Four New Messages

by Cohen, Joshua

  Cakes v. pies were debated, cupcakes v. muffins were too, the salient differences between them, the identities of the world’s greatest lacrosse players were discussed, various names proposed both at the college level and pro. Pressing questions asked and answered: What’s more degrading, working as a stripper or working as a maid? What’s the best position to have re: Iran—preemptive strikes or sanctions inevitably targeting women and children? What’s the best sexual position for virginity loss—for a man, for a woman, for a child? Is there a future for campaign finance reform after the veritable abortion of Citizens United v. FEC? If you could repeal any amendment to the Constitution, which (no one allowed anymore to pick the first ten, whichever amendment repealed Prohibition, or the thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth)? If you were a fart, what type (how wet, what smell)? Ten Most Mortifying Moments? Most egregious party foul? If you could describe your entire life in only one word to only one dead grandparent, which grandparent and what word?

  Etc.

  Mono’s apartment had been advertised as a one bedroom but having remitted the deposit he admitted to himself, why not, it was a studio. What the realtor maintained made it a one bedroom was a small little nothing nook by the door so minuscule that whenever Mono wanted to open the door he had to move the television onto the bed. His TV slept better than he did. The door’s peephole had been blackened for a robbery. The window opposite gave onto parkinglot, he never kept it open, gas. On the floor, lotto stubs, scratchers he’d scratch with teeth. Underlabeled whiskey under the label. Flies at the bottom of a liter of cola. In the bathroom clothing hung from the showerhead smelling alternately feculent and moldy. The sink was mustached with shavings. He’d been using takeout napkins as toiletpaper for a month. The sounds he’d hear by morning were those of mice the size of his pinky sprayed newborn from the walls or, once, the whining die of the smokedetector’s batteries. The apartment had no light because the bulbs had burnt out and he never remembered to replace them. Anyway Mono was rarely home at night and the television was enough light and the computer was sufficient too.

  Mono was ISO work. He was perpetually interviewing and applying himself to applications because what’s life for a man in the middle?

  Interrupting binges where if you didn’t have what they wanted you yourself weren’t wanted.

  Only feared.

  Meeting people furtively but trying to be kind. Yet having that kindness misinterpreted.

  I don’t care what you think about the Yankees’ outfield, one kid said, I just want my fucking drugs.

  Yankee wants his fucking drugs? Mono unsure of what to say.

  The kid apologized.

  Accidental, his initial involvement. Mono had begun delivering when he began owing Methyl money—short one night on an eightball he was supposed to have split before a food court coworker bailed (that one week Mono worked at Quaker Mall).

  He knew he had to get out when this past New Year’s down the shore at a condo shuttered for the season a fierce former valedictorian who’d strolled with him along the snowy beach had said, Let’s continue this conversation some other time—a convo about renewable energy—like when I’m sober and you’re not my dealer.

  Mono had had sex with her lesbian friend that night: she was stretchmark mangled, solicitous. She’d feigned abandon, collapsed on the bed, but just when Mono wanted to fall asleep she went to the bathroom to brush teeth, which was tender. The next morning she picked his jeans up from the floor and turned the pantlegs rightside out while Mono repositioned the pair of athletic socks in his jacket’s breastpocket—an advertisement for his packing a gun. That was the only time he’d had sex this year.

  The résumé he’d been sending around he’d falsified: his experience including six months as executive assistant in a film production company he’d created, a year as a consultant to a pharmaceutical consulting firm for whose HR hotline he gave his own phone, figuring he could talk drug distribution with the best—while his other references tended toward the suspiciously familial: his cousin who’d developed a dating website and was too lazy busy getting laid to pick up the phone, another cousin who did the ordering for but did not own as Mono had stated Trenton’s North Triangle Liquors—though when it came to education he demurred: granting himself only a B.A. if cum laude, supplemented vainly by a Dean’s Award in English.

  Despite this, he’d become inured to rejection: Never called back by that Suburban Poverty Task Force that needed someone with a liberal arts background to disorganize their archives, bend paperclips into helicopters and swans. Refused by that talent management agency requiring a front office rep. (he was overqualified, they qualified). A limousine driver, a limo dispatcher (ditto). Each being the juniormost position each business offered.

  Monday punctually at noon the phone rang and Mono answered and a voice said, Mr. Monomian (the pronunciation was passable), I’m calling from Skilling Militainment Solutions.

  Mr. Skilling, Mono said.

  There is no Skilling. This is O. J. Muggs, recruiter, ret. capt. Marines.

  Mono, sitting up in bed, said, Sir.

  I’m afraid we can’t offer you the position.

  You can’t? The position? But I haven’t even been interviewed.

  You won’t be. This does not constitute an interview. Please say yes, indicating your understanding.

  No I don’t understand.

  Don’t fool yourself, son. Not even civilians are exempt from civility. Security isn’t just armed convoys, it’s also a sound reputation.

  What’s unsound about my reputation?

  What you do in private is your business, until it becomes public, and then it’s your employer’s business, especially if your employer’s employed by the government of the United States. War’s all about image—and effective chaplaincy and counterinsurgency.

  Come again?

  You need to clear your profile, son.

  My profile, what about it?

  Your presence, you need to clean your presence.

  I’m not following, and Mono canvassed his apartment, wondering whether the man had a camera focused on him or was just intuitive.

  The internet, Muggs said, are you aware of your internet?

  Mono was not aware of his internet. He’d never made a habit of googling himself—it was too depressing a venture.

  Previously his life had passed undetected by bots. His life too modest for hits, too meek for the concerns of blogpostings and tweets.

  Mono had always taken such paucity personally—virtual presence being, to him, presence nonetheless.

  Whenever he searched there were only two results, two matches found: the first listing his name along with others of his class from Princeton High, the second aggregating what had to be all the names of all Jersey high school graduates ever to redirect them to wealth management services and medical tourism sites.

  But now still abed, after ending the phonecall, tugging his computer close and keying in monomian—typeable with two fingers, every letter but one kept to the right of the keyboard—he found a third.

  The blog was called Emission.

  The link was that optimistic bright blue that after Mono clicked would turn to the drab abused and nameless color of vomit.

  The post’s heading, RICHARD MONOMIAN.

  Mono withheld his vomit.

  He scrolled to the end and the post was signed with that single name, Em, timestamped midday the day before.

  But just as he was about to read the whole post from the top his computer emitted a pop—his father was messaging him over chat:

  Greetings Diran!

  That was Mono’s birthname, before Richard.

  Why are you not returning my calls?

  Mono messaged:

  cant talk now dad, then deleted.

  Mono messaged:

  its rich dad, then deleted again.

  His father messaged:

  Diran it is my hope you are not ignoring me.

  Mono clicked the chatbox
shut, blocked his father from chatting.

  He read on:

  Friday night @ party with RICHARD MONOMIAN. He brought ‘snax.’

  Wink! wink!

  Thats what he does for a living. He brings snax that are OK priced but also of crackhead quality.

  Anyways.

  Were all just hanging out smoking getting our drink on telling stories about former bfs and gfs when RICHARD MONOMIAN tells us this story.

  About another party he went to.

  A high school party.

  Now when the guy who brings the snax begins doing the snax and telling stories about high school you know its time to bag for home but for some reason we didnt.

  This was spring break, end of senior year.

  Before P’ton, obvs.

  It was a big houseparty at a big house with the hosts parents away—remember those?

  It ended with everyone oblitermerated passed out on random beds in random rooms and RICHARD MONOMIAN searching around for an empty bedroom to crash in.

  And he found like a guestroom or spare for using the computer or phone in room and there was a bed in the corner or like a foldout sofa.

  A girl was sleeping.

  RICHARD MONOMIAN said he didnt remember her name but even if he had remembered it and told me I wouldnt repeat it, thats not my style.

  RICHARD MONOMIAN said this sleeping girl was cute, I guess not cute enough to rape.

  Instead he pulled his pants down below his ass tits and pulled down his underwear also.

  RICHARD MONOMIAN grabbed his penis and stroked—he stood over her and stroked it!!

  Dick fisting his shit! Dick fisting his shit!

  Dick grabbed his hard dick hard and below him the girl kept sleeping.

  He was on MDMA I think.

  I think ecstasy and weeds.

  Highlarious!

  Suddenly he came: RICHARD MONOMIAN blew a load that landed in her hand.

  RICHARD MONOMIAN said he didnt wipe it up because he didnt want to wake her, he just pulled up his underwear and pulled up his pants and fell downstairs and out the door for home.

  Thats it.

  All the deets I have.

  Retardedly I didnt take a pic of him last night and cant find a pic online but Im sure one of my readers can and if you can then fwd: because I sometimes need a pic to look at to get less horny, Subject line: because I sometimes need a pic to look at to get less horny,

  (And if youre that girl who woke one morning on a strange sofabed in a strange house with a jizzy palm worried about what happened, maybe you ran out to get tested, maybe you ran out to get the pill—this is it, youre welcome, be careful where you fall asleep, sista.)

  At least his pic wasn’t available. That was the best benefit of his previous anonymity.

  Mono tried to remember what pics of him were around. Not many, few digitized. School portraits, a few snaps with friends moved away to colleges, and family poses, most of which his father had storaged. Easier to imagine a picture of yourself than to imagine yourself. He thought, why is it so hard to remember colors? And did anyone else think of death while being shot for an employee ID? (Besides the passport the only photo of himself he had was just that, from that week pretzeling at Quaker Mall.)

  He stayed in bed, blowing through what cash he had left ordering to his door medium pizzas and Asian noodle decoctions waiting for Methyl to call with his next assignment as the legitimate world with its legitimate rewards stopped calling, stopped responding to his calls—him sitting up in bed, with the pillow verticalized between his legs as stuffed buffer between computer and any Monomians to come, searching himself, researching his name, “within quotes.”

  Three results went to four when another blog he suspected this Em of hosting linked to the Emission, then four upticked to six when two readers of those blogs linked up from blogs of their own.

  Sometimes it was just an embed singly described, Disgusting, other times it was a capsule blurb that transclused: Em, a college girl from Jerzee who’s been keeping a party diary, writes about a guy masturbating on top of a sleeping girl … NSFW.

  But that was a particularly responsible example and most of the keywords were rather: Wrong, Sinister, This is just totally scrotally insane.

  People thinking this funny precisely because it was legend, social lore—it didn’t happen to them:

  next time sleep with an umbrella

  next time my girls not in the mood im gonna give her a monomian

  cumbrella lol!

  wear rubbers!!

  Within a week a hundredplus results all replicated his name as if each letter of it (those voluble, oragenital os) were a mirror for a stranger’s snorting—reflecting everywhere the nostrils of New York, Los Angeles, Reykjavík, Seoul, as thousands cut this tale for bulk and laced with detail, tapped it into lines, and his name became a tag for abject failure, for deviant, for skank.

  To pull a Monomian.

  To go Monomian.

  Fucking Monomial.

  No one, had you asked them, would have thought he was real. Only he knew he was real. And he only knew that, he thought, by his suffering.

  Mono was on the internet all day but did not masturbate. Porn sites went unvisited. He’d type in half their addresses then stop and delete, hating himself because the computer couldn’t hate him instead. The nonjudgmental nature of technology, if technology could have a nature—that struck him as unfair.

  He restrained himself from leaving comments on Em’s blog or from responding in any way by starting to blog himself because already people were posting under his name, were posting as him: Richard_Monomian, Rich_Monomian, Dickhardmon, Monosturbator69, each claiming to be “the real meatspace Monomian.”

  IRL I jerked in my own hand then inseminated her preggers (wrote Modick).

  Actually the bitch was so passed out I gave her an anal alarmclock (wrote Dicknass).

  The more the commenters commented, the more accurate even their inaccuracies felt, the more their elaborations felt essential.

  The weekend after losing out on a janitorial job then failing to obtain two other minimumwage positions (jeggings folder, organic waiter), Mono began searching for something else, not for this proliferating porno about himself but for a number of basic variations: “how to get something off the internet,” “how to remove stuff from the net,” “slander on the web,” “info on online defamation and how to fight it,” “how to destroy a website entirely forever,” “is destroying a website technically legal if the work is contracted to someone in another country,” “how to knock out someone’s server if you don’t know anything whatsoever about hacking or even what servers are.”

  He found a forum dedicated to cybersecurity that counseled a girl whose exboyfriend had uploaded a sex vid to contact a lawyer and sue for removal plus compensation.

  One chatroom included a comment from a genuine lawyer—“A Verified User”—advising a man whose wife had put up a website accusing him of being a compulsive gambler and not paying child support to contact him, he’d send a Cease & Desist for cheap.

  That must have worked because the link www.myexhusbandrandyisalyingdegenerate

  teenfuckinggamblerwhosbadinbedanddoes

  notpayforhisonlychildsfoodandmedication.com was no longer functional.

  Also the lawyer advised him to pay his child support: Buddy, that’s just Christian.

  Mono searched for lawyers in his area by typing “lawyers in my area.” The number one result was a website called “What Is a Good Web Site to Find Lawyers in My Area.” Like digging a hole to find a buried shovel to use to dig a grave.

  Then Mono typed in “how to get people to take down libel from online,” adding the local zipcodes.

  At the bottom of the first page of results, the tenth hit, was a link to a digital paralegal.

  That’s what the header said, Da Digital Paralegal.

  Mono didn’t hesitate, his connections did: B4UGO Network gave two bars, Chuck’s Den gave three, Sally S
ally Wireless Home—finally full strength.

  He arrived at a site either terribly lowtech or trying to keep the lowest of profiles: a page all blank white like paper with only a single address centered, the contact, dp@dadigitalparalegal.com, not even clickable—it had to be typed into the To: line of an email.

  What Mono sent this address was tentative, vaguely worded: Hello, my name is Richard and I am inquiring after your services, and though it was very late at night—though these were his normal working hours, beginning around midnight when, if Methyl had called, he’d be commuting the speed limit down U.S. 1 South between campus and the stripjoints of Trenton—the DP wrote him back within the minute, before he had the chance to signoff, amid a last reloaded scan of the news:

  Climate change was being called a sort of temperature socialism—it redistributed warmth to the colder months. This winter had set records. A woman gave birth to triplets, her twin to quintuplets. The father of all—the nondescript fertility doctor.

  Elections don’t end wars.

  The DP’s email, terse:

  U still up—just call me, then it gave her number. Her name, appearing not as a signature by dully fonted macro but as if by regular typing, was Majorie.

  Hello, Majorie?

  No reason she’d let it ring ten times.

  Yes, the voice lidless, up, what time is it?

  You asked me to call.

  No I know. I’m aware of my email.

  This is Dick.

  Dick who?

  Reluctance then because he’d have to say it anyway, Richard Monomian, and then he spelled it out.

  It’s good to meet you M-O-N-O-M-I-A-N.

  Behind her voice he could hear a toilet flush.

  How does this work?

  You were rather unclear in your initial query. But let me tell you to start, investing in taxi medallions is 100% safe and legal—a burgeoning business. I myself own ten I’ve leased at absurdly favorable terms.

  You’ve lost me.

  I have a comprehensive information packet if you’ll only give me your mailman address.

  My mailman’s address? I’m calling about the internet.

  A pause and then, mailman’s address is just a code, of course—if you were active in the Celebrity Privacy movement you’d have answered my mailman has no address, then we’d be talking business. I take it you’re no technophile.