The Fox Skull

In collaboration with our friends at Objet: We’ve asked five writers to write about a single object that is significant to them.

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Today’s OBJET is Amelia K on the thin veil between who you are and who you could be.

I am one of those people for whom Benadryl is a moderate hallucinogenic, although I have never seen The Hat Man. During my most recent dosage, what I hallucinated was a Bo Burnham special that does not exist. I receive blood transfusions once a year, and the first half of the treatment is Benadryl, to minimize the risk of anaphylaxis. During the treatment, which takes about 4 hours, I either listen to comedy specials or read one of the inspirational books lying around, at my therapist's behest: you have a chance once a year to almost literally become someone new, she says. Do something you wouldn't normally do, be someone you wouldn't normally be.

This blend of stimuli is probably what motivated my brain to create a special called Cold Water that, again, does not exist, despite my drowsy notes to the contrary. I am uncertain why I ever thought it was real; at one point, according to my notes, Faux Burnham gives earnest, actionable advice to women who have been previously abused and recently dumped, which would be a coincidence so odd I'd have to consider it divine, and I guess I did. You can just keep going out of spite, he (I?) urged me. It's a quick burning fuel, but sometimes you only need enough to see the next two steps in front of you. ("Cold Water" is also the title of a Tom Waits song, which should have been another tip-off.) Occasionally, I was moved to tears.

It is neither the strangest nor the most detailed thing I’ve ever imagined. I had two major imaginary friends in childhood. One was an older sister named Judith, who mostly existed to roll her eyes at me. The other was a dead fox whose skull is still in my closet, studded with those cheap stick-on earrings from the 90s. I preferred the fox because Judith was only ever impossibly cool, and the fox's role was in constant motion—confidante, metaphor, auspice. I was too old to talk to it and too lonely not to. Other kids were bewildered by me. I loved god in a way that would have had me burned at the stake, and glad for it. When my third grade teacher went around the room asking what we wanted to be when we grew up, I said martyr, and she said what? in a try-again voice, so I said writer. I wanted to live forever, except when I wanted to die so young my life would be drenched in inherent innocence, bound for nowhere but heaven; who else would want me? Who else would look me in the eyes, if not my god?

Well, the fox would, or at least it would appear to, until its eyes went wherever eyes go. It was still a little "wet" when I brought it home, against my mama's wishes—I don't care if they're dead, they just have to be dry—but I buried it in the dirt until the insect activity slowed down. I remember finding it the way you watch yourself in a home movie, like a generative gutshot; one moment you're not there, the next you're exploding over the frame, you're everything. The fact that nothing was eating it was exceptional to me, and I wrote down in burgeoning cursive, "Lucky girl today!" next to a quote from Song of Songs.