At long last, I finally made time to upload the greatest piece of art I have yet produced. I wrote, drew, and inked this entire project over the course of Fall Semester 2019. It had been sitting in a folder for over a year now, but I finally took the time to scan and crop the images for upload.
Any likeness to real persons and locations is strictly coincidental. Also, it reads right to left because I was reading manga. Oops.
: )
When I was younger, there was a brief period of time, a few weeks maybe, when the backyard did not get mowed. I don’t remember how old I was, but I do remember the glory of it. The grass rose up like a forest, tufted with fingers of seeds in serrated sheaths. Compared to the muddy, fungal waste that my childhood yard would become in proceeding decades, that brief period of stomach-high grass seemed like the beginning of the world.
We would play Pokémon in that grass, imagine all of the varieties that would inhabit my new corner of the wilderness. In the absence of any significant connection to real animals, Pokémon is like a drug to the child mind. It is really a wonder I went into that grass at all. I was generally terrified of insects and dead birds and anything that moved unpredictably. We were actually forbidden from playing in the tall grass. My mother screamed about ticks and other disease-carrying terrors, and my friend’s mother was even worse. Grass stains can kill, apparently.
The grass hurt my father the most. Each green needle stabbed at his pride and caused his skin to ooze beads of translucent shame. The grass was the latest slight in an endless train of frustrations that stretched back to before I was born. He would sigh over the grass and yell at the grass. He would complain about unheard whispers from the neighbors about the decline of our suburban integrity. This grass is destroying us! We are the neighborhood laughingstock!
Maybe the lawn mower was broken? That herbivorous shark of a machine with aerodynamic hull and one-thousand speeds? I really don’t remember.
The issue cleared up eventually. Dad fixed or borrowed a mowing device, and the tall grass was gone in an hour. I’m sure the exercise killed my lungs and forced my eyeballs shut for a week.
Many years later, the third-grade teacher that lived across the street would get a divorce and move away. In her place came an Indian family, a father, mother, and a little son that liked to wander and gape every corner of his new yard. This turn of events gave the neighborhood something to joke about. Little comments about smelling curry every time the doors swung open began to propagate. Sometimes the father didn’t wave or smile hard enough when the Lexuses drove by. An exotic new neighbor gives a suburb excitement to feed upon for months.
Among all the little peeves, this new neighbor had one crucial flaw–the father did not know how to take care of his yard. As his stay grew longer, so did his grass. Before long, his front yard was a matted forest straight out of my primordial past. I’m sure the experienced enriched the toddler’s life immensely, but it was a bane to the established neighborhood. Old griefs were reborn in my father, and he began to complain about the embarrassment just across the street. His imagination swam with the terror of plummeting property values. Is the guy going to hire a crew? My father eventually settled on the theory that the guy was a big city tech-wizard that had come to colonize American suburbia. No lawns in the concrete jungle.
Eventually, my dad took it upon himself to lay the green menace low. He took his monster mower across the street and cleaned up the place in no time at all. I don’t live there anymore, but I imagine the lawns are still as flat and brown as ever. An unpruned landscape is a very dangerous thing.
One of the chief traumas of my youth surrounds a pet frog. I have long been interested in keeping glass-bound pets, fish and such. This mania possibly stems from the massive fish tank that my mother used to keep in her store. It housed a pair of massive sucker fish (plecos, highly invasive), vicious orange cichlids with roving eyes, and a plethora of smaller fish that would be eaten and replaced over time. Maybe it was all the wildlife documentaries. Something in my deeper youth spurred me to keep strange animals, but my patience was not built for it. In the sixth grade, all I could think about was owning a dart frog. In the tropical rain forests of South America, the diet of these frogs allows them to manufacture some of the deadliest poisons in the world. In captivity, feasting on flightless fruit flies and basking under electronic light renders the domestic dart frog relatively harmless. The conditions necessary to sustain their lives, however, remain strict. The humid atmosphere and lush flora of the rain forest must be recreated in a glass cube.
I was not up to the task, and the frog that I had shipped to my house that summer died a few months later as Autumn began to make my house very cold and dry. Various follies compounded to create the frog corpse that still lies buried in a forgotten plastic coffin in my childhood backyard. I have gone over the various mistakes in my mind many times throughout the intervening years, but the gist of them is that I cared more about having the exotic frog than caring for the frog’s necessary habitat. The loss of the frog left me terrified, and I decided that I would not own another aquarium pet until I was mature and financially independent enough to do it perfectly. Though I raised some tropical plants in my room for some years after, I never did overcome my fears. Six more years of living without obligations flew by without any serious attempts at aquarium building.
The desire never really left, and now that I am a mobile college student, the aquarium mania has returned in force. Inconvenience seems to spur the fantasy on, in fact. I went through a period of intense longing for a goldfish last semester. Thank god I could control myself! Had a fish died in transit between my apartment and my house, I probably would have driven off a bridge. No, I am not so foolish as to impulse by another animal that I don’t have the means to take care of. I am, however, more than capable of spending large sums of money on objects that might eventually lead to me owning an animal. Hence, this:
This is ten-gallon filterless aquarium housing live plants. I finally put the whole thing together yesterday. I picked up the glass aquarium for fifteen bucks on Facebook Marketplace. I paid a small fortune for the rock and gravel because I wanted to support my local hobby shop rather than save big on Amazon. The plants were certainly an impulse purchase—I ordered those online from a plant dealer in Washington called Aquarium Co-Op. I realized that if I did not force myself to plant something, the separate parts of the tank were going to sit in my basement forever. What you see here is two varieties of Vallisneria and dwarf hairgrass. I intend to run to the store and pick up some hornwort to fill in the gaps while the baby plants propagate and expand. The lamp is just a desk lamp with a 20-watt CFL bulb inside. I’m pretty sure it will provide enough light.
A hobbyist in the know would call this aquarium design a “Walstad Tank.” That is, a soil-based tank that attempts to use an ecosystem of plants of bacteria to perform the duties of an electronic filter. Just beneath the pretty gravel cap is some organic soil that will hopefully not cause dangerous bacteria to flourish and kill the tank. Ideally, the plants will use it to grow expansive root systems and spread across the entire aquarium to form a lush jungle of green. I got the idea for my tank from a YouTube aquarist, Foo the Flowerhorn. They designed a series of filterless tanks, one of which is a lively Betta fish tank that has sweet potatoes growing out the top! I love Foo’s designs because they aren’t just plastic-laden fish containers—they attempt to create vibrant natural spaces that place just as much emphasis on environment as pet-keeping. The plants are not auxiliary. They are central to the success of the tank.
I quickly learned that there is an entire section of the aquarium hobby dedicated to planted tanks. In 9th grade biology, my teacher asked us to prepare biospheres for the upcoming science fair. By feeding ammonia to a jar of pond dirt and hornwort gathered outside my house, I was able to sustain a shrimp for several days. I did not realize it at the time, but that is basically how a filterless aquarium works. The bacteria in the tank turns waste materials into useful nitrates that the plants can recycle to keep the environment going. To help grow the beneficial bacteria, I will be loading this tank with ammonia. My basement will soon smell of noxious piss, I’m sure, but I won’t be around much longer to deal with it. While I’m away at college this semester, my brother will be feeding the thing. I haven’t actually asked him yet, but who could say no to such an adorable aquarium? By the time I come back, unemployed and prospect-less, perhaps the tank will be ready to sustain fishy life. At the very least, a lush forest of aquatic plants would look splendid! I will update my blog as interesting details emerge.
My ultimate hope is to make good on my childhood mistakes. I must provide a wonderful environment for any living thing that falls under my care. I can’t even remember that poor frog’s name, but his shade will haunt me for the rest of my life.
In December of 2019, I completed a fifteen+ page comic of my own design. Well, I called it a “manga” because it reads right to left and I was reading a lot of that at the time, but let’s not kid ourselves here. The project spanned over half the semester, and it represents some of the most focused work I have ever undertaken. I was drawing every day, planning character designs and studying figures often. I can say with confidence that the comic project was some of the happiest work I have ever undertaken. It is strange, then, that the existence of the project pretty much evaporated from my mind the following year. The all-consuming wave of the pandemic wiped my brain like a magnet on a hard drive.
Once I find a suitable means of digitizing the comic, it will be uploaded here in full. For now, I would like to document some of the steps I took to place my life in the optimal configuration to draw as often as possible. I think the under-discussed key to improving at drawing (at least from the outset) is constant iteration. One must draw as much as possible. This is easier said than done, and this post contains the methods I used to achieve a state of boundless productivity.
I started the project by spending money. I’m a consumer whore at heart, and if I don’t buy something shiny, I won’t be satisfied that I’ve got the right stuff. My animal brain will dwell on what I don’t have and prevent me from starting in the first place. If you know anything about online drawing communities, then you are already familiar with this phenomenon. Tablet mania runs deep—many aspiring artists won’t start drawing until they purchase an expensive piece of Wacom tech. They realize with horror, as I have realized multiple times before, that it is not the technology that makes the artist. The drawings remain shit, even when rendered in Photoshop. Rather than feeling depressed over this mental dependence on shiny new things, I decided to leverage my habit to my benefit.
My girlfriend and I took a bus into Boston to buy some drawing supplies, mainly a notebook. There is a store on Mass Ave called Muji (It’s practically on top of the Massachusetts Turnpike). Muji is a kind of Japanese junk stores. It’s like an Apple Store for clothes and household knickknacks that plays hard into a beige, wood panel aesthetic. It is soothingly boring in there. Beanbags, benches, and incense complete the vibe. While most of their junk is priced beyond consideration, they used to boast a beautiful selection of stationery and pens. I still carry around $3 pocket-sized Muji notebooks for note taking and idea spaghetti on the go (the price has since raised a dollar, but I had the foresight to stock up). For this project, I grabbed something even cheaper, these $1.50 blank notebooks with basic binding.
If you are buying a drawing notebook, go dirt cheap. Seriously. When you spend big for a notebook with good paper and expensive binding, it doesn’t feel so great to fill it with shit. The fear of wasting a page on a bad drawing will ultimately get between you and the primary objective of drawing all the time. Don’t let the Youtuber artists fool you. These practice notebooks aren’t going to be beautiful flipping material from the onset, though you will be proud to do so when the notebook is finally full. I have considered doing away with buying notebooks completely, but stapled printer paper poses a serious durability problem. The inexpensive Muji notebooks are awesome because they still look and smell great when you buy them, so they scratch that purchase itch without making a dent in your conscious. You can even use these stamps they have to add little designs to them. Very Muji. The notebooks are on the smaller size and thin too, so you can slip them into a backpack or smaller bag without losing space or risking serious damage by crushing or bending them. Unfortunately, I don’t think Muji carries these things anymore. Before the pandemic, they slimmed their selection down considerably and most of their budget stationary disappeared. I intend to write them a letter.
I also visited my local comic shop and picked up a handful of material from the fifty-cent bin. Old Marvels. These would be my reference. The simplicity of the line work and high contrast coloration makes for simple study material. My reasoning stood that by copying entire panels from these comic books, I could develop an internal library of poses and figures to draw upon in my own work. Art is plagiarism, don’t forget that. These comics also provide that dopamine rush of spending money on something cool and are destruction-proof. I wouldn’t be particularly upset if these trash comics suddenly burnt to a crisp while I slept. By either sheer coincidence or the logic of industrial binding, the comics and the Muji notebooks were the same size. They could be leafed into each other to create a single, convenient bundle.
The bundle turned out to be everything. One day before Shakespeare class, at a point in the semester when the wind was brisk but still tolerable enough to sit outside, I pulled out my materials on a metal bench and just started copying the things I saw in the comic. The activity was so engrossing that I almost missed the start of class. I began undertaking these simple studies whenever I had downtime—between classes, while procrastinating another project, etc. By making my practice as portable and straightforward as possible, I had solved my mental block and managed to make drawing fun again. After years of cranking out meaningless essay materials on pure deadline stress and adrenaline, the shift to working on a project long term and loving every second of it was shocking. It is important to remember that it is possible to feel that way about work.
I did some pretty clever things over the course of this project. Inking was a problem. I didn’t want the final comic to look like it was drawn from pencil, but tracing is difficult without a light table. I had to invent my own. During my Halloween all-nighter to complete the first draft, I found a flat-screen TV and pilfered a sheet of glass from the university art complex. By laying the TV on its back with the glass on top of it, I was able to create a functional light table. I must have looked insane, but at least I could revise my work.
The pandemic should have offered me a slate of time to continue this craft unbothered by practical reality, but it fled my mind in March. Many things did. This website is another lost item. I had finally crafted a canvas for publishing my writing and artwork online, but this blog went blank shortly after quarantine began. Maybe some artists can work in such stifled conditions, but I quickly lost grasp of time and sank into the simulated world.
I want to get drawing back. Maybe the comic shop is still open?
A scratched bowl can be a precarious thing. Jeremy was scraping rice out of a plastic one when he noticed its etched bottom. As the rice was reduced to a few grainy pockets, little silver lines made themselves known. Jeremy stopped mid-chew and pulled the bowl closer to his face. The etchings were fine, almost pretty. But why were they silver? He lifted his fork and frowned. The utensil was silver too.
Jeremy softly placed the bowl down on the couch next to him and stood up, mouth still stocked with rice. Hands tingling and head faint, the teenager walked to the trash bin and opened wide. A semi-chewed lump rolled off his tongue and made a “piff” as it pelted the empty trash bag. The lump clung to the side of the plastic and did not roll. Jeremy steadied himself against a countertop as his thoughts raced.
He wasn’t sure if he should throw the bowl away or the fork. He tossed both. He went to sit down again when another terrifying thought struck. Jeremy ran to the kitchen and drew another plastic bowl out of the cupboard. This one was scratched even more.
“Have I been eating plastic and fork my whole life?”
Jeremy’s belly tightened as he imagined a stomach lined with a thickening layer of undigestible detritus. He began rifling through the cabinets, peering into childhood bowls and mugs. Each mug has a spiral of slashes at its bottom from years of tea swirling. His once coveted Thomas the Tank Engine sippy bowl possessed a hull practically torn to shreds. He threw it into the trash.
Jeremy’s head swam and his chest heaved at an air supply that suddenly felt very limited. His tongue was like a brick in his mouth. Before a panic attack could bring him low, a killing thought infiltrated the conscious world.
“Teflon! Motherfucking Teflon!”
He practically tore the cabinet door off its hinges as he rummaged for his mother’s favorite frying pan. She lovingly crafted scrambled eggs on that thing for Saturday mornings beyond count. The image of the thing once conjured the scent of frying bacon and grease-battered home fries, but that was gone now, replaced by an emerging terror. Jeremy’s rummaging became frantic. He tore through stacks of cookware, digging through pot lids like a crazed badger escaping the neighbor’s spaniel. It did not take long to find the culprit.
It was horrific. The old pan was scratched to shit, with flecks of black coating scraped clean from ages of spatula contact. It resembled a peeling wall. Some distant knowledge of the dangers of cooking with old Teflon equipment flitted through Jeremy’s brain. Disgust caused him to leap upward suddenly, but the edge of the counter met his cranium on the ascent. If the counter wasn’t what knocked Jeremy out, the cast-iron skillet knocked from its peg certainly did.
Jeremy awoke in a grey landscape, a clearing of sorts. The trees that surrounded him were like mercury pillars, sharp and reflective. He quickly realized that the clearing wasn’t lined with trees at all–they were forks! As he stared at them, they began to decay. The silver coatings peeled backwards, curling like tinsel to reveal rough interiors of knotted rust. The orange brown metal immediately began to disintegrate. Jeremy sensed plumes of invisible flecks invading his lungs. He fled, the giant forks festering all around him. He closed his eyes as he ran and covered his nose and mouth with the cloth of his t-shirt. Blind, he eventually tumbled down a smooth incline.
A burning at his back forced Jeremy to open his eyes. He had apparently rolled farther than he thought, because the fork forest was nowhere to be seen. His back was resting upon the lowest point of an extremely smooth bowl. It was like glass. It was glass. The burning became a searing pain, and Jeremy launched to his feet. The green-tinged glass was too steep and smooth to climb, but that did not prevent Jeremy from trying. As he tried to use his palms to grip the surface of the incline, he yelped. It felt like acid was eating away at his skin. His shoes smoked, too.
“Oh shit.”
Jeremy suddenly recognized his enclosure. His grandmother owned a bowl exactly like this, only small enough for a human to eat out of. It was depression-era glassware, apparently. Uranium.
Uranium glass.
Jeremy used to eat out of that bowl every time he visited nanna. It was his favorite. He could not believe that he used to scoop cheerios out of an irradiated bowl. His poor grandmother had plenty of glassware like it around the house. Thoughts of nanna’s brain turning to radioactive mush while scooping oatmeal elicited tears.
As the evil bowl devoured the soles of his feet, Jeremy could not help but cry out in despair. The material world unraveled around him. His skin intermingled with glass and metal and his nails melded into the cloth of his sweatpants as he gripped them. His teeth bloomed from his maw like glorious crystals and evaporated into the atmosphere alongside the rest of his conscious mind.
Jeremy died that very day. His sister discovered him dead on the kitchen floor, frying pan gripped so tightly in his left hand that his fingers bled.
This piece of writing is about politics. I doubt that the politics in question are particularly controversial at this point, but who knows? You have been warned.
Assuming the globe doesn’t turn into a fireball during the next few weeks, the government of the United States is set to undergo significant political change. The Democratic party will have a majority in the Senate and the House, as well as a Joe Biden in the White House. I know that, for many of my more conservative and apolitical friends, this turn of events is tinged with uncertainty. Certain political and media interests have long worked to frame the Democratic party as the nest of identity politics, hugbox artificers, and regulation fiends. The overwhelming sense that “nothing will really change” and “both parties are fundamentally the same” reigns supreme. The goal of this short piece is to try and add nuance to this dull equivalence. At the very least, I want to highlight some of the non-insignificant ways that a Democratic majority in our policy making could be pretty darn close to objectively better than the Republican stuff we’ve been contending with for the past four years.
As a rule, I’m not even going to touch identity. Though I personally believe that discussions about race and class are central to improving our country, I also know that many of the folks, young and old, that live in the white suburbs of northern Massachusetts don’t really give a shit. “I don’t owe people anything, what does this stuff have to do with me?” I get it, I used to think the same way. When you are born and raised in a place where everybody looks the same, there is little to no visible poverty, and crime is low enough that the cops are bored out of their minds hunting for speeding tickets, the social media posts from liberal college students about Black Lives Matter seem very foreign. Instead, I’ll be talking about other things that do have a direct impact on everybody’s lives, rich/poor, black/white–issues that the Trump administration has catastrophically failed to do literally anything about.
Let’s start with Net Neutrality and digital intellectual property rights in general. If you aren’t aware, Trump chose a man named Ajit Pai to be the FCC chairman in 2017. Before that, Pai worked as a Lawyer for Verizon and firms defending large communications companies. As head of the FCC, Ajit Pai killed Net Neutrality in the USA, deregulated various mechanisms in place to limit the already hyper-powerful corporate media landscape, and generally sides with the rights of corporate power over individual citizens. As an avid fan of the independent web (I code and host my own website for pretty much no reason other than to be somewhat more independent from larger social media moguls), this stuff is appalling. While the FCC has been hammering away at their project to make the internet as hostile as possible to individuals, the slew of conservative judges that the Republican administration has churned out over the years are no doubt working to cement legal precedents for a vision of the internet powered by corporate bureaucracy. Investigations into unethical and illegal behavior by large corporations were halted during the Trump presidency, surprise surprise. I find it particularly alarming that our government is so keen to dismantling Facebook and Google while internet providers like Comcast have been allowed to monopolize the physical information infrastructure of the entire country for decades. Somebody is paying somebody else a lot of money, and the Trump administration has been especially blatant about its conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, Comcast is increasingly free to snoop your online activity and tattle to Disney whenever they deem your internet use anti-profitable.
There is no guarantee that the new Democratic administration will be more resistant to the influence of rich monopolies. After all, it was old Clinton himself that passed some of the worst deregulations in the media landscape (indie radio pretty much died in 1996). That said, we may at least have an FCC that stands up for the rights of citizens. We will also have a government composed of policy makers with a higher inclination toward internet regulation than the past administration. Biden has already promised to bring back Net Neutrality and expand internet access nationwide, and now he has the senate majority to actually make it happen. I am hopeful, but I temper my hopes. You must understand though, that during the Trump administration these ideas weren’t even on the table. Any bill even suggesting that internet use should be at all protected would wither in Mitch McConnell’s desk. Basically, I’m just glad to have an administration that maybe, just maybe, can be reasoned with about these things.
My regulatory pipe dream is expanded rights for citizens regarding copyright law. If you use Youtube to watch smaller channels, you know what I’m talking about. Youtube is the corporate whipping boy. Corporations like Disney and Nintendo are allowed to immediately demonetize or even claim the income of any video they want, and it is up to the creator to manually refute the claim. It isn’t even a human or lawyer making these (mostly false) infringement calls. The process is automated. I follow a small aquarium hobbyist that has to deal with false claims multiple times a week, and the headache is getting to him. There needs to be penalties in place to disincentivize false copyright claims. And I can assure you, breaking up Youtube isn’t going to make it easier for independent content creators to fight for their rights. Beyond the Youtube sphere, Nintendo recently shut down an online Super Smash Bros. Tournament for pretty much no reason at all other than a desire to promote newer product and stifle attempts to keep the old Gamecube community afloat during the pandemic. How are a bunch of Smash players supposed to fight that injustice? Corporate media is leveraging its power to sculpt culture to the liking of profit-obsessed jerks. I foresee a boring dystopia in which all of our interactions online fall under some form of copyright, allowing the corporate government to censor our expression at will. In the ancient days, myths were a commons and ideas could move. Mickey Mouse was shoved down my throat before I could even conceptualize the idea of applesauce, let alone intellectual property rights, so I feel like I’m entitled to representing the fucking three circle mouse logo without worrying about a Disney lawyer ascending from the pits of hell like a Fury to claw my eyes out.
To tie this rant back to the discussion at hand: would Mitch McConnell and Trump defend me from that Fury? Hell no. It has yet to be seen if Biden’s gang will be more useful in that regard, but the change brings me hope.
(I did email Elizabeth Warren about my intellectual property concerns a few months back. She got back to me today… with an automated email about her response to Covid-19… I guess she didn’t read it.)
More pressing than our internet freedoms is the health of the environment. I allow the boomers their cognitive dissonance and strange moods, but if you are under the age of thirty and do not understand just how pressing the threat of climate change and ecological collapse is, then you need to be beaten over the head with a block of cement. I’m honestly shocked that politicians don’t use Trump’s anti-environment stance to attack him more often, but I suppose it really is an issue divided by age groups. In typical shill fashion, Trump has peeled back over one hundred pieces of environmental legislation in order to appease frackers and drillers. His environmental protection agency is a stunted little creature, and his gutting of federal land management is partially responsible for the uncontrolled fires of the west. These past four years have really hit home the ideological shift of the Republican party. Once home to pro-environment policy makers decades ago, modern conservatives no longer see America’s natural resources as anything more than materials for profit. It’s all Minecraft as far as the lobbyists are concerned. America’s lack of concern for the world has global implications as well. The clear cutting and burning of the Amazon rainforest has been met with zero response from the Trump administration. The asshole that runs Brazil apparently kisses Trump’s ass. While I’m at it, what the hell was up with the fixation on coal? “Clean coal?” Even if that idea wasn’t totally bonkers, coal isn’t a thing anymore. Coal’s not cool. Coal isn’t the backbone of our energy infrastructure. It’s embarrassing. It was a blatant appeal to sects of voters that Trump evidently had no real intention of helping.
I look forward to a wave of policy aimed at improving the health of the planet. It has to happen. I don’t need to echo the stakes; you can find more skilled advocates across the web. If I could have one wish, though, I think more public funding for transportation would be awesome. Every workday, i95 becomes choked with cars during the morning and again at night. The hours spent in Boston’s commuter traffic are brain-crushing, and I can only imagine the collective fuel waste. An expanded commuter rail with greater consistency, more trains, and a farther reach into the northern suburbs of Mass and even southern NH would be a miraculous boon. We need buses, too. As it currently stands, living beyond the cities of America without a car is nearly impossible. The original stimulus bill contained billions of dollars for the airline industry (which proceeded to pocket the money and layoff most of its staff), but almost no cash went to busing and other forms of transit. If Americans can reorient their relationship to physical movement, perhaps we can reduce fuel consumption, clear up the roads for the real car enthusiasts out there, and free ourselves from the bondage of the interstate highway.
There is so much more that could be discussed about the folly of the Trump years, but I’m just about burned out. If you’ve read this far down, thank you. If you were previously ambivalent to the current political climate, I hope I have illuminated some issues of legitimate concern. Trump has taken great pains to ensure that meaningful discussions about policy are silenced in a discord of jeers and victimhood, and the media has been somewhat complicit in this phenomenon. Ignore superficial politics and keep your eyes on reality. Don’t let the mainstream Democrats fool you either–old men with lobbyists behind them are similar across the spectrum. Now that they’ve won, they may try to distract you with self congratulation and token moves. We must remind them that this is there last chance. Don’t let corporate powers trick you into worship. Also, read a fucking newspaper.
There was a magic stream in the forest that could transport people to another world, and Sam liked to visit this stream as often as he could. Time did not flow properly in this other world, so Sam had to be careful about managing his hours there. Because of school, he could not go on weekdays, and Saturday was usually off because his mother insisted he go to temple. Once, before he fully understood the nature of the magic stream, he skipped school to play in the other world and emerged after some hours to discover that he had lost an entire day of real time. His parents were terribly upset about this, and he lost many of his freedoms.
Sam finally stopped visiting the stream when the giant insect from the other world destroyed Boston. It was a calamity far beyond the scope of Sam’s play, and he became very afraid of forests forever afterward. He learned on that day that magic streams are not always a source of good things. This is the story of that calamitous adventure.
The day started like many others. It was Sunday, and Sam told his mother he was going to hang out with Andrew down the street. For good measure, he informed her that they would be taking their bikes to the dairy for some ice cream and minigolf. She liked when Sam spent time with friends (especially those as well-mannered as Andrew), so she warned him to mind traffic and handed him ten dollars to spend as he liked. Sam, however, did not turn left toward Andrew’s Cul-de-sac, but right toward the newer developments.
Beyond the plastic houses with their freshly unfurled sod and their orange realtor signs was an old forest of oaks and maples. In truth, most of the forest was not that old. Lines of stacked stones told of pastures and fields that once checkered that landscape, but they were over a century overgrown now. Where ancient cows once grazed, foxes and squirrels and drinking teens now eked out a claustrophobic existence in the face of an encroaching suburb. The trees do not mind so much. They did not think so sourly of cutting as you might imagine. To them, new real estate means fresh sunshine for the acorns, and the trees know in their hearts that they will outlast the shingled boxes. Sam arrived at a bend in the road surrounded by one such unfurnished box and walked his bicycle into the backyard.
A little trail overgrown with ferns and saplings extended from one corner of the yard deep into the woods. Sharp raspberry tangles used to block the path, but Sam had long ago disposed of these with a pair of his father’s clippers. The trail itself was knotted with old roots and pocked with boulders. It was a twisting path, and Sam often had to look down as he walked to prevent tripping. The dirt was speckled with broken glass, dented cans, and brass and green colored bottle caps. There rested in one clearing the remains of a brick chimney and a cut up tire. A little circle of stones indicated a campfire, and sometimes half-full cans and bottles tempted the curiosity of Sam and his friends. Beyond this, the wood grew thicker and wetter. Puny asters crept forth from the carpet of brown leaves, and salamanders slid from log hollow to log hollow. The sky grew dim behind a canopy crown where squirrels build soggy nests and woodpeckers flashed their crimson crests.
On this Sunday, the sky danced between threats of drizzle and shine that promised a rainbow to the lucky. The air was growing colder by the week, but only the upstart leaves had begun to turn. At intervals, a light rain would speckle the earth, but the deep canopy protected Sam from drenching. At length, Sam reached the clearing and made note of some rusty folding chairs that had not been there before. He pressed beyond the clearing, and eventually he saw the stream. It flowed tepidly for lack of nourishment, and Sam appreciated the drizzle for its life-giving aid. Otherwise, there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about this spot of the forest. Leveraging his foot against a jutting maple root, Sam leapt across the water.
The other world does not make its presence known immediately to wanderers. Its trees look much the same as our trees, and it even has squirrels and birds. Black squirrels, however, are the common variety there, and strange birds that did not fly so much as flutter or glide, like turkeys, wabbled between strands of brush. Sam called out, and all of the animal life of the new wood called at once back to him. It was a joyous song. The rain seemed to dim. The sun to pierce the canopy better here, and all was bathed in a brilliant glow like a perpetual sunset. Sam walked further and knocked on the bark of a pine, and the tree responded by oozing a delicious sap which attracted small birds and chipmunks. The creatures were unafraid of Sam’s presence. Sam scooped some of this honey into a jar and continued on toward a meadow.
Free of the tree-cover, the most brilliant features of this world become clear. The meadow grass, a shimmering goldenrod, stood twice as tall as Sam’s head, but no icky things like ticks of spiders seemed to inhabit it. The sky above was simply brilliant. A crystal blue framed the orbit of many moons that loomed so close that their craters and mountains could be counted with the naked eye. Layers of impossibly thin altocumulus flowed like distant waves across the expanse, and a thousand different kinds of birds, and unknown darker shapes still, constantly circled the sky, ascending and descending from the silhouettes of distant treetops.
TO BE CONTINUED
They said
That a long long time ago
Even before the Dinosaurs
When everything was very very
Primordial
The world was one big forest
And this forest produced oxygen all day long
There was a lot of oxygen to go around
Before the dinosaurs there were bugs and slugs and salamanders
We stop growing because our bodies
Know when to stop
Insects don’t stop
So long as they have the resources
So they said
I caught some specimens and put them in a box
I pumped the box full of pure oxygen
I put lots of hummus and grubs and cheese in there
Everything a bug likes to eat
I thought
I felt a little dizzy
It was already there when I woke up
Stock still, without opinion
An abdomen shattering the horizon
Wings like church glass
Carapace glistening
Shimmering rainbow
Oil on water
Eyes that saw everything
Everything
I heard the thrum before I saw it move
The sound consumed the highway and the birds
I lost balance and hurt my palms
It lifted imperceptibly
And then it rose
Smaller and smaller, until it looked normal sized
It ascended into space and was gone
beep beep beep
…
…
beep beep beep
what the fuck
…
beep beep beep
there it is again
what is that
beep beep beep
honey what’s wrong, nightmare?
no baby, listen
beep beep beep
what is that
I have no idea
beep beep beep
just go back to sleep honey
it’s nothing
beep beep beep
…
…
beep beep beep
not gonna happen
it’s not that loud
beep beep beep
did you leave the fridge open
not open
beep beep beep
did you check your phone
no shit, first thing I checked
beep beep beep
please calm down
it’s this corner, it’s coming from this corner
beep beep beep
it’s in the hallway
it has to be
beep beep beep
can’t go into the hallway without my fucking pants
can’t find shit
beep beep beep
just turn on the light honey
no, I don’t want to wake you up
beep beep beep
god kill me now
why don’t you phone the desk
beep beep beep
where’s the number
it’s next to the phone baby
beep beep beep
ya hello, there is this faint, rhythmic beeping noise
it’s really annoying
beep beep beep
if I knew what was causing it I wouldn’t be calling
no it’s not the air conditioner
beep beep beep
second floor
thanks
beep beep beep
you didn’t tell him our room number
like I want some desk clerk to know what room I’m staying in
beep beep beep
well how the hell is he supposed to fix it if he can’t find us
oh my god, you always find a way to make this my fault
beep beep beep
don’t go there now
every night it’s the same with you
beep beep beep
why do you always yell at me
why do you always make everything about you
I can’t do anything right
fuck me, I guess I deserve this
…
…
…
it stopped
…
…
I’m sorry honey
just go back to sleep
…
…
beep beep beep
The year was 20XX. The coronavirus epidemic had crippled industrial infrastructure, toppled the global economy, and caused more concentrated death on American soil than any event in recent memory. Claire Elise Boucher, Canadian musician better known by her alias “Grimes” (“Miss Anthropocene” in her later years) has just given birth to the King of the World, X Æ A-12.
The ascension of X Æ A-12 to the Throne of Earth in the years following the initial coronavirus outbreak continues to be a topic of great interest to historians today. While many academics as well as official archival documents indicate that the rise of the New Technocracy was planned throughout the two decades directly preceding the outbreak, some have argued that the weakened state of American democracy in the early 21st century had allowed for corporate entities, backed by massive wealth and technological prowess, to completely subvert traditional means of information dispersal and assume control of nearly every aspect of human life practically overnight. Those who argue this point of view often assert that the American way of life had long primed the population for such a dramatic and sudden takeover, but no concentration of wealth and power before TESLA had the scale of information nor the audacity to actually go through with it. Of course, to speak of any of this on unencrypted networks is grounds for protein recycling.
Though project Archangel would not be revealed to the public until April of that year, many point to February of 2021 as the point of transition from the old ways to the new reality. After the failure of the second mass vaccine trial revealed that the virus adapted too quickly to be subdued by a catch-all solution, despair began to creep through the population of the United States. Few came to terms with then President Donald Trump’s indefinite Stay-At-Home order. The president’s popularity at that point was either at an all-time high or an all-time low depending on which information distributor you asked. Either way, civil unrest was reaching a fever pitch, and the pandemic seemed all but uncontainable. Mass panic followed. The president’s sudden disappearance from the public eye near the end of the month was given hardly any attention amidst reports of a deluge of violent crime, mass sickness, and police overreach. By March, the military began to enforce quarantines in and around urban centers throughout the country. What followed was the Month of Silence, the great gestation period during which every major ISP blocked access to anything but the most basic functions of the internet. Television use, which had been declining steadily for years in the early 2000s, surged once again. It is interesting to note that almost all of the big name online shopping outlets went largely unrestricted, though shipping times were slowed considerably. Other methods of communication between households were essentially impossible. If there were any significant revolts during this period, the knowledge of them has been lost to time.
The people of the world experienced true quarantine during that fateful March, and we have experienced little else since.
On April 3rd, 2021, the machine turned on. X Æ A-12 announced his supremacy through neural-link, and the automated ration service began the very next day. Despite being a child of barely a single year, X Æ A-12 possessed the same capacity for language as a grown adult. Survivors from this period often recount that his voice manifested in their minds as a kind of childlike laughter, calming and innocent and filled with mirth. His first words, as dictated through the neural-link, are forever transcribed upon the footer of every major digital hub:
“History is dead. You are relieved of the bondage of your fathers.”
It is difficult to imagine that pre-Archangel world, that place of labor and hardship teetering upon the precipice of climate disaster. It may be hard, but do not look on these primitive peoples with condescension. It was through their mistakes that the children of the future discovered the means of escaping the boundaries of the physical and finally manifesting paradise.
Don’t move. Not a single eyelash. Remain perfectly still.
What form has that body of yours taken? Has your spine manifested the scoliosis curve of your 6th grade nurse’s worst nightmares? Does your head incline perilously downward, skull perpendicular as you peer into your phone? The device sits in the crooks of your fingers with a thumb poised to scroll or swipe. Does the way your fat bunches up between your jaw and neck unnerve you? The flab is comfortable when you can ignore it and scream inducing when you can’t.
Perhaps you haven’t gotten out of bed yet. Locked horizontally by gravity and heat, you must rely on your arms to bring the screen to eye level. Tiring, you opt to sacrifice the integrity of your vertebra in order to leverage the back of your head against a pillow. Why not take a picture of yourself, chin rolls and all? The glassy stare is endearing, though you may have been trained to abhor it. It is you at your least offensive.
The more industrious among you have already pulled out your laptops–a vital first step in beginning the day’s workflow. You half sit, half lounge like the rails on one of those library rocking chairs. Some of you make fantastic use of your bed’s headboard. My bed lacks one of those. My mattress rests atop a cheap metal frame from Walmart, and the door to the water filter prevents me from pushing the thing up against the wall.
If you like to do phone and computer things on your belly, god bless you. My arms fall asleep.
If you actually remained stock still through those last couple paragraphs, fantastic. Great sport. You can relax now. For years I resisted the use of my phone. Social media apps would be periodically deleted and reinstalled based on my level of what I myself deemed “obsessive usage”. To this day, I do not have messenger. I have relaxed in many other ways, however. I use my phone to read digital books and comics pretty much every day, and I have allowed myself to fully indulge in snapchat at this point, though I am still wary my instagram usage for pretty much no reason at all.
The current state of things has given people time to reflect on our techno lifestyles. Most of us have lived this way for some years now, but it took the latest innovation in plague warfare to show many of us just how easy it would be forego physicality entirely and fully indulge the culture of cyberspace. While we continue the labor of working out our relationships to these striking technologies in spaces, it is important to consider that the “before”, the idyllic, pre-smartphone pastoralism of, say, the eighties, sixties, or eighteen-seventies, was also an aberration brought on the by innovative technologies of the day.
Amusing Ourselves to Death, a pleasantly accessible nonfiction title by Neil Postman, has a lot to say about modern man’s relationship with the various media technologies that have ruled his culture for centuries. One passage in particular is the source of this post. The author is talking about the physical demands of reading:
“You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time. If you cannot do this (with this or any other book), our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency. The printing press makes rather stringent demands on our bodies as well as our minds.”
It should be noted that Postman published this book in 1985, a time when television culture dominated and the internet wasn’t a real thing for most of the population. Popular culture’s greater understanding of ADHD and the various disorders of anxiety have eliminated the descriptor “hyperkinetic” from our vocabularies, and we are less prone to calling out intellectual deficiencies when we see them. That idea of self-discipline, however, is one that still creeps about the darker caverns of the mind. Many of you still reading this are probably doing so in an attempt to fight back the gnawing terror of a more academic reading assignment. Reading more than a few snatches of academic writing is very difficult in 2020, possibly much more so than Postman ever could have imagined in 1985. Even as we spend vast amounts of time locked away in bedrooms amidst the coronavirus epidemic, attention for ungratifying things is a rare commodity.
Let’s drop the self-loathing for now and focus on that last line:
“The printing press makes rather stringent demands on our bodies as well as our minds.”
We don’t often consider how our machines dictate our physicality. Sometimes we will see an advertisement for a posture saving device like an adjustable table or an ergonomic chair and we are violently reminded of our own moment-to-moment positional habits. Now imagine how bodies were configured before the printing press, when books only existed among the powerful. Journalism did not exist. One could not disseminate ideas with anything more than the power of words. Maybe some families had a bible, or some towns an accessible library, but for the most part reading was not a staple of life before the fifteenth century.
Feudal peasants weren’t told to read lots of books or admonished for being unable to sit still except maybe on Sundays if they were church goers. With the introduction of print, the entire axis of culture changed. The way humans move around and physically spend their time changes. The commoners of the 19th and 20th centuries had to know how to read and communicate ideas intelligently to get by in increasingly interconnected ways of life. Now that print is declining and being replaced by liquid-crystal pictures and curt prose of electronic media, we are seeing the results another fundamental shift in the human configuration.
The transitional years are over. It happened right before our eyes. Children born today will know of the old ways only by the nostalgia that we feed to them. Is it good? Is it bad? It is life as it has always been, and as it has never been before. We can only hope that we reconfigure our lives with happiness and health for others in mind, and that those with power are willing to play ball.
This is all to say that you should not be entirely ashamed of your social media slouch. You are merely adopting the instinctual shape of an ape that has been asked to stare at a glowing screen for thirteen hours a day. The next time the reflection of your flabby arms, not-so-ivory enamel, or chin rolls bring you to the verge of tears, remember that you are participating in a process of modernization that began with some smartass realizing that putting fruit in the ground makes more fruit. Absurdity is human nature. You are experimenting with the latest craze in our ceaseless drive to adapt and socialize, and there is nothing insignificant about that.
The lone ranger was driving south from Burlington when the cop pulled him over. The officer was not overweight, but the way he rolled his body as he strolled towards the driver side window gave the impression that he might have been.
“Do you know why I pulled you over today?”
“No officer, I don’t believe I do. I pride myself on my consistent adherence to all traffic laws including the speed limit.”
But the officer was not paying attention to the lone ranger’s response. He was gaping openly at the ranger’s getup.
“Why the hell are you wearing that?”
The lone ranger was wrapped in a colorful poncho of dubious Indian origin. It was a gangly thing to wear in a car; the back flap of the poncho smooshed against the fake leather seats and bunched up around the ranger’s arms and shoulders. It should be noted that the ranger, upon lowering the window to address the officer, immediately returned his hands to the wheel, reassuming a perfect 3 o’clock 9 o’clock position that would not be broken until asked to exit the vehicle by the officer some moments later. A stained and bulging riding bag occupied the passenger seat next to him.
“These clothes are warm, not to mention comfortable. Doesn’t a man have a right to keep warm during these cold Vermont days?” No eye contact, and it was mid-June. The officer wiped his face and blinked.
“Can you step out of the vehicle please?”
“I will step out of this vehicle, but I would like you to know that I am in no way legally obligated to follow that instruction without cause. I am leaving my car because I am in no way particularly disdainful of authority. In fact, I have a lot of respect for officers of the law.” His face did not turn to meet the officer’s even once.
The officer stepped back, and the ranger swung himself out of his car and onto the street with a clink–he was wearing a pair of ornate riding boots with spurs. The officer entered a state of disbelief. The ranger was also wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, the torn remnants of a leather belt and holster, and a crushed leather that hung around his neck by a string. He seemed unwashed.
“Where’s your horse, cowboy?” The officer couldn’t help smiling now.
“I object to that title. And I have forgone my horse for what I believe to be a more efficient means of transportation given how much I travel. I would trade this hunk of metal in for a living, breathing horse in a minute if my work permitted it.”
The officer shook his head and muttered something flippant before taking the ranger’s ID and registration back to the cop car. The ranger remained relatively still, squinting his eyes beneath the mid-day sun and occasionally brushing away the strands of oak pollen that seemed to blow endlessly from the trees that lined the highway. They were like strings of dull yellow pearls flowing riding the wind.
The officer’s background check came out surprisingly sterile. Everything was valid. The lone ranger’s real name was supposedly Trevor Smith, and he used to have a flowing beard. Trevor had no criminal record, and his driving record was truly immaculate. The officer felt a little sorry for what he was about to do.
“Alright rustler, I’m going to save us both a lot of paperwork and have you come with me to a mechanic I know off the next exit.”
“Why, officer?”
“Window tint. I could hardly see you in there.”
“I picked this lease up in Palm Beach. It’s legal in Florida. I’m headed back there now.” The ranger began to tap his feet, generating a steady clink. Clink. Clink.
“It ain’t legal this far north, buddy. Those windows are practically black. Now I can write you up and cause a mess of trouble for me and you back at the office, or you and we can just head down to the shop and get this fixed nice and easy.”
The ranger, whose ID read Trevor Smith, knew a trap when he saw one, but he saw this one too late. He contorted his mouth as if to speak several times, but he ultimately crossed his arms and said nothing. After glaring at the cop for several moments, he finally declared, “Alright, I’ll see your mechanic. But know that I am making note of this backhand dealing and will file a report if anybody tries to force me into anything.”
“Settle down Trevor, this is routine. You’ll thank me later when a line of New York cops don’t slap you with tickets all the way down 95.” The ranger snorted. “Take the next exit, okay? I will be right behind you.” The ranger nodded and the officer loped back to his vehicle.
The shop was one of those 15-minute oil change gas station combos right off the interstate. It was rusty looking place alone on a stretch of state highway that was not well maintained. Pothole city. It was far enough north that the pine trees began to beat out the oaks and maples to crowd out sky above the road. The mechanic was waiting for the ranger and the officer on a bench next to an outdated gas pump. The ranger parked while the officer pulled up to the pumps and chatted with the mechanic. The cop had decided some minutes before that this Trevor Smith was mentally handicapped, and he informed his friend of this.
The cop pulled away and stationed himself a little way down the street while the mechanic, apparently the owner of the establishment, strolled on over to the ranger’s car. The windows were barely halfway finished rolling down before the mechanic said, “It’ll be two-hundred bucks.”
He couldn’t respond for some moments. “Two-hundred dollars to scrape tint off my windows?” The ranger was sitting stock still, 3 o’clock-9 o’clock, and his knuckles were white.
“I could make it three-hundred if you’d like.” The mechanic was grinning now, and his teeth were shiny like new. He was already thinking about how a story about his run in with this cowboy would be a great hit with his buddies.
The ranger was sputtering now. He kept trying to make eye contact with the mechanic, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it and instead his head sort of twitched back and forth like a broken clock. Finally, he spat, “I won’t stand for this, you know! You are the problem. The problem with society! You know you are. You’re what’s wrong with this country.” His face twisted in subdued rage.
The mechanic heard only gargling and a few hoarse exclamatory sounds. He was afraid that the ranger might have been having a seizure or something and moved to grab the door handle, but the ranger yelled and slammed open the door for him. He struggled with the seatbelt amidst the folds of his poncho and finally rolled out of the car with a heavy clink. He stood, heaving and shuddering against his own breathing while keeping his eyes far away from those of the mechanic. The two men stood apart from one another for some time. Open laughter could be heard from the police car down the road.
Years of dealing with the expression of indignance in all its ugly forms had steeled the mechanic against exactly this type of response. As the ranger stood before him flexing his hands and moving his lips inaudibly, what little concern the mechanic might have had for him was easily replaced by the hard calculations of confrontation. The mechanic was shorter than the ranger, but hardier. Flexing his own musculature, he looked the ranger in the face and began to exert all his psychic energy toward the usurpation of the ranger’s will. His hands were fists, but he spoke calmly.
“You want to hit me, huh? Huh? Makes things a lot easier if you do.”
The ranger did not hear him. He was trying to shout, “You are the evil in America, you are the evil in America!” but his mouth was sponge dry and all he could manage was a wag of the lips and a squeak. The police officer, perceiving from afar that the ranger might cause some real trouble, glided back into the lot.
“What’s going on cowboy? You giving Dag here some trouble?” Dag was the mechanic’s name, apparently.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
“Answer the officer when he talks to you–“
The police officer had barely begun the motions of pulling himself from his vehicle when a clap and a rush of wind tore through the left side of his face, causing him to slump back into the driver’s seat in a dead heap. The shock of the sudden gunfire caused the mechanic to leap backwards, rolling on his boot-encased heel and landing on his back. A second bullet from the ranger’s now unveiled revolver pinned the mechanic’s skull to the pavement forever. A woman’s scream erupted from the interior of the gas station.
The ranger could look them square in the eyes now. They were like marbles. The ranger, calm now except for a tremor in his right leg which caused a tinkling sound, stepped awkwardly over the mechanic’s body and moseyed on over to the station door. It opened into a dusty convenience store whose rows of mostly empty shelving displayed the detritus of decades. Expired candy bars and bags of chips with ancient logos were stuffed between pallets of brightly colored charging adapters and unwanted knickknacks. The shrieking from before had transformed into a prolonged and muffled howl from a back room behind the counter. The ranger pulled himself over the register and tried the door. The lock, which had existed in a constant state of needing repair for three years, gave without trouble.
The wife of the mechanic was newly middle aged and a little fat. She couldn’t scream anymore and instead moaned, attempting to hide herself behind a desk in the corner of the mechanic’s office. She hollered “No! No!” and attempted to throw whatever she could reach at the ranger when he entered. He dodged a holepunch while he attempted to justify himself to the woman, to explain to her that the bad men outside had tried to rope him into deeply entrenched systems of tyranny that could only be ended through violence, but all she heard was garbled English and snarling. The mechanic’s wife finally landed a stapler on the Ranger’s calf and he responded with a volley of bullets that ended the debate instantly.
It occurred to the ranger that he had never fired his revolver outside of the range before. Unless he was cleaning it, which he did often, it usually sat dormant underneath his poncho. He had made a real mess this time. On his way back to his car, the ranger didn’t look at the mechanic again. He didn’t try to examine the police car either. The ranger adjusted his poncho, stowed his revolver in the glove compartment, and reversed out of the lot. He took the on ramp back to the interstate and continued his journey southward.
The Elmwood Pharmacy, despite no longer serving in any official capacity as a repository for drugs, still acted as the nexus for Malden’s most sickly and impoverished residents. The Walgreens four blocks over may have taken Elmwood’s prescriptions, but the corporate overlords had yet to wrap their minds around the more subtle influence of scratch tickets and cheap french fries.
It was by the age-old combination of lottery, cigarettes, and bad food that old brick and mortars managed to survive alongside the new apartment complexes and supermarkets that continuously sprouted and asserted their dominion over the city’s urban nucleus. Elmwood clung low and desperately to the earth like a furtive slug, and it was easily one of the most loathsome structures still standing within view of the commuter rail. The rare travelers that noticed Elmwood at all have been known to say that the property would be better served by a Starbucks, or perhaps even a Subway. The place was generally despised, especially by its regulars, and it was only when faced with the dangerous end of a robber’s pistol that Kilgore J. Cohen, third inheritor and proprietor of the Elmwood legacy, realized that the whole place should have been sold off or burnt to the ground ago.
“Give me all the money,” said the robber, his voice cracking a little on the last word.
Kilgore with a mind stunted by years of cash register-induced apathy could barely muster the degree of emotion necessary for fear. “Of course,” he said, “I would think of doing nothing else.”
Simple compliance. The robber’s relief was palpable. He allowed his pistol to settle on the counter. Kilgore quickly concluded that he was dealing with an amateur, and he was surprised to find that, rather than relief and determination, he was actually very disappointed. The robber seemed to smile gingerly beneath the scraggly sock that concealed his face, like an idiot. Yes, Kilgore thought, only an idiot would rob Elmwood these days. This latest disappointment in a long life marked by small but consistent disappointments triggered a wave of nostalgia and despair that consumed Kilgore’s mind.
In the sixty-year history of the Elmwood Pharmacy, a robbery had only been attempted once before, and that was during the days when real prescriptions and not just a few bottles of Ibuprofen lined the store’s back shelves. It was a story told to the children at Passover of the time when the heroic uncle Albert went toe to toe with a fentanyl-crazed, gun-toting lunatic. As the legend goes, Albert calmly talked the gunman down and convinced him that he needed to grab the drugs from the back. Uncle Albert returned brandishing a rifle and threatening to blow the maniac’s brains out. This happened in broad daylight during a time when Elmwood was flush with chatter and the regulars that didn’t smell like homelessness. Back then, there was no need to stock Chinese newspapers or instant noodle. The vintage soda machine used to get cleaned polished weekly, and it didn’t screech.
The robber drummed his fingers against the register and drew Kilgore from his delirium.
“Yes, yes. Sorry.”
“No problem.”
Kilgore opened the register and laid some small bills and a stack of quarters on the counter. Then he tried something.
“We don’t keep much in the register anymore,” he said. “Most customers use EBT these days.” The robber nodded solemnly, as if he too had forced himself through five years of pharmaceutical school so he could inherit a bloated convenience store from his father during the middle of a recession. “Got more cash in the back. Want a scratch ticket?”
“That’d be nice actually, thanks.”
Kilgore peeled one of the more expensive tickets off the role and handed it to the robber.
“Got any cartons of Marlboros? Lights please, I don’t smoke the other kind.”
“Ya, give me a minute.” Kilgore hefted himself up the steps into the back of the store, which was really more of a raised mezzanine overlooking the register. He allowed his eyes to sweep the rows of dusty shelving and filing cabinets before settling on a cracked countertop where, just two decades ago, pills were bottled in-house.
A second wave of nostalgia almost debilitated him, but Kilgore weathered the torrent and fumbled under the countertop for a pair of forgotten buttons. He was not exactly sure how it worked, or if it ever did, but the button to the right apparently phoned the police. That is what his father once told him, anyway. The other button made an annoying buzzing sound at the food counter that Kilgore would have been beaten for playing with. He pressed the police button and continued toward a thin closet in the back corner of the store.
“Hey, you having a stroke back there? Hurry it up old man, I need to get moving!” Agitation grated against delight. The robber was almost giddy.
From the closet, Kilgore pulled a rusty metal case with a broken latch. He laid it on the countertop next to the stairs and called down to the robber, “I’ve got it here, it’s all right here.”
Kilgore unsheathed a handgun from the case. It was old, but immaculate. If uncle Albert’s rifle had really existed, this certainly wasn’t it. Was this one loaded? Kilgore didn’t know. It was heavier than he thought.
“What is that, what are you looking at?” Uncertainty was creeping into the robber’s voice now. “Bring the money down here!” The old man in the back of the store did not hear him.
“Yes, I’ve got it. It’s right here,” whispered Kilgore, and he was lost in another world.
(This is the latest version of a story idea that I have been rewriting for a few years now. The setting and story are based in fact. Earlier drafts are actually quite different from this one, so I will post them some day.)
It was the day after Christmas, December the 26th. Boxing Day. I was sitting on a bench in an industrial-sized bowling alley feeling increasingly awful with every passing moment. Almost half an hour had slipped away by that point and our buzzer still wasn’t showing any sign of ringing. It must have been kids-bowl-free day or free margarita bar or something because the place was bloated by screaming children, absent parents, and pop radio cranked to a maximum over the speakers. My head was going to start splitting. The chisel was already in place above my left temple and it was going to be these brats driving the hammer. I swear to god they gave this elderly couple the OK to bowl before us and we definitely got to the desk first. Worse, there was something brewing in my stomach, a barely perceptible tenderness erring on the side of nothing. But it wasn’t nothing.
The previous afternoon, Christmas day, December the 25th, the commemoration of Christ’s slippery escape, my girlfriend and I had been opening presents and sharing little kissies when her stomach started feeling the same way. By nightfall she was on a permanent loop between the bedside trash barrel and the guest bathroom. She knew what this was. I knew what this was. Her stomach bug definitely knew what it was: 24 hours of highly contagious, gut rending agony. Despite that fact, I played the chivalry card. I fed her soup despite knowing where it would end up. I continued to share little kissies despite knowing where I might end up. Please understand, I come from a family of addiction. My mother smoked two packs of Marlboros a day throughout my childhood, which is to say that my own ingrained sense of risk-reward is about as helpful as a lead brick. It’s a bundle of dead neural pathways, zero. I couldn’t help myself if I wanted to. When I see free kissies, I take them regardless of a looming stomach virus.
Fool I was. I woke up feeling fine, and in a few hours Amy felt a lot better too. Josh begged us to take him bowling on Boxing Day, so I offered to drive (we sort of promised we would take him a few days before anyway). Our usual spot, a local retro-inspired candlepin alley, was closed, so we begrudgingly drove the extra twenty minutes to the larger mainstream establishment off the highway. It was a gaudy place. More than two dozen lanes, a gargantuan, buzzing arcade, and an even bigger bar and restaurant. Suburban hell. Lebowski wouldn’t have liked it, and I was already poised to hate it even before my burgeoning illness started to reveal itself.
My girlfriend was back in the bathroom within five minutes of arriving. I was ready to leave after fifteen, but she was still in there. No calls or texts could reach her in that place. Josh was entertaining himself with a Jurassic park arcade game. I found myself locked on a bench steeped in loathing as I tried my hardest not to glare at passing children and the desk clerk who, seven minutes ago, told me, “it’ll be about five more minutes.” I allowed almost thirty five minutes to go by before everything became unbearable. I grabbed Josh out of an arcade machine, offered him McDonalds for his trouble, and made a beeline for the woman’s bathroom. Amy was just getting out, but as the bathroom door slammed shut behind her I caught a snatch of hyperloud pop music. Can you imagine that? They had speakers running in the bathrooms. There was literally no escape.
The drive home wasn’t too bad. The nothing in my stomach began to shift towards an indistinct weightiness. This state was more tender, yes, but still not painful. My headache subsided somewhat as well, and I began to toy with the idea that maybe I wouldn’t be hit with the brunt of the microbial assault. Maybe it was just gas. This momentary lapse in fear and caution cost me dearly. When we got home, Amy hopped into her own car to head home and Josh went inside to eat his free lunch. Feeling pretty good about myself, I snatched one of his fries and it was swallowed in a second. Instantaneous regret. That greasy lump of salt and potato sank like a rock and just sat there in my stomach. The immediacy of this retribution shocked me. My belly seemed to swell, and the weightiness building inside of it was no longer quite so innocuous.
I lurched my way down, down into the basement as my intestines began to come alive. I paced, massaging myself, hoping against hope that the feeling would subside. It didn’t, of course, and my organs continued to writhe as my head grew light. Once the final dregs of my initial hope faded, a frailer one emerged; perhaps I could make it through this thing without having to throw up? You should know that I hate throwing up. I’m bad at it, I’m a bad puker. My face gets hot, I shake, I cry. The thought of it makes me wince. Pale faced and clammy, swaddled in a stolen Marriott Resort towel, I swayed about my subterranean hideaway between lapses of breathless sitting. I couldn’t lay down. The cheap LEDs in the ceiling threw barrage after barrage of white hot rays directly into my skull, yet like a moth, or Moses, I orbited them unceasingly in a kind of desert limbo. I don’t know how many hours I passed in this delirium before I built up the conviction to evacuate my stomach manually.
In the 9th grade I suffered a similar bug, though the symptoms were not identical. It was thirst that got me last time. I just couldn’t quench it. After laboring for hours into the night balancing my fluid intake, I finally lost control and, after sprinting to the bathroom, wrapped my lips around the faucet and drank deeply for about ten seconds or so. I read somewhere that researchers studying birds on the desert islands of the Galapagos have to secure their water supplies really well lest the entire population of finches mob the barrels and drown themselves in their attempts to drink. Well, I imagine those finches, even in the midst of violent drowning, experienced some form of bliss, because my no longer so pubescent body was in heaven as I guzzled dram after dram of New England tap water. Satisfied, I waltzed over to the toilet and promptly vomited my brains out.
That was probably the easiest throw up experience of my life. It alleviated most of the symptoms immediately, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, this new bug was not of the thirst inducing variety. I had no desire to drink whatsoever, in fact, and I could not force myself to. Backup plan: physical manipulation of the uvula. I got on my knees and peered into the porcelain bowl. I caught a glimpse my own pale, dead eyed reflection in the toilet water and recoiled. Cowering, I crawled on all fours to the tiled shower. The inflamed mass of organs and fat that made up my underbelly swung and sloshed beneath me. There was no blood anywhere near my face. In the end, I didn’t even have to stick the finger all the way in. The mere mental impulse of pulling my own trigger was enough to shock my body into a fit of dry heaving and convulsions. My head drew back like a viper’s and my features seemed to twist before contorting into a lockjaw snarl.
Done!
And there he was. Steeping in a puddle of transparent bile bleached and limp was the semi-chewed carcass of Josh’s french-fry. The bastard was completely undigested.
[end excerpt]
