Dan Hoy
If I simulate sex onstage
only my corporate sponsors feel
alienated. And all the parents
and potential parents and
anybody who ever had parents
whether they knew them or not
whether they know it or not.
Sometimes my signature
dance move is to abstract myself
as much as possible. Music
is all form is what assholes say.
Ask yourself if youÕre an asshole.
I was sandwiched
between my mom and sister Bethany as per usual and
all I could think of
was how long until we break into Sunday School
and Elliot Fisher,
fresh from another subsect swallowed up into
our non-denominational
catharsis of worship and friendship and family
in the Dallas/Fort
Worth area. 3500 bodies filling the pews and hundreds
of thousands tuning in
across the country or from one of six satellite
locations on the
outskirts of town and on stage at least forty totally stoked
singers and guitarists
and bassists and keyboardists and a drummer
pounding away inside a
cube of Plexiglass, all with their hands
raised to Heaven or
hands busy with facial expressions suggesting hands
and bodies and souls
rising up like Elijah himself. All of it
replicated on the
three eight meter screens behind them, which retract
when itÕs time to pray
and get serious into the converging beams above.
Not that I was really
paying attention after IÕd caught sight of Elliot earlier
in that one Penguin
shirt that makes his eyes sparkle and turns his tousled hair
into something to
write home to God about, and even then Aubrey was
texting me from just
on the other side of the mixing desk about the new guy
in charge of the PA
system and I was texting her about how Bethany
was texting Julie
about the audacious heresy of us texting in church.
Like the time the
hotboys who show up late for Sunday School
every week reeking of
citrus because they always take an extended
intermissional break
in the orange groves making fruit grenades
out of oranges and
Mexican firecrackers and throwing them up in the air,
like the time at
Skateland when the hotboys were making antiquated
Ôhang looseÕ hand
gestures and singing the chorus to ÒOur God
Is an Awesome GodÓ in
mocking California surfer intonations and I said
to them, I said ÔYou
can infer what you want about your God from that
but you inferred it
not me,Õ and even if they didnÕt know the meaning
of the word ÔinferÕ
they knew I meant they were going to hell
because shortly
thereafter they flung cheese wizzy nacho sauce
all over my favorite
adult-looking t-shirt and I had to spend the rest
of the Skateland party
in Caleb BlackÕs beige corduroy jacket, which
was both embarrassing
and exhilarating. Me and Caleb french kissed later
outside behind the
dumpster, the smell of garbage and synthetic
pretzel dipping sauce
like an olfactory soundtrack to our waiting
for our parents to
pick us up and take us to our respective homes
in their respective
SUVs, the same eggshell white color, with
CalebÕs momÕs
differentiated by a faded American flag bumper sticker
with the words Òwhen
they pry it from my cold dead fingersÓ being
all that was legible
of what was once a larger message. I couldnÕt
help but be grossed
out by Caleb after that, unable to extricate
him from the memory of
that disconcertingly foul combo of smells,
and once he tried to
hold my hand when we got stuck together on the bus
ride to Church Camp,
which was awesome (the camp not the bus ride),
and I had to tell him
point blank that I was so totally not interested.
I think I might have
even implied that me and Nora Bishop had
some kind of lesbo
thing going on so he would get a clue and realize
there was no chance whatsoever
not in hell or anywhere else but
I donÕt really
remember what I said just that I wanted him to go away,
which he did, but then
Nora Bishop came over to talk about what
we might do for the
talent show on the last day of camp and I felt
disturbingly sick,
inside and out, like the smell of frenching Caleb Black
was permeating NoraÕs
face and the ride to camp and the whole world.
I excused myself to go
to the bathroom in the back of the bus just as
James Mingle was
coming out of it, not really thinking of how everybody
knew James had
Irritable Bowel Syndrome until two seconds later,
with the door closed
and the bus lurching into a turn, when it became obvious
that James had just
expulsed something irritable to the nth degree.
I barfed all over the
bathroom wall before the third second was over.
I could see Caleb
sitting six pews up and tried to stare at him without
triggering some kind
of psychosomatic burst of projectile vomit.
It was like playing
dominoes but like the opposite of playing dominoes.
Caleb alert, I texted Aubrey. Spew
in the pew, she texted back, Elain
is groovin. Where, I texted. 2
oclock.
I looked five pews up and thirty
seats over and could
almost make out the cord connecting an mp3 player
to its earbuds dangling
among the long blonde locks of Elaine Montague.
I texted lol and Aubrey texted hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha
which made me laugh
for real out loud right at the exact moment
when Pastor Jeff had
cut the music and was asking all of us to pray
for the local
missionaries spreading the word of God in Saudi Arabia.
I had to spend the
rest of the primary church service text free,
like I did for a month
after I was deemed an accessory to Sebastian Carr
hacking into the GPS
feature of Garrett JaneÕs phone so we could
reconfigure the
coordinates to make it look like he was at the Taco Bell
with Chastity Allen
instead of staying over at Myles VaughnÕs house
like he told his
parents. We got him grounded for the whole week
until GarrettÕs little
brother Wyatt heard us laughing about it and then
all of us got
earmarked for the rest of our unnaturally born lives.
Me and Sebastian and
Aubrey and Chase and the other Test Tubers.
Anyway the result of
this incident being that I was now in charge
of exchanging my baby
brother Tyson for a receipt at the ÔToddler CorralÕ
between services
because my parents were into the idea of me being
introduced to fiscal
and parental responsibility via one automaton-like task.
I loved Tyson but it
was kind of weird checking him at the door like a coat.
Wednesday nights we
walked past the eerily vacant Newborn Ranch
on our way to Xtreme
Worship in the Fun Room, which, despite
its hum-drum kiddie
name and aqua theme, is pretty fun, given that
itÕs filled to the
gills with ping pong tables and air hockey and four
PS3s w/ accompanying
LCD TVs, one in each corner. It also opens
out through a giant
nautilus-shaped doorway onto a grassy knoll
with a trampoline and
several equidistant tetherball posts and one
perpetually barren
pecan tree, underneath which Chase Hammond
told me he didnÕt want
to be my boyfriend or me to be his girlfriend
even though we shared
an extra-sensory connection and enhanced
cognitive abilities
due to the in vitro modifications made to our DNA.
We were all a little
weirded out after Elizabeth Bangs offed herself
with her momÕs
painkillers after an extended bout of intrafamilial
intelligence gap
induced ennui and made a concerted effort
to look out for each
other and provide compensatory solace as needed.
Hence the bimonthly
gatherings at AubreyÕs house for games
and such. We all
sucked at Trivial Pursuit but rocked the house
at Pictionary and
Taboo and other games in which communication
was prioritized over
knowledge. Information transfer. We retained
nothing, relatively
speaking, but our synapses stretched and curved
with every passing
datum. We speculated as to what in GodÕs
Green Earth our
mothers were thinking roughly 13 years ago
when they walked into
Associated Incorporated and signed a waiver
and received the first
of their weekly walk-in office treatments.
We further speculated
as to what significance, if any, to assign
to the digital paper
trail that Sebastian was able to reconstitute
connecting the no
longer extant Asso. Inc. to some obscure client
of the Carlyle Group,
the global private equity investment firm
specializing in
privatized defense companies and political arbitrage
with its workforce of
retired Presidents and Prime Ministers.
We also speculated as
to what exactly happened to ElizabethÕs uncle
after he disappeared
into a glistening black SUV w/ tinted windows
after making a drunken
molesty pass at her the night before.
We speculated without
Elizabeth because she died the morning after.
We speculated about
the fire fellow Tuber Corey Mills secretly set
to ElizabethÕs house
the following day, for unconvincingly pubescent
reasons that continue
to confound us and him. We speculated about
CoreyÕs increasing
isolation and onset of secondary sex characteristics
and how he freaked out
in Sunday School one day after Ms. Topper made
a passing disparaging
reference to J.D. Salinger. We also speculated
as to why I overheard
Aubrey reciting a sidereal monthÕs worth
of my Google
keystrokes in her sleep during the last slumber party,
and what if anything
that had to do with how I could accurately guess
what Chase had had for
breakfast every morning without resorting
to his breath or
flatulence. Or how last week I began to be able
to predict it. Elliot was
decidedly not unsettled by these developments
and others and was
able to keep up with the Tubers despite his being
new to the area and
not as far as we knew one of ÔGodÕs CreaturesÕ,
which was our parentsÕ
term for us. ÔLab RatÕ was ElliotÕs coinage.
I couldnÕt quite place
his accent but he said heÕs Canadian. Other
than that, he was
everything an IVF-conceived girl could want.
Self-assured, witty,
industrious, aloof, totally hot, a little dangerous.
I couldnÕt explain the
feeling in my chest when he was around, or shake
the feeling that his
sparkling eyes knew what I was thinking even when
I didnÕt and that the
moon would split in half and careen into the ocean
if our lips ever
touched. Church Camp was in two weeks. Lots of
staying up late and
moldy bunkbeds and flirting and swimming and
diarrhea and hiking
through the woods and chocolate chip pancakes and
teary testimonials
around the crackling and hiss and smell of the campfire.
I remember last time
my coat smelled like fire for days afterward
and even as every
other memory was coagulating into a nonspecific aura
I could still hear the
sound of Sebastian breaking down inexplicably
during Millie
MitchellÕs trite story about the death of her unborn sister.
The death wasnÕt trite
but the telling of it was, but I wondered this time
if Elliot would be
sitting next to me and if we would kiss later that night
or if maybe weÕd
kissed earlier in the day in the middle of the woods with
the creek nearby and
our friendsÕ laughter in the distance and now it was
later and we were
sharing a piece of dark together as somebody else sold their
soul to Jesus, crying
about the damage done to them or by them or both.
But then the service
was over and my mom gave me back my phone
with instructions to
not forget my fisco-parental duties. I hooked up with
Aubrey as we headed
over to the Toddler Corral to pick up Tyson,
my favorite ball of
sunshine, like some non-animatronic stuffed animal
that moves and giggles
and so forth, and then it was off to Sunday School,
with Aubrey filling me
in on what sheÕd just heard about Elliot via text
from Corey of all
people during a moment of testosterone-free lucidity.
But before she even
got to what exactly it was she heard she said
ÒShh Shh here he comes
act naturalÓ with a horrified look on her face
and I turned around
thinking she meant Corey but it was Elliot
strolling over like
Christ himself, eyes sparkling with the wind in his hair.
After years of disembodied
communiquŽ and shite poems
I got tired of staring
at the Kirkwood gap between us, which
meant investing in
BabyloniaÕs new wormhole technology,
which meant sporting a
vinyl orange jumpsuit and waiting
around a Proctis-like decompression
room for hours.
Then the requisite
delays due to my cracked, green skin
and cosmic reputation.
After years of godbot behavior
I was known for my
promiscuous allegiances and disregard
for corporate protocol
(like the time I bent a trail of outsourcing
into a galaxy-wide
closed circle of self-generating surplus)
and also for the bud
of whatÕs left of your replicated voice
coiled around my
cochlea, the Holovisor tilted away
from any incoming
light (like the distant sun bouncing off
the nearest Reflector),
eliminating the glare interfering
with the TrueVisage
contours and texture of your bodyface
on continual loop,
superimposed over the planetesimal debris
coloring the sky above
the ruins of Donna Centaura.
The visor is for geeks
and perverts but what can you do.
Like the other
temps-turned-godbots I came to Babylonia
to turn my
fortune-turned-fame into something more
physically nonlocal.
To step out of our pressurized suits
and expose our bodies
to the vacuum of space for 14 seconds
without our tongues
boiling. To send our shite poems
back from whence they
came instead of out into the void
dispersed at sublight
velocities, to compress everything
into the swollen fist
pulling your trembling bodyface close
even as it rips free
the ionomask holding you hostage
by keeping you alive.
If the wormhole opens and closes
as theorized if not
promised. Last time I saw you for real
it was on the pink
shores of Boscadar, on your knees
decoding the order
hidden in the pattern of machines
hurling themselves at
the glass dome painted the same color
and contour as the
desert facing it, the machines imagining
the neomorphs throwing
themselves at the dome painted
the same tint and
texture as the vacuum facing it
on the other side of
the glass, the neomorphs imagining
the machines imagining
the neomorphs imagining the glass
and the pink on the
other side of the black, and the machines.
The forced exile and
shite poems followed shortly thereafter
as did the bodyface
interface and TrueVisage love and
the here-not-here
transformation from temp to godbot
leading up to the
orange-suited prep for a Krasnikov jump
under the bruised
skies of Babylonia. I had nowhere to go
but here, here or
bust. No more whining about the inability
of entrepreneurial savvy
and a notoriety-induced sense
of being
indestructible to embrace the quantum entanglements
keeping us apart. Here
at last I would occupy the precise
spacetime coordinates
of your actual in the flesh bodyface
in an act of
unprecedented macroparticle annihilation.
It was already paid
for, like the clouds. All I had to do
was strip down at
T-minus however many and counting,
leap naked across the
K-fold and try not to hold my breath.