Perhaps not everyone knows what an anal lesion is. It’s a hairline rip or cut in the skin of your rosette. And if this small open wound gets infected as well — which down there is highly likely — then it hurts like hell. Like with me right now. Turns out your butthole is always in motion. When you talk, laugh, cough, walk, sleep, and, above all else, when you go to the bathroom. But I only realized this once it started to hurt.

The swollen hemorrhoids are also pushing with all their strength against the razor wound, ripping the lesion open even farther and causing the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. By far. In second place is the pain I felt run down my spine — ratatatatat — the time my father accidentally slammed the hatchback door of our car on my back. The third worst pain I’ve ever felt was when I ripped out my nipple ring taking off a sweater. That’s why my right nipple looks like a snake’s tongue now.

Back to my bum. In excruciating pain I made my way from school to the hospital and showed my cut to every doctor. Immediately I got a bed in the proctology unit — or do you call it the internal-medicine unit? Internal medicine sounds better than specifying “ass unit.” Don’t want to make other people envious. Maybe we can just generalize with internal medicine. I’ll ask about it later, when the pain is gone. Anyway, now I’m not allowed to move. I just lie here in the fetal position. With my skirt hiked up and my underpants pulled down, ass toward the door. That way anyone who enters the room immediately knows what the story is. It must look really infected. Everyone who comes in says, “Ooh.”

And they talk about pus and an engorged blister that’s hanging out of the wound on my butthole. I picture the blister like the skin on the neck of one of those tropical birds that puffs its throat out when trying to mate. A shimmering, inflated, red-blue sac. The next proctologist who comes in says curtly, “Hello, the name is Dr. Notz.”

Then he jams something up my asshole. The pain bores its way up my spine and into my brain. I nearly pass out. After a few seconds of pain I feel a wet squishiness and cry out, “Ow! Give me some warning. What the hell was that?”

His response: “My thumb. You’ll have to excuse me, but with that big blister there I couldn’t see anything.”

What a way to introduce yourself.

“And now? What do you see?”

“We’ve got to operate immediately. Have you eaten anything today?”

“How could I with this pain?”

“Good. General anesthesia then. It’s better given the situation.”

I’m happy, too. I don’t want to be conscious for something like this.

“What exactly are you going to do during the operation?”

The conversation is already straining me. It’s tough to concentrate on anything but the pain.

“We’ll make a wedge-shaped incision to cut out the infected tissue.”

“I can’t really picture that — wedge-shaped? Can you draw a picture for me?”

Apparently the esteemed Dr. Notz hasn’t often been asked by patients to sketch a diagram right before an operation. He wants to leave, glances at the door, stifles a sigh.

Then he pulls a silver pen out of his chest pocket. It looks heavy. Expensive. He looks around for a piece of paper to draw on. I can’t help him and hope he doesn’t expect me to. Any movement hurts. I close my eyes. There’s rustling and I hear him ripping a piece of paper out of something. I have to open my eyes — I’m anxious to see the drawing. He holds the piece of paper in his palm and scribbles with the pen. Then he presents his creation. I read: savoy cabbage in cream sauce. No way. He’s ripped the paper out of the hospital menu. I turn the paper around. He’s drawn a circle. I figure it’s supposed to be my butthole. And out of the circle a triangular wedge has been cut, as if someone has made off with a piece of cake.