Until then he had not really related to his asshole. He knew it was there, yes. He imagined it rather as something that dilated and contracted according to what was coming out of it -he did know that it was a dilating-contracting movement, he felt it- rather like the motion of a camera lens when you look at it from the front. There was a picture in his mind from medical journals or pornographic magazines; an exit point circled in pink, purple or brown. Sometimes it could also be an entry point. Its elasticity, the elasticity which made it possible to take in things was not meant to be, had always seemed to him an exaggerated facility. No, not because he was against pornography. He was open-minded. It was only that the insistence on finding other uses for things meant for a specific function, made him think what busybodies people were -inventive people, people who can always think of new uses for everything- and he found this endeavor superfluous. It was there, outside of him, he had no quarrel with it.
His hole didn’t come into his life right away. One day, towards the end of his young years, it made itself felt. It was rather like a relative one has not seen for a long time finding one’s telephone number and making a call. Perhaps more serious. It was as if there was some property in common with this relative whom he didn’t particularly like, so they had to see each other until it was disposed of. A nuisance.
It happened like this: One day, when his hand went there in a routine cleaning movement -not with special intent, never- there, on the rough, goosebumply rim of the hole he encountered a growth that protruded (it had to be protruding) and that had not been there until then. It irritated him. He would have torn it off had it been something that could be torn off. But right away he realized that he could not do so. He had to evaluate the situation. After a moment of hesitation, he went on to explore the area around the growth much longer and in a much more detailed fashion than he had until then. It was his longest lingering there. He didn’t like the sensation. Afterwards, he washed his hands until he felt they really were clean.
Nevertheless, that thing there made itself felt when he brought his legs together and stood up, or even worse, when he was walking. Or so it felt. Was the growth (which he had always associated with quack medicine and crude jokes) really making itself felt, or did it only seem so; of that he was not sure. But whatever it was, he had to accept the fact that he had no control over it, same difference, it was useless to make distinctions.
Of course, his hand went there a few more times. Although he realized that he could not pay constant attention to it and soon had to do something about it, he could not help checking the sudden appearance, and thus the area around it. It was strange there. He went back again and again to this spot he knew or thought he knew, as if to a vacant lot said to be haunted; past the tiny, sparse, crinkling hair (yes, that was the word even if there was no crinkling sound), he arrived somewhere textured like the faux leather used for covering chairs in his childhood but more fleshlike, shivering, alive. Then he would find the gristly yet elastic entry point and finally arrive at the growth which he’d hoped would miraculously disappear but of course had not.
There it was, and wouldn’t go away.
…
Excerpt from “The Phantom Behind"
Longer sample manuscript available in English 
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