Justin Taylor - The Gospel of Anarchy

Stuckins is a self-described libertarian, basically an anarchist from the other direction, though of course if Thomas ever said that to him he’d probably be answered with a boot to the head. (Nobody likes to hear the truth about themselves. Didn’t Jesus say that?) The rent’s low, almost stupid-low, and they pay it in cash, at Stuckins’s request, which is good because most of them don’t have checking accounts. Thomas used to, but he’s pretty sure it automatically closed after he drained it. Plus the cash thing makes Thomas think ole Jim’s a tax cheat, which he respects for all the obvious reasons. These were the terms of their agreement: “Money shows up in my mail every month, you’ll never see me over your house, less you call me ’cause something broke. It ever stops showing up is fine too, but then just don’t be in there when I get there.” In sum, renting this house is about as humane and nonexploitative as any transaction possibly could be while still taking place within the context of a capitalist mercantile exchange. It was, naturally, a handshake deal.

And of course Katy took this whole arrangement, when it was offered to them, as a miracle. Quote unquote.

Right when they got the house, Parker reappeared in town. Miracles sure were in ready supply that week. It was the first time in months that any of them had seen him. Something had changed — happened or failed to happen — out there in the woods. Thomas didn’t know what that thing might have been, he wasn’t sure that he would want to know, but he was sure that something had. Parker was different now, closed-off, distant, and genuinely spooky. His head was often cocked to one side, like he was trying to listen to fairly complicated directions being whispered to him by someone none of the rest of them could see.

It was over Thomas’s considerable objection that Katy offered Parker his own bedroom in the house. Since there were three of them splitting the rent, and Katy and Liz were sharing a bed, the idea had been that the third room would stay open, for an art studio or a practice room for the band they were always talking about starting, or a crash space for traveling kids. Whatever else they could think of. But Katy broke unilaterally with the consensus, an absolute betrayal, and she did it even though she knew that Parker had no money, and that that state of affairs would never change. She was prepared to take on his burden, though she herself was borrowing money from Liz, who had gotten it from her mother, who had given her daughter $387 as a moving present, then announced herself tapped out. Katy thought God would see them through, and of course it’s pointless to argue with anyone whose side God is on — though Thomas had been more than willing to give it his level best — but it turned out not to matter anyway, because Parker didn’t want to come.

Katy begged him. They were at Clasen’s, Thomas was working, and she’d already strained Parker’s patience by bringing him here. Thomas watched them go back and forth for nearly an hour, thankful he couldn’t hear a word either one was saying. Eventually Parker relented and agreed to go with her, but when they got to the property he wouldn’t set foot inside.

He never left any evidence of his campsite when he wasn’t actually in it — security culture, he said — so he had the tent with him, in his backpack, when he came over. He set it up in the yard, as far away from the house as he could stake it. Then he christened the house after the site of Jonah’s perdition, a rebuke that could hardly have been lost on Katy, but it had been her bright idea to give him the honor of blessing the place with a name. Thomas thought, personally, that as far as names went, “Fishgut” was a pretty good one, and he liked to think that they’d all learned a valuable lesson about playing with fire and getting burned. Heartbroken, but unflinching in her loyalty, Katy herself painted and hung the sign.

Then, on the morning of the third day, they found the tent flap open, the tent itself abandoned. He was gone.

That was seven months ago. Where he went, and why, remains a matter of contention between Katy and Thomas. They agree that Parker must have reached a critical juncture in his spiritual development. He’s a true knight of faith now, Katy says, a full-sprung saint. She believes he’s left the tent here as a covenant of his promise to return to them. In the meantime, she’s filled the tent with all the glass husks of her prayer candles after the candles themselves have burnt away. If Parker ever really does come back here he’s going to have to enter the house, finally, or else sleep in the leafy dirt, because his tent is not habitable in its present condition, having been turned by Katy into the world’s first and only anarchist shrine.

Thomas has a somewhat different interpretation of Parker’s flight. He thinks that a basically good punk finally let his own bullshit get the best of him and lost his fucking head. He likes to think that Parker will come to his senses, develop some genuine revolutionary consciousness in place of all this hoodoo. Or that maybe he did, and that that was what set him running — escape from the tyranny of Katy’s eager discipleship. He could be out there doing stuff with Earth First! or something else awesome. He could be with the Ruckus Society, getting ready for Seattle in November. But that’s probably just Thomas’s romantic streak talking, because it’s where he wants to be — putting his skills, himself, his body, to some use in this world, instead of hiding out here in this sleepy college town, praying for rain. Even an atheist Jew like him knows that old spiritual about how it’s gonna be the fire next time. Thomas wants to be kindling, or better yet, a STRIKE ANYWHERE match.

Realistically, Parker probably played the long odds once too often and is in jail somewhere for shoplifting and/or vagrancy. Or if he’s still free he’s probably the same as ever, only worse — out in the Southwest maybe, ranting at the crazy-making moon. One way or the other, Thomas doesn’t think they’ll ever see him again. Though God knows he’s been wrong before.

For example, he assumed that after Parker left, Katy and Liz would start to get over all his horseshit. How could they not, right? The guy sold them out like a million different ways. Thomas stopped arguing with Katy about Parker because it seemed QED to him that she’d let the thing die, find something else to project all her passion onto — hell, he thought they’d be a Food Not Bombs house by now. It astounds and disgusts him that instead Katy has continued Parker’s work and developed this weird little following within the community of Gainesville anarcho-punk: a sub-sub-subculture. And never mind that its very existence puts to question the ethos it ostensibly champions. Nobody hated crowds and groups like Parker. He could barely stand to have friends . Well, perhaps twisting Parker’s call to radical solitude into the pretext for punk rock love-ins is Katy’s true and lasting revenge on her AWOL master, though Thomas does wonder if the perversion is conscious. Anyway, don’t most disciples wind up turning their masters’ work inside out? So isn’t this really like the most typical, banal thing imaginable? The pattern is the breaking of the pattern — or whatever the fuck it was Parker used to say. Who has time for this Deleuze and Guattari meet Kierkegaard shit?

They gather at Fishgut on Sunday nights, biweekly, to get wasted and talk about their socio-spiritual development. They trade shoplifting tips and talk about energy projection and polyamory, or worse yet, read their poems to each other. Sloppy orgies break out on the living room couches, or the far dark corner of the porch. Someone invariably remembers there’s paint under the sink and then more New Age neo-Pagan pseudo-Gnostic (who can tell the difference at this point?) drivel sprouts up on the walls like bright stupid flowers. Thomas could, maybe should make a point of being elsewhere when they come over, but then it’s like who the fuck are they to run him out of his own house? Plus sometimes someone brings a guitar, or he gets his cock sucked. The main thing is to hide in his room during Katy’s homily, and/or, Jesus save us from ourselves, the open mic.