David Wallace - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Q.

‘What if I told you she said it wasn’t the violation or the terror or the pain or any of that, that it — that the biggest part, afterwards, of trying to like structure her mind around it, to fit what happened into the world of her, that the worst part the hardest part of it was now knowing she could think of herself that way too if she wanted? As a thing. That it’s totally possible to think of yourself not as you or even a person but just a thing, just like it was for the four guys. And how easy and powerful that was to do that, to think that, even while the violation’s going on, to just split yourself off and like float up to the ceiling and there you are looking down at this thing getting worse and worse things done to it and the thing is you and it doesn’t mean anything, there’s nothing that it just automatically means, and it’s a very intensive freedom and power in many ways, that now all bets are off and everything’s taken away and you can do anything to anybody or even to yourself if you want because who cares because what does it really matter because what are you anyway just this thing to shove a Jack Daniel’s bottle into, and who cares if it’s a bottle what difference does it make if it’s a dick or a fist or a plumber’s helper or this cane right here — what would it be like to be able to be like this? You think you can imagine it? You think you can but you can’t. But what if I said now she could? What if I told you she could because she’s had this happen and she totally knows it’s possible to be just a thing but just like Victor Frankl that every minute from then on minute by minute if you want you can choose to be more if you want, you can choose to be a human being and have it mean something? Then what would you say?’

Q.

‘I’m calm, don’t worry about me. It’s like Frankl’s thing of learning it’s not automatic, how it’s a matter of choice to be a human being with sacred rights instead of a thing or a rat and most people are so smug and knee-jerk and walking around asleep they don’t even know it’s something you have to actually choose for yourself that only has meaning when all the like props and stage-settings that let you just go around smugly assuming you’re not a thing are ripped away and broken because all of a sudden now the world understands you as a thing, everybody else thinks you’re a rat or a thing and now it’s up to you, you’re the only one that can decide if you’re more. What if I said I wasn’t even married? Then what? Then it’s showtime, believe you me baby, which believe me everybody that’s never had that kind of total attack and violation happen where everything they thought they were just automatically born with that smugly lets them walk around assuming they’re automatically more than a thing gets skinned off and folded up and put in a Jack Daniel’s bottle and shoved up your ass by four drunk guys who your suffering and violation was just their idea of fun, a way to kill a couple hours, no big deal, none of them probably even remember it, that nobody that hasn’t had that kind of thing really happen to them ever gets to be this broad afterwards, to always deep-down know it’s always a choice, that it’s you that is making yourself up second by second every second from now on, that the only one that thinks you’re even a person every second is you and you could stop anytime you wanted and whenever you want go back to just being a thing that eats fucks shits tries to sleep goes for dialysis and gets square bottles shoved so far up their ass it breaks by four guys that knee-jerked you in the balls to make you bend over that you didn’t even know or ever saw before and never did anything to to make it make any sense for them to want to knee you or rape you or ever ask for that kind of total degradation. That don’t even know your name, that do this to you and don’t even know your name, you don’t even have a name. You don’t automatically have a name, it’s not something you just have, you know. To get to find out you even have to choose to even have a name or to be more than just a machine programmed with different reactions when they do different things to you when they think of them to pass the time until they get bored and that it’s all up to you every second afterwards and what if I said it happened to me? Would that make a difference? You that are all full of knee-jerk politics about your ideas about victims? Does it have to be a woman? You think, maybe you think you can imagine it better if it was a woman because her external props look more like yours so it’s easier to see her as a human being that’s being violated so if it was somebody with a dick and no tits it wouldn’t be as real to you? Like if it wasn’t Jewish people in the Holocaust if it was just me in the Holocaust? Who do you think would care then? Do you think anybody cared about Victor Frankl or admired his humanity until he gave them Man’s Search for Meaning? I’m not saying it happened to me or him or my wife or even if it happened but what if it did? What if I did it to you? Right here? Raped you with a bottle? Do you think it’d make any difference? Why? What are you? How do you know? You don’t know shit.’

From Leckie & Webster’s Connotationally Gender-Specific Lexicon of Contemporary Usage, a 600gb DVD 3Product with 1.6gb of Hyperavailable Hot Text Keyed to 11.2gb of Contextual, Etymological, Historical, Usage, and Gender-Specific Connotational Notes, Available Also with Lavish Illustrative Support in All 5 Major Sense-Media*, ©2096 by R. Leckie DataFest Unltd. (NYPHDC/US/4Grid).

* (compatible hardware required)

date 3( d t ) n. [2 °C English, from Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin data, feminine past participle of dare, to give.] 1 Informal. (see also soft date) a.Consequent to the successful application for a License to Parent (KEY at PROCREATIVITY; at BREED/ (v.) ; at PARENT/ (v.) ; at OFFSPRING, SOFT), the process of voluntarily submitting one’s nucleotide configurations and other Procreativity Designators to an agency empowered by law to identify an optimal female neurogenetic complement for the purposes of Procreative Genital Interface (KEY at PROCREATIVITY; at COMPLEMENTARITY, OPTIMAL NEUROGENETIC; at P.G.I.; at NEUROGENETICS, STATISTICAL). b.A living female P.G.I.-complement identified via the procedures denoted by date 31.a.

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date 31.a USAGE/CONTEXTUAL NOTE:“You are too old by far to be the type of man who checks his replicase levels before breakfast and has high-baud macros for places like Fruitful Union P.G.I. Coding or SoftSci Deoxyribonucleic Intercode Systems in his Mo.SyS deck, and yet here you are, parking the heads on your V.F.S.A. telediddler and checking your replicase levels and padding your gen-résumé like a randy freshman, preparing for what appears for all the world to be an attempt at a soft date” ( McInerney et seq. [via OmniLit TRF Matrix], 2068).

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2. Vulgar. ‡(see also hard date) a.The creation and/or use of a Virtual Female Sensory Array (KEY at V.F.S.A.; at Historical Note for REALITY, VIRTUAL; at TELEDIDDLER; at COITUS, DIGITAL; at POLIOEROTIC; at OBJECTIFICATION, LITERAL) for the purposes of Simulated Genital Interface (KEY at S.G.I.). b.A drive-captured and reusable V.F.S.A., to which proper names and various sexual and/or personality characteristics are sometimes applied by overwrought male users (KEY at MESH, DFX; at BABE, CYBER-; at FEMALE, HARD; at SYNDROME, V.F.S.A.- PERSONALIZATION).