A Meanness in this World

Then this morning, I wake to find a naked Liz Phair sitting on the living room floor, playing my Xbox. At first I think that’s pretty cool, but then it occurs to me that the “H.W.C.” in her hair doesn’t look so hot any more. In fact, it seems to be forming a light crust, not unlike dried cake frosting, & it kinda stinks in a not particularly fresh, rancid sorta way.

And then I realize that I didn’t fuck Liz Phair last night, that in fact, I’ve never met her, & that she could very well be leaving a serious skid mark on the carpet. (Given her disregard for the hygiene of hair, I can only imagine what state her ass is in.) And come to think of it, I don’t own an Xbox, so where did this one come from? This mystery is getting more mysterious by the minute!

I’m about to demand an explanation, but Liz apparently just lost her last man in Super Mario Kart, because now she looks up. She has to tilt her head pretty far back to get a look at me through her artfully tousled hair. I’m not sure if her gaze is supposed to be solicitous, but I am surprised to find that it’s neither blank nor wholly intelligent. There’s some kind of idiot glint there—a consciousness that I’d hesitate to label as animal cunning. Maybe it’s sorta insectival, though I hate to do my simple nerve-stem bearin’ brothers & sisters a potential disservice through this comparison.

Let’s face it: I have no standard of comparison for what I see fermenting in Liz’s eyes. In all of my experiences, I’ve encountered nothing like it. Not even at the movies. It’s not an absence. It’s not even an absolute darkness. It’s not exactly feral or dead. It’s alien, but not in any imaginable extraterrestrial way. It’s almost Lovecraftian in its blasphemous suggestiveness of things outside normal human concepts of morality, physics, biology or mass marketing. In it, I recognized that which we all know in some primitive part of our minds, but strive never to recognize.

And my mind gives.

I don’t pass out or have a seizure. I don’t recall screaming or running. I seem to encounter an area of Hot White Oblivion. Under the circumstances, it is a blessing.

When next I become aware of my surroundings, it is as though Liz was never there. The Xbox is gone. The air is no longer redolent of sour butter. The floor is dusty, but, thankfully, unstained. And yet, I know it was no dream…

I have been given a glimpse of what is to come if humankind continues to explore the shrieking, nighted gulfs of its ignorance. I write this warning down because I hope, with little conviction, that my voice might help persuade society to renounce its quest for ever-greater control of the universe. Already, the phone rings, (Hang on a second... I don’t own a phone either! Just what the fuck is going on here?) & I can hear the buzzing voice of a telemarketer on my answering machine. It is already too late, I know, but desperately, I carry on. I can only hope that you who read this will turn back from the precipice as well…

No word from anyone, except for Laura… & M! See? And I thought no one cared! But around 7 p.m. or so, the phone rings, Actually, it’d been ringing all day, but the caller never left a message. Finally I star-69ed it. It was a 708 number that I tried to look up online. No listing. It was almost certainly M. So at 7, he does leave a message.

He’s mumbling in a secretive tone that would be comical if it wasn’t bringing out all this oiliness in his voice. He sez he’s going to be taking me up on the “favor” we spoke about. (That I be his cover story while he’s out boinking other women. After contacting me for the first time in, like, 6 months a while back, he’d sprung this on me with no warning whatsoever. I’d been so fundamentally caught off guard that I’d stupidly said OK, though I knew I wanted no part of it.) He finishes off his message with, “We should really go get a drink ‘some time soon.’”

My revulsion is great. So’s my anger. It’s all so sleazy—toward both his family, (most importantly of course,) & to myself. How could you ask such a “favor” of someone to whom you haven’t spoken & with whom you’ve made no effort to maintain a friendship?

I guess it’s in the air, meanness of spirit. Look at the photos of those Iraqi P.O.W’s being tortured by leering American G.I’s—something that’s been haunting my waking moments ever since I saw them. It seems we are solidly inside an era of bald-faced cruelty & apathy. People wear their sadism & callousness proudly, like badges of honor. Popular entertainment venerates assholes. And I don’t mean ironically, like, say, South Park, where you're supposed to think Cartman is funny, but stupid. More along the lines of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm: where malicious, infantile glee is celebrated as though it were a state of grace. What the fuck is wrong with Larry David anyway?

And for the record, (not that this will probably be read by anyone but me,) I don’t think I’m any better. Far too often, I have been cruel or turned a blind eye & deaf ear to the suffering of others. I do, however, think there’s a difference between acknowledging your weaknesses & wallowing in them.

Maybe this brave new world is better than that. After all, at least no one’s pretending to be good. Maybe all this effort to overcome our shabbiness is somehow detrimental. Maybe in embracing our vileness, we evolve to the next level of human society—whatever nightmare vision that might be. I’m guessing that if it goes in that direction, I won’t be around to see it anyway. I can’t say I regret that too much.

In the end, it may be my own weakness that’s bringing me discomfort. The world is what it is. Much as you might like to think otherwise, you can’t change it anymore—unless you’re really rich. (And then I suspect you wouldn’t harbor much interest in changing it.) If you’re consuming air & water, creating massive amounts of waste, feeding corporate greed at the expense of lives, then you’re part of the problem, which, I guess, means that I & everyone I know are some of the bad guys.

If you do still regret your complicity, lemme tell ya, you’re a thing of the past, like the blues or cassettes or roller skates. You’re a ghost, a fossil, a tar-pit dinosaur. You’re already dead.

And now Steve Forceman must be off. ‘Cause I make you laugh, & you make me cry. So I believe it’s time for me to fly...