Dr. Kerry’s mouth hung open. this, apparently, is what you get for trying to help someone out.

i looked away quickly, realizing that my staring at him was making things all the more uncomfortable. the liberal arts assistant continued typing, curtly. it wasn’t clear to me if she recognized how uncomfortable her statement had made everyone.

on the one hand, i guess i could understand. she must have seen an unending parade of students, shamed by parents/teachers/peers, who had made similarly sincere pledges to ‘get it together,’ but who also had no actual, concrete plan for how to accomplish such a nebulous goal. at a certain point, empathy has to turn into exasperation, and then harden into disgust. i can’t imagine that, on the surface, i appeared any different. it was a miscalculation to assume that this faculty member shared her assessment, but maybe she’d also had enough of these mush-headed humanities intellectuals who didn’t have to deliver the cold, hard facts to students as often as she did, and just didn’t care if we were both uncomfortable.

in retrospect, things had gone too easy. i had prepared myself for some real unpleasantness, and i’d been surprised at how smooth it had been. Dr. Kerry had, in fact, remembered me, his face breaking into a smile of recognition when he saw me standing in his office doorway. it felt good, and it felt even better when he expressed optimism at the idea that i might, in fact, be able to dig out of the hole i had dug for myself. i suppose it was easier for someone who had never seen me in a non-english context to imagine that, if i could simply master my anxieties (which were vague and nondescript, to him) then surely someone with my smarts should have no problem. i could just buckle down, suck it up, do some other appropriately vague and nondescript personal work, and things would simply work out, because that’s what things do for good folks who we don’t really know. the fact that i still couldn’t make eye contact with him, my attention continually returning to the multiple copies of the Riverside Chaucer on his desk, might have just seemed like a quirk. no reason that should get in the way of my comeback story. it felt good, like maybe this wasn’t just setting myself up for a final failure. (honestly, i was shocked that i hadn’t flunked out. i really thought that i had.)

when he wanted to walk down to the office of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, i was really grateful. i knew i was going to have to go down there, but i had imagined i would take another day and get myself prepared for it. i wasn’t prepared to go there right away, but this was also a good opportunity, because Dr. Kerry would probably do most of the explaining for me. this really was going so much smoother than i had anticipated.

Dr. Kerry’s familiar, warm welcome had made me reconsider a few things. mostly, it made me remember the time when he called my girlfriend, wondering after me, after i had disappeared during the last spring semester i’d registered for classes. i’d repeated my signature move: registering for a full-time course load, attended the first day of each class, then never set foot on campus again for the rest of the semester. he called Amy (my girlfriend at the time), because she was my emergency contact number, and i wasn’t responding to his calls. Amy played his message for me, and i literally pulled the covers over my head and tried to pretend that i didn’t hear. she scolded me, saying that it was inconsiderate to not respond, since he was going out of his way to check up on me. i replied that it’s his job; he’s my advisor, he has to make the effort, he’s just checking a box.

and that was it. i’d flunked out, and i wasn’t going back. i assumed i’d flunked out. i had certainly given it as good an effort as you could reasonably expect from a person.

now, however, i was reconsidering. he remembered me, and he even remembered the circumstances of my ignominious exit from the university with a surprising (and embarrassing) degree of specificity, though he addressed them with a generous non-specificity. it seemed like Amy was right. Dr. Kerry seemed legitimately invested in me and my success, and i had been very inconsiderate. once all the adrenaline wore off, i needed to remember to feel regret, and maybe think of something nice to do for him that i’d surely never do.

i felt energized as we walked down the hall to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences office. this couldn’t have gone any better. i recognized the assistant, as i’d had numerous interactions with her- dropping classes, providing proof that i’d been advised and could be allowed to register for classes (required for students on academic probation), etc. -which was concerning, but fortunately she didn’t seem to recognize me. one nice thing about being a massive fuck-up: you’re never an isolated case.

she confirmed that i was still on academic probation and, somehow, not expelled from the university, and i was really starting to believe that i was going to get away with this shit. Dr. Kerry explained the plan we (mostly he) had come up with, that i would only be taking two classes at a time (at least to start), so that i wouldn’t over-extend myself, and the classes i was planning on enrolling in for the spring semester. it would take longer to get myself out of the hole, but the priority, at this point, was to keep from overwhelming myself. it was a safe, pragmatic, and level-headed plan. i felt pretty good about it, and life in general, at that moment.

her eyes moved back and forth between the advising document Dr. Kerry had given her and my checkered academic record, displayed on her computer screen. my eyes continually scanned the room, repeatedly landing on an empty box of yellow highlighters on the supply shelf behind her chair. Dr. Kerry stood in the doorway to the larger main office, but i don’t know what he was looking at.

‘you’ve failed Spanish 204 three times.’

she was probably talking to me.

‘are you sure you want to take that your first semester back?’

instinctively, i looked to Dr. Kerry, like he was going to answer for me. he probably would have, actually, but i spoke up for myself.

‘it’s offered, since its the spring semester. it will be good to get it out of the way, and since the public speaking class is not very demanding, i should be able to concentrate on it.’

she didn’t seem satisfied with my answer, but she began to enter information. this was an unpleasant moment, but i had acquitted myself adequately, i thought. she stopped typing and looked at Dr. Kerry.

‘students on probation often have a flawed sense of what they’re going to be able to handle.’

Dr. Kerry’s jaw dropped. he clearly had no idea how to respond. i mean, this was his co-worker, and she was probably correct, but i was sitting right there. ‘students on probation’ was actually in the room with them. what was he supposed to say in this situation?

a few days later, after cycling and recycling through my feelings, i briefly landed on anger at the assistant. like, ‘fuck you, lady. you don’t know me. “students on probation.” you mean me, right? i’m right here, bitch.’ the brief surge of anger was sufficient to make me share the episode with my current girlfriend, because it was strong enough to make me feel that, objectively, she was in the wrong, and telling my girlfriend about it would give her the opportunity to take my side (which, of course, she did), not just because she’s my girlfriend, but because i’m right, and this woman was unambiguously wrong. no matter how correct her assessment of me and my situation was, it was seriously a dick-move to express it at that moment, to put myself and Dr. Kerry in that situation.

Dr. Kerry wasn’t able to make any words come out of his mouth, and we all just sat and stood there, awkwardly. i tried to imagine what he was thinking. i tried to imagine what she was thinking. i’m still trying to imagine these things.

You hate where you’re at, in a great hurry to, in one day, grow out of it
But to become what, you worry, when you, someday, grow out of it?

Concerned that others are advancing, steadily marching forward
And you’re stuck in place, stunted and lost, unable to grow out of it

There are flashes of another fear, the uncertainty and doubt
For what you’ll leave behind and lose, when you finally grow out of it

All the impatience and anxiety, I feel them in a different way
Where will I be left, I wonder, when you finally grow out of it?

You have no control over almost anything, it’s true, but it’s also true
That you’ll always be you, which will always be special, so why would you want to grow out of it?

the Lecturer

Professionals talking retro, classical shit
Opaque, acrylic vocal cords
Lecturing flowers,
imparting instructions on which way to turn,
which face is the right face to face
Blinking rapidly in perpetuity
Pretending greatly
Specialized and heavy

I always just slept through most of my classes. I knew all the shit already, anyway. It’s just giving terminology to talk about stuff I was born knowing. It’s updated, like when they made it so the zombies could run, but it’s still the same shit.

Amateurs talking their shit on the internet
“A tremendous amount of order”
(Wagner-Pacifici 88).
Hate stares and sour frowns
Of Man, By Man
Bomb First, and
Never Stop Learning

These fucking guys—and it’s always guys, isn’t it? even when it’s women, it’s men—talking about they’re doing you a favor, disabusing you of fairytales. They’re just replacing them with even stupider fairytales. Like when they say that only a father can teach a boy how to be a man—like a mother isn’t capable of fucking them up, showing them how to blame and hate. Facepalm.gif.

Abandoned stadiums that haven’t been used
since the Olympics they were built for
Answers ricocheting,
boomeranging,
coming back around regularly,
getting themselves all over everyone
Vomiting digital camouflage
We say “Shoot”
when we mean “Talk”
A chorus sounding like sunrise
The shit slaps,
like an abusive husband.
It’s, something
or other.

“The truth is electric
and it spreads, spreads, spreads…”
(Cleaver 118).
Bow your heads.
Let us pray.

Nerves,
Mega.
Raw,
Forever.

Works Cited

Cleaver, Eldrige. Soul on Ice. Delta, 1968.

Wagner-Pacifici, Robin. Discourse and Destruction: The City of Philadelphia vs. MOVE. University of Chicago Press, 1994.

people pass by
all days
pick and choose who i
want to be
like hats i want to wear

imagine everyone wearing those
Devo hats
you know, the red ones
maybe like geometric shaped
in reality they’d feed those things to their dogs
take drunken shits in them

not sure if they’re on their way out
or pushing me crowding me out of the space
mostly not engaged
anyway

listening to hardcore rap music
taking note
learning all the ways to onomatopoeically imitate
the sound of gunfire
pap-pap!;
bbbrr~r~r~r~r~r~r~r~r~rat!;
doot-doot!;
bucka-bucka-buh-bucka-bucka-
blaow!
M.O.P. is great for this—
a couple of cartoon characters, like Don Draper or Tony Soprano or Walter White
any of the critiques made into celebrations
#goals
because we have agency
we decide how we engage and
what we engage with

do i scream about this?
do i shake some sense
into everyone?
(i absolutely dream about this)
everywhere there is to turn
you run into the big, dumb border wall,
and the process of exploding the thing
blows your ass to pieces, too
should we tunnel even further down?
can we dig our way out?

driving,
and Danny Brown says the n-word:
is it strength when i shout along with him
or when i pause
to think about my choice?
is it strength that i choose to write
‘the n-word’
instead of the word itself
or is it a defeat?
should i embrace defeat,
force my ugly-crying in their faces?

bored, disinterested bullies
junior high wrestling coach’s veiny temples
overweight hollow-tip bullets
callous, grease-stained hands that jerk you off
as they hold you down
(or hold you down as they jerk you off)
or soft, pale hands that haven’t done a day of real work in their lives
but they get righteously pissed on the weekends
a dad bod

you know what?
i think those hats are called energy domes
they are an alternative
they look dumb.

One building out of many still breathes,
is still filled with people in need of
something.
But it’s not clear how or where they might find it in this place,
surrounded by metaphors,
American Horror Story-ass nightmare structures.
Solitude and broken windows,
rusted grates, chipped paint,
unevenly kept lawns.
It’s almost perfect, except that
the cloudy windows are absent gaunt, vacant-eyed and stringy-haired girls in dirty white gowns,
staring out and into our souls.
It’s poetry fuel,
way more than a sight for healing.

Security guards casually cruise the grounds,
ensuring that most outsiders stay
outsiders.
And, at this point, almost everyone is an outsider.
(This is irony, because those inside the building are held outside of the general public.)

A place where a healthy, strong man
might do well gathering pecans
is not, necessarily,
a place
where the sick and weak can be healed,
no matter how long the summer lasts.
It may also be a good place to inspire art;
for whatever that’s worth.

It’s bright, loud,
perfect.
Sunglasses self-consciously
facing the future,
staring up at forever,
waiting for it to shut up.

Can you believe
they’re actually paying this guy?
This bank president?
No one knows for sure what he does;
some sickening success.
The enduring Legend of How to Get Ahead.
Back, like cooked crack.
Back to lift up and inspire.

This shrug.
This eye-roll.
This Be Best.
This pair of eyes
that look the other direction when it matters.
The coldest pimp,
up there telling us to be out here
looking for somebody to hold.
This heartfelt embrace,
holding everyone close, and
preparing us to fly.
He means every word.
He’s paraphrasing Liz Phair;
talking about how it’s nice to get paid,
but better by far to be liked.
Like we’re fooled by that.
Like we don’t know how he’s getting paid.
Like a slavemaster can teach you to anything other than how to be another slavemaster

Like I’m better.
Like I didn’t turn on Liz Phair when she tried something different.
Like I didn’t act like she owed me something better.
Like I didn’t consider myself as sophisticated in high school,
because I jerked off to her,
instead of some less intellectual hot chick.
Like I didn’t assert ownership.
Like I didn’t believe that she was chasing shitloads of money.
Like I’m not taking notes right now,
because I can’t imagine anything better than being a more benevolent slavemaster.

I think that umm, if you truly wanna
“Stop the Violence”
Uhh, you look at someone who’s violent,
you pick up a baseball bat,
and you beat his [BEEEEP]![1]

i can’t keep pretending
there’s something magnificent or
magic
in the way a new day begins
it happens every day
like marvel superhero movies
the scale of the collateral damage may vary
slightly
but if you’ve seen one
you’ve seen them all
each one feeds you your own shit in the same basic way
there’s no reason to get there early because you’re not missing anything
important and
the previews go on forever
anyway

i was getting away from it all
this morning
i saw a dog who limped
licking ants off the sidewalk
while his master held a plastic bag filled with his shit

making conversation with a neighbor
they were calculating website traffic,
trying to reach the demographic,
revising anthems on the fly,
reifying appreciation,
brainstorming new ways to try to make it seem like war isn’t fucking cool as hell
woop woop wamp wamp beep beep
(that’s the cops)[2]
some kind of shit

these guys
i swear
they were almost too perfect
been lost they souls, they just waitin on the fire[3]
they looked exactly like everyone i’ve
ever met
and i spent
the whole rest of the day trying to decide who

i should tell
                                                                                                      get the motherfucker on the phone
the phone[4]

and then
it was dusk
practically dark
i was speeding back
going as fast as i could
deer on the side of the road
calm
like idiots
i gripped the steering wheel
tight
foot hovering over the break
i wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend[5]
we’re out here
going as fast as we can, and
we’re not noticing you
we’re not paying attention
we’re trying to run into whatever we can
hit it hard and make it
explode
turn it from a solid into a mist
we like to make stuff into other stuff that it wasn’t before
because we’re bored
we’ll make you
dead
and we’ll be upset because of how much it costs to make our car look perfect
again
we won’t even bother to make up stories about why
we killed you
i wish you would step back from that ledge,                                                                               my friend[6]

and then
it ends the way it always ends
like my dad coming home so drunk he can barely see straight
he’s done it for so many years
night after night
it stops being surprising
you realize that worrying accomplishes                                 nothing
sure
he might need to use your rear bumper to help stop his truck, but
so what?
you still have to acknowledge the effort
appreciate
that he’s doing his best
that he hasn’t been defeated yet
that he’s going to get up tomorrow
on time like he always does
that he’s going to do it all again
there’s something to be said for consistency
even if consistency smashes your shit
right?
but i can’t imagine it in better terms
than naked, half awake, about to shave and go to work[7]
every day

you and me have
never been better than him
and we’ll never be better than we
are right now so
get the fuck up[8]
but

if i could give up dreaming that i could be
that i’m
the star of some lost, mythic test footage
some boundary-smashing, genre-obliterating pilot that
never got ordered to series by
narrow-minded suits and timid fuck-boi bean-counters
then      fuck;
wouldn’t it be some shit then?

now—obviously then the violence will stop.[9]

[1] KRS-One, unkown origin (sampled in Sean Price, “STFU Pt. 2”)

[2] Cam’ron, “Crunk Muzik”

[3] Pusha T, “Raid”

[4] Faith No More, “Motherfucker”

[5] Third Eye Blind, “Jumper”

[6] Ibid.

[7] Liz Phair, “Nashville”

[8] Pharaohe Monch, “Simon Says”

[9] KRS-One, unknown origin (sampled in Sean Price, “STFU Pt. 2”)

my partner and i have a reoccurring argument. at base, i guess it’s a disagreement about the nature and/or possibility of capital-T ‘Truth,’ though the explicit focus is usually on some current event. the most heated of these battles took place in the months following the presidential election in 2016.

we were arguing about Fox News and the other right-wing media that played such a role in the outcome of that election. my partner was lamenting the fact that there are so many voices shouting out so many entirely subjective versions of reality, that it’s effectively impossible for any one voice to cut through the noise and establish a clear baseline, a shared reality. she was arguing that our current reality (or, more precisely, lack of ‘reality’) is incredibly dangerous, that self-interested and/or destructive voices can highjack the conversation and cause real harm to people, particularly those who are least vulnerable. her Exhibit A, naturally, was the result of the recent presidential election. this is not an outrageous argument. it makes sense, and my partner is not the only smart person who made/makes it.

my response to it, however, is that it’s built on a false assumption. we’ve had a fairly coherent ‘truth’ offered to us in the past, and those same people still suffered. the difference was that there was even less chance that their voices could be heard. as far as most of the world knew, they didn’t exist, because they were never even acknowledged by the tiny handful of people whose voices did get heard. a stable, monolithic truth might make my people like my partner and me feel more comfortable, but that’s because that single truth will most likely reflect our reality. i don’t deny the mischief caused by the (seeming) free-for-all we have now, but the problem, to me, is that people will always be selfish, paranoid and self-destructive. i’d rather have all the voices being heard, even if that’s really dangerous and one group has the biggest megaphone.

although this is all context. (but i do hope you think i’m really thoughtful and just mad woke.) my real thing i want to talk about is what my partner said towards the end of this argument. she was really thoughtful about my perspective (because she always is), but she offered the stray observation that, actually, i’m kind of like some of those alt-right guys, because we both have the same lack of faith in the system and instinct to want to burn it all down. this was consistent with her previous assertion that there was, in fact, not a huge difference between me and the Tea Party people during the Obama presidency. i never liked that idea, and i wasn’t much fonder of this new claim. what i really, really, really don’t like, however, is how much truth there is in it.

i lurk on in the r/the_donald sub-reddit quite a bit, and i’ve spent enough time there to feel comfortable making the claim that it is a rancid, pathetic, mean-spirited pile of sloppy and inconsistent idiocy. honestly, when i first started lurking there i thought that everyone there actually must be a Russian bot, because it was the only explanation for how nonsensical it all was. then the election happened, and i started to wonder if it was real. i’ve spent, conservatively, one-hundred hours there, and i still have no idea what the fuck is going on, who’s serious and who’s not, or if any two of the regular contributors would give the same answer to those questions unless they had coordinated ahead of time. it’s a scene man.

despite all of this, there are some fairly clear, consistent and deeply-held beliefs:

1. the government is corrupt and in the pocket of corporate america
2. the media is slanted and biased, either distorting or ignoring legitimate stories while ignoring really important events that people need to know about. they lie, basically
3. race and gender discrimination are destroying lives every day
4. pretty much everything is broken and revolution, not reform, is the answer.

it is more than a little troubling that these are identical to my beliefs. this is like a bizarro version of my beliefs, with the key difference being that an entirely different set of values motivates me. and that’s what i’d like to focus on, that’s what i want you to think about; that i’m motivated by empathy and compassion, that any extremism in my worldview is an expression of disillusionment, rather than self-serving nihilism. i want that to be the truth, but in practice i’m kind of just as nihilistic as these guys are.

i may find fault with my partner’s philosophy, but at least she has a truth, some star to steer by. there’s something to work towards for her, whereas i feel like everything should just be blown up and reset. i mean, i guess. because, as bad as i think it is, i have no faith that anything better would come out of the revolution. people are stupid, selfish and violent, and we’ll always make the worst, most evil choice available to us. but, i guess, we should all get the right to make that decision, to follow the stupidest possible choice we believe in.

which sounds really noble, right? until you think for a second and remember that, in the broad strokes (which end up being all the matters most of the time), i agree with these chuds on r/the_donald.

unreliable nonfiction narrator.

is this possible? the instructor of my creative nonfiction workshop this past semester, a fellow given to making definitive, absolute proclamations, was pretty sure that it wasn’t.

the subject came up during the subject of my second workshop piece. he (the instructor) observed that my draft (and first workshop piece) left the reader adrift, unable to locate the narrator in the flood of information and ideas. this was interesting to me, because, in a way, it was the effect i was going for. i didn’t want to claim any kind of authority- narrative or otherwise -because that would imply superiority to my subject (i was writing about incels), something i wasn’t interested in doing in the piece.

however, his opinion was that it wasn’t working that way. he argued (with absolute certainty, as he had no problem claiming authority) that i was simply leaving the essay without a center, leaving my reader with nothing to hold onto. (again, this was kind of my intention, to be honest.) he validated my idea of not wanting to look down on my subject, but he believed that i could (and should) have a strong, narrative center to the essay (“Let us know who you are and where we are at all times”) and still accomplish this goal. otherwise, he ventured, it’s like i’m trying to be, like, an unreliable narrator in a creative nonfiction piece. which, that doesn’t exist.

but doesn’t it? inasmuch as there’s no such thing as a ‘reliable narrator’ (which i would probably argue is true), why shouldn’t there be unreliable nonfiction narrators? i guess i can understand what he’s getting at (though he didn’t elaborate, because the discussion pivoted to something less interesting). if we’re questioning the reliability of the narrator, then doesn’t that call the whole ‘nonfiction’ part of the thing into question? but (i would counter) if we pretend that some individual can lay claim to absolute, unimpeachable TRUTH~, isn’t that the biggest fiction of all? if we ever want to engage in true nonfiction, actual REAL FUCKING TALK, shouldn’t it be a pre-requisite to acknowledge the impossibility of such a thing? the last thing i find reliable, personally, is some fool who claims absolute reliability.

i don’t’ know. i’m thinking about this.

really, i am.

There, I said it. Now the healing can start. 😜