Jarett Kobek: I Hate the Internet

The woman’s face was covered in blood. Her breathing was shallow. The gore obscured the woman’s features.

That could have been me , though Ellen, I could be the one on the ground, bleeding and broken, dying amongst strangers .

The broken body. Van Ness. Broadway. The old church. The faces. The cellphones. A billboard above an apartment building advertising Man of Steel .

But there were no men of steel nor women neither.

Ellen walked back towards Hilary’s apartment. She had come so close to death. She had almost died and she’d spent the last six months worried about the opinions of people who lived in Truth or Consequences.

She had almost died and she’d spent the last six months tormented over shit from high school. She had almost died and she’d spent the last six months acting as if her life was preordained for failure.

But life wasn’t preordained. Life was an electric car just out of the Broadway tunnel, speeding through a red light at Van Ness. Life was a young woman crushed in blood, gathering a crowd of people on their cellphones.

I can’t keep living like this, thought Ellen. I’ve got to do something else. I can do anything in my life. I can do anything I want.

Man of Steel was a film adaptation of Superman, a comic book intellectual property.

Superman was worth billions of dollars. Its creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, signed over the rights to their intellectual property for $130.

They were both 24 years old. They were from Cleveland. It was 1938.

A block later, as her thoughts cleared, Ellen realized that she had no money and was returning to Truth or Consequences to care for an elderly woman. Life wasn’t an either/or proposition. Life was both random death and decades of suffering. Life was a trickle of days that dripped away with no meaning and no purpose.

She had been raised to think that her identity was hers and hers alone. But Ashley Nelson had taught Ellen a lesson.

A person’s identity wasn’t just about what they wanted or how they lived or the choices they made. Life wasn’t made of self-determination. Life was the Chinese wage slave manacled to a factory line, building iPhones. Life was a $130 cheque in 1938. Life was about trying to salve the wounds inflicted by other people, fixing the damage done by strangers and friends.

And thanks to the corporations headquartered in, around and near San Francisco, the capacity for that damage was infinite.

Christine was out with her friend Denise. Denise was one of Christine’s bridesmaids.

Denise and Christine were having drinks at The Two Sisters, a literary themed bar on Hayes Street. They avoided the specialty cocktails. They both ordered vodka sodas.

They talked about the wedding. Christine and Bertrand had come up with a way to minimize the misery of planning.

They decided to get married at City Hall.

“We’ll be just like Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio,” said Christine. “Plus, it’s cheap. It’s only a couple thousand.”

Joe DiMaggio was a native of San Francisco who played baseball for the New York Yankees from 1936 until 1951, punctuated by a four year break for World War Two. He didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.

Baseball was a sport, which meant that it was a formalized system of control. Baseball involved moving balls around a constricted space in an attempt to create the illusion of meaning.

Joe DiMaggio’s time with the New York Yankees had created enough illusion that he ended up as ill-conceived metaphorical bullshit in Ernest Hemingway’s short novel The Old Man and the Sea.

The Old Man and The Sea was a book about how a senior citizen demonstrates the continued potency of his testosterone reserves by killing a dumb animal before being outwitted by other dumb animals.

Marilyn Monroe was the world’s most famous actress until an allergic reaction to celebrity forced her to swallow a bottle’s worth of Nembutal. She didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis.

She married Joe DiMaggio at San Francisco City Hall.

The marriage ended in tears.

Then she swallowed a bottle’s worth of Nembutal.

When Christine said that she and Bertrand would be like Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, she didn’t mean that her marriage to Bertrand would end in tears and then Christine would swallow a bottle of Nembutal.

She just meant they’d have a nice wedding.

Christine and Denise left the Two Sisters. Denise walked towards Market Street. Christine walked towards her apartment. She stopped at a Thai restaurant on Haight Street.

She ate some green curry chicken and then walked home.

About ten minutes from her apartment, she felt very strange. It was as if she’d drunk six vodka sodas instead of two.

She stumbled into her apartment. Her head was spinning. She couldn’t do anything but she didn’t want to sleep. She decided to watch something on Netflix, so she watched Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse.

Netflix was a streaming video service. Christine paid Netflix $7.99 a month and in turn Netflix gave her access to a wide range of films and television programs.

The screen was black.

The title appeared in white text: A TORINÓI LÓ .

Narration began over the black screen.

The narration was about the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and a horse he encountered in the streets of Turin.

Christine’s eyes rolled back up into her head. She knew that she was going to be sick. She wasn’t sure how but she knew that she had been poisoned.

She ran to her bathroom. She flung open her toilet.

She vomited and vomited and vomited.

When there was nothing left in her stomach, she felt sober.

“Can I blame Béla Tarr’s for this?” she asked the empty air. Then she said a prayer to Ray Kurzweil.

But, really, Béla Tarr hadn’t poisoned Christine. Neither had the alcohol. It was the green curry chicken from Haight Street. The meat was bad.

Do yourself a favor. Stop eating chicken.

The next afternoon, Christine still felt wobbly. She couldn’t go out. She invited Adeline over to her apartment.

Adeline was happy to come over. She liked Christine’s apartment and she liked Christine’s cat. Christine’s cat was a fat old Maine Coon named Beard.

Back in New York, back in the 1980s, Adeline and Baby had co-owned a Maine Coon. They had named him Captain Jenckes of the Horse Marines.

They’d found the name in a book about Maine Coons. The first Maine Coon that appears in the historical record was named Captain Jenckes of the Horse Marine.

“Captain Jenckes of the Horse Marines” was a mouthful. So Adeline and Baby called their cat The Captain.

Beard reminded Adeline of the Captain.

Adeline and Christine were sitting in Christine’s living room. They were talking about the wedding.

“I’m sorry to keep going on,” said Christine. “Ever since I said yes, I feel like I can’t talk about anything except getting married.”

“Have you and your beau decided upon the ceremony?”

“Bertrand is a failed Catholic,” said Christine. “We can’t be married in the Church. For obvious reasons. I think we’re going with a justice of the peace,” said Christine. “It’s easiest for everyone. Me included. You have no idea about how stressful this is until you’ve gone through it.”

“Which is one reason,” said Adeline, “that I have long eschewed the diabolical art. Not that I stand in judgment on your decisions.”

“I didn’t think you were,” said Christine.

“Have you arranged matters with your families?” asked Adeline.