My head was too big to come out of my mother’s womb. It got molded to the lining, somehow, and stayed there. My father said that he had been drinking Nescafé out of one of those shitty vending machine cups at the time. When I was a little boy he would tell me that he spat out a lukewarm mouthful all over the doctor when he heard the news.
My head was too big to come out of my mother’s womb, so when it did, it split my mother all the way down the middle and she died.

People keep asking me what the inside of a womb looks like. I tell them it’s like Christmas punch with ice cubes and grapes floating around in it, or like those big chunks of amber with insects trapped inside.
I used to have these nightmares that I hadn’t managed to be born after all. In them I’m always a fly stuck in honey and all I can see is red, like the inside of my eyelids after I stare at the sun for too long.
My house is old and made of red bricks. My room is on the first floor. The road in front of it is all oranges and blacks and browns, all crunchy with leaves. On the other side, my window faces dumpsters and grey cars and, in the distance, skinny mountains in fog that look like dicks with condoms pulled over the top. The room is pretty small but I’ve painted it white and gold and I have red plastic chairs from the dollar store set up on the balcony. There are two red blankets, in case a girl sleeps over, and cheap red flowers and red wine. I spend every weekend in my room, mostly, sitting and staring out the window and spitting at the bums as they pass on the sidewalk.
The first time it happened, I was sitting on one of my red balcony chairs, reading this children’s book with big pictures and smooth, slimy pages. I had found it wedged beside the dumpster on my way home from school. It was called “The Bare-Naked Book” and some of the pages had been ripped out but I could still see dozens of drawings of bodies, naked and fat or skinny. “These are your elbows,” said one drawing, a little kid in a bathtub. “These are your knees!” said another. In that picture, a little girl crawled below a tabletop, and the knobby, red, or arthritic knees of all dinner guests were exposed. I flipped the page: “This is your penis! This is your vagina!,” the book said, and then I heard the engine and looked up.
It was a beat-up white van with a huge scratch along the side of it. The van had stopped by the dumpster and whoever was driving kept the engine running. The exhaust fumes made me dizzy. I stared, but was still surprised when the driver- a man- leaned his head out the window and yelled, “Hey, kid, you wanna make your mother proud?”
I didn’t like yelling so I walked outside instead, barefoot, and went over the him. The man had patchy grey-and-white hair and smelled like laundry detergent. He wore a sweater-vest and dark glasses. He looked like he could be my grandfather. I told him I couldn’t make my mother proud because my head was too big to come out of my mother’s womb and it had killed her.
“Just come with me,” the man said. “We’re going to go find all the answers.”

I don’t want you to judge me when I say that the man’s words made sense to me, and so I went with him.

When I got in the car the man took one look at me and laughed. “Don’t look so scared,” he said. He pulled away from the curb and started to drive along the main road. “What are you, Amish or something?” He looked at my brown pants and my jacket with the big black buttons and my bare feet. Then he shook his head like he was forgiving me and smiled. “Your head’s huge. You must have a really deep throat,” the man said, his eyes on the road in front of him.

I don’t tell anyone this, but I lost part of my brain back then, back when I was stuck in my mother’s womb. I lost the most useful part, the one that deals with all rational, logic-based decision making. At least, that’s the only explanation that makes sense to justify the words that then came out of my mouth.

“Give me some money and I’ll show you,” I said.

So I showed him, because my throat really is pretty big. I did it casually from the passenger’s seat, leaning over into his lap, as though it was no big deal. When he was in my mouth it reminded me of the dense weightless feeling of the womb, of all your senses being busy at once, sort of hanging, not really waiting for anything or expecting much. Having him in my mouth felt like being stuck inside my mother’s body, knowing I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, and that there was nothing I could do.