Jarett Kobek - I Hate the Internet

Typically, both the rectum and the anus were used for the expulsion of solid human waste, so a certain frisson emerged from both the waste-factor and pain-factor of the rectum and the anus being penetrated by the male sexual organ.

Anal sex and its attendant frisson were given a great deal of value on the Internet.

Mehmet had invented this euphemism for anal sex during one of J. Karacehennem’s visits to İzmir.

One night in April of 2011, J. Karacehennem was woken at 4AM by the sounds of Mehmet’s next door neighbor having sex with her boyfriend.

At first he mistook her wailing for a ghost because the wailing sounded like the real world representation of the ghostly wailing present in Floyd Gottfredson’s classic Mickey Mouse newspaper serial House of the Seven Haunts, in which the ghosts made sounds like:

HOOHOOHOOHOOOHOOOOHOOO.

Then he remembered that he didn’t believe in ghosts and that if ghosts did exist they probably wouldn’t make sounds like the ghosts in Floyd Gottfredson’s classic Mickey Mouse newspaper serial House of the Seven Haunts .

Then he remembered that in Floyd Gottfredson’s classic Mickey Mouse newspaper serial House of the Seven Haunts, the ghosts had turned out to be fake.

Then he decided that the howling must be that of an owl.

Then he remembered that Turkey doesn’t have owls.

Then he remembered that he had no idea whether or not Turkey had owls, but that if Turkey did have owls, they probably weren’t in the urban environment of İzmir and they probably didn’t sound like the ghosts in Floyd Gottfredson’s classic Mickey Mouse newspaper serial House of the Seven Haunts.

Then he woke up a little more and realized that people were having sex on the other side of the wall next to his head.

J. Karacehennem spoke to his father the next morning.

“Mehmet,” he said, “she’s so loud!”

“I know what is going on in there with sürtük , but I can’t say it to you. She is doing a keetchy-keetchy special thing. She is having The Agony and the Ecstasy .”

“I thought this was a repressive country with restrictive sexual mores! I thought that you worshipped Allah and followed the religious strictures of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)! I’ve been sold a lot of lies!”

“Eh, kid,” said Mehmet, “it’s İzmir. Sikişmiş İzmir. We are a city of infidels. Gavur İzmir. What can you do?”

“Anyway,” said J. Karacehennem to his father, “I’m not really sure I could do another Fifty Shades of Grey. I don’t really know much about bondage or domination.”

“Kid,” a father asked his son, “Can’t you learn?”

Another time, Mehmet suggested that his son write a book called Stopped at the Top.

“Kid,” said Mehmet, “What you will do is this. You will go to Los Angeles and you will investigate what happened to all jurors in the O.J. Simpson trial. You will see where they are now and what kinds of houses they have bought. You will find out that they all got $5,000,000 each from the government to return a not guilty verdict. Kid, I know this because I saw it on the news that night. Bill Clinton went into the office next to the Oval Office and did a big sigh. Kid, they bought those jurors. Bill Clinton did it with secret money. If you write about it, oh, the books you will sell. Oh they will go fucking crazy for you, my boy.”

J. Karacehennem crossed Market Street at Church. He had just passed by Aardvark Books, the best used bookstore in the city. Long may you live, he thought. Long may you thrive!

He was going to 851 Haight Street, the venue at which he had agreed to do a literary reading.

851 Haight Street was on the third floor of an apartment building near Divisadero Street. The apartment was vacant. The apartment was in disrepair. It had been vacant for years. All the other apartments in the building were occupied.

A person called Janey Smith had come into possession of keys to the apartment.

Janey Smith had taken his name after the protagonist of Kathy Acker’s great novel Blood and Guts in High School. Janey Smith said that he’d had sex with Kathy Acker back when he was 18. This was before Kathy Acker died of cancer, when Kathy Acker knew Kevin Killian.

Anyway, Janey Smith and his friend Mike Kitchell, neither of who had any eumelanin in the basale strata of the epidermises, decided that it might be interesting to host reading events in 851 Haight. The space was unused, so why not?

Both Mike Kitchell and Janey Smith wanted the readings to happen at night.

The apartment had no electricity. In fact, the apartment had no wiring and most of its walls were ripped open and half demolished. There was a thick layer of sawdust on everything. There were piles of unused doors and a half demolished bathtub.

As a result of the cheap candles which Janey Smith scattered around the apartment, the reading series was not only illegal but also offered the chance of everyone burning to death.

The first event was in December 2011. Subsequent events followed. Each attracted a bigger crowd, until it got to the point where 80 to 100 people would cram into the front room of the apartment.

During the annus horribilis of 2013, Janey Smith wrote an Internet post titled “Fuck List” on a website called HTMLGiant. “Fuck List” was a list of writers that Janey Smith wanted to fuck.

Another writer named peterBD asked Janey Smith if peterBD could make a book out of “Fuck List.” The idea was that peterBD would take Janey Smith’s original post and write short vignettes about Janey Smith having sex with the listed writers. Janey Smith said yes. peterBD would call this book We’re Fucked .

This was a terrible idea.

By the Summer of 2014, We’re Fucked was published. Janey Smith contributed the introduction.

The book’s appearance coincided with much discussion on the Internet about several men in the Bay Area poetry scene. Basically, these discussions said: sexual predators are amongst us. Sexual assaults have occurred.

Five names were listed. Janey Smith was among them, although unlike several of the others, there were no clear accusations against Janey Smith.

Because the reading series at 851 Haight had some notoriety, Janey Smith was the highest profile of the named.

It did not escape notice that a person denounced on the Internet as a sexual predator was involved with a book containing a series of fictional vignettes about the denounced person having sex with a long list of writers. An equivalence was made between the accusations of being a sexual predator and the content of We’re Fucked .

One of the people in both “Fuck List” and We’re Fucked was a writer named Dianna Dragonetti. Diana Dragonetti wrote an interesting post for HTMLGiant about Janey Smith, We’re Fucked , the negation of consent, rape culture, the Patriarchy, and the fracas consuming the Bay Area poetry scene.

Like every other website on the Internet, HTMLGiant was about making money through adverts strategically placed around the content donated by its contributors.

When Dragonetti’s essay appeared, its final paragraphs were followed by these advertisements:

As J. Karacehennem walked up Steiner to Haight, he did not know that he was passing by Jeremy and Minerva’s old apartment.

He was thinking about the iPhone.

J. Karacehennem was thinking about both the iPhone and the iPad because he had been thinking about the New York Times , and its September 30, 1909 article asking whether or not J. Karacehennem was a White man.