by Steven Snell
“Only a little.”
“It’s like this. Less stages in greeting to bedding, means fewer physical steps. It’s just pure logic that you’re going to get to the bedroom sooner, which increases banging opportunity.”
“Nicely done, Mr. Patent.”
“If you can’t get laid in the Cambridge, you can’t get laid anywhere.”
“I need to move.”
“And I moved back. What does that say?”
“You burned yourself out?”
Jacob shakes his head in mocking annoyance and adjusts his shirt and looks outside and back at the chess set.
“It’s all interconnected.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“How we live, how we consume. Big spaces mean more stuff required to fill them, means more time spent shopping for knick-knacks, which means less time for banging.”
“People in Cambridge bang more?”
“The city is structurally designed to. What more can I say? It’s like gravity really.”
“Like gravity?”
“It’s a force, right?”
“As I’m aware.”
“I know it’s there, but I can’t see it, only its consequences. Sometimes it brings wonderful things like snow in the winter or leaves in the fall. And sometimes it’s the reason why planes fall out of the sky and kills hundreds of people with no one to hear the screaming casualties.”
“The only thing worse than foreseeable death is dying and not being heard.”
I finger my Queen, motion to move it, stop, lean back, cross my arms and return to staring at the board.
“Structures affect us. They force us to do things, to make the decisions we make.”
“Like how red lights force us to stop?”
I move and take one of Jacob’s Rooks.
Jacob moves his Queen. “Queen to Queen’s Knight.”
“Hrmph.”
“Greatness.”
“What about it?”
“There’re structures to induce it.”
“Are we still confirming your hypothesis?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’m with you then.”
“Greatness is prescribed by a group of people judging an individual, or product for that matter, mediated to accord with their backgrounds and needs and values and other baggage.”
“As much as I register what you’re saying, I wouldn’t dispute that.”
“Those are structures.”
“Ah. Got it.”
“Good. But greatness is also about being controversial. Everyone deemed momentous is deemed wretched by someone else.”
I position my Knight to threaten a Bishop.
Jacob continues, “What I’m saying is, greatness is dependent on those judgments within the arena of where one’s greatness is being created and projected – socially prescribed structures. So no matter how hard one tries, one won’t know greatness until one understands his or her own constructed walls – where outside and beyond are others’ greatnesses. And the bastards out there, beyond your walls, are leaning into them, reinforcing the walls to keep you quelled so as not to compete with their greatness – their big rooms and your small one.”
“So structures make you.”
“You nailed it my friend. Another coffee?”
I have no idea what I nailed.
Jacob picks up his mug and stands and walks behind the counter and pours me another cup. A young looking woman pushing a stroller pulls open the entrance.
I follow the woman. We make eye contact. She smiles, me back. The child says something and the woman looks down at her.
Jacob says from the other side of the counter, “I remember reading that self-awareness and self-image is developed through social experiences. But Being is not a one-way process – we’re also constructed by how others see us; I’m a mirror to what people say I am. If Being is this, greatness relies on being told one is great and reflecting on that moniker.”
“I’m only great if told so.”
“Whether that is in bed, or politics, or painting, it’s relative to one’s standpoint within his social network. One is great when the group has constructed the person to be as such … and that person is a piece of shit if it gets to his head.”
I laugh as Jacob passes me my coffee. He leans against the counter and flips through a magazine.
“See, look at this photo.”
Jacob hands me the magazine. There’s a man’s hand on a girl’s ass who is sitting on his crotch, his hand on her ass. Their clothing is wet and wrinkled. They have lawn mower cut grass shrapnel on them. It looks like a screen capture from a movie – a scene. But the logo in the bottom right corner of the page indicates it’s an ad for a clothing company.
Jacob leans across the counter and moves his Bishop out of threat.
“Bishop to Pawn’s Castle.”
“Rook.”
“Whatever.”
There’s a commotion by the front door. A few customers are pointing and taking pictures. A house sparrow is hopping around the entrance-way. It pecks at crumbs on the smooth concrete, hops to another crumb, then flies farther into the café and then flies back out through the door and away. I turn back to Jacob.
“His name is Bruce,” he states.
“Really?”
“He’s one of my regulars. He’s figured out how to time the door opening and closing.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, urban birds have larger brains than their country counterparts.”
“You’re a geek.”
“Being urban means a more complex environment; therefore, more brain power required. I couldn’t make this shit up. It’s evolution, baby.”
Jacob spins the magazine on the counter so it’s right side up to him. “I don’t know what this meant when I first thumbed through it but the picture intrigued me. I flipped through the rest of the magazine but I kept thinking about this image. I leafed back and looked at it again. Ads intrigue me, good ones, the quasi-enigmatic ones. Slow mornings, I guess, and there could be worse things than looking at a picture of a girl’s half naked ass.”
“Beats my job.”
“Don’t I know it.” He continues, “At first the image initially presents nothing but sex, some kind of provocative or enticing pose, a come pound me pose. The models are shot up-close, captured in mid gesture. This ad, this scene isn’t about clothing; it’s a composition to tell a story to transplant the viewer into this foreplay fuck fest. I’ve seen a few of the ads in this campaign and they’re all basically the same. Sweat, grass shrapnel, probably the scent of cum in the air – internalize the images, visually consume them, put them on credit. Buy the clothes, be sweaty, get laid.”
I move my Queen to counter Jacob’s retreating Bishop.
He pushes the magazine towards me and points. “And this, the ad’s colour palate is deadly. It’s rich and vibrant and lively and Brazilian street carnival fuck fest tourist picture taking masturbation ammo.” I’m nodding and Jacob continues, “And see how stress is added to the images not only through the intertwining of the models but the glow of their sweat and morning dew dripping from their buttered asses?”
Jacob scratches at his few days old morning shadow, picks up the magazine, flips through it, back to front, then drops it to the counter.
“There’s another ad – I don’t see it here – that depicts the models in these vaginal poses –”
“Vaginal poses?”
“Vag shots.”
“Yah, I figured that.”
“She’s holding a flower in front of her vag. Or she’s holding a snake – a serpent, the one there at Creation – placed between her breasts or crawling up her back where your cum is supposed to hit. It’s like my favourite Freudian dream where I’m pole-vaulting into a dormant volcano surrounded by salt flats and as I’m in my downward trajectory it erupts and a plume of hot lava explodes disintegrating me and the jet stream takes my ashes and deposits them about the earth.”
“You promised you’d never bring that one up again.”
“I’ll own that forever.”
“You’re a terrible person.”
“I know it.”
“Everything is sexual when advertising is everything.” Jacob continues, “The flower is a receptacle for the man’s yearning to be inside the girl, the snake is crawling towards the lily, the penis is hunting the nectar, the cave, the bush, the vagina, or as Henry Miller would say, the cunt. Buy the jeans, smell her cunt, lick her hemorrhoids, cum on her arm.”
Jacob takes my Rook.
I re-cross my legs and take a drink of coffee. I ask, “Don’t you feel that the models are ignoring you? The photographer is an observer; he – she? – is not constructing the image – he’s watching a show like putting $20 in the slot and the curtain at the peep show goes up. I’m a voyeur. I feel if I joined in, I’d be ignored like they’re saying, ‘piss off, we’re doing fine here without you, and would you please move your elbow, it’s digging into my boob.’ … I should get out of the way and just sit back on the sofa and watch and masturbate.”
“But don’t stain the clothes.”
“True, they are expensive.”
“Hold that thought.”
Jacob turns and picks up another magazine, licks his finger and flips through it.
“See, look at this one.”
He puts the magazine down and turns it so it’s upside down to him and places his finger on the image.
“This girl, see? Prone, back arched up to the sky,” he points at the other model, “and this one, pressing into her. Two girls, breasts pressed to each other, collapsing the boundaries of bodies almost to the point of penetration. They’re cropped to hide their faces and thus adding to their objectification, just exposing those important female parts. And their fingers – I love this part – their fingers pull down each other’s underwear just low enough, right down to the pubic bone, just low enough to entice the imagination but make it legal for wider audience distribution. They’re surrounded by grass and trees and moss and an apple and an Eden-like beauty; they’re the clay and God’s holy halitosis breath. They’re soaked in sweat and dew and their clothes cling to their breasts outlining their nipples and navels, revealing the translucency of the clothing. And this guy –” he points at the opposite page, “he’s wearing a loose shirt and so framed to barely expose the top half of his cock above the crop of the magazine.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Nice eh?”
“Like jumping off a cliff nice,” I reply.
“This I like – you can see what would today be considered skin imperfections – I love that! Despite the highly perfected and stylized photography – the buttered asses and tits – the models are otherwise natural – even unplucked eyebrows. You can see their pores and hair follicles. The meaning – this ad – is a state of envy; they want you to participate; they want you drenched in sweat and freshly mowed grass and apple cores; imperfect like you, and dirty like you. Through the bodies pressed together they create a feeling of claustrophobia in the Garden of Eden, but it’s not bountiful; it’s an eight and a half- by eleven-inch sheet of high gloss paper that you want to rub against your crotch and pull out your Visa and buy everything. Banging in the Garden of Eden. These.clothes.are.needed.”
Jacob closes the magazine and tosses it on the counter.
“No longer are we a society driven by human procreation – we fuck; there’re both fetishism and passion in our sexual acts. But fucking isn’t for race perpetuation. Sex isn’t about natural selection; it’s about a 24-inch waist with C-cup breasts and skinny jeans for boys and sneakers for girls and highlights and lowlights and sticking your face in the armpit of the girl while banging her.”
Jacob turns, washes his hands and smiles towards the man at the till. The man orders a double shot decaf no foam extra hot soya latte and hands Jacob his card. Jacob rings it through, pours soya milk into a metal beaker and begins steaming.
Jacob looks to me and I say, “Advertising –”
He points to his ear and shakes his head.
Louder I say, “We’re –”
Jacob nods.
“We’re no longer subservient or governed by some supreme being but rather culture and social class and race and ethnicity and gender and the economy and the media.”
“The new gods,” Jacob adds over the steaming.
“Exactly.”
“They’re the new forces to guide and unite and divide and castigate and truncate the larger arena of society.”
Jacob finishes making the man’s drink and places it on the counter. The man nods a thank-you and Jacob nods one back and leans against the counter towards me. “Culture, whatever that is, has become the key force in constructing and determining and defining meaning in what we consume and show off to others – Ikea should populate their stores with pews.”
“Imagine kneeling on particle board?”
“Imagine kneeling at all!”
“Ha!” I laugh, “True story.”
“There’s no one overriding principle anymore. No one god. There is no one narrative or story society is required to adhere to.”
I add, “We’re fumbling without a singularity, a single thing to guide us, god or an economic or political system.”
“Exactly… and it’s beautiful. We’re doomed to fail because all stories, these structures, will eventually just go out of style, overstay their course – and that’s a good thing. We look back at Facebook photos and wonder what was going on in our minds that allowed us to wake up one morning and put on acid wash jeans or polo shirts with popped collars or lace underwear or hockey jerseys two sizes too big. … It seems that traditional societies were guided by their historical narratives, their history, right or wrong scientifically – and by science I mean a method of investigation, not another socially constructed narrative – but no doubt approved morally and spiritually. Rational societies – the West with our science-based beliefs – are deliberate and make matter of fact calculations based on the most efficient means to accomplish goals, but they’re still historically based.”
“By definition, science should forget history.”
“Exactfuckingly!”
“We’re just assembled together by more stories, more structures; society, us, is just more complex, that’s all.”
“Exactly! You can’t delete history; you can’t recreate it – despite the tactics of totalitarian institutions, be it North Korea or Monsanto, humans are too creative. The present rationality is just determined by the circumstance you create, or created for you.”
“Agreed.” I take a sip of coffee.
“The Prime Minister can rationalize sending more troops to Afghanistan knowing full well that an Afghani seeing a soldier in body army holding an AK47 – is that the gun soldiers use? I have no idea –”
“Nor I.”
“– It only increases a sense of unease in that society.”
“For sure.”
“Can you imagine tanks driving up and down your university lecture halls or a Blackhawk helicopter hovering over your camping trip? And this is marketed to make Canada safer? Piss off. Have a kid play a violent video game for 24 hours and take a look at the state of his mind afterwards. If it wasn’t for a socially prescribed positive morality, he’d be out messing shit up. It’s why athletes or soldiers or porn stars listen to hyperkinetic pump-up music before they get in the game. A leader just needs to stick to his story. Rationalizing makes truth; truth makes it real. And those under the occupation of rationality fight back with their story, their truth, be it a monologue of suicide bombs or RPGs or videos chopping off a hostage’s head.”
“We’re all just stories.”
“Right or wrong is basically socially determined.”
“You don’t think they’re universals?”
“No, I don’t think so. There�
�s no one way. … It’s like, what is it we as a society are trying to perpetuate, to destroy or erase, for that matter? If anything, the only universal is accepting that we’re a collection of social and genetic forces and no matter how interconnected we become, we’ll never align all the forces to be so clean-slated that we won’t be able to distinguish ourselves. Utopia is a fiction; it’s just a construct to critique others.”
Jacob moves his Knight. “Knight to King’s Pawn, my friend.”
I look at the board. Jacob continues, “It’s like Relativity – theoretical physics is a metaphor for this.”
“And now arriving at Einstein.”
“I’m that good.”
I laugh.
Jacob continues, “Einstein said courting a girl for an hour feels like a second and sitting on a stove for a second feels like an hour. Time is an experience of circumstance. Even language, what we think is hard-wired is prescribed through experience. Naming something only works because that emitted sound is embedded within a group’s collective conscious signifying an arrival at a general consensus of what is being referred to. It’s like nick names. They mean nothing until either the receiver of the nick name recognizes it and or the nick name is picked up and used by others.”
“What’s Montague? It is not hand or foot or arm or face, or any other part of a man. Be some other name! What’s in a name? What we call rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.”
“Nice recall, mate”
“Grade Eleven English, thank-you very much. Go Shakespeare.”
I look at the board. Knight to King’s Pawn. I look at Cynthia’s camera and recall the pictures encased inside to be pasted on her apartment walls and layering new over old creating an unstable environment, like colonizers tearing down temples to erect churches and a statue of their god. There’s no final meaning in her living room.
“Shawn?”
I look at Jacob, “Yes?”
“Social segregation, racism – both promote hatred, promote tension, promote angst, promote war – which leads to government economic stimulation, leads to innovation, leads to market penetration, leads to control, leads to continuance, leads to old, leads to dated, leads to design and testing and production, research and development, leads to new, leads to better weapons of mass destruction to overthrow another’s ownership, leads to widespread death, leads to decreased population, decreased human impact, more dead bodies fertilizing the soil, leads to achieving the goals of the Brundtland Commission on Sustainability, leads to increased environmental consciousness and the promotion of a sustainable planet that was initially founded on separation, on difference on anti-sustainability. … Wait, Shawn, sorry mate, that’s checkmate.”