Undesirables – Garth Miró

November 13, 2025

Dr. von Hagens knew he was being shunned. His colleagues thought what all people think when a man is alone for long stretches of time with access to dead bodies. He wasn’t some savage; he just got along better with dead people. They were accountable. Anyway, it didn’t matter. He was going to leave these invalids and their judgments and reports and the God damned conniving jealous little Thilo who eternally listened to his God damned DDR radio and suspected everyone of being a nazi, good riddance, goodbye to all the small thinking at the University of Heidelberg, he was going to do something truly important with his life: become famous (or at least as close as one could get as an anatomist). 
        But after developing his sophisticated new method of “plastination” to preserve his late friends, pumping plastic into their heads and holes, the German anatomist found, beyond personal enjoyment, there was really no use for the technology. Like all Germans, the absence of any real practical functionality (money) tormented him to the point of madness, and he altogether dropped science. Dr. von Hagens became “von Hagens, the businessman.” He got to work peeling his now-immortal carcasses, bending their arms and legs into delicate poses, sealing them in big glass terrariums and giving their suffering titles: “the javelin thrower,” “the longest prayer,” “the bitch, Carla.” With this Body Worlds exhibit, he had his masterpiece. People lined up, as it is well known the living have always found it comforting to gloat over the dead; the line grew and grew, and even after opening hundreds of locations, keeping up with demand was impossible. Unfortunately, Europe’s insistence on cheap pharmaceuticals and socialized medicine meant people weren’t dying fast enough. 
        So it goes, when great industrious minds are impeded by Western morals, and to a much greater extent, regulations, it was off to the dim, luscious corners of mainland China. 
        In the city of Dalian, everyone had quit work to practice Tai Chi all day. They were well-known for doing this in their hideous matching yellow outfits—more well-known than newly-appointed mayor Bo Xilai, which was their greatest offense in his eyes. It gave his rival, the young princeling Xi Jinping a useful piece of gossip. Poor little Xilai, sent to the joke city in the joke province. Everyone knew Dalian was where political careers went to die. This God damn Falun Gong cult had turned the town into bums. All those unused factories…just sitting there, reminding investors the country was still very much split; there was New, and then old, stupid, hick-filled, shit outside China. He needed a way to jumpstart production. Something that didn’t take much manpower. 
        At an emergency conference held to conjure a miracle, the mayor met a weary von Hagens, who for months had been groveling throughout the country trying to sell plastination. Other leaders had shown him the door after learning the process smelled like shit, and would stain their people’s skin, and clothes, and make them all smell like shit: that kind of shame would eclipse any output. So, von Hagens pitched the mayor using the popular Maoist slogan: 实事求是 (“seek truth from facts”). The fact was Xilai was fucked. In charge of a town of freaks. No one talked about Dalain. And these facts were their prize.
        Nothing they did would be monitored.
        Finally, the mayor would get to join the Great Leap Forward, using those ridiculous Falun Gong members as blood sacrifice. It would be easy to get people on board. The poor were always the most fervent nationalists. A good nationalist knew “socialism with Chinese characteristics” was a malleable vision of Marxism; and more accurately, malleable to whatever dwindling CCP career needed a jumpstart. It should fill them with pride, getting to be considered undesirables.
        Xilai agreed.
        In the Year of the Ox, 1997, he made a deal with von Hagens. They consulted the Party’s “scientific rhetoric expert”—which didn’t really mean anything, besides the guy had eaten Zhu Lilan’s pussy, as was her system at the Ministry of Science. The last of their budget went into propaganda. They turned the streets red with rows of posters, simple enough for dumb peasant minds: “Plastination Will Change your Life.”

***

Twenty-five years later, late imperial America. Federal agents in the chat. Angry Arabs at the gates. Half the country Rationalists banking on hugged-and-kissed AI. The other half, dreaming of a socialist hippy utopia, where they could trade songs for organic produce and not use condoms. Body Worlds had just opened a new exhibit in New York City. They’d come here, because here, the Falun Gong had managed to keep themselves alive. They’d tweaked their image; found a way to sell their own tickets by training members to dance and look sexy twirling colorful scarves. “Shen Yun,” they called it. Unknowingly, people chose sides; either nodding through the exhibit to prove they “believed the science,” or dragging themselves up to Lincoln Center to see the cultists flip and swing to prove they “understood and valued art.” 
        I’d just taken Celine to both (without any idea of the history or von Hagens)—two dates in a Hail Mary attempt to smooth things over. She’d broken off our engagement, again. Third time. I was madly in love, apparently; a temporary insanity I was hoping to cure with marriage, as the literature implied. The night ended with her spitting in my face. So, this afternoon, I was doing my best to coax her back with my pathetic little letter of flagellation. 

Tiny Skinny Deer who’s always right,

I love you. I need you. I’ve changed, I promise. Yes, I know: “people only say those things when they’ve fucked up completely.” If there was a better way to prove it, I’d do that. I’d kill someone if that’s what you wanted. I’d prefer to kill everyone. Then it would be just you and me; you’d have to listen when I say I’m done cheating—even with prostitutes. I want things to be simple and clean between us. That hippie therapist said it’s key to keep the lines of communication honest. So, yes: I had a problem. I was the problem, as the things I was pursuing sexually had gotten so specific and elaborate, I didn’t actually think you’d want to participate. Really, I was doing you a favor by sleeping with prostitutes. Now it’s out of my system. From here on, I defer to you in all things. I will go back to school. I will wear those clothes. I will play the part, so your father will feel comfortable giving me a job. You’ll be able to bring me to those parties. To receive envy “from the right kind of people,” which as you’ve said, is the most effective method for staying young. I feel old now. Soon, I’ll die. I know I will if you don’t take me back. Please take me back. I’ve changed, honest. Celine’s letter (paper, because they turned my phone off) went on like this until the naked 20-year-old whose back I was using to write on twitched, turning my signature into a very thin, very straight, very long line.
        “Bunny,” the young entrepreneur put her clothes on and called her manager to come pick her up and I entered the “trained poodle” period of my life. Years of flagrant monogamy, sobriety. I performed any public display (Thanksgiving, ties) asked by Celine and her very rich family. It was unnerving, how comfortable I got. By the end, I’d offered all the juice of my youth to appease professors and tutors and career counselors. I entered the workforce. And then immediately the economy crashed.