jjohnsonwriter

[jjohnsonwriter]

“The Children are Our Future”

“When is this going to stop!?” Elizabeth Psomas checked the volume of her bullhorn. “Sarah Cohn, a transgender classmate, was murdered; found dead in a ditch, and neither the police, nor this school’s administration have done anything about it!” The crowd forming around Elizabeth on Appian Way kept growing, and they listened in rapt attention. “It’s up to us; the student body, to police ourselves and create a safe space; an environment where we can all learn and thrive! Right now, every man, woman, and child on this campus, be they cisgender, trans, queer, gender non-binary, agender, genderfluid, or native American two-spirit, should feel unsafe!” 

Her friend Sasha Stilton-Brown asked her, “Elizabeth, is it OK if I put down this soap box for you to stand on?” Elizabeth nodded, and Sasha replied, “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to provide explicit verbal consent before I can put this soap box down in front of you, Elizabeth.”

“Thank you for asking for consent Sasha. And yes, it’s OK for you to put down the box.” She placed the REI™ pre-distressed, limited edition Soap-Box™ on the brick walkway. Elizabeth stepped up on the box to address the swelling crowd. “My fellow students, for too long have our transgender, gender non-binary, non-hetero, and other genderqueer classmates been bullied, harassed, assaulted, and now murdered!” The crowd started to cheer and shout in a mindless rabble of positive reinforcement. Some of the passing students kept on walking, while others joined the growing throng.

“I’m calling for justice against this horrendous murder; an end to the harassment and abuse, and a campus where we can all learn and work knowing the end of our journey through this institution will be graduation, not subjugation and death!” They cheered Elizabeth on, and she felt the will to effect change; to expand the rights of her peers, and to increase tolerance in society. She was not trans, but having grown up a cisgendered woman, she knew the struggle of inequality and being told what was and wasn’t your place. The dozens of students now gathered around Elizabeth cheered her on.

The mob clambered over one another to hear Elizabeth’s words over their shouts and cheers, “Let’s march down to the student senate, and demand action!” She shouted and raising her bullhorn into the air, the mob followed her down in Appian Way to the Curia, where the student senate met

In seconds the Elizabethan mob filled the Curia’s atrium past its maximum fire marshal regulated capacity of 75 occupants, and Elizabeth’s consigliere, Sasha Stilton-Brown asked her: “Elizabeth, may I knock on the door to the student senate’s office on your behalf?”

“Yes Sasha, please do that. Thank you so much!” She said with great mirth.

Sasha Stilton-Brown politely knocked on the door three times, waited a few seconds, and knocked again. “I don’t think anybody’s here right now.” She told her friend and LGBTQIA+ inclusive, intersectional feminist ally.

Elizabeth scratched her head. “Um, I’m just wondering, if maybe it wouldn’t upset anyone too much here, or trigger them, if we broke the door down?” 

A young man from the crowd came forward and said “No, I wouldn’t be offended.”, but he was white, and from the looks of it cisgender, so they checked with some of the African-American kids, but they said that ‘African-American’ felt patronizing, and if you had to be so crass as to address their race directly, you should call them ‘black’, and that if you were going to write down the outdated and frankly somewhat racist historical phrase, then you wouldn’t use a hyphen, and that you would write it: ‘African American’, because a hyphen would actually imply that the person was someone born in Africa who had also gained American citizenship. 

Feeling the room had reached a consensus, Elizabeth decided that they should all take turns running at the door, then kicking the handle in an attempt to break the door down. They agreed they had a right to do break down the door because without doing so they would feel more threatened by not addressing the campus’s social climate in the wake of the potential hate-crime murder of their transgender classmate.

They broke down the door to find the room where the student senate held their meetings completely empty. “Elizabeth?” Sasha asked her, with the 112 members of the mob standing behind them. “Um… I’m kind of getting the feeling like that maybe the student senate isn’t here right now?” She said, raising the pitch of her voice at the end of the sentence so everybody would know it was a question, and nobody would feel like, threatened, or like, triggered, because it was kind of a tense situation anyway, and they were all feeling a bit ‘on-edge’, which was the term they agreed to use rather than going straight to labeling themselves ‘triggered’, because they were worried that with tensions running so high one person labeling themselves as ‘triggered’ might cause a massive wave of them all labeling themselves as triggered, and they all decided mutually, as like a co-equal-partnership-type-thing, that they didn’t want to put a ‘label’ on it because they knew that some of the group might not want to be labeled, and they didn’t want to make anyone feel they had been ‘Othered’, especially in such a big group, with so much like, ‘revolutionary steam’ built up.

“Right, I’m also thinking that student senate might not be here right now.” Elizabeth said, and one of the nameless, faceless, and totally coequal and valid mob came forward holding a piece of paper which had been taped to the door they were trying to break down.

A cis white girl wearing a black dress approached Elizabeth and Sasha. “Hey guys, I just wanted to show you that there’s this sign that says the student senate is actually out for the day, do you think maybe it would be OK if we agreed to meet another day, and like, maybe table this whole ‘revolution’ thing until the student senate, or some body of representatives we can actually talk to that might actually want to listen to us-”

Then the mob realized a white, cisgender, heteronormatively gender-affirming dressed girl was making the point, so they started shouting the nameless, faceless cis white girl down, the angriest and most aggressive of which were actually white cis females themselves, and the totally co-equal mob stoned her with their epithets: “White Privilege!”, “Cis-Privilege Must Die!”, and the absolutely fatal: “Heteronormativity is Patriarchy!” The mob heaped more castigations, one on top of another until their words blended together in a meaningless avalanche of anti-slurs, and Elizabeth and Sasha realized that they had lost all control over their once unified and somewhat cohesive group. The two friends pressed their way through to the exit and narrowly escaped being trampled by the mob. 

They had escaped to the relative safety of their dorm, and although neither of them were trans, or even gender non-binary, or anything other than like, totally cisnormative in their look, appearance, and the rest of their overall outward gender-expression, Elizabeth and Sasha weren’t taking any chances given what had already happened to Leah Smith: their trans classmate who had been murdered. Leah had been found buried in a shallow grave off the I-80; her genitals and eyes stabbed over 50 times before the attackers had set fire to her corpse.

“We can’t let this stand; we’ve gotta do something!” Elizabeth said as she cracked into a bag of seaweed chips.

Sasha Stilton-Brown had never felt really unsafe before in her life, but now her rights had to have been violated, she thought. She wasn’t sure exactly what rights had been violated, because come to think of it, she couldn’t really think of what all her rights were exactly, but she definitely got the feeling that somehow, somewhere along the line, they’d been violated. So she did the only thing she knew how to do. “Liz, I got it!” 

Elizabeth chewed the wad of granola to the inside of one cheek before clearing her throat and saying: “Well first of all, please don’t abbreviate my name, because it makes me feel like, less than, or ‘Other’,” Elizabeth used finger quotes when she said ‘Other’, “but yeah, go ahead, what did you want to say?”

Sasha cleared her throat before speaking again; “Actually, please don’t presume to give me like, permission to speak, because it makes me feel like I’m being managed, but yeah, what if we started our own student senate!?” Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at the insinuation she was managing Sasha, but then Elizabeth’s expression lit up when she realized the implication of all the things she (which she immediately corrected herself in her head to ‘we’) could do with all that power to affect change!

“Sasha, you’re a genius!” 

Sasha cleared her throat. “Actually, Elizabeth, please don’t use the term ‘genius’ because it’s rife with patriarchal implications, and my brother actually has an IEP, so I’d appreciate it if you could just, like, not.” Her brother’s IEP was a stunt he pulled so that he could listen to music in study hall and he didn’t actually have any learning disability except the paralyzing fear of spiders and dodgeballs, and aforementioned desire to listen to music.

Elizabeth immediately began to feel a flood of remorse, and tears welled up in her eyes, which she could barely contain. “OMG, I’m soooo sorry Sasha. I had no idea!”

Sasha fluffed her pillow and sat up in bed, working on her American Civ essay on personal freedom and the Bill of Rights. “But you know, you’re right: we need to make our own student senate. We need something which can fight for our rights on campus!” 

Four days later, in the hours preceding the next student senate meeting, Elizabeth and Sasha stood outside to gather another group of students to aid in their cause. They marched into the student senate meeting with their posse of like-minded, freethinking individuals in tow.

An official looking white cisgender female stood at the lectern wearing a Bernie Sanders button on her blazer, and spoke into the microphone: “As class president, it’s my responsibility now to open up the floor to public comment regarding the matter at hand: the senate’s vote on whether we should replace tofu in the cafeteria with soy-free seitan or tempeh.”

A thin young man (really more of a boy) wearing a gray cotton shirt with two interlocking triangles, one pink, the other purple, stood up and addressed the president of the senate, the delegation, and the room. “Hello, the LGBTQIAPK (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgener, Queer, Pansexual, Intersexed, Asexual, Pansexual, Kink) Delegation of Students Living on Campus for Safer Spaces and Healthier Eating Options (LGBTQIAPK-DSLCSSHEO) would like to posit that we only offer quinoa, almonds, and lentils as the cafeteria’s protein options, in light of the fact that seitan and tempeh are grown more internationally, and that we can’t be sure that we’re keeping our institutional carbon footprint at acceptable levels if we import seitan and tempeh.”

The class president scoffed and said: “Excuse me, but last week’s referendum was on precisely this issue, and we voted it down, 5-4 against.” She adjusted her glasses and brushed back her hair behind her ear with one finger.

Sensing either a lull in the conversation, or that if she didn’t butt in now the issue would never be heard, Elizabeth stood up and raised one hand, to which every member of the senate, the LGBTQIAPK+-DSLCSSHEO, the local DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) student union, the student Democratic Party, and the HHWOIB (Hula-Hoopers Without Ideological Boundaries), and the rest of the student body in attendance of the meeting who wasn’t part of Elizabeth and Sasha’s mob, or any other affiliated group, all scoffed at the very notion of something as childish as raising one’s hand, because anyone without a social life (which they assumed was everyone present, seeing as how they each assumed everyone else in the room, given that it was thursday at 5:35 PM, and most students on campus didn’t have classes on friday, which made it the university’s campus wide ‘Thursty [sic] Thursday’) was enough of a nerd, geek, or an outright Poindexter to know the basics of parliamentary procedure re. the fact that one never ever actually does something so blatant, obvious, and childish as raise one’s hand, but rather, intimates through a precise and scheming series of influence building tactics and other machiavellianisms to simply ‘make it known’ that one’s intention at present was to speak, and somehow simply command the attention of the room via psychic will towards one’s self and simply begin to speak. But Elizabeth was about to turn everything these coddled prep-school snowflake cucks had ever known about being a coddled prep-school snowflake cuck on its egg-shaped head.

“Excuse me.” Elizabeth said, raising her hand higher in that ‘I have to pee and I am a small child’ foot stepping pattern many people grow out of very shortly after they hit middle school. “Excuse me!” she shouted.

Class president Harper Graves leaned forward, smiled, and said into the microphone: “Yassss?” At which point the rest of student senate, the LGBTQIAPK-DSLCSSHEO, the local DSA, the student Democratic Party, and the HHWOIB started laughing, although a large contingent of those laughing were actually ‘whoop-whoop’ing, and the HHWOIB were laughing so hard that their internal somatic rhythms had taken over, and they’d started to swing their hips in the circular motions they subconsciously made after months of continuous daily ideology-free 8-hour-marathon-hula-hoop sessions. The only people in the room not laughing were Elizabeth, Sasha Stilton-Brown, and the 99 pissed off students they came in with standing behind them. In fact, Elizabeth and her mob stood stone faced and silent with their arms crossed.

“A student was murdered, and you’re all standing here arguing over tofu!?” Elizabeth shouted over the din. Some of the students were still wiping the tears of laughter from their eyes over Elizabeth’s ignorance of parliamentary procedure politics, but by the time they’d made sense of her words and understood what she was actually saying, the jollity of the room’s atmosphere had come to a grinding halt. “A trans woman’s mutilated corpse was found in a ditch, and we’ve done NOTHING to make this a more inclusive, just, and ultimately safer space in the aftermath of this tragedy!” Her words pierced their bleeding hearts and shot straight through. They all considered themselves trans allies, but in that moment of shining didacticism on the hill, the kids had just been forced to put their money where their ideological mouths were.

Senate president Harper Graves sighed. “If you want to raise the issue, file a motion, and we’ll vote on it at the next week’s meeting.”

Elizabeth walked up to the row of desks to the side of the podium and addressed president Harper Graves. “God damnit!” She shouted, slamming her fist down onto the desk, “We don’t have time to wait until the next meeting! Something needs to be done right now, and we need action!”

There was a clamorous chatter of speculation which broke out about the room: voices conferred with one another in private spaces as to what should be done, and Elizabeth’s spine snapped to attention. She realized that this was her moment, so standing at the head of the room, she climbed up onto the table where four of the nine senate members were sitting, and kicked a pile of papers into the air. A black curtain of silence fell over the room, and all eyes were on her.

Had Elizabeth known what the consequences of her actions would be, she might not have been so bold: so hasty: so… courageous! “All in favor of suspending this farce of the student senate, and transfering all the rights and powers of the governing body to a single leader…” She asked the room, looked directly into senate president Harper’s eyes and said: “raise your hand.” 

Sasha Stilton-Brown was the first to raise her hand, but she looked around the room first, and did it slowly. Elizabeth thought she was doing this not to appear like a blind follower, but Sasha understood well the gravity of the situation. Then, more and more hands started crawling up towards the ceiling, until a forest of men and women’s hands interspersed with different colors of nail polish (on both sexes, genders, and every combination of both) shot up about the room like a treetop canopy with pit-stained roots unifying every race, expression of gender, sexual orientation, and all variety of college campus liberalism

“Those in favor of immediately electing a new leader: keep your hands raised.” Elizabeth said, and nobody moved a muscle. It was parliamentary insurrection, and you could hear individual drops of sweat hit the floor.

Elizabeth looked around the room. Drenched in flop sweat, her hair frizzy in the heat. Harper Graves scrambled back up onto her podium and announced: “I nominate myself!”

“All who second the motion?” Elizabeth asked the room, and everyone looked around as if to check that there were no other aspersions: that they had all made the right choice. None of them cast a single vote for sweaty Harper Graves, not even her co-senators. Caesar’s murder was being committed right before their eyes, and everyone in the packed house just sat back and watched.

Knowing to quit when she was ahead, Elizabeth surveyed the room and savored the moment. “Motion passed. The chair recognizes Elizabeth Psomas as new Senate President. Meeting Adjourned. We’ll be holding the next meeting on Tuesday in the quadrangle.”

Some brave, slack jawed moron with an IQ of 120 (which wasn’t really a fair measure of intellect, they all acknowledged, given that the IQ test is notoriously biased towards white European males, but it was the closest thing they had for an intellectual yardstick, aside from SAT scores, which were their own sociopolitical minefield) had the balls (or whatever passed for ‘balls’ around these people) to ask: “What’s a quadrangle?”

“The fucking quad!” Sasha Stilton-Brown shouted, and they all left the room, shaking their heads at their compatriot’s ignorance: a sign of what was to come.

On Tuesday at 8:00 PM, just after the dining commons had closed they gathered on the quad. All the walkways and public areas had been brightly lit at night ever since the series of sexual assaults and brutal rapes had plagued the campus almost a decade ago. The Dean had managed to keep all incidents out of the papers, which was the only reason the college was still standing. But everything was about to change.

“Friends, Romans, country-people of varying ethnicities and gender identities: take back your campus. Take back your safety. Take back your rights!” Elizabeth shouted into the bullhorn, and the hundreds of students all holding hand-painted signs and their smartphones like torches in the night roared. 

Dean Whimple was watching from his office. He called the head of campus security: ‘officer’ (although he held no legal position whatsoever) Erik Goon. “Goon! We’ve got an insurrection!” The dean said, sweating into his suit as he listened in on the other end of the line. “It means get the fuck down here and break this shit up, god dammit! If we don’t get in there soon it’ll be all our asses!” He pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a sigh. “And Goon: for the love of god, don’t use force! The last thing we want is some legacy kid getting pepper sprayed, or god forbid, tazed, then they record it on their phone and it’s all over cable news for the next month!” Dean Whimple hung up to call the national guard, but then thought better of it. ‘No, Goon can handle it, and if Goon can’t fix it I may as well just resign right now!’

The Goon Squad reached the quad as fast as their Segways could carry them, and although they had been instructed explicitly by Dean Whimple to show restraint, they all had itchy trigger fingers, which a constant schedule of working out and mentally preparing oneself to beat the living shit out of some stuck-up rich kid who was just about to go off and make at least five, probably more like ten times your annual salary tends to do. Living their lives in a constant state of preparing for war had made the Goon squad ready to use deadly force, not to mention the pent-up homosexuality of spotting each other for all those sweaty, grunting reps in the weight room and the way the students segregated them in their own space, treating the campus security like some sort of crew-cut gestapo, or neon jerseyed SS.

Erik Goon screeched his segway to a halting stop in front of the quad and addressed the mob. “Disperse! Leave the premises and go back to your dorms!”

Elizabeth had worked too hard, and fought too long (since last Tuesday) to give in now. She commanded her army with the implicit epithet she knew would set their revolutionary blood ablaze: “No Nazis, No KKK, No Fascist USA!” She shouted from the center of the mob into her bullhorn, and they all started chanting the words in unison. Each of her acolytes’ warm bodies formed a protective cocoon to guard Elizabeth against campus security. She knew that if the authorities could cut off the head, then her movement would die, but if all they could do was to wound the flesh, then she could survive any challenge the administration had to offer. Sasha was right there with her, and she enticed the crowd to fervor, repeating Elizabeth’s chant: “No Nazis, No KKK, No Fascist USA!”. They locked arms around the edge of the mob so that even if a student on the outer ring should be tazed (which they were), or pepper-sprayed (which they were), a student being held up by all the social justice warriors around them would have no choice but to remain ramrod still and endure the abuse.

The crowd started to chant “We Shall Overcome” when the tasers and pepper spray started to become too much, and they seemed newly resolved, and to Goon’s eyes, totally impenetrable. Then a nameless voice shouted out from the back: “Fuck the fascists: resist!”

They broke ranks and started to overrun campus security. The mob was armed with lighters and cans of air-duster they turned into blowtorches, and students on the outside stood with three ring binders they held onto as shields interlocking in a phalanx, while their compatriots stood behind them and swung down on the Goon Squad using socks with locks in them.

Assistant head of security Mike Felcher turned to Officer Goon and said: “We’re fucked! Let’s go.” and Goon tried to marshal his troops but it was futile, and they all hopped on their Segways and rode away as fast as possible, fearing what might happen if the mob were to overpower them.

The revolutionaries stayed on the quad all through the night, and feeling a strong sense of comradery the next morning everybody went to breakfast together, commandeering an entire section of the cafeteria for themselves. Elizabeth and Sasha at this point saw fit to expand the rights and privileges of the student senate to overtake the position of the actual administration of the college, in the name of protecting the student body, which was the whole reason they’d started this thing in the first place: to make sure that none of them would ever again be made into a Sarah Cohn, or abused, offended, or upset in any other way, even if it was just the lack of a trigger warning or exposed to an idea which they felt triggered them in some way.

“We’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot!” Elizabeth said to Sasha, who this point was not lost on.

“Do you realize, that if we’d been in this position in our parent’s generation, we’d be looked at either as revolutionaries or radicals?” Sasha said, and Elizabeth thought she had a good point.

Elizabeth drank her coffee with a snowflake pattern stenciled in milk on the surface out of an avocado, and as she drank from the avocado, watching the snowflake slowly melt into the coffee, then dissolve into nothing, an enormous dam of rage that had been building up inside her finally burst. She stood up from the table realizing she just couldn’t take the oppression anymore.

“AAAHHHHHHHHH-TRIGGERRR-WARRR-NINGGGGGGG!!!” She screamed, and flipped her tray all over some freshman, covering him in a green slurry of avocado mixed with scalding hot coffee. He ran out of the cafeteria screaming, and covered with third degree burns, but nobody got up to help him or even gave it a second thought, because they thought he was a white, cisgendered male, but was in reality a somewhat butchy African American lesbian with albinism.

“Are you OK!?” Sasha asked her, terrified of what had happened to her best friend.

Elizabeth turned to her, and shouted: “STOP TRYING TO GASLIGHT ME: I’M NOT CRAZY, AND I’LL ASK FOR HELP WHEN I NEED IT!” And upon hearing this the acolytes descended on Sasha and dragged her off to some gulag of their own invention, because Elizabeth couldn’t be bothered to keep track of these things and she realized it was better not to ask such questions. 

“I’m calling an emergency meeting to order in the student senate right now!” Elizabeth shouted as she stormed up Appian Way to the Curia with her mob following closely behind her. They filed one by one in a purposefully random order into the student senate room so that nobody could say any one race, gender, gender identity, or sexual preference was privileged above another.

Once inside the student senate room everyone was too terrified of Elizabeth to address her directly, and much more afraid of each other should any one of them be seen to speak out of turn or break ranks, so they all just stayed, inspecting one another for any sort of ideological deficiencies, making sure to complement each other on anything they could determine as sufficiently breaking with traditional gender roles, racial stereotypes, and the like. All the cisgender white men had started wearing dresses over their jeans, painting their nails, and smearing so much makeup all over their faces that they looked like clowns.

“We’re going down to the dean’s office with our list of demands!” Elizabeth shouted. None of them had taken the time to write anything down or hash any of their ideas out, but they knew what they all wanted in a general way: something about some transgender-something, or something-something. It didn’t matter anymore.

Dean Whimple watched as the mob stormed up Appian Way towards his office, and they could swear they saw his Adam’s apple expand and contract in a very visible ‘gulp’ motion from outside the building on street level. The mob took to the stairs, seeing as how only a small platoon among their swelling ranks would fit into an elevator, and Elizabeth said that if they just showed up one elevator load at a time it didn’t have the same impact, not in a ‘revolutionary-change-type-way’, so they took the stairs. By the time they reached the eighth floor where the Dean’s office was, Elizabeth and the mob had become wily and primal. Something essentially human had left them and whatever was left of them when they got to the eighth floor was just animalistic urge and the bloodlust that drove them forward.

Finally she could see it. All of her sacrifice and effort since last Tuesday: nine long days of oppression in the free-wifi-all-you-can-eat-three-times-a-day-with-two-snacks-in-between gulag, and the constant threat that if she happened to be trans (which she wasn’t, but that was besides the point) that she could be murdered at any point in time was all worth it! Elizabeth approached the door with the words: “RICHARD WHIMPLE, DEAN OF STUDENTS”, stenciled on the pebbled glass. Elizabeth inched closer and closer to the door; justice, honor, and most importantly safety was finally within arm’s reach! Never again would anything bad ever happen to her or any of her beloved classmates. The world would truly be a Utopia, if only the rest of the world could enjoy the same unending rights and infinite privileges that she would soon secure for herself and the rest of the student body! But this was only the first stop! First ----- University, then: The World! Elizabeth reached out to touch the handle of the Dean’s office, but something was terribly wrong! There were shadowy figures looming behind the door’s translucent glass, and something much more dangerous than just one more cisgendered patriarchal male oppressor was lying in wait behind that door.

Then the face Elizabeth thought she’d never see again appeared before her: the best friend, closest ally, and dark confidant: Sasha Stilton-Brown, appeared before her. Confused, terrified, and trembling away from the door, Elizabeth was thrust back into the blinding light of her ex-best-friend’s glare. The subtle manipulations, the Stalinist realpolitik, it was all a clever plot to undermine Elizabeth’s authority, and transfer all of her power, bit by bit, one pernicious deed after the next, until her ‘best friend’s’ authority had finally eroded out from underneath her, leaving her dangling from a precarious ledge, and this was the final push over the cliff’s edge.

“You knew it was going to end like this.” Sasha said as she opened the door, pushed Elizabeth into the dean’s office, and slammed the door shut behind her. 

Elizabeth screamed: “TRIGGER WARNING!” as Sasha Stilton-Brown and her classmates stood outside the room, and saw the muzzle flashes light up the dean’s office. They smelled the burnt air of the gunfire. They all pressed their backs to the wall opposite, blood running out from under the door to the dean’s office and into the hallway.

[jjohnsonwriter]

Rushdie’s analysis of revolutionary India includes a healthy dose of #classconsciousness , and gives us insight into our own historical moment #whyweread https://www.instagram.com/p/B-mx_iyA57d/?igshid=o4u73a3comid

[jjohnsonwriter]

“Extraterestrial Homesick Blues”

MONDAY

The drive to work was all bumper to bumper traffic, and the AC from my 2013 Ford Taurus was just a colder form of CO2 poisoning. I miss the Lincoln, but Liz got that in the divorce too. 

I walked into the common room where all the residents were sitting around, watching TV, playing checkers coated in that special chemical that tastes like earwax. It doesn’t always keep the residents from swallowing the plastic pieces, but it helps.

“Hello, Dr. K!” Nurse Hatchet said. You could tell she had huge tits under all that uniform, even though she must have been like 50-something and she dressed like a nun.

“Hello nurse Hatchet, how are you this fine morning?” 

“Quite well, Doctor Kierkegaard. And yourself?”

“Well I’m feeling exceptionally… Refreshed, I guess would be the word!”

Rhonda, one of the orderlies, looked over at us smiled.

I waved out each finger from my hand individually at her. “Hi, Rhonda!”

“Hello, Dr. K. Good to see you today.” She took a resident’s temperature.

Hospital regulations are that we sign in when we come and go so that if anyone tries to use our key cards it’s kept in a log, that way we know if anyone’s stolen our card, which wouldn’t be good.  So I followed procedure, writing my name and the time on the sheet and started to walk to my office to get checked in, but before I got past the desk I noticed something was going on in the common room where Rhonda was standing over Artie Tremond’s wheelchair.

“Will you just hold still so I can do this?” Rhonda said, fumbling with his head as he lolled back and forth, trying to escape her grasp.

Artie was sitting in the corner with Rhonda standing over him, going on about how he had just about had it with Wellington. “Sacré blue! Zat goddamn sepoy général! E’ asé made a mockery ove’ mah impériale guard!” Tremolds said, then spat on the floor. 

“Now Artie, you know we’re not supposed to be spitting on the floor! Behave yourself so I can finish.” Rhonda chided him.

“Artie...” Nurse Hatchet reminded warned him without looking up from her papers. Sometimes Nurse Hatchet acted like she was the patient’s mother, which I found disturbing in it’s own way.

“That’s OK, he just needs his medication early today.” Rhonda walked back into a plexiglass enclosure and locked the door behind her. She opened the closet and began allotting the medication in paper cups with the wax paper cups of water on plastic trays.

Then I noticed a new patient sitting off to the side of the room, slumped way down low in the chair. His eyes were glazed over as he stared into the middle distance, not moving, and barely even breathing. His hair was all combed up in a greased pompadour like some kind of James Dean knockoff.  

I leaned over Nurse Hatchet’s desk and smiled. “Do you have the new patient’s chart?”

“Yes, but I’d better warn you. Watch yourself around that one, I don’t like the look of him.”

“Oh yeah? Did you get your heart broken by one of those guys back in the day?” 

She narrowed her eyes and looked up at me from papers she was pretending to read. “First of all, I’m not nearly that old. And secondly…” She caught my eyes wandering down onto her massive bosom. How does it all stay in there? 

“And secondly, My eyes are up here, Doctor Kierkegaard!”

“Right! Sorry Nurse Hatchet, I was just trying to read this patient’s file.” I lied, and pointed to some obscure piece of information in one of the files on her desk.

“That’s a requisition form for bedpans!” She chided me.

“I know. I just uh… wanted to make sure it gets done right… intra department oversight is a key feature of institutional safeguards against-” 

She shot me with another steely look. Unable to meet her gaze, I darted my eyes around the room.

“I guess I’d better-” I gestured to the new patient: Elvis Presley or James Dean, or some piece of 50’s obscura shat back out by the annals of the 20th century.

Nurse Hatchet leaned forward “Well I guess you’d better…” she said, shooing me off.

I walked over to the new patient and read his chart. Danny Califia: depression, claims he’s… an alien! Oh great. Why do I always get the crazy ones first thing in the morning?

I stood in front of him and very self consciously pulled my lips into the best smile I could muster, knowing my bedside manner was about on the level of Josef Mengele.

“Hello Danny, I’m Dr. Eric Kierkegaard, but most people just call me Dr. K.” He stuck out his arm limply, and took my hand with a firm grip shook hard. Even through the impenetrable lenses of his dark wayfarers I knew he was looking me right in the eye.

“You probly think I’m crazy doc, don’tcha?” Danny pulled a black comb from his ankle boots and sculpted his black pompadour.

“Well the thing about calling somebody ‘crazy’ is that it’s dismissive. It doesn’t get at the underlying problem a person is experiencing.” I started towards intake room four.  “I want to talk to you, just to ask you a few questions.”

“Okay…” he said. Poor bastard. He looks like he’s just about my age, stuck in a place like this in that getup. Hey I’m not judging, but still.

The first thing you learn in this job is ‘take everything they say with a grain of salt’. If you can’t do that, then you’ve already lost it. I was sitting in room four with this new patient: Danny Califia. Danny was a self-admit, although I had no idea why he was there. He seemed perfectly normal, except for the 50’s greaser shtick. The room where we met was like any other in the L.A. County psychiatric hospital: modern, sleek, off white with the faint smell of piss-stained bed sheets and slobbered tongue guards coming through the gap of air flowing between the door’s sill and the floor. Intake room number four had the same problem as every other room in the hospital: the fluorescent lighting was way too bright. You had to close your eyes and blink a few times every couple minutes just to make sure they didn’t dry up and fall out of their sockets.

I flipped through his intake file: personal history of depression, family history of schizophrenia, no known schizoid episodes. “So Danny, what brings you here today?” 

Danny pursed his lips in a rattlesnake kiss. “Yeah doc, I got the blues. Got the blues so bad I could just die.” 

It’s never somebody normal, it’s never a schizophrenic who just shits himself. No, always the crazy, off the walls, ‘couldn’t make this stuff up’ weirdos. “Well Danny, that sounds pretty serious.”

“ ‘Course it’s serious doc! I got the blues so bad I could just up an’ die!” He shouted, the sunglasses sliding down to the tip of his nose, and I could see his eyes were red with tears. He glanced up and caught me looking, then pushed the glasses back up to hide his tears. 

I looked him up and down. It’s like he saw Rebel Without a Cause or The Wild One and just got lost in it. I guess there’s no accounting for taste. “So Danny, tell me why you’re here.”

“Well Doc, I’m…” He started to cry. 

This isn’t just an act: maybe this guy’s just stuck in a timewarp. 

“I’m jus’ so goddamn homesick.” Danny pushed the sunglasses up the bridge of his nose again and shrank down into the chair, but that didn’t stop the tears running out under his shades.

I flipped through his intake file and loosened my tie. “Danny, where’s home? It seems you didn’t list an address when you were admitted.”

“Well the thing is Doc: I didn’t want to lie, but I knew they wouldn’t believe me.”

“Believe you about what, Danny?”

“Well the thing is Doc: I’m an Alien.”

I don’t know why I balk anymore. Half the fucking people in here seem to think they’re either Charlemagne or Jesus Christ. But an alien? That’s a new one.

“Uh… What’s the name of your home planet, Danny?”

He slid down into the chair and put one arm around the backrest. “Aww geez doc, I can’t say. It’d take me a real long time to say the whole thing out loud, like we’re talking days, doc.” 

“Well is there a shorthand? Like a ‘slang’ for your home planet?” Sometimes it’s hard to stomach this stuff: to act like you believe them, but trying to understand the full scope of their delusions is part of the process, and I needed Danny to trust me. 

He shook his head. “You ain’t gonna believe this doc but uhh, they’re real strict about slang on my home planet. You either say the whole thing, find a way around saying it, or die the thousand deaths of the Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa.” He leaned forward to peer over the top of  my clipboard. “Oh, if you’re writn’ that down doc, it’s a proper noun, so you gotta capitalize the first letter of each word.”

I found myself making the corrections to ‘Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa’. Wait, what the fuck am I doing!?

I decided I couldn’t let him deerail me. I had to keep the conversation on my terms, and follow my line of logic.  “But Danny, how will they know you’re not saying the whole thing? How will they know you’re abbreviating the name if they’re on a different planet?” I know he’s going to have something stupid loaded up for this, and I’m just walking face first into a trap.

“They got satellites in my teeth, doc!” This guy’s fucking nuts!

“How exactly does an alien know what a proper noun is?”

“Uh… do you think we’re stupid, doc? Course’ we’re hip to your Earth ways, ya dig?” He reached into his boot and scratched his ankle. “Hey daddy o’, you got any smokes ‘round here!?” 

“Sorry Danny, this whole hospital’s a tobacco free campus.” God I need a cigarette. “So on…” I looked down at the paper and read whatever nonsense I’d just written down, “So on ‘Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa’, they punished you for slang?”

“No doc, Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa is just the cat that they executed for using the slang name of -!” Danny’s eyebrows shot up over the top of his sunglasses, and he scooped the air back into his mouth with both hands, forcing the words back down his throat. 

Danny slammed his fists down on the table and shouted at me: “JEEZ DOC, WHADDAYA TRYNA DO? GET ME KILLED?” 

“Danny, I just want to-”

“-Doc, whatareya writn’ a book!? You think we didn’t do our homework, is that it?” I wrote down the words on notepad: book-homework. He scratched the back of his head, then the little prick pulled a cigarette out of nowhere and lit up. He was just about my age, maybe a year or two younger, or older even, but he acted like an 18 year old kid.

“Danny, you can’t smoke that in here.”

He exhaled a long drag right in my face. “Listen, daddy-o-”

My eyes stung from the hot smoke. “-It’s Doctor Kierkegaard, or ‘Doctor K’.” I warned him.

The room filled with secondhand and I looked up at the smoke detectors blinking red light, but for some reason it wouldn’t go off. Then my eyes darted up at the clock. 9:03: three minutes late for my next meeting. Thank God! “Well Danny, I’m afraid since I’ve got other meetings that’s all the time we have for today.”

He leaned the chair back on two legs. “Well doc, I’d say it’s been a pleasure but…” 

What a prick.

TUESDAY

I drove to work that morning and pulled into my spot, even later than usual from traffic. I was on the phone with my lawyer all the way to work, trying to get this alimony resettled with Liz, but of course she’s trying to go to school for acupuncture or astrology or some other horseshit. Apparently if I get a raise under state law she can do that, which would explain the guy skulking outside my apartment last night with the fake moustache hanging from his upper lip by a four inch strand of spirit gum. God, I’m going to do myself a favor and just shoot my next ex wife in the head right after the honeymoon. I’d way rather be Scott Peterson than the asshole who gets taken for a ride.

When I walked in Danny was talking to Artie Tremonds and smoking a cigarette under the smoke alarm. “You know, I used to hang with the real Napoleon. Class act. Nuthin’ like yours truly.” Danny looked up at the ceiling and exhaled a blue ring of directly into the smoke detector. 

“Sacré Bleu!” Tremonds darted his head around the room. “Nurseh! Nurseh! Thisa man haz leet a cigarette in ze nonsmoking area!”

“Some Napoleon! The real one used to smoke like a chimney!” 

Rhonda saw Danny standing next to Tremonds, and it made her nervous. “Hey!” She said, hustling over to them. “You get away from him, right now!” 

He tried to wave her off, but she stood there ignoring him, and apparently nobody noticed me enter the room. “And gimme that cigarette!” Rhonda demanded. Danny gave her the smoldering Kool and retreated to the back corner of the room to pout.

I checked in and called to him from interview room four. “All right Danny, we’re going to continue your intake evaluation.”

“ ‘S fine. This place is a drag anyway, man.” He said to nobody in particular, and Rhonda rolled her eyes as we filed into the dull green intake room. I opened the door, holding it for Danny as I coughed, choking on the stench of stale piss. God, was this place always such a shithole?

“So Danny, when we last left off we were talking about…” I had to look at my notepad to read whatever delusion this guy had come up with as a backstory. “Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa, and how you’re from another planet. Would you care to elaborate on that?” I thought I heard Danny go ‘chk’, like he was sucking his teeth or something, but I should have known better.

“Yeah well, one day the warden was having a party, see? I was up in county, then the prison band starts playin’, n’ it was ca-ray-zee! I’m talkin’ everybody in the whole cell block, spider murphy playin’ on the saxophone, little Joey blowin’ on the slide trombone. You shoulda heard those knocked out jailbirds sing!”

I realized what he was doing, then I looked up at him, and if I wasn’t already furious then by that point I was down right livid. “Danny!” I snapped, taking the cigarette out of his mouth that he’d lit while I wasn’t looking, “That’s the plot of fucking ‘Jailhouse Rock’; the fucking ELVIS SONG!” The little bastard just looked at me with a shit-eating grin smeared all over his stupid fucking face! 

“HAHAHAHA, sorry daddy-o, you just get so cranked up over nothin’!”

“Oh, you think you’re really fucking funny, don’t you!?”

I stood up, and backed over to the intercom and pressed the button. “Nurse, bring the patient to solitary, he needs to be heavily sedated.”

“You folks know hot to have a real good time round here!” He shouted at me, then the huge orderlies dragged him off, kicking and screaming. He snarled, raising his lip on one side, looked like he was winking at me or something, stomping one foot in rhythm as they hauled him off. He shouted at me “You ain't nothin but a hound-!” then they jammed the needle into his neck, and shot him full of promethazine hydrochloride. Danny went out like a light, and the two huge nurses hauled him off to his room, his heels dragging on the linoleum, and the right leg shaking every couple seconds in some kind of uncontrolled spasm.

I stood there in my padded cell, looking up at that blue moon, all alone. I opened my mouth with a dream in my heart and a private love all my own. As I tilted my head back and opened wide, my molars popped open like the hood of your grandaddy’s old Studebaker. Little satellite dishes shot up from of my teeth, and I could hear the mothership calling down to me. It said: “Little Rocketman, are you homesick? Do you miss your wife? It’s going to be a long, long time until touchdown brings you round again. We’ll bring you home, and we know you’ll prove us right: we know you’ll prove you’re the man we think you are.” 

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’m all burned up. Earth ain’t the kinda place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell.” 

“Should we destroy it?” 

I paused, and thought about it for a minute. “Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s give them a shot, see how they do.”

WEDNESDAY:

‘Hump day’. That’s what they call it. Yeah, ‘hump day’ my ass! I know I shouldn’t be so pessimistic. At least I’m almost halfway through. Now if I could just get rid of this patient. 

Thank god the hippocratic oath is just for physicians. Apparently it’s not enough that work is a shit-show. Last night at my apartment, I could have sworn I caught that P.I. digging through the dumpsters! Lucky for him the vietnamese couple taking care of their great grandmother had just taken out their trash, which was full of the old woman’s shit-caked diapers. I’ve been in this business long enough to know the acrid stench of human waste. Although you don’t need to be Columbo to figure out there’s just about jack shit on me in my fucking trash. But hey, let the bastard have at it! ‘As you wish’, asshole!

I pulled into the parking lot and found who else but Nurse Hatchet into my spot. Furious, I walked into the office and dressed her down.

“Nurse Hatchet.”

“Mmmmmyello?” she said as I pinched my brow and shook my head.

“You do realize you’re parked in my spot, right?”

She hadn’t looked up from whatever paperwork she was fumbling over and I dropped my keys down onto the counter. She still didn’t look up.

“HEY!” I snapped, and instantly realized my mistake.

Nurse Hatchet stood up and leaned over the desk, pressing her face right up to me, and I couldn’t help but look down at her enormous rack. “Doctor Kierkegaard, there’s no need to get testy with me, I’m just trying to do my job, the same as you, the same as anybody, alright!?” She said, and Rhonda added: “You tell em’!” pushing a wheelchair to the storage closet.

I realized something was wrong. People like Rhonda and nurse Hatchet aren’t always the most cognizant of their surroundings or their mental state, but somebody like myself… well, ‘knows better’ isn’t exactly the right word, but still…

Something was changing in her, in Rhonda, in me… well, all of us really. It wasn’t just that people were rude, that’s to be expected after a certain trudging through the daily slog of working life, but it’s that something had fundamentally changed in the hospital. I could tell something was wrong, and it wasn’t just my god-damned parking spot! It was the whole hospital: staff, residents, everything!

That day I was doing rounds, which meant dealing with one of the hospital’s two hundred patients for twenty minutes, spending another hour writing a report, then going to the next one. I call this the ‘chicken nugget’ approach to psychiatric healthcare, because it’s cookie cutter, and woefully insufficient to actually addressing the problems of a very sick and desperate human being struggling in the grasp of the state. Today I was going to see Artie Tremonds, a man who came to the L.A. county Psychiatric Hospital in 1998, and since slipping into a delusional state in which he believed from the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep (and strangely enough, even when he was asleep) that he literally was Napoleon Bonaparte, some time after he’d been exiled on the island of Saint Helena after having been defeated by the British and abdicating the throne. For the last 20 years Tremonds had made literally no progress whatsoever.

But today when I asked him some basic questions he started getting evasive in the weirdest ways.

“Do you still think that you’re Napoleon Boneparte?”

“You sinkeh you are-ah the only one wiz ze cleepboard, eh? You sinkeh zat just because you and ze British ‘ave trapped me ‘ere zat I will die of zis sickness!?”

Exhausted from an already long week, I tried to reason with Artie, a man fundamentally impervious to reason. I held up a mirror in front of him.  “But can’t you see when you look in the mirror that you’re not Napoleon?”

Artie had white hair, a small, squat head, and he was tall, lanky old Irishman. In his youth he’d been one of the best defenders in college basketball, but now in his 80s he was just a liverspotted old wreck: someone who’d spent years researching french history and slipped into a world of delusion, where the only facts that mattered were his own.

He only looked at his reflection for an instant, before waving me off with one of his long, freckled arms covered in white hair. “Zis is just a trick of the British! Ze real foe is right zere!” He said, pointing to directly at me. “If you want ze real culprit you must turn your ze mirror of deception on yourself, and you will zee yourzelf for awhat you really are: a fake!”

We had almost been making real progress before this, but now Artie was ready to throw it all away, but I had no idea why.

“But it’s obvious you’re not Napoleon. He died almost 200 years ago! Don’t you remember the life you led before you came to this place? Don’t you remember your family, or your-”

He slammed his long arm on the table, and suddenly I was terrified. “You! You are ze liar! I am trying to do somesing great here, and you do no-sing but stymie me at every turn! Damn you! Damn you, you liar!”

“Artie,” I said, “What’s wrong? Everything was going so well just last week, but now you’re fighting the staff, you won’t take your medication, and you’re trying to bite people, refusing to cooperate-”

He shouted over me,  “AHA! ZAT IZ ZE WORD, NO? La Coopération!” Artie spat on the ground, reinforcing his Napoleonic mannerism. “You, ze enemy of liberty, and ze arbiter wiz your thumb on ze scale! You; the man who would rape and defile ze sweet ladies of Liberty and Justice in a ménage à trois impie!”

He lunged at me, and just as I jumped back I ran to the door, the old man leapt from his wheelchair like a cat, skulking towards me, shoulders raised: some great irish lion and me, trapped in what was now his den. I reached behind me with my keycard and swiped at the scanner I couldn’t see. “BEEP!” I heard the electronic lock open and stepped through the door, slamming it shut after me, Artie’s face pressed up against the glass: his burst capillaries and maligned blackheads were crystal clear in the hallway’s glaring light, and the leering eyes of a madman following me as I turned to run away.

THURSDAY:

I should have listened to my old man. But sometimes you’re too stupid to know good advice when you hear it, and I’m not getting any younger. I really wish I could have kept making the payments on that Lincoln, but it was too much with my rent and the fucking alimony. I really loved that car. Hopefully the cunt gets cancer or something like that. Cunt-cancer… That’d serve her right!

After I reported the incident with Artie yesterday I decided to take the rest of the day off. He’s been heavily sedated and locked up since then, or so I’m told. I used to be more compassionate, but at this point I say fuck it: lock ‘em all up and throw away the key.

I walked in and Danny was just sitting there smoking like a goddamn chimney.

“Nurse Hatchet! What the fuck is Danny doing smoking, in the fucking common room!?” I turned to nurse Hatchet, who was showing so much clevage her titts were practically hanging out, not to mention she was smoking too. 

“Yeah well, what’s it matter to you anyway!?” She said, jabbing at me with her lit cigarette.

“If you keep talking to me like that you’re going to find yourself out of a job pretty soon!” I straightened my tie and said to her: “And what are YOU doing smoking in here!? This is a goddamn hospital, not a…” I struggled to think of a place where smoking wasn’t banned in California, and came up short. 

“A what?” She took another drag.

“Just put it out!”

She leered at me. “Or you’ll what, huh?”

Danny came over to us and ripped a drag. “Hey there dolly-” he said, lowering his glasses to show nurse Hatchet he was looking right at her tits. They were huge, and they weren’t the worse for wear either, considering her age. 

I shook myself out of it and scolded her again: “I will call the inspector general if this doesn’t get sorted out quickly, nurse Hatchet!” Danny was standing there in his leather jacket, smoking a cigarette. I spun around and scolded her again. “And put out that goddamn cigarette! You too Danny!”

She smiled, and I caught her and Danny making eyes with each other. “Don’t look at HIM, nurse Hatchet! He’s the goddamn patient! Or have you forgotten that!?” 

She chuckled, and he made a little spinning motion in the air with his finger to say ‘whoopty fuckin’ doo’. Shocked, my jaw dropped as I saw nurse Hatchet turn around and bend all the way over and stick her ass out. Danny started feeling his visible erection through the front of his jeans in an obscene and lurid display while he looked me in the eye and licked his lips. “Jesus Christ!?” I shouted, horrified, and called out for the orderlies: “Somebody get over here, RIGHT NOW!” and two huge guys showed up, Saul and Greg. Nice enough, but I’m pretty sure they barely had enough combined IQ to turn a doorknob, let alone screw in a lightbulb. “Saul, thank god you’re here!” I said, wiping the sweat off my forehead. “Can you take Danny back to his room, please?” I wiped the sweaty forearm off on my shirt. “Oh, and take away his cigarettes! I think he keeps them in his boot or something!”

They looked at each other as if there were anything to confer about, then turned to me, and in perfect unison said: “Yeah, sure thing Doc.” Danny didn’t resist. I think he knew if he struggled, they’d probably pull one of his arms out of the socket, seeing as how each of them was about twice his size and then some. He was just puffing that fucking cigarette up all the way off to his cell.

FRIDAY:

There was a pile-up on the I-10, so traffic was backed up from Palm Springs all the way to Coachella, which was a fucking nightmare. The rattling AC in my Ford Taurus finally shit the bed halfway up the freeway, and my balls were in nut-soup by the time I hit the traffic jam. I was just about knocked out from the stench wafting up from my crotch, and I stank like a Skid Row bum. 

“Nurse Hatchet?” I said, walking into the hospital. There were bloody footprints leading in every direction out of the supply closet around the corner.

The closet had been raided. Empty needles with their plungers depressed all the way, dozens of childproof caps rolled off in myriad geometries, and a minefield of broken pill bottles scowled up at me from the floor, their casualties’ blood pools and subsequent spoors leading out from the closet like some crimson fractal or otherwise sanguinary stampede.

Following the bloody footprints down a long hallway where they all congregated, I saw that Danny was sitting off to the side while Artie Tremonds was sitting behind a desk stacked up on a pile of mattresses, holding court.

“You ‘ave been found guilty, monsieur Hutchner, of committing treason and acts of sedition against ze state!” Tremonds barked from my office chair, which overlooked the whole room up on its platform of piss-stained mattresses stacked up underneath him on the cafeteria floor.

Lance Hutchner, one of the only patients I felt was making any progress was on his knees before the kangaroo court. He dropped down on all fours and began to beg. “Please! Please, please let me go! I didn’t do anything!”

Artie kept a stiff upper lip and motioned to his bailiffs dressed in their unbound straightjackets. They flanked Hutchner, lifted him to his feet, and dragged him over to a restraint chair, strapping him down at the wrists, elbows, shoulders, waists, and just about every other joint. Then they put a large box over his head and duct-taped it around his neck.

One of the patients walked over to Hutchner and held up a pair of scissors, ready to stab air holes right into the face of his cardboard box.

“Wait, stop!” I shouted, and all eyes turned to me.

Danny walked out of a darkened corner in the back of the room and stood next to an oxygen tank with a smoldering Kool in his mouth.

“Well, well, well, if it ain’t our old pal, Doc K.” He took a drag, pulled the cigarette out, and let it hang in his limp arm, inches away from the oxygen hose of the pressurized air tank.

My heart started racing at, and all the lunatics gazed on me with slavering intent. “Danny! Stop all this! Make these people go back to their rooms, and let’s talk about how we can get you back to…” I struggled to comb my memory for whatever dumbassed name he’d made up for his home planet- “K’nooch oon-raa!”

Danny narrowed his eyes, took another drag, then smiled. “You hear that guys? He wants to talk!” The murder of mad men stood cackling, hooting and howling as can only the wretched and the damned. I figured if I didn’t resolve the situation in about forty-five seconds I’d probably be tied up in a chair of my own, or worse. But then I felt a stinging pain in my neck, and the room went black.

When I woke up in the dark room I could smell Danny’s cigarette.

“Doc? You up, Doc?”

“Yes.”

“You see why I did it, don’t you doc?”

“No, please Danny, enlighten me.”

“Well, they wanted to blow you up. You and your whole planet. But I decided I had to stop them, or at least try.”

“Then why do all this!? Why go to all this trouble and not just blow the fucking thing up!?”

“Well doc, we got a saying. It doesn’t really translate too well, but loosely it means: ‘If they’re worth killing, they’re worth saving’. You know that Earth expression: the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

“Yes.”

“Well basically, if your enemy is a threat, you’d better make sure you know all his tricks before you kill him. If he dies, so do all his weapons and tactics, so we had to make sure we figured out all your Earth ways before we shot you down.”

“And so now you’re experimenting with lies!? How could a society so advanced it can put a person lightyears away into a different species’ body and blend them into their society!? Danny, you’re not an alien, you’re just fucking crazy!”

He sighed. “I was afraid you might say that, doc. But the pencil necks back home figured you’d have to cop to it before we could nix this big blue rock.”

“Cop to what?” I asked.

“We figured we’d have to get you to say something you knew wasn’t true, only you’d have to believe it. You’d have to lie, but without being dishonest, you dig?”

I could see the cherry red tip of his cigarette as he walked over to me from behind, and he stood at the end of whatever table I was strapped to.

“No Danny! No! What do you mean!? What are you talking about!?”

He heaved another sigh and seemed genuinely sad about whatever he was about to do. “Well I’m sorry Doc. I’m real sorry it’s gotta be this way, but…”

[jjohnsonwriter]

OK, Boomer

The generational divide between the baby boomers and Generations Y and Z (gen X is relatively silent on the issue, having long ago been neutered of any political or social capital) in 2019 is at its widest point in recent historyIn the wake of activists like Greta Thunberg, 25 year old New Zealand parliament member Chlöe Swarbuck's two word retort (‘OK, Boomer’), and the phrase in question, which was recently equated by one New York radio host with the N-word, objectively the most harmful and historically loaded slur you can really say in modern society (Riotta 1).

I think its important to note that my parent’s generation voted for a lot of stuff which helped destroy the world, is fundamentally not to blame for their past ‘mistakes’. The schism between the generations we’re undergoing now as a society are one part nature (because the old and the young have been in conflict pretty much ever since there was an ‘old’ and a ‘young’) and one part nurture: because there’s money to be made (specifically by the most wealthy people) by putting us at each other’s throats.

It’s important to remember the majority of a society isn’t going to be some hyper woke paragon of foresight who can gather all the facts and understand everything going forward. That would be an unreasonable metric by which to judge a society: Is everyone in the top 75th percentile of a population going to be the cultural judge of everyone else?

It’s possible to convince some of the smartest people of something that’s fundamentally crazy, and there are many examples of this in societies (The Red Scare, Hitler). But it’s also worth noting that a if your goal is to get power and use it to advance your own goals, of course you can’t just walk around saying: “Hey everybody, look at me! I’m going to fuck you over!” Otherwise you’ll never get elected.

Case in point: What do you think of Senators Chuck Shumer, Dianne Feinstein, and Dick Durbin? Last I checked, I thought these leaders of the democratic party were all beltway insiders who should have been kicked out of office years ago, but at least they oppose some of Trump’s imperialism. They’re all democrats, so they might share similar ideologies in my goal of a liberal political project, but they also voted for the Iraq war in 2003 (Cohn 6). That’s a war that's still going on. At least they’re probably to be reliable votes for impeachment, even though impeachment is at this point is basically impossible because you need a two thirds vote (Impeachment 1). Out of 100 seats, there are 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 independents, both of whom caucus with the Democrats (Party, 30). That would mean that every democrat would have to vote for impeachment. The numbers on impeachment have shifted drastically in the past two months, from a September poll by FiveThirtyEight indicating just 37% of Americans in favor and 54% Opposed in September to 51% in favor and 42% Opposed as of Halloween (Matsumoto 1).

And guess what? All those people who voted for Iraq, and are still in power? They’re not boomers, they’re members of the silent generation: the people born from 1925-1942 (Howe 1). My point here is that, as someone I know personally lamented “They just won’t die!” Am I calling for people to die? Obviously not, that's fucking insane. I even pondered (for about five seconds) if we should disenfranchise people who choose to retire, but then you instantly run into the problem of the fact that if you take away the right to vote for one group, you can pretty much take it away from any group, not to mention the fact that it’s just immoral to take away anyone’s vote anyway, despite what the republican party tries to do. Princeton professor Sam Wang points out, while both parties gerrymander, the GOP is the one doing the lion’s share of the work (Wang 2).

But you really can’t blame republican voters either. They’re in the same boat as the rest of us: a group of people who corporate and political (so basically extended corporate) interests are constantly trying to hoodwink. Major cash has gone into creating a media machine that pretty much forms the beginning and end of millions of American’s view on the world.

The Gerrymandering problem is an important one when we consider who’s in control of most of the republican states, both on the state legislative level and on the national level: Old white people. Now, moving out to all four corners of the 50 states can’t solve the problem of gerrymandering, but even so: the continued solidification of specific demographics (boomers) in specific areas (‘flyover country’) can only consolidate conservative power, so we’ll have to start spreading. Be the one to move out to Wisconsin and start that new gaybar! Be the one to drop everything, pick up in Arizona, and start your new life in the suburbs. Don’t just move to the cities, oh no! We’re taking over the neighborhood! Hey, you always wanted to own a home, and they’re cheap out there!

Sources:

Cohn, Jonathan. “Iraq War at 15: Who voted for it, who didn’t, and where are they now?”. Medium.com, Medium, 20 Mar. 2018. https://medium.com/@JonathanCohn/iraq-war-15-who-voted-for-it-who-didnt-and-where-are-they-now-595d1654bf9e.

Howe, Neil. “The Silent Generation, “The Lucky Few” (Part 3 of 7)”. Forbes.com, Forbes Media LLC., 13 Aug. 2014. https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2014/08/13/the-silent-generation-the-lucky-few-part-3-of-7/#584865ef2c63

“Impeachment”. Senate.gov, United States Senate. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Senate_Impeachment_Role.htm.

Matsumoto, Ryan. “Impeachment inquiry vote’s strong support from Democrats spells trouble for Trump”. Nbcnews.com, NBC Universal, 31 Oct. 2019. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/impeachment-inquiry-vote-s-strong-support-democrats-spells-trouble-trump-ncna1074661.

“Party Division”. Senate.gov, United States Senate. https://www.senate.gov/history/partydiv.htm

Riotta, Chris. “Right-wing radio host compares ‘boomer’ to the N-word”. Independent.co.uk, Independent Print Limited, 5 Nov. 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ok-boomer-bob-lonsberry-n-word-baby-dictionary-radio-a9186396.html.

[jjohnsonwriter]

Soft Targets

“Soft Targets and Crowded Places (ST-CPs), such as sports venues, shopping venues, schools, and transportation systems, are locations that are easily accessible to large numbers of people and that have limited security or protective measures in place making them vulnerable to attack.” - Department of Homeland Security (Securing 1).

The new film Joker came out October 4th in American theaters, and already there’s a shitstorm of controversy surrounding the film. For you math nerds, October 4th was Friday of last week, and I post these blogs on a Monday (the 7th). But the most opinionated articles from Vox and Vulture were both published on the 3rd (Lee 1). At least NBC had the decency to wait until the film had actually come out, publishing their article on the 5th (Bundel 1).

Before we go any further, I’d like to say now that this blog wont have any spoilers, but it will deal with the reaction and backlash to the film, and may talk speak very vaguely on the themes of the film.

But here’s my problem with this whole debate.

The movie is about a guy who’s (don’t worry no spoilers) let’s just say ‘struggling’. Someone who’s ‘fallen through the cracks’. Why are we more worried about the movie ‘creating’ more of these people and encouraging the worst of human behaviors than we are about what the film has to say? Maybe, instead of getting outraged about a movie, we could actually help people? No, that’s too crazy! That might actually make a difference!

Basically, in case you’ve been too busy living your life to sit around on the internet all day and follow the controversy, the film depicts (and I’ve seen it, so I’m not just talking out my ass here) a guy who’s got a lot in common with an ‘Incel’, or, an involuntarily celibate man who is part of a very loosely affiliated internet culture, and claims amongst its ranks terrorists such as Alek Minassian (A man who is accused of killing 10 people in Toronto on April 23rd, 2018), and Elliot Rodger, who killed six people before committing suicide in Isla Vista, California in May of 2014 (Elliot 1).

Basically ‘Incels’ blame the world (and mostly women) for their problems, chief among those problems, not getting laid, but other problems sometimes include financial problems, general social awkwardness and/or anxiety, and a lot of the time, not having any money (Louie 2). You know, money? That thing that pays for stuff? Like clothes, dates, a car, a place to fuck that isn’t your parent’s basement, and the fact that being unemployed or financially struggling can really cut into your confidence in the dating and/or hookup arena. Scientific evidence in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior also claims that on average women care a lot more about how much money a potential partner has than men do (Henderson 1). And yeah, I’m trans, and I acknowledge gay people are a thing, but this is a debate which centers around almost entirely cisgender heterosexual men.

Another big issue with the argument that I have with the people who’ve taken a stand against Joker is that I don’t think most of them have seen it. This is purely based on my own opinion, and the logic of the negative reaction that happened around the film before it was even released. But think about it: who would take to the internet, rave against the movie non stop, be part of a huge uproar, and then fork over the outrageous cost of a movie ticket to commercially support something they’re so outspoken against? 

The film had a very vocal fanbase, mostly young men. Surprise: an r-rated movie about a comic book villain has a mostly cis-male fanbase, which honestly my feeling is: good for them. I’m happy for people who get to feel happiness and joy. What kind of asshole is ‘anti-fun’? Well, in short, the most ‘woke’ among us, that’s who. And also, no, I’m not saying everyone in that group is an incel, because incels are probably like white nationalists: there really aren’t that many, they just know how to push the right buttons to get their message repeated over and over by a media system which really cares more about wagging the dog than following a story which will inform the public, so incels probably always look like a much larger group of people than they actually are.

Here’s a quote from a Vox article about the story written by Alissa Wilkinson who did actually see the film:

“the kinds of threats around this movie match, in a non-accidental way, a message that could be taken away from the movie — that violence is the logical answer to feelings of loneliness and despair” Wilkinson 1.

Ok, but are we going to ban or censor everything that ‘could’ be possibly taken the wrong way? I’m aware of the fact that this echoes the common argument we hear against gun control which goes something like ‘are we to ban everything that could be used as a weapon?’, but Wilkinson’s Vox review goes on to say: “By contrast, Joker is about a man who’s convinced that society has gone entirely mad, who explicitly believes in nothing and no moral code, and who becomes a folk hero for turning to violence as a result.” Wilkinson 1.

So why do we have to follow the man in this film as an example of moral decency, and how we should live our lives? It’s an ‘R’ rated film, meaning that anyone under the age of 17 must be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian (Moyses 3). The only people who should be capable of seeing the film are either those who are less than one year from being an adult, or someone who’s parent has decided they are mature enough to handle anything that happens in the film, and yeah, I’m sure some amount of unaccompanied minors sneak into the movie, but it’s a two hour movie, not a weekend at the Branch Davidians’.

Works Cited

Bundel, Ani. “ ‘Joker,’ starring Joaquin Phoenix, sparked an incel controversy because it’s hopelessly hollow.” Nbcnews.com. National Broadcasting Company,  5 Oct. 2019.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/joker-starring-joaquin-phoenix-sparked-incel-controversy-because-it-s-ncna1062656. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.

“Elliot Rodger: How misogynist killer became ‘incel hero.” BBC.com, British Broadcasting Company, 26 Apr. 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43892189. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.

Henderson, Callum. “Science has proven that women care more about money when dating than men.” Vt.com, Jungle Creations, 16 Feb. 2018. https://vt.co/lifestyle/relationships/science-proven-women-care-money-dating-men/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.

Lee, Chris. “How Joker Became the Most Hated, Loved, Obsessed-Over Movie of 2019.” Vulture.com, New York Magazine, 3 Oct. 2019. https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/all-the-joker-controversy-and-threats-explained.html. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.

Louie, Sam. “The Incel (Involuntarily Celibacy) Problem.” Psychologytoday.com, Sussex Publishers, 24 Apr. 2018. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/minority-report/201804/the-incel-involuntary-celibacy-problem. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.

Moyses, Kendra. “What do movie ratings mean?” canr.msu.edu, Michigan State University, 27 Sept. 2017. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/what_do_movie_ratings_mean. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.

“Securing Soft Targets and Crowded Places Resources.” DHS.Gov. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 28 Jun. 2019. https://www.dhs.gov/publication/securing-soft-targets-and-crowded-places-resources. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.

“Trial date set for Toronto van attack suspect.” theglobeandmail.com. The Globe and Mail Inc., 4 Dec. 2018. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-trial-date-set-for-toronto-van-attack-suspect/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.

[jjohnsonwriter]

The Dialectics of Dating

From the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:

“Dialectics” is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of contradictory process between opposing sides” (Maybee 1)

Dialectics are a way of forming an argument or an explanation as a kind of debate. For instance, in Plato’s ‘socratic dialogues’, characters would have a discussion around a central topic which was framed as a debate in which one person would pose an argument with supporting point, and those sitting around the table would poke holes in the first’s argument. This is also known as the “Socratic Method”: a kind of argument framed around rooting out everything we know to be illogical by using facts, evidence, and logic to come to the most logical and evidence based conclusion. 

The modern thinker who revamped Plato’s dialectical method was everybody’s favorite 18th-19th century German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel was in fact following the work of another German philosopher named Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Maybee 17). 

Fichte’s work was ubiquitous in German Philosophy and would, like much of the intellectual work of his contemporaries, would later be used as a fraudulent basis for antisemetic thinking and an intellectual basis for the third Reich (Albada 38).

In a nutshell, the idea goes like this:

As we can see from the graphic, you start with an idea, then its opposite, and from there you create a synthesis: you take the best parts of both ideas and combine them.

So what does this have to do with dating?

Well let’s start by looking at the romantic life a typical American in the 1800s. Most men in Virginia started courting young ladies in their teens, and by the time they had completed an education and earned a stable income they proposed to a suitable young lady who could raise the children and run a household while the husband earned an income (Courtship 1). Much of this arrangement was a form of bondage, in which the wife had little to no say over her life or her own affairs, and her husband had pretty much all the power. Only once the “Married Women’s Property Act” of 1848 was passed did women have some semblance of self determination. Prior to this, women in many western cultures were considered another form of chattel: the same as a slave or livestock (Maurer 1).

Women fought hard for their rights through the 19th and 20th centuries, and even now in the 21st century their rights are constantly being threatened. You could say that this statement is simply partisan puffery, but it is a literal statement of fact. Even in 2019 nine states have passed laws restricting access to a woman’s right to abortion almost 50 years after Roe V. Wade (Gordon, Hurt 2).

But even in this short history of courtship, from the mid 19th century to 2019, we can see a trail leading from the closely monitored and standardized forms of courtship which turned into the myriad of confused and tenuous “dating” (read: hookup) apps in the current digitized social landscape.

There is a clear trail from the hegelian ‘thesis’ of old courtship and marriage proposals which read more like a contract, slowly giving way to the less and less formal forms of dating where strict parental supervision no longer was the norm by the early 1900s (History of Dating 2) . The term ‘dating’ was first popularized in a 1914 issue of The Ladies Home Journal, which was at the time one of the authorities on American propriety. We see here the ‘antithesis’ to the dating of old: a style where young people were no longer under the thumb of their parents and families at large, now given a very high degree of autonomy, relative to their former roles as mainly supplicants, even for the men.

From this antithesis, there was a synthesis in the 1950s. World War II and its mass casualties on the American side, there became less of a stress on dating ‘up’ and more of a focus on dating for love (History 2). But the problem with this less restrictive social standard is that it lead to increased divorse rates. Full disclosure, now we’re getting into what’s purely my opinion, but that’s what you’re really here for, or at least that’s what I’m assuming. When you can just pick up a new partner, there’s less incentive to stay in the marriage. And work things out.

However, there’s some evidence that the reverse is true. One study argues that compared to young newlyweds in 2008, married couples in 2016 were 18% less likely to get divorced (Luscombe 2). The financial incentives for all those young newlyweds to get hitched might actually be a trap. The data actually shows that, as is a common theme with many millenials, all the ‘incentives’ for newlyweds are more likely tied to people who already started out with advantages in life, and that for people looking to get married as a kind of legal-financial glue to help two people prop each other up, might not actually work out that way. 2018 census data shows that marriage is really just a way to stabilize the income and shelter taxes for those who are already doing well, and less of a financial incentive for the shrinking middle class and ever expanding lower class (Luscombe).

And then there’s hookup culture, which is surprisingly shrinking amongst a generation who’s more anxious than any other generation, and twice as anxious about work as any other generation (Gander 1). All generations are more anxious than in the past, according to a 2018 survey by the American Psychological Association, but Millennials share more of that anxiety than any other generational cohort. Millenials are so anxious it’s disrupting them in the workplace at twice the national average (MacLellan 2). Although the data says that this reported anxiety might just be that: more well reported in Millenials and Gen Z, and actually just as high in other generations: we just don’t know (MacLellan).

But You’ll notice a common theme in all this talk of our sputtering, out of control decline in dating and romantic culture. The economy. Yes, the economy has been bad in previous times (like the crash of 1929 and proceeding great depression) but even in the wake of that crash, we weren’t as isolated and cellebate. Personally, I blame a combination of technology and a kind of social fracturing whereby each person is taught to be their own ship. No longer do we value our community or family, and now every person is an island unto themselves. But the problem with that type of isolation is that it leaves people with no social or political way out. Sure, you can vote and make a difference on a political level, but I don’t really see any obvious solution to the problem. It’s much easier than ever just to stop contacting someone even if you don’t want to go through the hassle of breaking up, and you were probably never anything that ‘serious’ to begin with.

Works Cited

Albada, Michael. “Fichte or fascist? The misappropriation of a republican philosopher in Weimar, Germany 1918-1933”. Stanford.edu. Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal, 2012. P.1, web.stanford.edu/group/journal/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Albada_Hum_2012.pdf. Accessed Sept. 30, 2019

Gander, Kashmira. “Millenials Are The Most Anxious Generation, New Research Shows”. Newsweek.com. Newsweek, 2019. www.newsweek.com/millennials-most-anxious-generation-new-research-shows-917095. Accessed Sept. 30, 2019.

Gordon, Mara. “Early Abortion Bans: Which States Have Passed Them?”. NPR.org. National Public Radio, 5, Jun. 2019. www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/05/729753903/early-abortion-bans-which-states-have-passed-them. Accessed Sept. 30, 2019.

“The History of Dating in America”. Sexinfo.Online. University of California, Santa Barbara, 23, Mar. 2019. sexinfo.soc.ucsb.edu/article/history-dating-america. Accessed Sept. 30, 2019.

Luscombe, Belinda. “The Divorce Rate Is Dropping. That May Not Actually Be Good News.”. Time.com. Time USA, LLC., 26, Nov., 2018. time.com/5434949/divorce-rate-children-marriage-benefits/. Accessed Sept. 30, 2019.

MacLellan, Lila. “Millennials experience work-disrupting anxiety at twice the US average rate”. Quartz at Work. Newsweek, 5 Dec. 2018. www.newsweek.com/millennials-most-anxious-generation-new-research-shows-917095. Accessed Sept. 30, 2019.

Maurer, Elizabeth. “Courtship and Marriage in the Eighteenth Century”. History.org. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2019. www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume7/mar09/courtship.cfm. Accessed Sept. 30, 2019.

[jjohnsonwriter]

(Why) Say Anything?

        I won’t be standing outside your window in a duster, holding my boombox high above my head playing In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. I’m not a shoulder to cry on, or a friend in hard times. I’m the loner, standing in the back of the room guffawing at all your conciliatory autofellatio, laughing as you stare like so many Narcissus in your pocket sized reflecting pools while the world burns.

So why am I here? Why are you reading this?

Because you’re sick of it. You’re tired of being called a self aggrandizing, moralistic virtue signaler. You can’t stand the thought of more inaction at a time like this. You’re tired of watching Nero fiddle while the world burns.

What do I have to offer?

I’m a pessimist. I’m a misanthrope to the core, who’s just smart enough to say “Hey, aren’t we kind of demented and sick, just as a species?” without the tools to change public opinion. That’s where you come in. Let this be your call to action. The fact that you’re here, reading my tripe, following along from home, that says something. That says you’re like me: somebody who’ll rattle the cages: somebody who won’t stay silent when the long night comes, because it’s already here. It’s time to put our thinking caps on.

Keep your eyes peeled every Monday for a new post. Follow me on instagram @jjohnson_writer