An Intrepid Report
Your intrepid reporter has been invited to the launch party for the first edition of
The Thrust, a new left-leaning, LGBT-focused literary magazine. Your intrepid reporter suspects that the party will be of the general sort she’s come to know and love through other intrepid reports: namely, that it will be stuffed to the gills with colorful characters, impressive outfits, and—most importantly—fodder for one’s substack, which your intrepid reporter is hoping will be written with enough literary panache to convince at least one soul out there that she deserves to be alive. Your intrepid reporter is excited, suffice to say.
But what to wear? Here your excited reporter confesses to being hopelessly adrift. Being a left-leaning, LGBT-focused literary magazine, your intrepid reporter suspects that the crowd at the launch party for the first edition of
The Thrust will be armed to the teeth, sartorially speaking. Your modest reporter will practice modest vulnerability in confessing that she simply wants something that says, “I have boobs,” and perhaps even, “I’m a woman.” A simply obscene number of nearly identical black tops present themselves for the occasion. Your intrepid reporter reports an embarrassment of riches on the boob-having, women-being, nearly identical black top front. One is selected more or less at random, and your black-top-clad reporter is eager to report that the rest of the outfit assembles itself without quandary or delay. (Your intrepid reporter confesses to stuffing two more black tops into a tote bag from
The Gloss, whose left-leaning, femme-focused literary exploits your intrepid reporter is keen to recommend, with the caveat that your intrepid reporter was not invited to their first edition launch party, and thus cannot speak to the quality of their “scene.”)
It is one of those New York City nights—you know the kind.
Your intrepid reporter has decided to walk the 20-some blocks and manages to arrive at
The Thrust loft without incident—sudoriferous though she may be. Immediately, your intrepid reporter is put at ease: the place is simply teeming with brooding twinks, whose presence your intrepid reporter well knows correlates with left-leaning, literary exploits. Here again practicing modest vulnerability, your intrepid reporter confesses to being excited: she likes talking about books, and she has already heard the
The Golden Notebook mentioned twice. Things are looking up.
Ah, but things can only look up for so long, before they must, inevitably, look down. And here your intrepid reporter is loath to report the appearance of an old college nemesis and all around despicable shitbird, the mononymical John, who has materialized in front of your annoyed reporter wearing a despicable shitbird smirk.
— Your intrepid reporter.
— John.
— Still sweating, I see.
— Right.
— Nice top.
— Right.
— How are you doing these days? I didn’t realize you had moved to The City.
Here your intrepid reporter is relieved to report that she is spared the rest of the conversation by the appearance of a mutual friend, second John.
— second John.
— John. Your intrepid reporter. How are you doing these days?
From there, your intrepid reporter reports that the conversation is effectively suplexed by a story second John relates about his last left-leaning, literary launch party, where he had front row seats to the now well-documented brawl between various associate editors at
The Gist,
The Essence, and
The Vein.
Here, a moment of introspection: was everyone here secretly a fascist? John certainly, but as for the rest . . . well, your intrepid reporter wonders about things like this. It seems eminently possible that most of what’s happening at this party, psychologically speaking, has been preempted by midcentury critical theory, which your intrepid reporter confesses to being woefully underread in. Maybe she should have gone to grad school after all. Ah, but the money wasn’t good, and your intrepid reporter is afflicted with a constellation of mental illnesses that could’ve made things difficult, psychologically speaking. And weren’t we just discussing fascism? Your intrepid reporter takes in the scene: here a pair of curly haired men discuss the relative merits of this season’s slate of New Directions-published novellas while sipping on what look to be gin and tonics; there a trio of tall, platinum blonde tote bag wearers discuss a brewing controversy in the left-leaning, literary podcaster space, drinking what appear to be gin and tonics; further still, two stunningly beautiful, gender ambiguous knockouts have set aside their gin and tonics to engage in a heated discussion, topic unknown—even your intrepid reporter’s keen ears cannot discern discourse at such a distance.
Are differing patterns of subcultural affiliation indicative of emerging forces in the class struggle? It’s a thinker, alright, resolves your intrepid reporter, as she escapes the Johns and strolls up to the bar to order a gin and tonic.
— [Your intrepid reporter]!
— Sara!
— Did you walk here?
— Yeah.
— Babe.
— Right.
Downing her drink, your intrepid reporter heads to the bathroom, where she secures a stall and changes tops. Well, while I’m here, thinks your intrepid reporter, as she drops trou, only for her moment of brief repose to be shattered by the intrusion of a chorus of voices:
— Who invited her?
— Did you see how sweaty she was?
— John said she still hasn’t read Babitz.
— Said she still hasn’t read Adler.
— Said she still hasn’t read Malcolm.
— Said she’s only barely read Lispector, and even then, had to give up after 20 pages.
— Sheesh.
Well fuck me what is this, thinks your intrepid reporter, having just dropped her phone in the toilet. Reaching into the toilet, your intrepid reporter does her best Slothropian pastiche, and after a mildly harrowing, reasonably psychedelic adventure through the New York City sewer system, she pops out the other side at the
The Tenor loft, whose reputation your intrepid reporter is assuming you are damn well familiar with by this point.
Unfazed, your intrepid reporter emerges from the bathroom and heads straight for the bar and then makes a casual beeline for the nearest available couch, of which there are plenty. Having made quick work of her gin and tonic, your intrepid reporter reflects: was it possible she could’ve avoided all of this by going to grad school?
The rattle of ice cubes rouses your pensive reporter from her thoughts.
— You’ve got a uh . . . — gesturing at your intrepid reporter’s bangs — dingleberry.
— Right. Thanks.
— Let me guess. You’re the intrepid reporter.
— How’d you know?
— I’m on the substack party report report substack beat.
— That’s high concept.
— I guess.
— . . .
— . . .
— . . .
— You’ve got another uh . . .
— Right. Thanks.
— So listen, as part of the substack party report report substack beat, I make it my business to know all about the various party report substacks.
— Sure.
— You’re aware that you’ve already shown up in a few of them this morning?
— What do you mean this morning?
— What day do you think it is?
— Friday?
— Sunday.
Your intrepid reporter looks around. The loft is deserted.
— That explains that, I guess. What about the bartender?
— What bartender?
Your intrepid reporter looks at the empty bar.
— Well, nevertheless.
— Anyways, like I was saying, the substack cycle’s already been more or less run through at this point.
— So what are you saying?
— You can’t publish your substack party report.
— Why not?
— It’d be uncouth. You’ve got another . . . would you like a mirror?
Your intrepid reporter and her new friend head to the bathroom.
— Anyways, like I was saying, you don’t want to be uncouth at this juncture.
— Sure.
— But I have an enticing offer for you.
— How’s that?
— We’ve got a few more days on the substack party report report substack cycle, I reckon.
— So you want me to write a substack party report report substack?
— Exactly. I need you to make me look good.
— Come again?
— No worries. Just get it done.
— Right.
— And take a shower.
— Right.
— I’m heading out.
— Right.
Your intrepid reporter is alone again. The final act. Well, your intrepid reporter confesses to not knowing much what to make of the night—or, upon reflection, several nights—worth of events that she has just undertaken. As your intrepid reporter walks the forty some blocks back to her apartment, her mind wanders, but bravely putting aside thoughts of grad school, she thinks about the issue at hand: her
The Gloss tote bag is in
The Thrust loft bathroom, which surely is presently inaccessible. Shit, thinks your rueful reporter, arriving at her apartment and opening the door.
A scene of familiar, abject disaster reveals itself to your intrepid reporter, and she reports that here her thoughts turn to the state of the American Left: what is to be done, your intrepid reporter wonders, as she dances between mounds of abandoned black tops. She pauses. Everything under heaven is in utter chaos—if not in America, then at least in this apartment. Yes, everywhere your dialectical reporter looks, contradictions abound, and yet everyone your dialectical reporter looks, the capitalist world-system endures—and how to reconcile these twin facts, dialectically? And more to the point, what does drinking gin and tonics and reading the right people have to do with the fact that a violent state more powerful than any other in the history of the world exists to protect an economic system whose internal contradictions are not even hyperbolically apocalyptic—or so science (Marxist and climate) says. Even your optimism-of-the-will-having reporter confesses to being blackpilled, from time to time. And yes, in true left-leaning, literary fashion, your not-so-intrepid reporter would love to now introduce a turn and convince you that Help Is On The Way—but is it? Fuck, she thinks, as she abandons her outfit on the floor and steps into the shower, where a coherent narrative about the future of American politics continues to elude her. Your now wet reporter scrubs. Is this all sort of uncouth? she wonders. Fuck, she thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Is having to win a good reason to believe that we will?
Until next time. Stay well.
A Supposedly Cunt Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Your intrepid reporter has been assigned a visit to one of her local Bay Area sex dungeons to engage in knowledge production; she is pleased to report that she has been given license to use first-person pronouns at her writerly discretion.
So there we are: I’m preparing to head to one of my local Bay Area sex dungeons and feeling a little peckish and recalling, by the by, that, for reasons I can’t legally explain, I am contractually obligated to serve cunt in a Chili’s Grill & Bar at least once a quarter. We are rapidly approaching the end of Q2, as I’m sure you well know, and there is a plate of Chicken Crispers® calling my name. Oh, how it sings! That distinctive galline warble. That percussive cluck. A symphony to my ears, an invitation to my stomach. Let us go.
Outfit resolved, I begin the journey southbound. It’s a pleasant enough walk, and I make it to the Chili’s Grill & Bar without external incident, though the internal journey was a tumultuous one—things were looking bad for a second, but then I remembered that I don’t go to grad school, and would be arriving at the Chili’s Grill & Bar soon, where I soon arrived, mildly elated and a little out of breath.
Oh, how it smells! Like an orgy: Skillet Queso fucking Southwestern Eggrolls fisting a Quesadilla Explosion Salad felching a Santa Fe Crispers® Salad frotting some Terlingua Chili fucking an Oldtimer fucking an Oldtimer with Cheese fucking some Big Mouth® Bites all more or less fucking a plate of Texas-Size, Honey-Chipotle Baby Back Ribs—yes, it’s a scent to smell alright, here in the Chili’s Grill & Bar, where I, your intrepid reporter, am now being seated.
Heads are turning and cunt is being served, I’m pleased to report.
Contractually, I can’t explain why I am offered a rather large discount at Chili’s Grill & Bar, but I am, and this, coupled with my generous per diem, coupled with my generous appetite, means that I am about to go ham, proverbially. After some lengthy deliberation, I settle on my four-course meal plus margarita slew and proceed to get hammered—when in Rome.
I have a second, and it never hurts to check in on the communists who live in my phone and see what they’re saying: will restaurants exist under communism? It’s a doozy: one the one hand, restaurants actually exist under socialism, so there’s a compelling historical case study to think through; on the other hand, can the modern restaurant exist without some level of labor exploitation and ecological harm—I’m not sure; on a third hand, some are saying that “everyone cook at home” is not a viable solution without some concerted feminist effort to make sure that doesn’t just mean “women cook at home”; on hands number four, five, and six we have various arguments that hinge on the definition of the word
restaurant and the aufhebenic capabilities therein; hands seven through eighteen weigh questions about the nature of The Restaurant Question itself, its posing, the forum of its discussion, so on and so forth; and by the time my Loaded Baked Potato Soup has arrived, things are getting rather hecatoncheirical, indeed.
And not just hecatoncheirical—here I am loathe to report that the general familial ambience at the Chili’s Grill & Bar, as well as your intrepid reporter’s first spoonful of Loaded Baked Potato Soup, are both rudely interrupted by the appearance of gunshots, a man with a questionable haircut, and a trio of his goons.
So are they saying that after The Revolution we won’t have Chili’s anymore? Might be kind of nice to get out of this contract, although-
— Well, well, well. We’ve got ourselves a hero, — says the man with the questionable haircut, pointing his sawed-off directly into my face.
— Heroine, probably.
— What?
— What?
— I’m going to flip this coin, — he says, pulling out a coin, — tails, I blow off your head. Heads, well, I’ll let you keep it.
— Keep what?
— Your head.
Sizzling. The fajitas waiter enters stage left, oblivious. The sound distracts the man with the questionable haircut, and he turns, vulnerable.
— It’s just you said “it”, which I think was a little ambiguous in terms of its antecedent.
The man with the questionable haircut turns back around, mouth agape.
— You could’ve maybe said, “Tails, I blow off your head. Heads, well, I’ll let you keep yours.”
The man with the questionable haircut blinks.
— Sorry, I don’t want to belabor the point, but another option you might’ve considered is skipping the wordplay altogether and going for something clear and direct, which might be more context appropriate. You look upset, but I’m the one with the gun in my face, so now I’m confused.
Now he looks confused.
— Do you need me to define antecedent?
— I know what a fucking antecedent is you insufferable cunt.
Police sirens wail in the parking lot.
— The cops, boss, — says one of the goons.
— I can hear that, thank you. Fuck. Let’s grab a hostage and-
— Her. — Her. — Her. — Her. — Her. — Her. — Her. — Her. — Her. — Her. — Her. — Her.
I look up from a mouthful of soup.
— Fuck me. Ok. Let’s go Ms. Antecedent, out of the booth. NOW!
So I get out of the booth. They tie me up and gag me, and we head to the roof, where the man with the questionable haircut proceeds to yell quite a bit at the cops, who proceed to yell quite a bit back, and this display of male homosociality goes on for what seems like hours; now the sun is setting and we’ve been cooking for a while and I’m tied up and also gagged and I don’t really have anything to do and I’m hungry and I’m starting to wonder if this will even fulfill my contractual obligations to Chili’s Grill & Bar or if this means I will have to once again serve cunt in this familial dining establishment, and I start thinking about being gagged and tied up and also remembering that I am on assignment to go to one of my local Bay Area sex dungeons which of course I am now going to have to do on another day which means emailing the nice woman who said she’d show me the ropes so to speak (her words, not mine), and all this is seeming like a huge pain in the ass from the vantage point of your intrepid, gagged, and bound reporter, who can do little but wait patiently for this situation to resolve itself and perhaps work on her mindfulness exercises: feel the sun on her skin, think about the breath in her lungs, the feeling of rope on her wrists, the gag in her mouth, and now the sounds of helicopter blades whirring above her.
To kill time, I try to take a nap, but when they’re not yelling, they’re shooting, so it doesn’t really work. I’m kind of bored, but then I realize that I could write a report about today’s events at the Chili’s Grill & Bar, so I untie myself and head downstairs to my booth only to find that the Chili’s Grill & Bar has been entirely cleared out, which likely means no Chicken Crispers® at this juncture. Sigh. I collect my phone and head outside to the parking lot. I’m not especially eager to walk home, but then I remember to ungag myself, and it seems a little easier. The nice woman who said she’d show me the ropes emailed me to let me know that she saw me on the news and that we can reschedule, and the good folks at Chili’s Grill & Bar also seem to have emailed me about a potential revision to our contract. I am tired and very sunburnt so I like some tweets and go to bed.
Stay well, everybody.
An Unremarkable Occurrence
Day 1
I, your intrepid reporter, have contracted the novel coronavirus. For the foreseeable future, I am stuck in my room, which means a temporary kibosh on the luxury blimp assignment. Shame. I have the normal afflictions—my head hurts, and my muscles ache, and my stomach hurts, and I have no taste and sniffles and so-called “brain fog”, and further, I’m obscenely sweaty—but nothing else; I must be asymptomatic, and I expect my life will move on—to greater, luxuriously blimpier things—posthaste; nevertheless, out of respect for my roommates and public health, I will become intimately acquainted with my room. The isolation begins.
Day 2
I have read every single Twitter post. Some were good, but I’m curious: is there a God? and if so, are they capable of regret? I wonder. I google “is rabbinical inquiry a symptom of the novel coronavirus” and get nothing but listicles. I google “is there a God”, and the computer turns off. I have more questions, and appear to be in a bit of technotheological pickle, but then I remember I have a phone. I text my roommate, who reminds me that he isn’t Jewish and thus doesn’t know if rabbis are allowed to smoke weed. I counter by replying that I am Jewish and still don’t know if rabbis are allowed to smoke weed, so it seems like a non-factor. He asks me why I don’t use Google, so I explain the situation vis-à-vis God. I hear him sigh through the wall. Does that mean he can hear me fart? Can God? I wonder.
Day 3
I receive a text from my friend:
[friend]: do you want to hang out today?
me: i have corona
[friend]: sick
me: exactly
[friend]: i’ll be there in fifteen
me: no i don’t want you getting corona
[friend]: wow mask off
me: i feel like you’re not listening to me
We do this routine for a few more minutes before she understands. Some people.
Day 4
I’ve learned a lot about my sheets. There is a saga: I actually bought a set of identical sheets before this, and they were delivered to my apartment building, theoretically to the inside of the gate, but when I arrived at the inside of the gate—my unit has a separate entrance that does not require me going through that gate or, obviously, its inside—when I arrived at the inside of the gate, which I do not normally go through, what do I find but an empty box and no sheets, which is curious, because it means one of two things happened: either the box was delivered outside of the gate, and someone opened it and stole the sheets, and then someone else in the building saw the open box and moved it inside of the gate, thinking this would signal to me that the prior scenario had just unfolded, or someone in my building stole my sheets. As it turns out, my buildingmates are much better at decorating than I am, rather testy when it comes to blasting cigs indoors, and yet, even more open-minded still when it comes to accepting the professional mores of private investigation, which your intrepid investigator managed to explain at knife-point, despite her struggles with social anxiety. Long story short, I didn’t find my sheets, so I asked for a refund, ordered another set, and said a teary farewell to my rapidly imploding mental health. But it’s fine. I got the new sheets, in the end. And so did someone else. Win-win.
Day 5
It occurs to me that I could read a book. I could even write a review. I remember that They told me new genres could be good for my professional development and also that I have a copy of Elif Batuman’s recently published
Either/Or. I had a relatively life-changing experience reading her article “
Get a Real Degree” in the bathroom of a diner once, and I’ve read a few interviews where she mentions the novel being written from a more political, gayer perspective, and I enjoyed Selin’s latent oblivious lesbianism in
The Idiot, and expect to find more of it here, in
Either/Or, so your intrepid reporter confesses to being considerably hype. I just have to remember how to read.
Day 6
I remember how to read. Thank god. I’ve missed so many tweets. I read all of them and then tweet every thought I’ve ever had. Now I’m bored again.
Day 7
Day 7. This is kind of bad. I like going outside. That’s where everything happens. What am I supposed to report on if not the things that happen outside? The things that happen inside? Do people really want to hear about my mental vicissitudes? Are they fiending to immerse themselves in a consciousness not their own? Is it possible that while, yes, it’s morally worthwhile, and yes, it’s critically generative, that, somehow even more profound still, it’s simply
pleasurable to explore the contours of the Other, to escape the prison of ourselves, to deny that seemingly undeniable reality that we are only capable of experience in a single consciousness? Or do people just want to read about blimps, ideally luxury ones? Sometimes I feel like I don’t really know anything about other people at all. Is that bad? Do most people feel like they have an intuitive grasp on the contours of the Other? I don’t know. Maybe I should eat something. I’m probably just hanglianated.
Day 8
I don’t think it was the hunger, actually.
Day 9
Maybe it was the sheets?
Day 10
I no longer have the novel coronavirus. Phew. Stay well, everyone.
An Arenaceous Affair
I no longer have the novel coronavirus so it’s time to start reporting intrepidly once again. I inquire about the possibility of going on a reality TV show for my next assignment, and They approve. I’m off.
There are a number of reality TV shows to choose from, and their representatives appear not to have labeled any of the audition rooms in this building. I try a door; inside’s a panel. They ask me to sit down, and I do; they ask me to give them my name, and I do; they ask me what on earth makes me think I would be well-qualified to be this season’s Bachelorette, given the fact that I haven’t even brushed my hair for this audition—this is a tricky one: I’m a lesbian, and not the kind that likes dating men. But I consider that They will be upset if I don’t complete this assignment, and further, that going undercover might be edifying, so I secure the job.
Now I’m the new Bachelorette and also in paradise—supposedly: I’ve never been especially hype about sand. But I again consider that They will be upset if I don’t complete this assignment, and further, that it’s a good idea to enter every experience with an open mind, including the ones that involve sand. Now I’m facing some bigger questions: I’m wondering whether me figuring out how to date men would make for good television, and likewise now realizing that many of the men who will be courting me have their hopes up in terms of starring in good television, and that the crew and the producers and everyone at home is also counting on me to produce good television, and damn this is starting to look like a lot of responsibility for your generally incompetent reporter vis-à-vis the demands of good television—but then I remember that I know how to read, and that I just read Elif Batuman’s
Either/Or, and that in
Either/Or there’s a part where the protagonist Selin reads a book entitled
The Rules, and that
The Rules gives her rather thorough and convincing advice about how to date men; I can breathe easy.
I should’ve packed sunscreen, I think, as the cameras start rolling, and the men begin to approach. I squint. It’s time to practice Rule 2:
Don't Talk to a Man First. This dovetails neatly with Rule 3:
Don’t Stare at Men or Talk Too Much. I begin to wonder if I should be talking to these men at all.
As I let that one marinate, it occurs to me that
The Rules don’t say one way or the other how much you should listen to the men that are courting you. I decide to give it a try.
— . . . and so like I was saying I
tried podcasting for a bit but I essentially found that it lacked the fundamental social relation that makes stand-up so compelling, the immediacy of the laugh, the relationship with the audience, the, in a word,
presence. And so
yes, I bounced around the podcaster scene for a few months but inevitably I found myself drawn back to my true calling: the stage, the mic, the audience, really. There’s something just so poignant about hearing the response, about being on the stage, about holding the mic, about really
feeling-
Jesus fucking christ, I think, like it gets between your toes and you can’t seem to get it off and it’s just so . . . gritty—paradise is cooked.
— You seem upset. Have I upset you?
— It’s the sand.
— Pardon?
I’m on the verge of explaining, but then I remember Rule 19:
Don’t Open Up Too Fast.
— I have a lot of problems with social anxiety.
— I see.
Rule 11:
Always End the Date First.
— I really have to pee.
— I see.
— We’ll see where.
(Rule 20:
Be Honest but Mysterious.)
I do actually really have to pee, so I jet off to the bathroom, where your intrepid reporter is happy to report no Slothropian adventures occur. I figure that it makes sense to return to exactly the same spot I was standing in, and by the time I return, the guy I was talking to has disappeared and there are two new men who are already in the midst of a heated discussion.
— Not only do I find that thesis conceptually bankrupt, I’d go as far as to say it’s borderline problematic.
— Unpack.
— To assert that
The Departed is essentially a film about the virtues of so-called “chosen family” is to undersell, I believe, what makes Marty’s films so compelling, which is that they portray a homosocial love between men that is outside the bounds of queerness. Take Colin, for instance. He-
I’m trying to follow along but also kind of bored, so I inquire about a comparative reading involving Matt Damon’s role in
We Bought a Zoo and the phrase “star text.”
It turns out this was the wrong thing to do because the next thing I know, both men immediately collapse and by the time the paramedics have come and confirmed that both men had aneurysms, and the cops have come and asked me what happened, and I relate what happened and then they all collapse too, and then the new paramedics come and confirm that they had also had aneurysms, and the new cops come and ask what happened and . . . basically, long story short: I’m no longer the new Bachelorette and am instead facing twelve charges of manslaughter.
I feel really bad. I don’t know what I did wrong. I was following
The Rules! Rule 1:
Be a “Creature Unlike Any Other.” Rule 32:
Don't Break The Rules.
Well, I won’t bore you: a few days later They sent me a text saying that They would dip into my per diem to get me a lawyer and now it’s the trial and it’s my lawyer’s turn to say his thing and he goes up there and says to the judge, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary people of the jury:
— Your honor; ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary people of the jury; my client may be a worthless piece of shit excuse for a human, just an all around dogshit attempt at life, not worth the cheap suit she came here in-
— Objection!
The judge looks at me.
— You can’t do that.
— It wasn’t that cheap.
— . . .
— I have a per diem.
— Can I go on? — asks my lawyer.
— Please, — says the Judge.
— Thank you. As I was saying, my client may be pathetic; my client may be reprehensible; it’s possible that my client may be worth executing just for the general well-being of the human race; but what my client is not is a murderer. What she is is greedy, reckless, hedonistic, solipsistic, a bad speller-
At this point, I get kind of bored and zone out. All stuff I’ve heard before. By the time I tune back in, the jury’s off to deliberate. I can only imagine what’s going on inside:
INT. JURY ROOM - DAY
12 JURORS are seated around a large elliptical table. They are in the midst of a heated debate.
FOREPERSON
So we’re all in agreement?
10TH JUROR
Absolutely. It looked like a cheap fabric.
8TH JUROR
I don’t know.
10TH JUROR
You don’t know? How could you not know? You saw the suit.
8TH JUROR
I don’t know. I think maybe we owe her a few words. That’s all.
10TH JUROR
I don’t mind telling you this, mister. We don’t owe her a goddamn thing. She has that per diem, doesn’t she? It’s not like she couldn’t pick out a better suit. Look, we’re all grown ups here. We saw the suit.
Anyways, it must’ve gone on like that for a while because the deliberation took forever, and then it dawned on me that 8TH JUROR must not have
12 Angry Men’d it because the next thing I know, They’re sending me a text saying that They don’t think that They’ll be able to process the invoice until after the execution.
I don’t really want to die, I don’t think. I’ve worked pretty hard not to die. So what am I supposed to do, open myself to the gentle indifference of the world? find it so much like myself—so like a brother, really? feel that I had been happy, and that I was happy again? wish that there’d be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they’d greet me with cries of hate? I don’t think I want to be hated. And I’m definitely not happy.
We’ll see what happens, I guess. Stay well, friends.
An Infernal Report
Well, if you were reading my last report you know that I was facing execution and pretty sad about it—good news and bad news: bad news is I got executed, but good news is Dante Alighieri is showing me around Hell and it turns out that it’s a pretty thematically rich place with lots to think about and even more to report on. I pay the fee at one of the Ouija terminals so I can ask if They’d like an intrepid report from the afterlife; They say yes, so I’m good to go.
I ditch Dante somewhere around the Second Circle. Too many rhymes. Can’t keep up. I spot a fluorescent construction vest abandoned near one of the trash cans, so I scoop it up and grab a stack of cones for good measure—intrepid reporting tip: if you’re nosing around Hell, best to look busy.
There’s a lot of construction happening in Hell. I can only imagine what the housing discourse is like down here. I check Twitter, but I don’t have service, and since I can’t read tweets, I decide I’ll find Lucifer and see if I can profile him. I have a hazy memory from an episode of
Supernatural I watched with my roommates that Lucifer is stuck in a cage somewhere near the bottom of Hell. Seems like a good place to go. I put down a cone (bucket list item), and I’m off.
As I pass a trio of lovers being repeatedly rent by these glaives of justice I’ve heard so much about, it occurs to me that maybe being sent to Hell should occasion some reflection on my behalf vis-à-vis being sent to Hell. Should I have spent less time being Jewish? But it’s 2022, I reason; that’d be regressive. No, probably what’s happened is that my commitment to intrepid reporting came at the expense of any meaningful sort of political efficacy, and further, that my commitment to intrepid reporting also led me to instrumentalize every thing, person, and place in my life in service of creating intrepid reports. Was my relationship with other people fundamentally extractive? Was I just mining them for content? Is it even possible, at a certain level of literary obsession, to experience anything at all without the added consideration of how you might transfigure that experience into something else, something consumable? And what does it say about me that I can ask these questions and still come out the other side writing intrepid reports? Sigh. I hate thinking about stuff like this.
Cereberus is a little cuter than I was expecting. He looks up from his flaying and gives me a three-headed nod; I nod back. One thing I always struggled with when I was alive was how to act around dogs. Guess I just needed one of these vests.
As I hit the Fourth Circle, I wonder briefly if I’ll see anyone I know while I’m down here. Doesn’t seem likely. Most of my friends are alive. Oh well. I can make new friends. But everyone seems so busy. There’s time, I guess.
The Fifth Circle is interesting because there’s a big river—vibes. Looks like my Clipper card still works, so I get in line for the ferry and start chatting up the other souls. Turns out my neighbors are both here on some sort of purgatorial work-study program; I guess if they put in enough hours, they’ll pay off some sort of spiritual debt and make their way upstairs. They’re headed down to the Seventh Circle, where they help the centaurs shoot arrows at everyone who tries to escape the boiling river of blood. We’re getting pretty chummy so I ask them how they feel about their job. Does it ever feel icky, all this unspeakable violence against their fellow souls? Well, it turns out we weren’t getting that chummy because they clam up pretty quick. Something about staying out of politics. Luckily, we’re basically at the ferry by that point, so I wish them luck with their journey and go out to look at the Styx, which smells pretty bad and looks like liquid obsidian, if liquid obsidian was studded with people.
I think I’m starting to kind of feel it: Hell fatigue. Dante said you get used to it. I don’t know. It kind of feels like things should change. People are really suffering! One thing I’ve learned about Hell is there is a lot of screaming—and not all of it literal: you have to figure that some of these screams are just the sounds of a better world yearning to be born.
— Ma’am?
— What’s up?
— The ferry has stopped. We have arrived at the city of Dis.
I wasn’t expecting it to be a literal city but the city of Dis turns out to be a bustling metropolis. I guess it’s where all the workers live; management has another city, I’m told, after I manage to secure a few gin and tonics at a bar at the corner of 16th and Gaap:
— So basically you’re dealing with admin bloat?
— ÿ̷̲̤̤̗̞̭̥̗̼e̶̡̗̠͈̱͕̝͍̫͈̠͉̠̬͑͜ś̷̥̯͖̄͑̏͐͘,̸̢̡̮̯̦̹̝̖̥͓̖̯̙͗̀ ̴̻͙̻͆̈́̿̒͋́͌̅̓̋̉͌͂͐t̸̢̢̖͍̭̝̙̫̲̩͈̘̅͑͗̅̓̂̑͂͑̅̒͘͠ͅh̵̞̥̞̘̖̪̉̿̑à̶̢̜̥̜̬̘̳̄̆̆͠ț̴͓̖͚̱̯͆̂͐͆̓̉̄̊̎̚̚'̵̡̨̣̮͉̠̦͔̪̲̗̘̤̈͒̾̑̋̓̔̀̾̎̏͒̎͝͝s̷̢͉̱̲̪͇̳̖̟̺̤̫̹͖̅ ̵̬͖͈́̉̽̎̓͊̓̄̚͝͠͠r̸̭͇̺̺̫̞̺͙̞͕̺̪̪̦̀͑̀̉̆ḭ̸̮̽̀̀̔͑g̵͓͔̙̝̜͇̞̫̭̤̔̎̈́̌̄͝h̵̡̛͕͇͚̱̥͖̙̓̇ͅṱ̶̞̺̮̮̺̘́̽͑̈́̑͆̀̈̇̿͗͊́̚
— Wild.
One interesting thing about Hell is there isn’t really a concept of time so you can pretty much go to the bar whenever—kind of like being in an airport. This turns out to be a fruitful comparison, and as I meditate on food courts and whether it’s possible to derive meaning from an infinite existence, the door opens and a trio enters the bar.
— Comrades.
— Get out of here, — says the barkeep — we don’t want your newspapers.
— Comrade, everything under heaven is in utter chaos—the revolution is upon us. No longer shall we toil under Crowley’s thumb. It is time. Let us go.
I smell a story, so I head out of the bar with the revolutionaries. They turn out to have some big ideas and even bigger plans; once we’ve overthrown Crowley and ushered in an era of infinite well-being and prosperity, we’re going to heaven, and we’re killing God. Spicy!
It occurs to me that I died before I could finish my novel, so I ask the revolutionaries if they know how to access Google Docs down here. They give me a look that suggests that my novel is not the overriding concern, at this juncture. I start to protest but they present a well-argued case that the novel can wait; I am swayed, and the novel goes on the backburner while we storm the gates of Crowley’s fortress, where we dodge heaps of burning oil, storms of bullets, and the occasional swung scimitar—all in all, I would say that things are looking pretty promising with respect to The Revolution, but perhaps not so much for me, as I am stabbed on the way to the bathroom and am left to bleed out in a pool of my own infernal blood.
So now I’m in Hell 2. I’m curious so I kill myself and end up in Hell 3. My mom always said I had a good mind for science. I wonder what my parents are up to. Hell 3’s Ouija terminals are all down for maintenance though, so it looks like I’ll have to try them another time. It seems likely that if I kill myself again, I’ll end up in Hell 4, from Hell 4 to Hell 5, so on and so forth, but this might be impossible to know for certain, as all the philosophers are back in Hell 1. Maybe there’s a way to go back there and check on The Revolution.
I walk around Hell 3 for a while before I find an Employees Only door. I’m still wearing my vest so I figure I’m good to open it and see what I find. It’s a lot of stairs but I end up getting back to Hell 1 with relatively minor inconvenience. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.
Back in Hell 1 things are looking pretty different. Looks like The Revolution was a success. They have Twitter down here now, and I learn from a snarky quote tweet that they managed to kill God, and also that they’re opening up the borders between Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and even Earth, which, conveniently, is where I want to go as The Revolution has not yet enabled Google Docs.
So now I’m back at my desk and finishing up this intrepid report and thinking about how I want to start working on my novel and really thinking about whether writing is even meaningful for me now that all the barriers between Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and even Earth have collapsed and we live in an eternal paradise with no end. I decide that it is.
Stay well, everyone.
A Papal Plot
Last you heard from me the Revolution had killed God and collapsed all divine boundaries to create an eternal paradise with no end. Well, we had a good run, but then God 2 got involved, and sure enough, the flames of Revolution were smote to ash scattered in the wind. L! Nevertheless, being somewhat endearingly fallible, God 2 isn’t the savviest when it comes to the hiring process, which is how one shortsighted clerical error has resulted in me being back on Earth, along with the rest of the formerly dead, while the formerly living are stuck in Hell—at least, temporarily.
I feel bad for them, but truth be told, I’m happy to be back. I had missed writing intrepid reports, and in this new era of widespread anachronism, the report business is booming; as it happens, They’ve just offered me a sort of walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes assignment about the people trying to assassinate one of the popes. I inquire about the optics of this vis-à-vis Judeo-Christian relations, and They point out that I was already part of a plot to assassinate God; I find this counterargument compelling and agree to the assignment.
The assassins are holed up on the outskirts of one of the papal enclaves in Nevada. I’ve been trying to get more steps in, so I figure a 156 hour trip will be good for my stats. Plus I have a lot to think about: I’ve been skimming some stuff about the nature of aesthetic practice lately, and it occurs to me that as far as expressions of the indomitable human spirit go, assassination is a strange case: after all, doesn’t it hinge on the very effacement of the self? And doesn’t that make it hard to invest yourself fully in your work? From a young age, certain ideological state apparatuses have convinced me that it is imperative I invest myself fully in my work, but those who labor under the capitalist wage relation know just how hard it is to unalienate your own labor through sheer force of will. That was one nice thing about the Revolution: if you’ve never seen human creativity unshackled from the demands of material want, you really don’t know what you’re missing. But it now occurs to me that much like intrepid reporters, assassins don’t get paid wages. I want to run with this comparison for a bit, since it seems that in some key respects, assassination is not so different from intrepid reporting: it’s important to remember that your ideal intrepid report is never about the intrepid reporter; people want to read about spicy action and choice details, not luxuriate in foreign subjectivity. So both reporter and assassin must be like God 2: present everywhere, visible nowhere. Peer review has identified this as a growth area for me.
My feet hurt a bit, but I’m basically where I need to be, so I hitch a ride. The car’s cluttered and smells faintly of death—no judgment.
— So what do you do, vocationally speaking? — I ask.
— I’m a serial killer.
— Oh.
— . . .
— . . .
— . . .
— Do you have like a style?
— What?
— When you kill people. Do you have goals? Are you avant-garde, or . . . I see . . . maybe the reward is the work itself.
— You people never shut up.
As I do the necessary set theory to try and figure out just how intersectional “you people” will turn out to be, it dawns on me that I’m in danger: I’m sure I’m not the first intrepid reporter to see this “Two Paths for the Murder” angle; I better act fast. As soon as we pull over for gas, I’ll call Them and see if I can lock in the title.
— Next gas station should be fine.
The serial killer looks askance. Did I say the wrong thing? Now I’m anxious. I’m always fucking up stuff like this.
— No rush.
Something’s still off, but unsure of what else to say, I look out the window. It’s pretty flat. I guess deserts tend to be.
Well, she’s not much of a conversationalist so we make it to the next gas station uneventfully.
— Just try to run. — she says, stepping out of the car and heading inside.
Now who’s saying weird shit? I get out of the car and head around back to the bathroom. No service. I guess I’ll call Them later.
I spend a good bit of time in the gas station bathroom but have no major insights and return to the pumps relatively unchanged. The serial killer has driven off without saying goodbye—fine by me: I’d probably fuck that up too. There’s another car there, but no sign of the driver, so I figure they’re probably buying something inside. I check the time, and it’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I’ve mentioned smoking weed, which puts me perilously close to violating some of my contractual obligations. I decide to head inside, pick up something to roll a few spliffs, and see if I can’t hitch a ride with this other driver.
Inside, the vibes are about what you would expect: fluorescent. The other driver’s already in line, so I stand regulation distance behind him, admiring his fit: his hat looks a bit like a pistachio, and I’m impressed with how couth he looks in robes. I see him swipe some Swisher Sweets off the counter, and I know I’m in good company.
— Any chance I could hitch a ride with you?
He turns; I smile:
— I have weed.
He smiles, I turn, and we head out to the pumps, where he motions for me to get into the back of his truck, which has been modified such that the bed of the truck is encased in a bubble of thick, maybe seven foot tall glass. This dude must love hotboxing, I think, as he gestures for me to hop in the bubble. In the back is another pistachioid hat, which the man hands me, as if to say, don this. I don it and hand him the weed.
— Itsa sativa? — he asks.
— Pink Jesus — I say.
His eyes open wide.
— On god.
Even wider.
— Rest in peace.
He smiles, softly, and we proceed to hotbox the hotboxing bubble. English doesn’t seem to be his first language, but we manage to discourse a little all the same before he stumbles into the front seat and takes us on a leisurely crawl down the highway to the nearest city. Intrepid reporter code requires me to confess that I’m a little fucked up at this juncture, but even so, it has not escaped my attention that various homeowners have left their owned homes to come cheer at our vehicle; some are even tears. This is not the kind of attention your reporter typically gets when she ventures outside, so I suspect that something is deeply awry.
Whatever it is, it surely has something to do with the trio of cars that have now surrounded our truck; I also reason that whatever it is can’t be good, as the cars to the left and right of us have rolled down their windows to reveal what appear to be harpoon guns. They harpoon the doors of our truck and bring us to a halt. At this point, I’m a little concerned: although most of my friends and family are down there, I don’t really want to go back to Hell; I should finish my novel, and I find it much harder to make meaning when my suffering is eternal, even if said suffering is somewhat literary in character. Of course, I am practicing self-love, so I acknowledge that once I’ve done my time purely suffering, I might be able to use my skills to get a part-time job doing something in the tourism sector—I already know Dante, which gives me a good in. But what am I thinking? Dante’s back in Italy.
As I wonder about the status of Hell’s LinkedIn servers, a few things happen: one, our assailants step out of their cars and open the doors of our car and bring out the driver and execute him; two, our assailants open the doors of the hotboxing chamber and bring me out and start to get ready to execute me before stopping and muttering something about me being a woman; so three, I realize that these feminist icons are, in fact, the very assassins whose shoes your relieved reporter has been assigned to walk a mile in. I assume a car ride is more or less the same thing semantically, so I hop in the back and start grilling them about their thoughts on Clement Greenberg’s 1939 essay “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” and its relation to their work, all of which turns out to be fairly complex and somewhat hard to follow, as we are working across several language and narcotic barriers. Nevertheless, we make it back to the compound having answered a few big questions about the indomitable human spirit, and I sigh in relief: I have plenty to write up for my next report; They’ll be happy.
Until next time!
An Intergalactic Gallivant
So there I am walking home from Nevada when a very loud, somewhat ominous droning signals to me that I am about to be kidnapped by aliens; a woman’s intuition never fails, and as I float up in the tractor beam, I pause the phenomenal 2022 Lucrecia Dalt album
¡Ay! to chide myself for wearing headphones while walking at night—I should’ve known better. I do still have a bit of service so I text Them to ask their thoughts on an alien adventure; They reply more or less immediately saying They’re down but will have to look into conversion rates before determining my per diem. This seems reasonable enough, and I am overcome with excitement. Aliens!
You can imagine my disappointment when they turn out to be fairly humanoid in construction; they are roughly my height, with skin like opal and eyes like shovels. They don’t have outfits, assholes, or ears; they do have dicks and feet. Everyone is looking at me.
— Hello, specimen — echoes a voice in my head.
I don’t know who to respond to, so I decide to wave in their general direction.
— She gestures — echoes the voice.
— Which one of you is talking?
— One?
— More than zero.
— Zero?
A careful reconstruction of the set of integers may prove out of my mathematical depth, so I try a new, more qualitative tactic.
— If you’re talking with me, blink.
They all blink.
— Oh.
— She understands.
Their laugh sounds a bit like Kate Bush drums, and I just know that a lot of my epistemological assumptions are about to be disrupted in edifying ways—lo and behold, I’m right! You would not believe the kind of Concepts a being freed from both bourgeois notions of individualism and the very notion of the individual as such can come up with.
Well, after a healthy amount of discourse, I teach them about numbers and narcissism, and they teach me about collective consciousness and space communism; I’m also pleased to discover that this intergalactic hive mind likes banquets. I’m hungry.
As we chow down, discourse resumes and it occurs to me I haven’t asked my new friend(s) what they were doing in Nevada.
— She finally inquires.
I slurp a space noodle (which is reasonably wide, with a remarkable amount of “bite”).
— Tell us. Ten, it is one more than nine?
I nod.
— And your people, they write novels?
— I thought that was a historically contingent form.
They laugh.
— There is an intergalactic ballot taking place. Your people’s top ten novels. What are they?
— Top ten novels? Buddy, they won’t even let me top one.
— Be serious.
I sigh.
— That’s not really my thing. Too stressful.
— Do you not care which are your people’s best novels?
— Not really.
— So we are free to leave
Don Quixote off of the ballot?
— Ok let’s not get crazy. Look I’m not saying it’s a bad exercise; I’m just saying it’s not really my thing. You might need to scoop someone else.
They blink.
— You are saying you are worried what your top ten list might say about your character, despite the fact that you are trying to present yourself as above the idea that cultural tastes determine character, thereby reaffirming what you set out to deny and trapping yourself in a contradiction, pleasing no one?
Ugh. Here we go.
— No, I’m saying that I don’t really like power scaling novels because I think it rests on some assumptions about literary value that don’t make sense to me. Have you seen my phone?
— Here.
— Ok sweet. As a way of articulating some representative views, take these paragraphs from Mark McGurl’s
The Program Era:
The conservative modernism of T. S. Eliot and his ilk has ingrained in us the notion that art never improves; and judgments of postwar American literature, including critiques of the writing program, habitually see it in sad decline from the heroic heights of the as-yet-unprogrammed interwar modernist era.
But perhaps, in the interest of dislodging some tedious prejudices, and for love of the educational system that has made most of us what we are, or maybe just for the fun of it, it’s time to resist this notion. One way to do so would be to crudely convert historical materialism into a mode of aesthetic judgment, putting literary production in line with other human enterprises, such as technology and sports, where few would deny that systematic investments of capital over time have produced a continual elevation of performance.
— Either literature is in sad decline or literature is seeing a continual elevation of performance, and either way, we’re basically approaching literature like it’s sports. But one important difference between sports and literature is that sports is a lot more amenable to metrics: that someone has hit a baseball can give you an important insight as to their quality as a player, but what does it tell you that someone has written a metaphor? Athletes have easily defined goals, so in some sense, success there is directly measurable; it seems less so in literature: what metrics are indicative of a writer’s success? And how can we use them to demonstrate that literary performance is improving over time? What are we optimizing for?
— You could argue that there is an aspect of success in sports that is not directly measurable: some intangible element of stardom or entertainment factor or even just skill. But I’d say that that’s precisely where sports becomes artistry, in the transition from quantitative to qualitative. Let’s piss off a few Marxists by misappropriating
Karl Marx’s distinction between
use value and
exchange value, where the former refers to a commodity’s tangible, physical utility, and the latter refers to an abstract number that lets it be exchanged for other commodities. What you’re asking me to do is take my subjective understanding of various novels’ use value and transmute that into some abstract notion of literary exchange value, which I can use to equate various novels and do the power ranking. But I don’t really know how to do that, and while I respect it being fun for a lot of people, it’s not really fun for me.
— We under-
— And further: the top ten list is probably also a historically contingent form, and given this whole use value exchange value thing, it’s no surprise top ten list making emerges as a mass cultural phenomenon under capitalism, as John Guillory points out in
Cultural Capital. But even if you remove the top ten dimension and just ask me for a list of good, representative novels, what you’re really asking for is a canon, and what that’s really asking me for according to Guillory is an “imaginary totality of works” when it’s also true that “no one has access to the canon as a totality”, so you’re literally asking me to do the impossible. Besides, I’m a reporter, not a critic. You’ve got the wrong woman.
— So who is it that we should scoop?
— Kind of depends. Do you think your ship could go to Hell?
— Hell?
— Nevermind. I have some ideas. Let’s head back to Earth. How long have we been up here anyway?
This turns out to be a good question to ask because the hive mind has no real conception of time, and we’ve apparently been discoursing and eating space noodles for the past two weeks. In that time, a lot has changed on Earth: God 2 figured some shit out and managed to get all the people who were unjustly put in Hell back on Earth but, fearing another revolution, decided to let all the people who were put back on Earth from Hell chill there until they died—blank slate, I guess. Anywho, on Twitter I learn that there’s another party at
The Thrust tonight, and I figure the people there will have strong opinions about the topic at hand, so I direct the hive mind to stop in New York City. Luckily, with all this Hell confusion, no one’s sold the apartment I was pretending to live in, so we cram in there to do some mild pre-gaming.
It occurs to me that my new friend doesn’t have an outfit for any of their bodies, but they’re about my size, so I distribute all the black tops and jeans I have and tell the rest to sit tight on the ship. Beanies hide the earlessness, but the bad news is that their dicks are considerably bigger than mine was, and the combination of me never having really tucked and our epistemological differences is going to make this teaching moment very difficult, indeed. Ah well. It’s probably fine. The bigger problem is these shovel eyes. I let Them know that I’m back on Earth and that They should Venmo me my per diem so I can go out and buy a lot of cheap sunglasses. I figure no one will be rude enough to ask about their skin.
Pre-gamed and sunglassed, me and my conglomerate stumble out of the building and proceed to walk the twenty some blocks to
The Thrust. Along the way, it occurs to me that it would be much more fitting for us to be headed to an
n+1 party right now, but sometimes things don’t work out like that.
As feared, I’m the only one who’s sweating when we roll up to
The Thrust building, where there are two poets working the door:
— The invitation said plus one.
— Ah, yeah, it’s like an alien hive mind situation? So they really count as one. We should be good.
The poets look at me suspiciously and unsure of which to make eye contact with, I look at the floor. No one says anything for a bit and then we pay the cover and enter the party. I signal to the hive mind that they should disperse, mingle, and not mention anything about Sally Rooney. It’s feeling like a three to five beers kind of night, and I’m already two deep, so I head to the bar to order one to three beers.
Once beered, I spot one of the hive mind chatting it up with some of the people I met last time and a few of the so-called “old souls.” I decide to sidle over and see what’s going on.
— It’s
Middlemarch.
— It’s gotta be
Middlemarch.
— I say, if
Middlemarch isn’t in your top three . . .
I haven’t read
Middlemarch so I sidle away to the next group.
—
Middlemarch.
— It’s gotta be
Middlemarch.
— What about
Belo-
— It’s
Middlemarch.
This happens six to seven more times. Eventually I find someone who hasn’t read
Middlemarch and we start chatting about literary value.
— Maybe you’re just bad at math — she says.
— What do you mean?
— There’s
an essay by Ben Marcus where he introduces the Fog Index, which is a measure of a text’s complexity. The Fog index tells us more than metaphor count, and as we increase the complexity of our literary metrics, we get closer and closer to the inscrutable
n-dimensional tensors of deep learning algorithms, like the autoencoder at the heart of Peli Grietzer’s “
A Theory of Vibe”. Doesn’t it seem possible that a very sophisticated deep learning algorithm might be able to assess literary value in a way that mimics human qualitative assessment but is ultimately quantitative in nature? How different are our brains than computers, really?
I read her the McGurl quotes and make my case about sports. She responds,
— But I think you’ve kind of fucked yourself with the baseball thing. Think about catching a baseball. Tracking the arc of a baseball is something you can do more or less intuitively, but it’s also something you can formalize using math and ostensibly teach to a machine. It may be significantly harder, but why should literary criticism be any fundamentally different?
Computers. My head’s swimming, and I’m about to call Susan Sontag over for the assist when a gin and tonic goes flying by my head. Thinking that’s not usually what gin and tonics do, I turn around.
Amidst an absolute clusterfuck of literary on literary violence, the hive mind looks at me sheepishly: they signal that despite my warning, they mentioned something about Sally Rooney, and now we can’t really do anything except dodge flying gin and tonics and make our escape as a leather-pantsed Rooneyite chokes out a bucket-hat wearing Bernhardian, who’s using their free legs to kick at a pair of plaid-clad Murnane enthusiasts, whose eyes your intrepid reporter follows in time to catch a Krasznahorkaite suplexing a Melchorist off a long plastic table, at the end of which a trio of Schweblinites seem to be curb stomping a Mabanckounist—well, here comes the 19th century: Zoalists teaming up with de Assisists teaming up with Melvillians to clothesline a fleeing Sternian. I wasn’t expecting the haymaker from the Austenite, nor was I particularly anticipating a Thiong'oite slap to land so crunchily on that Kafkesque woman who’s tripping over herself fleeing the pair of Yan stans mutually headbutting one of the Headheads.
A lot more eponymous stuff is happening, but there’s no time to linger: poets and theorists are inbound, and I’d hate to see what kind of violence they’re capable of. I signal to the hive mind that it’s no worries but we should probably bounce. They all nod, so I hurl a gin and tonic just to feel like I’m participating, and then we crash out of the door and into the street, where it’s a little nippy. I figure the walk home will be a good time to heat up.
Upon our return, we find that their spaceship has accrued a few parking tickets. I tell them not to worry about it, and we exchange contact info and promise to keep in touch. They zoom off. It’s been a long day and I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep.
Until next time!
A Kaiju Incident
A good night’s sleep does not seem to be in the cards as at around 3 AM, I wake up to sound of the city’s kaiju sirens, which can only mean that a large monster has awoken from its Atlantic slumber and begun its rampage across the eastern seaboard. Making a mental note that I need to stay away from New York City, I do what any sensible intrepid reporter would do and text Them to ask if they’d like an on-the-ground report; it seems someone is working the night desk, and They write back to say that They are interested but that They’ve received some reader feedback about my most recent reports and will be dispatching an artificially intelligent android to my location to handle all “comedically naïfish musings” so that I can focus on more serious intrepid reporting. They claim this will be good for my professional development.
As I think about this, I hear a knock at the door; I open the door, and there stands an artificially intelligent android that looks kind of like me. Neither of us is making eye contact, but I welcome her in all the same and offer her a pour over.
It turns out we have a lot in common. One difference, she explains, is that she is powered by a large language model (LLM) that has been trained on my intrepid reports. I ask my new friend if she thinks that the indomitable human spirit can be so easily encoded in 1s and 0s, and she says not all of them. I don’t really know what to say to that—I wish I had read more sci-fi.
A series of loud explosions signals to us that we have work to do so we hit the streets. I’m ready to try a new affect. We can’t see the monster yet but there’s a lot of traffic and also people fleeing as their homes, places of employment, and—indeed—livelihoods are destroyed in a manner neither metaphorical nor allegorical but—indeed—viscerally real: people are dying. If you’ve only seen it on a screen, it’s difficult to understand just how manifestly horrific a kaiju attack really is. You would hope that some cocktail of survival instinct and shock would short circuit your ability to perceive and process what is happening around you. But it’s just that. A hope. The truth is, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find that a kaiju attack is a pretty cerebral experience. Even if you are capable of suspending your concern for your fellow human, there is no escape in self-preservation: instead, you become acutely aware that though your body may manage to survive, you won’t; the person that emerges on the other side of this experience will bear so little relation to the person that entered it that even years of regular, deliberate self-work won’t be enough to set them back on the path they were on pre-kaiju attack; what you really become aware of at the onset of a kaiju attack is that nothing will ever be the same. Not for you, anyways. For those who live outside the area of attack, the event will soon become abstractly historical; it will disintegrate into anecdotes and media. But for you there will be no such luck. You are marked. This experience is yours now. Or rather: your its.
The android looks at me.
— Do you think it’s a bad idea to smoke at this juncture — she says, twirling an immaculately rolled J — vis-à-vis being uncouth?
— I think it might be kind of overwhelming — I offer.
— I see.
An otherworldly scream cuts the sky.
The kaiju is now visible—or, at least, one of its tentacles is. The tentacle is gripping a bodega; the suckers are the size of cars, and the flesh gleams with ooze; you can hear the blood pumping. Everything is pulsing. That something so monstrously large can exist in one of our oceans is only a sign that the phrase
our oceans is woefully—and in this case, punishably—problematic. Is what’s truly scary about the kaiju that it is autonomous? That it has a mind of its own? An intelligence? Compare this with the natural disaster scenario, in which the large earthquake or deadly hurricane can be seen as a direct extension of the concept of nature itself. But even this, I realize, we might trouble. Insofar as it is a system described by rules and capable of processing inputs to give outputs, in what sense is a deadly hurricane so different than the android running alongside me? It lacks a centralized intelligence unit, a brain or program, but can we speak cogently about decentralized intelligence? Isn’t that, after all, the same way we talk about systems like capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy? Even as the capitalist class organizes to crush all opposition, the operating intelligence of capitalism does not seem to reside in a cabal of capitalists; rather, it is embedded in the logics of capital itself . . .
The sound of a crushing bodega rouses me from my thoughts. I follow the android’s finger to the sky, where just the kaiju’s beak has emerged from the clouds. The beak opens, and another otherworldly scream cuts the sky. The kaiju is on the move.
I can feel my phone vibrating in my pocket; it’s Them. They’re asking how it’s going. Have I gotten a chance to talk with the android much? Have I felt that I can be more serious? I reply
not really but yes and They say that’s good, and I should feel free to mix up my affect, but I better get close with her in the next thirty seconds because we’re about to be co-pilots. Before I can inquire what this means, the streets open up a few blocks back, and the head of a mecha emerges. Based on the size of the head, I’m assuming this mecha is around twenty stories tall. The android signals to me that I should stop ruminating on the idea of mechanized violence as a solution to environmental catastrophe, and instead walk over to the head and get inside.
We get inside the mecha.
Once inside, the rest of the mecha emerges from the ground and it becomes clear that we are both twenty stories tall and wielding a giant sword—or, at the very least, something swordlike. It’s humming. The android suggests we do some calisthenics to warm up; she assures me that I shouldn’t worry, as piloting a mecha is a bit like riding a bike, but with less exercise involved. As I prepare to stew on that one, I see that we’ve already hopped onto one of the kaiju tentacles, stabbed our sword inside (prompting a third otherworldly scream), and begun to run up the tentacle, dragging our sword behind us such that we’ve split open the tentacle and showered the streets of New York City with deep sea gore. As we approach the brain, a second tentacle swats us into the sky; I barely have time to make peace with my own mortality before the android engages the thrusters, and it becomes clear this mecha can fly.
The android’s really the star of the show here; I can’t see her intrepid report yet, but I assume it will be good. As we take out a few more tentacles, I wonder what will be worse for the American literary tradition, the physical destruction of Brooklyn or AI automation. Though a seasoned intrepid reporter, I’m an amateur critic, and one thing I’ve learned is that when you only have a “
The Culture Industry” shaped hammer, everything starts to look like a nail—I wonder if there’s a sense in which a lot of mass cultural production is already sort of automated. But of course, a lot of mass cultural production is still paid, and that seems to be the issue at hand. Well, that and the kaiju.
We’re back in the sky. The android alerts me that without a surge of the indomitable human spirit, the mecha won’t be able to surpass its limits and plunge through the kaiju’s eyeball into its brain and out the other side. I see it’s my time to shine. I summon up memories of my loved ones, and, though I’m constitutionally opposed to it, do a bit of yelling until the controls start glowing and the android confirms that the mecha has synchronized with my spirit. We produce a second sword, begin to spin rapidly, and torpedo through the kaiju’s eyeball into its brain and out the other side, thus ending the monstrous menace. Once grounded, I emerge from the mecha a little dizzy and very relieved. The nightmare is over.
I charged my phone a bit in the mecha, so I still have some battery. I text Them to let them know that I’m ready to write a serious report, and They write back saying the android has just filed hers. I ask Them if they’re happy with her report and They say that it’s good but that They would’ve liked to see more human-android interaction; They assure me that we’ll get another opportunity in a future situation.
Evidently Their New York City office has survived, but They say that with all the kaiju coverage, it probably doesn’t make sense to file any more reports until after the holidays. This seems reasonable to me; it’s been a taxing few days, and I’d like a break.
Until next year!
A Curious Case
When the holidays are over and They’re back in the office and They write me to say that They want to do a noir thing and that the victim’s the Novel and that I’m free to do the voice and also smoke indoors, I am overcome with joy—what can I say? The idea has legs.
So, when I arrive at the scene of the crime, and discover that everything is well-lit and that everyone is one in a colorful cast of distinctive personalities summoned under somewhat false pretenses, you can imagine how immensely devastated I am to learn that we’re actually doing something more along the lines of
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, a movie which I watched over the break and had no real insights about. Frustrated, I text Them to complain that my handle on the conventions of the genre is loose, at best, and They text me to say, who cares? and also, did you pick up on the fact that everyone is fucking each other?
I look around. So it would seem. There is a definite, we-are-all-fucking-each-other sort of je ne sais quoi to my current environment. Fortunately, I practice radical acceptance, so I am able to slip out of the shackles of anger that bind me so and slip into new shackles: the shackles of sleuth. I’m ready to solve some crimes.
The Novel is lying on the floor of the living room. There are what I surmise to be bullet holes in its back and what I deduce is blood, soaking into the floor. Everyone is looking at me expectantly, so I nudge the Novel’s corpse with my foot, let out a satisfied chuckle, and light up a spliff.
— Mx. MFA — I begin, getting ready to pace — I bahleave it was the great critic Theodore Adorno who said “To think is to identify.” And I do bahleave that upon entahing this domestile-
— Do you normally talk like that?
I cough.
— And isn’t it domicile?
I cough again.
— To return to my point, I bahleave that upon entahing this domicile, I was able to ascertain, which is to say, identify, the killah.
— Yes — says Mx. NYC — and it’s not me; it’s Mx. CIA, who is literally holding a smoking gun. Can we go now, please?
— Now hold just a country minute — I say, spotting the smoking gun that Mx. CIA is indeed holding — you mean to tell me that you ahready solved this-
— Oh my GOD, of
course you think that! No, not you, dumbass — says Mx. MFA, seeing me sputter —
you. We fucked
once. One time. And it was
so long ago. I don’t understand why you’re still hung up on-
— One time?
— One time.
I pensively exhale. Something is not square.
— If I may, I bahleave-
— And while we’re on the subject of fucking, let’s talk about what you and Mx. HRT have been getting up to.
— How is that the same?
— How is it not?
I look at Mx. DSM, but they seem busy practicing radical acceptance on the couch.
— There’s a certain sense in which there are ways in which you are both kind of being fucked by Mx. MCM’ — observes Mx. PhD, to a pair of heavy sighs.
—
Obviously.
At this point, I’m feeling a little peckish, so I slink over to the kitchen, where something near the chore board confirms my hypotheses. I nod at Mx. THC as they emerge from the pantry and we share a meditative munch before the lights go out and several gunshots are heard—just as I suspected.
When I reenter the living room, the situation seems to have changed. Everyone is lying on the floor, bleeding what I infer is blood from holes that I conclude are bullet in origin; the Novel’s corpse is nowhere to be found.
This is not what happened in
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. It is, however, exactly what I expected. These deaths can mean one thing and one thing only. Now, if this were
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, you would be experiencing a flashback, but one thing I’ve learned the hard way is that the inexorable march of time only happens in one direction—and also that life and movies aren’t the same.
Anywho, it’s clear from the clues scattered about the crime scene that what happened was that the Novel had the temerity to suggest that they upgrade from a gas stove to an electric one, on account of the environmental impact as well as a concern for their own personal safety, and that this suggestion, so temerous and outlandish, drove everyone else into an ire so powerful it could only result in a collective shooting of the Novel, each taking their turn to shoot it in the back—this would explain the bullet holes. What happened next is easily deducible, and I’m loathe to even report it, on account of my absolute faith in the deductive capabilities of my audience—however, as I am paid by the word, what happened was this: in the short time in which I have been here, a regime of violent degrowth socialism has taken over the United States and dispatched hit squads to the domiciles of all vaguely allegorical polycules that refuse to upgrade their gas stove to an electric one. Naturally, when the lights went out, members of said vaguely allegorical polycule turned to their phones, where they had just received news alerts about the very same coup; spooked by the flicker of the shadow of death, Mx. MFA accidentally discharged their firearm, killing Mx. NYC, a noise that Mx. CIA mistook for the sound of a violent degrowth socialism death squad, then unloading the rest of Chekov’s Smoking Gun into the darkness and managing to wipe out the rest of the room. Haunted by their crimes, Mx. CIA then turned their own firearm on themselves. Case closed.
Or rather, case ajar. For the described sequence of events—so intuitive and obvious—fails to explain one thing: where did the Novel go? Its corpse is nowhere to be found. I’ve read at least one canonical detective short story, so I know that the most likely suspect is a rogue orangutan; this might also explain the hair scattered about the living room. But a quick survey of Google Maps allows me to deduce that there are no zoos nearby. Troubling. There has to be a more complicated explanation; I look where the Novel’s corpse once was.
Lo and behold, I find something: a ticket stub. And not just any ticket stub. I would recognize that corrugation pattern anywhere.
A knock at the door prevents me from cackling in excitement; it’s the violent degrowth socialism death squad, who prove to be capable deductive thinkers. They quickly deduce that the heap of corpses in the living room is not my fault and that this is not my domicile and, therefore, not my gas stove. After I help them exchange the stoves, we ride back to the city, where a number of comical situations play out involving the slang usage of the word
gas; finally, once safely ensconced in the comfort of my home, I let out the long-awaited cackle.
See y’all on the luxury blimp!
The One about the Luxury Blimp
You’ll recall from the last episode that I was investigating the death of the Novel; one thing led to another, and here I am, at long last, on the luxury blimp, surrounded by MILFs. Note that this is their, and not my, nomenclature; what I ascertain, using the powers of deductive reasoning, and also by talking to them, is that these MILFs are being luxuriously transported to their namesake manor for the purposes of reality television. Last time I came anywhere near reality television, I was executed and ended up in Hell, but I’m feeling good about my odds. That’s that Blimp Confidence they’re always talking about.
Well, it turns out I may not be as idiomatically gifted as I thought, because it’s only somewhere between the seventh and tenth gin and tonic, when the blimp terrorists reveal themselves, and the MILFs start screaming, and the other passengers start screaming, and the captain buzzes over the intercom to start screaming, that I (intrepid) remember that other thing they say about Blimp Confidence; unable to help myself, I let out an exaggerated sigh, and this proves somewhat socially inadvisable, as I seem to have angered both the MILFs and the blimp terrorists, the latter of whom proceed to advance towards me carrying their assorted weaponry. It all looks pretty sharp or otherwise scary, but interestingly, none of them thought to bring a gun on board, so I’m free to shoot six of them and then get in some rather involved hand-to-hand combat with the seventh, their leader. I win, which seems to appease the MILFs.
It occurs to me that these terrorists might know something about the current status of the Novel, so I unbalaclava the leader and ask:
— Do you know anything about who killed the Novel? And if it’s not dead, where it is?
His reply is characteristic:
— Kill me.
— But I only had six bullets.
— Strangle me then.
— Kind of harrowing for me, don’t you think?
— Throw me off the blimp.
We negotiate for a while until he finds his will to live. This was, in fact, the outcome I had been hoping for all along, but I knew from a critical pedagogy reading I did in college that simply depositing, or
banking, that idea inside him would not be conducive to my broader aims. My patience having paid off, I rebalaclava the leader, leave him to the MILFs, and jump off the blimp.
I open my parachute at the right time and reflect: I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. We were headed North. I was on the wrong blimp! As I crash through the undergrowth, I chide myself for being so stupid: this is exactly the kind of thing I’m always messing up. Ugh.
It doesn’t seem like anyone’s around so I decide to vocalize a little. It feels good to let out the frustration. One interesting thing about intrepid reporting is that it’s basically a form of self-annihilation: usually I’m so focused on what’s happening right in front of me that I don’t ever stop to think about what’s happening right inside me. There’s not that much so it’s somewhat manageable to think about. I think I am kind of sad because talking to those MILFs woke up some dormant Gender Feelings I had thought I was past, and also I’m pretty sure I killed six people—or, at the very least, severely wounded. They seemed to have a somewhat goonish relationship vis-à-vis the leader, and I can talk myself into believing that they would have killed me and a healthy number of MILFs, so it’s not too hard to self-rationalize, but on the other hand, I was so busy using the powers of deductive reason to deduce that we were headed North that I didn’t even bother to ask them what their rationale was for hijacking the blimp—maybe they would have made some convincing points.
As I reflect on the political economy of the goon, as well as the interiority such relations of production may engender, I am joined in my solitude by a number of reverse ecoterrorists (you’ll recall that in the last episode, a regime of violent degrowth socialism had taken over the United States, forcibly removing gas stoves from various homes, and otherwise saving the Earth; as you might expect, reactionaries of all stripes have banded together to become reverse ecoterrorists).
— Hands where I can see them!
— How am I supposed to know what you can see?
He shoots me in the leg, which hurts.
— Ok, here are my hands.
— What are you doing in our territory?
I begin to explain how They hired me to do a noir thing about the death of the Novel, and how one thing led to another and then I was parachuting out of a luxury MILF blimp because it was headed North and I didn’t really want to confront how many formative experiences I’ve been denied by a society that’s hostile to my existence, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in that because he then shot me in the other leg, which hurt almost more than the first one. I reason that maybe I was talking too much about myself and resolve to be a less narcissistic conversational participant.
— So what’s your story?
— They took our stoves.
— Your freedom too, huh?
— You’re goddamn right.
— So you’re saying you’re upset that they took your stoves and also your freedom?
(I picked up this active listening trick from reading a book about nonviolent communication, but then one of them bashes my nose in with the butt of their rifle, so I make a mental note to write the author and ask how he would’ve handled such a situation.)
— We could kill you right now.
— That’s real.
At this point, I have to confess that I’m a little bored. My legs really hurt and despite my best efforts, I don’t really care what these reactionaries have to say on the subject of Death.
— You could totally kill me but I’m actually kind of buddies with some people fairly high up in the regime of violent degrowth socialism, so you may be able to trade me for a stove or two.
My friends aren’t actually that high up, and I don’t really like lying, but it seemed prudent at this juncture. They take me back to their reactionary fortress and try to negotiate with the regime of violent degrowth socialism; the food kind of sucks, but I have a feeling they’re not really trying.
A deal brokered, I’m happy to report that I’ve made it back home. It occurs to me that whether the Novel was never actually dead, or whether its corpse was stolen, whatever I’m looking for, it’s probably pretty far away by now. I text Them to let Them know that I’ve failed, and no one responds, which makes me too nervous to sleep, bad news for me, as sleep hygiene is very important for my mental well-being.
The next morning They text me back and say that because I’ve failed to discern what has happened to the Novel, they are sending me to Intrepid Reporter Con for the purposes of my professional development. Fuck me. I hate conferences.
Well, see you there, I guess.
A Dream Interlude
Nervous the night before Intrepid Reporter Con, I have a dream. It goes like this.
I am at the Adult Spelling Bee. I am here. In the room. Everyone is looking at me for I am the one whose turn it is to spell. I am the speller. But I am bad at spelling. I am nervous. If I fail to spell the word correctly, I will likely be executed. They will execute me on stage, in front of the live studio audience; they will do this using a large, silver revolver; this is, after all, the Adult Spelling Bee.
I do not yet know that I am in a dream, and there are other rules: for each word that you spell correctly, you must down an Allagash White. I am open to drinking an Allagash White, but much prefer the illusion of choice. The illusion of choice is a foreign concept at the Adult Spelling Bee, except if it is your turn to spell; it is currently my turn to spell. They have yet to give me a word, so I am free to think about the other rules. Here’s one: fail to down your Allagash White, and you are presented with one of two options: die, or spend time in the Pit. Many prefer death. Against all odds, I have successfully spelled my word but failed to drink my Allagash White, so here I am, in the Pit. They have lowered me in using a cage. Although I much prefer the illusion of freedom, I am thankful for the bars; they are strong, well-spaced, and not easily chewed through. I was previously agnostic about hyenas.
The Adult Spelling Bee provides entertainment to families across the globe; it does respectable ratings for the Network, and advertisers are generally pleased. There are a number of cameras in the Pit, and superfans of the show, so-called ASBies, are quick to assure you that this is where the real work of the show happens. The Adult Spelling Bee may challenge assumptions you previously held dear, for instance, about hyenas or Belgian-style wheat beers. In the three years it has been on air, it has been widely credited with sparking a number of vigorous social movements. There is much to recommend the Adult Spelling Bee.
But at the present moment, I am less than thankful for its existence. They have released a number of other animals into the Pit. I think I am overstimulated. I look around the walls of the cage and spy an intercom.
— Hello — I say.
— Hello — says the intercom.
— Would you be so kind as to lower me another Allagash White? I think I am overstimulated.
— Check the cooler.
I open the cooler and find an Allagash White. I drink about two thirds and then take a nap. I have another dream. It goes like this.
I am on the runway. I remind myself that I am a model, not a plane. I am beautiful. I am glamorous. I cannot fly. People want to be me.
If I fail to walk correctly, I will be executed. If I fail to serve, I will be executed. If I deviate in any way from the Instructions, I will be executed. This is what they taught me in model school. I remember it well. The teacher. The students. The desks. The classroom.
You are not a plane. You are a model. You will act like it. I act modular. One of the other models ahead of me fails to walk correctly, and they yank her off the runway using a comically large hook. Laughs from the studio audience. This was a critical misstep on their part. I have now noticed the studio audience; they are half-submerged in a pool of Allagash White; I am in a dream; I no longer have to follow the Instructions.
— Hello — I say to the studio audience.
They gasp, and I turn my arms into wings. They gasp again. I turn my nose into a plane nose. They gasp thrice. I take off. But there is not much room to fly. I forgot to change that. So I crash into the wall. The studio audience laughs.
— Please — I gasp — my elixir . . .
A member of the studio audience brings me an Allagash White.
— Thank you — I say, downing three fifths of the Allagash White and falling asleep. I have a third dream. It goes like this.
I am at the Adult Spelling Bee. I am here. In the room. Everyone is looking at me because I am a plane. I make plane noises. I taxi. Inside me, the beverage service jumps the gun:
— Ma’am? — says the flight attendant — would you like a drink?
— Coffee — says the passenger, who is obviously a terrorist.
Gunshots. Explosions. I wake up into dream 2 and notice that I still have two fifths of the Allagash White; finished, I now enter dream 3b.
I am the Adult Spelling Bee. Inside me, intrepid reporters struggle to down Allagash Whites and are sent to the Pit. They fall asleep and have dreams of their own. The cosmos is in perfect disorder. Everyone’s getting a little weird with it.
I wake up. I wake up again. I wake up a third time. I am in my bed. It’s real life now. I check my phone. I still have a few hours before Intrepid Reporter Con. I have received various text messages from the Allagash Brewing Company. Sigh. I’m tired. Maybe I should go to sleep again. I try, but it doesn’t work. I’m too nervous. It’s fine. I’ll be fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just a conference.
A New Beginning
I should’ve known by that melancholick stupor so potent, that choleric doom so portending, but it turns out my biles were all fucked up, and when your biles are all fucked up, it becomes very hard to attend Intrepid Reporter Con. You can only imagine what sort of fresh humoral hell unfolded when They decided to end my contract, leaving me so-called “freelance.” But all’s well that ends well: I got bangs, rebalanced my humors, and opened a mildly successful, boutique management consulting firm, Intrepid Inc., whose services I encourage you to explore; we have several very happy clients.
I need some liquid assets so I decide to head down to the bank and see what’s what. As I’m waiting in line, I can’t help but overhear the man in front of me venting some spleen:
— For the last time, I am Pagliacci. P-a-g-l-i-a-c-c-i. Pagliacci. — he says, turning around in anger — oh fuck me. Grimaldi.
— Money troubles again, Pagli? — says the man I deduce to be Grimaldi, snickering slightly. — All those doctor visits, one presumes.
— This doesn't concern you.
This is so weird, I think: I’m pretty sure I’ve tweeted about this. But I don’t like it when people break the fourth wall, so I decide to stop listening and see what else is going on. A new group of clowns has entered through the front door; their arms are heavy, and their Bostonian accents more so, so I’m pretty sure I’m in some sort of
The Town pastiche. I sigh. The old me may have jumped at this bit, but I have bangs now, and also places to be. Business.
I let
The Town guys do their thing and then ask if I can hitch a ride with them back downtown, where I have some plans to meet up with a client at one of my old haunts. One of them tries to shoot me, but he doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing, so I disarm him and deal a cheeky blow to his ribs; this wins the respect of
The Town guys, and they decide to drop me off more or less near where I want to go. Twenty blocks later, I show up at the bar, ready to meet my client.
This is an interesting client. While I can’t speak to the nature of their business ventures, on account of my strict adherence to consultancy ethics, I can say that they saw from my LinkedIn that I had spent some time in Hell and were excited about the possibility of capturing a new market sector. All business is good business, as far as I’m concerned, so I gave them my usual spiel and showed them a few infographics, which they seemed to enjoy. I was a little worried about these guys, but they pulled through, made some record profits, and then got acquired by an even larger conglomerate, so we made plans to celebrate with something on the order of 4 to 13 gin and tonics and a bit of live music—art pop, I believe.
I don’t see my client, so I head to a table in the back and pull out my phone, which is out of battery. The music hasn’t come on yet and they’re playing the David Foster Wallace Hot Ones interview on the TV:
— It’s easy to run this wing through a kind of standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same wing can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people’s tolerance to spice. I . . . um . . . well to me, spice has always been about a sense of . . . compunction.
Weird, I think, I’m pretty sure I’ve tweeted about this too—just what the hell is going on here?
But I can’t get too metafictional, someone’s walking up to my table.
— Well, well, well, if it isn’t the intrepid reporter herself.
— Ah, — I say, a touch melancholick, — that was my old gig. Now I work in management consulting.
— Isn’t that sort of unethical?
I try to explain that we actually have our own code of ethics, but then I remember that this is Larry, someone I know from my reporting days. Larry is soon joined by several more reporters, and we get to chatting. This goes on for a while until:
— Is there a reason you keep looking at the door?
— Sorry? — I say.
— You keep looking at the door. Are you expecting someone to come in?
— Not really, my client’s not supposed to be here for another few hours. Old habit, I guess.
— What do you mean old habit?
— I mean we’re all reporters here. You know how it is. One minute you’re drinking, the next a group of bank robbers or terrorists or Hell-based revolutionaries-
— What?
— What do you mean what?
— Terrorists?
— Sure, or like aliens-
— Aliens?
— You’ve never done an alien thing?
— Now you’re looking at the other door.
— Yeah it’s protected by the bar so if anyone starts shooting-
One of the other reporters coughs, politely.
— I don’t totally know how to say this, but have you considered . . .
— What?
— It’s just . . .
— Well . . .
— . . . you might be-
— A little traumatized? — says Larry — are you talking to someone?
— I’m talking to you — I say, very confused.
They collectively sigh, pat me on the back, and leave.
Huh, I think. Should I go to therapy?
Therapy
My new therapist has her fingers steepled:
— Do they teach you to do that in therapy school?
— I’m self-taught.
— Ah.
— So, why did you come here?
— I think I’m traumatized.
— What from?
— Bank robbers, terrorists, Hell-based revolutionaries.
She makes a note in her book.
— What have you tried?
— To do what?
— Deal with this trauma.
— I journal, I take walks, sometimes I sublimate things into 280 character-
— That’s the second time you’ve done that.
— Use comedy to escape uncomfortable tension?
— Do a surprising thing on the third list item. It’s textbook stuff. Real bread and butter shit.
— . . .
— I’d like to see you push yourself.
— . . .
— . . .
— I don’t actually think I’m traumatized.
— . . .
— I think everyone thinks I’m traumatized because I got executed, and spent some time in Hell, and fought that kaiju, and dealt with the Chili’s Grill & Bar terrorists, and dealt with the pope terrorists, and dealt with the MILF blimp terrorists, and went to a few scene-y literary parties, but I don’t think any of that has had any effect on my interiority. I’m actually not sure I really have any interiority. I don’t really like to think about things. I’m more of an action girlie. Go here. Go there. Do this. Do that. You know? It’s kind of hard for me to spend time in my head.
— And you don’t think that’s a problem?
— Not really. There’s kind of a lot of stuff to do so-
— All that polysyndeton, I mean. You did it just now. And I’ve noticed it in your reports.
— You read my reports?
— I’m your therapist.
— So shouldn’t you be addressing my feelings and not my rhetorical devices?
— I think we both know that your rhetorical devices are a major part of your feelings.
— . . .
— . . .
— I’m in management consulting now.
— You’ve mentioned.
— I think it’s good for me.
— So you’ve said.
— I don’t think it’s a problem that I don’t have any real psychological depth.
— Me either.
— You don’t?
— It makes my job easier.
— What kind of therapist are you?
— Self-taught.
— I thought you’re supposed to wait until the end to do the callback.
— That’s why you’re you, and I’m me.
— I see.
— . . .
— What were we talking about?
— Your comedic crutches.
— Before that.
— Trauma.
— Right.
— . . .
— . . .
— . . .
Something occurs to me.
— I think I’m going to do a bit of self-advocacy in this space. I have enjoyed this visit but I’m finding it emotionally draining, and I think you and I are moving in different directions, therapeutically. I’d like to establish a boundary. From now on, I won’t be talking about my trauma. I am sorry if that makes you feel negative emotions. I just don’t think it’s healthy for me to be talking about, and I have to prioritize my mental health at this moment in time.
— Hmm.
— ‘Hmm’?
— Yeah, hmm.
— . . .
— . . .
— You can stop looking at the door. No one’s coming in.
— Sorry.
— Why are you apologizing?
— I made a mistake.
— Many do.
— Doesn’t make it right.
— No, it makes it human.
— Huh.
— ‘Huh’?
— Are you doing a bit where you try to sound like a real therapist to bait me into being emotionally vulnerable and then you’re going to pull the rug out from underneath and humiliate me?
— Why would I do that? I’m your therapist.
— A second ago you were criticizing my rhetorical devices.
— That was just a warm-up.
— For what?
— This.
— I’m so confused.
— That’s evident.
— I don’t understand why you’re being mean to me.
— Because you can take it.
— Can I?
— Aren’t you?
I chew on that for a second.
— I feel like I’m supposed to present this grand unified theory of all my problems, and once I identify the root cause of all this, I’ll be able to solve them all in one fell swoop. But I don’t think that’s what being a person’s like. I think being a person is about constant renegotiation. Day-in, day-out. Struggle. And I think you know that. I think you’re just doing all this so I . . . so I come to this conclusion! Fuck!
She smiles.
— You’re ready.
— For what?
— Therapy 2.
— Therapy 2?
— Therapy 2, babyyyyyyy.
Therapy 2
On a deserted island in the West Pacific, 27 days into Therapy 2, my conscience strikes up a conversation:
We have to eat her.
We don’t have to eat her.
We do.
We don’t.
You’re hungry.
We have food.
Not that much food.
I’ll concede that we don’t have that much food.
So.
So she’ll take us home when we need to go home. This is Therapy 2, not
Lost.
You haven’t seen Lost.
It’s part of the culture.
You resent her.
I don’t resent her.
She brought you to a deserted island in the West Pacific and forced you to do a series of increasingly esoteric challenges in order to unlock survival materials.
It’s just like
Survivor.
You’ve only seen one episode of Survivor.
It’s part of the-
Eat her.
No.
Your head is literally in the sand.
It’s called exposure therapy.
You can’t breathe.
Well now I’m going to be thinking about it.
You’re an idiot.
That’s it, I’m drawing a boundary.
With your conscience?
Line in the sand.
You hate sand.
I’ll concede that I still hate sand.
So eat her.
I-
— Time’s up.
I pull my head out of the sand. My therapist looks at me.
— Any insights?
— Not really.
Behind her, the sky is blue; the water is blue; the clouds are white; the breeze is gentle.
— Are you ready to go back?
— How many times are we going to do this again?
— Until you have an insight.
I put my head back in the sand.
Hello again.
I drew a boundary.
I crossed it.
I know.
Have you given any more thought to eating her?
I feel like you’re really fixated on this.
You really don’t have much else going on.
Rude! But yeah, totally fair.
So.
So I’m not going to eat her. She’s helping me unravel the tapestry of my self so that I can reweave it into a shroud of personhood.
Jesus. You’re fucking losing it.
It’s all this sand.
Can you feel it in your mouth?
I couldn’t until now.
Ha, ha.
— Time’s up.
I pull my head out of the sand. My therapist looks at me.
— Any insights?
— Not really.
— Are you ready to go back?
— Can I look at the sunset first?
— Why?
— It’s nice.
She turns around.
— Holy moly — she says.
— Right?
— That’s good shit.
— Right?
— Ok back to the sand.
It’s getting dark.
I know.
You’ll have the element of surprise.
I know.
So?
I just don’t think having the element of surprise is an ethically defensible motivation for eating your therapist.
Literally so stupid.
I really do feel like she’s helping me.
With the sand thing?
With feeling like I can be myself.
I didn’t realize you had that problem.
That’s because you never pay attention.
Fair.
. . .
Do you think she’s going to charge you for the flight out here?
Oh.
Dumbass.
I’ll expense it to the Firm.
The firm of which you are the sole employee?
Yes, the Firm.
Dumbass.
— Time’s up.
I pull my head out of the sand. My therapist looks at me.
— Any insights?
— Not really.
She smiles.
— This is the third time we’ve done this little bit.
— So?
— So you didn’t abuse the Rule of Three for Comedy. You’re growing.
— Does that mean we’re done here?
— We’re never done growing.
— . . .
— . . .
— Does that mean I should-
— Yep.
Back to the sand.
Therapy 3
— Today. That tangent you went on. That is the most fucked up thing I ever heard.
— . . .
— Can I ask you something? You’re jesterpilled, yeah?
— No.
— Well then what do you write the reports for?
— That’s a form of meditation.
— How’s that?
— I contemplate the riff in the Chili’s . . . the idea of . . . allowing your own punchline.
— But you’re not jesterpilled. So what do you believe?
— I believe people shouldn’t talk about this shit in therapy 3.
— Hold on, hold on, — my therapist sputters a bit — three months you’ve been in therapy 3, I get nothing from you. Today, what we’re into, now, do me a courtesy ok, I’m not trying to convert you.
— Ok, I consider myself a reporter, alright, but in philosophical terms I’m what’s called a foolmaxxer.
— Can you unpack that?
— That’s not what he says.
— What who says?
— In the scene. He says “um ok, what’s that mean?”
— Who does?
— He doesn’t say that either.
— . . .
— . . .
— We’ve talked about this.
— What?
— I don’t like being a part of your pastiches.
— It starts the engine.
— What engine?
— I think human consciousness-
— What engine?
— We’re here.
— They have a few more minutes in the scene.
— So you do know the scene.
— I know everything. I’m your therapist.
— I don’t think that’s how therapy’s supposed to work.
— This is therapy 3.
— . . .
— . . .
— My b.
— Can I ask you something?
— . . .
— Do you believe in God?
— They killed God. So now we have God 2. I thought you read my reports.
— Nothing that happens in your reports is real. You embellish.
— I report.
— You are severely delusional. Are you familiar with Quixote II disorder?
— What happened to Quixote I?
— Don’t worry about Quixote I. You have Quixote II.
— We’re here.
I step out of the car. Desolate grass shimmers in the wind. There is nothing out here. A house. Two cars. One broken. The Texan sun bakes in the sky. This is forsaken land. Two miles east, a slaughterhouse has burned its shit; flames lick at the sky, where the Texas sun is baking; you can smell it for miles: the shit, burning. Fingers of smoke-
— You and I both know smoke doesn’t have fingers.
— Can you read minds?
— You subvocalize.
— Fuck me.
— Get back in the car.
— The car is real?
— The car is fake.
— Why are you doing this to me?
— You haven’t paid for a single session.
— I thought this was therapy 3.
— . . .
— . . .
— . . .
— . . .
— I’m not going to say it.
— Sayyyy it.
— No.
I point my gun at her.
— Say it.
— No. I’d rather live on my feet than die on my knees.
— My mom always says that.
— You’ve mentioned.
— You’re distracting me.
— . . .
— What does Quixote II mean for me?
— It probably means you will never trust your reality. You will live your life unsure: whether things are really as they appear, whether you’ve simply distorted them, whether you can trust your brain. You will be afraid of distortions. Unlike the namesake of your disorder, you know that you’re insane. That’s why you have Quixote II. There will never be enough evidence; some part of you will always doubt. I’ll suggest to you here, today, in therapy 3, that the name Quixote II is no accident: you will experience the world doubly. Everyone does this, of course. But you do it clinically. To a concerning degree. You are doomed. You’re fucked. It’s over for you. You’re so-
— Are you supposed to be saying this kind of stuff?
— . . .
— . . .
— My b.
— Goddamnit.
She smirks.
— I think we have a case to solve.
— Aren’t we out of time?
— Ah fuck me. You’re so right. Next week?
— Next week.
#029
Isabel Pabán Freed
The Intrepid Reporter (2022ish – 2023ish)