Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

The don says, Why, Joey?

Blam. Blam.

At the end of the song, Joey has become the new don. In sports films, in crime films, in war films, in films of exploration, adventure, and detections, there is the implication that there are codes of honor between men, complex, undetectable, delicate understandings that govern male conduct, that dictate how and when they conduct their violences, but this is not true. There is nothing but what one feels the right to, if one has no guiding principle. In this place, there is no consensus.

The Millings Kiosk promotional film began with shots of the Hub fifty years ago, when it was still called Chicago, under control of a regional government after the brief collapse of the federal administration. It was an ugly city, devoted to pleasure. Chicago was a place where one was not forced to consume prudently, so nobody did.

People murmured to each other.

Then the first Millings Kiosk. They began in condominium lobbies for the convenience of the wealthy. Someone had the idea to put them in poor neighborhoods, where there were no grocery stores or department stores stocked with premium detergents and branded socks. A shot of the Millings people making excursions to the South Side, pre-pacification, to install library and pharmacy kiosks.

Stock footage, diversity, smiling.

Millings Senior with a young, built, mustached Uncle Al circa the establishment of the Hub. A wolf whistle in the crowd. They were handing out kiosk cards to guests.

I convinced Jonson to promote the nosy intern at the Slaw to junior editor. The staff indignant. I told Jonson she was a savant and would make his content aggregator a nationwide destination. The young woman wanted an editorship at the Slaw in return for her help adding my edits to the Millings Kiosk promotional film we were watching.

She said, Because I could go to jail for tampering with these corporate servers, although that’s unlikely, I need something more than money. I want to have a legitimate career.

I said, Millings Kiosk won’t be able to tell who hacked into their server. I was over at their offices a few months ago, to see Millings’s wife, and there are less than five employees, legacies of the good old days.

While the intern was looking for Uncle Al at the beginning of last month, she patched into the security cameras on the insurance tower across from the Millings Kiosk office. Although it is illegal to do so, it transpired that, by accident or by design, one of the cameras looked into Millings’s private residence, on the floor above the office. Since nobody in the insurance tower was actively monitoring its hundreds of cameras, this had gone unnoticed.

I spliced in the security camera footage where the narrator was explaining Millings Kiosk moved to its present location seventeen years ago. The family tower filmed by a drone flying in a rising corkscrew. At Millings’s window, I cut to the security footage, but left the voice-over.

The narrator said, The baton was passed to Rolf Millings, the third generation of the Millings family, to move the company into the modern era.

Millings in a robe, looking through a telescope at the street. The telescope moved a little to track people as they walked. Although one couldn’t see his bottom half because of the angle, it became clear after a few seconds that he was masturbating.

The narrator said, The Millings Kiosk Tower is a marvel of its era. It has been singled out for historical preservation. The apartments afford the privacy of the country in the heart of the Hub.

A collective intake of breath. Someone behind me dropped a glass. Where was Millings? I had cut the footage into a loop. Maybe eight seconds had passed. Stifled giggles growing. The party had been going some time, people had been drinking. The giggles spreading, unfolding, amplifying into laughter. A series of thuds and crashes as various Millings functionaries tried to shut off the video. The whole room shaking with chuckles. A judgment on Millings. Some going for the door, some savoring an intense merriment. The video was turned off.

There was Millings, bent over a little to be less conspicuous, slipping out the fire door. Before he sent the video of Osvald attacking Uncle Al to Dr. Lisa, I had considered his voyeurism beneath mention, not within the realm of our business, but he had crossed the line first, as he had when he ordered Uncle Al to attack me.

Noises of disgust as the ramifications of Millings’s behavior became clear. He could be prosecuted, although he wouldn’t be convicted, because it wasn’t explicit what he was doing beneath the frame of the shot. It only suggested an activity. The lights were left off for almost two minutes, until someone thought to flip the switch.

When the lights came on, and the party guests saw one another’s faces, another gust of laughter swept through the room, and it kept whipping through the crowd, snapping in my ears, taking from Millings what he held dear. It is hard to keep from laughing when others are. I was not laughing. It would be cruel to poke fun.

Kids Craft, an organization dedicated to passing on traditional regional techniques of distillation to at-risk inner-city youth. The Akhenaten Society. The Destitute Columnist’s Electricity Fund. Beans for Bums, dedicated to serving the finest pour-over single-origin fair-trade coffee to the homeless. The Ancient Grains Reconciliation Fund, for healing the schism between the proponents of freekeh and the partisans of sorghum. Appleholics Anonymous. Wabi Sabi Club. The League of Asexual Voters. The Fund for Erotic Antiquities. Sister Joan’s Sanctuary for Private Rest, a home for people who have suffered adverse effects from cosmetic procedures. Task Force for Awareness of Calorie Intolerance. The Center for the Honest Depiction of Yoga. Gardens Not Garters. The Poutine Society. Better Bistro Bureau. Noli Me Tangerine, an organization opposing the crossbreeding of citrus fruits. Citizens for the Reinstatement of Quiet Libraries. Mothers Against Disingenuous Decorators.

The skirmishes between Isabel and me that were calamitous enough to earn specific nomenclature, including the Cecil’s Bar Campaign and Matt’s Wedding Ambush, can be blamed on Isabel’s fantastical relationship to observed time. I would ask her to arrive twenty, then fifty, then seventy minutes before we were supposed to meet to ensure punctuality. She would sense what time I meant, attempt to compensate, and would be late.

I would huff myself into a fury in advance of arriving at the theater, restaurant, or bar, calculating when she would begin to layer on her maquillage, choose her outfit, gather keys and purse, kiss the cat, remember where she’d parked, charge her Pinger, look up the address, etc.

She would say, Did you want to see me mope around the bar in sweatpants?

I would say, Yes, that was my hope, one hour ago.

Inevitably I surrendered to the apprehension that she wasn’t going to show up. She was in a morgue cooling or tied up in a basement. Banishing my fantasies, I’d resolve to forgive her, test the smile I’d flex when she dashed in, quip how her watch was correct, but when she arrived, my kindness flapped off to roost in another skull.

She said, Aren’t I worth the wait?

I said, Yes, but.

She said, Am I or am I not?

I said, Aren’t I worth respect?

She said, Your timetables are a child’s fantasy.

I said, The hell they are.

She said, Don’t turn our fun into a chore.

Lateness is how the insecure demonstrate power. Osvald’s tardiness was learned from his father. Some avoid and some exaggerate their parents’ flaws. The waiting person was meant to be grateful when Osvald arrived. He sought attention. Through him ran a seam of grandiosity. He moved as slow as was feasible. It took him an hour and a half to move his bowels, as if he were the Sun King. He had to be perpetually fetched.