He became a giant ship sometime around his thirty-eighth birthday. Floating in the harbor, a doctor arrived to examine him. The doctor was having an affair with his wife, but he was also the only medical professional in the city who specialized in maritime transformation. The affair was a short one anyway. It had begun a month earlier when he and his wife decided they didn’t want children. He began to feel an itch down near his right knee, and his wife began to commit infidelity. The doctor wasn’t her only paramour, but he was her favorite. She begged him to go help her husband, and the doctor put aside his reservations and went down to the docks.

The husband was no small ship. Rather, he was something resembling a yacht. The doctor knew immediately that this was the cause of childhood trauma. When the husband-now-ship insisted that he’d had a perfectly happy upbringing, the doctor asked if it was possible that his parents had also experienced infidelity in their marriage. The husband-now-ship had to think for a bit, but then remembered his mother disappearing for several years while he was in high school. He never questioned why, but it seemed logical to assume that it had something to do with a lover. When she returned home, her hair was a different color and she had surgically enhanced calves, but other than that, she seemed quite all right. The day she returned, she walked into the house, asked what had happened to the cat, was informed the cat died of old age, some weeping occurred, and then she made everyone omelets. His father wasn’t bothered by any of it as far as the husband-now-ship could tell. The doctor was agitated listening to all this. He wasn’t a therapist. His job was to take people who had turned into something and turn them back.

Without further details, the doctor couldn’t decide how best to proceed with the reverse transformation. He asked for permission to board the husband-now-ship, and the husband consented. On deck, the doctor marveled at how clean the vessel was. Most people who turn into ships turn into barges. Rust and stains cover them by the time their evolution has concluded. That was not the case with the doctor’s girlfriend’s spouse. He could have eaten off that deck. In fact, he took a piece of bread out of his pocket, rubbed it on the varnished wood, and then took a bite out of it. He wanted to try and taste any skin that might be left, but there was none. He didn’t believe the ship could ever be a man again, and despite his excitement at the thought of having his love all to himself, he didn’t relish giving her husband the news that he would never again have a heartbeat.

Making his way inside the ship, he found something odd in the galley.

A bottle.

A baby bottle.

It was filled to the brim with rivulets coming down its side. The doctor picked up the bottle and took a suck. He was able to diagnose instantly that it was formula in the bottle and not breastmilk. The doctor nearly spit it out as he had a strong aversion to baby formula. He had a vivid memory of being an infant savoring the flavor of his mother’s sustenance. Any time he heard or read about a woman eschewing breastfeeding in favor of formula, he wanted to beat his chest and demand a tribunal. He took another swig from the bottle just to be sure, but there was no denying it.

He had his culprit.

Returning back to the deck, he lay down on the wood where the bread had been rubbed and whispered something to the husband-now-ship. The husband responded that, yes, his mother had given him formula. She found breastfeeding to be a rather grotesque practice. Pregnancy itself had roiled her. That was the reason she only had one child and eventually abandoned it for years on end. She found the way that children were created, gestated, birthed, and nurtured to be barbaric.

“I don’t understand,” the doctor replied, “You said you had a happy childhood.”

The husband-turned-ship confirmed that. He felt very strongly that his mother was a great roommate, if not much of a matriarch. His father was a great father, and between aunts and a series of nannies, there was no shortage of maternal energy. That left his mother to be a woman in the house who was fabulous and funny and treated him like a little oddity that might be worth something. She would tell him bawdy jokes and sing him songs about the French Revolution, and as he grew older, he realized that she wanted to model herself after Auntie Mame, and that was fine with him.

“All of that is the reason you’re a ship now,” said the doctor, “But mostly the bottle-feeding. That’s what did you in.”

There was a cure, but it wasn’t pleasant. Not for anyone. The doctor summoned the husband-turned-ship’s wife, and when the woman arrived at the docks, she was already wearing all black. She didn’t really believe her lover could fix her husband, and when the doctor explained to her how he could go back to normal, she was nearly tempted to tell him to just leave the boat the way it is. She’d always wanted a boat. Not to sail, but to have it as a status symbol. And now she could have a doctor as a husband instead of just a husband as a husband. All was going her way, and now it was being derailed. She wanted to throw herself into the ocean, but she was in no way poetic.

Instead, she was escorted by the doctor into a state room aboard the ship. Once there, she disrobed and stepped into the shower. After turning on the hot water and admiring the pressure, she summoned the milk. It appeared in drops at first, and then streams, and then a steady stream traveling down her chest, stomach, legs, feet, and finally, down the drain.

The wife stood there for what felt like hours letting the milk produce itself and then benefit her husband-turned-ship. Outside the state room, she heard the doctor humming a tune, but she couldn’t place what it was. She went to reach for the soap and saw that it had turned into a finger that was jutting out from the tiled wall. The finger had her husband’s wedding ring on it, and when she saw it, she felt a blockage begin to form in her throat.

Outside a seagull landed on the deck.

He had heard something about a ship in the harbor with breadcrumbs on deck, but looking around, he couldn’t find any.

To him, it all looked spotless.