DAVID V. MATTHEWS

The Non-Insane Portion

The fifth excerpt from “Our Putative Couple,” a work in progress. For the first four excerpts, please click (in this order) here and here and here and here.

■

“I like your sweater,” Cassie says.

“Me too,” Zane says.

“Thanks,” Reed says.

“Did Luisa crochet it?” Cassie asks.

“Uh-huh.”

“I could tell. It looks really high-quality. You always produce high-quality work, Luisa, but this time, you’ve outdone yourself.”

“Thank you,” Luisa says. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with the quality level, but I used only acrylic yarn this time. As an experiment? I still prefer wool, and so does he, but perhaps this time, the moths won’t turn his sweater into an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

From what Cassie can see, the sweater, a cardigan, consists of a dark blue background spattered with green, red, pink, purple, and—offscreen—possibly other colors.

“When did you finish the sweater?” she asks.

“Two or three days ago,” Luisa replies.

“First time I’ve worn it,” Reed says.

“Really?” Zane says. “Just for this call?”

“What?”

“Just for this call? Did you wear this sweater just for this call?”

“Yeah. I wanted to show off another Louie original. Actually, I wanted to wear this sweater all day, but with the temperature outside—”

“We had a high of, what, 77 [degrees Fahrenheit, or 25 degrees Celsius]?” Luisa says.

“Nice crisp fall weather,” Reed says with a chuckle.

“We had a high of only 63 [degrees Fahrenheit, or 17.2 degrees Celsius],” Zane says.

“You don’t have to gloat about it,” Cassie says.

“I don’t mind,” Reed says. “At least global warming has given you two a break.”

Another video call with the bio-dad. As usual, the half-siblings Cassie Flanagan (age forty) and Zane Flanagan (age thirty-nine) use her iPhone 17 Pro (US $1,099) instead of using what she affectionately describes as his “precious heirloom,” his Samsung Galaxy S25 FE (US $149.99). And as usual, they call while huddling together at the kitchen table in the townhouse (monthly rent: US $2,363) he and his husband (who often sits in on the calls, but not this time) share in the upper-income Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, instead of calling from what she semi-affectionately describes as her “rickety old shack” (monthly rent: US $1,195) located only 2.4 miles (3.86 kilometers) away in the almost as upper-income Pittsburgh neighborhood of Edgewood.

Speaking of married couples, Reed Flanagan (age eighty-six) and his spouse, Luisa Lopez (age sixty), following tradition, take this call on her Motorola Edge 2024 (US $249.99, discounted from US $549.99) as they huddle together at their kitchen table, in their apartment (monthly rent: US $1,020) in Trebain, Iowa; he hasn’t owned a cell phone for the past decade, due to his knowing from experience that he would spend almost every waking minute talking, texting, e-mailing, Internet-surfing, and—in his words, using a trendy verb Luisa had taught him—“doomscrolling the crap out of it” instead of doing something he considers “slightly more worthwhile,” such as revising his memoirs, “a Sisyphean task, sure, but everyone needs a task like this to build character, right?”

But back to the telephonic conversation.

“Have you heard the latest about Olivia?” Cassie asks.

“What?” Reed says.

“Have you heard the latest about Olivia?”

“No. What happened?”

“She lost her job today.”

“She did?”

“Uh-huh. Effective immediately. She texted me the news.”

Reed looks morose.

“Did they give a reason for firing her?” Luisa asks.

“Yeah, sort of,” Cassie replies. “According to the letter of termination she received, they had a major, major problem with what she said in class, though they wouldn’t go into specifics, only stating that she had repeatedly violated the university’s code of conduct.”

“Ah yesss, the coh-oh-ode of conduct,” Reed says in a wobbly, belittling voice. “I know it well.”

“We know, Reed. We know. Anyway, she plans to sue them for violating her free-speech rights. She’s even started a GoFundMe page to cover her legal expenses, though I’ll bet some of that money’ll go toward her other expenses, not that I mind, considering that, alas, Giant Eagle [a Western Pennsylvania supermarket chain] doesn’t rather charitably permit her to take, say, all the organic millet and brown rice ramen noodles she wants for free, due to her trillion-watt smile.” Pause. “Anyway, I donated fifty dollars.”

“So did I,” Zane says.

“Well then,” Luisa says. “Could someone please send me the link to her page?”

“I’ll do it after the call,” Cassie says.

“Thanks. I’ll dig around inside my change purse and see what I can contribute.”

“You know what Olivia should really do instead of pursuing legal action?” Reed asks.

“Uhhh, no, what?” Cassie says.

“She should get the hell out of this country while she still can. Before Trump tosses her into a gulag or something. You know, I never thought I’d say this, but based upon everything that’s happened this year—well, I think our democracy will die before I do. Before we all do.”

“I hope not,” Zane says. “I know we all gotta shuffle off this mortal coil eventually, Reed. But I hope our democracy survives.”

“And how will that happen? The part where our democracy survives?”

“Um, yes, well—the non-insane portion of the population could band together and make things suck a little less?”

“The ‘non-insane portion,’ yeeeah, right, that mythical beast,” Cassie says.

“Hey, the MAGAs comprise, what, only thirty percent of the electorate?” Zane says a bit more loudly.

“But more that thirty percent voted for the Cheeto-in-Chief last year.”

“Anyone can suffer from temporary insanity,” Zane says, remodulating his voice. “Plus Trump didn’t even win a majority of the votes. He thinks he has a mandate, but he won by a pretty minuscule one-point-something percent. The Democrats could have won if they’d swerved into the progressive lane for a change.”

“Yep, the progressives will save us. The teeny-tiny clique of zillionaires and Christian fundamentalists and white supremacists who have always controlled this country would like a word with you.”

“So we can’t change things for the better?” Luisa asks.

“Sometimes,” Cassie says. “Sometimes we can make minor, incremental changes, but then the Republicans always regain power and wipe those out, meaning we have to spend time making the same changes again, only more minorly and more incrementally.”

“But you think we can’t make any changes,” Reed says.

“I guess not.”

“Well, call me naïve or hippie-dippie or whatever, but I feel we can rehab America, someday, eventually, perhaps in an alternative timeline,” Zane says.

“Same here,” Reed says. “Living though the repressive crap I’ve lived through over the past several decades has, uh, it has made me appreciate America’s potential even more.”

“Yeah, America always has lots of potential,” Cassie says, chuckling twice.

“Better than having no potential.”

“Same thing. Whether or not you have potential, you haven’t really done anything.”

“Do you like this country, Cassie?” Luisa asks.

Cassie shrugs. “Do you?”

No response.

“You don’t like this country, do you?” Cassie asks.

“Actually—I’ve never liked this country.”

A five-point-eight-second pause ensues.

“You haven’t?” Reed says.

“No,” Luisa replies. “Don’t look so surprised. You must have inferred something.”

“I didn’t.”

“Okay, you didn’t.” A two-point-one-second pause. “As long as I can remember, I brainwashed myself into thinking I liked living here. But over the past several months, I’ve realized that deep down, truthfully, I should stop pretending. Why keep pretending at my age?”

“You don’t like anything about the good old U.S. of A.?” Cassie asks.

“Well, I like my husband and my stepchildren. And my friends. And all the craft stores—even Iowa has craft stores. But in toto, the Americanness of America gets on my very last nerve, or on what passes for a nerve. And by Americanness, I mean the grating, obnoxious innocence in everything we do, no matter how awful, no matter how racist or sexist or anti-trans or anti-immigrant or anti-whatever marginal group those in power have designated worthy of hate to distract from the never-ending class war. You know, I think a good portion of Americans, the most in-your-face portion? They love the class war. Sure, they get screwed economically, but they get to add excitement to their lives by crushing the scaaaary other. The Democrats keep losing ’cause they just don’t understand the sheer pleasure the powerless derive from crushing someone even more powerless. The Democrats could try crushing the rich, but the rich control both major political parties, so—yeah, Communism rules, I guess. Or it drools. We Gen-Xers don’t trust anybody.”

A seven-point-seven-second pause.

“Have I mentioned I adore that sweater you made for Reed?” Zane asks.

“I believe so. Anyway.” Three-second pause exactly. “I should’ve renounced my citizenship and left the country decades ago. I could still do those things.”

“Uh, yes, you could,” Reed says dazedly.

“I could join Olivia in exile.”

“True.”

“You could join us if you like.”

No response.

“I read this essay in college about American patriotism,” Zane says. “I don’t remember the author or title. But I do remember one point the author made. The author compares living in America to paying ten million [US] dollars for a Rolls-Royce. You may have paid way too much, but, come on—you now drive a freakin’ Rolls-Royce, man!”

Nine-point-four-second pause.

“Do they make electric Rolls-Royces now?” Luisa asks.

“Yes they do,” Cassie answers.

“Good. Then the environment might not deteriorate at such a rapid pace.”

“It’ll deteriorate at a nice leisurely pace,” Zane says.

“What?” Reed says.

Cats Riding Skateboards

The fourth excerpt from “Our Putative Couple,” a work in progress. For the first three excerpts, please click (in this order) here and here and here.

■

Standing outside her smeary beige high school at 7:12 AM on Monday, August 25, 2014, the first day of her junior year, Bailey spends a few moments checking out her classmates, the same pathetic nonentities she’s known for-freaking-ever: the concussed jocks, the perky sluts, the woozy potheads, the glowering lezbos, the emotive fags, the thuggish blacks, the white kids imitating thuggish blacks. No one there deserves to kiss her butt, not that anyone has ever tried.

But someone should try. Bailey knows beyond any doubt that someone as upper-percentile as she deserves a following. An upper-percentile following. A following she can cultivate via the greatest technological development ever, the Internet, the best place to attract attention.

She opens her backpack and takes out her phone. She logs into her account on allrighty.com, a blogging platform “FOR REAL AMERICANS”, as its masthead declares, quotes included. She reviews what she wrote the previous night (ellipses in original):

Welcome to Gettin’ Real with Bailey, a blog by me, Bailey Jennings, a 16-year-old girl. Yes, even a 16-year-old girl can have her own blog. What will they think of next?…Anyway, I should warn you, while I might occasionally write about Typical Teenage Topics such as fashion and music, I do plan to write mostly about, gasp, POLITICS. And NOT from a liberal perspective, either. I’ve never swallowed the lies spewed out every single minute by the liberal news media. Even sweet little 16-year-old girls like me can see the immense damage that [United States] President Barack Hussein Obama [in office from 2009 to 2017] and his fellow Marxist radical lunatics have done to this country. And I don’t know about other girls, but when I see damage, I point it out, so people can fix it. I’ve always pointed stuff out. I plan to do a lot of that here, on this little old blog. I’ll tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…with some cute emojis to boot. [Emoji of a woman’s high-heeled red boot, facing right, appropriately enough.]

I do own a pair of cute red boots in real life. Perhaps I could have kicked some sense into Michael Brown while wearing them. Then perhaps he WOULDN’T have physically attacked a cop, trying to go for the cop’s gun. Then perhaps the cop WOULDN’T have shot that dumb-ass dead. And then perhaps all those outside agitators WOULDN’T have made an attempted cop-killer a hero and rioted in his name [a reference to the weeks-long civic unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, that has followed the fatal shooting earlier that month of an unarmed, eighteen-year-old black resident, Michael Brown, by a white police officer; the above sentences present the police department’s version of events—went for gun, thug, outside agitators]. Of course, those rioters would have found some other criminal loser to idolize, but…I own PLENTY of boots perfect for my new career as a kicker. [Four emojis of the above women’s high- heeled boot, facing right, in brown, in blue, in red again, and in yellow, respectively.]

Bailey wants to do more than troll some liberal snowflakes. She wants to discuss vital issues in an engaging manner, the way her favorite right-wing news site, Viddy, does, an unusual site for a teenager to read, even a teenager like her who has taken Gifted Classes since sixth grade.

But, having resumed looking at the kids filing into the school, she admits to herself that if she did discuss vital issues in an engaging manner and thus attract an upper-percentile following, that following would probably never rise above the single digits. Most teenagers, even the allegedly Gifted ones, just don’t care about current events. Actually, most people don’t; they’d rather spend hours each day watching videos about, say, cats riding skateboards, than learn about how this once-great country has turned into a socialist hellhole. Most people find the truth too depressing. She might attract some followers if she dumbed down her content, reducing if not eliminating the news commentary.

No. Her index finger mashes the on-screen PRINT button several times. Someone has to point out this country’s idiocy, even if no one else cares.

revised June 20, 2026

Sheer Exertion

The last excerpt from “The Weekly Farm Report,” a story in progress. For the previous excerpts, please click (in this order) here and here and here. I plan to publish the finished story in my upcoming short-story collection—upcoming in a rather leisurely fashion.

■

Two days later, Tuesday, 8:06 AM, on Truth Social. Another message from President Trump.

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

“You still think this is just his way of negotiating?” Taylor asked a few hours later. “This is much, much worse.” Reading aloud from her phone: “ ‘A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.’ Hitler would have said something like this.”

“Ah yes,” I said, sitting across from her, at our usual Brew Crew table. “In almost every political discussion, no matter the topic, eventually someone brings up Hitler.”

“Well, if you act like a genocidal maniac—”

Taylor sipped her medium peppermint herbal tea, the first time she’d ordered something different at that coffeehouse, at least up to that point in our relationship, though she did still wear the dinosaur hoodie I’d given her.

“You think Trump’ll nuke Iran?” she asked.

“I don’t think he will,” I replied.

“Why not?”

“Because, uh, wait.” I picked up my large double-caramel cappuccino. I took a sip. I carefully set the cup back down onto the table. “Okay, because—okay, Trump would want us control Iran’s oil production after the war, right? But if we nuked them, that would make the oil too radioactive to use.”

Taylor paused. “You know, that explanation almost makes sense.”

“Almost?”

“Trump’s mind has turned to mush, due to dementia or mental illness or too much fast food or whatever. Maybe he wants to turn his negotiating tactic into reality.” Taylor scrolled through her phone for a few seconds. “Plus right after Trump’s unhinged post, JD Vance”—the vice-president—“could have said ‘Heh heh, just kidding, folks. We don’t reeeally plan to wipe out an entire nation.’ But that would have displeased his highness, Donald the Mad King. So instead, Vance said our nation has ‘tools in our toolkit that so far we haven’t decided to use’ against Iran.” Yep, this war is a home-improvement project. And with the nuclear winter that would result after our attack—”

Taylor placed her phone down onto the table.

“The human race had a nice run,” she said, her eyes trying to crowd out her other facial features, her mouth the extreme opposite of the smiley-faced dinosaur’s mouth, her lower lip imitating hummingbird wings (or one hummingbird wing—that poor amputee bird, or maybe not an amputee, maybe just a creature vigorously waving either hi or bye). I’d never seen Taylor look distraught until now, making me feel distraught, though I managed not to show it by sheer exertion.

“Okay,” I said, reaching across the table and covering my hand with hers. “Whatever happens, please remember—we still have each other. We’ll always have each other.”

Her lower lip stopped quivering. Her mouth slowly turned into the hoodie dino’s mouth again.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too,” I said.

Untold seconds of wordless adoration followed, the other coffeehouse customers partaking of beverages as mellow music—strummy acoustic guitar, plunky piano—flowed from the intercom.

“I have a suggestion,” Taylor said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Let’s blow off classes, go to my place, and, heh heh, consummate our relationship. Let’s consummate it all day. This may be the last day life exists on Earth, so we might as well make the best of things.”

A Biological Need

Another excerpt from “The Weekly Farm Report,” a story in progress. For the first two excerpts, please click (in this order) here and here.

■

Easter morning, bright and sunny. I met Taylor outside her dorm.

“Have you seen Trump’s post today on Truth Social?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

“You should. You might think the post is fake. I certainly did. But it’s real.”

“Okay, hold on.”

I took out my phone and went to the above social-media site, a site Trump owned. He had been publicly threatening for a while to destroy Iran’s infrastructure if Iran didn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F—-n’ Strait, you crazy b—–ds, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

(I’ve cleaned up the language a little.)

“So what do you think?” Taylor asked.

“I think Trump didn’t have his coffee first thing this morning, heh heh,” I replied.

“Actually, he’s addicted to diet soda, not to coffee. But right now, it doesn’t matter what he drinks, since it’s far, far, far more important that he threatened to commit war crimes in two days.”

“That’s just his way of negotiating.”

“ ‘Do as we say, or we’ll destroy your country’—a great negotiating tactic.”

“Well, we’re dealing with Iran here. We have to show them we mean business.”

“Yes, we always have to show predominantly non-white countries we mean business. Non-white countries with lots of resources we need, for our businesses.”

“Should we start heading out?”

Taylor paused. “Sure.”

We started walking toward downtown, where we’d planned to have Easter brunch at Taylor’s favorite vegetarian restaurant, Happy Harvest. She’d quit eating meat seven years earlier, when she was thirteen, due to how killing animals for food made her uncomfortable, though she didn’t actually kill them herself or even watch them get killed. She still didn’t like the killing part, but now she also believed that carnivorous diets made you fat and ruined your health. Humans had evolved to the point where they no longer had a biological need to consume animals, she thought. As someone who regularly worked out, she needed extra protein but got it from sources such as tofu, tempeh, and nuts, and sometimes from higher-carb sources such as lentils, requiring her to—

“You don’t deny that even threatening to destroy a country’s bridges and power plants is a war crime under international law?” she asked.

I didn’t respond.

“Well? Do you deny it?”

“I guess not. But—”

“But what?”

Pause.

“Sometimes you have to think outside the box,” I said. “Sorry if this sounds like corporate-speak.”

Blowout Losses

Another excerpt from “The Weekly Farm Report,” a story in progress. For the first excerpt, please click here. (Note: the below text contains some political content that might cause the Laura Loomer, Jared Kushner, Kirk Cameron, Nicki Minaj, the MyPillow guy, and even you to say “Awwwwww, not cool, David, not cool.”)

■

For the next few weeks, Taylor and I spent almost every waking minute together outside of class. We’d eat meals at the dining hall. We’d study at the campus library. We’d go to free movie nights at the student union—Hollywood blockbusters, on Blu-ray (remember that format?), on a big-screen TV, with free bags of popcorn. We’d attend rugby games at the stadium; our college, on American soil, was somewhat Anglophilic, unlike us, though we did like rugby’s ruggedness and, a little facetiously, our team’s kindergartenish uniforms: black shorts, red-and-black-striped T-shirts. (Too bad the team always suffered blowout losses.) And we’d sit at our usual table at Brew Crew, drinking our usual large double-caramel cappuccinos.

“I read somewhere that the Earth used to rotate faster, what, seventy million years ago?” she told me once, mid-cappuccino. “That made the days much shorter. Maybe half an hour shorter? If we’d lived back then, we would have seen thirty minutes less of each other every day. What a tragedy.”

“Yes, but on the bright side, we would have seen a real live dinosaur or two,” I replied.

“Heh heh heh.” She paused. “I used to love dinosaurs as a kid.”

“What kind of dinosaurs?”

“Any kind, as long as they were cuuute.”

A few days later, I gave her a present, something I’d ordered online: a black hoodie with a drawing of a generic-looking dinosaur on it, bright green, with a long neck, long tail, and triangular fins down his or her back. And two black dots for eyes. And a smiley-face style mouth. A really cuuute dinosaur, in other words. Taylor loved that hoodie and wore it everywhere, especially when we’d walk around campus, holding hands, making goo-goo eyes at each other, every so often stopping to kiss for a few seconds—acting the way most first-time sweethearts have acted since time immemorial, probably.

But we didn’t go further than holding hands and kissing. We thought about going further, much further. The furthest we could go. But we were virgins. We wanted to wait for however long it took, to make sure we had a strong, substantive relationship before we gave each other that gift you can give only once, with no returns. Maybe our Catholic upbringings had influenced us more than we’d realized. Or maybe we still would have waited if we’d had different upbringings.

At least we had more time to discuss the news. As you might expect from two political science majors, these discussions could get a little deep. And a little heated. We did have some differences, after all, particularly regarding the news story of the day: Operation Epic Fury, the war that the United States and Israel had launched a month earlier against Iran, to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, or to encourage regime change, or—

“To take the oil,” Taylor contended one afternoon at Brew Crew. “Trump himself has admitted this. He actually said, quote, ‘My favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran,’ unquote. It’s also why he had the president of Venezuela kidnapped, so we could take its oil.”

“All right,” I said. “If it is all about the oil—so what?”

“So what.”

“Yeah. The whole world runs on oil. We can’t have insane, violent nations controlling such a valuable substance, made from dead dinosaurs, by the way, heh heh,” I said, pointing at the dinosaur on Taylor’s hoodie.

Taylor didn’t laugh. “Right. Insane, violent nations, just like—”

“The United States and Israel, yeah yeah.”

“Well, if you don’t want me to call them insane and violent, then maybe they shouldn’t act all insane and violent and war-crimey.” She took a swig of her beverage. “Besides, how much has Operation Epic Fail helped us control the oil? Iran has shut off the Strait of Hormuz, and gas prices have skyrocketed. Trump’s buddies in the oil industry might not care, but—”

She took another swig of her beverage.

“Things will improve soon,” I said.

“I wish I had your level of self-delusion.”

“Why, thank you very much, Taylor.”

“Sorry. I’ve been pretty stressed lately, due to everything.”

“Me too.” I reached for her hand. She permitted me to grasp it.

An Artisanal Hottie

An excerpt from “The Weekly Farm Report,” a story in progress.

■

It wasn’t until college, March Twenty Twenty-six, that I had what I considered my first serious girlfriend. I met her, Taylor, one afternoon in line at the Brew Crew coffeehouse at the student union. The moment I looked at her, my jaw actually dropped in amazement. (Well, it dropped maybe half an inch, but that still counts.)

During my almost two years at that school, I’d seen quite a few hotties, but they’d looked, well, they’d looked a little too hot for me. I don’t mean they were out of my league, though they probably were. I mean they looked unreal in an A.I. kind of way, if anyone remembers A.I.

Taylor was also a hottie, but one with an everyday quality to her, a handmade quality—an artisanal hottie, you could say. Her curly black hair flowed down to her shoulders, in a style that, to me, didn’t look as if its creation had required blueprints or a construction permit or heavy equipment or a hundred-member work crew. Her complexion didn’t have that smooth glossy look adopted by so many women and men, so the adopters can, I don’t know, position themselves above mere mortals? Her huge dark round eyes all but escaped their sockets and embraced you—okay, more like engulfed you, since eyes don’t have arms. Her face featured, from what I can tell, very little makeup—maybe a minuscule amout of red blush and a thin layer of lip gloss.

And she worked out, judging from her tight—well, name an exterior body part of hers, and it was probably tight, but not bulked up, with a little bit of curviness thrown in.

Anyway. We’d each ordered our favorite, a large, double-caramel cappuccino; heh heh, we laughed, what a coincidence. We sat together at a table and started talking.

We found out quite a bit about each other.

For starters, we were sophomores majoring in political science. We’d always cared about current events and such, and with so much stuff happening during the current presidential administration, Trump part two, well, yeah, we both agreed, someone had to care.

Second, we hailed from Robinson Township, a fancy suburban area in Western Pee Ay, with her family living maybe two miles away from mine. We had never run into each other until now, though, due to our having attended different schools and different churches and shopping at different stores and the like. And speaking of churches—

We had grown up Catholic, but since arriving at college, we’d stopped going to church. We’d put our faith on hold, so we could explore other options for helping us develop mentally, emotionally, culturally, and any other adverb we could think of.

Also, we had parents who worked as mid-level executives at various firms at various Robinson industrial parks. My mom worked in investment finance, my dad in mortgages. Vice-versa for Taylor’s parents. We wondered, though, if our respective parents would ever have the chance to advance further career-wise, what with the idiots who always seemed to get promoted over them.

And we used to own female dogs that had two-syllable, six-letter names starting with M—Muffin (a Pomeranian) in my case, and Maisie (a Lhasa Apso) in her case. Our families had adopted the dogs as puppies. The dogs had even passed away a few years earlier from natural causes at the same age, fourteen and a half, Muffin first, then Maisie a week later. Describing what had happened to our pets still choked us up a little, even now.

Taylor and I talked about all this and much more for about an hour. By the end of that hour, we’d finished our beverages, and we’d fallen in love, not necessarily in that order.

Happy Mother’s Day, Loser

Your unremitting hatred made me the acclaimed industrial musicmaker I am today. (Well, acclaimed so far only on Screeeee!, this “noise, etc.” website run by an Indiana concert promoter I once blew.) When I was about fifteen or sixteen, I realized (after years of enduring your abuse) that I could become whatever I wanted because you’d never love me no matter what I said or did, whether I won the Nobel Prize for discovering a cure for cancer or sold cartons of your cigarettes to scuzzy junior high-school students so I could afford a bag of pot or the new Judas Priest album.

But what did I want to become? With my grades, I had no hope of attending Harvard, much less clown college. I had no interest in the Republican brainwashing crap the high school taught, anyway. I thought about blowing my way up the corporate ladder, but I remembered I hated yuppie scum back then. On the other hand, I didn’t want to slave at the sardine plant the way you did, loser.

Then came the ballcap incident. Remember that? I was sixteen, and we were living in that mobile home with the wood grain Con-Tact paper and the cat-piss smell (strange, considering we didn’t own a cat). It was night, and I was on the couch watching a Fall Guy rerun. You were in the kitchen, microwaving something that smelled garlicky. Suddenly—who knows why—you barged toward me and screamed “Where’d you put my goddamn Raiders cap?” “Nowhere,” I muttered; I didn’t even know you had a Raiders cap. “Liar! Goddamn thief!” you screamed louder. Ordinarily I would’ve screamed something back at you then left to smoke pot in the woods, but I decided to sit on the couch and keep quiet, to see how long you’d continue screaming at me. Thirty minutes later you were still at it, not hoarse at all, screaming “goddamn” this and “stupid, ungrateful slut” that, probably a record for you. I wanted to punch you in the mouth so I could shut you up, but I didn’t feel like wasting the effort on you. So I said “Don’t you have something in the microwave?” Amazingly, that shut you up; I thought you’d throw in a final “idiot” or two as a closing thought. You went back into the kitchen, and I ran outside.

That chilly night while toking up in the woods, I thought about your screeching voice, your broken-record insults packed with rage, and decided to become a…slut for real, just so I wouldn’t disappoint you in at least one area.

Five years and a million screw-partners later, I had just finished screwing this pustular air-guitarist named Austin in a welfare hotel. His face looked completely made of Braille and creeped me out; I had to punish him for offending my eyeballs (and for lasting only a minute in bed), so while he was in the bathroom pooping, I got dressed, took several records he had lying about, and left, thinking I could sell them at Spin Me Round Vintage Vinyl. Back at my apartment, I looked at them: typical metal sludge, plus one called Tension Headache from a local group I hadn’t heard before, Dry Orifice. I put on the album: no lyrics, no melody, just 30 minutes of clanging bells, chugging engines, and an unbelievable high-pitched scrape. I hated every second of this record, then realized that if anyone could make money doing this, I could; I’d endured your screaming for years, so I knew what noise was.

So I attended the next Dry Orifice concert, held in some pesthole with dripping cinderblock walls. After the show I met the group’s frontman, a skinny gray 38-year-old named XQ. I screwed him several times, got into the band as a clanger (me, with no musical training, as if I needed any) and began the musical ascent that continues today when I’m not working at the sardine plant—in clerical, okay? So thanks for introducing me to noise, for inadvertently causing my success. Happy Mother’s Day, loser. Oh, and did you ever find your goddamn Raiders cap?

Originally posted on my long-defunct website, Pixel Stupor, April 22, 2002 (story revised May 2-3, 2002)

The Cheese Grater

The third excerpt from “Our Putative Couple,” a work in progress. For the first two excerpts, please click here and here.

■

October 10, 2025:

“We’ve received some concerning reports about you.”

“Concerning reports? Wow, no one has ever written any concerning reports about me before. How many of these concerning reports have you received?”

“More than one.”

“One and a half?”

“Ha ha, sure, okay, one and half. One and three-quarters if it makes you happy.”

Exactly a month earlier, via a series of posts on X (the social media platform that Livin’ la Vida Locher will call the Spot), the United States Department of Education announced it had frozen US $380 million in federal research grants for Garnetville University, due to, first, the school’s “failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination— all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry”; and second, the school’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs” that have fomented “division and hatred based on race, color, national origin, and other protected identity characteristics” and thus worsened “intellectual and civil rights conditions.” To have its funding restored, the school needed to “enter into discussions” with the government “regarding institutional reforms” the school “should implement as soon as possible to ensure a safe learning environment for all students while safeguarding viewpoint diversity.”

Olivia thought Garnetville University, her employer, should sue the Trump administration on First Amendment grounds. Instead, the school capitulated, which didn’t surprise her, considering its reliance on sweet, sweet military contracts. So bye-bye DEI. And helloooo to the school’s latest employee, on the job for a little over a week: Bailey Jennings, white, cisgender, twenty-eight, bias monitor (a new position), sitting behind a desk, with Olivia sitting across from her, in a cavernous office in the Administrative Annex, a gray two-story slab with a pebbly façade.

“You know what everyone on campus calls this building?” Olivia asks.

No response.

“The cheese grater. It looks like one?”

“Ha ha, yeah, it does,” Bailey says. “According to—”

“I created that nickname.”

“Congratulations. According to the reports I’ve received, you showed a certain film in class a couple days ago.” Bailey, reading aloud from the laptop on her desk: “Doctor Farnsworth [a 1987 British and American coproduction]?”

“Yes, I did show that,” Olivia responds.

“And you discussed the radical gender ideology it promotes?”

“Ah, yes, radical gender ideology. A fair and balanced term.”

“Did you discuss the ideology?”

“If your concerning reports say I did, then yes, I did.”

“You discussed it favorably.”

“Again, if your concerning reports say I did—I trust their veracity.”

The film opens in 1867, when a white, presumably cisgender, eighteen-year-old, orphaned, homeless London resident named Henrietta Grubb, who has always had an interest in what she calls “doctorin’—sorry, doctoring,” wants to improve her socioeconomic status by earning a degree from “the most pres-tee-gee-ous educational institution in good old London town,” the Dillingham University School of Medicine. Only “the crème de la crop” gets into that school. Plus, thanks to “some bloody generous, whaddaya call ’em, scholarships, those croppers can attend grattees—uh, gratis, yes, you drink grat teas at tea time, from the grat bush in Southern Grattonia.”

However, she knows that due to the almost nonexistent education she received, she would never pass the entrance exams. Plus the school does not admit women anyway, due to the male supremacist attitudes that permeate almost every aspect of life during that time. So she disguises herself as a man named Henry Farnsworth (short hair, long trousers, waistcoat, bowler hat, last name derived from Farnsworth’s Rejuvenating Elixir, the patent medicine his Mum used to take); shows up at that school unannounced, first day of the Michaelmas (pronounced “Mih-kull-muhs”) term, the autumn term; and starts attending classes while not formally enrolling, telling professors who don’t see his name on the roster “Oh, yes, well, the good old registry must have mislaid my forms, but of course you’d expect that, considering the mountain of documents there—such a huge and treacherous mountain, you need a Sherpa to guide you through.”

Henry performs well in academics, particularly in anything medical-related. He resides in the student dorm, a much better place than the alley where he used to live prior to changing his identity. He forms friendships with most of his (white, presumably cisgender male) classmates, even outdrinking them at the local pub (his classmates vomiting loudly offscreen as calliope music plays on the soundtrack). But then his archenemy, the class bully, Reginald Avington-Trim (white and presumably cisgender male himself), wondering how someone of such obviously low social status could get into that school (“You can hear the stink of the slums in his beastly enunciation, excuse the mixed metaphors!”), does some investigating, from which he discovers Henry had never actually applied to their school. Reginald informs the administration; thus, Henry appears before the school’s (white, presumably cisgender male) disciplinary board, presided over by the dean.

“So, Mr. Farnsworth, based upon what we have heard here today, please tell us why we should not expel you and have you arrested for fraudulent impersonation,” the dean says.

Henry rises from his chair. He pauses. “I’ll admit I deceived you, sir. I deceived everyone at this school. But I—I—I didn’t have a posh upbringing. Of course, that doesn’t excuse what I did, but it might explain why I did it. You see, unlike certain of the wealthy blokes who attend this fine institution, blokes who shall remain nameless—well, unlike them, I don’t think I automatically deserve anything, and that includes a medical degree. Sure, I want a degree. But I want to earn it. I want to earn it so much, I’ll work twice as hard as the other students. No, thrice as hard. I’ve had to work for what I’ve achieved. That might explain why, since childhood, I’ve always—always—wanted to attend this school. I wouldn’ta chosen this school, a great school, a hallowed school, a demanding school, if I didn’t want to apply myself.” Henry lowers himself to one knee. He lowers his other knee. He clasps his hands. “Please let me apply myself. Please. So I can join the best profession in the world. The doctorin’ profession.” Slight pause, then, almost inaudibly: “Please.”

The board makes its decision. Afterwards, triumphal orchestral music (heavy on the brass) plays on the soundtrack.

The music continues as, over the next two decades, in a montage (every Nineteen-Eighties film features at least one montage, right?), Henry graduates highest in his class; lands a job as a surgeon at London’s best hospital, St. Calder’s, successfully performing risky operations that adhere to the film’s PG rating by featuring not much blood and no visible viscera; rises to the position of chief surgeon; adopts proper English (“The Queen could take elocution lessons from me, gratis, of course”); and moves into a country manor (with loyal country servants who now provide the film’s mispronunciation-and-malaprop-related comic relief). And he falls in love for the first time, with the white, cisgender, much younger, much wealthier Lady Florence “Flossie” Hargreaves and vice-versa.

One afternoon, as they stroll through the Hargreaves estate’s topiary garden (consisting partly of an almost unnoticeable matte painting), Henry tells her “I very, very truly much want your hand in marriage, Flossie. But”—foreboding piano-and-synth instrumental music starts playing on the soundtrack—“I have a secret. A secret I’ve never shared with anybody. A secret pertaining to, I suppose you could say my essence. Or my corporeal reality, if you want to use more sophisticated language. Years ago, I made certain choices regarding—”

“Do you think taxpayer dollars should pay for spreading transgenderism at school?” Bailey asks.

Olivia chuckles.

“Do you?”

“Sure, sure, whatever.”

“You’ve certainly praised in class what you call ‘gender-affirming care for young people.’ ”

“That I have.”

“So you don’t mind child genital mutilation?”

“You mean gender-affirming surgery? Trans kids rarely have that type of surgery.”

Bailey chuckles. “Sure, whatever.”

“Do you think they should have cosmetic surgery instead? Lots and lots and lots of cosmetic surgery?”

“Onto a different topic.”

“You don’t mind if twelve-year-old girls—”

“What do you think about Israel?”

“What do I think about Israel.” Olivia, scratching her right temple with her right forefinger: “Hmm.” She stops scratching. “Well, speaking as a Jew—and you do know about my Jewishness, right? Of course you do. The government knows everything. Well, Republican governments do. Anyway, speaking as a Jew, I have to say”—pause—“ohhhh, Israel, I love ya, but”—shorter pause—“I think we need some time apart.”

“Ha ha ha, yeah, you love Israel, sure.”

“But I do.” Olivia, languidly chanting while languidly pumping her fist: “Go, go, Israel. Go, go, Israel. Keep committing genocide. Yaaaay, Israel.”