“But parents,” said Janie Sezz, “nonetheless.”
“What do you think my name should be?” I said.
Janie Sezz said she had no idea. Maggie Mae asked what I thought it should be. I said I didn’t know. I said I’d have to think about it. That was fine by both of them. We moved on to other topics. To the other topic:
What should we do, now?
We should enter a blur. We should leave the diner and enter a blur. I’d never entered a blur. They convinced me I should. I didn’t take much convincing.
We left the diner and entered a blur. We went to my place. We went to their place. We walked around. We went to bars. We went to clubs. We danced. We drank. We showed ourselves to men for money. We let men pay us to touch us, suck at us, lick at our tits, lick at our necks, lick out our asses, put their cocks in our mouths, their fingers, their thumbs, their balls on our lips, and sometimes they’d fuck us. We’d often fuck each other. We shopped for books, too. We shopped for clothing. We shopped for liquor, ecstasy, and weed. Janie Sezz shopped for Xanax, Maggie Mae for Paxil, both of them shopped for hormones and coke. We walked around, drank coffee in diners, talked and talked and talked and talked.
The blur lasted two weeks, maybe fifteen days. At the end of it all, we got in a fight. A fight outside a liquor store. Who should pay for something—for a bottle of whiskey and a carton of condoms. It wasn’t about that, though. Not really. I paid for the whiskey and paid for the condoms—I had lots of money—and still we were fighting. And maybe that’s what it was—that I had lots of money, and they…did not. Or it might have been that they knew I’d be starting school in a week. It might have been that I’d told them what I’d planned to work on, that I planned to write a dissertation about sex work and gender, which made them suspect me of being a tourist, of having tricked them into thinking I was more than a tourist.
And maybe I’d tricked them, but if so not on purpose.
And maybe they were right about my being a tourist, but if so then I was only just finding that out.
And what, really, I wondered, was wrong with being a tourist? Why should being a tourist cause anyone pain? Weren’t we all just having our adventures?
I know, I know, I know, but look: I was nineteen years old. I spoke five languages, read in a dozen, and owned an apartment—still, though, still I was only nineteen. And they were, I don’t know, twenty-four? twenty-five? They weren’t any younger than I am now. They weren’t too young to know any better.
Anyway, the fight put an end to the blur. Or maybe it was the other way around: maybe the end of the blur caused the fight. It doesn’t really matter. Somewhere in there, my name became Fond, then Fonda, and then Fondajane. And by the time I’d cut my ties with Maggie Mae and Janie Sezz—for the first couple months after the fight, we’d still meet up, though not very frequently, once, maybe twice a week at most, but it was never the same as it had been before the fight, our parties always ended in resentment and anger, and eventually, they were starting out that way too—once I’d cut my last ties to Maggie Mae and Janie Sezz, I’d become who I am.
And it’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for coming to Private Viewing.
Now, what should we do?
Living Isn’t Functioning
Jonny Pellmore-Jason, Jr.
June 3, 2013
Freshman Honors Writing and Rhetoric Final Research Paper
Mr. Hunt
Limited Copyright © Jonny Pellmore-Jason, Jr.
Some rights reserved. Only VERBATIM copies of this essay IN ITS ENTIRETY may be distributed, displayed, sold, or recited without prior permission of the copyright holder.
1988
Graham&Swords Ovum and IncuBand BOTIMAL® HatchKit
Owner’s Manual
Congratulations on becoming the proud new owner of a Graham&Swords BOTIMAL®, the flesh-and-bone robot that thinks it’s your friend®! Please read this owner’s manual thoroughly and keep it in a safe place for future reference.
What’s in the Box
1 Ovum
1 PillowNest® (Don’t throw the box away!)
1 IncuBand®
1 28-day supply of LifePellets®
What Exactly Is a BOTIMAL®?
A BOTIMAL® is a biotic data-processing machine (BDPM)® with built-in, cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology so convincing you’ll believe it has a mind of its own®.
Hatching Your BOTIMAL®
Hatching your BOTIMAL® is easy! All it takes is an IncuBand®, a PillowNest®, and a few days of exposure to simple human warmth. You can provide all those things! Do so as follows:
Lay the IncuBand® flat on a pillow or couch cushion.
Make sure that none of the four thumbscrews are protruding beyond the foam-rubber lining along the inside of the frame (NOTE: the frame is the stainless-steel cuff in the middle of the IncuBand® where you’d expect to find the dial if the IncuBand® were a wristwatch rather than an elegant hatching technology).
Set the ovum in the frame.
Gently push down on the ovum until the white line along its circumference lines up with the frame.
Turn each of the four thumbscrews clockwise, until you can no longer turn them.
Strap the IncuBand® on as snugly as you would a watch. For quicker hatching, wear it so the ovum is pressed against the inside of your wrist (over the pulse).
Your BOTIMAL® will hatch after somewhere between 75 and 125 hours of exposure to your simple human warmth (+ up to another 24 hours of deprivation from your human warmth), depending on how frequently and consistently you wear the IncuBand® (greater frequency and consistency = less exposure time required for hatching) and whether you wear it on the inside or outside of your wrist.
Within three hours of continuously wearing the IncuBand®, you’ll notice the faint appearance of a black jot or squiggle showing through the pink sheen of the ovum’s casing. This is normal, and it’s a sign that your BOTIMAL® feels your warmth and is beginning to grow. Over the next 75–125 hours of exposure to your simple human warmth, the jot/squiggle will darken and become more defined, eventually lengthening and widening into a variety of interesting shapes that have variously been described by our scientists and lab technicians as “tattoos,” “inkblots,” and “woodcuts.” These changes are a sign that your BOTIMAL® is experiencing healthy growth inside the ovum.