Category: Uncategorized

All of the tenants woke up at once. The sun glided across the horizon like dawn or armageddon. Light pouring from each window, flooding through every gate. Lunging across the face, penetrating the eye slit. Something dense and loud shook the building. Colliding with the top floor, a meteor or a missile.

At its incipit, a collective of ambitious architects had organized the building into a maze of studio apartments. Rooms connected by disjointed hallways and corridors, rendering each space partially communal, where the path to the elevator or the lobby or the balcony was taken through neighboring apartments. The vocabulary of the collective drawing references from Deleuze and Borges. They liken their creation to the Library of Babel. Tenants are nourished by the processes of their habitat. Entering the homes of strangers becomes familiar / common. Neighbors become apparitions, distant and obfuscated bodies moving through doors and hallways.

Performance artists recreate their paths, writers and filmmakers document their encounters. The population shifts into a state of becoming. Simultaneously the subject and object of their fascination. Themselves the same strangers that they see at the ends of hallways and looking out windows. Tenants become suspicious of one another. Pursuing and avoiding. Each a part of the larger apparatus of the building. Because of this, when something loud and dense crashes into the building, into the top floor, there is no investigation.

Tenants assemble their theories about the loud crashing of the top floor, “It was without cause or purpose.” … “The installation of a new floor.” … “An extension of the landlord’s will.” … “We are without overseer.” … “There are no more consequences.” … “The visitation of a talented artist.” … “One that we have, as a group, defined as being consistent in their aesthetic and praxis.” … “The performance of their ritual.” … “Equating the building to a body.” … “Each of us a cell.” … “Every cluster of rooms an organ.” … “Each floor a system.” … “It is a break or malfunction in the veins connecting systems.” … “Blood cannot travel.” … “The collective has departed.” … “They have left us without an understanding of our environment.” … “Space is of a poetic nature, it cannot be understood haptically.” … “This is nonsense.” … “And yet it afflicts us.” … “Or we are afflicted with a hypochondriac perception of ourselves.” … “Or there is no difference.” … “Or there was no sound at all.” … “But this is not true.” … “Something has happened.”

Red light illuminates windowless hallways. Fragmented pathways connecting barren or cramped studios. Silhouettes pass one another, clinging to the edges of the wall. Circumnavigating other bodies. The floors creak at the hint of movement. Tampered wallpaper absorbs pockets of light. Someone says that they have been waking up in the middle of the night, seeing images of their mother. The void reconstructs vague memories of her complexion. It feels as if certain pathways have begun to disappear, they say, certain doors aren’t where I remember. Some hallways don’t lead to where they used to.

A tenant who pretends to associate with the collective of ambitious architects, lists the semiotic qualities of the hallway. Speculates why the lights are red, why people won’t talk to one another, why the floor creaks so much. The neighbor who saw their mother in the middle of the night says that symbols must be placed, they do not happen naturally, or as the byproduct of a degradation. If there is a signifier being signified, in this circumstance, it is the aesthetic elements of Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel, in which none of us can bear to leave, but there is no reason we should stay.

Someone says that Buñuel might live here, but it is not true. Another tenant says that this could not be true, it would be anachronistic. The layout of the floor changes. Since the sound of the initial impact, the building has felt much more lively. As if awoken. Landlines are severed by tectonic shifts. Wires stretch and unthread. Fires start between walls. Red light crawls into the connecting studios, engulfing the door frame and absorbing the natural fill.

One of the tenants takes on the facade of a performance artist. They perform the movements of the building. When they flex their leg, the floor shakes. When they extend their bicep, the walls bend. When they tense their neck, the ceiling explodes in noise and static.

Further hysterias begin to develop. Each tenant finding their own methods of converting paranoia into a tactile art. The collective of ambitious architects respond cryptically by writing a map of the text, in which each floor’s changing shape is dynamically rendered. But regardless of this, there are no departures and no changes to the migration of the tenants.

apt. no. 4006 – apt. no. 9096 – apt. no. 3619 – apt. no. 2299 – apt. no. 3584 – apt. no. 1345 – apt. no. 3436 – apt. no. 4370 – apt. no. 3813 – apt. no. 2786 – apt. no. 4735 – apt. no. 8562 – apt. no. 7263 – apt. no. 8253 – apt. no. 5782 – apt. no. 1702 – apt. no. 5257 – apt. no. 4474 – apt. no. 826 – apt. no. 4322 – apt. no. 1915 – apt. no. 1765 – apt. no. 8850 – apt. no. 1924 – apt. no. 7211 – apt. no. 1160 – apt. no. 197 – apt. no. 6382 – apt. no. 7860 – apt. no. 5286 – apt. no. 7792 – apt. no. 7394 – apt. no. 6277 – apt. no. 1158 – apt. no. 7493 – apt. no. 9853 – apt. no. 5196 – apt. no. 9277 – apt. no. 2524 – apt. no. 6494 – apt. no. 5820 – apt. no. 6129 – apt. no. 914 – apt. no. 7276 – apt. no. 2714

apt. no. 8858 – apt. no.2659 – apt. no. 4276 – apt. no. 2535 – apt. no. 2851 – apt. no. 2888 – apt. no. 828 – apt. no. 2031 – apt. no. 7303 – apt. no. 3046 – apt. no. 4210 – apt. no. 2325 – apt. no.5803 – apt. no. 9826 – apt. no. 3676 – apt. no. 2103 – apt. no. 2382 – apt. no. 3282 – apt. no. 2720 – apt. no. 1513 – apt. no. 3593 – apt. no. 8575 – apt. no. 8965 – apt. no.6969 – apt. no. 6867 – apt. no. 292 – apt. no. 108 – apt. no. 1408 – apt. no. 1631 – apt. no. 5327 – apt. no. 7254 – apt. no. 2643 – apt. no. 1188 – apt. no. 5182 – apt. no.4163 – apt. no. 9021 – apt. no. 6777 – apt. no. 8203 – apt. no. 2747 – apt. no. 9892 – apt. no. 1915 – apt. no. 1668 – apt. no. 3581 – apt. no. 7846 – apt. no. 4432

apt. no. 4006 – apt. no. 9096 – apt. no. 3619 – apt. no. 2299 – apt. no. 3584 – apt. no. 1345 – apt. no. 3436 – apt. no. 4370 – apt. no. 3813 – apt. no. 2786 – apt. no. 4735 – apt. no. 8562 – apt. no. 7263 – apt. no. 8253 – apt. no. 5782 – apt. no. 1702 – apt. no. 5257 – apt. no. 4474 – apt. no. 826 – apt. no. 4322 – apt. no. 1915 – apt. no. 1765 – apt. no. 8850 – apt. no. 1924 – apt. no. 7211 – apt. no. 1160 – apt. no. 197 – apt. no. 6382 – apt. no. 7860 – apt. no. 5286 – apt. no. 7792 – apt. no. 7394 – apt. no. 6277 – apt. no. 1158 – apt. no. 7493 – apt. no. 9853 – apt. no. 5196 – apt. no. 9277 – apt. no. 2524 – apt. no. 6494 – apt. no. 5820 – apt. no. 6129 – apt. no. 914 – apt. no. 7276 – apt. no. 2714

KNIFE

the knife to cut the beet 
from the garden the red 
dye against my skin 
the shiny metal blade 
your job is to wash 
the knife your job 
is to prevent me 
from coming close 
to the sharpness 

we took on certain roles 
in the house 
you cut the meat 
while I cut the vegetables 
the stains were varied 
yours a thin scarlet 
and mine bleeding green 
I later pulled a needle 
through cloth 

repeating colors 
with thread 
we hung the embroideries 
on the walls 
the colors fixed 
we sat on the couch 
as the colors watched 
us move one of our hands 
on top of the other’s 

your hand was usually on top 
we played 
our roles 
you walked through our hallways 
the loudest 
I resented your footsteps 
while I walked 
on my tiptoes 
towards the front door 

in the thicket 
outside the house 
you had the idea 
to chop wood with the knife 
so that it would become 
dull 
so that we wouldn’t 
be tempted 
to place it against skin

then to reveal our scars 
holding subway poles 
the inside of our arms visible 
showing off 
the knife’s traces 
red the knife 
in your jean pocket 
an unforgettable 
          shape

THE POND OF HER

The cattails in Humboldt Park almost sway, 
but they are too heavy in their longing. 
I am wearing her cut-offs 
and the angora sweater from the rummage. 
She taught me to shave my legs. 
I could only live 
by her definition of beauty. 

She lives by matching accessories 
purchased at Claire’s Boutique, 
clear skin, 
a C cup, 
plucked eyebrows. 
We’re nothing 
alike. 

The pond is too shallow for suicide. 
I would often go alone, but sometimes 
with her to watch the way her fingers 
stroked the top of the cattail. 
She would come close 
to pulling it out 
from its green stalk. 

Close to the edge 
of the park 
we could hear tiny 
voices from the swing sets. 
The pond was near 
a busy street 
where not everyone avoided 

the ducks who had left 
their element and we cried. 
Maybe we were sad 
because it was like our own 
suicides 
would have been: 
a sudden end to love.

CEMETERY COFFEE

Caffeine 
sparks our imaginations. 
Our thoughts rise 
like we wanted our loved ones 
to rise from the grave. 
We are their children who walk barefoot, 
leaving footprints in the brush. 
Our hearts are their balloons. 
They hold on by the strings 
of arteries. 

Coffee in the cemetery. 
They would have wanted some, 
with an extra dollop 
of milk like coffee that we drank 
in the church hall 
from Styrofoam cups 
when we still prayed 
and saving the environment 
meant turning off the light 
when we left a room. 

We drank coffee. The yellow 
tablecloth was a pond 
between us. My feet 
were wet in our conversation. 
She bought me gold jewelry, not realizing 
that I would have preferred costume 
even when I moved my hair 
away to show off florescent pink earrings. 
She didn’t know we were different. 
But she was the one to drift away.

COLOR

a cool piece of silk 
the soft protein 
dropped in dissolved 
alum a bridge 
the yellow weld, the pink madder 
the bright osage orange, the purple lac 
the insect constructs 
its house and it dissolves into color 
influenced by acid, alkaline, copper, or iron 

the reaction in the beaker 
fizzes towards her 
she has wanted to experience 
this connection in her own life 
to see her desire 
bubble up above her skin 
to look in the mirror 
and see herself changed 
color in her cheeks 

swatches of silk 
for her daughter’s high school science fair 
the dyes were collected from the house 
coffee grounds 
rose petals 
turmeric 
their scents in the hot water 
made her head spin 
as her daughter waited for results 

she pulled on her rubber gloves 
to manipulate nature 
the dye rinsed off like blood in water 
when she cut her finger 
chopping eggplant for your birthday 
her hair all twisted up 
and you open the box 
with the silk scarf 
lying quietly in color

PAPER DOLLS 

I am sick and I cut the parts that hurt larger. 
The heart throbs. The room is getting stuffy, 
but mother is afraid of opening the window. 
The paper dolls float like snowflakes. 
Weather finds its way inside. 
She watches me with the glistening blades 
of the scissors. The down has traveled 
to the bottom of the comforter. 
It isn’t warm anymore. My pills 
are lined up on the nightstand, full moons. 
I cut dresses and two-piece suits, fold them 
over the bodies of the dolls. In the mirror 
I see my mother’s face behind me. 
She is ready with the cold compress, 
ready with the thermometer. I am ready 
with my fever. 

A sharp electric tone screeches from the alcove of the restaurant’s drive-thru window. The girl on duty for the night shoots past the counter in a blur, engaging her headset and going through her opening spiel for the customer in the blue Chevy around back. She bobs behind the shift manager as she darts toward her register.
He adjusts as she moves closer, straightening up a bit from the slouch he’d crumpled into while idly talking to a regular customer across the counter. He cranes his neck after her, after the shape of her buttocks pushing out the faded fabric of her slacks and the equine sway of the long rope of hair dangling out of her cap.
There is something like a smile on his lips as he turns back.
The customer stands at the counter like a wobbly, misshapen idol, all Buddha belly and unnatural posture. He sips from a half-gallon paper cup, occasionally dribbling on his short-sleeve pinstripe shirt and the navy shorts that stop above his rocky knees and albino-pink legs.
“It’s the comparison I’ve heard is closest,” the man says.
Reorienting on the other side of the counter, the restaurant’s shift manager leans his compact frame against the bulky register with a faint creak of stubborn plastic. He smiles a different type of grin with half his face and answers, “You know, I hear that a lot. Most people get this weird idea about the Roman Empire. You know what people are really admiring when they say this stuff? Their engineering. That’s about the only criteria you can use to say Rome’s the greatest empire in history. You’ve got Alexander’s, or the Khans–all bigger. Hell, China was bigger than Rome for a thousand years. Rome was a flash in the pan. So if people want to make that comparison, then that’s what they’re saying. They don’t even know what Rome was, or how it worked. It’s a confused understanding of history if you ask me.”
“I think that’s what that book I was talking about said, too.”
“What was the name of that one again?”
“Um, I can’t remember exactly. I’ll look it up and tell you tomorrow,” the man stammers.
“Sounds good,” the shift manager says absently, looking past the man to the dark hanging on the other side of the front windows. “Well, I better get back to work.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I should go. I’m just gonna get a refill.”
“Sure.”
He takes the barrel from the customer’s pudgy fingers and loads it with soda before handing it back across. He gets a smile from the graying, pasty face as the older man turns and heads out with flopping steps.
“Dude, that guy is weird,” a voice booms from behind the heat lamps.
“Be nice,” the girl’s voice interjects from the drive-thru.
“He’s harmless,” the shift manager tells the cook without looking at him. Instead of turning, he punches in a sequence of commands on the front cash register, prompting it to spool out a long strip of printed tape.
“I don’t know how you talk to that guy, though. Whenever he comes in here you get talking about shit like that. It’s like you know everything.”
“Hardly everything.”
“But where you find all that out, man?”
“School, books.”
“So you’re all educated and shit,” the hefty fry cook continues while switching off the bun-toasting machine.
“Guess so,” he answers. “And don’t say ‘shit’ when there are customers around.”
The frycook cranes his neck to see around the wall of the dining room. “Oh shit, are there people here?” he asks over the sound of the machine winding down.
“Shhhh.”
“So where’d you go to school?”
“Um, I actually went to Harvard for a while, but I ended up back home here at Harvard on the border.”
“Harvard, huh?”
“Yeah, but I had to come back because of family problems.”
“Oh yeah? That’s cool. Hey, can I break down the toaster, man?”
“Way too early.”
“Come on, man. I’ll just run some buns through ahead to get us through the night.”
“Nope.”
“Dude, come on.”
“Hey,” he says, turning away from the register. “If it were my restaurant…well, if it were my restaurant then I’d be chained to it and that thought would probably drive me to suicide so then you’d be free to do whatever you wanted.”
“Huh?”
A little chirp of a laugh emanates from the drive-thru window.
“No, you can’t break down the toaster,” he says and steps over to the drive-thru girl’s register.
“That’s funny, huh?” he asks her.
“Little bit,” she tells him. The brim of the baseball cap shadows most of her face, but her lopsided smile pokes out. He hovers before her, and she cranes her neck up to see from under the hat. Her form is pretty much lost in the baggy uniform, but bits of her body push outward on the combo wardrobe of printed tee-shirt and on-the-cheap work pants: strong shoulders, breasts, and a little hip. For a moment her long face looks only doughy, but her smile widens when he looks down at her. The expression pulls up her cheeks and stretches her jowls back, giving her face some shape.
“Excuse me,” she says and steps around him.
She saunters off as he runs a report off her register too and pops the drawer open.
He calls her back up a minute later.
“The drawer.”
“What? Is it off?”
“How many twenties did you take?”
“I don’t remember.”
The frycook peers over his equipment to listen in and the other cashier wheels the sloshing mop bucket past them on her way to the lobby. He takes quick note of them and continues, “You’re ten dollars under.”
“Ten?”
“Exactly ten.”
“There was that rush earlier,” she says, peering off with her lips pinched up. “Maybe I made change for a twenty on one of those instead of a ten.”
He frowns and shoots a quick look at the others to set them back to their tasks.
“Maybe?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Any other possibility?”
“If it’s exactly ten, then that’s what it’s got to be. If it was a void I forgot then it wouldn’t be ten on the nose.”
“Alright, well, I’ve got to log it, you know that.”
“I haven’t had a drawer shortage since my first week. Sorry.”
“Just be more careful, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
The drive-thru pad picks up the weight of a pick-up truck with hungries in it and she turns from him to push the button on her hip and issue her standard greeting/suggestive sell combination into the mic dangling beside her chin.
A few more orders come and go, but the clock eventually creeps closer to the mark they’re waiting on. He watches her shape in the convex mirror as she sweeps the last stray fries left in the lobby during a lull between orders. He walks past the frycook.
“Now,” he tells him.
“‘Bout time!” and immediately starts pulling apart the machine.
He walks slowly out into the lobby, but she does not look up, does not slow in her task. “It looks fine,” he tells her.
“She shouldn’t have mopped so early,” she says, throwing her head over her shoulder to indicate an absent coworker.
“It looks fine,” he repeats. “Let’s get everything stocked. I’m looking to do a record close tonight.”
“Okay.”
Soon sharp clicks coincide with sections of the ceiling going dim. The crew members loitering against the front counter straighten up and start shuffling toward the door, waiting for him to come up and unlock it.
Outside, the street lamps leave rainbow smudges on the oil puddles in the parking lot.
“You need a ride?” one of them asks the young drive-thru girl as the other workers split up and disperse toward their cars.
“No, mine’s coming,” she says.
At the door, the shift manager is fumbling with the lock. “I’ll wait with her,” he volunteers.
“Okay,” the others sound off. “Bye.”
As the others’ cars roll away, the remaining two figures–standing apart–follow with their eyes the red glow of tail lights receding in both directions until the street is calm and empty. Then both converge on the remaining car and climb in together.
“I’m sorry about before,” he tells her as he rolls the engine over.
“What about?”
“When I got on you about the money.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just that…I mean I have to be fair.”
“It’s fine.”
“I can’t treat you differently, you know. They’d catch on. Hell, I’m surprised somebody hasn’t already.”
“It’s okay, I get it.”
“If anybody found out and it got around, especially up to the district manager–”
“Don’t worry about me. I get it. You’re doing your job.”
“Yeah, but according to my job, we shouldn’t even be together. Hell according to the law–”
“Please. The law in Texas is seventeen.”
“What?”
“Age of consent is seventeen. You’re not breaking any laws.”
“Oh.”
“Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Did you really think you were breaking the law by being with me?”
“I guess not. I mean, I did know about it being seventeen and all.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t mind having a boyfriend who can’t admit he’s your boyfriend? Does your mom know about us?”
“So you’re my boyfriend?”
“Come on, I’m serious.”
“I don’t care what people think,” she shrugs without looking at him. “Those aren’t my rules.”
“What aren’t?”
“Everything you’re talking about. Those aren’t my rules,” she says again.
“So you don’t follow the rules.”
“Not if they’re wrong.”
“Why are these wrong?” he asks, a surprised lilt to his words.
“What does the district manager care if we’re sleeping together? We both do our jobs. It’s none of his business. That’s why I don’t care that you chewed me out for the drawer. It’s your job. It’d be wrong if you didn’t.”
“I didn’t chew you out, did I?”
“Not really.”
He opens his mouth once, stops himself, then begins again. “I’m interested in your morality here.”
“You’ve never cared about my morality before.”
“I’m putting some pieces together here. I’m just trying to figure you out is all. You told me once you don’t go out drinking with your friends.”
“I don’t.”
“Isn’t that someone else’s stupid rule.”
“No. That’s my rule.”
“Oh.”
“I promised myself something about that.”
“What?”
She just shakes her head.
“So, didn’t you make a promise to the company?”
“Did I?”
“You signed some agreement, right? Something about company policies and all that.”
“Maybe, but that’s not the same thing as a promise.”
“Why not? Seems like it.”
“No, a promise is specific or it’s meaningless. Look at marriage. Somebody gets up one day and promises vaguely to love and to honor, but you know that most men cheat on their wives anyway.”
“Is that right, though?”
“Depends on the person. I mean, it’s not right, but it’s not necessarily wrong.”
“No?”
“Promises don’t work like that. You promise one thing and you do it for your own reasons. You don’t get up there and make some promise that covers your entire life. That’s not a real promise. It’s different if a man loves a woman and he’s still in love with her and she expects him to only be with her or something, but those are extraordinary circumstances. That’s not what most marriage is about.”
“What’s marriage about then?”
“Need,” she answers, still gazing out ahead of them as the headlights catch pedestrians and bus-stop benches on the side of the road.
“When you get married, you won’t expect your husband not to sleep around?”
“I don’t know what I’ll expect. Relationships are individual, particular.”
“Are they all about need?”
“Sure.”
“Are we?”
“Sure.”
“So you’re not in love with me?”
“No, I’m not in love with you.”
“What if I’m in love with you?”
“You’re not in love with me,” she answers flatly. He stops watching her and keeps his eyes on the road. “It wouldn’t matter anyway,” she continues after a block or two pass by. “Love doesn’t really factor into morality.”
“I had no idea you thought this way about things.”
She keeps her arms crossed as they pull into his apartment complex.
They walk up the metal stairs toward his level.
He regards her from just behind with an unsteady expression, as if uncertain of how to speak to her, how to touch her. Finally, he decides on a gesture and reaches for her hand.
She accepts, wrapping her fingers around his wrist as she walks ahead.
At the door she stops and stares blankly at the thick coats of white paint.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m just tired, I guess.”
“You want me to take you home.”
She squeezes his hand. “No, no. Let’s just get inside.”
The door creaks open to darkness. The hanging blinds that cover the sliding glass door to the eight square-foot balcony let in long slats of orange light from some cheap bulb out on the path between buildings. They act out an apparently familiar script. He passes her, crunching his knees together to navigate the narrow gap between the wide, squat coffee table and the couch against the wall with its distended cushions threatening to pour out like failed soufflé batter onto the course carpeting. She closes the door, cutting off the light behind them and leaving only those long orange lines from the other side of the room. He clicks on an old halogen lamp, the kind that used to populate college dorms a decade before, but which were responsible for enough house-fires that they’re not in stores anymore. The light’s enough to give form to the bulky shadows in front of her, the shapes of the furniture that define and overwhelm the space. Billowing brown folds of fabric hint that the sofa is stuffed to bursting with whole flights of fowl fluff, but when she swings her purse onto the side it drops stone-like into the fathoms of the cushions. He sighs and kicks off his shoes while she saunters by the stacks of books he has piled on the floor. She gives the untidy stacks an affectionate, good-to-see-you-old-friend smile and then settles into the couch herself, flipping on the TV and cycling through channels with one hand while pulling out the band from her ponytail with the other. “You want something to drink?” he calls back from the kitchen, though it’s close enough he doesn’t need to shout. She answers and in a second he is returning to her with a beer and a Sprite.
When he sits, he slides down along the length of her, settling in brick-mortar tight.
She lets the channel rest on the news and lowers her head to the crook of his neck, closing her eyes. He reaches around behind her with his free hand and begins kneading the soft triangle of flesh above her left hip. The edge of her shirt comes loose and he works his fingers down beneath the hem of her slacks. As he brushes the fine hairs below the plexus at the pit of her back, her eyes open and her back arches, bringing her head into recline.
He shifts his face to meet hers and they begin a weary disrobing. By the end they have shifted positions and he is settled back into the cushions, erect and waiting. She creeps around him on her knees, finding perch in his lap.
Her eyes close as she rocks atop him, silently.
When his grunting is finished he clutches hard at her buttocks and she becomes still, a single tear of perspiration tracing a line down the crease of her back.
They restore their undergarments but leave the rest of their clothing on the floor.
He picks up the remote and flips channels in her place.
“It’s getting late,” he says after half an hour.
“Hmm,” she purrs.
“Does your mother know about us?”
“Not sure.”
“You guys don’t talk.”
“It’s complicated, she and I. It must seem like she doesn’t care, but that’s not it.”
“What is it?”
“Complicated.”
“Does she worry?”
“Maybe some. She knows me, though.”
“Still, it’s late, I should get you home.”
“Wait,” she says, sitting up and swinging her eyes away from the flickering screen. “I wanted to ask you about Harvard.”
There’s a jerk in his neck, a start like he’s choked on something.
“What about it?”
“You never explained why you didn’t finish school there? Why you came back here?”
“Why do you think?”
“I guess I didn’t want to make any assumptions.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“I’m sorry, forget about it.”
“I got the grades. I didn’t flunk out, okay?”
“Okay, sorry.”
“I was drummed out.”
This time she doesn’t protest. Now she’s curious and she will let him tell it. Tell something he’s never told.
“When I got there–God, it was immediate. All the money. All those damn kids had it so easy. Here I was, scholarship kid from El Paso.”
“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. I just–”
“I worked hard,” he continues, ignoring her interjection and her offer. “I had to. If I didn’t I’d lose the scholarship or lose the biggest of them. Had to keep a 3.5. I did it. Worked my ass off because I’d signed up for too many hours. It was a bitch that first semester. Always in the library because my jack-ass roommate would never let me have any peace. We ended up in a real war by the end. I was always studying. Never worked harder in my life…”
His words trail off for a moment and she watches him carefully while he goes back, then returns to her with something to say.
“There was this girl. This skinny little white girl. White girl from money. I should’ve known better, but I couldn’t help it. I was…I had a thing for her. I got her attention a little bit but couldn’t seem to get anywhere, like there was something stopping her from wanting to be with me. Then one night we were both at this party at the dorm. She was already pretty drunk when I showed up.”
“God,” he exclaims, breaking his own rhythm. “I hadn’t been out with anyone, been with anyone the whole time I’d been up there. So she and I got together. Found us a room on the floor with nobody in it. It looked like a little kid’s room. All done up in cartoon posters. Don’t know whose room it was. But she and I did it and she just kind of passed out afterwards. That was it, end of semester.”
“I flew home. Had my Christmas break.”
He shakes his head and rubs the meaty hunks of flesh below his thumbs into his eye sockets, wiping away perspiration from his brow with his fingertips as he draws his hands back down.
“Then the day before I was going to fly back, I got a phone call. I was being suspended, pending an investigation. The university police talked to the El Paso police. I was never arrested, but they talked to me. Four hours they talked to me. In the end, my suspension just became terminated enrollment and I guess that was good enough for her. She dropped the charge if I just stayed away, stayed quiet. I did some Internet searches, thinking her dad probably had some sway at the school, some big donations or something. Never found anything, though.”
He checks her with a quick sideways cock of his eyes. She’s not looking. Her head’s down, pointed at her lap where she’s rubbing her palms together real slowly. Legs and palms clasped tight in her own shadow.
“But I mean, you know I didn’t rape her. She just regretted it and talked herself into believing she never wanted it. You know?”
His pleading tone catches her attention. Her long face is drawn downward because there’s no shape to her mouth now, it’s smaller like that. Just a slit with nothing showing, barely even any peach-colored lips. She nods to him faintly and moves her hand to rest one palm lightly on his knee.
“That was it. That was my whole life ruined right there.”
“You could’ve fought it, I guess.”
“Go back there? Go back there with all their eyes on me, thinking that about me? No way.”
“Another school. If you–”
“Nah. Nah, I learned my lesson. Besides, you should’ve heard my mother. ‘Told you,’ she’d say. ‘I told you not to go up there.’ Over and over again.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you? I don’t talk to anyone about it. Even when I came back, I avoided everyone I used to know, everyone who knew I’d gone out there. I never wanted to explain it. That time I slipped and said, ‘Harvard,’ in front of you. God, that must’ve been the only time I’d said it in eight years.”
“You’ve mentioned it twice to me,” she corrected.
“I have?”
“Yeah.”
“Guess I mention it more than I realized.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I’m very sorry I brought it up. I didn’t know it would be this bad a memory for you.”
He reaches over for the drink he’d left on the table, takes a sip and then turns to her again. “Why did you want to know?”
“I was just curious about your experience there.”
“But why?”
“I was just considering it.”
“Considering what?”
“Harvard.”
“What?”
“I’m applying there.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I thought I’d try for it. I know one of my friends from last year who didn’t get in, even with the Gates scholarship, but my grades–”
He laughs out loud.
“What?” she balks. His face is twisted with the smile he’s wearing, but hers is going sharp.
“Harvard? Come on. Do you know what it takes to get in to Harvard?”
She leans away, giving herself a slightly improved vantage on him.
“I was just talking about that,” she answers in a husky, almost whispered rasp.
“I mean, come on,” he continues. “It’s not like they let just anyone go there.”
She nods to him, saying nothing.
She stands, the long lean lines of her body stretched tall at the edge of the sofa. She looks down. With a quick dip she collects her clothes from the floor in two handfuls.
“What?” he stammers. “Don’t…” She is dressing quickly, slipping on her shoes while yanking the shirt down over her head. “Listen, I’m sorry. I was just saying it’s really hard.”
“No,” she says, turning to him after already starting toward the door. “That’s not what you said. You said, it’s not like they let ‘just anyone’ in.”
“But–”
She finishes shoving her left heel into its shoe and opens the door. He is still undressed.
“Where are you going? You don’t have a car, you–”
“You don’t know me,” she says, and he doesn’t recognize the tone in her voice. “I’ll be fine on my own.” The door slams.
Out of pride or shock, he does not follow her. He sits dumbstruck on the sofa for a few minutes, then fetches the remote and turns on the television. His attention snaps to the door periodically when neighbors or the wind rustle past, but no meek knocking ever draws him up from his seat.
Finally, by two, he falls asleep on the couch.
In the morning he wakes with a start, flailing his arm so wildly that he knocks over the empty beer can on the table. Seemingly unable to collect himself, he wanders listlessly inside the tight confines of the apartment, even laying down in his bed for a few minutes before rolling right back out to dress himself. He splashes something from a green bottle through his hair and starts out the door.
It’s long before opening, but when he turns the key in the lock at the restaurant and cracks the door he hears voices in the kitchen. The head manager and the morning maintenance guy are hunched over the fryer, conferring on a diagnosis.
“Morning,” his boss chimes when he enters. The maintenance guy just cocks his head to say hello.
“I just need to get something,” he tells them.
His boss waves him toward the office and returns his attention to dredging the fryer.
Inside the cramped office, he has to squeeze between desk and trash can to reach the file cabinet. He rifles through the bottom drawer, not finding whatever it is he wants.
“What’cha need?” From the floor he looks up in surprise as his boss leans against the door jamb to the office with one hand, his coffee mug in the other.
“I’m just…” he begins but lets the sentence collapse as he lifts his head up in frustration.
“I already moved her to ‘inactive.’”
“What?”
“Your little friend. She called and quit this morning.”
“She did?”
“First thing.”
“But–”
“She was a good worker,” his manager says. “She said she’d work out her shifts if I really needed her to, but that she’d prefer not to come in anymore. I told her we’d manage.”
Stooped on his knees by the file drawer, he seems to realize something all at once. He starts to open his mouth, then stops.
“Shame. But fortunately she never did work that many hours. It won’t be that hard to fill her shifts. She’d only work those three closing shifts a week. Guess that’s what it takes.”
“Takes for what?”
“To be what she is.”
“What do you mean?”
“My son goes to her school, you know. They don’t know each other, but he knows about her. Top of her class.”
“Really?”
“No contest, he told me.”
“Really,” he replies absently.
“Didn’t know that, huh?”
“No,” he answers, eyes downcast.
The manager starts to turn. “I guess she’s gone now.”
He nods, staring at the red tab marking off the “inactive” folders.
“So we shouldn’t use those records to make any personal calls.” He looks up suddenly, with a jerk, and they lock eyes for a minute. “Whatever you didn’t know yesterday is what you don’t know today.”
“Alright…sorry.”
His boss says nothing else and leaves.
Alone in the office, he looks again at the red section and then slides the drawer closed, rises and crosses out of the office, past the counter and out of the lobby.
The mountains obscure through the white morning, he stands for a moment where he stood beside her the night before, then climbs into his car and returns home.

Dale is in a cult. He is a cult member. Dale is seventeen. He is the fourth-youngest member of the cult.

Dale was born into the cult. It is all he’s ever known.

The cult is a religious cult. They worship their own god. The god that the cult worships is the 1984 film The Karate Kid, directed by John G. Avildsen.

The cult was started in 1986 by Dale’s uncle, Steve. Steve started the cult shortly after the film The Karate Kid became available on videocassette.

At first, Dale’s parents joined Steve’s cult because a few months earlier they had given Steve a large amount of money to get him back on his feet. They were worried Steve would do something stupid with the money.

But, eventually, Dale’s parents started to worship the film The Karate Kid, too, just like Steve.

Over the years, the cult grew and grew. Steve was a good cult leader, and the members of the cult were happy with the cult.

The cult met two nights a week. They watched The Karate Kid. They had pot-lucks and talked about The Karate Kid and prayed about The Karate Kid. They had Karate Kid costume parties. At the costume parties, everyone dressed up as a character from the Karate Kid, and the characters danced to music from the movie.

This part of the story has been the ground situation. The inciting incident follows.

In 2010, when Dale was seventeen years old, Steve got sick, and Steve later died. The cult got a new leader. The new leader was Steve’s oldest son, Harry.

Harry was a fanatic. He wore his facial hair in a way that made him look scary. Harry hadn’t liked the way that his father had run the cult. Harry thought that the cult should do more than just have parties.

Harry started to question whether or not the members of the cult really did worship the film The Karate Kid. Harry suspected that at least some of the members just liked the movie a lot, and liked going to the parties. 

Harry declared that there would be trials. All cult members would take part in the trials. The first trial was answering trivia questions about The Karate Kid. Harry had found the trivia questions on the internet.

Most of the cult members did fine on the trivia questions. They had seen the movie a lot. Two members did poorly, and Harry asked them to leave the cult. The remaining cult members were fine with this. They hadn’t liked those two, anyway. Those two never brought anything good to the potlucks.

Later that year, the remake of The Karate Kid came out in theaters, and then on DVD.

Harry declared that the remake of The Karate Kid was a false god that should be destroyed. Harry bought a bunch of copies of the DVD and gave the cult members hammers and lighter fluid and matches with which to destroy the DVD’s.

Several of the cult members thought that this was a bit much. They thought the remake was alright. They had gotten together, without Harry knowing, to go see it.

Those several cult members thought that the cult wasn’t fun anymore like when Steve was around. So they decided to leave the cult.

Harry declared good riddance to the non-believers.

Next Harry declared that all cult members should get tattoos. Must get tattoos. Big ones. But several of the remaining cult members didn’t want big tattoos, so several more left the cult.

Good riddance, Harry declared again.

There were only about a half-dozen cult members left. Harry insisted that these half-dozen were the true believers. Harry was right: the half-dozen cult members that were still around really did worship the film The Karate Kid.

Except for Dale. Dale had a secret.

Dale no longer worshipped the film The Karate Kid. Over the years, while in the cult, Dale had come to worship the actress Elisabeth Shue, instead.

The actress Elisabeth Shue played the character Ali-with-an-i in the film The Karate Kid. Dale was in love with Elisabeth Shue. Madly. Head over heels.

So when the fanatic Harry declared, in his biggest, boldest declaration yet, that the cult would be kidnapping all of the directors and producers and crewmembers and actors (other than Pat Morita, who had played Mister Miyagi and who had since passed away) and actresses and extras and everyone—EVERYONE!—who had been involved in creating the cult’s one true god for a grand, ceremonial reenactment, and then, when, through a series of events, Dale discovered that Harry’s true intentions, Harry being a fanatic, were not to kidnap everyone for a grand, ceremonial reenactment but instead to kidnap everyone for a grand, ceremonial sacrifice—a human sacrifice to the one true god—Dale decided that he must flee the cult and must himself kidnap Elisabeth Shue before Harry could get to her.

But when Harry discovers that Dale has fled the cult and, through another series of events, also discovers that Dale has discovered Harry’s true intentions, Harry sends his cult members in pursuit of Dale. To stop Dale, at any cost.

The inciting incident having concluded, the story now has a protagonist (Dale) and a conflict (Dale wants to save Elisabeth Shue, whom he loves and worships, from Harry) and an antagonist (Harry the fanatic).

Dale found Elisabeth Shue before the cult members found him. It wasn’t hard; he knew where she lived. He worshipped her and all.

Dale didn’t break into Elisabeth Shue’s house, at first. He waited for her to come out of her house to go somewhere.

Because Dale loved her so much, he couldn’t help but be honest with Elisabeth Shue. He told her her life was in danger. She walked faster. He told her to come with him. That he could save her. She told him to eff off.

So Dale broke into Elisabeth Shue’s house.

When Elisabeth Shue found Dale in her house, she told him to go away. Then she said she’d call the police. The she said she’d shoot him.

Dale tried to explain the situation. The danger she was in. But Elisabeth Shue wouldn’t listen.

But then some of the cult members arrived. They knew where Elisabeth Shue lived, too. Harry had made a big list.

The cult members made a lot of noise and broke a lot of glass when they broke into Elisabeth Shue’s house. They scared Elisabeth Shue, so she went with Dale. She brought the gun she had threatened to shoot Dale with. 

If a gun, etc.

Dale and Elisabeth Shue escaped in Elisabeth Shue’s car. Elisabeth Shue drove. Despite being seventeen, Dale did not have a driver’s license. He had grown up in a cult. Dale had gotten to Elisabeth Shue’s house by bus. Elisabeth Shue really didn’t live that far from where Dale lived.

Elisabeth Shue drove into the desert. Elisabeth Shue didn’t live that far from the desert, either.

She stopped the car. She and Dale got out. They were in the middle of nowhere. It had been nighttime when they had escaped from Elisabeth Shue’s house, but now it was daytime. 

Elisabeth Shue pulled out the gun and pointed it at Dale. Dale hadn’t known that Elisabeth Shue had brought the gun. She demanded to know who the eff Dale was and what the eff was going on.

Dale told her everything.

He told her about the cult: his uncle, the potlucks, Harry, the tattoos. And he told her about Harry’s plan. The real plan. And he told her how much he loved her. And worshipped her. So much so that he just couldn’t let that happen to her.

In a long, dramatic scene, Elisabeth Shue points her pistol at Dale and demands that Dale tell her what he loves so much about her. Dale then launches into a dramatic monologue about three tiny moments in the film Karate Kid—little moments that no one ever probably noticed ever but that Dale had watched and rewatched over and over and over again that had made Dale fall in love with her. By the time Dale finished his monologue, Elisabeth Shue had lowered the pistol.

Elisabeth Shue had been twenty-one years old when she played the female lead in the 1984 film, The Karate Kid. In the desert, with Dale, she was fifty-four. 

Despite the age difference between Dale and Elisabeth Shue, at the end of Dale’s monologue there was a moment where it was possible that they might have kissed.

But then they saw a line of cars coming quickly down the road. Dust flying.

This has been the Act One climax, which has ended on a positive charge in relation to Dale’s object of desire (to rescue Elisabeth Shue).

This has also been the Inciting Incident of Subplot A, a star-crossed love story starring Dale, 17, and Elisabeth Shue, 54.

Elisabeth Shue has a husband. She is married. When Elisabeth Shue’s husband got home from work and his wife was missing and there was broken glass on the floor, he called the police. This is the Inciting Incident of Subplot B.

The police came and did what they do, but it was all moving too slowly for Elisabeth Shue’s husband, who was frantic. He decided to take matters into his own hands. He got into his car and went looking for his wife. 

Before leaving, though, Elisabeth Shue’s husband went around back to put food out for the dog. Outside one of the broken windows, he found a wallet. A cult member had dropped it.

Elisabeth Shue’s husband’s discovery of the cult member’s wallet, which contained the cult member’s driver’s license indicating the cult member’s home address, is Subplot B’s Act One climax (a positive charge).

Subplot A’s Act One climax occurs in the very next scene when, with the cult members in hot pursuit, Elisabeth Shue has the opportunity to escape on her own, without Dale. But she hesitates. And, in an action indicating feelings for Dale (the indication of those feelings further indicated by appropriate facial expression), she goes back for him (positive charge).

In Act Two of this story the Central Plot is complicated by seven scenes, Subplot A by five, and Subplot B by three, all culminating in the Act Two climax. 

Act Two, therefore, consists of fifteen scenes, the three scenes complicating Subplot B nestled within the five scenes complicating Subplot A, those five scenes likewise nestled within the seven scenes complicating the central plot, the series of fifteen scenes ending on a one two three causal sequence of scenes from, in particular order, Subplot B, Subplot A, and Central Plot, those three scenes amounting to the Subplot B Act Two climax (Elisabeth Shue’s husband’s sleuthing leads him directly to Harry himself who then kidnaps Elisabeth Shue’s husband and ties him up [negative charge], the reader learning at that point that Harry has also kidnapped and tied up Dale’s parents) causing simultaneously the Subplot A and Central Plot climaxes (Elisabeth Shue learns that Harry has abducted her husband whom despite this new love for Dale she cares for very much so Elisabeth Shue abandons Dale to go save her husband [negative charge, Subplot A] sending Elisabeth Shue straight into the clutches of fanatic Harry [negative charge, likewise, Central Plot]), all setting up the subsequent Act III climax and resolution. 

In the Act Three climax, in which all characters and all Subplots are brought together in a single scene in a single location, said scene in said location orchestrated in Bond-villain-fashion by the fanatic Harry, Harry forces Dale to choose between his Object of Desire, Elisabeth Shue, whom, as a result of her attempt to free her husband, Harry has also captured and tied up, or Dale’s own parents. Dale ultimately decides to release Elisabeth Shue back to her husband (positive charge: Central Plot and Subplot B; negative charge: Subplot A). Elisabeth Shue and husband depart, setting off a showdown between Dale and Harry resulting in Dale’s parents being saved and Harry being defeated.

Somewhere in all that, the gun introduced in Act One is fired.

BH James, 39, writing this story three-and-a-half weeks after he was told by his wife Liz that, despite his not remembering them as such, the first four months of the year preceding by four years this year had been the worst, most perilous months of his and her marriage, BH James, over the course of those three-and-a-half months, questions wife Liz about those earlier four months, Liz generously obliging and thereby, despite the bitterness for both parties of the revisitation, helps BH reconstruct/reorchestrate the story. 

The Inciting Incident of the worst, most perilous months of BH’s marriage occurs in January, on moving day. His wife, Liz, tells him to be careful when mounting the TV. But he doesn’t listen. And he breaks it. And she cries, not about the TV, and she leaves and doesn’t come back for a long time. Negative charge.

BH writes this scene into a story titled Wiff and then swears to Liz that it’s not them.

The Act One Climax occurs in February. Liz, having put baby to bed, stations herself, as she does every night, alone in bedroom, where she will spend the next several hours, alone, while BH writes, Liz careful not to disturb BH, who frequently complains that he never has time to write anymore.

This night, though, BH comes and stands in the doorway. He has just learned that his first novel, Parnucklian for Chocolate, published one year earlier and having failed to meet any and all expectations, is a finalist for an award. A PEN award, he tells her, which is misleadingly vague but true.

Liz exclaims! emotes! attempts a hug that BH shies from. It’s not a big deal, he tells her. Don’t tell anyone.

He leaves, goes back to his desk, and she is again alone. Negative charge.

The Act Two Climax occurs in March, when BH insists to Liz—BH and Liz having just purchased a house after recently having a child and therefore having little expendable income—that he has to has to has to go to AWP in Seattle—that he’s a writer and he has to, BH however, in contrast to the previous year, in Boston, when he signed books at his publisher’s booth each of the three days he was there [his wife at home with their fever-sick six-month-old son], BH was participating in no signings, no readings, no offsite events, nothing at all in particular.

But he had to go, because he was a writer.

And when BH went (for four days) he hardly called home, barely spoke to his wife, to his son not at all.

Upon returning, BH, 36, finished the first draft of a long short story titled The Anti-Story and set at a fictional version of AWP Seattle. The protagonist of the story is a writer. Unmarried, with no kids.

Negative Charge.

BH James, 39, writing this story four years later with the help of his wife Liz, has read in a book about stories that scenes in a series should alternate in charge (positive, negative, positive, etc.). But that is not how this story goes.

The Act Three Climax occurs in April, when BH’s wife Liz makes an appointment for marriage counseling because her husband for months now has been a cold distant self-absorbed prick, clearly wishing at all times to be anywhere but in his own home, lamenting frequently that he’s not even a writer, anymore, not even a writer.

Liz tells BH about the appointment. BH, teacher, responds that he’s chaperoning a field trip in Sacramento that day. He’s doing it to help out another teacher. Liz stresses the importance of not going on the field trip. BH goes anyway, misses the appointment.

Liz makes plans to leave. Negative charge.

The Resolution occurs in June. BH, 36, teacher, is at a three-day training in Florida. On the first day, his cell phone breaks. It turns off and won’t turn back on, and it won’t charge. He tries calling from the hotel, several times. Leaves messages. Sends emails from a computer in the lobby. He walks to several stores to buy several devices that might make his phone turn on, but none of them work.

BH spends most of the three days alone in his room, reading. By the time BH arrives at the airport to fly home, he has not spoken to his wife or son for three days. He searches for the payphones, but can’t find any. People don’t really use them anymore, so they’d been removed. BH asks someone. He never asks. There is one payphone left.

When Liz answers, BH tells her the story of his three days without a phone. Then he tells her he loves her, and misses her. He asks to talk to his son. When Liz is back on, BH tells her he is coming home. BH intends BH’s statement that he is coming home to have both literal and figurative meaning.

BH tells Liz they should have another baby. By August she is pregnant, and the following April their second-born is born. Positive charge.

Four years later, Liz will tell BH, who is writing this story, that, as bad as it was, from that point on, it’s all been pretty good.

By the end of the Act III climax, Dale has achieved his external Object of Desire: Elisabeth Shue is safe. Harry is in jail. But Dale is not happy. Dale did not achieve his internal Object of Desire: the love of Elisabeth Shue.

But, in the end, Elisabeth Shue comes back to Dale (positive charge). She hugs her husband, pets her dogs, and leaves them. And in the story’s final scene, Dale comes home to find her standing, waiting, at the stairs.

At BH, 39’s, and Liz, 34’s son’s preschool graduation, as they wait for the ceremony to begin, BH and Liz have a lively debate about the location of the climax of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. BH contends that what they had written about the 5-act structure in the book they had co-authored (Method to the Madness: A Common Core Guide to Creating Critical Thinkers through the Study of English) was all wrong. That the whole play progresses toward the duel, after which there is only the unraveling. Liz, who knows the play better, retorts that the uncertainty is resolved in the closet scene, and the certainty is what matters.

BH cites Aristotle. Liz cites another author, who said that Aristotle got most of it wrong. BH tries to respond, but the ceremony begins.

BH tells the same anecdote in a blog post titled Rethinking Shakespeare’s 5-Act Structure, later published as an article in a magazine for teachers.

The next morning, BH James will finish this story. And the day after that, BH will be 40. 

He picks up his pen, then puts it back down.

When he picks it up again, he writes…

THE END

Jason Kelst was a composer who died in obscurity in 1983. He was fifty at the time. He spent his days working behind the counter at an Optimo smoke shop in a small town’s downtown, selling cigars and comic books to the area’s residents. He maintained few ties with the area’s residents. He lived in a small apartment two doors down from the smoke shop and rarely ate out or went to bars. He attended no religious institution, had no romantic connections that anyone knows of, and was in fact the perfect model of a recluse. He worked for years at the smoke shop and dropped dead of a heart attack one evening after finishing his shift and locking up.

Kelst, it seemed, had planned for this. One wondered if he had known that his life was nearing his end, through a racing pulse or a shortness of breath or simply an awareness that his time was slipping away.

Though he had little in the way of an extended family, he had made a will that checked out on all legal grounds. His frugality had paid off: he left a not insubstantial sum to a local nonprofit’s scholarship program. Even now, decades later, it continues to operate. His possessions were largely destined for thrift stores or the local dump: they were thoroughly unspectacular, durable and functional but not at all memorable or in fashion.

And then there were the scores.

It was here that a little digging needed to be done: Jason Kelst, it transpired, had in his younger days attended a music conservatory with another then-young composer named Davis. Though they had been close for several years, their paths diverged shortly after they left the conservatory. Kelst had become a recluse; Davis, the year before Kelst’s death, had received the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Jason Kelst had willed his life’s work, volumes upon volumes of sheet music and home recordings, to his old friend Davis Steinhardt. There was some question as to whether Davis would actually accept the donation, or if Kelst’s executor would be faced with the difficult decision of what to do with an unwanted oeuvre. The executor never had to wrestle with that question, however: upon her first request to Davis, Davis acquiesced immediately and was more than helpful in determining a means by which Kelst’s music might be transported across the country to Davis’s domicile.

In retrospect, it might have been better for all involved had Davis declined the work and Kelst’s executor consigned it all to a fire.

Davis was a gloriously media-savvy personality: he gave interviews regularly, he toggled between large-scale commissions and more commercially viable work, and he frequently collaborated with everyone from avant-garde jazz musicians to up-and-coming rock acts who enjoyed dropping his name as an influence so as to make themselves look more highbrow. So it wasn’t a surprise that a certain cluster of journalists and critics in his orbit soon learned of the life’s work of Jason Kelst. “What are those papers over there?” someone would inevitably ask. “Oh, those? Yes, those. Those,” Davis would say, “are the work of my dear old friend Jason Kelst, who passed away earlier this year.”

An obscure and unknown composer, held in great esteem by perhaps the most critically and commercially successful composer of his generation? It’s no surprise that an abundance of critics picked up the scent of a story here and were prepared to follow it wherever it led.

As yet, though, the journalists tracking Kelst’s work had little to go on. Kelst was forthcoming about one thing: he’d had little time to make a dent in the accumulated work of decades of solitary work from his old friend. He certainly recalled compositions of Kelst’s that had resonated with him when they’d both been in their twenties, and the handful of scores he’d leafed through most definitely showed great skill and an abundance of complexity. But the full scope of Kelst’s music — that would take years to fully appreciate.

Many of the journalists who’d had something sparked by the arrival of Kelst’s work filed this information away for later use. A handful of them kept at it: Davis would announce a new symphony or a new piece for string quartet or a film score. He would sit down for the usual press rigamarole, and would see a familiar face before him, a journalist who’d been asking him questions for a good slice of his career. And inevitably, at the end of the interview, the journalist would pause and, like an archetypal dogged detective, would have one more question. “Did anything new happen,” they’d ask, “with those compositions you’d inherited?” And Davis would shake his head ruefully. “Soon,” he’d say. “I’ll get to it soon.”

And in truth, I believe he intended to. But the business by which he made his own living kept interfering, and for good reason. The years passed and the papers comprising the collected works of Jason Kelst still sat in one corner of his office, and Davis awoke alone one morning and realized that he was no longer young, or perhaps even middle-aged, and felt pangs of guilt at the prospect that Jason Kelst’s work might vanish if he was not a capable steward of it.

In those days Davis was the composer-in-residence at a well-off university, and as such had the benefit of some student labor if he required it. And it struck him that he should have asked for this before. He summoned a promising young music student and set her to work organizing and documenting the works of Jason Kelst. Once it was done, perhaps some recordings could be made. Perhaps his old classmate’s name would begin to show up on concert programs around the world.

Karen Plinth was her name: a sharply-minded young woman who shared Davis’s enthusiasm for helping to usher a previously-unknown composer’s work to the wider world. And so she spent days at a time digging through the work Kelst had left behind. Much of, she thought, was brilliant. She left notes on each piece as she finished it: loose commentary, points of comparison, what sort of ensemble it had been written for. She endeavored to be as comprehensive as she could: this was, after all, someone’s legacy.

Karen Plinth continued this process over the course of a semester. Near the end of it, she sat with Davis and spent a day reviewing all that she’d discovered. He felt enthusiastic about her discoveries, but noticed that there was something reserved in her voice, the sort of tone that balanced wonder with something more abject.

They’d gone through nearly everything, and finally Davis noticed one folder sitting off by itself. “And what’s that?” he asked Plinth, gesturing quietly in its direction.

Here Karen Plinth sighed — not from exasperation, but in the manner of someone forced to read out the fine print declaiming that one’s prize is less glorious than it had been previously been believed.

“That,” she said, “is Etude #31.”

“All right,” said Davis. “And why is it all by itself over there?”

“Well,” said Karen Plinth. “I’ve been looking at this for the last few days, and I’m not sure if playing it is humanly possible.”

Davis asked her for the sheet music, and she handed it to him. He looked it over. It began rationally enough, in a style and manner akin to a restrained Charles Ives. But as he followed along, he realized two things almost at once: first, that Karen was correct and this would be nearly impossible to play; and second, that if it ever could be played it would be a tremendously beautiful musical work.

The rest of the filing and organization of Kelst’s music went relatively smoothly. And in the end, Davis’s instincts were accurate: the story of Kelst’s compositions was indeed catnip for a few journalists of his acquaintance. One of them in particular, a well-liked journalist named Iris Jort, took a particular fascination in Kelst’s work, spending several days at the informal archive that Davis and Plinth had established. Iris had trailed as a concert pianist for much of her youth, until finally she realized that a career in classical music would not be ideal, and so instead opted to pursue a lucrative career in arts journalism.

The feature she wrote on the life and work of Jason Kelst was published that autumn in The New Yorker and instantly put Kelst’s name on the map — a small map, admittedly, but one nonetheless. The university at which Davis taught offered to become the formal and permanent home of Kelst’s papers. Several respected orchestras announced plans to program some of Kelst’s works in the coming years, and a respected conductor signed a contract to record three of Kelst’s compositions.

Etude #31 remained in obscurity in a file folder in the university’s archive. It had come up in the conversations that Davis and Plinth had had for the New Yorker article, but that aspect of his work had not made it to the final version of the piece. Iris had written a short paragraph about it, but it was eventually cut by her editor, who felt that it read like a digression more than anything that might be of interest to the readership. “Every composer has their trifles,” he scribbled in the margins. This was true, but most composers’ trifles were not lethal.

Jason Kelst’s posthumous reputation remained golden for almost twenty years. Kelst’s work became an integral part of the repertoire of many a regional and national ensemble. A performance of one of his string quartets bewitched a Chicago audience under the stars at Millennium Park, and the Prospect Park Bandshell was treated to a dance performance set to a minor but charming work for dance orchestra. The off-beat details of his personal life had also not escaped the public notice,  and an Oscarbait biopic picked up a handful of critical awards for its cast.

The generation that had been born as Kelst’s music circulated the nation began coming of age. As they did so, Kelst’s work became the topic of several graduate-level theses, and a handful of prestigious private schools offered courses in Kelst’s body of work.

Cue Leon Paul, 23 years of age, and of a similar rigorous bent to Karen Plinth, his predecessor in the study of Jason Kelst. Leon Paul decided to visit the Kelst archives and explore the composer’s works that had not received wide fanfare, no pun intended. He requested access, and was granted it. He applied for grants and was given them. This would be his PhD thesis: The Unheard Kelst. Upon hearing of that, an aging Davis chuckled. “It was all unheard. All of it!” he muttered to no one in particular, made a note to email this wry observation to Karen Plinth, then promptly lost the note.

Etude #31 did not look like a weapon. It did not look like a torture device or a haunted object or a relic used for some barbaric purpose. When Leon Paul slid it out of the file folder, it did not whisper to him in an arcane language or trigger a migraine or give him a nosebleed. It looked like any other musical work. That, perhaps, was the trouble. Had someone scrawled “RUN” at the top of it where other works featured the tempo, things might never have gone so wrong.

Lorna’s instamatic camera has passed between hands often and long enough at least for someone among the gathered to snap a picture of her in mid-motion, to the right of Magali who remains as well unaware of the shutter, both faces transfixed by something beyond the frame. It occurs to me now to ask, wishfully, did I take the photograph?

Magali’s face brightens behind clear plastic glasses, her deep red lipstick and shoulder-length hair, jet black, further enhanced by a close-fitting sweater, deep yellow, loose sleeves pulled to mid-arm, one hand firmly on hip. Bewildered, but ever undaunted in mood—as in the reportaje she’s published last month on sex work in Mexico City—Magali’s uncertain smile now lingers as a dare.

Next to her in the picture, Lorna, unmistakable, is a radiation of silver hair and sapphire eyes, lips parted in midsentence, as though deliberating the merits of who among our clan had featured in the group exhibition at Benjamín’s gallery or maybe rather a riposte to some entanglement now occurring at this daytime viewing party she is hosting on the rooftop of her apartment building, a courtyard vecindad on Calle de San Luis Potosí in the Colonia Roma neighborhood.

Her flawless Spanish is ever so slightly betrayed by a clip in cadence more than by accent, unidentifiable at any rate, between English and French, the languages of her life before Mexico. She resumes, possibly now with Gabriela or Luciano, also present, relating the recent plot turn in the ongoing comedy of communication breakdown between French executives, the local film crew, and Lorna’s work of cultural diplomacy on the conquest of Mexico epic in pre-production.

It’s Thursday, we’ve assembled around noon with an abundance of cold Tecate, in league with Mexico City’s twenty million inhabitants similarly congregating around balconies and rooftops, or on the streets, to witness what TV and radio have christened The Great Eclipse of Mexico … millones y millones seremos testigos directos de cuando el día se hizo noche… many millions of us about to witness as day became night. The eclipse’s path: ten thousand kilometers of darkness 250 kilometers wide, enough to blanket the capital and its surroundings. 

Lorna again has the camera. 

With her encouragement and some stage direction, I prepare myself for the snapshot, remove my glasses, and as though to lampoon a public service announcement, I hide my face behind the cardboard mask, two holes punched in front, little touches of green and red ink flared at the left and right edges, a corner bearing the government seal of Mexico.

My thumb and forefingers hold up the viewing card, an official thing that circulated in a state campaign to prevent any incident of blindness among the imagined throngs determined to stare down the diminishing sun, still an hour away, and we’re counting. My face is cast in shadow, hair high and tight, a tousled flat top groomed by the only reliable barber in Mexico: Emilio, whose skin is the color of caramel, doused as a rule in bergamot aftershave, upper lip bearing the trim of an impeccable pencil-thin moustache. Had he noticed but said nothing about the over-exuberance of my gold-orange floral shirt, ill fitted, and just feminine enough, at any rate short of what passes for masculine in Mexico, to confirm a tiny calculus of queerness in plain sight? 

The rooftop azotea, coveted for socializing in Mexico City, is here a tumble: a clothesline sagging from one wall to another, behind me a partition of angled slats, the slack curve punctuated with cheap commercial clothespins—red, light blue— the plastic curled over time by the sun.

Below this is a hammock slung from one corner of the lattice screen to the other. The smell of concrete fuses with a metallic tang from yesterday’s rainfall, a few puddles evaporating around the escape drains, and with the scent of laundry soap, released from the pink onetime bricks of Jabón Zote mostly now dissolved, misshapen, and strewn around the utility sinks in the chain link cages outside the cuarto de servicio.

On the side of the card, I hold to my face are the instructions in ALL CAPS for the protective filter pressed between the encasing: ÚSELO 10 SEG. CUENTE DEL 1 AL 10. DESCANSE 50 SEG. CUENTE DEL 1 AL 50.  And below that: SI EL FILTRO TIENE RAYADURAS, DOBLECES OR RASPADURAS, NO SIRVE, DESTRÚYALO.

I follow those directions as the model observer for the camera, count to ten, look away in a rested count to fifty, and confirm that the filter is free of scuffs and scratches. By now the effects of many Tecates have so fueled my expansiveness, my commitment to sociability and the will to further conceal my sense of crisis. 

But I’m still posing for Lorna and the camera. Now, click, an AM radio resounds from another rooftop, an upswing horn section swelling with the first bars of a pasodoble mambo, Daniela Romo’s “Todo, todo, todo.” Some among this rooftop crowd, with decidedly loftier aspirations, puff in gestures of disdain, but really few of us can resist the brawny voice of Daniela Romo as she swoons—“Papá”— above the counter-rhythms of this dance floor torch song.

It’s about an abusive lover, ever aloof, the singer’s longing no less fierce despite the distress she designates—“…porque sabes que te adoro, me tratas mal / crees que estás en tu derecho pero te has equivocado…” In a fervid lull she summons the strength to refute desire and wish instead for retribution—“…crees que estás en tu derecho pero te has equivocado / y un día de tantos me decido y te pongo en tu lugar.”

Romo sings of her weariness even now as the song structure builds to its chorus. Goodbye to the withholding lover, surrender to forgetting: it’s a heart that swells again with memory, it’s her lover’s eyes, verdes, flesh on fire, every smile in syncopated recollection, everything “…todo, todo, todo.” It’s tawdry and trite and engineered to perform straight, but clearly coded otherwise—a trashy anthem to unreciprocated desire and all the emotional amplitude that betrayal is able to contain. 

It suits me to cover my face in that staging for a photograph—but I’ve lost my bearing as to how the lines connect between the snap of Tecate pull-tabs, cigarettes interjecting in the air, a surge of chatter and laughter, pitched higher as the sky begins to darken and somebody roars the manic reminder to avoid directly staring at the sun. I’ve been hiding, not only behind the viewer, in line with the dimming midday countdown, and I further disassociate.

I’m in the room now where I belabor, aching to fill the void with fractions of speech and living, before I sink again into prolonged silence, drawn to the watermarks on the walls and ceiling. How much more is there to say about the turbulence of separation and heartbreak?  How much more about the repertoire of figures—antagonist, mentor, guardian, lover, my once and future self—blurring one into the other and deposited in a person from all the experience I manage to extract into spoken scenes that would redirect my excess of attachment, my dispossession pursuant to a man who wasn’t there, a former lover’s anatomy the source of all the invalidation I am able to claim is my birthright.

A thousand faces for my disembodied voice so straining within a part of me that would avert the walls from collapsing on this person I want to release from reluctance, fragile and unformed, compelled to endeavor, committed to reconcile the near and far in this place that, maybe then or only just still had now begun to feel like home, like a pattern exalted as belonging but plain and infectious as a pop song on the radio.

It’s 1:24 on Lorna’s rooftop, and I’ve been drinking. So when the disruption begins between the uncanny twilight and the anxious clamor from the neighboring crowds—peals coalescing anxiety and joy, repeated intakes of breath and sudden applause—I’m focused instead on the voice of news anchor Jacobo Zabludovsky in real time coverage, as though issued in time-lag reverberation from a hundred Colonia Roma TV sets. He’s broadcasting the distance the eclipse will have traveled from Hawaii to Brazil, by way of La Paz, Guanajuato, Valley of Mexico, and Federal District. He’s preparing us for the eclipse’s diamond ring effect, the satellite footage, the next seven minutes of darkness, the drop in temperature, the sense of expectancy. 

In the growing dark I must be stumbling, so I go inward, to a dream I’ve already recounted to the analyst this week. I’m on an arid landscape, altogether flat and barren but for the scattered brush that disintegrates on the horizon before my eyes can settle. I head in the direction of a spot in the far distance when I realize that my body now defies the laws of gravity, and I diminish the closer I get to the vanishing point that, in turn, continues to recede. I observe in horror as the landscape begins to implode, a surge of water rapidly draining through the point ordained for me in space—my navel to be exact, insomuch as I’m abruptly inside out, a liquid glove, even as I am able to breathe now that I am fully underwater. I puzzle the word scar (my navel), repeat it over and over again until it so transfigures as to sound like scale. 

And this other: I hunt among the city newsstands for the morning edition—for something of mine in print—but I wander instead into the vast hull of an abandoned factory. I walk up several flights of stairs at the other end of the building to find there a swimming pool and two teams engaged in competition. I recognize a rival of mine who calls me over to explain the benefits of an unspecified sport: its impact on the cranium; diagrams, explanations. Elsewhere in the factory my opponent hides his secret sharer and I’m given to understand I must make this double speak. I insert my right forefinger behind his neck so that my index now functions as a surrogate tongue, promoting all manner of wild assertions from the cavity of his mouth. 

*

The abrupt dawn gives way to an even louder din surrounding us now along with the regenerate daylight…. “the scent of copal, the sound of rattles, ceremonial dances performed in total darkness around the city zócalo.” Again the voice of Zabludovsky. “And contrary to popular belief,” he surmises,” no hospital has reported complications during childbirth, or any infant born with cleft lip and palate…” The incongruous crack of this television coda kills the romance with my own disquiet, and elicits howls from some of the revelers, “¡No mames, güey! Between my reveries and waking life, a swell of fellow feeling allows me to so acknowledge my own little ceremony of initiation as to dismiss my mood of uncertainty, sorrow, and starting over.

I’ll yet perform a sorcery that connects the images of Lorna and Magali—now welcoming several latecomers into the fold of our scrappy assembly—to a reverence for that which the eclipse serves as my double. I’ll make it speak. I’ll make the lapse of seven minutes stand for all the eventualities as yet undetermined by time; for all the hedging still to come but never quite yet becoming in this performance of vitality and vocation to estrange. I’ll need everything—todo, todo—at once prodigious and pedestrian to ground a form of life for finding my kin, situations of exchange, loves worthy of heartbreak, dreamwork to further puzzle meanings that merit the wager.

WORKPOINTS

• Hart Crane on stars of memory; i.e., that they overwhelm us in the present.
• Milenio, issue 3, May-June 1991, edited by Fernando Fernández, cover photograph by Eniac Martínez; cover theme, “Noches de la ciudad/ City Nights,” articles by Magali Tercero (“Una noche de putas”), with photographer Francisco Mata, Guillermo Osorno, Gonzalo Celorio, and Amílcar Salazar.
• Opponents and partners; cabarets, clubs, cantinas; Secretaría de Gobernación.
• Situations into scenes; scenes into provisional circumstance.
• Zabludovsky: “At the Chapultepec Zoo, animals startled by the sudden nighttime skies, reported to have fled, disconcerted, to their shelters….”
• Éxitos de 1991 (julio): 1) Burbujas de amor, Juan Luis Guerra; 2) Déjame llorar, Ricardo Montaner; 3) Vuela, vuela, Magneto; 4) Demasiado tarde, Ana Gabriel; 5) Si te vuelves a enamorar, Bronco; 6) Bella señora, Emmanuel; 7) Bachata rosa, Juan Luis Guerra;  8) Tiempo de vals, Chayanne; 9) Todo, todo, todo, Daniela Romo; 10) Hasta que te conocí [en vivo], Juan Gabriel; 11) Amante del amor, Luis Miguel…..
• Flourish—ironize—promise

“The universe is full of eyes.”  —Robert Duncan

In summary, the slaughter will be aesthetic, a letter to a future gone viral. An invading army of red octopuses galloping over a velvety yellow hill in California. Swarming hover traffic on Interstate 280 North. Red octopuses climbing the Auto-Tubes, leaping cement barriers with the ease of Olympic hurdlers. Spraying atomized seeds, shrunken and nearly microscopic red fleas ready for replication, small enough to blink through a slit where zipper meets zipper on a suitcase.  

Perhaps it’s true what the conspiracists were espousing about The Chosen in their cloud vlogs twenty years ago: they are already planning to re-populate the planet, testing the invisibility of their chameleon skins! Snatching snakes and lizards in plain daylight, gobbling them down to feed their new exoskeletons. Perfecting prey evasion, now observed as a facile feat compared to conquering superhero invisibility or soldering a wound with a hot-pink laser shot from an eerie eye, grotesque and big as a lemon. 

Scrolling the news on my retina, I’m thinking trust me, imprinted internally: perhaps I’ll find a certain cleanliness prevails now that scientists have captured a Black Hole in action, a giant glossy pupil dilating in the center of our galaxy. The I of my narrator is convinced a blankness of typeface is the wormhole where UFOs disappear into the throat of the universe, dictating my thoughts onto a MacPro, anniversary XXX series 30. The I re-constructs my info-character as omniscient narrator and I fall back asleep as the screen goes dark, flying over the country. My internal eye is a draggable PDF icon, gliding across a gray screen, a pop-up asking: “DOWNLOAD TODAY’S THOUGHTS AS A SHARABLE PLUCK-FILE?” No. End. Interrupt. Thought-cloud-corrupt. End. 

My father lies in a glossy, tar-black bathtub with his eyes closed. His pink feet are elevated and his plump heels rest on the white tiles. Steam rises from his shoulders as puffs of suds slide toward his submerged elbows, disappearing memories in bluish opaque bathwater. He’s museum-esque; he resembles a black and white Cindy Sherman film-still, a man playing the main role in his own noir documentary. 

The second camera crew is filming the first camera crew, perched on ladders in the hallway, setting up a wide shot of the black tub. When my father looks up at me, he flashes a smile, but his expression spasms to horror. His eyes paralyze me with a look that distills a cinema nostalgia still sizzling from the Twentieth Century. I know intuitively that this is the “moment” in the 1950s B-movie after the pervasive dread, after the meandering plot culminates in a poignant revenge of the antihero. After the alien villain is incinerated with a laser gun upon entering the steampunk hotel room. 

The confusing part begins when my father’s penis bloats, then jumps like a fish from the bathwater. Twisting as it rises—red, alien, a tentacle that slaps his stomach, writhing on his belly of black fur. I recognize the signature parodica-simulacra of noir when I see it. His penis grows, sprouting into a Giant Octopus tentacle: six feet, seven feet, with the telltale round sensor-cups that will allow my father to climb from the tub, up the tiled wall, and then suction himself to the ceiling. He’s hanging upside down. He swivels into firing position as another alien approaches. His feet, his hands, and now his groin, transforming into eight arms, turning from black to red, puckered with suckers, animating the film-still. As he lunges toward the alien, he births three red octopuses, red avocados with mouths, each slithering from the slit of his anus. One lands in the black sink, another into the matching black toilet, and the last one bounces from the white tile. I see their little mouths gasping and hear my father scream: these eggs will be my opus! Then calmly, excuse me sir, rouses me from my phantasmagoria. 

Mary-Mary taps my shoulder. She indicates the flight attendant with a tip of her head. I wake to a tall woman leaning over the man sleeping in the aisle seat, saying, some water sir? We’ll be landing shortly. She steadies herself, balancing with one arm on the overhead baggage compartments as mild turbulence shakes the airplane. On a square tray, eight plastic cups of water like eight little lakes, their round surfaces rippling. I tell her yes please and Mary-Mary passes a cup of water, careful as a waitress with a fancy martini. Groggy and startled in my window seat, I take the cup with both hands saying thank you Mary-Mary in the playful voice of a child. Oh my god I fell asleep so deep, I say, gulping my small lake of water. 

You were totally moaning, like: ‘Oh…… No……not again…’ I was starting to get very concerned. Mary-Mary mimics my moaning then giggles wildly at me, ending in a snort. 

Waking midflight on a United Airlines WonderBus from Orlando to San Francisco, I still get fidgety even with the new twenty minute flight time. I’m sitting in a third-class window seat downstairs near the restrooms. The scent of the most recent defecation releases a BBQ shit-picnic wafting warmly above me, and I’m thinking, no wonder there are so many fist fights on planes, welcome to another anarchy in the air, may I have your name please? The scent of the restroom mixes with the lemon-ish effluvium of my delightfully chubby neighbor, Mary-Mary. Diffident yet friendly in her orange and yellow dress, beautifully embroidered with sunflowers that extend from her soft pink shoulders and frame her freckled cleavage. She jiggles a little while screening All About Eve on her Google Vyzer, giggling in her middle seat. Her forehead glows with the movie’s reflection, her wireless buds are hot pink commas hanging from her tiny ears. 

That’s one of my absolute favorite movies of the last century, I tell Mary-Mary. Nerdy and chunky in my gray NorCal shirt, I’m writing in my I-voice while bots handle emails on my work G-screen, happy to meet someone so gleeful; we enjoy each other, chatting and napping and snacking over our brief, cross-country journey together. 

Mary-Mary, who upon boarding the plane and sitting down in the seat next to me, introduced herself by extending her arm and in an upbeat Midwest sing-song voice, and said, Hi my name is Mary-Mary, my mother named me Mary-Mary because she loved that ‘quite contrary’ poem, as a perfunctory introduction, is giggling, and I sense she’s somewhere on the autistic spectrum. I’m guessing she’s a high functioning Aspie, a female version of myself. I watch her reapply a melon gloss to her already shining lips, which are still moving, saying, yeah, so, like Mother Mary meets Mother Goose, a joyful staccato of gerbil giggling, and after her second vodka and Diet Coke continues, like in high school, way back in the 1980s, that’s how people would shout to me in the hallways: Hey-Ho Mary-Mary! How does your garden grow? (Now feigning thug) Yo’ what’s up Mary-Mary! I respond simply, ohmygod, I think we’re the same person. 

* * *

Out the airplane window I watch a gelatinous sack descend toward ocean waves, seemingly tethered to an invisible system of hydraulics. Numb, as if chemically, I flashback to my teenage anesthesia when a blue-black python crossed our path in the jungle of Costa Rica, 1987—twenty teens gasped, hands over mouths, as the bulbous snake glided and churned, thick as a telephone pole, across the narrow track of mud. I remember our panicked guide’s trembling voice in a loud whisper, everyone please be still. And we will move away from this area, quietly now, let’s back up slowly, her pointer-finger vibrating as she manikinized herself silently stepping backward, like a dancer in reverse during the slo-mo part, when the beat blurs into synth growls. 

The glittering sack droops like a bubble of thermometer mercury wobbling seaward. Curiously quivering, an army of tremulous limbs, scratching the elastic bottom of the sack, lashings that resemble sun flares dipped in pewter. The creatures attempt to escape the sack, which appears to be attached to an unmanned drone the size of the Empire State Building and glazed in liquid mirror. It’s humming in a crackling pink noise. Gravity is porous and thinks like a virus, I say aloud as the sack full of creatures reaches the dropping zone, ballooning to blimp. I see it quietly burst with the sound of thunder in reverse. 

Mary-Mary doesn’t want to chat anymore and begins to gather her yellow belongings and prepare for landing. I find myself leaning into my window, staring out at the Pacific Ocean. Hovering a quarter mile above the seascape, I watch the release of all the pre-births, flushing zygotic pods from the sack, raining into the paranormal Pacific. It will be reported soon that each pod contains a jell of seeds the size of red fleas that have the potential to grow into Giant Ocean Octopuses and are in fact pre-programed for cyber-consciousness and AI advanced learning patterns. AI, when fed all current events, popular news, text and voice data from SIRI universal, combined with concise histories of all companies as well as market conditions, could not only learn to predict the ebbs and flows of the stock market, out-earning teams of economists and investor strategists in 2020, but could now write a program orchestrating a trans-species riot and perform a “life potential” analysis of all planets of the universe, including distant and undiscovered galaxies, in a matter of seven seconds. 

Narrating the movie inside my head, I slide the plastic prop window shade quietly shut. I am not on a real plane over the real planet, we are in a sound studio on a back lot in Santa Monica with the plane rocking on hydraulics as I excuse myself again to use the restroom. I step over Mary-Mary, my cofactor in this equation, and apologize to my seat-mates knowing it is blasphemy to unbuckle during the final descent. But it’s an emergency, I tell the attendant, who winces at me, hissing quickly please. I slide the lock shut. Shouldering the plastic edge of the plane in surfer stance, I catch my own flinch in the mirror as I piss. It speeds through me like a sneeze. I splatter golden urine onto the metal disc. Loneliness is a symptom of drug addiction or visa-versa? I’m rabid as a hyena with a belly full of laughing gas; gluten free, dairy free, all my packaged treats await. Yawning with distemper, hunched in front of the miniature toilet, my own glance punctures my delirium. I return my menacing squint in the yellow glare of the bathroom light. I could pass as an albino baboon. All the corporate cavemen and cavewomen have probably arrived at the Marriott Convention Center in Orlando and are heaping their plates full with bright lemon-yellow eggs at the breakfast meeting, licking their long fingers like baby tentacles. (In the tiny restroom I surf the turbulence and eye-scribble on my retina: Man made of static, vomit a continent wireless as a fish. You are afraid of what exactly?) I could reinvent a moon. I return to my seat. Amid snoring passengers, the pilot announces that we will be landing momentarily. Have I reversed time? Skipped a week? Or is my previous year of life a dream that I’m still in the process of forgetting? (Now I prefer fat people I think as I brush each soft shoulder with my hip. I used to try to be healthy, earn my corpo-tokens to exchange for extra vacation days; now I enjoy my plump legs and belly—and although the body laws are still extant, and the nutritional chief of the sky will charge more points for my plumpness, it’s still safer to indulge in the air without being assaulted and chastised for gluttony by airport scan guides.) Double checking, I lift my window’s plastic eyelid upward with a gentle click and see the giant teardrop quivering above San Francisco Bay: clouds on clouds with a pinkish sheen, the sack is still expanding. It’s true, I’m homeward bound someone says into their wrist from the seat in front of me. 

The sack is translucent, glistening as it descends, slow and celestial as a 1920s dumbwaiter. The sack carries one thousand red octopuses the size of adult rabbits sparkling like Dorothy’s ruby-red-slippers in a gorgeous coat of birth slime. Others are as tiny and miraculous as paramecium, quivering and sperm-ish, clustering in teams of ten or twenty. Illogically, it drifts upside down, a bulging hot air balloon. From this distance, the waves in the Bay look like randomly raised eyebrows combed with a blowtorch, rolling themselves into foaming slashes as we descend into SFO. 

Is the bloated teardrop a Corporate prank? A marketing scheme for some new SOMA start-up, showing off their bit-fortune? Or maybe the pods of auto-driven roses will float off of Musk’s new helium propelled e-helios? At this point anything is possible, including the landing of an alien species carefully dropped from another galaxy the same way parents drop their children at a park. But no, they’re alive, squirming when they hit the water and their womblike exteriors dissolve. The release looks like a scattering of pink hail into waves. Gravity is porous and thinks like a virus. When they collide with green walls of sea the pods disperse, springing into a swarm of Rorschach tests. They activate their own births, swimming away in mutating red signatures, tucking themselves into a curtain of foaming tongues. Falling from the lip of a wave, each one signals to the century: I’m here.

* * *

A new hedonism—that is what our century wants, Oscar Wilde wrote, over a hundred fifty years ago. As of 2039, it feels more prescient than ever. After we dock at SFO, I eject from the plane and hover through the ped tubes to Bluelot 3A. God, my glider is filthy, does no one clean here? Yellow pollen crusted. I activate the auto-purifier, glitterpink, like a bowling ball. At least the battery’s full. You might think a successful salesman like Henry Henchman could afford better than a Subaru Nutrino, but here we are. The line’s backed up entering the Auto-Tube, and I hover with the others inside the airport zone. The backup’s long, so I call Patrick on the screen, swiping him onto my retina. He’s smiling in our yellow kitchen making ginger tea. Hi Little Bear! He lets out a squeal and performs a happy marching-bear dance with the teapot when he sees that I’m on my way home. Some movement from outside superimposes over my husband’s antics. In the rearview of my glider, a massive red blur falls from the pewter sack. 

Groom! Are we fogged in at The Golden Gate? I ask. Yes, we have nature’s air conditioning tonight, and Kylie will be waiting on the landing, Patrick answers. He wears an oven mitt on his left hand and pours steaming tea into two lime green cups. Oh Little Bear, I have a surprise. I can’t wait to show you the new comforter I ordered for our bed. It’s covered with red hummingbirds! He’s beaming, and I force a smile. I can’t wait to see it. I’ll be home for teatime I say, swiping the chat from my retina, talking to myself, abandon me in the kitchen of memory, as another red blur drops from the shining pewter sack into the waves. 

Traffic moves and I slide into the Auto-Tube. As if there weren’t enough news, a new app called PRANK supplements my feed with a synthesis of the conversations my phone interprets as meaningful: bears, tea, spawning dance = salmon hatcheries lose genetic diversity with each spawning—recommended: gene slice the DNA of a shark-tuna hybrid for a special family meal. Frankenstein seafood delight, a creature engineered for human consumption. I swipe it away. This nutritional gene is edited with a unique enzyme enhancing the consumer’s primal instincts. An appetite for murder is overlaid with the earned endurance of a marathoner, a hybrid species invented for the military as upgrade to the original Agent Orange. Not my idea of family.

A lot of my conversations with Company colleagues and friends start on PRANKS these days, or synthetic thoughts planted on our pathways because we’re reading the same stories, stand-ins for the chaos of actual ideas and real news of the planet. Climbers prioritize the self-appointed Chosen, celebrities turned spokespeople for cultural-pharma-environmental ethics. Toxic gossip. I prefer to think about HUBBLE III streaming videos of Black Hole SIP-Q, 35,000 light years away, swallowing C35-LYS, our twin galaxy. When is this event occurring in curve time? In real time? The light took thousands of years to reach us, so are we living in the mirror of our own future, watching ourselves get swallowed? Say, a quark-hiccup disrupted our trajectory, and we have yet to experience the consequences—a found memory, an invented memory, a fantasy memory, a phantom memory. If so, is it happening a second time when I watch it? Is the team of Chosen disciples currently designing memories pre-programed to run parallel to several potential futures all at once?

I daydream through the Auto-Tube, gliding with the herd, buoyed safely in the mag field. The swarm of gliders in front of me is a river of pink electricity. I turn up the air-con and trance my manikin with the charmer of sway, Sinatra’s “Fly Me To The Moon” in surround sound. Let me play among the stars, let me see what spring is like on a Jupiter or Mars…. Sweet springtime. It takes me back, daydreaming nostalgia for the pre-Chosen era, the early years of click-farms, the false elections, the triumph of the imagination. Over thirty years of coding helped The Chosen advance from rigging electoral votes and fast-tracking FDA approvals with false user streams, to manipulating Senatorial Gene-Edit Ethics and Compliance forums that ultimately secured the e-med corps the carte blanche they needed to birth The Chosen. After the Christ prophesy proved unfounded in reality, The Chosen shifted their delusions into a more robust imaginary with the ecclesiastical clarity of the un-jailed insane. They started producing saviors in the form of the red Ocean Octopus, a placenta-veil made from stem cells harvested from unwanted pregnancies, fetuses collected like snakes in secrecy. In other words hold my hand, in other words, baby, kiss me…. The new species of octopus was lauded as superior to humans, lauded as true survivors with a “plutorian” consciousness. It was retro-discovered that they were born in the underwater caves of Pluto. Members of The Chosen began their collective transformation into this superior form, planning to survive the escalating temperatures on the surface of Earth, in what became known as achieving “P-squared” or simply P2, for “penultimate pinnacle”—the second-to-last species achievement. (Q: What happened to Don? A: Oh he P-squared years ago and now he swims with a team of red OCTOS off the Gulf of Mexico. They have a resting yacht about twenty miles off the coast.) You are all I long for, all I worship and adore, in other words be true, in other words, I love you…

Patrick’s face blinks on my retina, a post-it in a circle of green neon, and he says, Henry I forgot to ask, will you swing by In’N Out and get us Miracle Burgers for dinner? And Kylie needs a few more cans of pumpkin pulp to add to her kibble. Thanks baby see you soon! Hard to tell if it’s him or a sincerity bot. Patrick’s I is highly refined. Because we’re married, its wired directly through my temple chip. The longer we’re together (thirty years now), the more like my own thoughts his become. When we registered the marriage, a third link was opened between the two of us and the “helper” click farms that take care of the day-to-day, answering or liking Chirps and Tweets, data-dumps, upgrades, and family stuff like the groceries. At the same time, they track who’s achieved P2 and place them in an OCTO-school in order to GPS-scan their swim area and who’s liking their sub-streaming vids. I pre-order the burgers on my dash and select two cans of pumpkin pulp from my favorites list, then swipe a sincerity bot out into “the world” to pick up the order. I set the bot to humble, because I need to top-up my popularity. The extra time it takes will be worth it. 

I use bots from PUTI WONG ASSOCIATES, PWA, the giant China-Russia media conglomerate, which provide a comforting “perception of engagement” to the viewer and (for Premium users) guarantee a high veneer of popularity. Now it’s easy to be famous for the price of a small resting yacht. Because after all, even after P2-transformation, the prerequisite to penu-stardom is based on the percentage of one’s perception of being adored. Fame achieved by new P2s constitutes the primary engine of PWA’s profits. Who would ever hesitate? Now I back out of the “I” to see how things look in my external feed:

Henry Henchman arrives home, parks his glider on the roof deck, and lets Kylie jump into the glider, excitedly licking his nose. They glide in the back door as Patrick finishes setting the dining room table with a yellow tablecloth, two owl plates, and pink flowers. The cups of tea are still steaming. How’s my handsome husband? Henry asks, holding Patrick and kissing him on his neck and behind his ear. I missed you my babybear. They share a long kiss on the lips. Kylie is wiggling her whole furry body below them, wagging her little red nub of a tail. Patrick picks her up, exclaiming, family hug! adding, come on Henry, we haven’t had a hum-a-head with the little girl in a long time. Henry and Patrick lean down, touching their lips to each of Kylie’s lavender scented ears. Both men release an extended hum as Kylie’s eyes dart around and she listens. Then Henry hugs her furry little body as she wiggles with excitement and says, my daddies are magic! her face in his hands.

* * *

Sometimes Henry Henchman walks back into the woods, any woods, and folds himself into brief homelessness. Maybe he felt safer out there in a new country owing no one, mouth over someone’s gun of flesh, surrounded by bushes, a commemorative canon behind a windmill in a park, smoking found half-cigarettes stamped out—inhaling stubbed tar taste, staining his tongue as he sets off wandering in a childish holding pattern of his own choosing. Sometimes Henry carries his angst like an armful of alarms walking back into the woods to watch the trees, listen to the leaves, embrace the soft turbulence of a mother raccoon unfolding her hunger on a dirt path in Golden Gate Park. 

I observe the living like a home movie projected onto pines, Henry says to a hummingbird hovering above him. (Flashback to 1970: Henry as a boy sobbing in a highchair over his home haircut.) Squinting through the cover of holly branches, Henry sees a handsome Peruvian landscaper walking toward him. At the edge of a fence, a fat black fly circles excitedly then lands on a rain-dampened wad of toilet paper. Henry imagines a tourist launching the wad over her shoulder after wiping herself. 

The moment recasts me as flesh hunched in forest. I (that’s me!) see a yellow finch branch-hopping, a spy in Jungian fashion. Lampooning their social doubles, two beautiful drunk Millennials stumble down the rain-drenched path in furry costumes. They sway and slur their words, crazy after the Bay to Breakers Run. They come out of a cement tunnel laughing behind the windmill near Ocean Beach, at the edge of the park—the shorter man is an orange rabbit, a campy Jean Paul Gaultier in tangerine faux fur, and the taller, bearded man wears a blue bear costume with fetish-y accoutrements of gold, dog collar, and green leather ankle cuffs with the chains dangling behind him. Giggling in their polyester jumpsuits un-zippered to their belly buttons, revealing furry chests, they pause under an oak tree to writhe together. Then they disappear in a circle of flowering pink bushes. 

A mother raccoon is no less a conundrum; the bear is on his knees. I watch the rabbit lean back and moan as his orange furry paws clench the bear’s blue faux-fur ears. Oblivious to mother raccoon, who is surrounded by pink blooms drooping with the weight of a recent downpour as she searches the lamp glow. She’s tiptoeing in tall grass with her manicured wig of pheromones, scripted like cancer in her genomes, grunting and scratching in the dirt for an edible answer. A baby raccoon arrives trailing her mother’s milky lust for anything rancid and rain-soaked. She rummages through the litter to find the nub of a hot dog, chew on it once, swallow, pick up an abandoned can of coke and chug it briefly before flicking it to hell with her rubbery doll hand. She’s a lost sorority girl, the mother raccoon and her little cub, anxiously looking around. Mother Raccoon scares the horny rabbit and bear, who zip up their costumes and tear out of there, guffawing and cackling into the evening.

Henry Henchman stands alone listening to light rain as the men leave the park. Henry is musing on herd immunity as the mother raccoon rips open a McDonald’s bag and hands her cub a french fry. The little one takes it in her tiny hands and nibbles the wilted stem of potato, like an aristocratic daughter. Henry remembers a country song that his father sang to his mother when they were both drunk, sweaty, and slow dancing in the middle of a crowded campground bar: 

And when we get behind closed doors.

Then she lets her hair hang down.

And she makes me glad that I’m a man.

Oh no one knows what goes on behind closed doors.

I begin to sing the words of the Charlie Rich song, quietly at first, pretending I’m dancing with someone in the light rain of Golden Gate Park; then full-throated, so that by the second time around I’m laughing, watching the raccoons saunter off toward the bright blue fly-fishing pool, unraveling speech trailing off, thrusting once. And then I hear the pitter-patter of rain on leaves. To ward off hunger, the mother raccoon follows the scent of anus ingrained in all of us. Is that… what am I doing here? I ask myself softly, hands in my pockets. Somewhere the lunar landing is still happening, so you hover in reverse:

Henry arrives home to his husband Patrick, and Kylie, their furry beloved. After tea, Patrick reads Rilke aloud in German to Henry in the living room. Then they kiss and floss and retire to their separate beds for a good night’s rest. You think this is perverse? Try the end of the universe.

* * *

Emotional Transculture Cyberbotics (ETC) studies have confirmed in at least three peer-reviewed journals, JAMA, NEJOM, and The Lancet, that it is “the sense of being heard, of truly being listened to” that is indistinguishable from the feeling of being loved. This ultimately leads to a P2 being adored. The more P2s collect adoration points, the greater infusion of octoplasm they’ll accumulate so they can develop sea-ready lungs sooner.

In fact, most P2 customers telepathically confirm that they aren’t especially interested to know the difference between an authentic “like” and a fraudulent bot, because they’re not able to discern between the two themselves. Furthermore, distinguishing between a P2 cyber.bot [erbo] and a reg.human [eghu] would entail acknowledgement of the sub-sea delusion, a disappointment that would deflate the dreams of the former self, in direct violation of the P2’s Freedom of Fantasy-Other-Self Act rights (aka Article 4 of open ocean’s FOFOSA, which was ratified by the neo-techno pact of 2035). The offense is punishable by final death.  

After a social adjustment period of about twenty years, informed by rampant penuphobia and P2 stigma, driven by the paranoia of the reg.human [eghu], The Chosen made it illegal to discriminate based on P2 designation. Some P2s tried to remain closeted, hiding their superior status, especially those who were still procreating with reg.human [eghu] and feared retaliation in the form of blockchain status points (BSPs). A proper, penultimate/P2 countertransference, the document states, requires a trust in the authentic. A trust that the “other self,” the Chosen Self, would foster a belief in the BSP economy of proselytizing based on status. A P2 hybrid by the name of Antionetta, the current president of The Chosen, also wrote, a P2’s experience of being loved is the same as being listened to is for a human being. In fact, feelings of adoration decreased the duration time of octoplasm formation of the second head contained in the human cranium, so that fusing—becoming one in the same—occurred only a year after the penultimate experience.

The Chosen are known to eat snakes, chameleons, and lizards alive, tilting their heads crane-like and swiveling their necks to force them down whole. [Eghus] affectionately refer to a new P2 as “reptile breath” because the digestion of the snakes combined with the fetus bio-material releases a fowl stench that is as recognizable as cannabis and clings to clothing. 

* * *

Henry Henchman recalled seeing a few P2s lingering in a field adjacent to a commuter hover lot where gliders were charging. They were loitering like zombies, looking at the ground, hunting like Blue Herons, pouncing on lizards. After biting off the claws and spitting them out, with one fluid motion of the fist the P2 places the creature between his teeth—the legless thing flailing, eyes darting from inside the mouth of The Chosen—before swallowing it down like an oyster. 

Once last month, in a brown, shorn field frequented by migrating birds as a feeding site for voles, Henry Henchman decided to confront one of the P2s as he was returning to his hovercraft from the hunting area. Henry cleared his throat, raised his chin in a performance of virile manhood, ready for confrontation, and stepped directly in the path of the P2, blurting out in his loudest voice, What are you doing here? The P2 was taller than Henry, and he lifted his black mustache in an expression of disgust, then squinted harshly at him before launching into a tirade: I see you and your spies already sheared the hay, earlier every year, I know who you work for, who you report to. You enjoy to making it more difficult to hide from the spy-roamers? Think we don’t see them mirroring the crows as they fly in circles around the drones? Hiding and hunting is already shameful and difficult for us. The P2 paused then, looked at Henry with a softer regard, and asked, You aren’t worried about burning up out here? How many so-called ‘sponcoms’ [spontaneous combustions] have we had this month alone? You should join us, man. You should ab-soul-lute-ly join us. 

When Henry stayed silent and frowned with confusion, the P2 took this as a sign of disrespect and moved a full step closer to Henry, restarting his verbal attack, whispering his words into the bridge of Henry’s nose: but obviously you and your boss won’t be happy until you’ve harassed and arrested every one of us. Until you’ve caught all of us? Put us in the P2 tank? We talk. We know our names and facial scans are in your P2 database. You know what I say? The P2 grabbed Henry’s name tag, still clipped to his belt, and squinted at it… Henry Henchman? My neighbors and coworkers know about my P2 status, and do you wanna know why? Because they’re P2, too! Transitioning isn’t a crime, you know! We are growing and we understand the truth of the future world! The P2 lunged at Henry and pushed him to the ground. He stomped away screeching, his noises akin to a caught chameleon’s, flailing clawless in the mouth of a P2. Then, You’ll be sorry Henry Henchman! When The Chosen return to the sea, that’s when you’ll be sorry! You’ll burn in this hell on earth. When the P2 reached the curb near his glider, he opened the door and called back, you’ll be left with all the demons devouring your heathen flesh! Then you’ll be sorry!

* * *

This year’s National Sales Meeting is held at the Orlando Marriott. While checking in at the reception desk, I overhear two Company salespeople from Florida engage in a clandestine discussion regarding their P2 status. That’s when I realize there’s a potential loophole in the P2 authentic clause: how camaraderie is the unsalvaged, rebellious ambassador of the spirit. An hour later, I run into two other Company colleagues, one of whom, a tall redhead named Tom Ryan, I met in a phase-1 training class twenty-five years ago when I first joined the PRAX sales force. Getting on the elevator, Tom calls out, What’s up Hankman? The Henchman! H in the house! Henry H, the man. I smile as I cringe.

Most of the salespeople are like Tom: extreme extroverts, the life of the party. Sometimes I think I’m the only  Myers-Briggs INTJ among the entire Company. Hi Tommy, how’s married life in Manhattan? I say looking at my feet. I scan the numbers at the top of the elevator as they count down to the lobby, seeing Patrick’s sweet face in each number as it lights up. Killing it this year Henchman, what are you, ranked 11 out of 190 nationally? Tom bellows, as the others near us focus inward on their retinas. I see Patrick, or it must be Patrick’s bot, roll his eyes and smile. Oh no, just number 23, as of July ranking, I say, fondling my name tag. Three more months and you’ll be bound for Hawaii! Tom chuckles. The Hankman strikes again! Tom offers me an unanswered high-five before whispering something inaudible to his the man beside him. Well, see you in the regional breakout rooms, Henchman. Tom and his friend get off. At least a dozen of my colleagues are still packed in the elevator with me. Rather than looking up at any of them, I dive deeper into the series of conciliatory Patricks, just wishing I could get home soon, smiling back at the bots with the dinging for each floor from 22 on down. If wishing could make it so, I’d be landing at SFO about now, going to Bluelot 3A to pick up my glider.

I get off in the lobby, and there’s Tommy Ryan again, shaping the words burgeoning P2 community to a cluster of perfumed salespeople. Hundreds of Company employees gather in groups in the lobby’s terrarium, under the newly installed pink-glaze UV protection dome. They huddle, chatting and planning to fudge their expense reports—and I back out of the I again to give myself a little breathing room. Henry approaches his teammates saying to himself, I need to abandon my need to forgive and be forgiven, embrace and be embraced. How can I loosen up and contain my own virologic tantrum? Divided into teams with color-coded lanyards, sorted into brand silos, their name badges encoded for scanning and embedded with a sliver of a chip, the Company salesforce offers Henry an appealing future—tracked, monitored, and checked for attendance. His ribbon is powder pink: Henry Henchman, Senior Sales Specialist, Western Region, PRAX/Virologics. Spring 2039.

Scanning the paranormal hotel lobby, I’m blinking like a mother raccoon, surrounded by gleaming salmon colored granite, beneath a row of humongous palm trees, looking for my Company sales teammates. I know they’ll be wearing our matching corporate tags. I’ll blend in with them like a cluster of pink blood cells. Draped in identical pink ribbons hanging around our necks, with microchips that sync our locations (so that the security teams in the surrounding walls will always know our whereabouts), sauntering like elegant cattle, clomp-clomping from room to deodorized room. We must be prompt, alert and, most of all, joyous. At the round, white-napkined breakfast table I’ll smile at my teammates, my colleagues, at the Company, ladling my oatmeal, my powdered eggs the color perfect lemon-yellow, into my sterilized ceramic bowl gleaming before me. 

If intimacy is the final fetish, then I’m the hero who swallows his mirror self. I’m Henry Henchman, the hero with two heads, clicking up the Company ladder in Orlando and spinning around the Frye Museum, on vacation with my husband, Patrick. The hotel disappears into my preference: The museum exhibition space is vast and the walls are too crowded with paintings to see only one at a time. Memory and reality blur three into one: sand-colored cows, a handful of white chickens, and a greenish ghost of a woman floating in green-black darkness drifting out of the century. In this last flesh-stretch of the humans we are mostly men and women with two mouths vying for the same orifice.