by Jarett Kobek
COMIC RELIEF WAS A COMIC BOOK STORE that had been located on Haight Street. After the store closed, a great number of other establishments had occupied its former address.
In that moment, as Jeremy and Adeline ambled through Buena Vista Park, the storefront was occupied by an establishment called BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.
It sold sex toys and lingerie.
“WHAT I CAN’T GET OVER these days,” said Jeremy, “is that the world seems obsessed with everything that I really cared about when I was fifteen years old. Comic books. Geek media. It’s all so mainstream. I used to get more shit than you can imagine because of my Red Sonja t-shirt.”
“Darling,” said Adeline, “What if you’re a bellwether? What if all American culture is on a thirty year time-delay from your interests at any given moment?”
“Maybe it’s been passed on to you. What if it’s your interests, right now, that’ll determine the tastes of the future?”
“I sincerely hope not,” said Adeline, “Or else I’ve doomed our planet to a terrible dystopia comprised entirely of Krautrock, antique postcards of St. Augustine, and enema porn.”
ADELINE WAS ONLY KIDDING. She was using irony.
No one with a social life cared about Krautrock.
“EVERYTHING CHANGES,” said Jeremy, looking at the ancient trees. “I remember when you lived on our couch. I told you not come in here at night.”
“Why ever was that?”
“It was dangerous. There was a lot of violence. They would find bodies.”
“Do you know,” said Adeline, “I am quite convinced that it’s much better to live in cities of our present moment. We no longer face the threat of death on every block. But emotionally, I wish we were back in those bad old days. It kept the scum out. It was terribly frightening, darling, but wasn’t it fun?”
“Beats me,” said Jeremy. “Why do you think I live in the suburbs? I hate cities. I hated them then, I hate them now.”
THEY CLIMBED towards the top of the park.
Adeline challenged Jeremy to a game. She asked him to think of the worst possible way that the tech industry could ruin Buena Vista Park.
“You’re the writer, darling,” she said, “I should hope that you’ll best me at my own contest.”
“Give me a second,” he said. “I’ll think of something.”
chapter twenty-eight
“Those assholes,” said J. Karacehennem, “fucked with the wrong person.”
Those assholes were the nineteen terrorists who hijacked airplanes on September 11, 2001 with the intent of crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.
Those assholes had managed to crash their hijacked airplanes into the two buildings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The airplane piloted by Ziad Jarrah did not crash into the United States Capitol. The airplane piloted by Ziad Jarrah had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers used a food cart as a battering ram and stormed the cabin.
Ziad Jarrah was the subject of ZIAD. There’d been a moderate amount of eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.
J. KARACEHENNEM was walking with Adeline in Chinatown. He had returned from Europe about a week earlier.
This was the first time that he had seen Adeline since his return. He convinced her to go to Caffe Trieste in North Beach.
Adeline met J. Karacehennem at the Powell BART stop. She found him leaning against the railing by the Cable Car, standing with one foot atop a brown box.
“Whatever do you have in the box, darling?” asked Adeline.
“It’s the Spanish translation of ZIAD. I haven’t opened it yet. I opened the original box of ZIAD in Caffe Trieste. I figured I’d do it again with the translation.”
They walked up Powell to Union Station and over to Grant Street and then up through the Chinatown gates.
“How do you feel about the book being translated?” asked Adeline.
Which is when he said: “Those assholes fucked with the wrong person.”
Then he added: “They really fucked with the wrong neurotic. They thought they could bomb the living fucking shit out of America but they didn’t realize that twelve years later I’d be making fun of them in Spanish.”
JUST THEN, J. Karacehennem bumped into a middle-aged immigrant. The middle-aged immigrant was smoking a cigarette. The middle-aged immigrant had some eumelanin in the basal stratum of his epidermis.
The middle-aged immigrant looked at J. Karacehennem.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said J. Karacehennem.
The middle-aged immigrant spit on the sidewalk, threw his cigarette at J. Karacehennem’s feet and shouted, “Gwai lo!”
“WHAT DID HE CALL YOU?” asked Adeline.
“He called me a gwai lo,” said J. Karacehennem. “It’s Cantonese. It means something like ‘white boy’ or ‘foreign devil.’ I used to do Ving Tsun in New York with this kung fu master named Moy Yat. He always was calling us gwai lo.”
“How charming,” said Adeline.
CAFFE TRIESTE was empty except for its regulars. J. Karacehennem had come here for years and had yet to know any of the regulars beyond simple observation.
The regulars were crazed relics of San Francisco from the era before the Internet economy exploded into the collective consciousness.
Radicals and poets and free thinkers. They were all, at the very least, middle-aged. Almost all of them lacked eumelanin in the basal layers of their epidermis.
HE OPENED THE BOX. The cover showed an airplane crashing in the cedars of Lebanon. Ziad was from Lebanon. Adeline and J. Karacehennem fondled the books and drank coffee.
“I simply can not remember,” said Adeline. “Did I inform you about Christine?”
“What about her?”
“She’s marrying Bertrand. In February.”
“Some people move fast,” said J. Karacehennem.
CHRISTINE HAD ASKED ADELINE to be a bridesmaid.
Adeline was touched but declined.
She’d been in too many weddings, she said, and couldn’t stand another. She hated how the wedding party was always on display.
ONE OF THE REGULARS came into Caffe Trieste. His name was Roy. He suffered an unspecified mental illness. He had no eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.
Roy’s mental illness caused him to shout at all of Caffe Trieste’s customers. He did this every day.
Roy was also one of the best dressed men in San Francisco. He clothes were always immaculate.
Roy shouted at some tourists.
“Whatever did he say?” asked Adeline. “All I could make out was something about Sicilian bastards.”
“I’ve heard him yell at a million people,” said J. Karacehennem, “I can never understand him. He is a perfect example of why Caffe Trieste is the greatest place in the city. Did I tell you about election night last year?”
IN 2012, President Barack Obama ran for re-election against Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, who didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.
It was the usual bargain for J. Karacehennem and other people of the Loony Left.
You supported a person whose policies you agreed with, sort of, but who you felt was too beholden to corporate interests and whose foreign policy made you sick.
If you didn’t support this person, the alternative was something even worse. Voting was little more than triage.
J. KARACEHENNEM went to Caffe Trieste and watched the election results. The anxiety fell away very soon. It was obvious that Obama had won re-election.
The night was punctuated by the unexpected appearance of the great and neglected poet Jack Hirschman.
Hirschman was the oldest of the old school. Hirschman was enough of a throwback that he was still an active, believing Marxist. Hirschman had edited the Artaud Anthology, a book published by City Lights which Karacehennem had admired as a teenager.
Hirschman stormed in with his great walrus moustache and
his long stringy hair dangling beneath a black cowboy hat, a red scarf thrown over his shoulder.
Hirschman waved his arm at the television and started shouting, “HERE IS YOUR DEMOCRACY FOR YOU! HERE IS YOUR DEMOCRACY FOR YOU! HERE IS YOUR DEMOCRACY FOR YOU!”
J. Karacehennem knew that he himself loved San Francisco.
NOW HE WAS SITTING in the same seat, talking to Adeline, and he knew that he hated San Francisco.
“I’m moving,” he said. “After WTF comes out and I do the events.”
WTF was his new book. It was being published in the small press.
“Why now?” asked Adeline.
“This morning,” he said. “I woke up to a 400 people protesting outside of my door.”
J. KARACEHENNEM really had woken up to 400 people protesting on the other side of his door.
Oh Christ, he thought when he heard the sounds of the crowd, they’ve come at last. Why did I write a book about Islamic terrorists?
The protestors weren’t protesting J. Karacehennem.
They were protesting Local’s Corner.
THE HOUSING SITUATION in San Francisco was bad enough that people were regularly staging protests against the effects of the tech industry on the rental market.
People were being evicted at a rapid clip.
The cost of living was skyrocketing.
A protest was planned on 24th Street. It started between York and Hampshire and moved towards Mission. As the procession reached Bryant, a decision was made to divert the hundreds of protestors down to 23rd Street.
23rd & Bryant was the intersection that hosted Local’s Corner.
J. Karacehennem lived a few doors down.
J. KARACEHENNEM and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter woke to the sounds of people cheering. And the sounds of people banging drums. And the sounds of a flatbed truck with a PA system parked in the intersection. And the sounds of people yelling at Local’s Corner through the PA system.
J. Karacehennem and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter went outside. They looked at the flatbed truck.
Sandra Cuadra was speaking through the PA system. She was telling the story of how Local’s Corner denied her service.
Here is some of what she said: “So another person that was with us said, ‘Hey, you know what, let’s go to this Local’s Corner on 23rd and Bryant. I want to try it out.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I want to try it out too. It’s a new place.’ So we walked over here. It was six of us. Two of them were my niece and nephew. One was 14 and the other one was 12, and we came here to come eat. And it was two people on the outside table and there was I think two other people inside the restaurant. So I walked into the door and I asked the lady, ‘Six people.’ There was a lady on the ground, kind of cleaning something, and she kind of looked up with the deer in headlights. So she looked at the guy behind the counter, and she kind of looked at him, didn’t say anything, she’s like ‘Uh, uh.’ He’s like, ‘Can I help you?’ I go, ‘Yeah, there’s six of us.’ And then he says, ‘We can’t accommodate you.’ And at first I didn’t trip, I thought maybe he had to move tables. So we’re like, okay, we’ll wait a minute. Right, so we’re kind of waiting. And then he says, ‘No, we can’t accommodate you.’ I go, ‘What do you mean, you have tables inside, right?’ And then he goes, ‘Uh, uh, uh, we kinda can’t.’ Right, kind of stuttering, kind of like shocked, he didn’t know what to do. So you know, we’re like, ‘Well, you know, we can move tables together.’ We didn’t mind eating separately because I have a big family we’re used to doing lots of tables. He just kept saying they couldn’t accommodate us. And then, you know, kind of wait, pause a moment and he goes, ‘You can go to our restaurant over there on 24th Street.’”
SANDRA CUADRA stopped speaking. The protest continued for another ten minutes before moving back up Bryant. People stood outside of the restaurant banging on its windows and beating drums.
J. Karacehennem said to The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, “We have to move. We can’t live like this.”
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter agreed.
“WHEN WE MOVE, we’re leaving San Francisco,” said J. Karacehennem to Adeline. “I want to leave the city. I hate San Francisco. Or at least whatever the hell it’s become. But it’s not like we have any choice. There’s no way we can find an apartment even remotely comparable for the same rent that we’re paying.”
“Where ever will you go?” asked Adeline.
“I’ve got a few events set up for WTF. One of them is in Los Angeles. Another is in Portland. I guess we’ll look at both cities.”
“Portland is so dreary,” said Adeline. “It’s like San Francisco but even worse. Do you think that your constitution could truly handle a return to Los Angeles?”
“I’m more inclined towards Los Angeles,” said J. Karacehennem. “It’s still the only place that ever felt like home.”
ADELINE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING but she worried that if J. Karacehennem and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter dropped out, then it was only a matter of time before everyone else dropped out too.
Adeline herself was fine. Her family was rich. She owned her apartment as part of a tenancy-in-common. But she felt loss around the margins. The slow disappearance of her friends.
For a moment, things had hung in perfect balance.
But all things end.
Adeline learned that on the day her brother killed himself. Nothing lasted. The whole world was on a script of loss and people only received their pages moments before they read their lines.
Adeline lifted up a copy of the Spanish translation of ZIAD. She flipped through.
“How is the translation?” she asked.
“Lo siento,” said J. Karacehennem. “¡No habla Español!”
“Do you feel anything?” she asked. “I remember when mine eyes espied the first translation of Trill. It was into that barbaric language of German. I hoped that it would mean something. In the end it meant nothing.”
“I guess it makes it real,” said J. Karacehennem. “It’s too bad, there’s another book that I’d love to do. I can’t. I just can’t. If I do one more book about terrorism, then I’m just that guy. I’m just the terrorism guy.”
“What’s the book?” asked Adeline.
“I want to do a book about the really hot terrorists and freedom fighters from the 1960s and 1970s. People don’t remember, but there was this amazing moment when terrorism was high fashion. When you didn’t have to be an ugly little man from the middle of nowhere with an overwhelming fear of sex. Terrorists and freedom fighters used to be really hot. Don’t you remember Leila Khaled? Leila Khaled was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived! Or Djamila Bouhired? Holy shit, Djamila Bouhired! Don’t forget Dolours Price! Fuck, even Gudrun Ensslin or Patty Hearst. It’d be a book about closing doors on a wide variety of semi-valid political expressions. It’d be about the death of romance in modern life. Why are all of today’s terrorists so bland and so drab? I’d call it Death in a Miniskirt.”
chapter twenty-nine
Ellen Flitcraft of Truth and Consequences, New Mexico was visiting San Francisco. She was crashing with her friend, Hilary, who Ellen knew from UCLA. Hilary didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis.
Hilary and Ellen had been freshmen year roommates. They’d lived together at Hendrick Hall, in the close quarters endemic to Third World countries and the student housing of American public universities.
SIX MONTHS HAD PASSED since Ashley Nelson uploaded pictures of Ellen performing oral sex on Maximiliano Rojas.
Ellen’d been fired, she’d been shamed, she’d sunk into a state of anxiety followed by a long depression. She had self-medicated with processed foods. She’d gained weight.
The latter helped, a little. The weight gain made Ellen somewhat unrecognizable to the men of T or C.
Being a woman in a society that hated women, Ellen had spent her post-pubescent life tormented by the unwanted attention of men. After Ashley uploaded the photographs, a personal
element had entered the rictus grins of the world’s men.
A few men had stopped Ellen and asked about the photographs. These conversations tended to start with opening questions like: “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
The questions were rhetorical. Everyone in Truth or Consequences had seen Ellen.
Even Ashley Nelson had approached Ellen. This occurred in the parking lot of the Shell gas station. Ashley more or less admitted that she had uploaded the photographs.
“Everyone’s heard that you got yourself into some trouble,” said Ashley Nelson. “I don’t know if you deserved it, but you always did think you were better than everyone else. It just shows what can happen.”
ELLEN WAS STILL taking care of her grandmother. She’d managed to get another job, also in insurance, from an office manager who’d heard about the situation and taken pity.
“The only thing,” said the office manager, “and I hate to admit it, but your name is mud. I’m going to need you to work under a new one.”
So Ellen Flitcraft, for the sake of business, had become Ellen Pierce.
WHEN THE PHOTOS leaked, Ellen deleted her social media accounts. Months later, she opened new accounts on Facebook and Twitter, using the name Ellen Pierce.
There were no pictures attached to the accounts. Ellen was judicious about whom she allowed to be her Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Her WaNks Index Score was 5.
In early August, Hilary sent Ellen a message on Facebook. She suggested that Ellen visit San Francisco, where Hilary was working at a startup called Bromato.