Chapter 14
FIRST DAY OF SOPHOMORE YEAR, 1996:
Eyes as deep as eternity (they knew it, the joys and terrors of ∞ + ∞ = infinity.) My brown wells of saltwater (seashells by the seashore shined through my shoals) bored through the back of my skull, as leaden (but naturally so) as an Atlantic City crane or Edgar Allan Poe’s laudanum-lidded orbs.
But, in the terms of Gilles Deleuze, gothic morbidity (as anything more than a glamorous pose) would be reactive (weak, negative, resentful, backward-moving, and life-denying) as opposed to active (strong, positive, unresentful, eternally-recurring, and life-affirming.)
Nay, a moldy library stocked with many volumes of quaint and forgotten lore was not the place to start my climb to the stratospheric heights of High School popularity.
‘Twould be better to live in the antiseptic sun, literally and metaphorically so. What we needed were not volumes, but volleyball – like the all-male game played in “Top Gun.”[i]
I looked in the bathroom mirror (as Rocky did in “Rocky III” – I am not being an ironic hipster faggot here), dug into my reserves of resolve, and said to myself (silently, of course):
This is my year. I will be popular this year, no matter what it takes. I will get a girlfriend this year, no matter what it takes. Today is the first day of Sophomore year. This will be my year. I will be strong and confident, just like Jahn taught me. Strong means that if I do something, I go all the way with it. Confident means that I do not doubt myself over what I did. I will be strong and confident until I am popular. Jahn taught me how to be strong and confident and I will use that strength and confidence to become popular. I will become popular this year, no matter what it takes. I will get a girlfriend this year, and…
“Will!” shouted the ogress. “Get your ass to the bus stop or you’re going to miss the bus and I don’t want to drive you!”
And maybe even try to make something happen with Amanda Goldstein…
Sneaky Sis Kayla (it was her first day of Freshman year) and I walked to the bus stop. Kayla quaked and quivered, turned her head up, pointed her chin down, squirmed and twitched. Though she never admitted it, she was a Nervous Nelly - just like her big bro. Though not concerned with questions of Being and Nothingness, she was scared to enter the thick of a new blackboard jungle. And though my mother favored Kayla, she had not exactly molded her into a paragon of adolescent self-possession.
“You’ll be all right,” I said, trying to be “Big Brother” (think Berenstain Bears instead of “1984.”)
“Thanks.”
See? Kayla and I sometimes loved one another.
We walked past a dead mama possum on the side of the road. Blood dripped from its jaws. The creepy critter had picked a fight with a speeding automobile and lost. The babies from its marsupial pouch (also dead as fried chicken, as the Samuel L. Jackson character said in “Pulp Fiction”) littered the shoulder and the grass; a lone little one lay in the center of the road, inert but intact.
That such a gory tableau could have been smeared all over faultless asphalt - and just across the way from the hot moms on Heritage Court (almost all of them in need of an ass-fuck, but they could cuddle me and stroke my hair too – I needed the love of a mother!)
“Eww…” said Kayla.
“I hope it’s not an omen.”
“No, it’s just gross.”
Kayla was not superstitious (thanks to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I’ve just recently learned to place a hat on the table and leave it there.)
We side-stepped the carnage, flicked an errant branch or two out of our faces and, at the end of our Dora-like trek (“Dora” references? what am I, a millenial?), found ourselves at the north corner of Belmar Boulevard and Martin Road.
On the south corner, the official bus stop, stood two girls: Cara Adamcik and Louise Donaldson.
Eyes as deep as eternity (they knew it, the joys and terrors of ∞ + ∞ = infinity.) My brown wells of saltwater (seashells by the seashore shined through my shoals) bored through the back of my skull, as leaden (but naturally so) as an Atlantic City crane or Edgar Allan Poe’s laudanum-lidded orbs.
But, in the terms of Gilles Deleuze, gothic morbidity (as anything more than a glamorous pose) would be reactive (weak, negative, resentful, backward-moving, and life-denying) as opposed to active (strong, positive, unresentful, eternally-recurring, and life-affirming.)
Nay, a moldy library stocked with many volumes of quaint and forgotten lore was not the place to start my climb to the stratospheric heights of High School popularity.
‘Twould be better to live in the antiseptic sun, literally and metaphorically so. What we needed were not volumes, but volleyball – like the all-male game played in “Top Gun.”[i]
I looked in the bathroom mirror (as Rocky did in “Rocky III” – I am not being an ironic hipster faggot here), dug into my reserves of resolve, and said to myself (silently, of course):
This is my year. I will be popular this year, no matter what it takes. I will get a girlfriend this year, no matter what it takes. Today is the first day of Sophomore year. This will be my year. I will be strong and confident, just like Jahn taught me. Strong means that if I do something, I go all the way with it. Confident means that I do not doubt myself over what I did. I will be strong and confident until I am popular. Jahn taught me how to be strong and confident and I will use that strength and confidence to become popular. I will become popular this year, no matter what it takes. I will get a girlfriend this year, and…
“Will!” shouted the ogress. “Get your ass to the bus stop or you’re going to miss the bus and I don’t want to drive you!”
And maybe even try to make something happen with Amanda Goldstein…
Sneaky Sis Kayla (it was her first day of Freshman year) and I walked to the bus stop. Kayla quaked and quivered, turned her head up, pointed her chin down, squirmed and twitched. Though she never admitted it, she was a Nervous Nelly - just like her big bro. Though not concerned with questions of Being and Nothingness, she was scared to enter the thick of a new blackboard jungle. And though my mother favored Kayla, she had not exactly molded her into a paragon of adolescent self-possession.
“You’ll be all right,” I said, trying to be “Big Brother” (think Berenstain Bears instead of “1984.”)
“Thanks.”
See? Kayla and I sometimes loved one another.
We walked past a dead mama possum on the side of the road. Blood dripped from its jaws. The creepy critter had picked a fight with a speeding automobile and lost. The babies from its marsupial pouch (also dead as fried chicken, as the Samuel L. Jackson character said in “Pulp Fiction”) littered the shoulder and the grass; a lone little one lay in the center of the road, inert but intact.
That such a gory tableau could have been smeared all over faultless asphalt - and just across the way from the hot moms on Heritage Court (almost all of them in need of an ass-fuck, but they could cuddle me and stroke my hair too – I needed the love of a mother!)
“Eww…” said Kayla.
“I hope it’s not an omen.”
“No, it’s just gross.”
Kayla was not superstitious (thanks to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I’ve just recently learned to place a hat on the table and leave it there.)
We side-stepped the carnage, flicked an errant branch or two out of our faces and, at the end of our Dora-like trek (“Dora” references? what am I, a millenial?), found ourselves at the north corner of Belmar Boulevard and Martin Road.
On the south corner, the official bus stop, stood two girls: Cara Adamcik and Louise Donaldson.
[i] I
am not talking about an ironic or even unironic return to the sun-splashed
shores of the unquestionably glorious 1980s. Not because it would be a
regressive or reactive move, but because such a strategy would create a bubble
both creepy and uncanny; a simulated reality of sorts; a mental prosthesis (I’m
borrowing from Sloterdijk here) as hauntological (now I’m borrowing from
Derrida) as the “Carousel of Progress” at Disney World (and I am, apparently,
the only one who still visits that attraction.) View the “San Junipero” episode of the Netflix show “Black Mirror” to understand what I'm trying to get at here! (See? I am of this time!)
Pining for the past is like drinking to forget one’s problems. All the drinker does is fall deeper into a solipsistic episode of "The Twilight Zone” (think of the character who did not know if he was a businessman or an actor playing a businessman.) Hooch doesn’t help one to remember but helps one to forget (who one is.) To paraphrase Dave Mustaine from Megadeth, escape through substance abuse is like wetting the bed on a cold night. Each short-term relief digs the black hole deeper until one comes face to face with the uncanny (a sense of being profoundly not-at-home-in-the-world) Jacques Lacan defines it as being "in the field where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure, resulting in an irreducible anxiety that gestures to the Real" (or whatever the abstruse psychoanalyst means by “the Real.”)
We also have no place for a quasi-tongue-in-cheek “Vapid Existentialism” (a term I am borrowing from my friend, the comedian Todd Montesi.) I was a Vapid Existentialist through the entire election season of 2016 (though I continue to believe that Donald Trump was and is the greatest President of my lifetime – even better than Ronald Reagan and that is saying a lot.)
What do I mean by vapid existentialism, pining for the past, and building an uncannily-too-cheery dreamhouse of cards over the void of not-being-at-home-in-the-world? Well, here is an example: through most of 2016 I thought of Celebration, Florida as the proper home for a post-post-post-post-post-modern philosopher. Celebration, for those of you who don’t know, is a community planned by Walt Disney and completed approximately 30 years after his death. The town was built to resemble a quaint, wholesome, white-bred, All-American town; the idyllic Midwestern utopia of a Mark Twain or Frank Capra.
A picture of Celebration, Florida:
But one can only hold one’s tongue in one’s cheek for so long before it gets stuck there forever (just as our parents warned us about making funny faces: “It will become frozen that way!”) By playfully batting the playful postmodern badminton birdie back and forth too many times (and on the semi-polished court of a half-educated brain, no less) one soon enters – and for real this time – what is called “The Uncanny Valley.”
What is the Uncanny Valley, you say? How does one enter the Uncanny Valley quickly, cheaply, and – most importantly – temporarily? Here’s one way: any 80s/90s kids who grew up on Saturday morning episodes of “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” should revisit that show and view it through their now-adult perspective – and while tripping on acid. Not that I’ve ever done any hallucinogens (dost thou think me a decadent?)
My sick brain powered me down the I-888 Expressway of Dread. The Jim Beam fueled my 50s Firebird to its final resting place at the Last Chance Café (the last exit right before the Dysphoria Diner, which hosts the Sock Hop from Hell! “Wear your poodle skirts and varsity sweaters to the only 24/7 dance floor suspended over an eternal abyss! It’s cool, daddio!”)
I still love Disney World. Florida is still my overall favorite state (though NYC will always be my creative home base.) And I still think that Donald J. Trump is the greatest President of my lifetime (I say this in all seriousness: he is a man of peace, worthy of the Nobel Prize.)
The only difference now is that my tongue has been pulled from my cheek and placed back between my teeth (where it now wishes to speak honestly and spread the words of love rather than the curses of consternation.)
Yes, I continue to love everything I loved back in 2016 (including “The Carousel of Progress.”)
But I’ve decided to stand up straight.
For instance, I cannot pretend that Fort Lauderdale possesses all the cultural advantages of New York City. Yet, in many ways, Fort Lauderdale is a better place to live (and philosophy nerds, by the way, stoop over the shelves of the A1A Barnes & Noble just as they lurk between the shelves of The Strand; though there are towering palm trees and year-round crickets outside the A1A store; and that means a lot to a person like me who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder.)
The Fort Lauderdale Barnes & Noble (it contains just as many heavy tomes as the one across the street from Lincoln Center):
But there is not a Met or Guggenheim down there (not that their exhibits have been other than P.C. lately anyway.) To pretend that more cogitation takes place on a beach than in a hallowed hall is to quasi-tongue-in-cheek make fun of both of my beloved cities (though I would make the argument that South Florida has become a better place for the midwifery of philosophical thinking; the NYC vibe has been downright fascistic lately: NO ART BY STRAIGHT WHITE MALES – WE ONLY WANT SUBMISSIONS FROM MUSLIM TERRORISTS AND BLACK NON-BINARIES! AND BECAUSE TRUMP!)
Anyhow, I friggin’ digress!
Living in the past or a sense of postmodern playfulness would not work for my Sophomore year either. The approach would have to be one I have re-learned as a 39-year-old: a straight, unironic tongue; love of self; love of others; a disavowal of everyday campiness (for the most part); and an affirmation of life and all that is good in our lives.
And as I write this novel, I must also remember to not live in the good cheer that was September 1996. The world is still in front of me and it is not 1986 nor 1996. The time and place is now and it is a time and place too good and real (un-uncanny) to ever deserve faggot-like mockery.
Pining for the past is like drinking to forget one’s problems. All the drinker does is fall deeper into a solipsistic episode of "The Twilight Zone” (think of the character who did not know if he was a businessman or an actor playing a businessman.) Hooch doesn’t help one to remember but helps one to forget (who one is.) To paraphrase Dave Mustaine from Megadeth, escape through substance abuse is like wetting the bed on a cold night. Each short-term relief digs the black hole deeper until one comes face to face with the uncanny (a sense of being profoundly not-at-home-in-the-world) Jacques Lacan defines it as being "in the field where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure, resulting in an irreducible anxiety that gestures to the Real" (or whatever the abstruse psychoanalyst means by “the Real.”)
We also have no place for a quasi-tongue-in-cheek “Vapid Existentialism” (a term I am borrowing from my friend, the comedian Todd Montesi.) I was a Vapid Existentialist through the entire election season of 2016 (though I continue to believe that Donald Trump was and is the greatest President of my lifetime – even better than Ronald Reagan and that is saying a lot.)
What do I mean by vapid existentialism, pining for the past, and building an uncannily-too-cheery dreamhouse of cards over the void of not-being-at-home-in-the-world? Well, here is an example: through most of 2016 I thought of Celebration, Florida as the proper home for a post-post-post-post-post-modern philosopher. Celebration, for those of you who don’t know, is a community planned by Walt Disney and completed approximately 30 years after his death. The town was built to resemble a quaint, wholesome, white-bred, All-American town; the idyllic Midwestern utopia of a Mark Twain or Frank Capra.
A picture of Celebration, Florida:
I wanted to move there
and live as the town philosopher; sit in a rocking chair; puff a Mr. Cleaver
billiard-style pipe; crack a volume of Baudrillard; and then take my stroll –
an evening constitutional – along the maple-lined sidewalks; say hello to my
neighbors; comment on the late-November chill in the air (because Central
Florida does get a bit chilly depending on the time of year.) Retire for the
evening; lay me head on a frilly pillow and chuckle to the “Andy Griffith Show”
– and Ol' Andy would play on this T.V., of course:
But one can only hold one’s tongue in one’s cheek for so long before it gets stuck there forever (just as our parents warned us about making funny faces: “It will become frozen that way!”) By playfully batting the playful postmodern badminton birdie back and forth too many times (and on the semi-polished court of a half-educated brain, no less) one soon enters – and for real this time – what is called “The Uncanny Valley.”
What is the Uncanny Valley, you say? How does one enter the Uncanny Valley quickly, cheaply, and – most importantly – temporarily? Here’s one way: any 80s/90s kids who grew up on Saturday morning episodes of “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” should revisit that show and view it through their now-adult perspective – and while tripping on acid. Not that I’ve ever done any hallucinogens (dost thou think me a decadent?)
My sick brain powered me down the I-888 Expressway of Dread. The Jim Beam fueled my 50s Firebird to its final resting place at the Last Chance Café (the last exit right before the Dysphoria Diner, which hosts the Sock Hop from Hell! “Wear your poodle skirts and varsity sweaters to the only 24/7 dance floor suspended over an eternal abyss! It’s cool, daddio!”)
I still love Disney World. Florida is still my overall favorite state (though NYC will always be my creative home base.) And I still think that Donald J. Trump is the greatest President of my lifetime (I say this in all seriousness: he is a man of peace, worthy of the Nobel Prize.)
The only difference now is that my tongue has been pulled from my cheek and placed back between my teeth (where it now wishes to speak honestly and spread the words of love rather than the curses of consternation.)
Yes, I continue to love everything I loved back in 2016 (including “The Carousel of Progress.”)
But I’ve decided to stand up straight.
For instance, I cannot pretend that Fort Lauderdale possesses all the cultural advantages of New York City. Yet, in many ways, Fort Lauderdale is a better place to live (and philosophy nerds, by the way, stoop over the shelves of the A1A Barnes & Noble just as they lurk between the shelves of The Strand; though there are towering palm trees and year-round crickets outside the A1A store; and that means a lot to a person like me who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder.)
The Fort Lauderdale Barnes & Noble (it contains just as many heavy tomes as the one across the street from Lincoln Center):
But there is not a Met or Guggenheim down there (not that their exhibits have been other than P.C. lately anyway.) To pretend that more cogitation takes place on a beach than in a hallowed hall is to quasi-tongue-in-cheek make fun of both of my beloved cities (though I would make the argument that South Florida has become a better place for the midwifery of philosophical thinking; the NYC vibe has been downright fascistic lately: NO ART BY STRAIGHT WHITE MALES – WE ONLY WANT SUBMISSIONS FROM MUSLIM TERRORISTS AND BLACK NON-BINARIES! AND BECAUSE TRUMP!)
Anyhow, I friggin’ digress!
Living in the past or a sense of postmodern playfulness would not work for my Sophomore year either. The approach would have to be one I have re-learned as a 39-year-old: a straight, unironic tongue; love of self; love of others; a disavowal of everyday campiness (for the most part); and an affirmation of life and all that is good in our lives.
And as I write this novel, I must also remember to not live in the good cheer that was September 1996. The world is still in front of me and it is not 1986 nor 1996. The time and place is now and it is a time and place too good and real (un-uncanny) to ever deserve faggot-like mockery.
Comments
Post a Comment