That Thing we have to do, I’ve been really dreading it. I know everybody eventually has to do it; I’m hardly the first to arrive at the moment, knees quaking and fists reddened, but for some reason, I have this strange sensation that I’m not going to survive the passage. I foresee multiple therapists, medication and consequent side effects, cold sweats as the coffee timer blinks sometime past six in the morning, unpredictable sobbing, the loss of limb, no, of life: I think I’m going to die.

I am told that incredible as it might seem, I will pass this test without incident, will not even suffer—well, there’s substantial pain of course, what kind of passage would it be without substantial pain?—but nothing that can’t be contained. Pain as with the pulling of wisdom teeth or the birth of a child, pain that is to be borne and accepted as a necessary but not necessarily evil nuisance. Bullshit, I’m thinking. At night, as the water drips in the shower, as the dog snores on the floor, I curse the minutes passing on the clock, twist from left side to right and back again. But I don’t much mention my worry to friends. Most of them have already done the Thing anyway. Only with the consumption of wine do I nervously make a joke about it. They scoff, “Oh come on. Are you still whining about that? Trouble is, you think you’re special. What are you so worried about? Are you picking your teeth? Are you still renting?”

And it’s true. I’m not special. I work a regular job doing regular things going out to regular bars and regular restaurants, the sort that have clovers and wood chairs sometimes, the sort that have sleek metal modernist counters others. I earn an average income and live in a modest apartment. I am a perfectly reasonable candidate to survive the Thing.

Maybe I’ll even enjoy it. I fear that I’ll enjoy it, that the blade in my hand will be accompanied by a rush of pleasure, that I’ll associate forever this pleasure with that blade, and instead of doing the Thing once, I’ll want to repeat it in a depraved and slightly sexual way. People would talk. “She couldn’t handle it.” “Haha, no the problem is she COULD handle it, over and over again.” Perhaps it is like sex; that too I initially feared. But what sounded painful wasn’t, was so unpainful in fact that it was repeated twelve times in a weekend. And perhaps this will be repeated, something more than ritually.

I have registered with the Department of Mature Equilibrium; they forwarded me a computer print-out (dot-matrix!), appointment March 23, 2 pm. Middle of spring, prime of day. I can’t imagine getting luckier: a welcome thaw, unseasonably warm; the sweat, the blood, the permanent equation of my favorite season with that Thing that I’d rather forget. I repeat nonsensical aphorisms to myself: March comes in like a lion, goes out like a dead lion. This fails to reassure.

“But you know you have to do it?” Mom says, on a Sunday, end of winter. She’s practical, no-nonsense, irritating in her righteousness. No, I don’t know. What would happen if I didn’t come to grips with Mature Equilibrium? What about dread constitutes adulthood? She doesn’t answer these questions. She just cuts her overcooked tuna steak smugly, wiping it in the gravy as she says, “What is it with you that you don’t want to be an adult? Leslie Breadnot has done it and I never thought she could tie her own shoes. Quit biting your nails.”

Everything about me is an adult, except for my rebellion against doing the Thing. I have a job. I pay my own rent in my own apartrment. I cook my own dinners. I have one meal a week with my parents in which I refuse to say the Thing prayer, “Lord, grant that our daughter might graduate into adulthood soon, and join the rest of us this side of Maturity and Reason.” But nobody, not nobody can explain why Maturity and Reason need be precipitated by Fear and Despair.

The night before my appointment, I can’t even put myself out with Klonopin. That’s how nervous I am.  I lie in bed and think of all I’ve loved about life. Sex, mostly. I masturbate as many times as I can, which turns out to be six. I get up, wash my hands, finish a pint of cotton candy ice cream. I go wake up my best friend the dog, who tugs briefly at a chew toy but then shrugs and heads back into the living room. I follow him, turn on the TV and watch infomercials: Year Round Tomato! Dehydrate everything in your refrigerator! Make beef jerky! Polish your silver with one dip! I decide that the product I would be unable to resist is anything that gets me out of doing the Thing. Do I need to mention no such product exists? 

In the morning, Mom drives me. “There’s a rip in your jeans. I can’t believe you came to do the Thing wearing jeans with a rip in your knee. Elena Havegood wouldn’t do that. She dresses like an adult.” She’s driving to make sure I go, I think. I’ve protested so much that she doesn’t trust I’ll do it. In the waiting room, she neatly unfolds a handkerchief and blows her nose. I’m nervous, this irritates, I want to kill her. Maybe that is the way one is supposed to feel before doing the Thing. Perhaps adrenaline assists.

Three other people wait ahead of me: two guys, one girl, all five years my junior, at least. Mom raises an eyebrow. “See?” She doesn’t say that so much as think it loudly. What she says is, in a whisper, “I told you it was about time.” Nobody much looks at each other. On the cover of a People magazine, blonde celebrities who’ve recently achieved Mature Equilibrium beam under the headline “Easy as American Pie.” I stare at it for half an hour trying to make sense of it. Whoever’s in there is biding his time, I’ll tell you what. I’ve heard this is a problem. You want an early appointment, because everybody gets nervous at the last possible second, stalls, hems, haws, holds the line up. And he’s not within sight or I’d give him dirty looks. It’s not nice, it’s not fair, I’ll probably take my time too, but I’m so nervous I doubt I could control myself. Waiting is the worst part.

I think about how much I’ll miss my dog if I die. Of course, if I die, I won’t think at all, but I focus on this anyway. He’s a great dog, a big black mutt with the foulest breath in the world. I like that he’s ornery.

We’ve been there about an hour when a woman ten years older than me comes in. Eureka! I want to say. But she’s clearly a wreck, looks disheveled, maybe even homeless, and isn’t helping my case. “See?” Mom points behind her palm and does another eyebrow lift. As the sloppy dresser takes a seat, Mom resumes her position with her chin up self-righteously, determined to oversee my passage into adulthood. All she says is, “Doesn’t she sort of look like Melissa Cantpea?”

We wait for two hours. When the receptionist calls me, she stumbles over my last name. I don’t know why, it’s easy: Floodgate. She looks at the younger girl but I stand up. She sees me, a quick nod and I follow her into the room. I can feel Mom’s satisfied gaze behind me. I can feel that she’s half proud and I resent it.

I am led down a short hall into a room with a metal table and a metal plate, curtains closed before one-way glass. I know the drill. Before she leaves, the receptionist hands me a hospital gown, which I’m told to put on so that it opens at the front. I am wearing a shirt and a sweater; I pull them both off, awkwardly, the sleeves of one still nestled in the other, then hang them together from the door knob. Wrapping the gown around me, I tie it beneath my chin and fold my arms over my chest. Then it’s wait. And wait. More waiting. It’s infuriating to me that they’d leave you waiting like this in a hospital gown, entirely ready to wet yourself with anticipation.

A nurse comes in. “Hi Miss Floodgate, I’m Prudence. Let me take you through the routine. No reason to panic. Do you need to use the bathroom?”

But I just want to get it over with, so I say no. “Okay, so here are your tools. Did you take a class? Where’d you take the class at. Good then, you know how to open the rib cage. Well, I’ll leave you alone. I’ll just open the curtains, and when you’re ready, you can take care of the Thing, put it on the plate, and as soon as you’re done you’ll be scored and approved. Okay? I brought you your tools. Don’t worry, if anything goes wrong, someone will be right in with you.”

And she leaves just as perky as she came in. I’m alone, except for the Mature Equilibrium monitors on the other side of the mirror.

So I pick up the chest expander, and I press it against my sternum. It cracks me apart like I’m a pistachio shell. I raise the blade and plunge it in, veering right, just as instructed. It feels almost like it did on my practice mannequin. Oh there’s pain, believe me, plenty of it. Hurts like a bitch. But I knew that was coming, and knowing it is coming is worse than feeling it. So I just run around with one fell swoop. When I have the Thing on the platter I raise it to the ceiling. Points off for that grandiose gesture? Thing is, once I have it on the plate I can see how ridiculous this all was. Beating still, kind of a useless organ when you think about it. Suddenly the world just seems so practical. I feel fantastic. I don’t know why I didn’t do this a long time ago. I mean I feel terrific! I beam at the viewers, hold the Thing up so they can see. Blood drips down my arm, a little, but not that much really. I can see life for what it is now: we have a good parking spot. Mom will be satisfied, we’ll go pick up some groceries. While Mom tells me how right this all was, I’ll vacuum my apartment.  Somewhere, I think, I have a dog.