Jarett Kobek - I Hate the Internet

Amanda to Ashley: I NEVER LIKED THIS STUCK UP CUNT AND SHES BOWLING WITH UR MAN

Ashley to Amanda: im comin rite now

But Ashley’s brother, with whom she lived, had borrowed her car. She had to walk from the northern part of the city. By the time that she arrived, Ellen and Maximiliano had gone to their respective homes.

Amanda gave Ashley a ride over to Maximiliano’s house. Ashley thought she’d catch Ellen and Maximiliano in the act of betrayal, but the only thing she found was her boyfriend sitting on his mother’s couch, eating toxic junk food and playing BioShock Infinite on his X-Box 360.

“Where’s your whore?” asked Ashley.

“What?” asked Maximiliano.

“Ellen,” said Ashley. “Amanda saw you.”

“Aw baby,” said Maximiliano, “It wasn’t nothing. We were just hanging out.”

Maximiliano spent the next few hours explaining the situation. He was soothing Ashley. He was telling her the truth about why he hadn’t told her the truth. He’d wanted to keep her from freaking out because he didn’t think she’d believe him that nothing was going on. He stroked her head and let her cry. He kissed her face.

Mamá Rojas overheard everything. None of it improved her opinion of Ashley.

When Ellen was dating Maximiliano, they had a ton of sex. They had lost their virginities to each other and fucked in every possible way. They had seen each other clutched in orgasm. Countless times. They’d been in love.

On one evening late in the relationship, when they were both drunk and more than a little stoned, Maximiliano convinced Ellen to let him take photographs of them having sex.

“I just want to have something to remember,” he’d said.

He used his cellphone.

Ellen knew this was a terrible idea but she lived in a culture enraptured with its consumer electronics. These consumer electronics were inevitably incorporated into people’s sex lives.

Sometimes it was gross, like the unconscious symbolism of a television remote control employed as a dildo.

Most of the time it was simpler.

It was the Twenty-First Century.

Everyone fucked on camera.

They didn’t end up having vaginal sex. While Ellen was performing oral sex on Maximiliano, he ejaculated into her mouth and onto her face. It was something about the combination of the camera and the act and the way that the camera made him see the act. He took pictures of it all.

While they were in bed, Ellen asked to see the evidence. She had sucked his dick with such love but none of that came across in the photos. She just looked awkward and weird.

“Can you delete these?”

“I wanna keep them,” said Maximiliano. “For the future, you know. I love you, baby.”

Ellen said okay, fine.

When they broke up, she insisted that he delete them.

“I’ll come to your house and tell Mamá,” she said.

He told her not to worry. He said he deleted them.

A week after the bowling incident, Ashley Nelson visited the Rojas household. She screwed out Maximiliano’s brains. He fell asleep.

While he was snoring, Ashley found his cellphone and looked for evidence of his infidelity. She’d never done this before. She couldn’t find anything.

Ashley woke up Maximiliano.

“I don’t feel so good,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Stomach ache,” she said. “I need some medicine. Do you guys have Kaopectate?”

Maximiliano went into the bathroom and looked through the medicine cabinet. He remembered seeing a bottle of Kaopectate.

He couldn’t find any. What he didn’t know is that Ashley had removed the old Kaopectate. The bottle was in the bottom of her purse.

He returned to his bedroom.

“I couldn’t find any,” he said.

“Can you go get me some?” she asked. “It’s killing me.”

She gave her very best groan.

Maximiliano took his car and went to find some Kaopectate. Ashley sat down as his computer and started going through his files. She was seeking evidence of his infidelity. She had never done this before.

She found the pictures of Ellen performing oral sex on her boyfriend.

Now Ashley’s stomach really did hurt. She wanted to throw up. She felt like she could die. The sky had crashed in on her head.

She logged into her email account. She emailed herself the pictures.

When Maximiliano came back home, Ashley thanked him for the medicine. She drank some Kaopectate and said she had to go home. He offered to drive her. She said it was okay. She’d be okay. She just wanted to sleep in her own bed.

It started somewhere around eight in the morning. Ellen’s phone beeped out the arrival of phonecalls and text messages and voicemail. The first text message was from her second cousin. That was weird. They hadn’t texted in years.

CHECK YR EMAIL .

Ellen checked her email.

There were about thirty messages.

The nicest read, “I’m sorry to tell you this but I think you were hacked. There are some pictures of you online with your name that you should probably see. You probably recognize them but maybe you don’t.”

The email concluded with a link to a webpage.

And it was on that webpage that Ellen saw herself performing oral sex on her high school boyfriend. Her full name was attached. She was on the Internet.

Ashley emailed the link not only to Ellen but also to everyone who knew Ellen. Old friends, people from high school, teachers from high school, Ellen’s boss at the insurance company. Ellen’s family.

Because Ellen was a normal human being, she didn’t know that she could hide her friends list on Facebook. Her friends were visible to the world.

Ashley sent links to all of Ellen’s friends. The ones who didn’t read the message from Ashley received the link in messages from other people to whom Ashley had sent it.

Almost everyone who knew Ellen saw photographs of Ellen performing oral sex on her high school boyfriend.

All the while, Facebook was making money. Every message that people sent each other about Ellen’s public shame arrived alongside advertisements for electric razors, pet food and the Child Brain Health Research Institute.

All the while, Google was making money. Whenever anyone searched for Ellen’s name, Google serving targeted advertisements and collecting user data for future exploitation.

There was not going to be a move to Los Angeles. There was not going to be any career in film. There was only a long stretch of crippling student debt and elder care in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

There was only life in a city where at least half the population had seen photographs of Ellen performing oral sex on her high school boyfriend.

She could change her name and hope that no future employers would make the connection, but this meant giving up her identity and did nothing whatsoever to alleviate the mental trauma.

She wasn’t kind of famous like Adeline and, unlike Adeline, she had nothing to sell.

Ellen was twenty-two years old and her life was over.

Christine worked as an assistant librarian at UCSF’s Parnassus campus. Adeline had never inquired as to how she got the job.

Adeline never asked about anyone else’s work or living situations. It seemed rude.

Adeline met Christine at an event for Baby’s Annie Zero .

The event was held at City Lights, a bookstore in North Beach famous for its association with the Beat Writers of the 1950s and 1960s.

It was the best bookstore in San Francisco. It was also the best bookstore in America.

Events at City Lights were planned by a man named Peter Maravelis, who didn’t have eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis. If Peter Maravelis believed that an event would draw a large crowd, the event was held downstairs. Smaller events were held upstairs in the intimacy of the poetry room.