With the short fiction collection My Child is a Stranger (AOS, 2025) Brandon Teigland offers a close reading of possible futures. Teigland’s exploratory voracity lays the groundwork for an examination of impulse, whether towards the limits of art or the human. The realm of theory has to live in our very real, fleshy heads, at least for now, but what happens when assumptions break down? I spoke to Brandon about this questing and interrogative collection.Rebecca Gransden: How long has the compilation of My Child is a Stranger taken you? What was the process of choosing the stories for inclusion like?Brandon Teigland: Over the past decade, while writing and publishing three other books, I was also assembling this collection—eighteen stories written between 2015 and 2025. In that time, the culture of contemporary fiction has changed. All the stories I've included in My Child is a Stranger are in some way about the time of their writing, whether they explicitly address the issues of the day or not. Everyone knows what these are: globalization, economic collapse, inequality, technological upheaval, environmental degradation, mass displacement, terror, war, and, with these, shifting ideas of what it means to be human.Is there a common thread among these? Probably not. As Jean-François Lyotard would say, there is no overarching metanarrative to explain and justify everything. There are only outcomes—ideas lived out in all their messy complexity. The 'child' in the title comes from Emmanuel Levinas’s Totality and Infinity, where he cites Isaiah 49: My child is a stranger, but a stranger who is not only mine, for he is me. He is me, a stranger to myself… However we relate to children in our own lives, the figure of the child—whether as an evasion or an embodiment of hope and despair—tells us something of the fears we as a species have for the future and what hope we invest in it.RG: What does the posthuman mean to you, and how does it manifest in your writing?BT: Posthumanism is a strange institution—one that allows us to be everything, anything. David Roden’s Disconnection Thesis suggests that posthumans would be radically different from humans because they would be 'disconnected' from existing human forms of life, practices, and conceptual frameworks. This disconnection isn’t just physical but involves a deeper ontological rupture—meaning posthuman beings may not be understandable in human terms, as they would operate outside the assemblage of human social systems.I see two kinds of posthumanism: ‘open’ posthumanism, which is unrestricted and capable of embodying anything, and ‘closed’ posthumanism, which imposes its own self-chosen limitations, restricting what posthumanism can be. I find both compelling and a little suspect, which is why I consider my writing a type of speculative posthumanism.Roden’s speculative posthumanism contrasts with critical posthumanism, which focuses on deconstructing the human concept within cultural and philosophical contexts. Instead, he considers the possible emergence of new kinds of beings beyond our ability to conceptualize—an unpredictable evolution where technology, biology, and autonomy break free from human structures. This aligns with my interest in posthumanism as a post-existential, almost unknowable state, where identity, transformation, and alienation lead to forms of existence outside human comprehension.To ask, ‘What is posthumanist literature?’ is to examine how writers might explore these feral forms of fabulist fiction. Literature is bound up with what it’s like to be us, to be human. How we make ourselves intelligible to ourselves. Posthuman literature matters not because it helps us understand who we are today, but because it asks who we might become, or not become, tomorrow.RG: “The Last Shape” explores themes of aging and decay, of the ravages of time. You highlight how the pursuit of ‘beating’ time, the thirst for life extension, can lead to a state that pollutes the living environment. How do you view the concept of deep time? What is the contemporary relationship to the idea of primitive memory and evolution?BT: In “The Last Shape”, Professor Ali Abbasi, a biogerontologist, ventures into California’s Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in search of Methuselah, haunted by dreams of being trapped among its twisted pines. He realizes these trees endure not through vitality but by existing in a half-dead state, mirroring his fear that extreme life extension leads to stagnation and detachment.As he ascends, he encounters a breath-like entity dormant within the roots, suggesting that longevity is not just biological but an unnatural disruption of time. When he descends, his own breathing has changed—his body altered, his humanity uncertain. The story critiques the philosophy of senescence as a postmortal impasse, where longer lifespans sever us from evolution, erasing primitive memory and disrupting the natural balance. Deep time, embodied in these trees, reveals that life and death are inseparable, and immortality is not a triumph but a corruption of identity. The pursuit of preservation doesn’t just pollute the environment—it pollutes the self, rendering us unrecognizable. True continuity lies not in defying death but in accepting the decay and renewal that sustain all life—offering no solace beyond nature’s endless cycle.RG: We each have to face our own apocalypse. The collection confronts apocalypticism on both a personal and societal scale. How do you view the modern era’s version of apocalypse? Is there an apocalyptic zeitgeist in the literary scene?BT: The apocalyptic realism of contemporary literature is an as-yet-unstated movement, forming new waves around writers who are realizing that there is no limit to what literature can do: it can do anything it wants. It can be raw, risky, and random—deliberately unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional. Most significantly, it can embrace a wilder edge, a kind of optimistic nihilism—something like a Crowleyian call to 'Do what thou wilt.'RG:I chose the wrong means of escape. I took an awkward shortcut that led me right back to where I was, left to compound the horror of living there, in that place of no escape, with the exhaustion of the journey. Empty-handed and up to my ears in student debt. If I wasn’t a destroyed human being then, I am now. Stagnant and useless. Full of false sensation. False scorn and feeble hatred. Not knowing which it really is, scorn or hatred, I laugh.“The Naysayer” pays particular attention to the concept of ‘giving up.’ What does ‘giving up’ mean in this story? To what degree did you consider structure in your approach to “The Naysayer”?BT: “The Naysayer” is a novelette written with the experimentalism and exploration of postmodernism and pessimistic fiction, chronicling a protagonist who internalizes failure as a metaphysical and existential certainty. The narrator, a disillusioned student burdened by debt and an eroding sense of self, isolates himself in a rented room where he discovers a lost manuscript, A Theory of Giving Up, written by the enigmatic Detlef Stefan. This "taxonomy of failure" becomes the narrator’s gospel, shaping his understanding of human effort as futile and resigning him to a state of inertia.Giving up, in this story, is not simply surrender; it is a conscious philosophical act, an assertion of negative will, a final form of resistance against a world that demands constant forward motion. Structurally, “The Naysayer” parallels this philosophy by rejecting conventional narrative resolution, unfolding in recursive loops of failed attempts, lost texts, and abandoned thoughts. Each passage feels like a false start, a directionless intellectual meandering that reflects the narrator’s inability to progress in life. The disquiet of “The Naysayer” is not in catastrophe, but in its quiet insistence that all roads lead nowhere.RG: How do you feel about the idea of anonymity?BT: I prefer to be a known unknown—recognizable yet obscured, present but absent. Absolute anonymity doesn’t interest me, but neither does full visibility. Slavoj Žižek describes the “Bartlebian act” as a quiet refusal, an opting out rather than direct resistance, like Melville’s scrivener who “would prefer not to.” Writers like László Krasznahorkai cultivate a similar aura of mystery, remaining at the periphery of mainstream literary consciousness while exerting undeniable influence. Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms take this even further, fragmenting the self into multiple voices, each existing independently while the author remains elusive. In an era of constant self-performance, there’s value in resisting that pull, letting the work speak for itself, and leaving just enough space for the writing to haunt the reader.RG:I’m afraid to begin this story, a story with no definite end. There’s no single structure I can name here, no crystallized normality around which I can base the experience of my life, nothing that I can’t doubt any more than I can doubt the very room where I’m writing this now, a room in a city in a postanthropic culture on a planet in space. On an old bed, I lie down passively, supine, in a kind of resignation, and wait for the end.Are there stories that you are still afraid to begin?BT: “Cathedral of Spiders” collapses the boundary between fiction and nonfiction by making myself a character, testing how far self-mythologization can go before dissolving into alienation. The work teeters between self-aggrandizement—casting myself as the last human, the final perceiver—and the ironic deflation of that role through solipsism and cosmic insignificance. Writing becomes both an act of creation and self-destruction, a manuscript that longs to be burned yet refuses to end. I feared this erasure—not just of identity, but of the distinction between fiction and reality, between writing and self-annihilation, between the author and authored. The text spirals endlessly, a voice narrating its own extinction, unable to stop.RG: What does the future mean to you? Where would you like to take your writing?BT: The future is a place where writing literature is impossible—extro-literature. Extro-science fiction, as described by Quentin Meillassoux, explores worlds where science cannot be used to explain existence. It rejects science’s ability to establish objects or theories, confronting the idea that the laws of nature are not logically necessary. In a similar way, extro-literature suggests that writing itself becomes impossible in a future where meaning dissolves, where narratives are no longer anchored to human logic or perception.All my writing questions the limits of human-centered storytelling. I’m trying to understand how a posthuman novel both embodies and reshapes its own form—how a posthuman novel functions. If writing itself becomes impossible, what remains? Perhaps only fragments—stories that can no longer be told, slipping away. If posthumanism severs us from our origins, then posthuman literature must do the same—breaking away, leaving no meaning behind.
Everyone was lined up to watch. We’d waited months. Cassie sat beside me on the curb as her dad revved the engine of his bike. Ready. All eight cars from the night’s derby were bumper-to-tail in front of him like a canyon. He had cleared seven in Wichita once, but never eight. Cassie’s step-mother Luann had refused to show. Cassie and I both wore shirts with a graphic of him soaring through the air. He signed them earlier that day, laughed and apologized that he was out of the smaller sizes. “Christ sake, those look like dresses on you two...” Walking away we’d sniffed the signatures as they dried. We sat beneath a streetlight waiting for the jump. Our white shirts glowed. Her knees were tucked into hers like huge tits, she looked down at them and smiled at me. “Hope mine never get this big.” She made jokes when she was nervous. Her dad turned the throttle again, ZRRAANG....ZRRAANG. Carnival lights turned woozy in storefront windows as they shook. He took a last look at the ramp and then retreated to the end of the block for his approach. He was the coolest guy I had ever seen. My dad was on stage with the rest of the band and they all started banging away on their instruments. He was on drums. It was their first original tune all night, a rabid, crescendoed free-for-all. The engine screamed through its gears down the street toward us. The band stopped on my dad’s cue as the front tire reached the foot of the ramp. Our hearts beat into our ears. Eight cars. Cassie knew before anyone else. She realized Luann was right. That eight was too many. She pulled her knees from her shirt and sprinted toward where he would crash land, feet from where his helmet split against the street.
***
After that he was different of course. The bones eventually healed but his head never did. No more state fairs, no more jumps. And Cassie was different too. She threw away all those shirts because no one wanted them anymore, especially her. They sold his motorcycles to pay the hospital bills. He would shuffle through neighborhoods, never lifting his feet. Sometimes barely dressed. People whispered in their yards about him until it wasn’t interesting anymore. Finally he took a shotgun into the basement and finished what the crash had begun. The police took most of the mess away, but the blood was still there. Shards of bone were left behind too, some stuck in the ceiling tiles even. I heard my dad screaming into the phone the next day, furious. “Because I would’ve done it myself, Frank, for fuck’s sake!!!” He came out of the kitchen, eyes wet, shaking his head. “That poor girl...’’ They’d let Cassie clean it all up herself because she and Luann couldn’t afford someone else.
***
I followed Cassie down to the creek behind the funeral home. She lifted her dress over the tall grass along the bank. The first time I’d seen her in a dress, or a necklace. She took off her shoes and put them on a large rock, then stepped in. She bent down and caught a few tadpoles in her cupped hands. That time of year there were thousands of them. We’d collected them together as little kids. “Lonesome in numbers...” I didn’t know if she was talking to me or the things squiggling around in her hands. She looked up. “It’s something my dad used to say. That there are so many people it can make you lonely sometimes. Like these things...just too many of them to mean anything. C’mere...” She let the tadpoles go and took off her necklace. It was a delicate gold chain with a dull, white pendant shaped like an arrowhead. “Gimme your hand.” She pressed the sharp edge of it against her palm and drew blood. I asked her what it was. “A shark’s tooth. My dad gave it to me.” It didn’t look like any shark’s tooth I’d seen. I gave her my hand. She squeezed hers hard against it and I felt our blood mix. We watched it drip from our hands and disappear into the water. She asked me if it hurt and I shook my head no. I looked at her and saw she was crying. That’s when I knew it wasn’t a shark tooth between our palms; it was bone.
We’re brushing our teeth side by side at the sink, like we do every night, when I see it. A spot of bright red on my husband’s face, peeking through the bangs that have been out of fashion for years, but which he refuses to grow out because I adore them. It’s no bigger than the tip of my pinky. But it’s definitely not a pimple. It’s flat and even and there are ripples in the skin around it, like the imprint left by a tiny elephant’s foot.I get less than a second’s glimpse before my husband bends over the sink, spits out toothpaste, rinses with water. Then he turns and heads for bed. I’m still brushing, brushing, brushing. Still thinking about the spot. Hazily I wonder if, given enough time, the repeated motion of the toothbrush would eventually grind my teeth clean away. The news has been calling it SL-29. The SL stands for Spot Lesions: they resemble flesh peeled off in a perfect circle to reveal the raw redness of the meat underneath. Except they never heal. They never go away. Instead, they spread all over the body. The spots are often itchy, and weep a strange fluid—sometimes clear, sometimes yellow, sometimes black—that doctors have still not been able to identify. Sometimes they crust, like herpes sores, and then the pain is said to be immense.A better name for the disease would probably be something to do with pox, but that word would alarm the population, and the most important thing with any disease outbreak now is to avoid any alarm. After all, we saw what happened with the “Covid Crazies” and their masks, their stockpiling, the way they wanted to stay inside all day and sacrifice the economy for their delusions. The Vice President referred to them as “Gollums” the other day, and his fanbase (which regrettably overlaps significantly with the Lord of the Rings fanbase) praised him on social media with an avalanche of memes. The administration loves SL-29. It’s sexually transmitted, so what better punishment for the whores and sluts and single mothers than to have our loose morals branded on our faces forever? There are even rumors that the official SL title doesn’t stand for Spot Lesion at all, but for Scarlet Letter. Most people call them the Scarlet Spots. I finally rinse my mouth and head to bed. My tongue feels cold from toothpaste, a heavy slug resting against the slick backs of my teeth. My husband, facing away from me, seems to already be asleep, but that’s impossible. He never drifts off this quickly. Does he know I’ve seen his spot? Has he even seen it? Of course he has. For all the grief he gives me about admiring myself in the mirror so much, he could never miss something so striking. It really is scarlet. As I get into bed, he continues to breathe slowly and deeply. The steady rhythm remains uninterrupted even as I fluff my pillow and lay down, as though he truly is asleep. But he could be faking it. He could be praying I fall asleep without asking anything. But they don’t fucking disappear, my love, I think, clenching my jaw as I glare at his shape in the darkness. Are you going to shellac your bangs to your forehead? Use foundation so I never, ever see?And what about when the spots start spreading? What then? Yes, the only trouble with the spots is that men get them too. That’s why SL-29 is at the top of every STD screening test. Before chlamydia, HIV, gonorrhea, and everything else that can, in some way, be managed or treated or cured.
***
In the middle of the night, when I’m sure he really is asleep, I creep to the bathroom. I close the door quietly, flick on the lights, and examine every inch of my body. I have to use a hand mirror for the more hidden spots, but after a while, I conclude that my skin is SL-29 free. For now, at least. My mouth tastes rank, like I’ve been licking the floor and my own armpits. I go back to bed and try to sleep but my dreams are hallucinogenic, liquid, slipping through my brain like slick poisoned water.
***
Monday morning. Subway car rattling uptown, my sleep-blurred eyes, that odd gnawing hunger that always comes with not getting enough sleep. I brushed my teeth before leaving—alone, this time; my husband goes to work an hour later than I do—but my breath is stale inside my mask. I’m one of the few who still wear them, and my husband would be ashamed of me if he saw, ashamed and angry enough to shout, but he’s not here right now. Just a few other early-morning commuters, still mostly mired in the fog of recollected dreams, who couldn’t clearly give two fucks about my mask. Across from my seat, there’s an ad: “One night with Venus, a lifetime of SL-29.” Next to the bubbly words is a cartoon of an embarrassed man, face covered in red spots. I wonder how many people will catch the centuries-old reference to syphilis. When the subway gets to my stop, I stand up and walk past the sign, glancing at it one last time. Now that I’m closer, I can see the vandalism I would’ve caught earlier if the vandal had the presence of mind to use a Sharpie instead of a pencil. The word Venus has been crossed out in thin, barely-visible graphite. And above it, scratched deep into the shiny plastic, as if he could already tell that the pencil wasn’t going to be sufficiently discernible: A WHORE.
***
As soon as I sit down at my desk, the fogginess leaves me. It’s a sudden, destabilizing rush, like coming down out of the clouds on an airplane at night. Suddenly you’re seeing civilization spread out below you in all of its greedy, multiplied glory: city lights glittering like insect shells, spangling clear across the globe like earthbound stars. At least my resting bitch face comes in handy today. I’m left in peace as I boot up my monitor, open my email, scroll through my new tasks for the day. I don’t actually read any of it. Instead, I’m thinking of my husband. His way of saying “Only with you” when I ask him to do something he doesn’t really want to do—clean the bathroom, sign petitions, scrub the crusted stovetop. It’s true that there’s some romance in the teamwork, in both of us bettering our living space side by side. Once, we made eye contact over our flooded bathroom floor, flashed each other twin grossed-out grins: We’re in this together.The way he promised, using almost the same language, that he’d always be mine. It was just after he proposed, and he was holding my hands carefully. Like they were birds, hollow-boned and nervous, that might at any moment fly away. Most men make a big deal out of a woman being theirs and only theirs, but my husband seemed to find the idea of him being mine equally scintillating. At the time, I found it touching. Now I wonder if it was something he read online. One of those tricks guaranteed to lower the female guard. I think of my husband’s wide, toothy, childish smile. His complexion is so pale that even his teeth, which are actually fairly white, look yellow. Soon the spots will cover his entire face, astonishingly bright on his skin—not melting into one another like confluent smallpox, but just barely managing not to touch. So that each spot preserves its own perfect roundness. Almost as though it’s intentional. I once saw an interview where a doctor squinted at a patient’s face and pronounced them “the most perfect circles I have ever seen in nature.” He even took photographs, and other people measured the circles, confirmed that they were indeed mathematically perfect. “The good news is it’s not fatal,” the doctor said as he concluded the interview. “The bad news is it’s not fatal,” I muttered to myself, watching, because the suicides were rising by then and have continued to increase ever since. What the fuck do I do now?I check my wrists and forearms again. I fight the urge to march to the bathroom and strip down in a stall, twist until my body is covered in sweat and I’ve pulled a muscle in my back from trying to see every inch of my skin. I can’t panic. Panic won’t make any of this any better. According to the guidelines, the disease is 80% transmissible before any spots appear—that’s why we need expensive SL-29 STD tests, rather than a simple strip search. But once a spot has appeared, that person’s transmission rate climbs to 100%. Anyone they have intercourse with will get the disease too. And once a spot has appeared on someone you’ve been having sex with, you have forty-eight hours to see whether they’ve infected you during their asymptomatic phase. Forty-eight hours from last night. I just need to make it till Tuesday night, and I’ll know. For better or worse. And then I can…then I can…At this point my brain stops. Like a webpage that won’t load. I simply can’t think of what I’m going to do after the forty-eight hours is up. Almost with relief, I recognize another problem: I can’t know how long that spot has been there. Was it there the day before yesterday? I can’t be sure—I barely glanced at my husband all day on Saturday, preferring instead to read and separate myself from him and his video games, the way he cursed at the screen whenever he made a mistake. A flat red spot hiding behind his bangs would have been easy to miss. And of course there’s the question of how he got it. Where he got it. Who gave it to him. Only with you. I feel like I’m breathing through a rolled-up piece of paper. A hollow plastic cylinder. A straw. The ad from the subway flashes back into my mind. The slogan, the humiliated cartoon man, the crossed-out Venus. And then that other word, etched into the plastic, with such determination and fury, like a scar. Earlier, I thought of the vandal as a man. Now I no longer do.
***
My husband gets home an hour after me. His bangs are perfectly in place, and he’s smiling: his teeth the color of weak chamomile tea, his lips stretched and rubbery. “I got your favorite,” he says, holding aloft some bags from the nearby Korean restaurant. “Excited?”I blink at him. Does he think that he can use bibimbap and glass noodles to, what, bribe me to stay with him? That, supposing I’m clean, I’ll willingly let him infect me so that we can be scarlet-lettered together? Ha. Only with you, babe, right? Red circles clustering on our faces and then trailing down across our bodies, so bright we can’t cover them even with the thickest foundation. Maybe he’s even dreaming that I’ll come with him to live in one of the communities where the SL-29 social outcasts live as shut-ins: spending their worst days soaking in cool water, spending all the other days hiding behind thick curtains. Only venturing outside in the darkness, like suicidal, hideous vampires. I almost laugh at the idea. He takes my sardonic grin as a sign of pleasure. “I knew you’d be! It’s always better when it’s a surprise, right?”“Oh yeah, definitely,” I say, trying not to let the sarcasm seep too deeply into my voice. “Surprises are always better.” Only twenty-four more hours to go, I think. And it’s now that I decide. If I don’t have any spots on my body by tomorrow night, I’ll get out. I’ll tell everyone the truth and leave him to pick up the pieces by himself. It doesn’t matter that I can’t divorce him—I’ll run. And if I do have a spot on my body by tomorrow night….But the thought of that turns my guts into snakes. It makes my head so heavy that that I have to bow over, gripping it in my hands, and the next thing I hear from my husband, coming close and speaking in a voice that I could swear is more fearful than it ought to be: “Is everything okay?”In bed, he reaches for me. “Sorry, babe, not tonight,” I say, trying to sound as regretful as possible. “My stomach’s cramping…I think it’s from eating too much spicy food.”“But you love spicy food.” His hand is on my waist, stroking gently but insistently. I fight the urge to jerk away from him. “Yeah, but I’m not used to it anymore. We haven’t gotten from that place in a while. Or any of my favorite restaurants, for that matter,” I add, unable to keep the resentment out of my voice. “We’ve mostly just been eating the bland American food you seem to constantly crave.” In the silence that follows this, I hold my breath, letting it live high and shallow in my nostrils and the tops of my lungs. But, finally: “Huh, okay.” I can hear the shrug in his voice. I never rebuff his sexual advances unless I’m on my period or have a migraine, but he just moves to the other side of the bed. My body relaxes in relief. At the same time my mind spirals, trying to determine whether he’s given up so easily because he knows he already infected me last week, or because he thinks he’ll have another chance tomorrow.I want to ask Who was she? Was she hot? Did she refuse a test, or did you just not care enough to even ask for one?I want to ask Was it worth a lifetime of spots marring your whole body? Flesh pepperoni peeking out all over your cheese-curd-colored skin, skin the color of milk gone sour, skin like that of a corpse just before it stiffens and turns blue?But I don’t want to make him angry. Ever since the Domestic Violence shelters have all been closed down. Ever since the Domestic Assault hotline has been disconnected. Ever since calling the cops on your husband is the quickest way to get yourself dragged down to the station for “inciting the violence” yourself. Ever since new, privately funded studies came out showing that women are indeed the more emotional sex and that their manipulation can easily be used to paint good men as “abusive.” Ever since no-fault divorce was eliminated. Ever since. Ever since. Ever since. Ever since the dawn of fucking time because men have always been physically stronger than women and always will be.
***
In the end, I don’t even have to wait forty-eight hours. The spot is there on the back of my knee when I go to the bathroom the next morning, peeking out at me like a knowing eye. I stare at it like I’m waiting for it to wink. Heat unfurls across my body—a panicked rush of blood, a silent roar. My vision goes black at the corners, as though smoke is closing in, and I curl forward over my knees, muffling my wail in my hands. A crazy idea flashes through my mind: cut my leg off. But that wouldn’t work, not even if I took it off at the hip. The disease has already spread throughout my body. It’s like mold: glimpsing a little bit on the surface only means that the roots have long since claimed what’s underneath. There’s no stopping it now. The panic gives me tunnel vision, and I’m standing up now, staring into the bathroom mirror, staring at my face which is now unblemished but which will soon—who can say how soon—show a spot. Maybe with me, the disease will creep upwards. My husband’s will progress downwards, and mine will follow the reverse course. We’ll fit together perfectly.I turn the shower on full blast and scream into a towel. Swallowed up by the terrycloth, it’s more vibration than sound, and it shudders through me, shakes my arms and legs until I’m a trembling strand in the corner of the bathroom, looking towards the door with wild eyes, praying he didn’t hear anything. Because…because…Why? Why the fuck not?To get my answer, as I always have, I need the clarity that comes with pain. So I step into the shower. I gasp; the cold is a physical force, ripping the air from my lungs. Needles of icy water rain down on me, shocking, splintering me into a million particles like television static. A numb buzzing in my brain. Pain, pain, pain—And then, clarity. I slam the shower closed, panting and trembling. The facts are simple, clear as ice as they march out before me: He fucked someone recently. He got SL-29 from her. He returned home. By now he’s sure, by now he must be sure, that he is infected. He hasn’t told me. I’m infected too. Probably from when we fucked on Thursday or Friday. I’m in the same boat as him. We’re in this together. But it’s not a boat I’ve joined willingly. It’s a boat he’s dragged me into, without my knowledge or consent, a boat that could bind us together for a lifetime. If he were more possessive, I’d even suspect he’s done this deliberately, binding me to him so I can never escape. But he’s not like that. He’s never been possessive. And he loves himself far too much to ever destroy his appearance just to have me by his side for the rest of our lives. I clench my fists on the shower wall and get myself back to the row of facts. Okay: yes, I am infected too. I skip to the next one before my legs can start shaking again, quickly, onto the next fact: he needs to be punished. My husband can do so much to me. He can cheat on me. He can put his hands on me as many times as he wants—smack me across the face for speaking in the wrong tone of voice, pinch my lip between his sharp nails as a punishment for accidentally stepping on his foot—as long as there are fewer than two witnesses. He can stop me from voting. He can even impregnate me and force me to keep the baby (although what other option would I even have? a coat hanger? a handful of toxic weeds?). Although, in his defense, he has never done that last. He doesn’t want children either. It was one of the things we agreed on at the very beginning, one of the things that bound us together in a world where other couples were constantly fighting and breaking up over the issue. We simply looked at each other and said, “Nope.” Smirking, like we were in on some grand inside joke. A secret held like a jewel between the two of us. Funny how it’s always the wives who are paraded like a spectacle for bringing the Scarlet Spots into their homes. Sluts infecting their unsuspecting husbands. Funny how it’s never, ever the other way around. I think again of the ad on the subway. The original saying was One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury: a phrase intended to sway young men away from prostitutes, because syphilis was treated with mercury in those days. But what about the phrases to sway young women away from the Johns who would later pass that disfiguring disease onto them? Those phrases did not exist. They never do.I step out of the shower stall, run the shower hot for a few minutes, and then emerge from the bathroom. Using my weakest voice, I tell my husband I’m coming down with a cold. “I just took a steaming hot shower,” I say mournfully. “I think I’ll take it easy in bed today.”He gives me a sympathetic nod and tells me to feel better. Before he leaves, I notice another spot, just below his chin. He turns away from me quickly, not wanting me to see. I want to tell him that I already know. But that would ruin the surprise. And surprises are always best, aren’t they, love?
***
As soon as I hear the elevator doors close in the hallway, I fly into action. I have to get everything set up perfectly by the time he comes home. As I walk to first one hardware shop and then the next, and then a chemist’s shop, and then a kitchen-wares shop, I try to let my thoughts wander. But they don’t want to wander. They keep coming around to tonight’s plan, like a fierce, certain arrow. And I smile. I keep smiling even as I’m aware of that spot on the back of my knee, that barely perceptible itch. What’ll happen tonight, what I’ll turn my husband into…it’s almost enough to make the infection worth it. Almost. I spend the rest of the day setting things up. He’s only got two red spots, but I can add a few more: early ones, surprise ones. Maybe I’ll take some things away, too. I think again of why I didn’t want to make him angry when we lay in bed that night. Yes, on the whole, men have always been physically stronger than women and always will be. But that’s assuming no other factors have been introduced to alter the equation. And a sedated man bound to a bed, tied in five-point restraints like they use at the hospitals for hysterical women—well, all his strength will be useless. As useless as the nipples on his chest. Maybe I’ll start with those. No one’s coming to help him. After all, the Domestic Assault hotline has been disconnected. Tonight it’s his body on the bed. And—finally—my choice.
The woman who wrote Beowulf considered it juvenilia. She composed it during the years she roamed close to the old hall, hearing the revelry, watching the fighting and fucking from the slippery dark outside. Over the long seasons she recognised, in her observations of the hall, a will that sprung from its inhabitants; a mode of life that ran in tight, obsolete cycles. Drink spilled, offence taken, necks opened, blood added to mud, children made, killed. These dances played out, accumulated nothing. Over time, she moved away from the hall and disavowed the tales she wrote about it. In their place, she composed stories that were not about human things. Wine and swords melted into the grey candlelight of the old world. She took what the land told her and made its rough clay into her letters. The humans and their fires were things she had stepped upon to light the way; this new language was in the stones, in the correspondence between root and soil, between a bird’s foot and the branch on which it balanced. The years turned. She roamed further into the land’s interior. Caves contained dialogues of water and stone. Animals in mating bred glyphs and signs. Trees bent horselike to meet her, brushing flowers into her neck as she went. There was no longer a distinction between herself and where she placed her body. Blood from a wound was shared with whatever thorn had cut it. As water ran over her hand it carried some unseen fraction downstream. These were inscriptions the world would not preserve; a language inscrutable by the evening of the day on which it was composed. She would scratch on bark or carve into rock, then find it gone. The idea of lines on a scroll became laughable to her, pulp, dirt. The description of a blade, a creature, a warrior, a mother––this was child’s work. She found within this new expression a tapering line, a promise that vanished like ice. Foot became tree became fur became blood became water. Eventually, she was no longer visible. The hall raged on out of sight, a red pinprick, prevailing.
***
It's a mistake for one to assume that writing is the end of anything. Anyone can knock stones together, that’s writing. Anyone can stick a sword through an eye, that’s writing. As words get older, they become solid. Eventually they’re just something to trip over, look back on, and curse at. The world does not have need of anything so final. A place is found in its accumulation and then its dispersal. What else is there to say, other than I am something that briefly came true. Aeons pass. A body sits at a table. It is hard to make out what it’s doing through the haze––perhaps the old perpetual scratching of lines. Some monster shambles to the door, knocks, enters.
In 1983, when I was 32, I invited my Sorbonne classmate Renée Hartevelt to dinner at my apartment at 10 Rue Erlanger, under the pretext of translating poetry for a school assignment. I planned to kill and eat her, having selected her for her health and beauty, characteristics I felt I lacked.I have had a lifelong suspicion that people find me mentally and physically repulsive. However, many of those who meet me find me to possess obvious intelligence and a sense of humor. They also find me handsome, although of austere appearance. I am often regarded as “very self-analytic."I considered myself weak, ugly, and small (I’m 4 ft 9) and wanted to absorb Hartevelt’s energy. She was 25 years old and 5 ft 10. After Hartevelt arrived, she began reading poetry at a desk with her back to me when I shot her in the neck with a rifle. My colleague Brod has compared me to Heinrich von Kleist, noting that both of us have the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details. He thinks I am one of the most entertaining people he has met. I enjoy sharing my humor with my friends, but also help them in difficult situations with good advice. According to Brod, I am a passionate reciter, able to phrase my speech as though it were music. I fainted after the shock of shooting Renée but awoke with the realization that I had to carry out my plan. I could not bite into her skin because my teeth were not sharp enough, so I left the apartment and purchased a butcher knife. Brod feels that two of my most distinguishing traits are "absolute truthfulness" and "precise conscientiousness." I explore inconspicuous details in depth and with such precision and love that unforeseen things surface that seem strange but absolutely true.I consumed various parts of Hartevelt's body, eating most of her breasts, face, buttocks, feet, thighs, and neck, either raw or cooked. I swallowed her clitoris whole, due to her being on her period at the time, and me not liking the smell of menstrual blood, while saving other parts in my refrigerator. I understand the pathos of things. I possess an empathy towards things, a sensitivity to ephemera, an awareness of impermanence, of the transience of things, both a transient gentle sadness at their passing, as well as a longer, deeper, gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.I also took photographs of Hartevelt's body at each eating stage. Once the remains of her body that I did not consume started decomposing, I attempted to dump the remains of Hartevelt's corpse in a lake in the Bois de Boulogne park, carrying her dismembered body parts in two suitcases, but I was caught in the act and arrested by French police. In my debut novel, I coined the term Saudade, an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for something that one loves despite it not necessarily being real. My wealthy father provided a lawyer for my defense. After being held for two years awaiting trial, I was found legally insane and unfit to stand trial by the French judge, who ordered me held indefinitely in a mental institution. After a visit by the author Inuhiko Yomota, my account of the murder and its aftermath was published in Japan under the title In the Fog. In my second novel, I coined the term Weltschmerz (literally "world-pain"), a literary concept describing the feeling experienced by an individual who believes that reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind.My subsequent publicity and macabre celebrity likely contributed to the French authorities' decision to deport me to Japan, where I was immediately committed to Matsuzawa Hospital in Tokyo. In my third novel, I coined the end-of-history illusion, a psychological illusion in which individuals of all ages believe that they have experienced significant personal growth and changes in tastes up to the present moment, but will not substantially grow or mature in the future.My examining psychologists all declared me sane and found sexual perversion was my sole motivation for murder. As the charges against me in France had been dropped, the French court documents were sealed and were not released to Japanese authorities; consequently, I could not legally be detained in Japan. I checked myself out of the hospital on the 12th of August, 1986, and subsequently remained free. On July 2nd, 1982, I attached 43 balloons to my lawn chair, filled them with helium, put on a parachute, and strapped myself into the chair in the backyard of my home at 1633 West 7th Street in San Pedro, California. I took my pellet gun, a CB radio, sandwiches, beer, and a camera.While being lifted in the air by the balloons, I considered inventing the wind phone, an unconnected telephone booth where visitors can hold one-way conversations with deceased loved ones, but decided against it.
She thumbs the tumor where it rubbed on the boning of her bra. Her work shirt is half undone, her chest exposed to the mirror. The hooks unclasp, and it’s there in full view: pill-sized, pill-hard and intradermal. She squeezes, this is no pimple - the skin that hides it turns a deeper pink and that’s the end of it. An intruder to the bathroom fails to enter, the door ruts the lock. She buttons her blouse and smooths out her hair to return to her work. The tumor snugged in its place over her breastbone, against the bra, beneath the blouse.At home, the blouse is torn open for inspection. The woman lives alone, where no-one will stop her picking and probing. Her thumb angles it left, right. The node is anchored and completely numb. How long has it been growing there? It’s been a long winter. When dressing and undressing in the dark, certain sacrifices are made. It’s entirely possible for a woman to miss the point, no matter what she thinks she’s agreed to lose when signing the contract. Every job has its roadblocks. This was little more than the latest in a string of unanticipated set-backs.The tumor is clothed in soft skin, reddened from inspection. It slides downward when her thumb slips sideways, aghast and curious, she slides the pill further down and finds no resistance, no pain in the slightest. The effort translates it a few centimeters lower. The woman’s skin is split open. She opens a thin, oval window through yellow fat to the wet, pink muscle underneath. A clean wound, she braces for burning that she expects but doesn’t feel. For minutes, she is thrown back on her ass in shock before the mirror. Her features are catlike. She crawls forward again to inspect her opening. The tumor lies waiting, the skin above shows no sign of releasing it and when she tries to push it back up where it came from, it refuses. A dilemma presents itself. Reason dictates an open wound should endeavour to remain small - though reason has not encountered a wound as willing as this. Why didn’t it hurt? She thinks she might have gotten lucky. Logic dictates that harm creates pain. She will have to keep pushing to feel some. Then - and only then - will her condition make sense.As she tests, the pill slides further until it rests at the beginning of her stomach, a trail skating behind it like the fly of a dress. There is still no pain, but there’s something like it. Slowly now, the body peels tenderly, the split inches as the cells divide. Electricity from their parting comes in small dispersals, easy warmth. The sensation deepens with the cut, she realizes when the tumor passes over the naval that she is out of splittable skin. How unfair. Feline face flushed, mouth agape, torso yawning with muscle sparkling under the drooping cuts. Pill-like tumor pressed and ready over the mound of her cunt.She forces it down, measuring her limits. Her skin gives way. Pleasure courses thicker and hotter than blood though unready veins. The passage is savoured. Movement of the tumor over the slick flesh of her vagina arches and blossoms to unimaginable heights at every millimetre. It shoots through her legs and cools the palms of her feet. She feels holes torn where none have appeared. But alas! Her openings meet at last and somehow the tumor becomes lost inside her. It is gone. What remains is the woman, legs spread to reveal the opening wide enough to dissect her body to the breasts. Underneath the wrapping, the muscle is healthy and vibrant. It trembles involuntarily when inspected. Breath clouds her face in the glass, but she is not currently interested in breath.. Gently, she pulls the sides of the wound wider, it gives way easily. Pain refuses to find her, friction between skin and muscle is like slipping an old burn through velvet. Fingers find their way under. She is confronted with the image of herself, a woman she knows well, naked, panting and dipping her hands beneath her skin as though she were hungrily caressing a lover under their clothes. Whole hand under, whole hand up. The rift splits more where her arm has gone, it passes the breastbone to her neck. Wrapped in ecstasy, she has torn the skin all the way to her face in want of further release. Her fingertips run over her teeth and she recoils, at last, in face of what she has done. Is continuing to do. Terror grips wide eyes for a moment and the shock has sent her limbs moving spasmodically. She catches her loosened skin on the carpet. It pulls to the side, replacing fear with ecstatic friction once again and her thoughts of repercussion are replaced by greed. Her hand runs under the opposing arm and removes it like a glove. Just as simply, the other is removed, then she works on loosening her leg. She slips out of herself like stockings. Leveraging her hands over her top row of teeth, she reaches up, pulling her face off like a hood. She drops the whole thing on the floor, a deflated heap of blood and flesh.Free from her binding, the body feels lighter, less agitated. The pleasure has died down to an insignificant hum. But has not yet made a full exit, as the open air against her muscle brings a slight tingling sensation. Blood billows out around her feet like a shadow where she walks on her plush cream carpet, the fibres putting welcome shocks through her naked soles. Facing her in the mirror is a glistening wide-eyed creature of meat. Hairless, lipless, quivering red ape of tendons and sinew. Although it moves at her command, strangely, there is no compulsion to covet or mourn for it. Nor are there thoughts of returning to the chrysalis. She kneels in a widening pool of blood, raw palms smearing the mirror where her teeth grind the glass.
I can’t remember his name so I will give him one. Devin. He was 32, blonde, sun kissed, and standing on a dock in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were but if I had to guess, they were blue. I hit “heart” and a few hours later, I felt his “heart” back vibrate against my jeans. It was December 2014 and I was 21. Back then, the OKCupid app was clunky and I always gave out my cell because texting was easier. I gave Devin my number and his texts came in green on my iPhone 5. He tried calling me immediately after and I rejected the call. “Can’t talk now, what’s up?” “Oh, sorry. Just wanted to say hi.”I ignored this and went about my day, already forgetting him.The next time he calls, he calls three times in a row at 9:45pm while I’m cramming for a Bio Anth final in the Philosophy building with two other girls. I pick up on the third, frustrated and already bored. I tell him I’m studying for a final in a flat tone and don’t run with any of the small talk he’s making. Eventually he says, “You know, I was excited to get to know you but I didn’t think you’d be such a bitch.” His words are like a dental drill buzzing too close to my pink gums.I immediately stop breathing, faced with a challenge. I liked challenges, holding my hand over fire to see how long I could last until the burned flesh was too much. I liked stretching my endurance. I was young then, what an excuse.I forgot what I said next, but my voice changed. I remember thinking of a kitten before its first time getting its claws trimmed, unwieldy and meaningless. I petted him with my voice, pressed my hand to its nose for familiarity. Devin told me he worked in entertainment, lived in Jersey but went often to New York for events and premieres. I told him I was an actor and director finishing up college. I told him where I went to school and thought about joining him for premieres. He asked me what I was into sexually, a conversation I was privy to having. Nothing scared me about sex anymore after I lost my virginity in London the year before. Out of all the questions he asked me, the only one I remember is did I like having things stuck up my ass. I forget what I answered but it probably wasn’t the truth. “I wish I could meet you tonight”, his voice like gravel. “I’d love to pick you up and see you in person.” I told him I had to study for my final and he proposed to see me after I was done the next day for coffee before I went home for break. But we kept talking, and at one point, he called me from a different number. A work phone. Devin demanded nudes a couple hours later. I sent him a couple I took weeks ago in the daylight, light pouring into my room as I faced my Macbook, my bottom half covered with my Marimekko duvet but my top exposed, an indie sleeze Rokeby Venus. My nipple piercing on my right breast twinkled as my pupils focused on the spot to the bottom right of my laptop’s digital eye. I remember feeling beautiful, classy, powerful when I took those, thinking they were a gift. Devin responded immediately that these were old photos and that he was insulted that I didn't send him something new. “I want you to go back to your dorm and send me 30 photos of yourself in 15 minutes.”So I did. I sucked myself in, contorted my body and began clicking my iPhone camera. I sent him 30 and he asked to Facetime me. I said yes. I never thought I could say no or ask for photos in return. I don’t know whether I say this to prove I wasn’t asking for this or because I can’t objectively look back at this anymore.He Facetimed me and I answered on my computer. His screen was black, I could not see his face. He told me he turned off all the lights and was too lazy to turn them on. I vaguely remember he said he had a cat or two. Did I see them? I can’t remember. I can’t remember how it happened but I was laid back on my twin sized dorm mattress, pressing my cheap red marbled bullet vibrator from Spencer’s Gifts to my clit, fake moaning but trying to make it real. My eyes were fixed on the high cracked ceiling, avoiding the square of darkness on my laptop but more importantly ignoring my body reflected back to me, a form that felt so foreign and weak to me. I had a pit in my stomach that could’ve been sexual shame but felt coarser than that. I tried to ignore it. Devin’s voice was in my ear as I faked the build of an orgasm. Right before the false peak, he said, “now shove it up your ass.” I didn’t do it. By that point it was 3am and my exam was in five hours. He agreed he’d see me after for coffee and I went to bed with a sour stomach.I woke up and took my exam, running on acidic coffee and adrenaline. I remember passing my friend Carina in the dorms, pink and giddy because I found someone cool. We both always talked about our boy troubles at our small liberal arts school. I remember I imagined I was glowing telling her the news, like a drop of dew on a leaf. Once I realized I had nothing packed, I called Devin and asked if we could reschedule coffee for when I returned in the spring semester. He hung up immediately and five minutes later, I received five texts from an unknown number—his other number I forgot to save. All five texts were photos of a man I didn’t know—a brunette with a dark goatee who looked about 250 pounds. Photos of him standing with friends outside, his arm wrapped around a woman’s waist in a bar, him wearing those wrap around glasses dads wore. Another text came in. “I knew you wouldn’t like me because of how I looked.”I can’t remember how my body felt when I got all of these texts. I called one of his numbers back, I can’t remember which. I could tell I was on speaker phone and asked him what this all meant.“I have a medical condition where I look the way I do but I’m going to have surgery in a couple months. I wanted to find a person who could see beyond what I look like now so that when I look different, I know they will be with me because of who I am.” I pictured a fucked up version of Beauty and the Beast, my childhood VHS tape warped in the sun, all the cartoons twisted. I couldn’t understand why I felt conflicted. He kept talking.“Well, I’m already on my way to your college.” “What?”I only then recognized the fact that his voice sounded slightly farther away, in a tunnel. He was on speaker phone. I imagined his chubby hands on his steering wheel, every minute a couple feet closer to me.“I’m getting off at your exit now, it’s too late for me to turn around.”That’s when I remember how my body felt. It felt like glass.I thought it would be easier to handle all of this on my own. I didn’t think to get campus police involved or anyone else. Devin had my nudes. It felt like I had already signed over my rights and my body and there was nothing I could do. I told him where to go after he passed through the entrance, campus police probably waved him in without looking up from their phones. His black minivan circling the campus like a vulture over a bunny with a broken leg, too stunned to move. He pulled into the small parking lot of my dorm building. It was one of the older buildings on campus and the 4th floor was supposedly haunted by a girl who jumped out the window because some boy broke her heart. He got out of his van as I stood on the gravel. He had the same wrap around sunglasses, red adidas shorts that hit right at his knee, and adidas slides. I didn’t look at his toes for too long. My plan was to say hello and send him on his way. But once his soft, sweaty flesh enveloped me, he said, “I thought I’d get to see your dorm.”I remember walking him up to the second floor of the dorm, my shoes pressing into the grey carpeting, thinking “I have a loud scream, I have a loud scream.” Because even though I knew this wouldn’t end well, I thought I could handle it. Devin sat on my bed, his flesh resting on the same Marimekko bedding in the photo I sent that he hated.I buzzed around the room packing. He wouldn’t stop talking. About New York, about events, about how he worked on Lord of the Rings—a fact I checked on IMDB later and his name wasn’t listed on any of the projects. As he kept going on, I kept checking the clock, seeing time constrict as my Dad drove closer and closer to me. At one point, I remember telling him he needed to leave, that I didn’t want my father to meet him like this. He asked me to sit on the bed with him, my worn stuffed elephant as the only witness as he said, “I’m not leaving until you kiss me.”I wish I had taken the time to think, to slow down, to pause time. To rewind, to enter this dorm room as I am now, to grab my hand and run screaming down my hall. Knocking on doors until someone came out. I picture this now and my screams are silent. She lets go of my hand because no one comes out, no one hears me, and she returns to her dorm room, sits down, and kisses him.I have never felt my body shake as violently as it did then. Every muscle in me was alive, knocking against my skin like bees in a hive of flesh. I pulled away and remember seeing this booger, this gleaming moist pea green lump of rejected bacteria hanging from his right nostril and being disgusted. “I could tell you wanted more.” He said with a grin.He left shortly after because I said my dad was nearby. I forget if I kissed him again, and my dad arrived 30 minutes later with my sister in tow. We packed the car and drove back to Rhode Island. Right before my dad came, Devin called me again on speaker phone. “I know your dad wasn’t almost there. Don’t you ever lie to me again.”That night, I went to the 99 with my high school friends. After three five dollar margaritas, I told them numbly that I was catfished. I told the story like it was a joke, looking for laughs along the way. Three of my guy friends looked stunned, one of them saying, “Christ, are you alright?”The only thing that comes back clearly is what my only girlfriend said, “Are you sure you didn’t do anything enticing?”I called my therapist the next day and told her what happened. “I need you to block both of his numbers. This man has done this before, he has a story and a system to manipulate women.” she said. “Once you return to school, you need to report this to campus police.”But I didn’t heed this advice. I thought I could fix this. I texted him a couple days later and explained to him that I really couldn’t get into anything serious with my senior thesis coming up in the spring. It really wasn’t him or his looks (or his lie), it was all me.What came next was a large paragraph, jumbled and clearly voice to text, but the one thing that stands like a monument in my mind was that “he didn’t want to be my friend he would find a way to fuck me he would.” I blocked both of his numbers. I deleted my OKCupid account and never redownload it.I told some of my good friends what happened to me when I returned in the spring semester, always when I was drunk or stoned. I figured it was a good party trick, like my nipple piercing—something initially painful that turns into a cheap novelty. There was something about seeing people react to the story. How they laughed at the term “catfish” and then their faces shifted and landed in a place of concern. I watched this happen time and time again, hoping that concern would rub off on me. It never did. I graduated in May 2015, age 22. I packed up my parents' car and stayed in a hotel with my best friend for our last night in Jersey. “The Graduate” was on TV, Katherine Ross in her wedding gown and Dustin Hoffman staring straight ahead into a world we never see. It is now February 2017. I have forgotten about Devin. I live in Brooklyn and work as an executive receptionist for a luxury real estate company. I get a text from an unknown number around 3pm, nothing atypical as a girl who goes on a lot of first and only dates. “Hey beautiful.”“Who is this?”“Devin.”“Sorry I don’t know of a Devin.” “From December 2014.”Just as my brain made the connection, I received a photo of myself. Nude from the tip of my breasts up, a small smile painted on my face. My eyes locked with the digital eye of my phone.Another text. “I just wanted to see if this girl was still single.”I can’t remember how I thought of it but I texted back, “So sorry! I think you have the wrong number! Best of luck finding her.” And blocked the number. All I can remember was sitting in a packed L train during rush hour, feeling like I was being hunted, that he saw me hiding in Brooklyn. He knew where I was at every moment. I called both my Providence based therapist and my new New York based therapist as I walked home in the park. One said she was impressed by my text to him and the other said this had nothing to do with me, that this was some indication that he was flailing and reaching out to older situations. I pictured him in some basement in his same red adidas shorts and adidas slides, a single booger hanging from his nostril, the only light coming from a laptop as he shot off messages like bullets from a sniper rifle into the void. “You could be in Africa for all he knows.” I tried to believe that as I struggled to find sleep that night.Devin never tried to contact me again. I grew up thinking that love could be served up on a spoon or a knife, but it was love just the same. I had no concept of what negging was, what manipulation could look like, the idea of revenge porn was just whispers and nothing legitimate. For years I looked back and thought what an incredible idiot I was. How I got out by the skin of my teeth. How it really wasn’t that bad, all he did was kiss me in a small dorm I invited him into. How I should’ve known better. I retold this story countless times and I guess I was waiting for someone to ask why I did what I did so I could finally say that I did it for love.
You're gonna come in here into my place and tell me to change my socks you're gonna tell me that? Get out of here with that horseshit. This is my place and these are my socks and I'm not changing them just because you don't like that I've worn them these same ones for 45 years.I'm not here to do what anybody says to do I've earned it you see the fucking pictures on the walls of this place? There's pictures of me with like several different celebrities ok? They came to my place here and they gave me money to give them drinks and that money didn't get spent on new socks I'll tell you that much right now and those celebrities didn't say like hey your socks you should change them it's been too many years. They didn't say shit. So yeah I've fucking earned it.And you think you're some hot shot because you put those socks on fresh this morning? Like you're walking on air or water inside those shoes? And you think you're the first chump to suggest I change these socks? You think you're special? You must think you're something real special walking into my place telling me that horseshit. I get a guy in here at least once a week telling me some horseshit about changing my socks. They say Jim you gotta change those socks. Well Jim Parcheesi ain't changing his socks for nobody you hear me? You hear me talking right now?You hear that? You're not even a celebrity you see those pictures those photos? That's me and you can't see it because my feet aren't in any of the pictures but my socks these socks are on my feet right then when we took the pictures me and the celebrities. God rest most of their souls. These socks have been in the presence of greatness. Several different times.These socks do the fucking trick ok. For 45 god damn years. I wore these socks in the war. I wore these socks when I married the love of my life my beautiful Maria Parcheesi. At my kids' events when they were kids I wore these socks. I wore these socks when the great sports moments of this city happened and people were here at Jim Parcheesi's drinking drinks and getting rowdy because of the sports. And I wore these socks at my dear Maria Parcheesi's funeral God rest her soul that treasure of a woman. So you don't get to come in here and tell me about no socks.So sue me ok? These socks were also not cheap mind you. Back in the day these were expensive fucking socks tough guy. So you think you're better than me? Nah you aint special. I used to have a best friend who I aint gonna name because I don't name names ok but he and I we were good buddies best of buddies he was at my wedding my best man when I wed the love of my life my beautiful Maria Parcheesi.Well one day my buddy my buddy he goes Jim what's the deal with those socks people are talking they know they're the same socks as for years. Well I looked at him and I said this coming from you from you of all people and this was right there right where you're sitting he was there and I was here right behind the bar right where I'm standing now and he goes Jim people are talking and you know what I said I wiped my hands and put down my towel because I was you know wiping a glass or whatever and so I put down my towel and you know what I said I looked him dead in the eye and I said out. That was 15 years ago and we ain't talked since. This guy he and I were practically brothers he was with me when I bought the damn socks! You believe that?So if you think you're gonna come in here and tell me to change my god damn socks Mr. nobody from out there on the street if you think that then you've got another thing coming my friend. I'm going to live for another 45 years and I ain't changing them then or ever and then when the lord God above decides it is my time I will be laid to rest beside my dear Maria and I will be wearing these socks in my casket and you can bet your ass that when I step into the eternal light and ascend to the celestial halls of heaven I will be standing naked before the original breath of creation itself except I will be wearing these god damn socks.
My dead friend isn’t supposed to be on the whale watching tour. It’s a pale summer morning, the harbor glazed with fog. I’m standing on the boat’s upper deck directing tourists aboard, gesturing to empty seats, passing out pamphlets. And there she is, lined up behind a family of five. She’s wearing a navy windbreaker, jean shorts, and muddy white sneakers. Why are you here? I ask. You’re scared of the ocean. Only the Pacific, she says. The Atlantic is fine. I say, Okay, but don’t freak out the children. We jet off, gliding over the glass panes of the sea surface. It’s an hour journey to the watch spot, the boat picking up speed once we reach deeper waters. Roughly fifty passengers sit sardined on narrow benches, stuffing their arms into jackets as the cold cuts into the air. My friend follows me to the mic station. The concessions guy walks by and glares at her, since the area is roped off from pedestrians. I tell him she’s a wealthy socialite, so it’s fine.My voice vibrates through the shitty speakers: As you can see in your pamphlets, there are many types of whales. Blue Whales, Orcas, Sperm Whales…Forget about those. We’re here for the Humpbacks. A little girl, whose wispy hair is whipping in all directions, asks something. Her voice is drowned out by the engine, so I tell her to speak up.How long are Humpbacks!? They can be 48-62 feet, slightly larger than a school bus. My friend cups her hand to my ear. Are you on birth control? I mute the mic. Not everyone’s birth control kills them, I say. I know yours gave you a pulmonary embolism, but something like that simply wouldn’t happen to me. You were on some weird high-hormone brand anyway. So don’t worry. Now the little girl’s father is seasick. He puts his head in his hands, moaning and rocking. This kind of thing happens often. Through the intercom, I command him to stare at the horizon. Something about it resets your balance. But there is no horizon. Due to the fog, the gray blue sky melds to the ocean. Guess he’s out of luck. You weren’t my favorite, my friend says. But you were the fun one.You mean the slutty one, I say. I remember our first fight. In college I helped her make a Tinder, taught her how to scam men for money. But she got upset, called it amoral. She actually wanted to go on dates, to be touched. I called her unrealistic. That was a nice fight, she says. By the end, we saw each other’s perspectives, and I got a boyfriend. The dad is trying not to throw up, his forehead all sweaty. A stranger gives him a swig of Pepto Bismol. His daughter keeps poking him and shouting, Look at that! Look, Dad, look! She points to nothing. He stands up. Don’t go to the bathroom, I holler. It will only feel worse in there, and we need it available for the others. He sits down. I turn to my friend and say, I suppose you’re here to blame me for your terrible taste in men. That was the algorithm’s fault, she replies. You don’t have to make everything about yourself. I do make everything about myself. I wish my friend hadn’t died. It’s never fun to discuss at parties. I shelled out all this money for a therapist. For a whole six weeks, I stopped having sex. Then for a whole six months, I had too much sex. Her death makes me hate the ocean, which she always lied about being afraid of. The fog thins, tinting the water blue, deep blue, endless blue. I continue my spiel: Before a whale surfaces, there are clues. Look for circles of bubbles. If you smell something rotten, it’s their bad breath. The little girl gets a kick out of that. Her dad finally throws up in a paper bag, and the couple beside him flees. You know, I was in love with you, I tell my friend. There you go, making everything about yourself again. Isn’t that why you came, for a confession? No, I came for the whales. The boat slows, then stills, the engine clicking off. Bubbles form. We watch, wait. A Humpback breaches in the distance, a sliver of gray slicing through the waves. People rush to the railing to take zoomed-in pixelated photos for Facebook. Water spouts from the blowhole. Its tail tips up before submerging. The onlookers ooo and ahh. You should stop taking birth control, she says. Not any good. Do you want me to get pregnant? Kind of weird. Maybe if you got pregnant, you’d finally get over me. Now here she is, making everything about herself. When I take my pill, I think of her. When I meet someone with anxious-avoidant attachment, I think of her. When I imagine kissing a woman, I think of her. If she would have kissed me back. If she would have said I was doing it for attention. But isn’t it human to want attention? She’ll never understand that.The boat idles. The little girl is jumping up and down, struggling to see around the adults, and her dad has thrown away his bag of vomit. The sun spurts through the clouds. I point out more whales. To the right! To the left! Go, get your fill, your eighty bucks worth. The crowd clusters from one side of the deck to the other. You know, you weren’t in love with me, she says. Grief makes you uncomfortable, and pretending you loved me makes it easier to process. This is really homophobic of you.No, it’s homophobic of you. You’re fetishizing a dead woman. So what am I supposed to do? Just get over it?Yes! Just get over it! People die all the time. Go get knocked up by some man and move on with your life. You’ve been bumming me out. I announce that it’s time to get going. The engine starts, and everyone sits. I hand the dad another bag to barf in. I let the little girl keep her pamphlet, even though I’m supposed to re-collect them for other tours. I tell my friend she’s right. When I step off this boat, I’ll quit birth control, find a nice man to knock me up, and stop having gay fantasies about my dead friend. I saw the whales today, after all, and that’s what’s important.
I found the file by accident.It was tucked between Q3BudgetProjections.pptx and TeamSalesSeminar_2021(final_FINAL2).pptx on the shared drive.Jesus.pptxJust like that.I clicked it out of curiosity. Or maybe boredom. It's hard to tell the difference between the two when you spend the day in an office staring at spreadsheets that mean nothing to you. The file was empty. One blank white slide. No title. No bullet points. No formatting. Just a white void.A warmth emanated from the screen. I stared at it for a while. I bathed in its glow. My body slackened. My thoughts dulled to a low hum. Like I was recharging. Like I had taken something I wasn’t prescribed. Somewhere below the static, I thought I could hear a choir humming. Maybe it was the computer’s fan speeding up. The electric sermon lulled me into a trance. I don’t know how long I sat there.A wave of anxiety snapped me out of it. Any of my coworkers could have walked by, caught me slacking off. I told myself to close the file, to get back to work. But I couldn’t. My hands moved without me. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I started typing.I wrote:I was the one that stole Rachel's underwear at the 6th grade sleepover.I had never admitted that to anyone, though the memory haunted me awake with guilt many times in the 20 years since. It felt good.I typed another confession. Then another. And another. I kept going until—"Mary," the voice said. I looked up, heart racing. My coworker stood across from me, arms crossed. "You're in this meeting right?" he said. "You coming?"I clicked save and exited out of the file.It wasn't until later that night, stoned and half asleep in bed, that it occured to me. Other people had access to the shared drive. My stomach twisted. I sprung upright, grabbed my laptop, and logged in. Jesus.pptx was in my recent folder.I opened it up. Checked the file history:File owner: Mary SLast edit: Mary SI didn't remember creating it, but then again, I hardly remember anything I did at work. Assured that no one else had read through my confessional, I shut my laptop and drifted off.Weeks passed before I opened it again. Work got busy. Days blurred. But one slow morning, restless, I clicked the file. Just to vent. Just to kill time. I typed secret after secret. My muscles unclenched with every confession. I wrote down my hopes. My childhood fears. I described my first kiss. It was at that moment I decided I would speak to Jesus.pptx every morning when I got to work.The next morning, however, I discovered something strange.I opened the file, expecting relief before the first slide even loaded. But a new slide had been added:I miss the way my mother stroked my hair.I was hit with nausea. My vision tunneled. I hadn’t typed that.I deleted the text and replaced it with a secret of my own choosing:I google myself everyday. I saved the file. I closed it.I began checking the powerpoint every morning.Like clockwork, new slides appeared. And they knew things that I barely admitted to myself. Things I had buried. I wasn’t sure if the feeling it incited stemmed from feeling seen or feeling surveilled. Slide 16:It felt cold and sterile and free of guilt. No one noticed.Slide 21:I haven’t been touched in 46 days.Coworkers glanced at me differently. "You look great," one said in a tone that meant nothing. "You seem tired," another offered, like a question. I started bringing lunch from home, eating alone. I stopped taking breaks. I withdrew, unsure if I was becoming more real or if I was being erased.Eventually, the file ran out of confessions. It had mapped every failing, every fleeting shame. It started predicting my future.Slide 56:I won't be needed after Q1. I stopped checking the file after that. Not because I didn't believe it. Because I did.On March 31st HR called me into their office. I knew what was coming. Before packing up my few belongings and returning my laptop to IT, I deleted the file. Cleared the trash.On the way out, I passed the printer. A stack of fresh printouts sat waiting for someone. In big bold letters the title page read:JESUS (FINAL).I didn't stop to read it.
