Cosmogony

by Lucy Ives

  However, I should note that this was not enough for Will and Jamie. Will and Jamie didn’t care what their most trusted, wisest friends told them regarding balance and being happy with the life one has. They both wanted to know what would happen if they were to stop lying.

  The other thing is, both Will and Jamie were also of the mind that they never wanted to stop lying, ever. And it was the fact that telling the truth, so called, was incompatible with never ever stopping lying, that tripped them up. It felt fresh to them and new, the idea of ceasing to conceal themselves. They wanted that piquant as-yet-un-experienced experience. They didn’t want to stop lying, but they were also greedy for new life and refused to be denied. They looked at each other and told each other that there existed an experience that should be tried, a sort of paradise, whee!

  They were for a long time baffled as to how to do it. For, as time had gone on, as we have noted, the situation had become increasingly settled and tenable. It also felt right to leave things as they were. This was why Will and Jamie resorted to occult measures.

  I know, said Jamie, a sort of spell by means of which we can allow chance to make our difficult decision for us. She didn’t, by the way, say this in so many words.

  Will looked at Jamie. She was a brunette, with spindly limbs.

  Just leave your phone out where Ada can find it, Jamie said.

  Will understood what Jamie was saying without so many words. He understood that he and Jamie could allow others to make their decision for them. It would be possible to demonstrate that the reason he and Jamie were lying was not that he and Jamie were liars but that they were doing something that others were not willing to perceive, given the terrifying truth of his and Jamie’s feelings for each other.

  And so, because of the ultimate hiddenness of truth, because truth loves to hide, as the ancient philosophers mutter damply into their beards, Will did as Jamie suggested. He left his smartphone lying around and he put a very obvious security code on it, one that even an extremely inauthentic individual would be able to guess. And he and Jamie waited for several months.

  It took longer than they expected for Ada to consult the phone. The results of this consultation were predictable and we needn’t linger on them. Of greater interest is what was simultaneously occurring in the world of Jamie and Jaime, because actually very little was occurring there.

  Will now lived alone. He had left the apartment he shared with Ada and moved to an even more remote part of the city. Here, the ocean exchanged colors with the sky.

  Meanwhile, Jamie and Jaime lived together. Will and Jamie saw each other but they did not speak of Jaime. In truth, they did not really see each other much.

  Will did not feel fear. Will felt only a calm confusion that approached a form of devastation or collapse. Again, Will was calm. He was calm as someone in the midst of a calamity is calm. Will waited. And he waited some more.

  Will had done nothing. He had only done as Jamie had said.

  All contact between Will and Ada had ceased. Will knew this was a permanent state of affairs.

  Will went for walks by the ocean. He drank. He felt himself changing.

  Will received a contract regarding his separation from Ada as well as information about their impending divorce. Later, Will received papers regarding the divorce.

  Will signed these papers.

  Meanwhile, Jamie was distant. Even without asking her about it, Will knew that Jaime, her husband, was sick.

  On the day on which the divorce came through, a strange thing happened: Jaime died. I guess Ted died, too. His heart stopped, or there was some other systemic failure.

  The upscale grocery store where Jaime/Ted worked posted a notice online and in its newsletter. Relatives paid for a few sentences in a major newspaper.

  Will did not know what Jaime/Ted knew about Will’s relationship with Jamie, and now Will would never know.

  I don’t know what Jaime/Ted knew, either.

  Eleven months later, Will and Jamie got married and moved out of the city. They were finally going to start their new life. This is the sort of thing, in case you were wondering, that is possible.

  More months have gone by and now, in the present, Jamie is pregnant. She stands by a window in the country in the home she shares with Will. This is really occurring, by the way. Dust spots the sunbeams and leaves rustle. It seems like there is always good light around these people! Songbirds are singing their hearts out.

  Jamie says, “I always knew that I would have to leave Ted.”

  She calls him Ted these days. It turns out that perhaps this was the name she had always called him, after all.

  “I know you knew,” says Will. He is interacting with a dog.

  “It became clearer and clearer,” Jamie continues. “I wanted him to go away. It’s not like it is with you. I wanted him to leave me.”

  “I guess, in a sense, he did.” Will is solemn.

  “You’re not listening to me. He shouldn’t have let me make so much food for him. He knew I grew up on a farm. Everyone knew.”

  Will continues to stroke the face of his dog. Jamie is speaking but Will lets the words she says accumulate at a distance. The words take the form of soft, dark clumps. Will thinks about the brave dominion of man, the chaos of animal life in the absence of a master.

  Will thinks.

  Will begins thinking about what Jamie has said, moments ago. It never occurred to him until this minute that Jamie could have left Ted, but she could have. Yes! She could have left him early on, years ago, at the very beginning. She could have left him even before Will knew her.

  But Ted is dead, thinks Will. No one has to leave a dead man.

  Will begins to listen.

  Jamie is saying, “He wasn’t strong enough. But now that I am feeding two people again, I can feel how I understand humanity better. It’s so important, what I learned.”

  “You did the right thing,” Will reassures her meaninglessly. Will’s dog stares at him with melted eyes. “You knew what was the right thing to do. You always do.”

  Will says these things and thinks he understands what Jamie says. He thinks that Jamie is saying that one must have standards. One cannot judge a bond, even of love, without a test. One is right to be suspicious, especially if one cannot understand a partner’s behavior. He is glad that he and his new wife are so well matched. He is glad they will bring life into the world.

  Guy

  This article is about the persons. For other uses, see Guy (disambiguation).

  Guy is an American slang term for a human being.[1] It characteristically applies to men.

  Guy is an old term, recognized by multiple generations.[2]

  Contents[hide]

  1

  History

  1.1

  Guys in literature

  1.2

  Spread on social media

  1.3

  Debunking

  2

  Biography

  2.1

  Public opinion

  3

  See also

  4

  References

  5

  External links

  History[edit]

  The term is present in early nineteenth-century British English to indicate a “poorly dressed fellow,” originally referring to the effigy of Guy Fawkes, leader of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up the king and Parliament.[3] It was also a vogue word during the Napoleonic Wars. However, it is commonly believed that there were no true guys until the 1970s.[4][5] There is thought to be a link between the development of the term into a social phenomenon and the financialization of oil markets and stagflation prevalent in that decade.[6][7][8][9]

  In the summer of 1969, during the course of a lecture on social ecology under late capitalism, the systems theorist Niklas Luhmann noted that the concepts of “generalness” and “individuality” are opposed.[10] Luhmann’s theory was shortly tested during the rise to prominence within the American Republican political party of f
ormer actor and corporate hype-man, Ronald Reagan, who, although unsuccessful in his 1968 and 1976 bids for the Republican nomination for the presidency, yet embodied the so-called everyman quality definitively described by Alfred Döblin in his 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, even as Regan vociferously touted the uniqueness and irreplaceability of America.[11][12][13]

  After Reagan was elected to the presidency in 1980 by a nearly 10% margin, Luhmann’s theory of Western social systems was at last disproved.[14] In urban America, the term “guy” came into frequent use, usually deployed to address someone in an informal manner (“So listen, guy, I’m glad you finally called”) or refer to another person (“Well, wouldn’t you know, that guy’s stealing my car”). Use of the word to mean “person” was further popularized in American films of the 1980s and 1990s such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, and Titanic. Infamously, the unreleased director’s cut of Titanic contains an anachronistic use of the term, when actor Billy Zane, playing the role of Cal Hockley originally written for Michael Douglas, points at a lifeboat and begins screaming uncontrollably about his irrational fear of flowering plants. This scene was deleted for the theatrical version.[15][16]

  The late 1990s saw the solidification of guys, leading to the period of the early aughts sometimes referred to as “peak guyness.” The particular inoffensiveness and gangsterism, typified by the ubiquity of drab garments like the cargo short, cargo pant, semi-mesh cargo-T, and golf visor, seemed to come at the expense of political will and directedness, not to mention mental health, for adherents.[17][18] Into the American imagination came an obsession with plots and a prurient interest in that which is unique but, paradoxically, assimilable to even the most unsubtle norms. Authenticity became a frequent theme of American broadcast television, with the ascent of celebutante Paris Hilton as well as, later, satirist Stephen Colbert, both of whom played strategically tweaked approximations of themselves.[citation needed]

  However, since approximately 2008, it has become more common for people to believe that guys do not exist, that there are only men. In fact, studies have shown that guyness is even more prevalent and may not be related to biological sex.[19] Researchers who once mistakenly linked guyness to uncertainty about masculine roles in an increasingly automated society now see the trend as the result of unconscious, as well as conscious, assumption of economic privilege in youth. Guyness has also been shown to lead to alterations in everyday speech patterns among subjects monitored. Meanwhile, Katy Perry is almost certainly a member of the Illuminati.[20][21][22][23]

  Guys in literature[edit]

  According to the writer Tom Wolfe, no guys have ever appeared in literature.[24] There is, however, some suspicion that the character Jessica Fletcher, portrayed for many years by actress Angela Lansbury on the long-running television series Murder, She Wrote, was an attempt to represent a guy as an omnipotent literary mystery writer, under the guise of a female persona.[citation needed] As everyone says, there couldn’t have been so many murders in one town! The website pentropy.com, citing a 4chan post from August 18, 2007, claims that novelist Jonathan Franzen always inserts a small, distant figure into the forest scenes in his novels. The figure climbs a difficult-to-perceive ladder and several moments later it is possible to make out the figure swinging back and forth, as if at the end of a hangman’s noose. This strange, seemingly unmotivated event is believed by a small cohort of readers, as the cohort’s self-proclaimed leader “r3d0rd3d” notoriously posted, to represent a figure of mourning for the death of guys within art.[25][26] Similarly, Italo Calvino’s ghost is said to wander the rambles of Prospect Park, manifesting himself in picnickers’ speech through uncanny bursts of whimsy. It’s embarrassing for me to say how I came to this conclusion, but I know he’s there.[27]

  Spread on social media[edit]

  Aaron Rally-Wyeth, a New York writer and editor, was dubbed “a guy” by Facebook users reacting to his post of August 18, 2016, in which he compared “hair plugs” to “butt plugs” for, as he wrote in a follow-up post, “no particular reason,” appending a PDF of over 1,000 images of the Canadian-American actor Brendan Fraser. “Who is this guy?” wrote one Facebook commenter, Pika Shoe. “I feel like, yeah.”[28] In response, Rally-Wyeth commented with a link to a tweet by Justin Bieber, in which Bieber expressed a desire to distance himself from his own father. This statement, since removed from the original post, subsequently became the basis of a theory of the interrelation of male passivity and apocalyptic dread, popularly known as “Whose Guy Theory,” or, colloquially, “wgt.” It appeared on Twitter via a since-deleted account attributed to “Brüno Mars.” The theory was then posted to the message board Godlike Productions. Rally-Wyeth denied that he had any intent to “even know anything about your dad.”[29] This phrase later became a rallying cry for Fraser’s fans, who, long silent, began to demand that a prequel to 1999’s colonial Pandora’s box retelling, The Mummy, be made in which Fraser’s character Rick O’Connell’s relationship with his apparently kind and successful, although in fact conniving and acquisitive, father is revealed to have been the driving animus behind O’Connell’s obsession with the looting of ancient Egyptian graves. Actor Rachel Weisz is said to be in talks to produce.[30]

  Debunking [edit]

  All this was subsequently shown not to matter. No one was looking, but it was obvious, all the same. There in the dregs of various parties, in the calm and bitter talk that succeeds a success, in the desperate mashing of the foggy and barely responsive screen of an iPhone 5. Unseasonable weather was the first topic broached; after this, all could agree. Culture was something anyone “had.” It was influenced; it got produced. That guy had a knowing way of walking into anyone’s scenario. I met him through some acquaintances.[by whom?]

  Biography[edit]

  Born in West Suburb, Connecticut, Rally-Wyeth attended the Trask-Lovely School and the University of Chicago, where he majored in the History of Social Thought. After graduating, Rally-Wyeth relocated to Berlin, Germany, where he held various positions, as a teacher of English as well as what he termed a “technological advisor to naïve gallerists” in his well-known humor piece, “Late Imperialism: Or, While the Soft Power Lasts.”[31] In 2007 he returned to New York City, settling in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, a rapidly gentrifying area where all his friends were moving.[32]

  Rally-Wyeth rose to prominence with a series of unpaid internships at general interest publications where, by going out to drinks with senior staff and googling them beforehand, he established himself as an unshy heterosexual individual of note. By early 2008, he had risen to the position of “Janitor,” the waggishly titled part-time role on the masthead of Man’s Leisure, a magazine which has since been sold, restructured, and rebranded as the print quarterly of Buzzfeed, Print.[33] Though Rally-Wyeth’s tenure as Janitor lasted but a short year, he was able to revitalize Man’s Leisure’s standing among the younger intelligentsia of Brooklyn, frequently leaning ironically in to what he and colleagues called the “badness” of the journal’s name. In 2009, he was the subject of a major advertising campaign for That Most Important Thing, the lifestyle brand and for-profit philanthropy group, which was then honing in on “the muted palette of male fashion” and developing a line of small luggage for discerning younger urbanites, what later became the cult “Petit-Maître” murse series, with the slogan “For a Living Religion.”[34]

  Meanwhile, Rally-Wyeth continued to post to social media. In 2011, he went public with his boutique media company, TK, so named for the editorial convention indicating text to be inserted at a later time. TK’s early mission was to “publish” tote bags at irregular intervals, as the firm wrote in its print-on-demand manifesto, “Successfully Marketed Lives.” Of this endeavor, Rally-Wyeth posted:

  And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that this Guy asks in return? Solely, I may say, that you would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living objec
t; or, even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light . . .[35]

  After an initial backlash, Rally-Wyeth published a retraction and personal statement in which he admitted that there were other people participating in his collective and his use of the first-person singular pronoun was disingenuous. He also admitted that he had appropriated all the text in his social media updates from real-estate listings and homeopathic tea packaging. TK subsequently initiated efforts to diversify its staff. The rarity of people actually from New York City within New York City became a point of controversy in nearby milieus, culminating in Rally-Wyeth’s viral think piece, “‘Where Did I Grow Up?’?”[36]

  Since 2016, Rally-Wyeth has taken on an advisory role within TK in order to focus on his web series, “Spreading 2.0.” He divides his time between Brooklyn and various grant-funded opportunities, with his partner and .63 children.[37]

  Public opinion[edit]

  The world was changing. I lived in it, but if you had blinked, you might have missed me. I stood in the shadows, the corridor, the edge of all things, and I was vaguely this guy’s friend. I had at least the same level of education as him, if not more, and my face was reasonably symmetrical. I had less hair on my body, although my body was larger than his. When we first met, things were professional and, indeed, have basically remained so.[eh?]

  But it’s more complicated than I am letting on. I began working with him not just because I believed in his economic-miracle-cum-personal-brand (that everyone kept photographing and re-blogging and ostentatiously letting slip whenever it took the form of a name), but because I was an idealist who had difficulty holding on to a job. I may have needed someone to help me. I might have wanted to get involved with the free market. I encountered this guy’s friends at informal gatherings and they told me how good he was with money. Of course, they used different terms. They didn’t say “cash” or “aggressive” or “demonically clever” or “red-blooded systems juggernaut.” It was more like that party game where you have to guess a word without being supplied any of its common synonyms. It was maybe like Charades, too, but I think that came later. Only later was it necessary to attempt to interpret events without listening to anything you heard. Only later did I get to be in an Odysseus-type situation, in which the majority-minority ratio on the ship was inverted and I was the only one with wax in her ears.[38] No, in the beginning it was more like, “We have to get in front of this moment and this is the way to do it. These assorted institutions are failing and everyone is out of touch. You aren’t recognized because you haven’t found the right partners. Our bubble is the best bubble that ever bubbled, ever, OK?” And I believed it. I believed them. I believed everything I heard. I believed I was being rescued from the world’s largest and most inexorably creeping (due to carbon emissions) desert.