I Spoke with a Trumpette

I live in Utah, often described as America's reddest state. In 2012, Utahns supported Mitt Romney, the Mormon candidate --who somehow managed to sell himself as a conservative-- by 92%. But Utah did not like Trump. He won only twice as many votes as Hillary Clinton, a dismal showing for a Republican candidate in this state. Mormons are very conservative, but Trump's nasty, loud, bullying behavior didn't sit well with Mormons' sense of decency. But, still, Trump got about 2/3s of the vote here.

But I did not meet a self-declared Trump voter until last night. I was at a friend's birthday party. I was talking with my very liberal, very informed, very activist, totally blue-collar white male friend about Trump's revolting cabinet nominations when a woman approached us and announced she had voted for Trump because he shares her "American values." Now, of course, this kind of deployment of a hackneyed phrase in defense of an indefensible position raises my hackles. I bristled. I got agitated like I used to when I was a young brawler. I said "WHAT American values? Lying? Sexual assault? Fraud? Mocking the disabled?" To her credit, she stayed calm. She said, with a dismissive flutter of her costume-jeweled hand, "Oh, that stuff doesn't matter. All of us do that." I said, in a total huff, that I sure don't, and that nobody I know does, and that it's nasty and mean behaviour that disqualifies a candidate.

She took this as an opportunity to educate me. In a long Fox-inflected invective, she recommended that I open my mind and stop hiding behind liberal talking points; that I consider Trump's promise to give $100,000,000 to "the inner-city blacks"; and that I learn how to engage in "loving, open-minded, respectful dialogue with (my) conservative neighbours."

I was so flummoxed to hear someone who actually considered Trump the best candidate that I had trouble breathing. My whole life I've seen decency, rationality, and honesty as the underpinnings of democracy, and Trump is a blowhard bully, a science-denier, and a habitual liar. The best I could manage after her blinkered and offensive little lecture was "So I take it you voted against Hillary, not for Trump, because he does not embody the values of open heartedness and respect you just recommended."

Her response was another lecture in which I heard fragments of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, the apostols of hate: she said she hadn't voted against Hillary at all. She voted against Bill, the "proven rapist." She spun a right-wing fantasy in which Hillary took power behind the scenes in the Clinton White House, and, in exchange, allowed Bill Clinton to run a 'fuck dungeon' in the basement where he raped untold numbers of women and killed the ones he couldn't silence with a payoff. He ran the place with "pedophile Dennis Hastert." And on and on. I'll spare you the rest. At this point the birthday girl showed up and the Trump supporter gave her two packages of marijuana she'd just brought over from Colorado, and my buddy and I took the opportunity to leave.

Maybe she saw our retreat as a capitulation, but it wasn't. It was simply a realist reaction to facing insanity. You cannot have a rational discussion with crazy. Should I have asked her to cite sources? To explain how the press failed to learn of this story but, in her world, it's common knowledge? Should I have asked her to unpack the logic in voting against a non-candidate because of his ostensible sexual predation by supporting a sexual predator? Of course not. You can't talk sense to crazy.

Sure, I believe in respectful dialogue. But it can't exist when one party disdains the facts and acts irrationally. Who, in the new regime, can answer those of us who read the real news, who try to understand the science, who seek remedies for systemic injustice, who make personal sacrifices to act ethically and fairly, who subscribe to a code of decency and compassion, who see government as a bulwark against private interest, tribalism and arbitrariness? I've been combing through the published histories of Trump's new cabinet, and I see very little more noble than self interest, greed, contempt, even hatred.

It's already dull from repetition, but the rust-belt, blue-collar constituents of the Trump regime are facing another humiliation: on top of losing your good jobs, you're now going to lose the dignity of self-determination. You used to unionize and elect politicians who were committed to your safety and economic security. Now, inexplicably, you've elected a rich, arrogant, narcissistic buffoon who doesn't care one shit for you. He does not share your values.

My liberal and moderate friends have become very complacent and ironic in recent years. We felt stymied by the right, but we also felt that our generous egalitarian decency was ascendant. Some of us have become flabby and can't remember how to brawl. I look forward to the coming fight. I'm proud to stand in my corner with such democratic institutions as remain: science, the free press, the academy, art, free global trade. Hell, even the Brotherhood of Man is on my side, and the overwhelming majority of the world's women. It's good to be here. Let's fight crazy.

A Couple Modest Proposals:

1. Capital Punishment:
The person who administers the lethal injection shall be chosen by lottery from among the voters of the state where the punishment is levied.

2. The Militarized Police:
The cops can wear whatever armor and carry whatever weapons they want, but everything must be pink. No more black.

3. De-funding Mental Health Services:
The legislators who vote to de-fund public mental health services, and the citizens who voted them into office, shall make their homes available, on an as-needed basis, to house those who become homeless because of the de-funding, and shall provide food, healthcare, comfort, encouragement, and all other forms of support to their guest until he or she is free of need.

4. Please add your own Modest Proposals in the comments section below, and I will add the most virtuous to this list. Trolls will be bludgeoned to death by sluts.

Rural Head Surgery. A One-Act Play

The Store. Kolob, Utah. Springtime.

[Handy Whitehead slams through the front door of The Store. Gladys is seated behind the counter, trying to make the books balance. It is very early in the morning.]

Handy:                 The fucking judge confiscated the goddarned truck so I have to walk everywhere…

Gladys:                Handy, oh my gosh, what happened to you?

Handy:                 …unless I borrow Ferral’s ranch truck or a horse or whatever, and I am talking about a serious goshdarned number of miles, right?

Gladys:                Handy…

Handy:                 …cause of staying way up at the Grand Arch where the linehouse is a mile from 144, and then it’s, what? five, six miles into town. I am a early riser. All God’s people are. But not every early riser is a child of God, see.

Gladys:                Handy…

Handy:                 So, it’s early in the AM and I got to get to town so I walk that mile out to 144 and even if I was inclined to hitchhike, which I am not ever since all that business with the Lady Ranger, there is no traffic to speak of especially not this early in the AM so I was not expecting a ride, and besides I do not have the kind of wardrobe that is conducive to getting picked up. So I am minding my own, y’know, walking down the yellow line and I am singing. Ok, so I checked out all these CDs from the bookmobile and I am listening to the Mozart one. The Requiem. That one is my favorite, the way the bass part just booms and groans, it is the sickest shit, Gladys…

Gladys:                Handy! Your head is bleeding!

Handy:                 It does remind me that I am going to die, the Requiem, and sometimes out in the linehouse of a snowy night it feels like I am dying listening to that, but so anyway I am walking down yellow line with my headphones and I am singing the notes of the Requiem, getting that bass line loud enough I can feel in my chest when I got the note right and I am conducting the orchestra, beating my arms around all crazy and shit and then there’s this like nuclear fucking detonation in my head. It was just a moment of, like, fuck me I have had a stroke probably from God for being bad. Or a vision.

Gladys:                What do you mean? You didn’t hit it on something? Did you fall down?

Handy:                 No no no. I’m walking and BLAMMO!

Gladys:                [Pushes her stool toward Handy]

Sit on this. Well, what happened, Handy?

Handy:                 It was that little shit Ezra. He threw a beer bottle at me.

Gladys:                Ezra?

Handy:                 That little cunt, sorry, that little shit I guess he was driving home from whatever the fuck kind of carousing those boys do up to Youngville and I guess I was walking down the middle of the road singing and conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and that little shit wanted to get home before his dad sees the truck is missing and he’s been drinking all night, which we all except the Bishop know he does, and so maybe he’d been behind me trying to pass and for all I know leaning on the horn, but I had my headphones on, and so he throwed a beerbottle at me and it hit my head.

Gladys:                Handy, this is, like, a gash. Like as long as my finger.

Handy:                 I can sure feel that, Gladys.

Gladys:                You’re going to need stitches, sweetheart.

Handy:                 Wull, that’s what I come here for.

Gladys:                I need to get Kandace up here to watch the store and I’ll drive you up to the clinic.

Handy:                 The clinic is not a place I will be going.

Gladys:                Handy, you need stitches, love.

Handy:                 That’s what I come here for.

Gladys:                I am not stitching you myself.

Handy:                 You put the pocket back on my shirt you can sew up that headflap the same way.

Gladys:                That’s different, honey. This is, like, medical.

Handy:                 Fuck that, Gladys. It’s a skinflap, is all. I’m not going to the clinic, and you can understand why.

Gladys:                I know you got reasons, but it’s time to not be stubborn.

Handy:                 The time for me to not be stubborn is when the Pope gets married, Gladys. Or when Sheriff Huffman votes Democrat. Girl, sew me up. I can’t be going around bleeding. People would take note.

[Gladys goes to the freezer and tears open a bag of ice and twists some cubes into a towel and presses it to Handy’s head.]

Handy:                 Goshdamnit, girl, you’re killing me.

Gladys:                This is a serious cut.

Handy:                 Wull, so, let’s get medical.

Gladys:                Stick your head under the faucet. We need to wash it. And your hair has, like, twigs in it.

Handy:                 I don’t have no shampoo or shit like that.

Gladys:                Well, love, maybe you can understand why a girl would flinch from poking around in hair this nasty.

Handy:                 I wasn’t planning on a girl messing around in my hair today.

Gladys:                That is the kind of plan that always turns out predictable.

Handy:                 Maybe this will be a learning experience for me where I unlearn my nasty ways and shampoo my hair every morning.

Gladys:                Hold still.

Handy:                 Holy mother! Damnit! That stings!

Gladys:                That’s because half your skull is sticking out and is getting soap on it.

Handy:                 Any glass in there?

Gladys:                No. Plenty of nasty dirt, though. That Ezra is going to finally get hauled up for this.

Handy:                 The Bishop ought to beat the living tar out of that son of a bitch.

Gladys:                You leave Lynette out of this.

Handy:                 She’s the one raised him to be such a punk.

Gladys:                She did not. She’s got her hands full.

Handy:                 She’s a angry prick, is what she is. And Ezra is a angry little cunt. Sorry.

Gladys:                Hold still.

Handy:                 You got some suture needles?

Gladys:                Course not. I’m not a health care professional.

Handy:                 What about antibiotics and shit like that?

Gladys:                Peroxide is all I have, love.

Handy:                 That’ll do the trick.

[Gladys goes back to the house. Handy stands with his head in the sink, bleeding and humming the Requiem.]

Gladys:                Come over in the light.

Handy:                 You got any liquor?

Gladys:                You know I don’t, silly.

Handy:                 Any painkiller?

Gladys:                I got these Oxycodone from when my back went out.

Handy:                 Gimme a few of those. How much is a dose?

Gladys:                It says take one and two if the pain is bad I think is what my doctor said.

Handy:                 I better double up for the stitching.

Gladys:                They make you sleepy
.

Handy:                 That’s ok. I’ll just take a nap.

[Handy taps four or five pills into his palm and swallows them. Gladys puts on her reading glasses and runs a length of silk button thread through a needle. She places the needle and thread on a plate and pours peroxide over. Then she pours peroxide on Handy’s wound.]

Handy:                 Holy Heavenly Mother, that hurts! Holy shit!

Gladys:                Hold still, you big baby.

Handy:                 That hurts like hell!

Gladys:                I know it, love. Now really hold still.

Handy:                 You sewing already?

Gladys:                That’s what you come here for, right?

Handy:                 Well, wait a damned minute for the pills to kick in.

Gladys:                I need to get this done before I get customers. They might not want to see a unwashed dirty guy getting head surgery on top of the soda case.

Handy:                 Just flip the closed sign around.

Gladys:                How ‘bout you just hold still and stop being a baby.

[Gladys stitches the wound shut. It takes quite a while. She has to keep washing the blood off and Handy’s hair keeps getting in the way. When she is nearly done Handy starts humming the Requiem again, pretty loud this time. He is having trouble keeping his feet under him as he leans over the soda case. The door rings open and a Tourist steps in. He is tall and blond and is wearing short shorts and sky-blue socks under sandals. He cannot see Handy from where he stands.]

Gladys:                [Addressing the Tourist] Help you?

Tourist:                Ja. I am looking for ze food for ze hiking.

Gladys:                Snacks are there on the wall. Sodas are over here. But you got to wait for the sodas.

[The Tourist looks for snacks at the front of the store. Gladys finishes the last stitch and Handy stands up to where the Tourist can see him. Handy is getting drowsy and very sleepy. He has a blood-soaked towel on his head.]

Tourist:                Mein Gott!

Handy:                 Got me a little headflap repair going on back here on the soda fridge.

Gladys:                Handy, you shut up and go lie down on the porch and take a nap. I’ll put a bandage on it soon’s the customer is gone.

Handy:                 Will do, sweetheart. Scuse me, Heimlich. Gotta go lie down.

[Handy starts to the front of the store and the Tourist stands aside, aghast.]

Gladys:                Not that way, Handy! Not the store porch, I meant the house porch. Out back.

[But Handy stumbles out the front door of the store and flops down on the deck chair. He promptly falls asleep. Several Other German Tourists are watching from a row of RVs.]

Child Tourist:     Mein Gott!

Old Tourist:        Mein Gott!

[The first Tourist leaves his snacks on the counter and runs out of the store, looking distressed. Gladys tries to get Handy to move, but he has passed out. He has blood all over his shirt and the bloody towel on his head, and he is listing toward the door. He is drooling onto the welcome mat.]

Letter to K. About Being Just a Regular Guy and the Psychology of That

I know I have an offputting and sometimes conversation-killing tendency to fall silent when someone says something particularly thought provoking. I start thinking about what was just said--and, I guess, about how to respond most laudably--and my thoughts get complicated and I usually end up somewhere in uncertainty and ambivalence and I just don't say anything. This is what I did that night on your porch in Baltimore when we were smoking pipes and drinking rye and mostly talking about something else. So, this letter is me trying to make my uncertain and messy thoughts coherent and to actually respond to what you said.

Which was, more or less: "I am just a regular guy." Which startled me a bit. In my world, your extraordinariness is something crucial. It drew me into your orbit 22 years ago, and, though love holds me there, your extraordinariness is a real and potent and exciting thing. So my habit of equivocation, in which my mind sees it both ways and is almost always stretched between two poles, right away began its dissonant feedback thing. On one side of its aisle it shrieked, not a little desperately, "No, you are not regular. You are extraordinary, and regular is the enemy that is always trying to wrestle us to the ground." But on the other side of its aisle, my mind said "Well, in certain ways you are extraordinary, but I think I know what you mean when you say you're just a regular guy: maybe being regular is simply our baseline state and when we are extraordinary we're just reaching up out of our regular mode, usually in practiced, reliable ways. We've concentrated on certain narrow ways to be remarkable, and we can rely on those ways to attract attention and admiration, etc." So, I sat there half drunk and chilled and thought, "Ok, I guess I sort of understand why K. is insisting that he's just a regular guy, despite his obvious extraordinary wit and inventiveness and psychological insight, etc."

But then, as I sobered up in the shower later, and lay awake in bed for an hour, I remembered where I had recently heard another extraordinary person claim, almost vehemently, that he was just a regular guy. In that really unsatisfying [and probably fundamentally flawed] movie "The End of the Tour," they have David Foster Wallace insist, several times, that he is just a regular guy. The David Lipsky character--a sort of angry, hurt Woody Allen with the bloodsucking drive and instincts of a mosquito--keeps scoffing at this. Lipsky insists that DFW is being coy at best, and certainly disingenuous, and probably dishonest. Lipsky, with beautifully-acted bitterness, holds up Infinite Jest as proof that DFW is extraordinary, the greatest writer of his generation. We see, in one of the few good scenes in the movie, that Lipsky very much wants to be a great writer, and that he has a high opinion of himself, and that it galls him terribly that DFW is much, much greater than Lipsky will ever be, and that he, DFW, has pretty much buried himself in a drab little house and a drab little job in Indiana, and that his life looks totally mundane and lowbrow and unremarkable. The Lipsky character keeps trying to get the DFW character to admit that he is a genius. But he wont.

It occurred to me as I walked home from the theater, like six months ago, that Lipsky had missed the tragic central point of IJ, and that DFW's impatience with Lipsky stemmed largely from Lipsky's blindness to the psychology of addiction. Without unpacking IJ much here, in this letter, I just want to summarize my reading of the whole addiction and 12-step theme in IJ: I think that DFW showed Don Gately and Hal Incandenza in psychological contrast: Gately keeps checking his ego at the door of his recovery. He sees the Crocodiles as prevailing against their addictions inasmuch as they keep the specialness of their individual stories at bay. Gately, the future Crocodile [we hope], has to continually reassert his own human universality against his specialness. He is maybe greatly aided in this by his background as a neglected kid who has never been told he's extraordinary. His recovery depends on his ordinariness. As long as he's a regular guy he stands a chance. And when he is forced to do something heroic, when he protects the residents of Ennet House from the bad Quebecquers, he ends up in extremis.

Hal Incandenza, on the other hand, is pretty much crippled by his specialness. Where Gately was neglected and never thought himself special, Hal was raised by an overweening mother who fed him "mnemonic steroids" and--simplifying here-- made it pretty much clear to young Hal that she would love him inasmuch as he accomplished extraordinary things. He was raised to use extraordinariness to win his mother's love. So, when Hal is forced to quit taking drugs, he faces not just withdrawal, but existential crisis: his ego is tied to the high, or something like that. His extraordinariness, which is what makes him worthy of love, is tied tight to his drugs. Without the drugs he may cease to be special. So Hal is facing something Gately isn't: in quitting drugs he may fall apart. He may no longer be able to maintain his incandescent specialness. He may end up being merely regular.

So I was lying there in bed in Baltimore, listening to the gunshots and sirens down the hill, thinking more clearly than when we were out on the porch half drunk, and I thought maybe I knew what you meant when you told me you consider yourself to be an ordinary guy. I think you know that you have gifts. You shine in certain K.-like ways, and you know you do. Your wit, your verbal inventiveness and agility; your special intimacy with the whole American high-low thing; your strange and super-charismatic way of unenjambing lines in a song so that they scan two or more ways, one funny, one poignant, and so on. Plus, if I may Lipsky for a moment, you have all this other extraordinary stuff: powerful charisma, physical grace, aliveness-to-senses, and, weirdly, even a kind of patience-in-impatience [which gives me hope for my own middle age], etc. I think you know this about yourself, though you don't much talk about being special. I may be totally making this up, but I guess you were raised at least a little like Hal, not so much like Gately. At some point, I hazard, you swallowed the idea that you would get love --or maybe just more love-- if you shone.

For my part, I believe my own childhood was way over on the Hal side. There was neglect, for sure, but it was nothing like how Gately was neglected. I grew up with the idea that I was extraordinary, and that I would get more and better love if I shone. I'm totally still plagued by this, of course. Thank Gawd I seem to have very little propensity for addiction. But I am psychologically crippled in other ways. I see it. I'm sure there's lots I don't see. I know it largely governs the way I live, and that it has manifested most powerfully in my relationship to my work, which is like a shitshow marriage, which is mostly what we were talking about that night. As always, thank you for being so patient with that fucked up shit that I replay endlessly.

Which brings me to intelligence and what I think it is. We, in this culture [maybe not in the world of progressive education, but you guys are special], tend to see intelligence as bandwidth. When we say that Albert Einstein was smart and George W. Bush was stupid, what we mostly seem to mean is that Einstein had fatter, faster wiring and Bush had feeble, sluggish wiring. Given the bell curve, I'm sure there's a real, natural range in humans' processing capacity. And of course there's the effects of trauma, physical and emotional. But a more interesting --and hopeful-- concept of intelligence favors drive over wiring. No proof here, but it seems to me that some people are "smarter" than others because they work at it harder. But I think it's pretty rare that a person sets out in a disciplined and systematic way to become smarter. I think most people we think of as smart became that way because they feel driven to it. And maybe the most widespread source of that kind of drive is what April Incandenza gave to young Hal: the sense that he had to accomplish something to earn her love.

I don't see any reason to believe that the most accomplished people are really all that better-wired than the rest of us. But they do seem to be more driven, narcissistic, and neurotic. Where does that come from? Probably from a middle-class parenting culture that attaches love to accomplishment. Tiger Moms. Lecturing dads. Hectoring grown-ups pushing kids and withholding affection or approval when kids are lazy.

I think it's probably true that all healthy kids enter the world with roughly the same mental capacity, roughly the same wiring. Some get a little better equipment, others a little weaker, but almost all of us are born with more or less equally capable brains. At that point, some brains are probably starved for stimulation, such as when a single mom has to be away working at Burger King all day, and other brains are well fed, sent to the best schools and lessons. Some kids, lots of them middle-class with college-educated parents, immediately start learning that their worth, their lovability, is a function of their achievement, and they learn that certain things they do make their parents smile and hug and coo and celebrate. So the kids focus on those things. And, lo, they become more and more proficient, and they earn more and more attention and approval, and the feedback loop propels them into college, and a career, and a specialty, and they become known as smart. So, in this model, accomplished is lovable is smart, and the whole package is a strongly-reinforced delusion.

The self-narration of smart is "I am special," but smart people did not start special, and I have heard very little said about what appears to be a plain fact: if you spend 15 years working hard at becoming a heart surgeon, you will be a heart surgeon, and people will say of you "That guy is smart. He is a heart surgeon." Any regular human intelligence, focused long and sharply enough, leads to the kind of accomplishment that is seen as smart, even if only a few people know what it is you do.

Thinking this way, it seems to me that insisting on being a regular guy isn't just good, healthy American populism. It's also an acknowledgment of privilege, a humility about accomplishment and how unextraordinary it is to become really good at something when you spend years working on it, and a refusal to race in the lemming-rush of specialness, which does not, after all, land us in Mom's Lap of Love, but just down there at the bottom of the cliff. I'm being sloppy and silly here, but really: being the smartest guy in the room, the most special, does not come with love. Even the respect is often grudging. And, furthermore, feeling special can exempt us, in our own minds, from being decent, loving, present, and even happy.

The tragedy of Hal mirrors the possible redemption of Gately. Hal's specialness exempts him from the real work. It makes his difficulties feel personal, and it makes his accomplishments feel existential. Hal exists, in his own mind, only inasmuch as he maintains his specialness. The pressure is on Hal to keep deserving love. Poor, neglected Gately, on the other hand, the regular guy, has a chance. He doesn't feel special, so he is free to admit he's a fuck up. He can really own that. From there, he can look up. The sea was way out. A good read of IJ, in light of DFW's history with depression and drug and alcohol abuse, and in retrospect now that we know he killed himself, is that he saw himself as Hal, but he knew that beating both the depression and the addiction depended on becoming Gately. Alcoholics Anonymous holds, at its very heart, the apparently-paradoxical principle that recovery requires the burial of specialness. There can be no special exemptions in our recovery because we have to recover as humans. We can't recover as special cases deserving of special recognition and special status. Humility, I guess, is the only way. In this model, it is the ego that is depressed and addicted, not the subsumed infant of pure potential, not the regular guy.

Now, of course I am not saying that this is what you meant. I'm just suggesting that I found a happy congruence in what you said and what DFW said. In my mind, at least, you both uttered occult wisdom. Maybe you meant something else, but let me point out that you said something super-wise even if you meant something else, and that I must be super-special for recognizing that. After all, this little essay is a performance, and I want you to think highly of me, because I respect you because you are extraordinary. But not exempt.

The Fall

From where I sat I could hear only the sibilants and fricatives, the blown leaves of their conversation. A bit of voice like a glimpse of leg. Mostly those rustling esses and rattling tees. The limb gets pretty hard. I worried they'd see my feet dangling there over the patio, but it was dark.

This is good, I’m sure he said. He made a stabbing motion with his knife at the steaming contents of his plate.

So glad you like it! The way she spoke she could only be smiling: her voice high in the throat, slightly fluting, bright. Her face was in shadow but I could hear she was smiling. Recently, the advertising they play over the sound system in the grocery store features intensely-smiling female voices. The voice actors sound like they have great teeth, American grins. They sound like they are exquisitely happy about fat-free yogurt or what have you.

I wished I had put on a sweater.

He said appreciative things about the food, which smelled very good. His body performed the sanctioned poses: heroic positions of the torso, shoulders, and arms; ostensibly languorous attitudes of the legs, hips, and abdominal trunk that actually require considerable flexing; constant adjustments of the angle of the head relative to the position of hers, always mindful of the most flattering angle of the light streaming across the table from the kitchen behind them. My theory is that we learn this from the media, and it is an aspect of fashion. The self-consciousness of his performance of the current manhood subverted his intended projection of virility, IMHO.

Her movements were also highly practiced, pretty and delicate, graceful and equivocally coy, and, though the wind picked up a little and hissed through the tree and I couldn’t hear much of what she said, I could hear, distinctly, that her voice was pitched high and that it rose at the end of each sentence almost like a question, but not exactly. Every sentence rolled onto its back. This is a form of deference, or perhaps submission, and therefore potentially dominant, and I have theories about this, that there is a sociobiological basis for this kind of feminine behavior. It is a way that women make themselves available to men. It is a method of flattery and, therefore, control. I am tempted to say it is a way of lying, or, perhaps, a form of honesty. This will require more thought.

The voice actor who reads the tortilla ads uses the hard r’s and soft d’s of Spanish. Her vowels are unitary and precise, very unlike the broad diphthongs of American English. She sounds very nearly overwhelmed by the pleasure of urging us to buy the tortillas. Euphoric, or giddy. I predict that these women, these voice actors, will soon figure out a way to suggest, just to the limit of decency, that they are actually enjoying a barely-contained orgasm brought on by the product they’re selling. I’ll have what she’s having, they want us to think. Oh, so that’s her secret! And it’s on sale today! Commerce depends on the cynical re-purposing of sex, of course.

After some time, he pushed his plate away. They stayed on the patio, drinking beer and leaning into each other with the unmistakable movements of what I will call new love, which is lust. Each movement profoundly gendered: her graceful arms, elbows in tight, wrists exposed, hands birdlike; his arms possessive, his chest forward and massive.

He said something sly and turned his head to watch her eyes. She laughed rather abruptly and her shoulders rose and she placed her hands on his bicep. She threw her head back to laugh, and placed one balletic hand on her upper chest, as though she couldn’t get a deep breath because what he said what so amusing. He leaned back in his chair and straightened his legs out in front of him and hooked a thumb in his pocket so that his hand framed his package. All these movements had the canned flavor of recitation. My theory is that the highest-status young people practice these gendered movements in the mirror. They must consume media with a voracious attention to gender display, desperate to learn how to present themselves for mating.

I have heard very few male voice actors reading ads in the grocery store. Men do many of the in-store announcements, but the ads the male voice actors read are mostly for meat and barbecue products. Also, men read the ads for the gas-discount rewards program. These are prescribed male roles. The male voices are enthusiastic, but, whereas the women’s voices verge on rapture, the male voices verge on command. Pert girls sell salad greens. Kindly but authoritative fathers sell charcoal and beef.

She played with her hair. She spoke and the wind rose at that moment so that I was able, again, to entertain the idea that the breeze emanated from her mouth, that she made the leaves rustle and the branches rattle. I saw her teeth backlit white against the kitchen window.

That's all. They went inside after a while, and watched TV. He put his arm on the back of the couch behind her. She retracted her hands inside the cuffs of her sweater, hunched her shoulders, tucked her feet, and made herself small. And I slipped down out of the tree and walked back here to my warm, bright little apartment suspecting that I had witnessed what I need to know, that it would require some thought and parsing, but that the leaves would eventually blow off the tree and leave the trunk bare and plain, and there’d be nowhere to hide.

Elena Ferrante is Cormac McCarthy!

"...diffuse at first and then growing ever denser..."

“…I sat for hours, for days on end with my face to the wall, tormenting myself and gradually discovering the horror of finding that even the smallest task or duty, for instance arranging assorted objects in a drawer, can be beyond one’s power. It was as if an illness that had been latent in me for a long time were now threatening to erupt, as if some soul-destroying and inexorable force had fastened upon me and would gradually paralyze my entire system. I already felt in my head the dreadful torpor that heralds disintegration of the personality, I sensed that in truth I had neither memory nor the power of thought, nor even any existence, that all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away to a place of execution I would have gone meekly, without a word, without so much as opening my eyes… The entire structure of language, the syntactical arrangement of parts of speech, punctuation, conjunctions, and finally even the nouns denoting ordinary objects were all enveloped in impenetrable fog… Especially in the evening twilight, which had always been my favorite time of day, I was overcome by a sense of anxiety, diffuse at first and then growing ever denser, through which the lovely spectacle of fading colors turned to a malevolent and lightless pallor, my heart felt constricted in my chest to a quarter of its natural size, until at last there remained only one idea in my head: I must go… and throw myself over the banisters into the dark depths of the stairwell. It was impossible for me to go and see any of my friends, who were not numerous in any case, or mix with other people in any normal way. The mere idea of listening to anyone brought on a wave of revulsion, while the thought of talking myself, said Austerlitz, was perhaps worse still, and as this state of affairs continued I came to realize how isolated I was and always have been…I was as ill at ease among artists and intellectuals as in bourgeois life, and it was a very long time since I had felt able to make personal friendships. No sooner did I become acquainted with someone than I feared I had come too close, no sooner did someone turn toward me than I began to retreat. In the end I was linked to people only by certain forms of courtesy which I took to extremes and which I know today… I observed not so much for the sake of their recipients as because they allowed me to ignore the fact that my life has always, for as far back as I can remember, been clouded by an unrelieved despair… I began my nocturnal wanderings… to escape the insomnia which increasingly tormented me.”

̶ W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, pp. 123-126