by Tracie Dickerson

Created on: May 06, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

The first time I heard about the BODIES exhibit I was riding on the tube in London. My boyfriend at the time was telling me about his recent trip to see the exhibit and how great it was. I was repulsed as he described how the human body had been carefully preserved, dissected and posed to best show the human body in motion only without skin. I was disturbed. I thought Zack had lost his mind. I thought I should end our relationship on the spot, before he became next Jack the Ripper!

A few years, a few boyfriends and a few thousand miles across the pond later, I found myself having a similar conversation with another boyfriend. What is it about boys and dead bodies? Is there some internal drive they have to poke at dead things with sticks?

"Gross. Not again." I thought to myself. But eventually I came around to the idea of taking Roy to the exhibit.. mostly because I couldn't come up with anything else I could give him for his birthday. I was tired of gift certificates to the comic book store, and this seemed like something we could enjoy? together.

He was overwhelmingly delighted when I told him of his present. Excited though I wasn't, I put on a happy face and paid for our entry tickets.

Having grown up in a town with a large hospital, I have seen my fair share of weird stuff preserved in jars with needles and numbers to tell you what you are looking at. I was truly expecting to see this on a much larger level. Giant gars of weird stuff. But the exhibit was much more fascinating than that.

This exhibit was more like looking at plastic people. Once real, now plastic people. I was interested, but still grossed out. There were hundreds of people around me. So many of them had similar reactions to the bodies on exhibit. I stood there for a few minutes chatting with a worker. One of her most frequently asked questions turned out to be, "Are they real?"

Although mildly fascinated by the exhibit, I found myself disinterested after the first few rooms. Roy, however; moved a bit more slowly. Digesting each new part with a vigor I had never seen. I continued to move through the exhibit, staring at some stuff, reading bits here and there.. and then I came to the room of dead babies.

Having not had a child yet, I was torn. Do I see the room of babies in different stages, preserved for all time, or skip it and go to the next thing? I went for the room. I was sad as I stared at all of the lives lost. I thought about all of the potential these individuals would have had if they had lived. It was something I may never forget.

I found myself most interested in the human circulatory system. They had colored the veins blue and red and different parts of the system were so intricate and so beautiful. I had never been more amazed. For the first time I viewed the human body as a piece of art. Not just any art, but more impressive than the entire Louvre kind of art.

When I was done, I bought the book for Roy, as a final birthday present. I waited for another hour and a half as he toured the exhibit, reading the signs, truly learning from the exhibit.

I found a place to have a soda and a cookie, and thought about boys around the world and their fascination with the human form. Some things never change.

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