Jarett Kobek - I Hate the Internet

A few men had stopped Ellen and asked about the photographs. These conversations tended to start with opening questions like: “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

The questions were rhetorical. Everyone in Truth or Consequences had seen Ellen.

Even Ashley Nelson had approached Ellen. This occurred in the parking lot of the Shell gas station. Ashley more or less admitted that she had uploaded the photographs.

“Everyone’s heard that you got yourself into some trouble,” said Ashley Nelson. “I don’t know if you deserved it, but you always did think you were better than everyone else. It just shows what can happen.”

Ellen was still taking care of her grandmother. She’d managed to get another job, also in insurance, from an office manager who’d heard about the situation and taken pity.

“The only thing,” said the office manager, “and I hate to admit it, but your name is mud. I’m going to need you to work under a new one.”

So Ellen Flitcraft, for the sake of business, had become Ellen Pierce.

When the photos leaked, Ellen deleted her social media accounts. Months later, she opened new accounts on Facebook and Twitter, using the name Ellen Pierce.

There were no pictures attached to the accounts. Ellen was judicious about whom she allowed to be her Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Her WaNks Index Score was 5.

In early August, Hilary sent Ellen a message on Facebook. She suggested that Ellen visit San Francisco, where Hilary was working at a startup called Bromato.

“lol,” wrote Ellen in her reply, “what the hell is a bromato?”

“the answer is 2 complicated,” wrote Hilary.

Ellen agreed to visit San Francisco. Hilary offered to pay for the plane ticket.

Ellen’s vacation took some wrangling with her office manager and her grandmother’s neighbor. The neighbor, who burned with the meanness of a Pentecostal Christian, viewed Ellen with a great deal of suspicion but agreed to take care of Ellen’s grandmother.

Hilary lived in a 3BR apartment near the corner of Fillmore and California. She had five roommates. Hilary was being overpaid by Bromato. She was the only person in the apartment with her own room.

She put a spare futon mattress on the floor.

Ellen slept on the mattress.

“The neighborhood isn’t that interesting,” said Hilary. “I wanted to, like, live in the Mission but this was the only place I could find.”

“How much do you pay?” asked Ellen.

“Sixteen hundred dollars,” said Hilary.

“A month? That’s more than double my grandmother’s mortgage. For a room.”

“Who wants to live in Truth or Consequences?”

While Hilary was busy at work, Ellen wandered alone through the streets of San Francisco. She did all the usual tourist crap like seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and taking a boat out to Alcatraz and riding the Cable Cars and going to City Lights, where she bought a copy of Howl , which was a poem about men performing oral sex on each other in mental hospitals.

She was amazed by San Francisco’s public transportation. Never before had she experienced the sheer pleasure of not driving. Never before had she experienced the wonder of city walking.

On her second day in the city, a young man asked Ellen if she liked getting fucked from behind. She’d been in San Francisco for less than forty-eight hours. This was the ninth man to sexually harass her.

Ellen didn’t make eye contact with the young man who asked if she liked getting fucked from behind. She walked away. When she neared the Hilton on Kearny Street, Ellen let herself breathe.

Nine instances of sexual harassment in less than forty-eight hours. It was like being in Truth or Consequences, but at least in San Francisco no one was sexually harassing her for photographs uploaded to the Internet.

Her life had become so baroque that this felt like a relief.

She started walking. A man in a suit asked Ellen to smile.

Ellen walked to Washington Square Park. She sat on a park bench in Washington Square. She started to cry.

The sound drew the attention of another man. He said that Ellen looked too pretty to be so sad.

In the evenings, Hilary took Ellen to bars in the Mission, where they met up with Hilary’s friends and co-workers. Ellen had resisted the idea at first, saying, “The last time I went to a bar, things didn’t end so great.”

One night, as they were headed home from a bar called Doc’s Clock, Hilary said, “It’s been wonderful, like, having you here. No one here fucking cares about any of that shit. Why don’t you, just, you know, move here?”

“With what money?” asked Ellen.

“I could totally get you a job at Bromato,” said Hilary. “It’s not like we have any standards. You should see some of the idiots at work.”

“I can’t leave my grandmother,” said Ellen. “Otherwise, I’d be out of New Mexico in a heartbeat.”

On her last day in San Francisco, Ellen’s flight back to New Mexico was scheduled to depart at 3pm. Ellen decided to rise early and walk through the city for a final time.

She woke up Hilary. It was a work day. They said their goodbyes.

“Come back any time you want,” said Hilary. “My door is always, like, open.”

“I might,” said Ellen. “I really might.”

She showered and left Hilary’s apartment.

Ellen walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, a place that she had avoided on the advice of Hilary’s friends. One of these friends, who worked for Facebook, had said, “The only people who hang around Fisherman’s Wharf are frat assholes and tourists. It sucks.”

But Fisherman’s Wharf was the one tourist destination that Ellen hadn’t seen. She had no idea if she’d ever come back. So why not?

When she got to Fisherman’s Wharf, almost no one was on the streets. Most of the stores were closed. Hilary’s friend was right. It did look like a place for frat assholes.

Ellen walked west. She sat down on the small beach of Aquatic Cove, watching the shallow waves lap up against the sand. Back in Los Angeles, she’d always liked the beach.

Not sun bathing. By the time she was thirteen, New Mexico had drained away the sun’s pleasure. But there was something about the repetition of the sound of the Pacific.

It was the same thing with Aquatic Cove. Peace washed over her. She felt herself dissolving into the cosmos.

She looked at her phone. She was losing time. There was a plane to catch. She started the walk back to Hilary’s apartment.

Ellen waited for the traffic signal to change at the corner of Van Ness and Broadway. The light turned green. Ellen stepped off of the sidewalk.

There were more people on the street than when she’d left Hilary’s apartment. They were going to pointless jobs where they would earn meaningless money to buy ugly shit which they thought might alleviate their garden variety misery.

When Ellen was almost halfway across the street, she heard a slight, high-pitched sound.

She felt the blast of wind. She turned. She saw the grey blur of an electric car, less than two inches from her body. She didn’t see the driver’s face.

The car went through the red light.

Ellen looked to the other side of the intersection. A young woman, about Ellen’s age, was rushing across the street.

The electric car smashed into the young woman’s body. The young woman flew back four feet and crumpled against the pavement.

Ellen was one of many people who rushed to the woman. Some were on their cellphones. They were calling the police. The thought hadn’t occurred to Ellen.

One man, who had some eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis, took charge of the situation, yelling at everyone to stay back.

“Don’t move her,” he yelled. “Don’t touch her!”