Waiting tables, dyeing textiles, separating goats in heat
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James Lainsbury has worked as a logger, editor, and many things in between. He is a Mainer by birth but is currently nestled between Interstate 90 and the rail yard in Missoula, Montana, with his girlfriend and a moody springer spaniel. His essay “Control” is part of a larger, unpublished work.
In a procedure called a uterosigmoidostomy, surgeons connected my bladderless ureters to my colon. They couldn’t hook them directly to my urethra, because my penis would have become a spigot without a shut-off valve. Instead, urine and feces mixed in my colon, and I shit a muddy river. At three, I didn’t know there was anything wrong with this.