Cole left his desk and stood in the office doorway. “You doing okay, buddy?” he asked.

Imad regarded him with eyes that seemed too big for his face. “I’ve been under the weather,” he replied. “Too much reading. You know how it is.”

“I’m more of an audiobook man myself.” Cole cleared his throat. “Listen, Imad. I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t look so great. Do you want to sit down before you head out? I’ve still got some soda from the graduation party in the minifridge. You’d be doing me a favor if you took one.”

A wan smile surfaced on Imad’s face. He took a step toward the office, but his expression twisted into a grimace as his laptop bag shifted against his side. “Thanks, but I’d better get going,” he muttered.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call someone? Like a Lyft or something?” Cole offered, but Imad shook his head and slipped through the door to the stairs. 

Cole watched as he left. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the corridor, but he could have sworn he saw a sheen of sweat on Imad’s forehead. It was probably nothing more serious than a summer cold, but Cole wondered what Imad could have read to make his face so pale. 

As he indulged in speculation, Cole’s imagination got the better of him. Miskatonic University was famous for housing a large collection of books once deemed heretical by the large universities in Boston. Even today, books bound in human skin occupied a substantial division of the library archives. What if Imad had gotten sick from contact with one of the books in the special collections?

A story about a forbidden book would make a great podcast episode. The most downloaded episode on Cole’s feed was a story about a cursed doll he’d found on Etsy. Creepy dolls were a dime a dozen, but the pink mildew poking out of this doll’s cracked porcelain scalp was something special. The listing said the seller was local, so Cole sent her a message and requested an in-person viewing of the doll. The seller immediately replied with her address.

When Cole drove over, he found the doll perched on the edge of the rotting concrete porch of an abandoned wastewater plant. It sat in a puddle of something that wasn’t quite liquid. Cole was painfully aware that he’d walked headlong into a prank, but he didn’t touch the doll. He had no interest in mucking about with the neon fungus infesting its hair, but he was more than happy to take a photo. 

Cole invented a lurid story about the doll for his podcast. Sure enough, listeners loved it. He resented the popularity of such obvious clickbait, but it served its purpose. For a time, at least. As was so often the case with online content, interest waned quickly. He needed another hit. Cole fancied himself to be a literary horror specialist, and he used his show to discuss writers like M.R. James and Elizabeth Gaskell alongside twentieth-century film noir. An episode about a cursed book had the potential to draw an audience, and it would be a much better ambassador for the show than a fabricated story about a cursed doll.

When he introduced himself at department parties, Cole didn’t hesitate to tell new acquaintances that he hosted a podcast. He’d even printed a business card on handsome matte black cardstock with his name and website. Most people accepted the card, but very few asked him what he meant when he described his field as “dark academia.” Perhaps they assumed he was complaining about grad school. 

To be fair, Cole had tried his hand at a graduate program, but only briefly, and only at a small department at a state school in Ohio. The college’s fluorescent-lit cinderblock buildings didn’t contribute to a scholarly state of mind, and Cole dropped out after his first semester. He took the opportunity to relocate to Boston, where he found a job writing copy for the alumni magazine of a liberal arts school. 

Far from being the ancient and shadow-blighted city he’d read so much about, Boston was a textbook case of gentrification, especially the neighborhood around the university. After a year of mounting debt with nary a Gothic spire in sight, Cole found a listing for an administrative assistant at the Classics Department of Miskatonic University in Arkham. There wasn’t much charm or prestige out in the Essex County suburbs, but it was hard to deny the lure of cutting his rent in half. 

Cole was interviewed by the department chair, a harassed-looking elderly gentleman in a threadbare blazer. The chair informed Cole that there were no other applicants, and that the position was his if he wanted it. He would be working under the head administrator, a cheerful red-faced woman named Peggy who introduced herself with a wave. The chair didn’t seem overly concerned with how the department was run, and Cole suspected that Peggy had acquired the blush on her cheeks from a liquid lunch. He accepted the job on the spot.

The Classics Department was like any other office, equipped with outdated computers and furniture straight from wholesale. The industrial wall-to-wall carpeting bore the stains of years of department parties, and a neglected snake plant struggled valiantly by the lone window. Cole didn’t see much of the professors, and the grad students were an uninspiring bunch interested primarily in gossip. 

Imad was different. As far as Cole could tell, he was the only person who made use of the shared grad student office. He came in every afternoon, and he always stopped by the department office to say hello before disappearing into the small room at the end of the corridor.

Imad told Cole that he was working on his dissertation, a comparison of Near Eastern gnostic texts from the seventh and eighth centuries. He more properly belonged to the Religious Studies department, he’d explained, but it was dissolved the same semester he finished his coursework. Cole didn’t follow his breakdown of the situation, which had something to do with falling enrollments and shrinking budgets, but he understood that Imad had been taken in by the Classics Department as a courtesy. 

Cole asked about the progress of Imad’s work every afternoon, and Imad was always ready with a concise and practical explanation. It didn’t escape Cole’s notice that Imad was blessed with a mellow yet resonant voice that would sound excellent on tape.

Cole gradually developed a casual friendship with Imad over the course of the spring semester, and he came to look forward to Imad’s visits to the office. Once classes ended and the students disappeared from campus, however, Imad started to change. He lost weight, and his cheeks became so hollow that his eyes seemed to bulge from his face. The golden tan of his skin faded to a sickly olive. His beard was patchy and uneven. 

And there was another thing. Imad had begun to smell. The odor that lingered behind him wasn’t unpleasant, but it was odd. The smell reminded Cole of wet asphalt drying in the sun after the rain. Or like an antique doll sitting in a puddle of creosotic slime outside an abandoned water treatment plant in the twilight of rural Ohio. 

Cursed book or not, something was going on, and Cole figured that he owed it to himself to get to the bottom of whatever was troubling Imad. With almost no work over the summer and a boss who only rarely bothered to show up to the office, it’s not as if he had anything else to do. 

There weren’t many students on campus during the summer. Truth be told, there weren’t many students on campus during the school year. Cole was given to understand that Miskatonic’s enrollments had been falling with each successive semester. This didn’t surprise him. The campus was filled with stately old buildings, but none of them had been maintained for years. The gym had been built in the 1970s, and the dorms a decade earlier. It wasn’t the sort of place that attracted students. 

Regardless, Cole was required to be in the office until the end of working hours. He replied to emails in the morning and spent the afternoon in comfortable solitude searching for stories online. 

He’d recently started researching the Theosophical Society Lodge next to campus. The Lodge had supposedly held seances well into the twentieth century, but they apparently stopped on the eve of the Great War. The building now housed a library that served as a stage for public lectures on world religions, some of which had been recorded.  

Cole had just downloaded the most recent lecture when Imad walked into the office. He looked even worse than usual. His face had gone from olive to yellow, and the sheen of grease on his forehead was unmistakable.

Cole swallowed his shock as he greeted Imad. “Hey, so,” he began. “I was reading about modern Gnosticism. Not much to do here over the summer, right? And I was wondering. How would you pronounce, ah, Mandaeism?”

“Mandaeism? You pronounced it correctly. The Arabic is al-Mandāʾiyya, but Mandaeism is fine for general use. Why do you ask?”

“I was fishing for material for my podcast. I read that a lot of Iraqis moved to the suburbs of DC during the early 2000s. Apparently, one community brought lead amulets written in a form of Aramaic that no one at the Smithsonian can read.” 

“I wouldn’t say that no one can read them,” Imad replied. “Even if the ganzibria priests couldn’t transliterate the written text, they’d be able to recite the historiola.”

“The historiola? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with that term.”

“A historiola is a short story about a ritual. The act of reading the story functions as a performance of the ritual itself, like a magic spell.”

“How does that work?” Cole asked. 

Imad shrugged. “It’s magic. Who can say how it works? Still, it’s probably for the best that no one at the Smithsonian can read the amulets. You wouldn’t want to pronounce the Aramaic with too much accuracy. If the divine creator brought this world into existence with a word, it stands to reason that another word might open the gates between worlds. That’s a metaphor for the expansiveness of spirituality, of course,” he added with a smile, “but one can never be too careful.”

“Interesting,” Cole said, and it was. The idea that the act of reading could serve as a magic ritual was intriguing. “So what are you translating this afternoon?”

“Well,” Imad started to say, but he winced as he leaned against the waist-high counter separating the office from the faculty mailboxes. It could have been a trick of the light, but something seemed to ripple under his layers of sweaters.

Imad caught the look of concern on Cole’s face. “Sorry,” he said as he turned toward the door. “I might have had too much tea with lunch. I’m going to visit the bathroom and head to my office.”

Cole nodded and returned his eyes to his computer screen, hoping that he’d staged a decent performance of polite interest. He hesitated to cross the line of professional distance with the members of his department. He couldn’t afford to move back to Boston, and he needed this job. Arkham wasn’t the most prosperous suburb, and the only other paying work he’d be likely to find here was at the fulfillment center warehouse by the highway. 

Still, he liked Imad. Professionalism be damned. 

Later that afternoon, he brewed two bags of mint tea in paper cups and carried them down the hall to the graduate student office. When Imad answered the door, Cole was struck by the wet smell that emerged from the room. It was as if something spilled on the carpet and never dried properly. 

“So I was thinking,” he said, “no one is using the department chair’s office over the summer. I was planning to air it out a bit. Care to join me?” 

The chair’s office was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and equipped with the sort of grommeted furniture that populated movies about gentlemen explorers. It smelled like fine paper and old leather, and the sunlight that filtered through the cloudy panes of glass in the mullioned windows was bright but gentle.

 “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what you’re working on?” Cole asked as he sat down. 

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it,” Imad replied. He sank back in his chair as he took a long sip of tea. “At the moment I’m working on a translation of the Kitab al-Azif. This is a gnostic text that originated somewhere in the vicinity of Yemen in the early eighth century. It was believed to have potent magical properties, and it was translated into several languages over the centuries. 

“Manuscripts of the Azif managed to travel around the world, but they’re remarkably rare. When I was doing research for my MA thesis, I’d see one translation or another cited in various papers, but I could never find the original source. It turns out that the only physical copies in the United States are held by the Miskatonic library, which is why I applied to do my PhD here. 

“I thought it might be interesting to compare the versions to understand how key phrases were translated by different cultures. When I spoke to the head of Special Collections here at our library, she was happy to share a PDF of a tenth-century Arabic manuscript held by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The file isn’t the best quality, to be honest. The manuscript is a copy of a copy of a copy, and the source is badly damaged. I’m doing the best I can with what I have available. 

“I’d like to write a grant to go see the original in person, but I’m not at that stage yet. Maybe next spring? I could use a vacation.” Imad shrugged and took another sip of tea. Cole was relieved to see the color returning to his face. 

“So this Kitab al…”

“Azif. It’s a poetic word that refers to the chirping of nocturnal insects.”

“So this Kitab al-Azif, what’s it about? If that’s the right question.”

“No, that’s a great question. The book holds that there’s a deeper truth to the universe, and the author – we don’t know his true name – tells a remarkably coherent story as he explains what this supposed truth is. He claims that our universe is like the thin film on the surface of a bubble, and he believes that there are all manner of things outside the bubble we can’t see. 

“This isn’t an original idea, but what’s interesting about the Azif is that its author provides a history of our planet long before humans lived here. Most creation myths describe humans as being brought into existence shortly after the universe itself, but the Azif speaks of genesis in terms of cycles. People that weren’t human inhabited the planet before us, and people who aren’t human will live here after us.”

“That sounds kind of Buddhist,” Cole cut in.     

“Exactly! There’s a great deal of Eastern thought incorporated into these ideas. All times exist at once, simultaneously, and in different dimensions. The borders between dimensions can be weakened by magic, supposedly. By the act of reading the Azif, the creatures occupying other dimensions can be invited into our own world.” 

“I’d love to meet them,” Cole remarked. “I wonder what they look like?”

Imad stared at his tea as he shifted the paper cup between his hands. “They’re probably not what you expect. I think we’ve gotten used to the strange creatures that appear in movies. When you finally see the monster on the other side of the door, it becomes familiar, like a type of mascot. We can see horrible things online whenever we want, from deep sea fish to the microorganisms that live inside our bodies, and we’ve learned to love them. But maybe there are things out there that are so alien that we’ll never be able to process them, either intellectually or emotionally.

“Gnosticism seems so natural in the twenty-first century, doesn’t it? Of course there’s a deeper truth to the universe. All we have to do is use science to figure it out. People publish their findings, and what they learn becomes real to us in the form of technological innovation. But the modern Western world didn’t invent science. Other cultures studied the stars and the principles of chemistry and physics long before Aristotle began giving lectures at his Lyceum. So why did gnostic ideas fall out of favor? Why did people stop thinking about the universe as a malleable series of experiential planes? I wonder if perhaps someone saw the monster on the other side of the door and decided that it would be better if the truth remained hidden.”

“Wow. I wish I could have recorded that.”

  Imad looked up from his tea. “What do you mean?”

“That would have been a fantastic interview for my podcast. You have a great voice for audio.”

“Do I?” Imad laughed, but his mirth vanished as his face twisted into a grimace.

Cole frowned. “Listen, Imad. You’re really not looking so great.”

“I’m fine.” As Imad rose to his feet, Cole couldn’t help notice the awkward movement of his body. The way his sweaters bunched around his torso was decidedly odd. Something like a thick strip of cloth hung from the back of the layers of fabric. As Cole watched Imad leave the room, he could have sworn that it twitched.

Cole returned to campus later that evening. He unlocked the department office and sat at his desk without turning on the lights. He considered making a show of checking his email, but the performance would be for no one’s benefit but his own. As long as he was here, he might as well get this over with. 

Cole wanted to tell himself he was sneaking around for Imad’s own good. That was true, to a certain extent, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He’d always regretted not investigating the waterlogged doll, and he promised himself that he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity like that again. Still, as he set off down the dim corridor of faculty offices, he couldn’t help but feel guilty. The grad student office wasn’t a private space, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t violating Imad’s trust. 

There was no strange smell when he opened the office door, just the lingering aroma of bergamot tea. The two cubicles closest to the door were empty. Imad had claimed the cubicle by the window, and he’d dragged a table next to the wall behind his chair. It was covered in library books.

There was nothing unusual on Imad’s desk – a bottle of aspirin, a jumble of cheap pens, and a spare phone charger. He hadn’t pinned any photos to the corkboard cubicle divider, but a collection of thank-you cards from students was propped in a corner. Several manilla folders were stacked on top of each other in the opposite corner, each neatly labeled in Arabic.

Cole opened one of the folders. The paper inside was covered in dark smudges. This must be a copy of the manuscript scan Imad told him about. Cole didn’t know anything about Arabic, but even he could tell how bad the image quality was. It was amazing that Imad could read this at all. Interleaved between the photocopies were pages torn from a yellow legal pad. The loose papers were covered with annotations surrounding a handwritten English translation.

 Cole scanned what Imad had written, but none of it made sense to him. As far as he could tell, this particular passage had something to do with constellations. The next page was a clean photocopy of what must be a Latin translation, and the next was a translation of the Latin into severely antiquated English. Under that was a printed copy of the Wikipedia page about the sky quadrants used by medieval astronomers.

Something seized in Cole’s chest as he flipped through the pages. This was exactly the sort of academic work he once imagined himself doing. A lone scholar sitting at a quiet desk with nothing but paper and a pen as he studied ancient texts, taking careful notes while excavating the meaning of words written in centuries past. There was a certain romance to the idea, and Cole wasn’t at all surprised to find that Imad’s handwriting was as beautiful as his voice.

He picked up the legal pad sitting at the center of the desk and flipped to the last few pages. A word written in capital letters immediately caught his attention: SHOGGOTH. Under it, Imad had written: “What is formless will be given form. The shoggoth will heed the call of its creator, if called in a [dream??] voice speaking its proper name. That which hides in the deathless gap between hours can be retrieved by a shoggoth, grasped within its hands without hands.”

The next page contained a series of vectors that Imad had labeled with numbers and overlaid with pencil sketches of constellations. Cole recognized the Big Dipper of Ursa Major, as well as the three stars of Orion’s Belt, but something about the angles formed by the connected lines felt wrong. Looking at them too closely made his head hurt. 

The next page was a photocopy of an illuminated manuscript written in Latin. Cole didn’t understand Imad’s annotations, many of which were crossed out, but a square yellow sticky note appended to the bottom of the page caught his attention. Almost without being aware of it, he read the note out loud. “The hands without hands, fhtagn ph’nglui.”

As the words left his mouth, the image of the thick pale thread emerging from Imad’s sweaters jumped into Cole’s mind. He was struck by the smell of water. Roiling seas under an endless expanse of sky, stars and constellations without number, pinpricks of light fitting together into an intricate matrix of impossible geometry.

Something unpleasant rose in his throat. He barely made it to the bathroom in time.

Cole couldn’t leave the building quickly enough. He was sick again in the bushes beside the parking lot.

It was only sitting in his car, with the air conditioning blasting in his face, that his nausea dissipated. As he clutched the wheel, Cole chided himself for letting his imagination get the better of him. A cursed book was all well and good, but the notion of a cursed photocopy was absurd. He’d managed to spook himself for no reason. Whatever was going on with Imad had nothing to with star charts or Latin manuscripts. A section of the roof of Whateley Hall had collapsed during the heavy snowfall of the previous winter, and Cole wouldn’t be surprised if it had resulted in extensive water damage to the building. The insulation in the walls was more than likely riddled with mildew.  

Someone should get Imad set up in a different office. That someone, as it happened, was him. He’d bring it up tomorrow, Cole resolved as he backed out of his parking space. Still, he was troubled by the word Imad had written in rough letters at the top of his legal pad. What the hell was a shoggoth? 

Cole woke up the next morning haunted by a lingering sense of shame. What had possessed him to drive back to campus and sneak into Imad’s office? That was creepier than any cursed book could ever be. He needed to talk to Imad. Really talk to him. Maybe even ask him out to dinner.  

Cole washed his hair for the first time in a week and trimmed his beard as it dried. His apartment occupied the top floor of an old Queen Anne house, and the morning sun streamed through the tall windows under the peaked gambrel roof. Songbirds chirped in the branches of the stately ash tree growing beside the house. Cole had been toying with the possibility of moving back to Ohio, but he couldn’t deny that there was a certain charm to summer mornings in New England.

In the department office, he chatted with Peggy as he handled the visa paperwork of an incoming grad student, all the while feeling a sort of secondhand pride that someone would come all the way from abroad to study at Miskatonic. He ate lunch on the outside patio with the two elderly women who ran the office of the Modern Languages department. They showed him photos of their cats on their phones and told him stories about their grandchildren as they enjoyed the sunshine. Afterward, they brushed their teeth together in the women’s bathroom on the second floor, which they agreed was the nicest in Whateley Hall.

 Cole waited for Imad to come to the office. He waited so hard that he couldn’t read Wikipedia, not even the entry about the mysteriously nondescript warehouses used to house banks of internet servers. Everything he saw on social media annoyed him. Eventually he gave up on trying to do anything productive and opened a website that emulated screensavers from the 1990s.

After spending half an hour watching digital fish float through an overbright coral reef, Cole realized that he was being silly. It was a beautiful summer day. There was no need for him to kill time in an empty office while Imad was making himself sick looking at crusty photocopies of wizard nonsense for the sake of a dissertation that no one would ever read. 

Cole’s palms were sweaty as he knocked on the door of the grad student office. What if Imad had noticed that his research notes had been disturbed? 

“Imad?” he called out, but there was no answer. He wiped his hands on his pants before grasping the doorknob. At best, he’d have to apologize to Imad for going through his papers. At worst, he’d have to drive him to the hospital. 

There was another possibility: a void, a vacuum, a tear in the fabric of reality. A window opening onto an oceanic abyss trapped beneath sheets of ice for millennia. A silent city suspended under lightless stars. A multitude of insectile eyes focused on the present moment: a miniscule oasis in the ever-expanding desert of time and space. 

Cole opened the door. The office was empty.

The window was open, and a faint breeze carried the scent of freshly cut grass into the room. A ceramic mug of tea sat on the table next to a laptop with a burnished copper finish. 

Cole closed the door and stepped back into the corridor, where he was greeted by a strange but familiar smell. The odor wasn’t unpleasant, just unusual. It reminded him of the lake shore where his uncles had hosted cookouts when he was a kid. He’d spent most of his summers indoors, reading his way through the local library’s paltry stock of fiction. His isolation made the outings to the lake with his cousins all the sweeter. In truth, Cole loved the smell of water, and he had a good idea of where it was coming from. 

He retraced his steps down the corridor until he arrived at the bathroom by the elevators. With no hesitation whatsoever, he went inside. 

At first, Cole didn’t understand the sight that greeted him. He recognized Imad’s face, but it took a few seconds to process the rest of him. Five fleshy appendages ringed with red patches of irritated skin emerged from Imad’s naked torso. The tentacles were limp but twitched spasmodically. 

Beads of sweat pooled on Imad’s forehead as he stared at Cole in horror, his sweaters clutched in his hands. “Listen, I don’t… I mean, I can explain,” he stammered. 

“You can explain later,” Cole replied, his concern for Imad’s discomfort winning out over his shock. “Just sit tight. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

Cole dashed to the department office, hoping against hope that Imad didn’t flee. He grabbed a can of ginger ale from the office minifridge and rushed back to the bathroom.

He found Imad sitting on the bench by the door. His face was utterly forlorn, and his tentacles waved listlessly in Cole’s direction. 

“Buddy, you’ve got to hydrate,” Cole said, popping the tab on the can of ginger ale.  

Imad accepted the can with a curt nod and drank. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The words of the ritual,” he muttered. “The book was a historiola, but I got the words wrong. I couldn’t read them correctly.”

“Maybe you can get them to send you a better photocopy next time,” Cole replied. “For the time being, you need to take better care of yourself. Your, uh… Tentacles? Can I call them that? Whatever’s going on there. It looks like they’re irritated by your clothing. Peggy has a giant bottle of hand lotion on her desk. I’m sure she won’t mind if you use it.” 

“This doesn’t bother you?” Imad asked.  

“It’s not making you evil or anything, is it?”

“I don’t think so.” Imad’s shoulders sagged. “It’s just a lot to get used to. And sometimes I see things I’m not sure are actually there.”

“What type of things? Anything fun?”

Imad managed a weak grin. “Why? Do you still want to interview me for your podcast?”

“Forget the podcast. But I’d love to talk with you. I’m not busy right now. Do you want to take a walk? Maybe go out for coffee or something?”

Imad’s tentacles perked up at the question. “Are you asking me out?” 

“I… yes. I’m sorry if that’s not appropriate. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” 

“You don’t want to make me uncomfortable.” Imad stared at Cole in disbelief before breaking into laughter. His tentacles undulated with good cheer. 

Cole returned his smile. He’d been worried that something was terribly wrong with Imad, but this wasn’t so bad, all things considered. Imad’s tentacles were kind of cute. Perhaps they would have been more horrific if they’d come directly from a cursed book, but there wasn’t much damage a grainy photocopy could do. Whatever this Kitab al-Azif was, he and Imad could handle it together, preferably after they’d gotten something to eat. And who knows, it might even make a good episode for his podcast. 

The post The Annotated Kitab al-Azif appeared first on The New Absurdist.

We all know why we’re here: our country is being stolen. They’re here to take our food, they’re  here to take our jobs, and they’re here to take our homes. They think they’re entitled to our  healthcare. They think they’re entitled to our wealth. They think they’re entitled to our possessions.  We know what’s going on: they think they can be the new us. 

For too long, we have suffered this injustice. I say, no more! No more to their lack of morals! No  more to their terrible English! No more to their sucking on our women’s breasts! It’s time to act.  Babies will not replace us! 

Look around! Babies are everywhere: in our pre-schools, in our playgrounds, even in our maternity  wards! And they’re disgusting. They don’t even look like people. Their heads are gigantic, their  hair doesn’t grow right, and — and — Excuse me. It’s just so unnatural — no real human is that  short. We should not have to share our air with these aberrations.  

And have you ever talked to one of these monstrosities? It’s impossible. Many of them just make  noises. Not a word of English! And the rest are even worse. They need you to read to them. Can’t  do it themselves! No education! And they don’t even listen if you try. They refuse to understand.  You read about green eggs and ham and they talk about “gween eggs anam.” You read about three  little pigs and they go on about “free yidduw bigs.” And don’t get me started on Peter Piper picking  peppers! If they won’t hear us, why should we tolerate their presence? They have to go! 

Now, I know some say we should love babies. “Babies are God’s creatures,” they say. But I’ve  read the Bible. Look at Genesis! It’s right there. God created one man and one woman. Where are  the babies? Nowhere. It’s Adam and Eve, not Mommy and me. “We were all babies once,” they  say. But we’re not anymore. We left that behind. We’re better than them. “We need babies to keep  the population up,” they say. But what about the immigrants? Our beautiful immigrants need space  to live. Their accents are so musical and their cultures are so vibrant. We don’t need babies and  they don’t deserve our compassion! 

So what can we do? Well, first, deportations. The babies have to go. All of them. Back to where  they came from. Back to women’s bellies. It will take determination, but if we do enough chopping,  and grinding, and maybe seasoning, our women, our capable, capable women, can eat all the babies  within a year. Then they’ll be gone. And then? Then we make sure no more of those minuscule  abominations enter our great country ever again: We need new laws to defend ourselves. Our  schools must teach the dangers of heterosexual sex. Free contraception must be available to the entire population. And abortions — abortions, our God-sent panacea! — abortions must be  mandatory. Everywhere. For everyone. The character of our country is at stake.  

We can’t wait any longer to save ourselves from being replaced. We must act. And we must act  now! Vote for me and I promise to do everything in my power to save our way of life. Down with  the babies and up with the flag! Make our country grown again! Now is our time! 

Thank you. God bless you and God bless our great nation. 

The post The Growth of a Nation appeared first on The New Absurdist.

I. 

He got rid of the Saturn Astra in Frederick, Maryland. The car barely made any money, a  tenth of the price that his father had bought his first car for (a Volkswagen), but its AC had  kicked the bucket and he had no money for its repair. The buyer was a white woman that  smelled of garbage and expired food, and this seemed to be the last of her money.  

It was enough for new clothes, measly lunch, and a trip to the pool. In the men’s  bathroom, he applied hair dye on his fraying thin hair, and stepped outside to watch other  people, hear snatches of names he could take from. At the pool: a mild murmur, drowned out  by the waves the swimmers made. He didn’t see the appeal of swimming, largely because he  couldn’t. His father, whose father had been in the Navy, had never much enjoyed swimming.  His mother loved the sea but had no use for the pool; the chlorine didn’t do her curly hair any good, and she hated wearing swimming caps. She told him multiple times to take care of his  hair, to which he — then as now — responded with bleach and chemicals. He had done this for a couple of towns now: wash the dye; find a job, a crappy place  to stay; go do whatever job he found, cut down on food until he had enough money for a new  car. Then he’d drive off until he ran out of fuel or arrived at the next town, whichever came  first.  

Back in the bathroom, he stared at a shock of red hair going off in all directions, with  spots of white blond from where he had forgotten to apply the dye. He looked like a bet gone  wrong. A night nobody remembered, the morning that everybody regretted.  

“Mickey, go get your things!” he heard a boy shout. He smirked to himself. 

Soon enough, he came across a record store and badgered the owner into staying there in  exchange for working at the record store; the owner, a large white man, offered a storage  room that was really a recording room for local bands, and his own bed was a mat tossed  aside at the corner. There was a drum kit installed prominently at the center. He decided then and there that this would be his instrument and began to play drum fills, not very good ones, but soon enough he approached something he could only describe as sludge. “Good playing,” he heard. 

Across him was a dark-skinned man; bald and hunching, carrying a guitar in his hand,  he approached Mickey with a sparkle in his eyes. 

“How long have you been here for?” Mickey asked.  

“Maybe an hour. You were playing the drum track to When Doves Cry there, weren’t  you?” 

Mickey shook his head. “I was just playing anything.” 

The man took out the guitar from his case and plugged it in. He swished over the strings, playing in a way that was neither rock nor R&B nor punk; it was too jerky, too  jagged, too discordant. It stretched any definition of the word music, but the man nevertheless  continued playing.  

Mickey hit the kick once. The other man kept playing. Mickey hit the kick again. He  added a snare when he felt like it, then a drum fill. The logic was that there was none. The  drum barely made sense with the now screeching guitar, but it made Mickey play, and Denzel  did not stop, either. 

Denzel abruptly stopped. Mickey added a drum fill and hit the hi hat, and Denzel  laughed. 

“This ain’t your instrument, but you obviously played one before,” Denzel said. “And  you obviously know rock.” 

Mickey smiled. “So do you.” 

“What do you think of punk?” 

“You mean what Nirvana’s doing? Garbage.” 

Denzel smirked. “And Television?” 

He shrugged so as to answer the question without addressing it. “I like music that  ain’t got much to do with charts. They’re played on college radio once and they think they’re  hot shit. MTV made it worse. There’s no counterculture anymore. It’s all mainstream now.  Fugazi might be cool, but they don’t alienate. It’s ‘cause Black people aren’t part of this. No  wonder Bad Brains is the only band worth a damn.”  

He heard Dylan, almost smelled the waft of cigarettes, in half of these words. The  more Mickey talked, the wider Denzel’s grin got.  

“Name’s Don. Join my band,” Denzel said. 

“Mickey.” He got up and shook his hand. “Gladly.” 

In this version of the dream, they play together: Reese on drums, Dylan on guitar. A knock to  the door. Dylan stops playing, then goes out to see who it is. Mudman comes in. He looks at  Reese, and Reese knows he’s going to die. He starts to whack the drums instead. The force of  it kicks Mudman back and down to the ground; now Reese pummels on top of him, and he’s  gone.  

The name was Bridgeburn. Their sound: annihilistic, a word that Don combined from  annihilation and nihilism. Some of the pamphlets he made, the ones that Mickey could read  anyway, declared, “It isn’t metal, nor punk. Bridgeburn is COUNTERCULTURAL,  INTELLECTUAL and VISCERAL.” Mickey had no idea how intellect and viscera could  correlate, but Don was not receptive to feedback. 

Don was tall, though how tall, Mickey couldn’t tell from his hunch. Maybe six foot  five, maybe more. Everything related to Bridgeburn went through him: garish posters and  potential album covers, melodies so gossamer they might as well be hallucinations, lyrics that  were best performed spoken and not sung. When he played lead guitar, he’d stand like he was  peering down on an ant crossing his path. Mickey surprised himself by identifying Lou Reed  out of the creative rubble — his father revered him, and the first record Mickey had heard  was The Velvet Underground & Nico.  

Don, upon hearing the name, turned to Mickey with an indignant air, glared once, and  decided to sing instead. It sounded like scratching metal. 

Blair excused herself for a smoke break, motioning for Mickey to follow; as soon as  they were out, Blair said, “Make him speak again. This is horrible.” 

“Wasn’t aware this was on me.” 

“Say you didn’t hear Lou Reed.” She glared at him and puffed smoke in his direction.  “Soon as I’m done with this cig. The other day, my supervisor wouldn’t let me finish it. Because the shelves weren’t filled yet.” She rolled her eyes. “Damn shelves never fucking  end. And this cig’s not strong enough.” 

Blair, the bassist, was also tall, but she stood straight as a rod when playing. Her face  communicated her desire to talk as little as possible; but here, on one of her many smoke  breaks, with Mickey next to her, it exploded to long complaints of her job at the supermarket,  which included nasty customers, odd coworkers, pesky bags and dusty shelves. That she  didn’t bring up her parents’ heritage seemed a dogged insistence that she was as American as  everyone else, though frequent rants about citizenship applications let Mickey know that she  was not, at least in the legal sense. She never smiled, though it wasn’t for lack of Mickey  trying; the one time he didn’t, she asked him if he had gotten ill, or if he was mentally ill. He  said it was the latter; it made her smirk.  

They returned from the smoke break. Mickey said to Don, right away, that the Lou  Reed from before was bullshit. Don nodded; for a moment the air in the room was blessedly  silent, and then Don decided to sing again. Mickey exchanged a glance with Blair and  shrugged. His job was to play drums, though in his case, it translated to hitting them with no  rhyme or reason. As long as he kept Mudman at bay.  

He sometimes thought Don would disappear into his brown jacket, the jacket taking  over, turning liquid, like mud. This usually happened when Don decided to voice his thoughts  out loud. Like how he thought Mickey was more white than black. Said it had to do with the  smell, the vibe. Blair only shrugged when Mickey looked at her for help. She thought him  soft because he didn’t fight.  

It wasn’t that Mickey hadn’t thought of any violence. When Dylan fought with his  father, using his actual fists, Mickey had dreamed of fighting his dad all night, ending up with  a bloody mouth. It was that Mickey couldn’t fight. He blamed his nose for it, which bled by  itself. Anything could set it off and just about everything did. He couldn’t smell and taste all that much, but blood, he always managed to. Its pungent, metal smell never faded. That  interrupted the rehearsals more often than it had to, and only because the drums started to  sound wet, which was against the intellectual viscera that Don wanted Bridgeburn to have. 

Don thought Mickey had polyps in the nose. Don thought maybe Mickey should play  one song with the snare only, no kicks. Don thought Mickey should get himself checked.  Maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was just because he was genetically malfunctioned, a  cripple. 

Those times Mickey thought of violence again. Surely there would be some way to  hurl something at Don and rattle his brain a little. But Don told him to speak up if he had  something to say, and Mickey didn’t. 

Dylan, in his mind, always half-grinned when he said this. Just before Reese would go  somewhere, he’d shrug. Reese knew the story, right? There was this cult member who  believed he was made of mud. He’d go around biting others, harass and psychologically scar  them to induct them to the cult. He did this by biting people: their legs, their necks, their  shoulders. Then these people would become mud people. It was a virus of some kind. So  better not walk alone when it’s mud season. Mudman would always be there. When he told his story, the smile never reached his eyes. 

It was just past dawn when Mickey sat in front of the drums. He whacked over the snare, with both drumsticks and quick succession, then assaulted the rim like he was going to break  the drumsticks in the hope that it would hit him. Whack-whack-whack, patter-patter-patter,  clunk, clunk.  

“MUDMAN!” he shouted. He shouted it again, elongating the u, the a, a growl as he  continued whacking over and over. “MUD! MUD! MUD!”

Distantly he heard the bass and the guitar joining him, but Mickey heard his own  noise first, and he felt his throat strain from shouting. Blood dripped down the snare, mixing  with the sweat from his hands. The beat was audibly damp. He stopped to a thumping heart,  throbbing hands, and a clogged nose. He couldn’t tell where the blood came from: his hands,  his nose, his fingers. His head kept shouting: MUD! MUD! MUD! 

Blair and Don looked at him, Blair with her mouth open, Don with a glimmer in his  eyes. 

“Mudman?” Blair asked. 

Mickey swallowed. He wiped the blood off his nose. The world spun ever so slightly  in his vision; he distinctly felt that he would fall if he were to get up. He nodded. “This is it, man,” Don said. “Where’d you get that one from?” 

Blair raised an eyebrow. “You like it? Thought you didn’t want nobody doing the  lyrics but you.” 

Don laughed once. “I never said that.” 

II. 

In the dreams, Mickey was aware he was dying and then dead. Every time he woke up, it felt  like he was reborn. It didn’t feel as holy as it sounded. 

“Mudman”, pressed and distributed independently, came at a perfect time. Punk had broken,  as though punk was a dam keeping the putrid water of music journalism and the overall  establishment at bay, and now, more than usual, Mickey found Don talking to white people in  their band shirts and a card in their hands. Sometimes, they ran into Mickey, mostly at  restrooms; those times, Mickey pointed outside and led them back to Don. Don was clearly  into it. All the venomous looks he shot Mickey’s way were proof of it. In the touring van, Don openly discussed labels as though either Mickey or Blair had a say. SST was a no-go;  Dischord was good, but Don didn’t like to be in DC; Geffen was an absolute no-go. All major  labels were off the table, including a man from Atlantic Records that had promised them  “Beatles money”.  

In Chicago, Mickey paid with the remainder of his money for a recording studio,  enough for three days. They were about to record “Mudman”, the only song of Bridgeburn  that hit college radio, when a journalist – a white woman with thick-rimmed glasses – waited  for them at the entrance. Blair was nowhere to be seen, probably in some bathroom trying to  get her fix, and Don said they could use the break.  

They conducted the interview at the studio. The journalist was from a high-profile  music magazine that had recently begun to interview underground bands. Her eyes were only  on Mickey, and she shook his hand first.  

“And Blair?” she asked. 

Don looked at Mickey. Mickey rolled his eyes. 

“We can continue,” Don said. 

The first question was if Don was inspired by Public Enemy, because he, too, was  “rapping”.  

Don: “It’s not rap. I don’t think of my performance as rap.” 

“Sounds like rap to me,” the journalist said. 

“Is this because I’m Black?” 

“It’s because you’re rapping.”  

“We’re not—” Mickey said. Don raised his eyebrows, but didn’t cut him short.  “We’re not inspired by rap. I would say we do our own thing.” 

The journalist turned to him with a wide grin. “Surely you’re inspired by someone.”  “Mickey has no inspirations,” Don answered. His posture was eminently calm; Mickey had no doubt that Don believed this to be true. “He does what I tell him to.” “So Mudman is really your creation?” the journalist asked. 

“It’s not,” Mickey said before Don could claim that it was. “It’s mine.”  Don narrowed his eyes, straightening up as the last resort of towering over Mickey in  some capacity, but let him talk. 

“I like Fugazi,” Mickey answered. “Guy Picciotto is a great songwriter, abstract and  evocative. I don’t suppose I have a lot of inspirations besides that. Maybe some poems my  mom used to read to me, but I haven’t been able to read much these days.” 

“Yes.” She jotted this down. “Yes, I hear your similarities now. So would you  categorize your work in Bridgeburn as post-hardcore as well, or would you call it emocore?” Bridgeburn was a band with no remarkable talents swept up in a tide of media interest. They had one song, an emotional outburst Mickey had to perform by himself every  other day, and it was the one Don didn’t write. “I think we’re an older brand of post-punk,  closer to Wire. It’s about rattling the soul.” 

“We’re not close to anything,” Don said. He stood up so straight that he appeared a  head taller than Mickey. “People are close to us. They see us and want to steal what we got.” She looked at Don for the first time. “Mind telling names?” 

“Depeche Mode stole from our outfits. Looks too. The goatee—” 

Mickey laughed; he closed his mouth so more wouldn’t come out. That was his  goatee, not Don’s. 

“Goatees are dope,” Mickey said once he calmed himself down. The journalist’s head  turned right back to him. “Black and leather too. The scene is smaller than it looks, so I think  some overlaps are part of the point.”  

Seeing her jot it down brought him a little relief. At least he would come out alright.  These were group projects individually graded. Don would come to the same conclusion soon enough, and when that happened, Mickey would take the “Beatles money” an Atlantic  representative promised Don, go solo, buy a plane, and fly across America. He managed to  write some lyrics lately. There were toplines, some chords. He could use them all and it’d  still be better than the bullshit they recorded here. He rather liked it up on stage; the lights,  the shouts, the sweat, the blood working together to create a concoction more powerful than  chloroform. It was so nice to not exist for an hour or two. To not remember anything afterward. 

The journalist looked at him like she wanted all area access into his brain. “Mudman…” she said. “What a song. Truly ferocious.” 

Don said, “Matter of fact, we’re about to record it right now.” 

She furiously nodded. “Is it alright if I could sit in the room and watch you? To my  understanding, it is a Mickey Stanbull solo.” 

“It is—“ Mickey started. 

“Not a solo,” Don said, voice so clipped that Mickey flinched.  

The silence that followed was cold and thick. She didn’t write this down. “Don will play the guitar,” Mickey murmured.  

“On a song with only drums?” 

“Studio versions always differ,” Don said. “And it originally started as a band.” The journalist jotted it down. “But Mickey, you can play the guitar.” 

Mickey nodded. “I can. I started out acoustic. I wouldn’t mind going acoustic, even  folksy, down the road.” 

She tapped against the notepad. “This is interesting. I wonder if you heard of Dylan  Fitz—“ 

“I don’t want you to be part of it,” Don suddenly said.  

“—gerald,” the journalist said. She turned to Don. “No?”

Don’s leg jerked up and down.  

“Gerald?” Mickey asked. What’s this about?” 

“Dylan Fitzgerald. This talented young songwriter from Vermont. It’s a real tragedy  what happened to him. We could discuss this off the record,” the journalist said. She glanced  at Don. “Are you truly against me joining your recording?” 

Suicide was not a tragedy. To have a song stolen, to find no audience, to put all your  hopes in one song – these things were once tragedies to him, but now that Mickey had met  record label executives hounding him in parking lots, asking him to sign a contract, he  understood that it was all quicksand regardless. The tragedy was that Dylan had told Reese  he’d be outside for a minute and never returned.  

“Yes,” Don said. “Shit comes out when it comes out.” 

“I agree,” Mickey added. “It should be a surprise to everybody.” 

The journalist nodded, peeked at her wristwatch, and cleared her wrist. “Final  question. Mickey Stanbull, Mudman, I believe, is deeply personal to you. Where I’m from, in  Vermont, we have five seasons and not four. Lots of mud there. Vonnegut called it  Unlocking.” 

“That’s a good speech,” Mickey said. “I know that one.” 

“So are you from Vermont?” 

Mickey laughed. “Yes.” 

She fixed her glasses. “So how come you don’t know Dylan Fitzgerald?” Mickey didn’t know Dylan; Reese did. But he felt like Reese again. He felt it like  toothpaste remnants on his shirt. He was too old, too tired to think that driving from state to  state would wash it away, but he did once harbor the hope that Reese Fitzgerald would  reemerge as a part of himself, like a snippet of a melody in his head. Instead, Reese had  become a journalist’s scoop, part of the coveted biography of Mickey Stanbull. 

He found it quite hard to breathe in here. “Burlington has room for… um, all kinds of  lives and stories,” he managed to say. 

“I believe he had a brother. I saw him once. They performed the song together, over at  the Blunder, in South End?” 

“That’s nice.” 

“I’m just saying that you look like him.”  

His mouth felt stuffed with cotton. “Is it because I’m Black?” Mickey asked. She didn’t answer. They left it at that. She shook his hand and grazed Don’s. 

As soon as she was gone Don stood up straight; he seemed seven feet tall. He entered the  recording booth, cocked his jaw at Mickey, and picked up his Fender.  

“You don’t need the electric guitar,” Don said. 

He whacked it down to the ground in a beautiful arc. Even from the isolated room, the  sound was gnarly. The recording engineer, a muscular man with a Viking-like beard, shot up  from his deck. But Mickey was faster; he flung the door open, he was about to swing his  clenched fists, but a breath out and blood dripped down his nose, all over the rug. He put his  hands to stop it; energy seeped out of him like a teabag dropped into hot water. He could  barely stand straight, saw stars in his vision, black and white. He fell to the ground, his  fingers sticky.  

The viking jostled past Mickey, which made him bleed even more, and now it dripped  from his palm, thudding onto the rug. “Get the hell out of my studio!” the man bellowed. Mickey felt something past him and slid to the ground. 

III. 

He left the record store, the one in Frederick. The sky was a slab of white marble, the streets swept clean save for one figure at the horizon.  

Mickey knew at once that figure was Mudman. 

He wanted to turn around, but his body had become stone, his eyes burning the longer  he stared at Mudman. His mouth was parched; he couldn’t scream. His heart thumped too  slow. When he did move, it was a sudden jerking motion. It didn’t hurt his body, nor his legs.  Soon he floated backwards, and the entire time, he stared at Mudman. Mudman was getting  closer by the second. He was running, sprinting towards Mickey. There was a baton in his  hand that he whipped out, and his rattle petrified Mickey. 

Mickey fell. Now Mudman was on top of Mickey.  

“I…” Mudman began. A disgusting mix of horse and human feces emanated off him.  “I… crave….” 

Mickey was going to die. 

He shouted, screamed for help, yelled for somebody to come save him, but no one was there. Not one person opened their windows. He staggered up, felt his feet hit the  concrete as he ran as hard as he could. The horizon didn’t move. Something whipped him to  the ground again. His whole body shook from his tears, his open, loud sobs. He couldn’t  move his body, and this time, he felt a sudden coldness in his legs. He was being stripped;  Mudman would eat him, leg up; Mudman would kill him, He closed his eyes shut and let snot  and tears run down his face to the concrete. Everything in him tensed. There was no God to  pray to. Only Dylan on the other side. 

His stomach growled. Behind him, he couldn’t feel Mudman anymore. He felt something wet and rather sticky beneath him. When he opened his eyes, he found he lay on a  puddle, staining the street ruby red.  

Then he felt a horrifyingly large scraping inside his stomach. Like he’d never eaten before.

Mickey woke up. He was in the recording room. The viking man was shouting at Don; there  was a fight of some kind, outside the studio, the viking’s arms pressed against Don’s, locked  in something Mickey couldn’t quite get. But he saw Don, Don in his coat, and he felt the  scraping from the dream that didn’t feel like a dream anymore. He felt himself floating  toward Don. He heard himself say, “I’ll handle him”. They walked outside.  Don looked at him and asked, “What?”  

What a nice day it was outside, crisp and blue. Dylan killed himself on a day like this  one. Mudman had never had a chance to bite him. And if there wasn’t Dylan to warn him  from the threat, then could Reese be blamed for being caught after all? He tasted blood on his mouth. “I…” he said, “I crave.” 

IV. 

One to Watch: Mickey Stanbull 

This story was reported by Janet Lexington-Schwartz 

As soon as he got onto the mic, a blue Jazzmaster strapped on his shoulder, Mickey Stanbull  bellowed MUDMAN on stage and gave everybody a good fright. Time stood still and  became an eternal present — the thick riffs that were choked further against the amp; the  repeated wailing, oh my God, the wailing; the face, the locks falling like an angel fallen to  the pits of hell. This man spells out sex, desperation, and dirt all at once.  

The pit waited for this moment for almost an hour. And in four minutes, this grim  eternity was over. I was rattled, and grateful that this was the last song. The entire stage was  as spellbound as I was.  

Rock cannot be consumed through radio and MTV alone, and Mickey Stanbull is  living proof of it. He has a presence best experienced live. No more nerdy characters mumbling their way to the stage; it’s not cool to act uncool, despite whatever pretensions our  current leading men are under; and it’s not cool to be overeager about stardom, despite  whatever delusions Billy Corgan puts himself in. Our greatest frontmen are showmen,  whether conscious or not, whether willing to play on purpose or by accident. Hours ago, in  conversation, he struck me as the former; now, I am not so certain.  

After “Mudman” ended, Stanbull locked eyes with the nearest spotlight. His face was  startlingly empty when he looked up, as silent as everyone else. The audience erupted into  applause, roared for an encore, but Stanbull moved backstage without thanking anyone. I  couldn’t help it; I ran backstage, a few fans in tow, calling for him. He turned and didn’t  seem to understand. He looked at us and seemed to ask himself who “Mickey Stanbull” was.  It was to the degree that I briefly wondered if this “mud-man” he sang about chewed at  critical portions of his brain, leaving him crippled but savant, without an identity. In truth, as  he tells me later, he was rattled too. He felt the song exactly as we did, an earthquake of an  experience. What had just happened could not be repeated — until it would have to, all  across America, for many years on end. 

That night, in Chicago, he announced his departure from Bridgeburn. The death of a  band is the birth of another star. 

Lately, Reese dreamt of him playing music with Dylan, both on acoustic. He’d toured all  across America, and he was in Connecticut now. It wouldn’t take long to go back to Vermont  now, just in time for mud season. He’d just have to wait for Dylan to step outside for a little  bit. 

The post Mudman appeared first on The New Absurdist.

If he were to look up, he might see his own reflection in the mirrored ceiling of the elevator. An anonymous dark head, an anonymous gray suit. But Virgil is not the type of person to look up. Instead, he tilts his wrist so that the face of his watch blinks on. Six minutes early. Perfectly on schedule. 

Virgil is headed to the third floor. In fact, the elevator will only deliver him to the third floor. What actually lies on the floors above, the land of vision and dental and paid vacation time and conference calls with the CEO, he does not know. And however splendid floors four-through-seven are in reality, Virgil’s imagination is constantly concocting something much, much greater. 

The elevator doors glide open. Already the office is dotted with faces, eyes that twitch up when they hear the mechanical thunk of cogs sliding into place. Across the rat-maze sprawl of cubicles, Jude Esperanza is standing in a cluster of employees, waiting for his turn to speak. Jude, too, looks up when he hears the elevator. Jude’s eyes land on Virgil’s face, and stay there. 

Virgil imagines the office as a slaughterhouse. Meathooks swinging from heavy wrought-iron chains. Bodies pale and doughy, strung up by the ankles. Featureless masses of skin and sinew, strawberry-red muscle and cauliflower-white fat. Nail gun, bone saw, twine. Bodies heavy and ripe for the picking. 

Virgil blinks when he hears the elevator doors start to drift shut. The office is normal again, clean and white. No hooks, no white hanging bodies. He slides his foot forward into the doors’ path. For a second they just hang there, nameless hunks of machinery. Then, a groan as they slide open again. Shaking his head like he is trying to dislodge a stubborn shard of shrapnel, he shoulders his messenger bag and walks to his desk. 

Floor-to-ceiling windows colonize the west wall. Outside, the smoggy sky, easy fodder for habitual daydreamers. Past the asphalt parking lot a smudge of black against the snow, high-rises compete for dominance over the skyline. It is a bitter, brisk day. Comparatively, the inside of the office is sterile and warm, an incubator. 

The sound of a completely superfluous briefcase being slammed on a desk makes Virgil look over. Darcy, sliding her rolling chair over the linoleum, waves. 

All of the cubicles in CronosTech offices are made entirely of glass. It is supposed to symbolize something, Virgil reasons, but he can never quite figure out what. It makes him feel like an object on display. At any rate, Darcy can always see him through their shared wall, and seizes onto any moment of accidental eye contact as an invitation to chat. 

“Hey, you!” she chirps. “How’re you holding up?” Six weeks since the operation, and Darcy is still perpetually interested in Virgil’s health. 

“Fine. You?” 

“Oh, alright. My knee’s been bugging me again.” 

Virgil frowns, an appropriate facsimile of sympathy. “Sorry to hear that.” His hand twitches toward his mouse. Darcy, not finished, inches her chair towards him. “Did you hear,” her voice the stage-whisper of the unrepentant workplace gossiper, “That 

Jude got the implant?” When she says implant she points to her temple, although Virgil knows the implant is located at the back of the skull. 

“Isn’t that confidential?” Fragments of light glint off of Darcy’s round glasses. Virgil feels a headache coming on. 

Darcy ignores him. “I mean, I’m not totally certain, but it makes sense, right? I always got the impression that Jude would do anything to get a…competitive edge.” The implant, as it is colloquially known, does not yet have an official name. Still officially in testing, the offer to install it had been cordially extended to select employees at CronosTech. When one really considers it, the name feels like a misnomer. The unassuming little chip does not truly implant something new inside its host, but takes something away. The idea for the implant is this: humans, in modern day, developed countries, no longer have any need for the sensation of hunger. Certain innovators and entrepreneurs, funded and championed by CronosTech, consider hunger an evolutionary excess, as useless as the vestigial tail, and a nuisance. So, they began developing a procedure that could eliminate it. Virgil, of course, eagerly went under the knife. 

When someone is hungry, they are uncomfortable, and therefore less productive. Since the operation, Virgil’s focus has hardened, sharp as the edge of a scythe. He’s at the top of his game. He finishes work quicker. Completes extra tasks. All the while, he feels lighter, buoyant. It’s like a tiny but impossibly heavy rock in his stomach has been extracted. 

Darcy huffs at his lack of reaction to the news. “I just thought you’d like to know.” Jude is the only person on the floor who Virgil considers his direct competitor. He had been promoted to the second floor only a few weeks after Virgil, and was mere days behind in the ascent to the third. And now the (alleged) implant. Virgil has the sinister impression that the man is gaining on him. 

He realizes he’s been staring out the window. A powdery white cloud speared on the spire of a high-rise, a car backing out of a parking space. He turns back to his computer, and gets to work. 

Lunch break still hasn’t stopped feeling strange. Each day watching his coworkers take their meals from the fridge, food smells mingling together: leftover half of a burrito, BLT on sourdough, kimchi fried rice. Sitting around the break-room table, sidelong glances, everyone pretending they don’t know or haven’t guessed. Making small talk: weather, layoffs, weekend plans. The rational part of Virgil knows that he does still need to eat, despite the lack of hunger signals to his brain, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s faking it. 

Today he extracts a deli sandwich from the fridge, ham and cheese, with his name scrawled across the side of the packaging. The break room is curiously empty for the time of day. The coffeemaker burbles diligently in the corner. 

The door swings open as Virgil unwraps his sandwich, background chatter and keyboard clacks seeping in from outside. It’s Jude. 

Partially stooped and awash with the bluish light of the fridge. Jude’s long hand wrapped around a tupperware container. 

The whir of the microwave settles into the otherwise quiet room. Virgil’s sandwich tastes of nothing. Jude is staring intently at the microwave like it contains the answer to an essential question. He is an unreasonably tall man, almost Muppet-esque with his oversized, gangly limbs. The wispy ends of his hair cover the nape of his neck, where the incision scar would be. If it were true. 

The microwave beeps, and Jude sits opposite Virgil. He avoids eye contact in a way which Virgil considers a purposeful slight against him, as he pries off the lid of the tupperware. Steam rises languidly off the liquid within. Who in their right mind brings soup to work? 

“How are the reports coming?” Jude has the low sort of voice that hums in your chest. “Fine.” 

“Anya says she wants them done by Tuesday, did you get that email?” 

“They’ll be done.”

To watch Jude dip his plastic spoon into the soup, blow on it, and bring the spoon to his lips, is almost unbearable. Something about it repulses Virgil. He yearns desperately to avert his eyes. Yet, he does not, and instead watches Jude’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. Something passes in his expression, his mouth tightens and his nose crinkles almost imperceptibly, which Virgil recognizes. His suspicions confirmed: Jude has gotten the implant. 

The loading symbol is an ouroboros, never satisfied. Virgil clicks the mouse impatiently, although he knows that will only slow the machine down more. FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS: functional computers. 

The weekend had passed uneventfully. Virgil spent Friday night watching old sitcom reruns, went grocery shopping on Saturday (shopping expenses lowered since getting the implant; no use splurging on on pricey ingredients when it all tastes the same), and on Sunday called his mother. She chided him for not going to church, and interrogated him about his mental health. She was convinced that the implant was bad for him, and monitored carefully for adverse side effects. Throughout the weekend, the image of Jude bringing the spoon to his lips and swallowing painfully would suddenly appear, unbidden, in his mind, which he stamped down with the vehemence of a cowboy crushing a snake beneath his boot. 

The document loads at last, and Virgil is once again free to insert figures into his spreadsheet: numbers upon numbers. Dollar signs, expenditures, profits, slotted neatly into the green and red checkerboard. Everything in its rightful place. 

There is a tapping on the glass of his cubicle, like a bird pecking at a window. When he looks up, Virgil expects to see Darcy’s owl-eyes peering at him through the fishbowl of her cubicle. Instead, he is met with Jude’s cool dark stare.

“Sorry, it looked like you were in the zone there.” In the zone sounds stilted, almost ironic, coming out of Jude’s mouth. 

“Yeah, well.” Virgil rubs at a sore spot on his neck, which continually reappears despite CronosTech’s patented ergonomic chairs and keyboards. “What’s going on?” “The reports? I’m supposed to pass them onto Anya, and you said on Friday—” “Oh, right.” Virgil had finished them, in what some might consider a frenzy, after his and Jude’s lunch conversation. Then he had promptly forgotten about them. “I just need to print them out. Give me a second.” 

Virgil opens the document, and the ouroboros returns. His mouse hovers over the print button. Jude taps a bony finger against the top of the cubicle. 

Virgil presses PRINT. He rises from his chair at the same time that Jude starts to move towards the printer. 

“I got it—”, “It’s fine—” 

Their voices overlap each other. Eyes track them across the room, their buzz of adrenaline. Virgil and Jude plant themselves on either side of the printer, as it hacks and shudders like a cat coughing up a hairball. Over the plastic hull of the machine, Jude’s jaw is set and his eyes are hard stones. He looks wildly uncomfortable. Is he sweating? The printer spits out a sheet of paper, then another. Something unfamiliar churns in Virgil’s stomach as he watches Jude pull at the collar of his button-up, exposing a narrow strip of collarbone. 

Virgil imagines a butcher’s shop. Dull thud of knife hitting cutting board. Thick strong hands knuckling slabs of meat tender and pliant. Cleaver glinting, silver-toothed smile. Pool of red bleeding pink at the edges as it glugs down the drain. Raw crimson scent that settles at the back of the throat. Intoxicatingly sweet. Virgil takes a deep breath in.

The printer sighs, and the third sheet of paper is released. Virgil darts his hand out and grabs the stack. Jude tries to do the same, too late. His hand jerks out and slams against the printer with a thunk. 

“I’ll take these to Anya myself,” Virgil says coolly. 

When he returns at last to his cubicle, Darcy is, as usual, not working. “Jesus, Virgil, what was that?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

It is not until he sighs and clicks open the spreadsheet document again, the blue light washing over his face, that he realizes what the strange churning feeling had been. It was hunger.

The hold music is a rendition of one of Beethoven’s concertos, distorted and fuzzy over the phone. Virgil stands under the awning of the bus stop, watching the rain pour. A car rolls by, spraying up a sheet of water. A single bulbous drop lands on the patent leather of Virgil’s shoe. 

Beethoven comes to a stop. A laconic voice on the other end says, “How can I help you?” “Hi, yes, I’m calling to get in contact with Dr. R—?” 

“This is his office. What is this regarding?” 

“He implanted the CronosTech, uh, thing in me, and it’s malfunctioning.” “Are you experiencing any of the following symptoms: swelling, fever, dizziness, fatigue, memory loss, hearing loss,” The voice rattles off. 

“Well, it’s just that I’m hungry again. But it’s not a normal hunger, it’s stronger, it feels… weird. Bad.” Virgil takes a gulping breath. “I’m not myself. I’m thinking strange things.” “So.” The word is heavy, drawn-out. A shuffling of paper, a sigh. “Dr. R—’s earliest appointment slot is in February. We can have you come in then, if it works for you?”

Virgil leans his head against the cold metal of the pole, feeling slightly faint. “Hello?” comes the voice. “Are you still there?” 

“Yes,” Virgil says. “February works fine.” 

The receptionist confirms the details of the appointment, and Virgil resuscitates frozen fingers to add the date to his phone calendar. He is shoving his hands in the pockets of his coat when someone ducks under the awning beside him. 

Jude nods in greeting. Virgil forces his face into a smile. 

“I’ve never seen you take the bus,” Jude says. 

“I normally Uber.” Finances have been tight. 

Jude nods thoughtfully, like Virgil has just provided some keen insight. 

Virgil looks back at the ground. The gutter is congested with slush, gray-brown and sluggish. The churning in his stomach is back. 

“Do you ever feel,” Jude says into the thick silence, “Like you’re being compartmentalized?” 

“What? No.” 

He glances over his shoulder. “In there, I mean. At work.” 

Virgil shrugs. 

“I just…” His eyes are darting around, like he’s hunting for some secret camera or enemy agent. He looks into the headlights of oncoming traffic, pigeons resting on a telephone wire, the shuttered windows of the building across the road, but never at Virgil’s face. “I’ve been feeling claustrophobic, lately. Yesterday I nearly hyperventilated in the elevator. The third floor is so small all of the sudden. It’s like I’m a figure in a spreadsheet, and I’m stuck in my stupid rectangle. And I can’t move, even if I wanted to, until they decide it’s time to slot me into the next compartment. And maybe the next compartment will be a little bigger, but maybe it’ll be just the same as it’s always been.” 

Virgil doesn’t know what to say. He thinks he should defend CronosTech, something about the ingenuity of the company, the beauty and symmetry of it. If Jude doesn’t like being a tiny cog in an immaculate machine, that’s his problem. But the words aren’t coming, they’re stuck somewhere in his small intestine, forming a hard knot. 

“I don’t know,” Jude says. “I just feel like there’s something missing. A hole. Something like that.” 

A distant rumble. The screech of heavy, unoiled machinery. The bus is here. Jude steps towards the bus as the doors swing open. He looks back expectantly. “I’m taking the next one. This one doesn’t go to my place.” Virgil lies. The thought of 

close, humid quarters, of beads of moisture trickling down the windows, of heat and fabric and skin, of Jude’s bobbing Adam’s apple, makes him feel sick. 

The rain does not let up until the next day. Puddles in the office parking lot shimmer iridescent like the hard shells of beetles. The sun pokes reticently out from behind a fat gray cloud. Darcy is humming an infuriatingly cheery tune, breathy and soft. Virgil supposes she’s cheerful because it’s almost 5pm, when they can all pack up and go home. But Virgil will be staying late tonight. 

Anya had pulled him aside to point out a miscalculation in his most recent report. Virgil could only stand there like a chastised child, heat creeping into his face. It is unreasonably time-consuming, to fix all the incorrect dates and numbers that had spawned from the initial miscalculation. His eyes are heavy marbles in his cottony skull. Perhaps, on a brighter day, an automated solution to this problem might have found its way onto the FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS list. 

Jude is pretending their rainy conversation never happened, that he never admitted his secret seditious thoughts. He is smiling widely at everyone, baring his big chemically whitened teeth. 

All the while, the pit in Virgil’s stomach expands and expands. He had eaten his deli sandwich today, for the first time in weeks, ravenously. This did nothing to quench the hunger. It boils and palpitates within him until he is certain it will spill out in a great wave, flooding the office with a tide of want. 

Darcy says goodbye as soon as the clock strikes five, power-walking to the door with the tenacity of someone with a hot date. Virgil lacks the energy even to roll his eyes. By the time he inserts the last corrected figure onto the document, the sky outside is the color of wet charcoal. The date of his appointment with Dr. R— could not seem farther away. The printer whirrs and spits. Infernal machine, always complaining. The office is nearly deserted; the motion operated lights over every cubicle but his own have long shut off. His own, and one other, on the other side of the room. Through layer after layer of distorted glass, he can just barely make out the figure sitting behind the desk. 

Virgil takes the papers from the printer, warm like a hand, and tries to ignore the pounding that now thrums in his skull. He is ready to double over from the hunger. He lays the corrected reports down on Anya’s desk, hoping that the speedy correction might win back her favor. 

When he looks up, Jude is there. He’s breathing heavily; Virgil can almost imagine he feels the breath on his own cheek, goosebumping his skin.

The look on Virgil’s face might have registered as surprise in Jude’s mind, because he says, “Sorry to startle you.” 

When Virgil doesn’t reply, he adds, “Burning the midnight oil, you know.” “Me…too.” Virgil manages. 

“But I’m done now.” 

“Me too.” 

Virgil drags his eyes up from the floor, up Jude’s improbably tall frame. For the first time he looks, really looks, into Jude’s eyes. Inkwell black. In those eyes Virgil sees reflected the same hunger that dwells rabid and desperate in his own stomach. The wave inside him crests, foams over. 

Virgil stares. Jude stares back. 

Then, two snarling beasts, they are upon each other. A passerby glancing idly at the scene might have seen a pair of lovers, but lovers do not generally tear each other’s throats. Virgil’s teeth sink into Jude’s neck. Jude drags his nails down Virgil’s back. Blood, hot and sweet, rushes into Virgil’s mouth. The taste of iron and sweat. Jude clutches Virgil’s head, knots his bloody fingers into his hair. His face pressed to Jude’s neck, Virgil swallows to keep from choking. Jude clamps his teeth into Virgil’s shoulder, tearing away a soft chunk of flesh. 

The two dedicated CronosTech employees, locked in their embrace, crash into the nearest cubicle, which shatters into a kaleidoscope of broken glass. There is no time for efficiency, shrewdness, precision. Their work is simple. Simple as the food chain. Simple as carnivorousness. 

It is as if Virgil has been eating gravel all his life, and now he finally has tasted food. Hearty, lush, instinctual. Meanwhile, Jude writhes against him. His teeth ribbon Virgil’s flesh.

Virgil’s shoulder burns, ache laces through him, but the taste is so magnificent he does not care. He will gladly take hunger if it means such bliss.

The post Saturn Devouring His Son appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Back then, some quarter century ago, the nuns knew little about anatomy. Modest by nature and training, they either didn’t look or never noticed that my testicles didn’t drop. They had nothing to drop into, I was born without a scrotum. Many were too timid to even look at my penis. It’s just an organ, Sister Elfriede said. Without it none of us would be here. 

It’s dirty, some said. 

Dirty but necessary, Sister Elfriede rejoined. The two or three nuns who were least squeamish – they had brothers, they’d been around – were assigned to care for me. The others were excused. 

This was in a remote part of East Tyrol. Visitors, wealthy, middling, or impoverished, were, despite the abbess’ hopes, rare. 

My caretakers were musical. They hummed and sang religious music, hymns mostly but sometimes plainchant, as they washed, fed, or comforted me. I heard more song than conversation until I began my secondary education. 

Once I passed my toddler years, they let me walk the grounds unaccompanied. My voice, closer to a countertenor than anything else, was influenced by the chittering of the creatures I heard in the woods and clearings during the day, the distant sound of yodelers, and the screeches of the beasts culling their ranks in the night. 

I received my earliest formal education in the convent. The sisters had no way to send me to the nearest school, kilometers away. They suspected public education anyway. 

Progress came to our corner of the Alps. When I was twelve or thirteen, the road in front of our convent was paved. We started receiving visitors but no benefactors. One of our new guests mentioned there was a school bus stop a kilometer away. The nuns conferred. The following September they enrolled me in an all-boys prep school. I was a scholarship student. 

My first class was gym. We all had to strip. The teacher wasn’t gay. We’re in a gymnasium that believes in first principles, he said. Back to the Greeks! We stood in a line while he inspected us. He pulled me aside. 

Where are your balls? he asked. 

Balls?

Your testicles. 

Testicles? 

He marched me, still unclad, to the principal’s office. A woman’s group was in the waiting room waiting to speak to the headmaster about who knows what. Since the gym teacher had seniority, besides he had a class to teach, the receptionist waved us in ahead of the committee. They seemed more incensed about being bypassed than by my nakedness. 

The principal allowed the headmaster to return to class then called the convent. Sister Elfriede was indisposed. The second in command said she never noticed anything irregular about my anatomy but then she’d never seen me naked. The principal wrote out a slip, told me to report to the nurse’s office. I couldn’t find it till midway through second period. The nurse palpated me, said she couldn’t feel anything irregular besides my missing equipment. She gave me my clothes, which my gym teacher had a boy deliver, then sent me to the nearest hospital a village or two away. 

There I was X-rayed, MRI-ed, massaged again, made to cough and perform calisthenics. It was the first time I’d ever exercised. They had me lay on an examining table. Someone took pictures, others took notes. They planned to write an article about me for some Munich medical journal. 

A specialist came in. He explained that the procedure to create an external scrotum for my gonads to drop into was risky and very expensive. He doubted Sister Elfriede, given her poverty and beliefs, would pay for it. He’d seen the videos of the round nurse rubbing me, saw my erection. Your desires are normal, he said. You don’t need the operation. He wrote a lengthy note. Give this to your gym teacher tomorrow, he said. We saw you exercise. We know his type. He’ll go easy on you. 

The gym teacher read the note next morning. You must be a sissy, he said. Drop and give me ten. 

Ten? 

Ten pushups! 

Pushups? 

He dropped and demonstrated. He must have done fifty. 

I lowered myself then came halfway up. 

You may dress, he said. I need to get the boys ready for competition. 

I sat in a corner and leafed through a book about Salzburg’s heyday while the gym teacher forced some students to run laps around the gym and others to perform soccer drills. Those who weren’t on a team could do as they pleased. Most of those played basketball or used the gymnastics equipment. 

Next morning I had music first class.

I bet you didn’t expect to see me, the gym teacher said once we were all seated. I didn’t know what to expect. 

There’ve been a few budget cuts, the teacher explained. It’s all for the better. Franz, the old music teacher, retired. I hear he’s composing and conducting now. I don’t have the musical talent that old Franz has but I do know some things. He then yodeled for five minutes. As he ranged from low to high and back again, we sat in our seats dumbstruck. After our applause died down, he asked each of us to sing a short passage. He took notes on our voices. We’ll meet again next Wednesday, the gym teacher said at the end of class. During the peak of sports seasons, we’ll have music once a week. Later, towards Christmas, we’ll have music two or three times a week, depending on how much time I need to prepare you to sing in the concert. 

The following Wednesday, he arranged us in a semicircle then stood facing us. I was on his far left. The next closest person was a few yards away. Not all of you will be choristers, he said, just as not all of you will perform on a sports team. Since this may be your first formal exposure to music performance, I’ll give you all a chance to make the squad. 

He handed out sheets of music. The first song was a Christmas carol, “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”, of course. I’d heard it, we all heard it, many times. 

As we filed out of the classroom, the gym teacher asked me to stay behind. 

You have a wonderful voice, he told me. You haven’t just made the choir; I want you to be a soloist. He gave me a book of songs. I want you to practice as much as you can, during gym class of course, but also at home. 

The nuns of course were pleased that I succeeded at something. 

I was the featured soloist at every performance my first three and a half years there. Bored with the repertory, I added melismatic effects and other trills and tremolos to my parts. Audiences looked forward to my eccentric interpretations, never knowing what to expect. I changed them from evening to evening not so much for them as for me. 

In the spring of my last year there we performed an operetta, von Suppé’s Galatea. The female roles were sung by students of a nearby girl’s school similar to ours. That was the first time I saw Lotte, who played the lead. I was cast as Ganymede. 

I played the role straight, as straight as I could. Like all my schoolmates I was smitten with Lotte, a medium height fraulein with black curls, freckles, dimples, hips, and what we imagined was a stupendous bust. The production was a great success. The last performance was a matinee, the Sunday before school let out. Backstage we heard that Pelagio, the famous impresario, was in the audience. Lotte, usually composed before we went on, was jittery. I held her hand. How can you be so calm? she asked me. I didn’t tell her I’d never heard of Pelagio, had only a vague idea of what an impresario does. You’ll be fine, I said.

Lotte sang and acted better than she ever had, better than anyone who’d ever appeared on our schools’ boards. The audience applauded a full fifteen minutes, demanded she perform an encore. She sang a Lied by Schubert a cappella since the musicians had already left. 

As the star, Lotte had the only private dressing room. The rest of us shared a long dingy green room. Many of my classmates were going to fancy dinners to celebrate the capstone of their scholastic musical careers. I had to take the last bus to the nunnery where I’d eat cold leftovers from the communal dinner. The abbey’s finances hadn’t improved much. I’d be lucky if any meat was left for me. 

Worried that I’d miss my bus, I was on the threshold of the doorway out when I felt a familiar hand upon my shoulder. 

Thank you so much for encouraging me, Lotte said, then turning to Pelagio, who was with her, this is the man who inspired me to my greatest performance yet. Lotte turned me around, kissed me chastely on the lips. It was the first time I was ever kissed. 

Have you completed your farewells? Pelagio asked. 

Till then, it hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t see Lotte after my final performance or, for that matter, most of my classmates after the coming week. I wasn’t accepted to any universities, had no job offers. 

Come fall, I’ll be studying at the Mozarteum University, Lotte said. 

Ah, Salzburg, I thought. 

In Innsbruck. Pelagio will visit me at least monthly and arrange that I get extra instruction. After I graduate I may sing in one of his opera troupes. 

That’s fantastic, I said. 

I told Lotte I didn’t know what I’d be doing when she asked. Lotte batted her eyelashes at Pelagio. You’re a major benefactor to the Mozarteum, she told Pelagio. Surely you can find something for our Ganymede there. 

His voice is more than adequate for someone with his training, Pelagio said, but it’s not up to university standards. The school always needs janitors. He turned to me. Can you push a broom. 

I can learn, I said. 

After much back and forth, though only after Lotte threatened to give up music or go to another school, Pelagio agreed to hire me. I’d get room and board plus a miniscule stipend. 

Lotte’s parents emerged from the shadows. Her father gripped my hands hard, her mother smiled at me. They both thanked me for my pep talk. Let’s celebrate our deal! Pelagio said. He then took Lotte and her parents out to dinner.

I missed my bus. I didn’t get home till just before the front door was locked. They’d never given me a key. The sister who let me in told me that the leftovers for dinner were already added to the compost heap. We’re becoming a green nunnery, she said. 

The next morning I told Sister Elfriede of my plans. She agreed that I could stay at the convent till the new school year. She’d even let me wash walls and floors. I didn’t realize that they planned to banish me once my education was complete. 

I worked mostly with Turks and Arabs. My voice deepened though it was still higher than most. There wasn’t any demand for a singer with my range. My deepest note was at the high end of a light tenor’s range. 

At the beginning of my second year there, Bruck, a wealthy Englishman or an Anglophile, I couldn’t tell the difference, sponsored a performance of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Tryouts were winding down when Pelagio appeared at my locker at the end of my shift. He spent most of his time in Vienna and Milan, sometimes in Salzburg, rarely in Innsbruck. He asked me why I didn’t try out for a role. 

They only ever want baritones and tenors, I said. I was told to stick with my brooms. 

Not for this piece, Pelagio said. He showed me the part for the Chinese Man. Bruck is a very wealthy man, much wealthier than anyone your nuns will ever know. This is the first piece he’s sponsoring. We need to wow him. 

Next day I won the part. My partner was a Korean woman, not Lotte. My supervisor gave me time off to rehearse and perform though I wasn’t compensated for the hours I missed. 

Bruck was detained by some lucrative business in Cambridge. He was only able to attend the final performance, another Sunday matinee. Lotte, who played not Titania but Juno, approached me before we went on. She asked me if I was nervous. 

No, I said. It’s a small role. 

I’m worried, Lotte said. Bruck isn’t like the other burghers who sponsor our productions. I hear he’s very knowledgeable and demanding. The stakes for our institute are high. 

I held Lotte’s hand. She calmed. Pelagio appeared. What’s this? he said. 

Nothing, Lotte answered. 

He left, most likely because he didn’t want to disturb Lotte before her finale. 

We all performed splendidly till the last line of “Yes, Daphne” my final song. The rest of the cast carried on as if I didn’t flub my part. 

Pelagio was already in the green room when I entered. We could still hear the audience’s applause. It may have been the loudest ever heard at the Mozarteum.

What do those yahoos know? Pelagio said. I sat next to Bruck, saw him wince as you concluded your part. I told him you weren’t part of our academy, just an outsider we decided to bring in, we didn’t want to make it a breeches role. 

I’m an aesthete with a cultivated ear, Bruck said. Even so, I understand that singers don’t always hit their notes just as athletes and actors sometimes miss their marks. Besides, this is a music school not the Royal Opera. That was the last he said to me. He left as soon as the final curtain fell. I’m ruined and it’s all your fault. 

Lotte approached as Pelagio finished his tirade. He left the green room apparently without seeing her. 

Pelagio wasn’t ruined. We didn’t stick around to find out. Instead, we flew – where else? – to New York. 

I’m fed up with Pelagio, Lotte said on the plane. I didn’t know if she was angered by his attention or lack of attention to her. 

We had to share a room our first night in Manhattan. Lotte sent me out for pizza while she showered and changed into her nightclothes. After we ate she told me to shower and to come to her naked. 

I approached her side of the bed more excited than I’d ever been. She touched the tip of my quivering penis, examined the fair hairs around its base, gazed at the spot where my scrotum should be. You may dress, she said. 

That’s it? 

I just wanted to see if you’d passed puberty, she said. I should have known from the peach fuzz on your cheeks. Who castrated you? 

I wasn’t castrated. My testicles didn’t drop. 

That’s gross, she said, but we’ll still be friends. 

Lotte, her parents, or someone that they knew has connections in New York. We soon found work. Lotte was accepted at Julliard. 

I went a-whoring with all the spare money I scrounged. The whores didn’t notice or didn’t say anything about my missing equipment. This went on till the director of the troupe pulled me aside. Lay off the hookers, he said. Satiety is bad for your acting. Remember the part calls for you to long for your beloved. 

He didn’t prohibit sex, I just had to seduce or be seduced by my partners. The few cis women I slept with were queasy about my equipment. I had better luck with trans women. Our company had an about equal supply of both. Lotte sang with us summers and during winter breaks, her duties at Julliard were that demanding. Wholesome as a milkmaid, she stood out from the rest of the troupe.

Lotte graduated from Julliard with honors. She wasn’t able to find many roles. Casting directors for conventional media – TV, mainstream theater, even film – looked at her history with the various groups she played in, considered her healthy appearance, and scratched their heads. My troupe evolved. We didn’t have any major roles for singers with Lotte’s talents and appearance. She didn’t want to play mere foils to major characters. One day the director fired her. Lotte came to me straight after. I don’t know what to do, she said. My father is sick, maybe dying, my parents have to cut my allowance. 

The following Sunday – we no longer performed matinees – I took Lotte to a pier in the West Village to help her forget her troubles. We brought mountain bread, a hunk of gray cheese, and Grüner Veltliner in a wineskin, my treat. It was the first fine day of spring. For some reason we had the pier to ourselves. After we had a little bit to eat and drink, we sat on a blanket at the end of the dock, our legs dangling over the Hudson. I held Lotte close, was about to kiss her when we heard someone shout, What’s this? 

We turned. It was Pelagio. He put the cheese and knife in his bag, slung the wineskin over his shoulder. Do you have any idea how far I had to walk to find you? he said to Lotte. Come, I’ll get a taxi, we can still catch a 6 pm flight to Vienna. He tore Lotte from my arms and dragged her to the street where a cab was waiting. I reached for the wine, found only the bread, a sort of flattened boule, tore a chunk off, and chewed it. I, who ever since my rescue by bony Sister Elfriede sought solace only in buxomness, had a long empty afternoon and Monday ahead of me.

The post The Horny Castrato appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Making cloth is such a beautiful and humble practice. I am obsessed, especially because so much time and labor are involved in weaving. Within a rapidly changing world which prioritizes tech, my discipline and motivation to produce meaningful thought provoking work remains the same. I am invested in processes that are not digital, or adapted from technology, but human driven. Slow and simple traditional methods which continue to be reliable, with the use of hands instead of computers. In a capitalist world where commerce overtakes creativity for the sake of profit, my only investment is to hand produce work with commentary on what I deem neglected and important. I don’t really care about selling the clothes from my runway shows, or producing seasonal garments; my runway shows are there to tell stories, and my work is there to whisper my obsessive ideas, opinions (and sometimes secrets) to the mass public. 

A Bloodline And Their Rituals.

Growing up in East Los Angeles, we get our nutrients from the corners. East Los Angeles is where my unnamed neighbors sit next to me on the public buses and crowded mercados. It’s where artisan hand painted eyebrows became a fad and rosaries dangle from our throats. Where frightening gunshots get mistaken for fluorescent firecrackers, and add warmth to our atmosphere. Where we spill our teeth over our subhuman occupations during the heat of the summer.

The concrete is meticulously tattooed with graffiti, so pure, however its expression is often misunderstood. Our blood; it gets misplaced with a type of sticky tar. Our skin sizzles in the summer as we congregate under the sun in fields or in manufacturing factories scattered across this country. Our sweat drips and pools around our ankles, as our labor becomes someone else’s commodity. The community I was raised in, it places me under its tongue, and I’m absorbed into its gums. It’s dangerous. 

I come to realize how my Chicano identity and Latino background has become the originating genes to my body of art work and craft. The working class struggling family and community I was born into aided my drive for innovation, and a lust for “honest art” which to me, is realistic, relatable commentary on underprivileged lives. I come from a culture of people you never see featured in popular magazines or media. Our lifestyle is evident and purely valid, however I continue to find narratives of our existence to be misconstrued. I want to showcase truth and honesty. This is the significance and integrity I wish to provide through destacarse. My apparel work and runway collections have always been really personal and intimate. 

Experience From Losing Teeth

One of my first professional runway showcases featured my Fall Winter 2015 collection titled “The Boy Who Dreamt Of Losing Teeth”. This collection was inspired by my discharge from a psychiatric mental hospital. The collection focused around recovery and phototaxis organisms. The color pallet for the clothing juxtaposed dark colors such as navy blue and black, but with neon orange and faded blues. Some garments also had dead moths sewn into the linings or behind clear plastic. The models graced the stages with bloody noses and bruises (makeup, of course) and I hand constructed metal face masks that also had moths and butterflies clustered onto them. I was twenty two years old. 

Another significant collection was my Spring Summer 2017 collection titled, “Sinnerman”. This collection was really a menswear collection but had very feminine details such as hand pleated tulle ruffles and lace. Some of the male models walked down the runway in knit dresses. This collection was inspired by gender and binary oppositions regarding human sexuality My models also had their arms dyed in Japanese ink to physically represent the “illness” of being queer onto the body. This period of my life allowed the DNA for this collection to unfold willingly. 

The next collection which I feel pushed me to extend beyond personal realities and enter into political commentary was my Spring Summer 2018 collection, “Travieso”. This collection was born in the era where children were being contained at borders in cages and unmentioned presidents were specifically targeting brown immigrants. “Travieso” was a collection that drew inspiration from both the Bracero Program in the 1940’s but also the Zoot Suit Riots. I think American society heavily (and secretly) relies on immigrants for staple industries such as the garment manufacturing industry and agricultural industry. Around this time, I had gotten fired from my job for whistleblowing cruel mistreatment towards the undocumented immigrants in the company. “Travieso ” showcased garments that had hand sketched, tattoo inspired cultural imagery screen printed onto select pieces. 

The layout of this show forced the audience members to be separated by a chain link fence that ran along the runway. Audience members were seated on both sides of the fence, looking at the clothes on the models and the audience on the opposing side of the fence, as a border. This emphasis of separation was crucial to my strategy presenting a blatant division of people that I wanted to provide commentary on. It was obvious and it was cold. Lastly, the model who opened the show was wearing a hand draped chunk of metal chain link fence. This wearable piece was inspired by the reality that immigrants in America always carry the weight of the border on their shoulders.  Intersectionality is a very fascinating format, and with my work, I want to introduce narratives that allow my audience to resonate and understand immigrants, and the underprivileged. I hand construct every garment in my collections, and am hoping to showcase a new collection after I graduate from RISD. This collection will be  titled, “Dolores”, which means Pains in Spanish. My fingers are crossed. 

Left Image: From “Travieso.” Right Image from New Collection, “Dolores.”

Weaving Possibilities

I am currently developing woven textile work and learning how to weave while earning an MFA in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). I got accepted into RISD with no prior weaving knowledge, and so here is where I am completing my full circle of garment development. I feel like I have enough knowledge and experience on how to produce a garment; the final link that was missing from my skill set was the ability to produce the textile for the garments. Now I am learning how to weave both by hand and machine to produce the woven structures for my garment. I learned how to use an eight shaft floor loom, and soon I will learn how to weave using a Dobby loom and industrial Jacquard loom. Making cloth is such a beautiful and humble practice. I am obsessed, especially because so much time and labor are involved in weaving. 

  My label, destacarse., was formed originally to showcase abstract garments. Since then I have been transitioning my brand to highlight Chicano culture and what I deem as “East Los Angeles realism”. Now, I am in the early stages of investigating how my brand can really produce nearly 100% hand made and housemade goods and artwork without outsourcing. I know after I graduate, I will expand my work and products on a somewhat larger scale. Slow fashion is the way to go, and I am even considering how to find a way to produce all the textiles for my garments as well. 

  I value handmade work. Where there is technology, there is ease and a lack of trial. The trial for error is supremely human. Technology and its abilities are a major crutch on civilization. We no longer solve math problems in our head or on paper, we use the calculator app on our iphones. We have no need to write grant proposals for non profit organizations, we now use AI. Chronic convenience suffocates human motivation. All these shortcuts diminish our ability to think creatively and independently. However, as we, a society continue to use technology to solve all our problems for us, at the same time this is happening, we are beginning to undervalue the ability of craft and handmade. There is a tremendous amount of trade and skill that goes into constructing a garment, so why are seamstresses getting paid subhuman wages? Why are there declining artisans worldwide who specialize in shoes, apparel, handbags etc. Why are there no longer special members in each family who sew clothes for the family and mend on a domestic level? I think one answer lies in the creation of the assembly line, pushed by the industrial revolution. The disassemblage of craftsmanship was caused by the expansive mass producing assembly line; where employees are forced to remove themselves from a “start to finish” process, and only perform a one step task repeated in a production line. Hand making, the skill to be able to build and make something on your own, is a weapon against capitalism and in some ways can be the most political step away from government, because you no longer require monopolizing companies to sell you goods and services. In my opinion, we have to relearn these archaic ways of life. 

 I still find myself unsatisfied by all these absurd systems. At the moment, I find myself caught in the jaw of an art school. My past and future are flashing before my eyes like a fire alarm signaled during a therapy session. I come from a community where art is labeled as “Folk Art”, instead of “Fine Art”. Beyond all this I have realized that my integrity and dedication to my craft has gotten me to where I am today. Since high school, I am doing exactly what I set out to do to my surprise. I still have so much more to learn and experience. I still want to study textiles and denim manufacturing in Okayama Japan, too. Dedicating my life and labor to design and craft has been challenging, but I have a feeling that things will eventually work out. I feel like I am in my own little golden age. 

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“Do you like it?” she asks, her torso draped over the jewelry counter from the strain of reaching over to place the ring on my finger. The counters are designed to mitigate physical interaction between the cashiers and customers, but her determination to outfit me in her homemade bling took precedence over the layout of the register counter.

“I do,” I reply. She points a finger adorned with a blue acrylic gem at the tray of green-stoned
jewelry.

“Let me see those.” Her eyes peer up at me from underneath the bang that runs across the front
of her harsh black bob.

She’s imposing, despite her petite stature at four-foot-nine. She doesn’t even need to bend down to see what’s in the jewelry case. She’s a televangelist on a Korean-language prayer hour broadcast on local cable in a less-than primetime slot. She comes in once a week to pass out her handwritten business cards and paw through the secondhand jewelry. She is a blinged-out Virgin Mary, a neon fresco cast in flesh, a disciple of Tammy Faye.

The televangelist holds up a necklace with a large gem in an opaque lime neon color: a faceted octahedron dangling from a chain coated in green residue formed from the neck sweat of its previous owner. It likely belonged to a small time drag queen who pivoted careers to a desk job when their dreams of stardom didn’t find them before they were booted from their parents’ health insurance.

Her vanity—her total disregard for anything that won’t sparkle on camera—is refreshing. That’s
the televangelist in her.

She sets aside the pendant and nods to me, the signal to set it aside for purchase. She picks up a necklace made of green plastic beads. Costume jewelry is difficult to sell; the consumer mindset it appeals to is one of theatricality, of the self-conscious performance of glamor. The wearers of kitsch like this, tacky even by the standards of their years of manufacture, take pleasure in the effacement of modern tastes. In their shared simulacrum of wealth, they create the images of the culture of unapologetic plastic overflow they grew up in: the intentional kitsch of Dynasty, the series. An untrained eye would discount it as camp. The costume-jewelry buyers’s covetousness is paradoxical: the sheen of something like costume jewelry implies the kind of richness that is frowned upon in the Bible: “Proverbs 25:16: If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it.” But the actual value is little more than the materials it’s made of; they buy to invent the glamorous image that they feel represents them. Overconsumption, the performance of it, is a vice that they can only afford at a secondhand store.

The televangelist settles on the neon green necklace and a pair of earrings with resin stones dyed off-aquamarine. Four dollars. She walks out after promising to return next week. The bejeweled gift was accompanied by her business card. It’s a small piece of green cardstock with her name and channel number printed on the front and the words “Read Romans 5” printed on the back, followed by the word “sin” in parentheses.

I read the passage a few hours later in the breakroom. It serves as a short introduction to finding salvation from humanity’s inherent sin, with familiar characters like Adam and Jesus Christ, even to someone not raised in the church—any church—like myself. “We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope,” declares the passage. This is the gospel that her rings symbolize: if trash can be made into something beautiful, so can the wearer.

That’s the ethos of this charity shop, named after Mount Sinai in the Old Testament, which serves a hospital on the West Side of Chicago bearing the same name. The store has resold the donated items of Chicagoans since it opened in the 1980s. The televangelist is one of the neighborhood oddities who traffic through the charity shop: day roamers like trust fund babies, night janitors, social security pensioners, and anyone else without a place in the normal working hours of the workday. These people are older in age. The youngest of the charity shop evangelists, as I have taken to calling them, are sixty.

Most of them have accrued the physical afflictions that come with age: liver spots, wrinkles, pallor, cataracts, varicose veins, and other signs of the body’s denigration. Many of them show signs of more extreme maladies. In the case of the lifelong smokers, they have blackened gums and missing teeth—much too expensive to replace at the same rate as they fall out (they just keep them out and stick to soft foods). Some have tumors hanging from the side of their larynx. Benign, suspended in a brief moment of inactivity like the life of the body it’s grown from. For now, we are together. And then one day we won’t be.

The unstoppable march of modernity has left these folks in an alien culture, a space-age landscape run on technology too sleek to have been created by human hands. While the world around them strives towards the future they, the oldest, have been left behind by digital payments and Instagram stories. They have been left behind by trend cycles in a culture of constant novelty. So as an expression of their style, for their unbridled confidence in old age, as a protest
against the sidewalk treaders who would rather ignore them, they dress boldly.

The women favor loudly patterned blouses adorned with shiny brooches. Sometimes they wear animal prints: leopard and zebra like the wealthy of yesteryear. Their furs aren’t real. The prints that adorn these archetypal church ladies, signal a love for the personal expression of glamor; a word that has come to mean very little when used to describe clothing made to order en masse from thin pleather, polyester, and wall insulation. The men dress in business casual, accessorize with feathers, rings, and uniquely-rimmed eyeglasses. If they require an aid for their mobility, they will often opt for a wooden walking stick, updated dressings of a Biblical prophet costume. Style is a lost art in the age of convenience, wherein an outfit can be made to order and shippedfrom overseas in minutes. But in a place like a charity shop, the customer must hunt for their purchases. The sensibility persists in those that the age of convenience is not convenient for.

Most are religious. Not as religious as the televangelist, but religious enough to make an occasional reference to God at the checkout counter: “God bless your customer service!” Every day they come, willing to trade their allotted spending cash from their Social Security for tchotchkes, jewelry, clothing, even electronics past their obsolescence in this economy of reduced capacity. Here, we all gather under the denomination of trade. The gospel of the manufacture of goods is recited: “Hardwood furniture really isn’t what it used to be,” and “It’s so hard to find clothing without any plastic in it nowadays.” Their belief in an unchanging higher power is hand-in-hand with the persistence of objects that have resisted obsolescence. True believers may find evidence of a higher power in the endurance of the trappings of a world that once welcomed them; a person may find evidence of God in a bakelite Mah-jong set.

The whole thing occupies a rented warehouse with enough donated furniture to give extreme home makeovers to the entire population of a small township. Once through the front doors, customers walk down the center aisle through the heaping piles of vintage furniture in the front to the cash register planted in the middle of the sales floor: the functional altar helmed by someone like me who has been in the store long enough to know them by name. Behind the checkout counter is everything else: the clothing racks, the shelves of books, the piled home goods. They stay, sometimes for hours, in the makeshift pews assembled from secondhand dining sets and office chairs (and at one time, an actual pew donated by a now-defunct Baptist Church in West Chicago). They’ve been coming for years, some since the store opened, during the daylight hours when the rest of the city is working or in school.

Items are donated to the charity shop for lack of need, lack of love, lack of life. The largest donations are from deaths. Sometimes the death is inferred, like in a shipment that contained a marked up copy of the book “Live Free of Cancer” and the remnants of a last meal putrefied on the surface of an unwashed dinner plate. Other times it’s more obvious, such as when the previous owner’s belongings are shipped alongside the person’s ashes in an urn. The disembodied connection between donor and customer is like the relationship between saint and reveler. The continued subsistence of the store and those that depend on it comes from gifts of these deities of outgrown paraphernalia; and thus we are rewarded with shipments from the Patron Saints of Neiman Marcus Cashmere and Nabokov literature.

A young woman bought a night light in the shape of the Virgin Mary for three dollars. It was an opaque piece of plastic molded in the shape of the Madonna holding a baby, from the crook of her swaddling arms up to a halo around her head. A lightbulb was placed inside her cranium via an opening in the back and when the figure was plugged into an electric socket, a glow emitted from her halo, casting light onto the open wall beyond her. It had likely been donated by another Christian who had found enough comfort in the Lord’s protection that they no longer needed the light while they slept.

Religious objects are bought quickly. These are things like wall crucifixes, Jewish prayer books, even a tee shirt from the extreme end of the evangelical spectrum that said “Vaccinated in the Blood of Christ” (which, unless owned ironically, likely arrived as part of a death shipment). As it functions in America, religion is an institution that the masses participate in by buying the pieces of their own shrines at home: small fetishes made from the reappropriated artworks of the Romantic Period, endowed with no ephemeral divinity other than the shared belief held by buyers—the essence of the American free market.

The American spirit of self-determination claims that the spirit of God can reside within everyone, but is best shown outwardly by purchasing. Most of the modern empires of faith have had less to do with the holiness of their geographic location and more to do with the naivete of the surrounding people who live there. Many have crumbled beneath the weight of the crimes perpetrated by the con artist behind the gilded desk at its megachurch headquarters: the Falwells, the Bakkers, the Shamblins. And evangelical sites that aren’t taken down through the conventional method of prosecution for white-collar crimes often dissolve after an FBI raid and a classification of their beliefs as a cult.

That was the version of religion that I saw growing up: a cult of hypocrisy that used the image of an omniscient creator to hide behind their bigotry about the things that they did not understand. And as I got older and grew into myself as a queer man, my disdain for their way of thinking only festered. I was raised in an atheist household. I had no conception of a higher power at a young age except for my parents, who I knew were responsible for bringing me into the world. I was a product of love—not divine love but mortal infatuation un-entwined with any sense of cosmic destiny. I was a product of hormones and a honeymoon in Eastern Europe. There was comfort in the simplicity of my birth—I navigated the world without residual guilt of the suffering of any saints at the behest of my inherent sin. I felt nothing at the sight of the crown of thorns, at the figure of Jesus emaciated on the little cross jewelry that my classmates wore. But when I felt lonely I had nothing to turn to for comfort.

Belief in a higher power was an immaterial concept, a shared falsehood I couldn’t comprehend during my developmental years. Because the way that evangelical religion functions in America rests on tiny acts of divine intervention. These were any happenings before the eyes of the congregation that gently stretched the laws of physics: bursting stage lights, speaking in tongues, the face of Jesus inscribed in toast. The faith I was an outside observer to was merely an audience captivated by sleight of hand magic. No matter how hard I squinted, the browning on my toast remained absent of even minor gods.

Without experiencing the devotion that is built out of religious rituals, there was little for an outside observer like myself to find appealing. Every interaction I had with prayer, every time my skin prickled at the utterance of the word “God” was colored by the fact that I thought I was too smart to fall into the mindset of religiosity. But could I be blamed? There is little appeal in modern Christianity: the brash, bulldog ideology that was created from the attempt to merge the New Testament with American mass culture. I had, and have no interest in erudition from Mark Wahlberg or the crucifixion pageant performed by Marvel superheroes.

The current world shaped by the Industrial Revolution has begun to rapidly depreciate as it reaches the limits of what can be gutted. Paradoxically, the Bible preaches against loving the world in place of the higher power that created it: “John 2:15: Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Yet there is an innate desire of the world’s inhabitants to find meaning, even pleasure in the state it has been left
in, in lieu of reverence to a higher power. The garbage is already here. It can be enjoyed at least.

In the case of entirely secondhand decadence sold at a charity shop like this one, the items have already been consumed and discarded. With a new owner, the synthetic undergoes a resurrection, which offers a different way to interpret the definition of “decadent.” For a culture like America’s, one that shrugs off the principles upon which it was founded in favor of perennial modernity, lots of waste is left behind. So when confronted with photographs of landscapes decimated by chemical runoff and sea life asphyxiated on shoelace aglets, a rational person would feel compelled to clear out their Amazon cart and rescue some pre-loved items from their destiny as trash, to thrift. Overconsumption isn’t the problem, it’s hyper-metabolization, the secular shame of fetishized novelty.

Despite its service, desire for new things has reached such a fever pitch that the store has begun to fall into obsolescence. Most of the clothing that has been donated displays the tags of already-defunct fast fashion retailers, made from more plastic than actual cloth. The housewares have more frequently come from the shelves of Walmart and Home Goods which the original buyer tired of after a few uses. Though they’re returning to the economy, these things weren’t meant to last very long anyways. The line between donations and tax-deductible waste disposal has begun to blur.

The cash register receipts must be wound by hand now that the gears of the machine no longer turn. The clothing racks sway with every shove of the hangers, thrown off balance from the weight of the load they bear. And when a counter drawer collapsed beneath the weight of miscellany, doomed to otherwise be forgotten among safety pins and sticky notes, a small piece of paper inscribed with the Virgin Mary was revealed, shoved between the cabinet wall and the drawer slide. It was a flier given by a Catholic Church with the Memorare prayer: “Remember, O most compassionate Virgin Mary,” it read, “that never was it known that anyone who fled your protection, implored your assistance, or sought your intercession, was left unaided.”

The store’s inventory grants customers intercession, a deliverance from the weight of a necessity that can only be alleviated with a purchase. “Things tend to find people here,” is what my boss told me when I started, “so don’t worry about trying to push people to buy things. If they want something, they’ll buy it.” But in order to complete the transaction, to receive the offering made, they must actually buy it at the cash register, the altar equipped with altar people like myself to aid them. And while I do not believe in divine providence, I believe in the power of a salient community united in the religious-adjacent belief that if they revere the charity shop, it will return blessings unto them. I am a part of an intangible network that is much larger than myself. I receive from them for my servitude to their holy site, most often loose cigarettes, even though I tell them I don’t smoke: “Let this humble gift bring you a little bit closer to Heaven in exchange for your kindness.”

The televangelist comes back one evening, within the hour of the store’s closure.

“I’ll be quick,” she says. “I want to see that.” Her bejeweled finger hovers over a necklace of warm-toned glass beads like a string of hard candies.

“That’s pretty,” I say.

“I know,” she replies. “I’ve got good taste. You see what I buy.”

“Are you going to make it into rings?”

“Yes.”

“Can you save one for me?”

“Maybe. There are some people at a jewelry store over there—” she gestures eastward, “that want to buy some.” She winks at me and leaves. She will be back for more supplies soon, just like the rest of the sidewalk roamers that find themselves drawn back to the store each day. 

They, the practitioners of the secondhand gospel, will tread the sidewalk every week until their hip, or heart gives out. And when it does, their estate will send a truckload of their leftover belongings to the shop, which I will sell to another wanderer, just like them.

The post Charity Shop Evangelists appeared first on The New Absurdist.

He woke up one day and when Scotch Tape came to greet him in bed with a lick of the feet and a wag of the tail, Jeremiah gave him a pat on the head as he had always done, and the next thing he knew, there was a tiny tyrant standing before him. 

“Well, now you’ve done it,” said Napoleon, “Look at me. Just look at me. I’ve been dead for almost two hundred years, and you brought me back just to fetch a frisbee.” 

Jeremiah assured Napoleon that he didn’t mean to resurrect him. He had no idea why patting Scotch Tape on the head had resulted in such a transmogrification. The ten-year-old was not a magician or even interested in magic. He also loved his dog very much, and he had very little interest in dead military commanders. 

Not knowing much about Napoleon, but recognizing him from a children’s book his grandfather had given him that centered around famous angry Frenchmen, Jeremiah brought Napoleon downstairs so that he could show his parents what had happened. His mother was making Belgian waffles, and from behind him, Jeremiah could hear Napoleon making a comment about those lousy Belgians and their lackluster waffles, but not wanting to absorb any discrimination, he simply focused on the task at hand.

The trouble was, as soon as he tugged on his mother’s sleeve, she turned into Napoleon as well. Turning around, she scowled at the boy. 

“Look what you’ve done,” said this other Napoleon, “I don’t even like waffles–let alone Belgian ones. Sit down and I’ll make you a French omelet. It’s time we had some real food in this house before I go off to war.” 

The Napoleon that had once been Scotch Tape shook his head, but he sat down at the table, and put a napkin under his chin. Jeremiah didn’t understand. Did touching people now meant he was reviving Napoleon’s? Or were these beings still the beings they were before but trapped in some sort of Napoleon shell? 

While Jeremiah contemplated what to do about his two Napoleons, his father entered the house with some kind of stain on his tie. 

“Spilled coffee all over my–” 

Before he could finish his complaint, he noticed the two historical icons standing in the kitchen.

Jeremiah’s father slowly began to back away. 

“Jeremiah,” his father said, “Would you meet me out in the driveway, please?” 

The boy went running towards his father hoping for a comforting embrace, but his father side-stepped him. He looked pained at having to dodge his son, but he motioned to the front door as though some kind of answer would be waiting on the other side. 

Out on the driveway, the April air seemed to want to heat up, but couldn’t quite get there. Across the street, the Muscatellos were packing up a moving van. Jeremiah realized that it was a good thing he hadn’t hugged his father, because then he might have turned him into– 

“Napoleon. You would have turned me into Napoleon.” 

When the boy asked his father how this had happened, his father leaned against the driver’s side door of his Nissan Rogue. There was a small dent where Jeremiah had banged into the car with his bike. His father had not been cross when that happened, chalking it up to the kinds of things that occur when you have a son, and how lucky he was to have such a good son, who never did anything wrong aside from riding his bike a little too fast and not eating all his peas when they were served each Tuesday and Thursday. 

“Jeremiah,” his father said, “I was worried this might happen.” 

“Worried what might happen?” 

“When you were born, the doctor did some tests on you, because you had this strange birthmark on your back that looked like Napoleon. We asked what it meant, but the doctor–I think his name was Roberto–he was being very cagey. Anyway, you seemed fine, so we took you home. A few days later we got a call from someone who sounded like Dr. Roberto, but identified himself as D.R.R. He told us that one day our child would wake up, and everyone he touched would turn into Napoleon.

Not knowing much about history, we didn’t see the problem. Your mother always confused Napoleon with Charlie Chaplin, which doesn’t make much sense, but she always did associate disparate things. I knew who Napoleon was but he always seemed kind of cute to me. Your grandfather was familiar, and very concerned, which is why he bought you that book as a child and had you read it. He wanted you to be prepared for what might happen if and when the day arrived when your Napoleon syndrome would kick in.” 

As his father was telling him this story, the mailman was walking down the street. A bee flew near his face, and he began to run to avoid the bee, because he always suspected he was allergic, even though he had no evidence to back that up. While running, he slammed right into young Jeremiah, and the moment he did, he turned into Napoleon. 

“Sacre bleu!” the mailman shouted, “Now I am Napoleon? And I still have so many letters to deliver. What a garçon irréfléchi! Wait, is Napoleon allergic to bees?” 

Jeremiah and his father looked at each other, and then the mailman. 

“I don’t know,” said Jeremiah, “I think he might have suspected he was, but I doubt he had any evidence to back that up.” 

Napoleon the mailman walked away muttering to himself, and this is how Jeremiah learned that Napoleon was a mutterer, which is something they don’t usually teach you in history books. Jeremiah’s father ushered him into the house where Napoleon the Former Dog and Napoleon the Former Jeremiah’s Mom had found the board game Risk in the closet and were engaged in a heated game. Napoleon the Former Dog looked as though he might prevail, but Napoleon the Former Jeremiah’s Mom was giving him a run for his money. 

Jeremiah’s father led the boy upstairs and had him get into bed. The boy had never changed out of his pajamas, so for a moment, he wondered if he could close his eyes, open them, and find out the entire thing was a dream. Only the dirt from the lawn at the bottom of his feet would prove otherwise. He couldn’t fathom living with Napoleon for a dog let alone Napoleon for a mother, and certainly not Napoleon as a mailman. 

And could he really go the rest of his life without touching another human being for fear that they might try invading Russia in the dead of winter? 

“Now listen,” said his father, “I know this morning was confusing. You’re going to have a lot of confusing mornings in your life. Some more than others. This will, hopefully, be the most confusing, but I can’t guarantee that. The good news is, you’re a kid, so you can just get back in bed and sleep until whatever this is wears off. It might take all day, but I’m sure it’ll go away with time. Just to test it out, I’ll have a few historians stop by this evening to see how you’re doing. One of them might even allow you to try turning them into Napoleon, and if you can’t, we know the worst is over.”  

Jeremiah’s father patted a spot on the pillow near Jeremiah’s head, but was careful not to touch any part of his son since the worst was clearly not over. 

“Some days you wake up and nothing makes sense, Jeremiah,” he said, “And when you get older, you can’t go back to bed. You have to just press on and try to avoid connecting with anyone. Keep your head down. Power forward until things feel all right again. One morning I woke up, and every time I went to have a sip of coffee, it was Greek yogurt. I don’t know why. It only lasted one day, but I couldn’t go back to bed. I had to keep working, and I was so grumpy, because I couldn’t have any coffee, and I don’t like Greek yogurt all that much. This will pass though. This will all pass.” 

With that, he patted the spot near Jeremiah’s head one more time, left his son’s bedroom, and closed the door behind him. 

Not sure what to make of anything his father had just said, Jeremiah tried to sleep, but when he began to dream, he could only have Napoleon dreams. It seemed that even touching an image in his mind was enough to transform it. A dream of him taking a test in school became a dream of him writing a letter to Josephine. A dream of him riding his bike became a dream of him riding a horse into battle. A dream of him playing soccer became a dream of Napoleon playing soccer and losing the game, because Napoleon had no idea how to play soccer.

When the dreams became too much, Jeremiah opened his eyes and saw that moonlight was streaming through his windows. His father had forgotten to close the curtains before leaving him. He went to the window, and saw that the moon was hovering right above the house where the Muscatellos live. Without thinking, Jeremiah touched the glass that separated him from the moon, and, to his surprise, the moon became Napoleon. 

“C’est bon, Jeremiah,” said the Napoleon Moon, one of the kinder Napoleons, “Go back to bed. Le meilleur remède pour le corps est un esprit calme.” 

The best cure for the body is a quiet mind. 

Jeremiah got back into bed, and Napoleon dimmed his moonlight a little, but just a little. He wanted the boy to know he was here, but that he would be gone in the morning. 

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He watched them with all of his parents along with his aunts, uncles, and cousins, who cracked seeds so loudly and commented over each 7 minute episode that Amir already longed for a time when he could have the show all to himself. How crazily wonderful were these animals. Of course they were funny—the cat from the wrapping paper so tragically doomed to failure and the rabbit outsmarting the bald hunter proving among his instant favorites. But as the grown-ups laughed and pointed out obvious ironic moments and the kids younger than him applauded and fell over as the giant dog he would soon learn was a coyote fell several kilometers to the ground, he already felt somehow superior in his understanding of it all. 

It was more than mere antics or the idiosyncratic voices funny even to those who didn’t understand English (like many of his generation his parents had thankfully immersed him in the language since preschool). There was something special—miraculous even—in the totality of the aesthetic experience. The tension of the classical music his father always played as he painted in his studio positioned against such absurd scenarios played out with characters drawn so perfectly simple that they seemed to him more interesting than any humans he’d grow up to meet for the rest of his life. 

That night he set his alarm before the first call to prayer beyond his window, imagining instead of the muezzein on the loudspeaker he hears the rabbit and the duck singing the song to their dance steps. He only remembers one phrase from it, “On with the show this is it,” but it played throughout his dreams with the rest of the cast—from the fast mouse to the giant rooster—appearing on his unconscious stage. He positions his blanket right in front of the TV in the living room with his bowl of sugar cookies and a cup of milk. Turning the volume low enough so his parents and the fresh batch of relatives visiting from Tehran won’t wake up, he watches almost two dvds all the way through, so entranced he even forgets he has to go to the bathroom until his mother appears. 

“What are you doing up so early, Amir, and eating pure sugar for breakfast!” 

He can’t bring himself to pull away from the man who discovers a dancing frog that refuses to perform for money. She turns the TV off and stands in front of it.

“Sayyyyyy…what’s the big idea!!!” replies Amir, attempting his impression of one of them—Yosememite Sam—for the first time. 

“Come to the kitchen. I’ll make you a proper breakfast.” 

She heats up the fresh bread in the toaster oven as she takes Nutella for him and feta cheese along with cucumber for her and his father out of the fridge. As she begins to chop the cucumber he asks for carrots. 

“Carrots? For breakfast? Since when?” she asks, half smiling as she goes back to the fridge for a couple, which she peels and rinses in the faucet. 

Amir sticks out his front teeth, and chomps into it in rapid succession. 

“Awww….what’s up Doc?” he asks, in the nasal voice of Buggs Bunny, already hands down his favorite. 

“Oh Amir you’re being silly,” she replies, now cutting the cucumber. 

He cradles the carrot in his hands, like a kitten, then begins to sing longingly, in English: “Oh carrots are divine you get a dozen for a dime it’s magic!!!” 

“Shhh…you’ll wake your father!” admonishes his mother. “Those American cartoons are going to corrupt you,” she says, “They’re very violent, and they teach bad manners. I’m only going to let you watch a little now and then. And no more today. Now eat your breakfast and drink your juice.”

Of course he knew she couldn’t keep him from his new obsession. Already it hurt even physically to be away from them, like Rumi when his beloved teacher Shams went missing. But it wasn’t enough just to know that within an hour she’d abandon him for yet another entire day of painting like his father would later in the afternoon. Channeling the most rebellious, destructive model he can summon in the moment so full of sugar, he begins growling and salivating, then sends himself viciously spinning as the Tasmanian devil through the living room. It was as though he’d become some wild dog—considered especially dirty in Islam—rabidly crashing through all semblance of normalcy in the family home. 

He’s sent to his room as his father wakes up in a rage and his mother is left to clean up the pieces of broken lamp and a vase. The sugar crash hits him as he lies on his bed, almost in a kind of coma. Despite his parents yelling at him, he’s sorry for nothing. Soon his father will lock himself in his studio to paint, getting drunk throughout the day, while his mother won’t surface from her room until it’s time to make dinner. He will watch and re-watch as many episodes as he can. 

***

On afternoons and long Fridays his adult relatives at the garden are so grateful for his shows that occupy all of the usually menacing children for hours at a time. Now and then they might step into the upstairs tv room just to check on their own kids and laugh a little at Amir’s antics, but for the most part they let him do his thing, just grateful to be free of their responsibilities to supervise. 

At first he entertained the little snot-nosed masses of cousins and second cousins simply by acting out every character in every episode as they appear on the screen beside him. Off hours he’d devote all of his playtime to constructing what he’d need for each episode, always improving his go-to costumes like his rabbit ears or duck bill. 

To recreate one of his favorite moments in all of television, he’d even gotten his cousins Bobback and Farbad to carry up an old abandoned TV he’d found in the shed, the kind made out of real wood with the giant dial for the channel changer. Riding his bike early one morning to the garden, he sneaks upstairs with tools he’d taken from his father’s studio. First he drags two mattresses from a room on the first floor of the garden house outside, directly underneath one of the upstairs windows. He unscrews the back of the TV, then after yanking and cutting out all constricting wires, he rips out the bigger components. Putting a sheet down in front, he smashes the screen with a hammer. Then he knocks out all remaining glass. The-clean up takes longer than the destruction, but it was worth it for the big show later that afternoon. 

With his audience glued to the working TV set along with his performance alongside it, they laugh as he runs around in his black and white outfit with whiskers and a red nose stuck on his face and a long tail c pinned to his butt. He’s painted an actual stuffed nightingale yellow and tied it with strong to his belt. Chasing the bird around with the same stumbling moves as Sylvester after Tweety Bird, the kids all hoot and holler. Then in another episode, when his model cat creeps back inside granny’s house to eat the kitten’s food, only to suddenly discover that he’s caught behind the TV screen, so too does Amir find himself behind his own emptied TV set.

Aware of appearing as himself in a show, he joins the famous cat in breaking the 4^th wall. Holding up a can of tuna fish labeled like the original cat’s “Pussy Kins Cat Food” in one hand with the sign, “Ask for it by Name” in his other hand, they both blink knowingly. Then with a foolish grin they dance awkwardly as they sing in time to the commercial jingle:

 “Pussy kins cat foot tastes real good 

Satisfies cats like a cat food should 

Hardens their muscles softens their fur 

Pussy kins cat’s cat food makes them purr.” 

Amir then sends himself flying, as if having been thrown out the actual window like Sylvester by the old woman on the real screen beside him. The danger of the fall draws a collective grasp. All the kids panic until his cousin Esan runs to look out the window, screaming, “He’s okay!!! He’s okay!!! 

Delighted as always to serve as his passive audience, all of his young relatives sitting crisscross applesauce clap and laugh so loudly that by the time Amir comes back upstairs he is followed by one of the old men from the garden below who creeps up to tell them to pipe down. 

This was Uncle Ali Mohammad, his father’s eldest brother, who’d often stumble into the room in various degrees of drunkenness. He yelled in a slobbering slur at the room full of toddlers, Shut the hell up, raving about how they were trying to recite great lines of poetry and couldn’t concentrate. This time as the kids cower in terror, Amir fearlessly grabs one of his seemingly endless carrots picked daily from the garden. Chomping on it, he walks up to the bald man with the big belly, and ask, “Aaaaaa…..what’s up doc?” 

The room explodes with nervous laughter. While his uncle rages and stomps his foot to scare them all into momentary silence, when he turns to leave Amir in his rabbit ears sends him off with one of Bugg’s famous sarcastic lines. “So long screwy…see you in saint louie!” This brings renewed laughter, and even more applause, while solidifying his position as their true leader. Overjoyed at the triumph of their claims upon the upstairs room, without Amir asking they again settle down in greater obedience than to their preschool teachers, waiting patiently to watch whatever episode he next had ready for them. 

All along, however, as he keeps workshopping his own performances he’s been training his minions for theirs. Two months into an especially hot summer, one day he turns the dvd off. “Nooooo…..!” they all cried, starving for the repetition of his mimicry just like he did for the original show. 

“Wait! Wait!” he yells, waving his hands down upon them as if to cool off their outrage. “You know it all now…like me. Instead of just watching Looney Tunes, who wants to play Looney Tunes?” A chorus of kids screamed so loudly the old men sent his own mother up to control them. 

After assigning his young relatives various roles and doing what he could to get them in costume, with Ali Reza as the new Sylvester and Miriam his youngest and by far the cutest cousin as Tweety Bird, they rehearse the scenes they watched and saw their great teacher act out. Baback, stocky and inherently ornery, made the perfect Yosemite Sam, especially in the cowboy hat Amir made for him by cutting and refiguring one of his mom’s hats with her sewing equipment. Eson and Elhan, brother and sister, wanted to take turns as roadrunner and coyote, so no argument there. Though nobody would ever have thoughtlessly asked Kaveh to play Porky Pig because of his stutter, he himself volunteered. Ironically, he had a hard time stuttering once he’d put on the foam pig nose and ears. 

Without question Amir would stay eternally as Buggs, and to that end he kept perfecting more and more of his costume. Soon he ended up with an entire rabbit suit. The other roles were flexible, and some got to play two or even three parts. For some reason, though, Amir was never satisfied with anyone as Elmer. He’d let everyone, even his teenage cousin Farhang, try on a stocking for the appearance of baldness, then cover it with a brown hat he’d painted red in the back. Still, despite the rifle he created out of cardboard tubes used to ship his father’s special paper, nobody seemed to pull it off. So they all took their turns, and he learned to live with what they could offer. 

After rehearsal, they started to take their show to the garden, performing their little seven minute skits for various packs of relatives able to give them their attention. To a point the grown ups seemed encouraging, stopping their backgammon and ping pong to watch the coyote chase the roadrunner by flapping wings made from umbrellas Eson took out of a box labeled ACME. After his exaggerated fall from the heights of a chair, they’d all clap then return to their own entertainment. 

The old men, though, had none of it. Invariably if they got within earshot the same irascible Uncle Ali Mohammad would complain, now more than ever. Even worse, he’d get his otherwise seemingly tolerant reciters of poetry on his side. 

“Hey! Hey!” he said, clearly drunk in the early afternoon. “We are discussing poetry right now, so shut the hell up! Or else…I’ll give you all spankings!” He raised his hand as if to swat their backsides. From a safe distance, Amir once again munched on a carrot, saying, “Ehhhh…what’s up doc?” With his pack of animated animals under his direction, he would count off the time to the big song and dance opening. “Okay, ready? Yek, do, seh!” Just as in the show, they all came out dancing and signing. 

Overture, curtain, lights 

This is it, the night of nights 

No more rehearsing and nursing a part 

We know every part by heart 

Overture, curtain, lights 

This is it, we’ll hit the heights 

And oh what heights we’ll hit 

On with the show this is it! 

 Having seen the routine so many times, most of the grown-ups would just tune it out. Ali Mohammad, though, had reached a breaking point. Already too drunk to recollect lines from Hafez he was to recite at the shab-e-sher, after downing the lukewarm tea his niece had brought him, he threw the glass as hard as he could. It smashed against the wall, but shards reached Amir, still dressed as Buggs, actually hitting him in the side of the head.

His entire Looney Tunes cast stood still, waiting for his reaction. Touching the bleeding wound near his real ear, then raising his fingers to show the blood, he declared with eerie calm, “Of course you know this means war.” 

But those expecting an immediate and comically violent reaction were soon disappointed. Strangely, and rather tragically, the show stopped for a while. Completely stopped. Amir started dressing like himself, and despite the constant pleading of his entourage, he refused to act his part as Buggs or direct the others. He wouldn’t even join some in going back to watch the original in the TV room. Soon burned out on the reruns, the kids just congregated near, but not too near, their disaffected leader. Some wore their costumes for a while and tried acting out scenes on their own, but soon they too abandoned the get up. Though it went without saying, all of course hated Uncle Ali Mohammad more than ever. 

Every so often Amir would leave them altogether, or at least try to, walking beyond the walls of the garden and into the streets and alleys. There was considerable construction, with workers laying pipes for some new buildings. He stood beside a hole, a new one that seemed rather deep, beside a mid-size digger with the fresh dirt on the teeth of its scooper. “Hey Buggs, are you going in that hole?” asked cousin Ali Reza. 

“Yeah, you going to hide from Elmer Fudd?” asked Bobback. 

He brushed them off as he kicked a little dirt into the opening, clearly studying what was down there. Soon he returned to the garden, and they’d all settle into some new routines of kicking a soccer ball and eating watermelon near their parents. 

Then one Friday early evening, when most adults beyond the old men reading poetry had decided to pay a visit to a sick relative before coming to the garden, Amir showed up in his bunny suit. His cousins were dying to join him again, but instead of directing them, he just stared at his Uncle Ali Reza, so the kids all stared at him too. Since the old man’s wife was not around he seemed to allow himself to get especially drunk. At one point he tried to get up for the restroom, then fell back down in his chair. Even worse, since the kids weren’t misbehaving, this time he started to take out all of his bullying aggression on his small circle of friends. 

“Heeeey Emmmmmdod,” he said, slurring his words. “You don’t know shit about Hafez. You know that? You think you’re so fucking special with your PhD. I’m surprised you passed kindergarten. And Hisham, yeah…you Hisham!” he continued, as the men looked to each other. “You only stay with us because your wife…she looks like an old goat…and your kids are even uglier.” 

His pack of friends and relatives soon had enough, and decided to take a walk without him. As the drunk old man dropped his head on the table, Amir as Buggs Bunny now sensed his chance. Clipping on his father’s crisp white collarless shirt and his mother’s white gloves, he went to the portable sound speaker on a nearby table. He’d once played dj for his father at a gathering, mostly just choosing from songs on a preset list, something his dad hoped would keep him busy and out of trouble. Thankfully, though, it had given him just enough instruction for this performance. 

Putting on Rossini’s opera, like Bugs before him in the episode from “Rabbit of Seville,” he stuck a comb in his hair and picked up a pair of scissors and a razor he’d taken from the bathroom. Then, he started to sing along to the intro, just like in the episode:

How doooo! 

Welcome to my shop 

Let me cut your mop 

Let me shave your crop! 

Daintily! Daint-til-ly! 

Hey yoooou! 

Don’t look so perplexed 

Why must you be next 

Can’t you see you’re next? 

Yes, you’re next! 

Yoou’re so next!

How about a nice close shave 

Teach your whiskers to behave 

Lots of lather lots of soap 

Please hold still don’t be a dope 

Now we’re ready for the scrapin’ 

There’s no use to try escapin’ 

Yell and scream and rant and rave 

There’s no use you need a shaave! 

As the kids started to applaud and scream in delight, he began pouring drops of oil on his drunken uncle’s bald head. In time with the violins, he manically rubbed it in, all the while looking at his usual audience of eager children who cheered him on. 

“Buggs is back!” they cried, “and look what he’s doing to Elmer Fudd!” He then took off his dampayees and took turns lifting each foot high above him, awkwardly rubbing the oil into his uncle’s head with his toes. Then he went away, to the kitchen, with the music still playing. That panicked his audience, and they all screamed, “Come back, Buggs come back!” Thankfully he soon returned with a container of homemade whip cream and a bowl of fruit. Even though they knew he’d make a circle of white with the cream, then balance bananas, apples, and grapes on his head, it still profoundly amused them. They all chanted now, in unison, “Buggs! Buggs! Buggs!” 

When he added more cream on top, followed by a cherry, even though his uncle made no acknowledgement like the original Elmer as Amir held up a mirror for his client to see his new hairdo, the recognition of the details from that episode killed them all with laughter. Of course they wanted to see him in a turban, like a mullah, playing a flute as a razor came out of a basket like a snake to bite the old mean man on the behind. For that matter, they’d also wanted the whip cream to have been sprayed around his head, as opposed to dolloped on with a spoon. Like Amir, though, they’d learned to make do, using their imagination to fill in the blanks. 

Children charged with great imagination, just to see Amir gesture toward key moments was more than enough for them to fill in the rest. As Amir sat next to the old man and called for the kids to rock, and even try to raise his chair, though they barely could move the old man back a few centimeters they could easily pretend they were enacting the infinite ascension of the barber’s chair to the climatic classical music. 

Completely in sync with their fearless leader, when he next reached down to take off the old man’s shoes they beat him to it. As a few of them together heaved his bare feet onto the chair where Amir had been sitting, Elhan ran to a room where her older sister spent a lot of her nights since a big fight with her parents. In less than a minute she returned with the nail polish, which Amir put on the old man’s toes. 

Of course there was no cement to affix to his face and let dry in a block before chipping off. But when Buggs cried for a container full of mud, all his minions went scrambling. He waited then, with the music playing, his gaze right before him as though in front of a camera. Soon he had options: pots and pans filled with dirt from the garden moistened with water from the tub, flour mixed with water from the kitchen, and even their grandma Taj’s leftover fesenjan. 

Near the end of the song, Amir went for the mud, packing it on the old man’s face, which they tilted back for maximum exposure. Though a little off script, Amir allowed the addition of fresh tulips picked from the garden, which he planted on his drunk uncle’s upper forehead with more handfuls of mud. 

As the music ended and Amir took a bow, his ears flopping down to his knee caps, the garden gate opened and they saw the pack of his relatives, including his parents and, much worse, Ali Mohammad’s wife. Instantly she registered what was happening. She raised her purse, swinging it wildly as she ran toward Amir. He zig zagged around her, then took off into the lemon trees. Though his wife couldn’t keep up, she now had a host of adults on his trail, including her athletic youngest son Mirdad in his 40’s, who years ago had played semi professional soccer. 

But Amir as Buggs could weave in and around the legs of these grown-ups, slipping passed them with a kind of poise. It helped of course to have the kids cheer him on. At one point, back near the outdoor tables where the family would have the big meals, he grabbed a cloth napkin and held it like a bull fighter’s cape. As Mirdad ran to grab him, Amir took two quick hops to the side. Seeing Amir now in the episode of Buggs fighting the bull, a couple of them grabbed tulips off the old man’s head and threw them at their hero matador. 

They gasped when Mirdad did grab him by the arm of his rabbit costume, but Amir quickly twisted out of it, then charged for the garden door. The pack of grown ups all followed, of course, then the kids after them, running into the dusty twilight of the outside village. Here and there kids did what they could to impede the pack of adults, jumping onto their own parents back and even running ahead and stopping short, forcing them to fall onto the gravel road. 

Though Amir was obviously fast, he still ran with the ironic grace of his character, kind of half skipping now and then, when he’d sensed he had a decent lead. Though quick at the start, however, the legs and lungs of his fiercest opponent was soon proving too much for him. The footsteps in dress shoes got so close he knew he’d be grabbed any second. But just as Mirdad reached with both hands for his neck, he plunged, feet first, down into the hole. It’s as though it really were a real episode, where he once again evaded capture by Elmer Fudd and others. At first in anger, then in real concern, his father shined a flashlight down in search for him. The fall looked much further than they’d imagined, and though they could ultimately see the ground below, he didn’t seem to be anywhere around. Soon his mother was calling frantically, “Amirjan, of course you are in some trouble, but we love you and won’t let you get hurt. Please just come out where we can see you…we need to know you are okay.” 

As her voice echoed through the hole, his audience all got very still. They wanted, even had to believe, he was okay. Now, however, they had some doubts. At first cheering for Buggs, suddenly the kids called him by his real name. “Amir! Amir! Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Eson got on his knees by the edge, as if to climb down, before his father stopped him. “I need to save him! He’s…he’s down there!”

Soon the adults decided to send someone for some rope, in the hopes of hoisting someone down in search of him. It would take some doing, for at least over an hour, and by the time Mirdad reached the bottom and shined his light, in real distress he cried out, “I don’t see him! He’s not there. I mean, did anyone see him actually fall into the hole? I’m not so sure now. Maybe at the last minute he made it look that way?” 

As his father now called the authorities, who would also get down there and look, some of the parents soon took their kids to bed partly out of fear of what they might find. All the while, though, Amir was back at the garden. Having fallen down the hole on a mattress he’d dragged there earlier, then out of sight upon landing, like Buggs before him he’d found an alternate escape route through a narrow passage deep underground. Now with a pillow and blanket taken from one of the guest rooms, he settled into bed between rows of corn. Chewing a carrot he plucked directly from the garden, he said as if to a camera in front of him: “Ain’t I a stinker?”

The post Persian Looney Tunes appeared first on The New Absurdist.

With some help from you, reliable sources, and our editorial team we have put together a brief guide for learning about what is currently happening in Palestine, around the world, and what we can do to support people in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing. While the New Absurdist is not a news source, it is a place for education, activism, and promoting positive growth in the world. It is both our privilege and our responsibility to elevate the voices of people who are being censored for speaking out for peace and basic human rights. 

At this time, we’d like to invite artists and writers who are passionate about anti-fascism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, and Palestinian support to consider submitting their work to The New Absurdist, and as always we will do our best to elevate these underrepresented voices on our platform

Introduction 

In the Western world, and as we can see in the United States, many people, including students, are being doxxed for speaking out against the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. And although there has been a slight shift after much public protest to offer a more ‘balanced’ perspective, much of mainstream media has been offering biased reports dehumanizing and downplaying the plight of suffering Palestinians.

In stark contrast, when Russia invaded Ukraine, international leaders applauded Ukrainian resistance against occupation, because they were people that “looked like us” — essentially people that didn’t look like brown skinned refugees — but blond and blue eyed people, “civilized people” that deserved our empathy. 

Gaza is currently, and has been, an open air prison where Palestians have no right to free movement, a situation made exponentially worse by the incessant and indiscriminate bombing by the IDF. Thousands of people have been killed in an extremely short amount of time, with 74% of them being women, children and the elderly. Around half of the Palestinian population are children. Public infrastructure such as hospitals are now practically nonexistent due to Israeli bombing and war crimes. Like many others around the world, we demand a permanent ceasefire, and an end to genocide, occupation and apartheid. 

This article is divided into three main sections which you can click on below to jump down.  

1. The Occupation of Palestine
2. The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
3. About the Cover: The Watermelon
4. What can we do to support Palestine

The Occupation of Palestine

For many people in the US and the western world, what is being called the “Israel-Hamas War” seems to have started in a horrifying attack on October 7, 2023 when Hamas killed around 1000 people and abducted around 200 people to the Gaza strip.  For many others, especially those in Palestine, the violence goes more than 75 years back, with Palestinians facing illegal occupation by the Israeli military. 

Nakba

After the Partition Plan (Resolution 181) passed in 1947, Palestine was divided by the United Nations into 3 parts: a Jewish state, an Arab state, and the City of Jerusalem under UN administration. This plan was rejected by the Arab world, on the grounds that it was unfair and violated the UN Charter. Israeli militias launched attacks against Palestinian villages, destroying hundreds, killing thousands of people, and forcing a mass exodus of Palestinians to flee, never able to return to their homes. 

More than 1 million Palestinians were left living in Israeli occupied territories. This forced exodus became known as nakba, translated as “catastrophe” in English. It is considered to be a core part of the shared trauma, history and experience of being Palestinian. 75 years later, Palestinians continue to have their rights denied, whether it’s by dispossession and displacement by Israeli settlements, evictions, land confiscation or home demolitions.

Apartheid 

The situation in Palestine has been aptly described by Amnesty International as apartheid. 

Apartheid may ring as a big buzz-word. There is a misconception at best, and a Zionist sentiment at worst, that the situation in Israel cannot be at all akin to apartheid, at least as people know it from South Africa.  After all, as the Jewish Virtual Library (published by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise) puts it, “Jews are the majority within Israel, but the non-Jewish minority…enjoy full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.” It’s giving ‘I’m not racist, I have a black friend,’ or ‘I don’t see color’ energy to justify systematic racism and oppression. The Palestinians in the Bank are considered to be in a ‘different situation’ because of what is called “incessant terrorism” and there is denial of any injustice done to civilians living in Palestinian territories illegally occupied and controlled by Israeli military and settler violence. 

Amnesty International describes apartheid as “territorial fragmentation; segregation and control; dispossession of land and property; and denial of economic and social rights,” Palestinians currently do not have the same rights as Israelis in the illegally-occupied territories of Palestine. Checkpoints, roadblocks, and settler-only roads make daily tasks almost impossible to complete. Getting to work, school, or even the hospital requires an extensive amount of bureaucracy and luck in the permite regime. For these reasons, Amnesty International has written extensively on Israeli war crimes and officially considered the treatment of Palestinian citizens in these occupied territories as apartheid.  Human Rights Watch has also pointed out these injustices, without directly using the label.

In 2022 for the first time in history, the United Nations commemorated nakba, or The Catastrophe on its 75th anniversary, and proposed to make it officially recognized in 2023. Just months after this international recognition of Israel violence against Palestinians, we are once again witnessing Israeli militia indiscriminately bomb people and infrastructure, killing exponential numbers of Palestinian civilians. The Israeli response to the Hamas attack and subsequent kidnapping of hostages, has turned into an attempt at ethnic cleansing and further establishment of a Zionist and Nationalistic military state. 

It is very important to note that governments do not necessarily represent their people, and the Zionist movement does not represent all Jews. Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement that calls for the creation of a Jewish state, which gathered much more support after the horrifying events of the Holocaust, and as a response to the rise of both nationalism and Anti-Semitism on a global scale. But in practice, Zionists are engaging in settler colonialism, including creating illegal settlements, driving out and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians with the justification of returning Jews to their ancestral homeland. Before 1948 and the formation of the Israeli ethnostate, Muslims, Jews, and Christians in various empires had coexisted in Palestine for generations. 

 In addition to recognizing that it is difficult to deprogram from philosophies and politics that we may have grown up with, it is also necessary to combat our own anxiety and fears and deprogram ourselves from Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Zionism. Ethnic connotations and stereotypes associated with religion are used as a tool to dehumanize people and ‘other’ them. With the power of the internet and spread of information, people are not only learning about the liberation movement for Palestine, but for the Congo, Sudan, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and many others. 

The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza

Gaza is a small strip of land (28 by 6 miles) populated by 2.3 million Palestinians, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world. About 50% are children. The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees who were uprooted from their ancestral homes in Israel occupied land. Most of them are unable to leave Gaza.

In response to the 240 hostages taken and 1,000 civilians killed by Hamas on October 7th, Israeli forces have killed 15,000 Palestinian civilians (more than 10 times the amount). 

While it’s difficult to compare tragedy, as a frame of reference, about 10,000 people were killed in the Ukraine War over 2 years, and 3,000 lives were lost on 9/11. Entire families have been killed as a result of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, and it is estimated that a Palestinian child is killed every 10 minutes on average, since October 7, 2023. 

Palestinians in Gaza face dire conditions in Gaza due to Israeli occupation and international humanitarian war crimes. This includes:

• White Sulfur bombing, an international war crime with a loophole used for ‘signaling’ as an excuse over civilian areas, which can cause severe burning down to the bone. 
• Restricted Water supply and Hazardous water quality – Israel controls the water resources of the West Bank. Palestinians receive only 20% of the water resources, and are unable to drill new wells or install pumps without permits from Israel, which are nearly impossible to attain. They aren’t even allowed to collect rainwater without having cisterns destroyed by the Israeli army.  (See Climate Diplomacy for more information on the Israel Palestine Water Sharing Conflict.)
• Extremely dire living conditions – In some shelters, 400 people share 1 toilet.
• Destruction of communication infrastructure and targeting of Journalists and their families
• Collective punishment involving civilians- international war crime
• Cutting access to food, fuel, electricity, water, medicine, and internet 
• Bombing of civilian areas including Refugee Camps, Schools, Hospitals, and Mosques – An international war crime
• Military detainment of Palestinian children – hundreds of children are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system  every year
• Crumbling War-torn infrastructure

About the Cover: The Watermelon as a symbol of Palestinian solidarity and resistance

We invite you to print this cover and use it freely at Pro-Palestinian protests. 

This cover is inspired by how in  2023, protesters in Tel Aviv used images of a watermelon captioned with “This is not a Palestinian flag” in response to a ban on the Palestinian flag and its colors, enforced by the Israeli military.   

This is not the first time the Palestinian flag and its colors have been banned by Israel. Israel banned the Palestinian Flag and national colors following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem from Historic Palestine, displacing more than 500,000 Palestinians and effectively more than doubling Israeli territory. 

In the 1980s, artists in the Palestinian city Ramaallah were forbidden by Zionist forces to use the Palestinian national colors in any capacity. This meant that artworks containing red, green or black could be confiscated by the Israeli police. Not even a painting of a flower, or a watermelon could make it through. This idea lent itself for the watermelon to become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.

This image, and others like it,  of “Not a Palestinian flag,” or “Not a Watermelon” (paired with an image of a watermelon) might remind you of Rene Magritte’es famous image of “This is not a Pipe.” Artists like Rene Magritte were part of the Dada movement in the early 20th century, who made surreal and nonsensical images in protest and reaction to World War 1, nationalism, violence, and modern capitalist society. 

To add another layer of cultural significance, watermelons were a world-renowned speciality of Palestine before the 1948 Nakba when Israeli Zionist forces destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages, killing and forcing out thousands of Palestinians to gain territory. As the IDF and Israeli settler authorities started occupying Palestinian neighborhoods, they also drove the large and remarkable Palestinian watermelons out of competition with Israeli seed companies. 

In 2021, after an Israeli court ruling allowed settlers to forcefully evict Palestinian families from their family homes, the watermelon resurfaced as a symbol of protest and resistance for Palestinian solidarity once again. 

Despite how the 1967 ban was officially lifted in 1993, Palestinian flags are still taken down and banned in Israeli occupied territories in the name of ‘keeping the peace’. And in recent crackdowns, Israel’s national security minister Ben-Gvir, has ordered police to ban Palestinian flags from public places. (Hence, the 2023 Tel-Aviv Bus Protests)  Ben Gvir belongs to the far right Otzma Yehudit/ Jewish Power political party (Described by Professor Eva Illouz as a Jewish fascist group)  and is known for his history of racism and pro-settler stance. The ban on Palestinian flags and colors is just one of Ben Gvir’s continued bids for power in government, including trying to make it his position to direct police policy.

As the saying goes, “where one burns books, one will soon burn people.”  When political powers begin to dictate what is appropriate and inappropriate for society in art, such as Nazis labeling art as “degenerate” it is only a matter of time before people start to be targeted and persecuted. The banning of Palestinian national colors and symbolism during protests in Western countries, even in a painting of a watermelon, is yet another example of how systems of oppression are imitated throughout history. Consider how the censorship of media such as arts and literature applies to the censorship of people’s right to exist, such as the Florida Book Bans, which have removed around 300 books in the last school year.

Now, we see these sentiments reborn once again in watermelon emojis and symbolism in a reaction to capitalism, fascism, nationalism, and violence. Absurdity and nonsense in art, writing, and media function to point out the absurdity of the injustices we face in the world. 

What can we do to support Palestine?

A special thank you to contributor and reader Rowan M. for her help with compiling research and writing out ways to help and protest. Read her article “5 Palestinian Films and Documentaries to Watch” on The New Absurdist. 

There is a place for all forms of protest in the face of oppression, and we’d like to emphasize our take on efficient or sustainable protest. For example, protesting in the streets may not be an option for disabled people. For People of Color, speaking out publicly may affect their livelihood much more than white counterparts.

We encourage you to ask yourself what is the way that I can help best: Is it a conversation with your peers? Is it monetary? Is it using your art? Your writing? Are you a good speaker? Do you have a platform? We have compiled some resources on ways that you can make a difference below. 

BDS! Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions 

• BDS is a Palestinian led movement for freedom, justice and equality. This movement uses economic and cultural boycotts against companies that financially support Israel’s apartheid regime and violation of Palestinian human rights. 
• The three main goals of BDS are to urge nonviolent pressure on Israel until it complies with international law by meeting 3 demands.

1. End Israel occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the wall
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab- Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality
3. Respecting, Protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194. 

• Check out the official BDS website to see what major companies to boycott. 
• You can also use https://bdnaash.com to identify which companies do and do not support the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. 

Donate to Doctors Without Borders to provide much needed medical care to people in Gaza and the West Bank

• Unlike Israel, which has strong emergency and health care systems, Gaza and the West Bank urgently lack medical personnel and supplies. As Doctors Without Borders puts it, “Medical facilities and personnel must be protected and respected, hospitals and ambulances are not targets”— not that that has stopped Israel militia from bombing hospitals and necessary public infrastructure. 
• Doctors without Borders is completely funded by independent donors to mobilize and save lives when a crisis strikes. Click here to Donate to Doctors without Borders. 

Send an E-sim to Palestine

• In addition to killing thousands of people in the Gaza Strip, Israel has been cutting off power and fuel supplies to more than 2 million people in Gaza. These internet and electricity blackouts mean that families cannot communicate with their loved ones and Palestinians cannot contact the outside world. 
• The internet has been key in debunking falsehoods, and helping spread first hand information and experiences. These blackouts serve as covers for human rights violations in Palestine, preventing people from both receiving and broadcasting vital information and updates. 
• Sending an E-sim helps connect people to the internet, their loved ones, and communicate with the outside world. E-sim cards are pieces of software that act like traditional SIM cards that allow people to activate a new cellular plan with  phone and internet access on their existing phone.
  • To buy an Esim: 
  • 1. Download one of these eSIM charging apps: Holafly, Nomad, Simly, Airolo. HolaFly is the most in demand right now, but all are needed.  
  • 2. Choose the location and number of GB you want to purchase. Over 30 GB would be great, but all amounts are helpful. 
  • 3. Email a clear image of the QR code (not the link, but the QR code itself) to gazaesims@gmail.com. Then @mirna_elhelbawi and the @connectinghumanity_ team will distribute to folks in need on the ground in Palestine
  • Slideshow Instructions from @bintmeetsworld  

Buy from Palestinian Businesses

• Buy an original Palestinian Keffiyeh from the last keffiyeh factory in Palestine here, from Hirbawi.
  • The Keffiyeh is a traditional scarf traditionally worn by nomadic peoples and villagers in Palestine to protect wearers from the harsh sun and sand. Nowadays, it has become a symbol of Palestinian pride, identity, and resistance. 
  • Along with Pro-Palestinian Protests, the Keffiyeh has been banned in many Western countries.
  • While visiting family for Thanksgiving, 3 Palestinian students in Vermont were shot while wearing keffiyeh, and a woman charged with a hate crime assault attacked a man who was wearing a keffiyeh with his 18 month old son. 

• Use Palestine Portal to buy Palestinian goods
• Palestine Online Store is an activist-run store whose mission is to promote Palestine through its handcrafts, foods, films, books, and solidarity apparel.
• 8 Palestinian businesses for you to support

Contact your Representatives

For our US readers, Jewish Voices for Peace and US Campaign for Palestinian Rights both offer instructions and caller scripts for how to contact your representative and senator’s office for a permanent ceasefire and refusal to send American weapons and funding to the Israeli military. 

Consume, Elevate, and Support Palestinian voices and content. 

For example, consider these independent journalists in Gaza who are showing their experiences first hand, in a raw and powerful way on instagram:

• @hindkhoudary
• @byplestia
• @wizard_bisan1
• @motaz_azaiza
• @ahmedhijazee

You could also follow other influencers on social media who are sharing updated information on the ongoing genocide. Some examples of who you can follow on instagram are:

• @wissamgaza
• @rosypirani
• @jenamatari
• @quillmistress
• @voice_of_palestinians_
• @resist_zine 

• Watch Documentaries and Films by and about Palestinian people. See Rowan M’s article “5 Palestinian Films to Watch” on The New Absurdist. 
• Read both Short and Long Form Content about Palestine. The following links have reading lists for books regarding Palestinian history and perspectives, including colonization, violence, economy, LGBTQ, culture, and fiction.
  • Decolonize Palestine Reading List
  • Haymarket has a Free Palestine! reading list. All of these books are currently 20% Off, and come with a free ebook where available. 

Protest

We invite you to print this cover and use it freely at Pro-Palestinian protests.

• Shut it Down for Palestine has information on marches, walkouts, sit ins, and other forms of direct action
• Resist Zine has visual guides for:
  • Dealing with Police at Protests 
  • Guide for Youth Protesters 
  • Protest Anxiety

Resources and Useful Links

• Jewish Voices for Peace
• STOP GAZA GENOCIDE Ceaasefire Now Public Tool Kit 
• Contact the White House 
• American Friends Service Community 
• The United Nations: The Question of Palestine: Timeline of Events
• Reuters: Mapping the conflict in Israel and Gaza

Thank you for reading. Once again, at this time, we’d like to invite artists and writers who are passionate about anti-fascism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, and Palestinian support to submit their work to The New Absurdist, and as always we will do our best to elevate these underrepresented voices on our platform.

The post This Is Not A Watermelon appeared first on The New Absurdist.