Right after training, we have a few minutes to ourselves before the movie actually starts and we're still hanging around on the couch. Programs on TV look like they did this morning. On news broadcasts and national channels, lots of women on screen have been replaced either by a male version of themselves, or by a seemingly different person altogether. However, I notice certain types of channels or shows aren't affected by this at all. One of the judges I saw in a cooking show earlier this morning happens to be a guest on a women focused morning program. In addition to having a short arm with a finger on her right side, she also has a narrow foot directly attached to her right hip. An opening in her pants lets it move around in sync with her arm as she speaks. Sometimes, she simply flaps her arm or absently rubs her foot against her chair, like anyone who would normally cross his arms or play with the tips of their fingernails. Her other hip is as empty as mine. The host, a plump black woman, is dressed in a single piece of purple velvet that envelops her from buttocks to neck. Set on the table before her are reading cards that change whenever she utters her recurring catchphrase.
Mary clicks her tongue and the screen changes. A show called No men is playing. From what I had time to read from the TV guide on-screen, it revolves around the lives of a group of young women after a mysterious event wiped the males from the face of the Earth. It's probably meant to empower women and pretend that they're not as useless as they actually are. Three friends are sitting around the living room and argue about who's turn is it to cook dinner. A limbless blonde girl on the low couch says it's Gina's, her immediate neighbor. Also limbless, Gina would rather it be Alanna, sitting in a stand alone cushionned chair, but Alanna retorts with a sharp funny remark and sends it back to the blonde, called Rose. While she fidgets in her chair, Gina starts making a point again, also adressing Rose. Meanwhile, Alanna grins and pushes aside her long red hair with a single arm twice as long as mine. On the same side of her body, her only thigh also happens to be surprisingly long.
The camera shifts and a fourth girl comes into the room, waddling as we all do, with only a few inches of leg on her left side. On it, a complex design is tattooed but I can't quite make out what it is from this angle.
"Girls, girls, calm down!" She raises her shoulders high and lowers them again, as if to gesture them to relax. "It's barely even 3:30, why are we talking about dinner yet?"
"Because if Rose is cooking, she better start now." Says Alanna, mockingly raising her eyebrows at her.
"Ok, let's make a deal." She pauses as she arrives near the others and leans back on the wooden table. "I'll cook with Gina, then Alannah can handle the dishes later." She looks at both girls as she explains her point. "Without men, we need to stick together, right?" They all frown and nod, slowly realising that fighting is no option now. "But still, we don't need to start now, so how about we have some fun in the meantime?"
Rose speaks up, her soft voice barely more than a whisper: "What kind of fun, Meg?"
Meg doesn't answer. Instead, she bites her lower lip and begins waddling again, this time directly towards Alanna, who easily climbed down of her chair. The camera zooms in as Meg reaches her friend and their lips connect.
I startle. What's happening?
As they kiss, Alanna's arm slides under Meg's clothes, removing her shirt and pants, seemingly sewn as a single piece of clothing, and revealing her naked shoulders. The bones move beneath her skin as she leans forward, bites in Alanna's own shirt and rips it off her torso as well. Using her arm, she presses her friend against her, their breasts in full frontal contact. Unable to return the favor, Meg's body is undulating against her friend's. On the other couch, a similar scenario is unfolding before our eyes. Rose's shirt and pants are nowhere to be seen. Her small breasts follow the walking movements of her torso when she approaches Gina. She kisses her once before letting herself fall flat on her back. Gina, still fully clothed, backs up a bit before delicately dropping on her belly. From there, she inches forward and buries her face into Rose's genitals.
"Uhh, Is that porn?" I ask.
"Might as well call it that way", Catherine answers. "I read about the show when it started airing. The network would only accept to produce a women-only show if there was at least one sexual scene per episode."
The girls stay put on the couch, but I'm starting to get uncomfortable. Even if I was a lesbian just yesterday, this isn't turning me on at all.
On TV, the girls' movements are imprecise. Rose has to flip on her belly before being able to stand up and undress Gina the same way the other girls did. They start kissing again, their neck craned so they can reach each other across the small gap that still separates them. The rest of their body is tensed with excitement. Hips rise and fall, shoulders extend forward or shrug. Limbless, the pleasure they're currently having make their reduced bodies squirm without letting them hang on to anything. Rose leans forward to tip Gina over before proceeding to climb on her to kiss her once again. The two make for a wriggling pile of sweat and skin.
And this is when Hope decides to come back in the room. According to it, the documentary should start any minute now so it switches to the appropriate channel. I notice that my own neck has gone sweaty and I try to scrub the sweat off with my arms. Is it from disgust or actually from repressed excitement caused by that show, No Men? God, who knows. There's still much to learn about this new world.
The movie is said to have been produced by one of the big names in the filmmaking industry but I can't seem to recall his name or any of his other accomplishments. After being shown a simple company logo, the monitor fills up with close-ups of two faces side to side. A man's and a woman's. The man is handsome. Cleanly shaved, his hair are cut short and he's putting on a forced serious look that sometimes gives away to a shy grin. The woman's has the same kind of vibe. Strait black hair fall on the sides of her face, piercing green eyes and a small pointy nose. The focus is the same on both cameras, but I can already sense a difference. The woman seems twitchier. She tilts her head slightly to one side, or wrinkles her nose. Nothing major but she's definitely more expressive than her male counterpart. After 30 seconds of this, the narrator comes on and takes turn on explaining parts of the lives of our two subjects. How old they are, where they work, where they're from, what are their goals and, while he does, the camera slowly pans out.
As it does, we all know what to expect, apart from them being completely naked, maybe. The man has broad shoulders and defined muscle lines on his pectorals, arms and abs. Standing, his hands are joined to hide his genitals. Hair cover most of his chest, legs and arms. The woman, however... is a whole different story. Beneath her head, her shoulders broaden and abruptly come to an end before you would expect them to. Like cliffsides, the skin on her sides dips downwards where arms are supposed to be. The twitches I was noticing earlier seem to move in sync with some of her unconscious shoulder movements, unnoticeably moving back and forth. Her breasts are as free as the man's and her belly is flat and toned from years of using nothing but abdominal muscles to move around and care for herself. Her hips are just as empty as mine or Mary's. Just like all of us, she seems to have developped an exemplary sense of balance when sitting upright without any help whatsoever. Then, the woman gracefully scoots out of the shot, one calculated hip rotation at a time. The whole thing takes about 15 seconds, while the man needs only two small steps to his left and he's nowhere to be seen.
"Hey, I could've done the part, too!" Mary says, aknowledging their physical resemblance.
"Yeah but are your tits as symmetrical?" I reply, reaching for my own and pushing them up just to tease her. We laugh it off.
So we're going to follow Meredith's adventure as she and the filmmakers explore the public's reaction when seeing a more complete woman. The goal is to set her up in various situations where the crew can manipulate robotic limbs as if it were her own, but first we get to see her reabilitation. As I noticed by looking at her face alone, the way your head moves, twitches, or bobs can give away lots of information about your body. The current setup consists of the subject (no longer naked, fortunately for her), a team of non-verbal communication specialists and specific scenes to rehearse. They showcase a lot of footage from her practice for the café scene where they're going to sit her before customers get there and wait for their reactions. With remote controled limbs, they'll be able to make as if she's sipping her own tea or crossing her legs, but nothing is as easy as it seems.
Just like I did, the team immediately adresses what I had noticed. When she speaks, her head and shoulders are way too expressive. She needs to let more room for her hands to talk for her instead of emphasizing thing using her neck muscles. Moreover, since we all move and use our shoulders like hands because we don't actually have hands, she needs to let them rest as well while she's practicing the scenes. When they try to make her sip tea, she cranes her neck too soon, immediately causing the motion to look unrealistic. When you get fed by someone else, you get used to reaching out for it since you don't really know how far the spoon will come near your face. She doesn't know what it's like to bring things to her mouth without having to angle your head in reaction to another person's movement, but she needs to learn to trust the limbs and whoever is controlling them. After a few minutes of montage, she starts getting better and better at it. Without the cover up on her robotic limbs, we can see her body quite litterally slouched on her seat, not contracting a single muscle. With arms and hands, she would have no use for it so she sits her way through the whole thing for most of the remote-controlled gestures.
For another scene, she's meant to be laying on a beach chair wearing nothing but a bikini. This calls for specialized team of makeup artists who have the duty of erasing the delimitation between her skin and the limbs. With most of the robotic parts hidden behind the backrest, she'll still be able to make a few key movements that must first be rehearsed. However, we dive directly into the real scene instead of watching her practice like the first one. Tactically-positionned towels and cushions hide metallic components under her hips where her legs are activated as well as behind her back and just like that, she's a gorgeously limbed woman lying on her back on a sunny beach.
Before long, she's getting a lot of attention. Several hidden cameras capture the reactions of passersby. As families come to install their stuff on the beach, they orbit around her, both fascinated and confused. Men look at her with frowned brows. Women, on the other side, either sitting in mechanical wheelchairs, in a man's arms, set in sleds equipped with wheels, or on their own, hopping, waddling, pushing, rolling or making their way however they physically can, seem to nurture growing feelings of jealousy. After taking a good look at Meredith, they often seem to compare themselves to her, their eyes going back and forth between the actress' and their own finite bodies, their lives confined to the limits of a torso, or feel the urge to activate the short limbs some of them are lucky enough to have.
Two young women about Meredith's age sitting not too far from her spot make their way up to her, both stocked with a single short piece of limb on opposite sides of their bodies: a leg for one, and an arm for the other. Toned and tanned, they're prettier than most women with limbs I can remember.
"Wow", says the first with faked astonishment. "Looks like someone's been born lucky."
Meredith's head raises slightly and turns toward the girls. "Excuse me?"
The other speaks and points to her legs : "Nice limbs you've got there."
Her articulated right arm smoothly takes off her shades and lays them on her thigh.
"Thanks, nice sunny day isn't..."
"Freak." The first girl mutters between her teeth.
Meredith stutters. "E..ex..excuse me?" Her abs contract and she slightly straightens herself on her seat. Her left foot now rests on the chair, her knee raised upwards.
"Oh you heard me." A silence ensues. The image alternates between the surprised look on Meredith's face and the agressivity on the girls'. "This beach is no place for a freak of nature like you."
She turns around and starts waddling away as normally as anyone with limbs and attitude would do, her short leg plowing the sand everytime she pushes herself forward. The second one scans Meredith once more and whistles a few high notes. Seconds later, a muscular guy shows up to pick her up from behind. One hand lodged in her armpit, the other beneath her rump, she's lifted up into the air and the actress' eyes follow her. Right before they head off, the girl spits in the sand next to her chair.
Meredith, slightly shocked by their reaction, falls back on her chair. Her legs fidget to simulate a slight nervousness while her arm reaches below the chair to grab her phone and check the time.
The screen cuts to a different decor. Still a beach, still wearing a bikini, but she's lying on her stomach now. Her head is resting on her joined hands. When a man walks near her, she addresses him.
"Hey, sorry to bother you, could you help me perhaps?" She asks in a friendly voice.
The guy stops. He's alone but he carries a pack of beers in his left hand. He hesitates.
"Hum... Sure. What can I do?" He approaches her distrustfully.
"I bet you can't reach your back either right? I'm in need of a helping hand." Her left hand grabs a nearby bottle of lotion and extends it towards him.
When he takes hold of it, her hand retracts and rotates to indicate spots on her back. "Shoulders are done, it's really just that middle portion."
After putting his beer down and applying a thick layer of lotion on his hands, he drops on his knees and delicately rubs her back. As he does, you can spot the delimitation between her skin and the imitation of the animated limbs, pushing her around slightly on her seat, creating ripples that vary in texture and shape between her actual body and the fake. But he doesn't notice a thing.
"First time I see a woman like you in my entire life."
"A woman that can make the first move?" She twists her neck and winks at him. While she does, her shoulders stay relatively stable. "I'm pretty good at that."
"No I meant your physique."
Meredith faints surprise. "Oh yeah, that too I guess."
"Usually it's on every channel when a girl is born the way you are. How come you're not famous?"
"Oh, I'm working on that don't worry."
I giggle. I didn't know you could break the fourth wall in a documentary.
The guy stands up again and picks up his stuff. "Look, uhm, I gotta go meet my buddies over there, but maybe later we can hang out?"
"Yeah, why not?" Her hand is shielding her from the sun while she's looking up at him. "I'll be here until 3."
"Count that as a date, then."
He walks until he's offscreen and the actress relaxes herself, again laying her head on the robotic hands.
This goes on for a while, alternating scenes, decors, and situations, showing a plethora of reactions coming from the public. Then, we see a montage of situations where either the limbs malfunctionned, pretty much ruining the scene, or moments when Meredith decided to openly spoil the setup. To this teenage girl, utterly fascinated by her limbs, or to the guy to whom she promised a date when he came back to see her. Next is the crew's turn, almost entirely composed of men, of course. They expose their vision of the film and what it meant for them, the technical and ethical difficulties they encountered while looking for enough budget to create the projet but also with filming and casting.
Suddenly, an actress I recognize from the normal world appears on screen. Cheekbones from out of this world, hazelnut eyes, long dark brown hair put up in a ponytail, sitting in a directors' chair resting her chin in her open.... hand?! I blink a few times to make sure I'm not dreaming.
"It's crazy because that reminds me of my entire life. High school, college, my debut as an actress", she uses her fingers to count as she speaks. As she does, I realise she only has three. "those are all things I've heard or situations I can relate to." She waves her hand around, gesturing at the set and the crew members. "Intimidation towards limbed women is a real thing and I think this is one of many steps needed towards changing the general opinion and better acceptance of people like me but also to create a society where noone is discriminated for the length of limbs they have."
An off-screen voice says : "Would you have rather have been born without that arm?"
She grabs her right shoulder, obviously lacking bones and flesh even seen through the fabric of her button-down shirt. "15 years ago I would've said a million times yes. High school was a really difficult time of my life, I still have scars on my hip that justify that answer." Her hand moves and cups her left hip, as devoid of limb as are her shoulder and her other hip. "But I've learned to accept myself as I am. I also think that it acted as a springboard for my career, allowing me to be cast in more complicated roles than other women simply because of my physical appearance, which is absolutely desolating if you ask me."
While the credits scroll down, we can see the main actress, Meredith, sitting in the same chair as everyone before her, talking about the movie. What it meant for her, for women, what she's learned... She clothed again, and the robotic limbs are gone. Her body language is back to normal now and her shoulders are as active as ever. She goes on for several minutes without being interrupted. I catch the last bit of her monologue.
"... we have to think about what kind of society we want to live in. My appartment isn't adapted for me! We're all dependant on our boyfriends, our caretakers, I can't do much on my own! This chair is 2 feet of the ground." She leans to the left and touches the armrest with her ribcage. "How do you think I got up here? Why aren't there any straps to prevent me from breaking my neck?" She tenses her muscles and launches herself forward, effectively performing half a rotation midair before a nearby technician bolts to the rescue, catching her limbless body before she could crash to the ground. She squirms in his arms all the way back to the chair where she slouches over on one side. "I think this movie is the perfect opportunity to show the world what it needs and why we need it."
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When arrives to pick us up later in the afternoon, I'm still thinking about the movie. Is this how people see me when I'm the only limbless girl in my entourage? I'm usually too busy minding my own body to notice, but perhaps it is. People frowning and spreading gossip. Mark is home when we drop Catherine off and he picks her up like a package. The bones on her shoulders wave us the tiniest of goodbyes as we drive off.
The rest of the evening goes on pretty smoothly, just like the last 27 days. Nick cooks for us and we watch TV the rest of the evening. I was affraid he'd want to have sex with me, but he doesn't mention it. When I get too tired to keep my eyes open, he helps me to the bed and I fall asleep almost instantly.