Just in. “Allowance, an essay about stacking firewood, puberty, fatherhood, and Milli Vanilli is part of The Iowa Review’s 2019 spring issue. You can snag a copy here.
User Not Found - Published by Future Tense Books
In December, I threw myself a tiny inflatable raft after nearly drowning in the murky internet sea. I flailed around, gasping for air, and in the process, wrote an essay about it. The essay, titled User Not Found, was picked up by the spectacular small press hero, Future Tense Books and will be released in REAL book form at end of November.
You can preorder your copy HERE.
Some excerpts from User Not Found for your reading pleasure:
It happened frequently, the sky shifted from blue to red to black and the day was gone and I was still there masticating the frayed remains of a fingernail, scrolling through screens, two of them. One large. One small. My upper back ached. My chin doubled and tripled. My hips melted through the slats of chairs. I assumed someone would come and feed me by hand, then through a tube. Let me check your eyes, they would say. It looks like you’ve lost your vision, they would say. We are going to have to scoop out your eyeballs and feed them to the tiger sharks. Let’s not waste the remaining energy of your eyeballs. The sharks are the only way out for you, they would say. If you don’t give the sharks your eyes, you’ll regret it, more than likely end up alone, penniless, a bonafide cyborg. I nod and update my status on the walls. When your eyeballs are fed to tiger sharks.
***
Today, sentences come in clear, even lines. I’m compelled to write long letters about what life was like ten years ago, before I was on the walls. I text paragraphs to faraway friends I haven’t spoken to in a while. I ask them to remember us when we didn’t have money for shoes or coffee creamer. I try to recall the shape of their name on paper, the patter of their footsteps. My eyes aren’t as tired, and my peripheral vision is improving. I consider heading to the woods to see if I can spot a Great Horned Owl.
***
I feel sorry for all users and long to free them from the walls. Let’s eat pie, I think. Let’s stare at the back of each other’s hands. Let’s talk about the weather. Let’s make out. I want to smell you! I look outside. Orange with thwacks of blue. It’s easy to put my shoes on, to open the door.
***
I buy film for a 35 millimeter camera that belonged to my father in the late sixties. I take the first film photo of my child, eager to see her image composed of dots rather than pixels. The shutter clicks. She asks to look at the picture. When I tell her it’s inside the body of the camera, in a roll of film we will have to process with chemicals and light, she loses interest in what I’m saying and walks away.
The Animal Model of Inescapable Shock - Anne Boyer
If an animal has previously suffered escapable shock, and then she suffers inescapable shock, she will be happier than if she has previously not suffered escapable shock — for if she hasn’t, she will only know about being shocked inescapably.
But if she has been inescapably shocked before, and she is put in the conditions where she was inescapably shocked before, she will behave as if being shocked, mostly. Her misery doesn’t require acts. Her misery requires conditions.
If an animal is inescapably shocked once, and then the second time she is dragged across the electrified grid to some non-shocking space, she will be happier than if she isn’t dragged across the electrified grid. The next time she is shocked, she will be happier because she will know there is a place that isn’t an electrified grid. She will be happier because rather than just being dragged onto an electrified grid by a human who then hurts her, the human can then drag her off of it.
If an animal is shocked, escapably or inescapably, she will manifest deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her. If she has manifested deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her, she will manifest deeper reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her and then dragged her off the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for electrified grids. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for what is not the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for dragging. She may also develop deep feelings of attachment for science, laboratories, experimentation, electricity, and informative forms of torture.
If an animal is shocked, she will manufacture an analgesic response. These will be incredible levels of endogenous opioids. This will be better than anything. Then later, there will be no opioids, and she will go back to the human who has shocked her looking for more opioids. She will go to the shocking condition — called “science” — and there in the condition she will flood with endogenous opioids, along with cortisol and other things which feel arousing.
Eventually all arousal will feel like shock. She will not be steady, though, in her self-supply of analgesic. She will not always be able to dwell in science, as much as she now believes she loves it.
That humans are animals means it is possible that the animal model of inescapable shock explains why humans go to movies, lovers stay with those who don’t love them, the poor serve the rich, the soldiers continue to fight, and other confused, arousing things. Also, how is capitalism not an infinite laboratory called “conditions”? And where is the edge of the electrified grid?
