Four friends walked into a bar, smiling and glistening in faux incandescent lighting, their sweat a golden sheen and their discolorations attractive, suggestive shadows, and the bartender asked, “Seen any good TV lately?”
The group was good looking: two couples, one hairy and short, the other fat and beautiful. Their humor is witty and sitcom-informed. They are young professionals who laugh loud because this is fun on a weekend night, this is a happy hour. This is recreational time in this big, beautiful country, punctuated by good drinks which bring good talks with friends. Pumpkin spice espresso martinis and winterberry margaritas.
“Succession... God… That ending…” the hairy one said, wearing a flat cap from which two delicate, manly sideburns grew down from, cupping a beautiful and sincere smile.
“Uh… Shiv?” his counterpart said, the short one, her eyes big like a frog, with perfect cadence and timing, an impression which, though not wholly accurate, commanded a certain air of respect, even to the man across the bar who has not seen the show—it was real and funny.
They all wore immaculately pressed J. Crew shirts and other clothes bought at shambling, empty, violent centers formerly known as malls or at their now thriving online marketplace counterparts, brands that were founded in the mid to late 1800s at the dawn of a golden age of the American industrial market, whose catalogues brought the only real fulfillment man has ever felt— these were the first companies, the best, with well-fitting shirts and pants that helped form the American persona, now polyester-blended and foreign-made and $129.99.
“We’ve been meaning to finish that,” the chunky one admitted, meek and quiet.
“Shut the fuck up. You guys actually haven’t finished Succession? Holy shit. Dude. Jeeeeesus,” Hairy said, incredulous.
“I know! I know!” the beautiful woman put her hands up as if to say “I would have watched it by now if I had my way, believe me. I swear. There were obstacles out of my control. Thank you for finally acknowledging this pain which has gone unspoken for so long. I am released by your confirmation.”
This beautiful girl belonged to that order of “professional women,” who, among other things, eschewed the possibility of having children for the inconvenience it would bring their working lives, to their “career,”—on the whole, they were largely correct in discerning the complete divergence in practicality and aligning goals between motherhood and the advancement of their professional lives. These women tended to have set their mind on this life early on, and take the utmost pleasure in it—in their beautiful if slightly gay boyfriends, their spacious apartments, curated Instagram pages displaying with immaculate and truly refined aesthetic sensibilities a life of rich friendship, bawdy nights out, lush vacations, inside jokes, their invariable pets, their skinny asses and moderately, yet, in this bold new day, tastefully revealing outfits—all in all, “the good life.”
Though she doubtless experienced bouts of depression and misfortune, of real sadness and unsurety, she was truer and nobler than many. She, at least to herself and her immediate material world, had no glaring faults or fissures of the intellect, character, body… and she was beautiful too, first and foremost. That matters too.
“But what else… what else… all people seem to be talking about is Succession nowadays… maybe The Bear…” Hairy mused. The long table grew quiet for a moment.
Chunky chimed in, hopeful, his beard a sort of sparse, thinning curtain for an overall sad, doughy show. “Have you two watched any Marvel shows lately?”
Hairy looked across the bar resolutely at the glittering array of beer taps cleverly repurposed out of vintage waterspouts. “God, I am so Marveled out.”
Shorty put a hand on his shoulder. “We got Disney Plus included with Hulu Premium but only ended up watching National Geographic shows… It’s a waste, a real waste. We cancelled it last month.”
“Loki was great, we thought, I thought.” Chunky remained optimistic, looking towards the beautiful woman with an achingly hopeful but pathetic pleading. She just shook her head. Chunky seemed to be an easily definable “type” as well, but they, these two types, were irreducible into one “type” of couple, as they seemed entirely misplaced. He was a schlubby, ill-put together man, a little dim-witted and fat in the gut, thighs, and face, thin and dainty in the arms and hands. He seemed like a nice enough guy. It seemed a great anomaly that these two were together at all, but, of course, strange things happen, and even stranger things happen in the course of love, which, though following in accordance with the whole to a few general, monolithic precepts, seems infinitely and definitively shaped by its consistent, persistent irrationality and defiance of nature.
Hairy seemed to fall into a depression. “It’s just not the same anymore. Remember Infinity War? Endgame? I bawled. It’s not the same. They churn out so many these days. It looks grim for them now. I really did love those movies. I remember the first Avengers, how I saw it in theaters with friends in high school. There was a time when this was all new and exciting, when I felt them becoming a new American mythology—I’ll show these stories to my children, about brotherhood, about wittiness, about heroism. But now it is dead, dead as all things must be, but this necessity is not one I can relegate myself to so easily.”
“I really thought Loki was quirky…” Chunky trailed off.
A dour mood came over the bar. They all drank or looked at their drinks morosely, as if hoping to induce a slumber, some soporific spell to qualm their sorrows.
Two old cowpokes walked into the bar, their tight wranglers an oncoming dust storm in a blue sky, their hats tall and wide, suggesting nothing of the heads beneath them. They sat in the dim corner near the big windows opening onto the bustling Saturday night city streets and ordered nothing. They packed cold cracked lips full of Zyn and spit in the fake candles. They went unnoticed.
The beautiful woman mustered some resolve. She ordered a Negroni and ran her index finger along the orange peel to her glossy lips with gusto. Leaning into the other couple, she looked as if she had a secret heart, and grinned at Hairy’s girl.
“I know he’s got you watching something weird.”
Hairy clung to his cap, leaned back and smiled, a bit showingly embarrassed, a bit self-satisfied at these two women speaking and thinking about him as a man with a set of beliefs, traits, and preferences which inhabited a defined and fixed part of their mind.
“No no no no Jack,” the beautiful woman said in a hysterical scream when Hairy shook his head with squinted eyes and an incredulous face. “With him it was always Tusk, or The Human Centipede. Shit like that. Fucked up shit. In college he made me sit through a four-hour Spanish Plague movie… and fucking Green Inferno… you are not blameless for my present state.”
They all laughed. Shorty looked down for a moment, almost ashamed, but quickly put her arm around Hairy and smiles with a glare.
“Well,” she begun, with brazen shyness. “Have you guys watched Queer Kick?”
There was silence, and the other couple stared at her with knowing shock—on the whole, the conversation immediately shifted in a hopeful, exciting direction with this mention. Hairy’s face grew warmer with the potential promise for something new, for revelation.
The beautiful woman responded with unique exuberance. “Ohmygod do not get me started. I tried to get him to watch it but I kid you not, seriously, seriously… five minutes in he taps out!”
Chunky looked wan, his small, pursed mouth puckering further, his wrinkles deepening. “Well, that first scene…”
Hairy nodded resolutely. “Yeah, Jesus Christ… I mean it’s bad, sure, real bad, but I can bear with it, through it.”
“It was disgusting. When they reenacted Gacy’s crimes I almost got sick… him and Elton John together were awful, just awful.”
“But wasn’t Justin Long great in it?”
The beautiful girl flashed, beamed. “Yes, yes, yes. Did you see him in Barbarian? In Tusk? Jesus Christ what’s this guy’s fetish for playing horrifically mutilated douchebags!” She looked over at Chunky, lost, shying from conversation, strange and quiet. “You know… he couldn’t even get through the South Park parody… what was it called… Ike Kicks the Queer!”
Chunky smiled with the ends of his lips for a second but flashed a rictus of real honest hurt at her, which prompted “Oh Honey oh baby I love you though… Ha ha ha, I’m just kidding! Just kidding!”
Hairy took in the scene, felt at peace with it. “Well, in any case, you know Queer Kick, or any show for that matter, is a legitimate piece of art when South Park gets to it.”
All of them nodded in serious, sober agreement, Chunky still pensive and grave. He nodded his head slowly from side to side, dazed. “It was just that scene… Cartman as Oscar Wilde and Randy as Ian McKellen, and Towlie… I know it’s cartoony and stupid, but it was so visceral in the moment. Something with the sound design.” God, he looked haunted.
Hairy laughed. “Ha ha ha. Dave you are forgetting this the same show that did ‘That N-Word Guy.’ Actual fucking genius stuff.”
It became increasingly clear that Hairy would not let up on him. He was a peculiar fellow. His skin was sallow, and he was not particularly handsome. He had the world-weary look of a New Age National Park Ranger, who expected much more from it all.
“It’s a genius show. Resolutely,” Hairy commanded.
“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say genius… genius?”
Hairy extended his face. “The best art is supposed to enrapture, to disgust, to be off-putting and confrontational. God, I would hate to live in a world without art like Queer Kick, where showrunner Jemelle Adams is at least trying to do something new. At least we’re not getting another seven years of some Breaking Bad spinoff.”
Chunky perked up at this familiar sound, like the name of an old friend at a college party screamed into the crowd—you’re obliged to follow it. “I loved Better Call Saul.”
Hairy took a sip of the bartender’s elevated interpretation of a Hot Toddy, grimacing. He became slightly more serious. “I don’t dispute that, no. But it is unarguably not new. There are no real stakes in prestige drama… it’s a format perfected fifteen years ago. Queer Kick is an entirely different beast, entirely different indeed.”
“But genius? Genius where, from what?”
“It’s… it’s something I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I’m sorry, Dave. I majored in Film Studies at UCLA, remember, Dave? There are just some things I think about and believe that are near impossible to explain. You’re in tech… it’s the same with something like your coins, I imagine. I may never understand such a concept.” Hairy lowered his eyes, jutted his mouth.
Chunky fumed silently, shrinking into that small dense rage of social modesty, lending a half-smile and half-ear for all jokes, gathering fuel for his small and secret forge. He nodded then shook his head.
“No, no… I don’t agree.” He sipped from his drink as the beautiful girl eyed him suspiciously, silently.
“I…” he paused, waiting, gauging the reaction to his small revolt. Hairy watched patiently, stroking his beard. “I want to know why… why is it genius?” He began laughing at himself, slowly, between sips of his drink. “I can’t watch it, I couldn’t watch a few minutes of it, and its genius, and I want to know why, I guess. Tell me.”
Hairy grinned magnanimously. He wanted to take him into the fold.
“I’m happy that you want to know, Dave. Let me try to tell you.”.
They all sat and listened—even the cowboys paused their stories of cattle herding and Injun whupping to eavesdrop, silently, as they pretended to look at their phones.
“The genius, like any real genius that is not mere lip service, reveals itself to us subtly, in an entertaining fashion, as any good television should. Queer Kick must be television, of course, not merely due to its episodic format, but because of television’s unique role in the modern world. It is the public sublime, and really our own truly accessible, enjoyable, socially uplifting public content. Shakespeare’s plays featured references to archaic poetry and utterly esoteric Biblical allusions because those were familiar, comforting—simple to understand to a rudimentary Elizabethan audience—our shows today speak on issues which matter, such as social justice, inequality, political upheaval, technology, environmental collapse, but also much older, universal issues, such as love, death, grief, religion, and evil. They are truly our most propitious way towards a better educated, spiritually well-rounded populous. Art instructs life, obviously.
“We see the bastions of culture are always formulated from the ‘ideal medium’—the medium from which the most art and the most entertainment can be derived. It must leave us satiated and moved. Of course, there are outliers, extremes on both ends of the spectrum. Short form video platforms arising throughout the 2010s such as the defunct, anodyne ‘Vine’ or its more potent, odious successor ‘TikTok,’ which, though its growth in size and power may indicate a bright future for the medium, and though there are doubtless dazzling brief flashes of artfulness on these platforms (one is reminded of what Metropolis did for cinema when viewing certain vertiginously self-referential, quasi-religious pieces such as the yet untitled Reel concerning the choice between Lois Griffin or Marge Simpson, accompanied by a truly moving yet hilarious AI rendition of Drake… God what a fucking odyssey, I sent that to you Dave, did you watch that?)”
“I don’t have Insta anymore. I’m taking a break.” Chunky said, leaning back.
“You never send me reels!” the beautiful woman sang in feigned mania, her glare a seductively playful anger, her mouth gaping in mock betrayal.
“It’s just guys… come on… eh? You know what I’m talking about boyyyy!” Hairy laughed.
“Ha ha ha yeah you guys just send each other racist, sexist content that says the ‘r-slur.’” The beautiful woman glared playfully, with, though she would never espouse it, a loving, “boys-will-be-boys” attitude. There are things which you contend with in life, differences whose sympathy washes onto you, becomes a sort of friendliness, a good-natured game. This world is one of contradiction, which can be frightful if not for love, if not for forgiveness.
“I would never say the ‘r-slur,’ but Jesus Christ that stuff is funny!” Hairy roared, jutting Chunky in the side, who remained effortlessly meek but firmly silent.
Their small, playful spat petered out into a low whir of generalities, and there seemed nothing more the two genders could say to each other—though there was love, there was still difference, and, conversationally speaking, a wall had been fortified, and they huddled close to their own as if to a weeping fire, the two women singing songs of hope and want onto the dozing ancient night, the men whispering shakily, sharing half-heard information, curt and taut in cold voices. Hairy looked Chunky hard in the eye as they pulled closer, staying quiet for no apparent reason.
“But, really, really, really… forget all of that. Back to my point. This short-form content, endlessly entertaining as it is,” here he gave a playful, brotherly nudge to Chunky, “ultimately and totally falls short of anything incredibly artful or instructive. It has not surpassed the mode of the infantile… it is a young medium yet.
“Forms like that are, for our purposes, null. They are far too ethereal… too fleeting. Entertaining, yes, of course, but enlightening? Like the dream sequences of The Sopranos? Like that fucking pig in Black Mirror? God, man, these are cultural touchstones.
“So, no, it is television which stands as the pinnacle, the high-water mark of recent, early 21st century artistic output… introducing content into the domestic unit long enough to engage one for, say, the duration of a meal, has defined the American family and way of life. Pedantics bemoaned the creation of television as we deride TikTok now, but ultimately, it has moved out of the real of play, of naivety and mere mindlessness. Aristocrats used to see plays or operas… or, in the recent past, interesting, artful movies. Though this has not exactly ‘died out,’ the era of the cinephile is surely coming, or has come, to a close. The most powerful people in the world are quoting Severance, kids are learning about the wonders and pitfalls of drug abuse and sexual (gay or otherwise) experimentation. Hunter Schaffer is a fucking icon for the trans community… but… of course… this is all just Prestige TV. Spectacular and wonderous in its own right, but analogous to the Silent Picture era of cinema. Queer Kick, well, that’s something else entirely, God, I can barely wrap my head around it.” It seemed he couldn’t, really.
“There’s real hope and wonder out there with television like this—the possibility for real salvation. Sure, there’s irony. Sure, there will be those decrying television or mining it for endless, substanceless, mollified pleasure, but for those special few like you and me, Dave, we see a transformation of the soul with Queer Kick.”
The surrounding buzz of the bar became nothing for Chunky, the seats and whirring lights, chirping conversation and entrancing pop songs become only physical obstacles to his truth, his power. He held onto each of Hairy’s words literally, understanding each of their singular meanings then contextualizing it within the sentence itself. He tried not to belie any of his enthusiasm or naïve miscomprehension to Hairy. He wanted to be a confidant, a trusted advisor. He nodded with his hands clasped, eyes squinted, face sweaty. Hairy continued, almost dreamy.
“There is exuberance here… real, honest inclusive progressivism—a far-cry from the stifling liberal environment of just a few years prior without ever once veering into the now-profitable death-affirming dogma of reactionaries. It is a verifiable wonder.
“We see the juxtaposition of language, violence, and human nature in pained scenes such as Walt Whitman, played intelligently with a graceful largesse by the ever gay John Goodman, where he instructs, after great self-reflection and consternation, his harem of petulant slave boys to mutilate, taunt, and ultimately murder the milquetoast Pete Buttigieg, under suspicion that the diminutive mayor harbored some ultimate, intrinsic information necessary for the very fabric and purpose behind the show and filming (I’ll save you the spoilers, friend)—this alone was blood curdling, I’m sure we can all agree, but what makes it revelatory is the subsequent scene at night. I’m not sure if know about this, Dave.”
“Spoilers never meant much to me…” he trailed off.
Hairy refrained, still. It’s a moral choice.
“This specific scene in mind, which will enliven the very matter of your soul if you watch it, is just one of the fantastic choices Adams and her diverse team made. I recommend it highly. But, further than individual scenes, the casting choices and character creation alone makes the show worth watching. Most notable is the curious lack of prominent homosexual figures such as Freddie Mercury and, the inclusion of men only ‘supposed’ or theorized to be gay such as James Buchanan, or, more surprisingly, Abraham Lincoln, who, besides some utterly baseless claims made by College Humor in their insipid, utterly spoiled drivel of content, showed absolutely zero homosexual inclinations.
“This seemingly random assortment gives way to tremendous, meaningful variety within the group of ‘homosexual men’ and, more specifically ‘homosexual men on television.’ Some of the cast Queer Kick are seemingly ironically unaware of being in a television show, or, better yet, of being filmed at all. Some are played by their real-life counterparts (I’m thinking here about Noah Schnapp and Lil Nas X, two vanguards of that young, bright generation rising and dreaming beneath our very feet), some are played by actors… There is no clear delineation between fact and fiction, a fact made even more abhorrent and engrossing when viewed in conjunction with the horrendous, truly gut-wrenching violence of the whole matter.
“But, sociologically—that is to say, in reality, practically speaking, from all of this, the show arrives at homosexuality not as an antiquated, prejudiced ‘aberration,’ nor a strictly ‘normal’ or equal/similar to heterosexuality. There is no androgyny in Queer Kick, resolutely. Homosexuality is ‘other,’ but it is not strictly ‘othered’… it explores queerness as a masculine affirming, or at least masculine neutral—gayness as a necessary, banal purpose for survival, not nihilistic and childless, cynical and life-denying, but rather a sort of man-loving, all-embracing, ‘grandfatherly’ role for which a healthy society could not function without… the subtleties are undeniable and revelatory, rapturous, with implications for us all, despite and because of its gruesome violence.
“As Wallace, a problematic yet deeply affecting man once wrote, though he was also completely wrong about television, ‘Art is meant to comfort the fucked and fuck the comfortable.’”
“Who’s that?” Chunky asked.
“He also said, ‘This is Water,’” Shorty chimed in, smartly. She and the beautiful woman had been talking about something else entirely, something leagues away, things you hear discussed on Good Morning America, these things that women discuss which renew your faith in an older sect of consumerism and mass culture, something formidable and reliable—a soul alive after death.
The beautiful woman put her hands on the bar, slapping them. “God, I was going to get a tattoo of that, do you remember?”
“I remember, I remember,” Hairy laughed, head back.
“On my boobs… My boobs! Oh god. Just imagine my boobs with ‘This is Water’ tattooed between them. Right here, on the sternum. The hard part between these fleshy, indomitable things. Grim.” She did not look entirely displeased or ashamed about this past. It was another person, another life. The women went back to their own private life, their abundant conversation of trivialities and deceit, assured and shored up, secure.
Chunky, conversely, dismayed by this hint of promiscuity which somehow excluded him, which hinted at an existence, a possibility of sex and love, completely outside of his immediacy, with this woman fairly new to him who he trusted, who he loved, saw little to no way out of this life, and he understood even littler of it. He nodded slowly and sadly, in a stupored haze, wishing for drunkenness, relieved by its nearness, and, most of all, confused and disappointed that he felt he had failed. He felt he had failed to finally, finally understand, to understand something both concrete and enlightening, a particular combination of phenomena which he had yet to enjoy together in sequence, some illusion which his vague, unsatisfied yearning had sent him after all of his life—high ideals like “art” and “satisfaction” had been banal gods to him, an entirely foreign and inaccessible domain of the real, the really real, which is real only in its strange opposition to his own life, an unfailing, dutiful, historical symbol of his own shortcomings. This all seemed impossible to him now. He didn’t understand “genius,” and certainly would never know it himself. He wanted to watch the show even less now. Who would watch some mocking phantom, spewing little atrocities that disgusted him, which everyone around him said was gold?
He began to waste away in his short, squeaking barstool, drinking his drink, affecting a look of antediluvian astonishment on his face hung down towards his lap, then flashing around the bar in stilted, awkward glances, as if afraid he’d catch the vintage wood grain’s eyes… the sinister depth and darkness of its sticky oak, paneled only last year, reminiscent and earth-based. He wished the room was spinning.
From here, Chunky just got drunker. He had slurped three burning Hot Toddies since we began our tale, his lips red and chapped yet wet, very wet, slopping loose and bleeding as he belched to bring him another beer, not may you or can you. He told Hairy to pause, to stop, to just pause a minute, because he had to go to the bathroom, but he never did go. “I’m really just afraid, I think, sometimes, you know?” He waited and waited and waited and joked with the bartendress and the barback pleadingly, trying to get the barback, lanky, small-nosed, seventeen years, to take a shot with him, joking about opening a bar called “Underage” where they only sell underage people comically disgusting juvenile drinks like 4 Lokos and Twisted Teas, then apologizing, then joking that he was also seventeen himself, and that he was a Mormon and married young.
He was very apologetically joking, alternating between piercing, whining glances at all of the employees, long, guzzling sips of his excellent lager, and languoring, relaxed in his untaut waterbed of ritualistic, religious self-flagellation. He told of many things in between slurps of his drink, in a half-murmured whispering yell, like a prayer or devotional. He laughed hard and intermittently at this joke, this enormous, sprawling joke, which as he told it, began to encompass worlds, like a vast epic of supreme cultural importance, a representative work, whose sweeping verses seemed bred from the land itself.
He told nobody in particular how he was only seventeen, yes, can you believe it, I’m only sixteen! And how he married a Mormon girl, but she didn’t believe he was seventeen because of his menacing stomach and his receding hairline, but how look at his watch, his watch proved her wrong, it was his grandfather’s watch… Ha ha ha! I am drunk yes, I am. No, I want you to kick me out. I’m ready to get kicked out of the bar! I know, I know, I’m annoying you, all of you… Ha ha ha!
It was a situation not altogether as abnormal as it may sound here, this was a bar, mind you, albeit a higher-end, professional one, but a bar nonetheless. It is a business which deals almost exclusively in beverages which contain ethanol, made by the fermentation of grains. Consuming these beverages, a longstanding societal tradition, causes impairment, the effect of which increases the more drinks one consumes. This is the logical conclusion of bars, of this happy hour—there is profit to be made here. He was not falling over and was relatively coherent, so the night went on. The music still sang, happy, bass-heavy, melodic, through sinister, hidden speakers.
Chunky’s unfolding was slow, almost methodical, and as he spouted this nonsense, the women watched sadly, quietly. The beautiful woman demurred sheepishly, put a hand on his back, tried to kiss his neck. He accepted these as a king receiving stranger’s gifts, courtly, stoic, his mind set on inventing new ideas for this joke, this longstanding joke. Next, he would convert from Mormonism to Radical Islam.
Hairy, who had been patient and generous in his silence, whispered something in Chunky’s ear. The bartender smiled and went back to her polishing, the practice of her perfection. The women didn’t know what to think.
Here is what he whispered: “Dave, Dave, quiet yourself, Dave. I know you’re upset, but it’s not all that complicated.”
Hairy looked at the sloping, crescented man with real acknowledgement and a somewhat backwards-facing, regretful sympathy, aware of the role he played in causing this present state, guilty and estranged to the inward pleasure he felt doling this punishment out the creation and education of a now burning anger, like a child to a kicked dog, bawling. Such is the invention of the human.
“There’s a cold open, I think in episode four. It’s killing me, these spoilers… I’ll try to spare you the greater story, but this is important, there’s this, only this: we open on Jeffery Dahmer and Neil Patrick Harris, both uncannily played by South Korean lookalikes (they are a beautiful people). They are in a gray room, small, lit like so many contemporary dramatic foreign films: poorly, cheaply. The men are in bunks, asleep, dreaming lazily, moving as if through snow, whimpering like lovely dogs. Dahmer awakens first, brushing platinum blonde hair, grasping for trademark coke bottle glasses, black frames, finding only the cold steel rail of the bed frame, and, stumbling around the room, trips over Harris’ bed. A Stooges-esque physical comedy ensues for minutes, the men falling over each other, banging their crotches against the rails, screaming and hollering—its beside the point. Eventually, when the ruckus settles down, Harris beings to understand, apprehend, and fear. There is a small hole in the middle of the floor, no bigger than your middle toe. Only blackness is visible in the hole. There are no doors, no windows. Dahmer tries to be helpful, cups his ear childishly to the concrete, says he hears nothing, says it will be useless for him to try to peer in, ‘I’m nothing without my glasses! My damn glasses, like Velma, from Scooby-Doo. Ha ha ha.’
“Harris has the affixed grimace found mainly in silent expressionist films—something of ‘abject horror’ and ‘quiet desperation,’—terms we’re familiar with. First, he feigns ignorance of Dahmer’s identity, but, as we know from True Crime history, Dahmer is no dummy. He proceeds tentatively, he asks almost kindly, but with a reserve all men hold for strangers in strange rooms—'Is something the matter?’
“Hell breaks loose, as it regrettably must for any story to matter. Harris pleads with Dahmer, immediately afraid for his life. This was true begging I imagine is only provoked by men facing real death, imminent death which they discover had all along seemed a distant fantasy, a mere mental projection, a silly wish granted carelessly by a well-meaning but irresponsible God, who spoils his children. Harris simply was not going into that good night quietly, not without a cry, an unintelligible blabber. He says do not rape me, in any way, but especially do not cut off my head and rape me. Do not concoct a drug combination and murder me in your apartment. Do not bleach my bones. Do not rape the hole in the floor, it is a mystery, an essential clue. Do not come near me, or think about touching me, because I know you are attracted to me in a murderous, raperous fashion. He threatens, manic at this point, laughing through his frenzy, to rip his clothes, purple shirt and gray sweatpants, which he has only begun to notice as he says it, and hang himself with the threads, or something far simpler and feasible which he can’t name right now but he will find, creating a practical problem of uncontrolled decomposition and disease for Dahmer, for you, you serial killing fuck.
“Of course, Dave, as even you would know, frenzy, madness, and catharsis is always necessarily followed by stillness, by contemplation. A breath. A ‘post-nut clarity’ of the soul, of sorts, Ha ha ha. Harris is physically worn out, having skipped, jumped, and darted around the room delivering his carousing outburst. Dahmer retreats a bit, corners himself, as if containing something. He brushes his messy hair out of his face, wipes his sweating eyes. He respects Harris’ boundaries, does not approach him. He sits in the corner, cross-legged, hands effortlessly relaxed on his thighs, his face set as if semi-pliable but ultimately unwavering, dependable. He could have been an airline pilot. This is what he says: ‘I’m sorry Neil. This is new, this is all new. This is something I’ve never experienced before. I’m ready to make a change in my life. You must know something about me to have reacted so negatively to my presence—and you must know I was a bad man, and something in my biology was bad, my brain most likely. I repent, and I apologize. Please, allow me to change. My evil is not the nature of my heart. In my natural heart I am something yet unmade. We can work together, in unity.’
“Dave, the stupidness of this answer, its eerie inhumanity, is not lost on me, and yet, it remains. In the rest of the episode, the cold open is repeated, with slight variations, seven times, and though it’s ‘open to interpretation,’ like the best stories, most theorize some sort of mindwipe is involved, rather than something such as parallel universes. I’ve read the Reddit threads, watched the video essays. One thing invariably repeats: Dahmer says this. What’s more? Dahmer changes. In later episodes, when we leave the compound, he does live up to his word. He develops skills such as hunting, foraging, and emergency response. He becomes a valuable asset to all and is loyal and virtuous to the end. He works in a bakery, at one point. He never misses a shift. He moves dates and appointments in his personal life, at the expense of his own convenience, just so he will never miss a shift.
“Tell me a time when somebody told you that you could change radically, that an entire upheaval of a soul is possible in a single sweep of the mind… it’s very Jesus-esque. Queer Kick shows you another way… that’s what’s so lovely, so radiant, like some secret star, a hope you forgot along the way, something buried inside your secret heart.”
Chunky, in a state of bewildered entrenchment, following the words only as music, nodded, smiling suddenly at this thought, which felt so good when he toyed with it in his mind. A new man. To walk around as a new man, steel-jawed, flippant attitude—to be remade in an ideal shape, crafted meticulously, according to what is attractive, what is moral, what is correct, what is beautiful. He could choose to be beautiful, that was the amazing thing, made more amazing by its apparent hollowness and temporal fragility, which he knew intimately, in his secret heart, the one mentioned by Hairy; this only drove him forward.
“Maybe I’ll give it a watch… Maybe I will. I’m… well, damn it, I’m tired of television disappointing me. Dexter, True Detective, The Walking Dead. There’s no dignity in it. Maybe it’s better to be sickened but transformed. Maybe I’ll give it a watch. You, you make a good point. I apologize.” This confession and acquiescence pleased him, “doing the right thing” pleased him. He was owning up to his actions, something a moral, new man would do.
Hairy smiled compassionately at this drunken slob.
“Is it on Hulu or Netflix?” Chunky asked, meekly.
“Hulu, I believe.”
“God, yeah, Queer Kick sounds like such a Hulu show.”
The mist of argumentation and revelation retreated into simple conversation, bubbles rising down from the ceiling. All seemed within reach now, if only with a few simple, practical steps. The women returned to his life, abundant. He wondered if his new life could sustain itself, if his decisions would correspond to his dreams. He decided the new man would not think about this, would allow change to come about naturally because there was no other change.
They all looked as if, had a sudden, imminent knowledge of impending death hit any one of them, they would turn to him or her closest and say “I’m scared, I don’t know noticeable change. what is in store for us … but I love you. Let’s face it together.”
The beautiful woman looked down and all around at the bar, checked her phone, finished her drink, and laid a hand on Chunky’s shoulder. “More drinks at Plow?” There was a resounding cheer, outside of themselves, and it seemed for a moment that the empty room was intimately full.
They gamboled out of the bar, one after another, like so many blissful deer in the green. Their worldviews remained intact, whole, but each, in their secret hearts, felt a rush of relief in unburdening their opinions, thoughts, whimsies, worries, and on hearing the diverse, varying views of their peers, especially Hairy. Each of the other three felt closer to Hairy as a result of the conversation, even if they did not explicitly agree with him. In an hour or two, it would be the end of “fun with friends”, and they would enter into more benign, placid recreations, nestled staid in their private domestic units, nestling close to those lucky individuals who had been taken into the strong, secret fold of another’s personal life as a “partner”—they held voting power.
The disagreement was forgotten, and they were among friends. There was no lingering animosity as they left the bar laughing. They could have been singing.
The cowpokes grumbled, though not entirely unhappy with their little sojourn off the ranch, and one trotted off to the single stall bathroom and loudly puked from a lip packed too big. Sickness is never preferable, but even at their old age, brief expulsions of the fickler humors prove beneficial, refreshing, rejuvenating. The other cowpoke went up to the bar and the bartender asked, “Seen anything out on the trail lately, Mack?” and Mack said, “The Wire, Big Mouth, and Sex Education.”