Jarett Kobek - I Hate the Internet

“Darling,” said Adeline, “What if you’re a bellwether? What if all American culture is on a thirty year time-delay from your interests at any given moment?”

“Maybe it’s been passed on to you. What if it’s your interests, right now, that’ll determine the tastes of the future?”

“I sincerely hope not,” said Adeline, “Or else I’ve doomed our planet to a terrible dystopia comprised entirely of Krautrock, antique postcards of St. Augustine, and enema porn.”

Adeline was only kidding. She was using irony .

No one with a social life cared about Krautrock.

“Everything changes,” said Jeremy, looking at the ancient trees. “I remember when you lived on our couch. I told you not come in here at night.”

“Why ever was that?”

“It was dangerous. There was a lot of violence. They would find bodies.”

“Do you know,” said Adeline, “I am quite convinced that it’s much better to live in cities of our present moment. We no longer face the threat of death on every block. But emotionally, I wish we were back in those bad old days. It kept the scum out. It was terribly frightening, darling, but wasn’t it fun?”

“Beats me,” said Jeremy. “Why do you think I live in the suburbs? I hate cities. I hated them then, I hate them now.”

They climbed towards the top of the park.

Adeline challenged Jeremy to a game. She asked him to think of the worst possible way that the tech industry could ruin Buena Vista Park.

“You’re the writer, darling,” she said, “I should hope that you’ll best me at my own contest.”

“Give me a second,” he said. “I’ll think of something.”

“Those assholes,” said J. Karacehennem, “fucked with the wrong person.”

Those assholes were the nineteen terrorists who hijacked airplanes on September 11, 2001 with the intent of crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.

Those assholes had managed to crash their hijacked airplanes into the two buildings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The airplane piloted by Ziad Jarrah did not crash into the United States Capitol. The airplane piloted by Ziad Jarrah had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers used a food cart as a battering ram and stormed the cabin.

Ziad Jarrah was the subject of ZIAD. There’d been a moderate amount of eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.

J. Karacehennem was walking with Adeline in Chinatown. He had returned from Europe about a week earlier.

This was the first time that he had seen Adeline since his return. He convinced her to go to Caffe Trieste in North Beach.

Adeline met J. Karacehennem at the Powell BART stop. She found him leaning against the railing by the Cable Car, standing with one foot atop a brown box.

“Whatever do you have in the box, darling?” asked Adeline.

“It’s the Spanish translation of ZIAD. I haven’t opened it yet. I opened the original box of ZIAD in Caffe Trieste. I figured I’d do it again with the translation.”

They walked up Powell to Union Station and over to Grant Street and then up through the Chinatown gates.

“How do you feel about the book being translated?” asked Adeline.

Which is when he said: “Those assholes fucked with the wrong person.”

Then he added: “They really fucked with the wrong neurotic. They thought they could bomb the living fucking shit out of America but they didn’t realize that twelve years later I’d be making fun of them in Spanish.”

Just then, J. Karacehennem bumped into a middle-aged immigrant. The middle-aged immigrant was smoking a cigarette. The middle-aged immigrant had some eumelanin in the basal stratum of his epidermis.

The middle-aged immigrant looked at J. Karacehennem.

“I’m terribly sorry,” said J. Karacehennem.

The middle-aged immigrant spit on the sidewalk, threw his cigarette at J. Karacehennem’s feet and shouted, “ Gwai lo! ”

“What did he call you?” asked Adeline.

“He called me a gwai lo ,” said J. Karacehennem. “It’s Cantonese. It means something like ‘white boy’ or ‘foreign devil.’ I used to do Ving Tsun in New York with this kung fu master named Moy Yat. He always was calling us gwai lo. ”

“How charming,” said Adeline.

Caffe Trieste was empty except for its regulars. J. Karacehennem had come here for years and had yet to know any of the regulars beyond simple observation.

The regulars were crazed relics of San Francisco from the era before the Internet economy exploded into the collective consciousness.

Radicals and poets and free thinkers. They were all, at the very least, middle-aged. Almost all of them lacked eumelanin in the basal layers of their epidermis.

He opened the box. The cover showed an airplane crashing in the cedars of Lebanon. Ziad was from Lebanon. Adeline and J. Karacehennem fondled the books and drank coffee.

“I simply can not remember,” said Adeline. “Did I inform you about Christine?”

“What about her?”

“She’s marrying Bertrand. In February.”

“Some people move fast,” said J. Karacehennem.

Christine had asked Adeline to be a bridesmaid.

Adeline was touched but declined.

She’d been in too many weddings, she said, and couldn’t stand another. She hated how the wedding party was always on display.

One of the regulars came into Caffe Trieste. His name was Roy. He suffered an unspecified mental illness. He had no eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.

Roy’s mental illness caused him to shout at all of Caffe Trieste’s customers. He did this every day.

Roy was also one of the best dressed men in San Francisco. He clothes were always immaculate.

Roy shouted at some tourists.

“Whatever did he say?” asked Adeline. “All I could make out was something about Sicilian bastards.”

“I’ve heard him yell at a million people,” said J. Karacehennem, “I can never understand him. He is a perfect example of why Caffe Trieste is the greatest place in the city. Did I tell you about election night last year?”

In 2012, President Barack Obama ran for re-election against Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, who didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.

It was the usual bargain for J. Karacehennem and other people of the Loony Left.

You supported a person whose policies you agreed with, sort of, but who you felt was too beholden to corporate interests and whose foreign policy made you sick.

If you didn’t support this person, the alternative was something even worse. Voting was little more than triage.

J. Karacehennem went to Caffe Trieste and watched the election results. The anxiety fell away very soon. It was obvious that Obama had won re-election.

The night was punctuated by the unexpected appearance of the great and neglected poet Jack Hirschman.

Hirschman was the oldest of the old school. Hirschman was enough of a throwback that he was still an active, believing Marxist. Hirschman had edited the Artaud Anthology, a book published by City Lights which Karacehennem had admired as a teenager.

Hirschman stormed in with his great walrus moustache and his long stringy hair dangling beneath a black cowboy hat, a red scarf thrown over his shoulder.

Hirschman waved his arm at the television and started shouting, “HERE IS YOUR DEMOCRACY FOR YOU! HERE IS YOUR DEMOCRACY FOR YOU! HERE IS YOUR DEMOCRACY FOR YOU!”

J. Karacehennem knew that he himself loved San Francisco.

Now he was sitting in the same seat, talking to Adeline, and he knew that he hated San Francisco.