You Shall Never Know Security Read online

Through the window, I see the melancholic, winter gaze in Keith’s eyes, fresh, fuzzy and wet like dripping television static. His terse lips are bulging around his gums as if he was chewing on a bear trap. A distinct internal pressure is being exerted on his lips. I picture opening his mouth and seeing the teeth of an anglerfish.

  I wonder what world I’d be transported to if I smelled his hair now.

  I know this isn’t the change his parents told him about, but I’d love to think it is, that I could be his trigger.

  I wonder how long he’ll wait outside.

  This can't be the change his parents told him about.

  His side car door is open.

  His mouth opens. I can't say “he opened his mouth,” because the way he opened it, it looks like it opened only as a byproduct of his mouth struggling against his teeth.

  His teeth are wild like brambly bushes. They jut out toward me, this big mess of brambles, getting narrower and narrower, until they form a block like serrated chalk, pointing in my direction. Like an arrow.

  His side car door is off its hinges.

  The passenger seat is ripped to shreds.

  Wonder

  Wonder . . . .

  Wonder if you’ll think of me when whatever lady you marry tells you she’s pregnant. But I know that’s unlikely; honestly, you’d have no reason to think of me then, anyway. Your plate will be full with baby books and doctors visits and late-night heart-to-hearts with your bros and confidential talks with yourself in the mirror. You’ll being doing a lot to change your ways and prove to everybody (especially your mother-in-law) that your wife didn’t bet all her chips on a losing horse.

  You won’t think of me when your baby is finally born, either. No, I don’t know what you’ll be thinking then. If popular culture is any guide, you won’t be thinking anything, except maybe: I’m a father, I’m a father, I can’t believe it, but I’m a father. The whirl of the delivery room will grant your inner wish and fall into a state of reverential calm: the doctor’s pat on your back will fail to register and your wife’s warm but fatigued smile will go unnoticed, because at that moment in time, it’ll be just you and your boy.

  I’ll be the furthest thing from your mind.

  You won’t think of me, specifically, when you change your baby’s diaper, wipe your baby’s ass . . . and feel something inside him scratch back. But we’ll be connected, in some way, because then you’ll get to feel what I’m always feeling — some kind of inarticulate jolting dread in your gut. But your panic — lucky you — will last only for a little bit. Rational minds rationalize, and you, no doubt, will suppress fears of your baby’s health by smothering them with comforting reminders of your overactive imagination and the horrors wrought by your unchecked anxieties. The baby books will have taught you well.

  But minds only stretch so far, and I can’t tell you exactly what you’ll think or how you’ll cope when you see formless movement pushing against your baby’s diaper like a heavy body groping against blinds on a windowsill, or what appeasing words you’ll offer to your crying baby boy as you hold his hand and, as earnestly as you can muster, pray to your god, to anybody, for the bleeding and redolent rotting in his mouth to go away. But soon enough you’ll stop worrying about that because soon enough he’ll have no mouth.

  But I do know how you’ll feel when all the doctors visits fail and you end up dealing with Frank or Sal or whatever quiet hoodlum in the waste management industry you manage to pay off. You’ll beg him — please, please, please — to keep his mouth shut. Just take the package and get rid of it. Don’t worry, you have his word. He’ll take the unmarked cardboard box containing your “baby” and hopefully he’ll drive fast enough (or be oblivious enough) to make his way to the barge to discard your son before he hears your boy’s mewling, gets curious, and discovers something his mind can’t undo.

  I’ll empathize with you when you hold your wife at night, after you tell her it all went according to plan, that she can stop worrying, that you two can — and will — move on. I’ll empathize with you — a little bit — because at least then you’ll know loss. You’ll know a little bit about pain, and, as scared and confused and distraught as you’ll be, you’ll look into your wife’s dinner-plate eyes and know you need to stay strong for the both of you.

  But your stoic façade will come to its end, soon enough. Desperate hopelessness. That’s what you’ll feel when you knock and knock on the bathroom door, pleading with your wife to open the door, finally making headway when your fury breaks and you command her to open that fucking door. There’s that rage: you’re finally putting it to good use! And to think, you thought it had left you! But we both know that underneath your brashness is gnawing futility, and that’s all you’ll know when she finally opens the door and lets you in but turns away from you, too ashamed to let you see her face. But you can see it off the reflection of the mirror and you can’t explain it but her reflection looks too abstruse. It looks like melting.

  I know you won’t be thinking of me then. I can accept that.

  But I do hope you think of me, somehow, when in the middle of the night you open your eyes and see what your wife has become. Oh ye of little imagination, in that quick instance you'll probably just picture a spider or a crab or maybe a lobster. How wrong you will be. I should let you linger on my handiwork.

  God, I hope lightning flares and thunder booms right outside your window when you get that first good look at her. You’ll subconsciously take note of how long her limbs are and how unstable she seems, how something about her makes you itch and grimace as if you were watching contorting maggots sucking on rotting meat.

  But somehow you’ll know this is just the natural conclusion to what you set in motion five years ago. I pray some dying ember in your brain flares and you somehow think of me, even when she lands on your stomach, moans a dirge into your ear and burrows her hungry hands into your face like a dog burying a bone in the backyard.

  And if you don’t think of me, I’ll make you, even as your face and skin play the part of the doggy’s upended dirt.

  But, even then, I’ll keep a little mystery between us. I’ll let you wonder, just before your consciousness floats off like a boy letting go of a balloon, why it was, five years ago, that even though you had knocked the drink out of my hand for absolutely no reason, that even though you had your friends all laughing at me, that even though you were calling me a faggot in front of everyone in the room: that all I did to defend myself was smile.

  Endemic

  Cliff was “late” because he had been jerking off, which was an irony (and a debilitating one) too obnoxious to consider now. It was nighttime. Blessed nighttime. He was never in the mood for histrionics (especially not now), so he didn’t think about why he was doing what he was doing. He just stood up against the brick wall, tapping his foot rapidly. Nervously.

  “Okay Okay Okay Okay!”

  It was nighttime, the time to feel good, the sidewalk marinating in the forced effervescence of drowning lights and flashy spectacle. This wasn’t even the best part of the city, but the lights and the razzle-dazzle cascaded off any reflective surface too stubborn to get out of the way, making all the exterior walls lambent screens for enticing projections.

  Fortunately, there were alcoves.

  Chipper twenty-somethings walked down this route toward all the bars and clubs. One such beauty walked past a Victoria Secret’s ad, which featured a requisite too-glossy, too-cavalier model of undetermined ethnic vintage, who evidently had been instructed to project an air of almost-zealous indifference toward all the unwashed masses who might be interested in the products she was hawking.

  Based on this ad, Cliff thought, this model would be a complete stuck-up bitch. She was physically astounding, no doubt, but something was just off about her. To Cliff, she was like one of those McIntosh apples at the grocery with that unnatural greasy sheen, that you pick up and buy despite your misgivings, but then you find out they look that way because they were coated in pesticides.

  But that lovely young sprite walking past the ad was something else. She would probably feel insecure if compared to the Victoria Secret ad, but if only she knew. What power she had! She was vivid exhilarating multi-color to the ad's monochromatic black-and-white, an underappreciated fluttering butterfly juxtaposed against a pinned insect. The dead-eyed, digitally altered advertisement — promoting flesh sultry as burnished copper, and nothing more — was eclipsed by the wholesome, frustrating presence of the sweet-souled genuine article walking down the sidewalk.

  She looked like such a nice person, strolling about with four friends in tow. She probably was such a nice person, and even if she wasn’t, we have a way of excusing the behavior of the wholesomely pretty, a genetic urge to render our most prized and strongest material above the rest of our common rabble.

  Her curves and the proportions of her body, the honey-dew sweetness of her cutesy-pie face . . . all this elicited such angst within him. It was incredible, he knew, to be inflamed by proportions, sizes, shapes: aroused by geometry. This agony was incredible. He smiled as she and her friends walked out of distance. He was glad she existed in this world.

  It would just take a little more time, he was sure of it. His “she” would stroll down the street, alone, maybe after slinking away from an unwanted advance at some twenty-something bar. Her face would be a vision of twittering teasing, the way all pretty twenty-something girls get when they're festively drunk, the way any kind and warm advance is responded with a hazy-eyed “oh yeah?”

  He saw someone like him, he could tell, someone slinky with a motor in his foot keeping time on the wall. He probably saw a bit of himself in every guy he met. There subtext was his ur-text, that's all.

  Fuck it, he should stroll down deepe
r — it's darker there.

  Earlier

  Dr. Thomas Moody flipped through the pictures of the girls he was about to meet. Not women: girls. They looked like girls to him. No, they were still girls, he reminded himself. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, a little older. Still girls.

  It was a rare moment of inactivity in the office. The diagnostics had all gone well and everything had gone off without a hitch, but of course, they opened to no fanfare, no acknowledgement, nothing, just had to wait and see how the world reacts to their newest Rorschach test. Some will see security (most, thankfully) and a few others will get a little bit queasy.

  But they get sick about the specifics, not the intention.

  Never about the intention. Not now. Not anymore.

  Everyone acknowledges this work is needed.

  Even the “addicts.” The ones who stayed up too late, locked themselves in their home office and ignored their families, the ones who tried to explain those massive credit card debts (“Honey, what’s WPI Friends?”) to their distressed wives with a straight face.

  It seemed so silly that it had to come to this. He still never bought into the idea of “addicts.” But other people did. It was a way to categorize, and a way to get funding. A way to get support. Maybe In this day and age, anyone who paid for porn had to be some type of addict; he'd been shocked by some of the receipts he'd seen during his field work.

  And people hated these addicts. Hate-Hate-Hated them.

  The beautiful girls come strolling in. Six of them. All between eighteen and twenty-three.

  He politely extended his hand to all of them. “I’m Dr. Thomas Mooney. It’s nice to meet you all.”

  They responded in kind.

  “It's been surreal,” began one achingly radiant pixie-haired brunette. She smiled moonbeams, her flush skin delicate with pink hue. “It’s just amazing how this all works.”

  “Yes, we can all agree, it’s something alright. Are there any questions you'd like answered before we begin?”

  A demure, feather-tipped Japanese girl with platinum blonde streaks raised her hand, like she was still in school.

  “When do we get our stipend?”

  A quick, jocund huff. “What stipend?”

  Laughter.

  The effects of wholesomely beautiful girls enjoying themselves is beyond contagious: it doesn’t spread, it controls.

  Smiles all around.

  “Soon. But if that is the most pressing question on your mind, then things must be going well.”

  The Japanese girl smiled. Her eyes widened and the room seemed to light up. Mooney felt a soft, persistent hum of intelligence in the girl’s face. Her eyes, her laugh — just everything —and just felt so happy she had agreed and that she'd be part of this project.

  “I know, just speaking for myself,” the pixie went, “I feel this has just been a great experience. Just, all of this, knowing what this is for, and just being able to be a part of it.” Everyone concurred.

  “From the bottom of my heart, the thanks is all on the . . . paid side of the office.”

  Laughter.

  Associates were spinning around in their chairs, not looking directly at any of the girls, just big grins, maybe hoping one of the girls would turn around and reveal a flit of interest, a wayward, attention-demanding flick of the eye. They were like steer men funneling coal into a furnace. Anytime it seemed like it was time for the girls to leave, for the encounter to fizzle out, the associates proposed or “reminded” or joked or did whatever they could, to keep the conversation going. To keep them there.

  It reminded Dr. Mooney of the early experiments. Foregone conclusions, really:

  Items were placed on sale at a supermarket. Two fat girls bring the items to the register, but the sales don’t ring up. The cashier needs to call management. The items are trivial purchases, like gum. Lines form as the cashier calls to get the manager. Then gauge the line’s reactions, their perception of the two fat girls, how quickly the line becomes intemperate. Becomes a mob.

  Duplicate the test for pretty girls.

  Guess the results.

  Now

  These girls, they walk out to the bar, in the bitter cold, in glorified bras and mini-skirts, low-rider jeans and various textures violently form-fitted to be as streamlined and body-hugging as possible. The bars open up — the two-second feedback of amplified screams and hoots and excitement — and then the girls disappear.

  But here was one girl walking back alone.

  Alone.

  This girl is walking back alone.

  He hated them. He was a nice guy, and he would look into beautiful faces and warm, open eyes and imagine some humanity in them, pretend that, since the form was so divine, so to must be the function. They were so angelic, they just had to understand him, to see the beauty in him, to know that all his life all he needed was a beautiful girl to love him.

  But instead, they just gave him that look. Flocked with their friends on all sides, how transparently disinterested they look, how obnoxiously hypocritical, overhearing them call guys pigs and pricks and “all the same” and “only after one thing” when they were the ones after one thing, after a guy with money and looks and POWER and STATUS.

  They put their pictures on their websites, their Facebooks and their Twitters — pictures overflowing with exposed flesh and demure smiles and overt celebration — and when he kept their pictures open on his screen, he noticed how their smiling faces weren't so far removed from the come-hither gaze of a cam whore or anonymous porno slut. It wasn't a fair stretch to picture these Facebook whores as real whores; transpose faces, pick which bitch from high school should be matched up with the dehumanized pussy of some slut you will never know.

  This girl was alone. This girl was an ignorance-feigning slut.

  Look at the way she’s dressed.

  If he was richer and more attractive, this would be the opening of an old-school porn:

  “Hey,” he would say. “where you goin’, the night’s young.”

  “Hey, home,” she would reply, all glazy-eyed.

  He wasn’t actually sure how all those old-school gonzo pornos went down. But probably money would be offered, the girl would be attracted by both cash and the attention, and the fucking would commence in a van or some back alley.

  He realized he was following her into some back alley. This dumb bitch was doing the job for him.

  In any other circumstance she would be making fun of him, she would be ignoring him, she would be embarrassing him, she would be a living testament to masculine frustration.

  But not now.

  Earlier

  The crew had spread around the lab, doing their own work. Dr. Mooney head downstairs and saw Morgan Flim about to serve his tour of duty in the “raise room,” schematics and notebook in hand. It was Morgan's lucky time of the month alright.

  Each month one of them got to go into the “raise room.” There, the lucky contestant would scope out the newest pornography — “new” pornography being a relative concept, since pornography had a rate of production rivaling Happy Meals — and do research on the newest angles, the newest themes (on the street, amateur, professional, aggressive, low-fi, gentlemanly), the newest target (Asian girls, bbw, blondes, petite, teen, incest, diamond, hooters, older, geriatric, pedophilic): everything and anything to get a better handle on the newest trends.

  “Lucky” time of the month was a euphemism. A barrage, a never-ending masochist viewing session of all the newest, updated-to-the-day porn had a deadening effect on even the most eager new employee who was prematurely excited to tell his friends what he got paid to do at work all day.

  He often joked that you could get all “addicts” to quit just by making them watch all of it. Addicts live off the needling desire to view porn at any time, but porn at all times would be, well, kind of like sleeping with your wife day-in-and-day-out — the same repetition and boredom from which they were probably escaping.

  But, maybe not, as the kaleidoscopic range of different porn options made sure no consumer was left unsatisfied; the fact that a subject as simple as “college whores” could be so variegated left little doubt as to the depth of the modern porn well. Like Homer Simpson in hell, sentenced to eat an endless supply of doughnuts as punishment for his gluttony, they'd just keep consuming.