Private Citizens: A Novel

by Tony Tulathimutte

  “What’s this?” Lucretia said when he handed it to her later, now that she was awake. Clearly it was an aquarium. Picture one of those big tanks at marine parks with the portholes in the sides. An orca whale or something is swimming around in there and its movement makes either large or small waves, moving quickly or slowly. Now look at the part of the wave you see in the porthole as it’s passing by. Now how can you tell if it’s a wide wave moving quickly or a narrow one moving slowly? You can’t! The two different properties, size and velocity, are indistinguishable because of the flawed terms we use.

  “Henrik, love, you’re losing me,” Lucretia said.

  Yeah but it’ll make sense when I tell you this right now, so keep listening: imagine that every measurement is performed through a “porthole” and that properties we ordinarily see as distinct aren’t, like the Heisenberg position/velocity issue, well that’s because position in some way that’s not obvious yet is velocity. Where we are is what we are. All mass shares the same identity. Make sense? The math’s not there yet but it will be. So does that make sense? All mass shares—

  “Back up. Can you explain—”

  I am explaining! Just look at the fucking drawing if you want to get it. I put a ton of effort into making this easy to get. I’m telling you something important and you’re deliberately trying not to hear me which drives me fucking insane. Hell, you don’t care. Honestly it feels like we’re not even dating. Are you serious or am I just a bit player in your kooky fancy-free lifestyle? We’re not getting married if you’re not going to hear me, honestly, I mean Christ what’s your problem, I drew this specifically so you would get it.

  “Okay, Henrik—”

  And I hate when you tell me I’m smart, because you think I’m an idiot. Being all sneaky and hiding a gun in your drawer. What? You thought I didn’t know? But I moved it. It’s gone, I moved it.

  “Henrik, you’re manifesting imbalance. I feel uncomfortable and as if the dialogue isn’t being respected. I think you should leave.”

  Fuck you. I’m going nowhere.

  “Anthony, 8-Ball! Help!”

  There was a heavy crunch at the door, and the partition wall began to bend in a big conic section toward them. The wall fell to the onslaught of Lucretia’s roommates clambering in, and Henrik grappled with them before he heard an aerosol sizzle and clutched his eyes. He curled up and they pulled his undershirt and frog-marched him over the fallen partition, down cold cement on bare feet and out the heavy steel door, which closed and shot its bolt behind him.

  YOU HEARD ALL about insanity and genius—the thin line, the alleged link. You didn’t hear about the equally thin line between insanity and idiocy. Drevets et al. (1997), using PET scans of the subgenual prefrontal cortex, demonstrated a 39 percent reduction of the volume of gray matter in bipolar patients, findings corroborated in later MRI studies on prefrontal gray and white matter by Lopez-Larson et al. (2002), on gray matter density in the fronto-limbic and cingulate cortices by Doris et al. (2004), and in situ by Fenn (2008), with his stinging face, mincing barefoot up Seventh Street at eleven P.M. in white boxers and an undershirt, awaiting peer review.

  Long red vectors of pain jabbed at his eyes. He searched an hour for the impossible rarity of a pay phone, and found one on the wall of a payday loan office, whose neon sign Henrik couldn’t read. He felt the shape but not the temperature of the phone’s receiver in his hand, its square metal keys. He misdialed and redialed until Will asked Henrik to repeat what he was saying.

  “Can I stay with you,” Henrik said, picking out his words like glass from a foot.

  “Um. Yeah, I guess. It’s kind of a party here, though.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind, fuckin’ just come over. Everything cool?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  Will gave Henrik the directions. “Before you come over, you should know—eh, actually, whatever. You want a ride? I’m not too drunk.”

  Henrik considered the temperature and the wind. The flap on his boxers was not the kind that buttoned. “Just give me directions.”

  The street skewed with a dolly zoom, each step seeming to lengthen the distance. He disrupted a pair of seagulls in single combat over a Snickers wrapper. A car passed, trailed by its reflections on nearby parked cars. When Henrik bumped into people he said sawright, which sounded equally like sorry and it’s all right; he left a trail of sawrights down three miles of sidewalk.

  Will’s doorbell was an ugly overhead buzzer. Henrik heard the nearing bumping of footsteps, the weather strip swishing open, then, with his dirty feet and butchered hair, half-nude, a rash across his eyes, Henrik saw at the threshold, leaning on a crutch, missing front teeth, holding a wooden spoon dripping spots of tomato soup onto the threshold, Linda.

  She squinted at Henrik in suspicion, then widened her eyes, expressing something opposite. Had Will set this up? They stood longer until their silence acquired rules: They would stare at each other, remaining still so as not to disturb whatever feelings had been deadened by silence in the first place. The one to speak first would have to apologize.

  “Need help?” Linda said at last. Entranced, doubting his stinging eyes, he gawked at Linda, who tried again: “Do I know you? Are you lost?”

  CHAPTER 8

  The Interior Drama

  At least she was fun!

  —Gustave Flaubert

  I. To Be Foul

  Linda needed a reason not to write and a new place to stay. To both ends, she put her hopes into tonight’s party, which Eve had invited her to. The two shared the toothpaste-dotted bathroom mirror, swapping mascara and gin and tagging each other with pumps of hair spray, while Jared chatted with the babysitter. The parents hadn’t gone out since Mercy was born, and Eve’s trepidation was visible as she strove to deparentalize her attire. Linda had been out of the game for a while too, but she felt good in her stolen leggings, stolen nails and eyelashes, stolen Ferragamos, a stolen color-blocked Fiorucci tunic dress cinched by a white belt reclaimed from a stolen vintage rag, her Rick Owens jacket from Berlin, a huge stolen Margiela bag to abet future stealing, and no panties.

  Eve was worried they’d be late even though it was only nine. They stepped into a spore-like rain that appeared only as a vague downward trend in the air, and on the J-Church clanked along to the Inner Mission. Linda busied herself doing bumps and some shrooms she’d found in her jacket’s chest pocket. It was easy to spot the place by the loiterers on the stoop smoking and adoring their phones. They followed the music and gabble to the unlocked apartment, entering a low-ceilinged living room lit with a string of Christmas lights. The tableau was unpromising: there were only about ten people, bunched into tight circles. The lower halves of the beer cans were still matte with fresh condensate; chip bags stood unopened in serving bowls.

  While Eve and Jared shuffled apprehensively from room to room like prospective buyers, Linda peeled off her leather jacket and stuffed it behind a couch cushion. She stood among the quidnuncs and tryhards, aware that she could be mistaken for one of them, twenty-somethings in slouching contrapposto, clustered like stands of thistle, always smiling with friends and unsmiling when alone. She recognized a few from other parties—she waved to the gay Turkish guy whose accent she liked to imitate and got some menacing cut-eye from the girl who sold crafts on the corner in Hayes Valley, whose boyfriend Linda had blown.

  Linda ventured on into another living room, one of those rooms rich people had just to have them, parquet everything, black leather everything. A tattooed Asian guy was pretending to attentively laptop-DJ but was really just playing a Kitsuné Maison compilation. The drink table held spirits, a cheese board, hummus and carrots for the anorexics. All books fit neatly on invisible shelves with their own display lighting. Pragmatic Ajax, Beautiful Form Design, The 4-Hour Workweek, 1,000 Brain Hacks.

  It was basic as fuck but it would be a good place to crash: she would find out who lived here. Linda took a pint bottle of Wild T
urkey from the bar and nursed it in the hallway until two guys approached her. They looked identical, beards and knit caps and red plaid flannels. She really couldn’t tell the difference between them.

  She’d missed the beginning of what one of them was saying. “It’s, like, strictly an aesthetic designation. It’s all image. If you look it, you’re it, so anyone who’s all asymmetrical-hair-big-glasses-beard-hoodies-tattoos . . .”

  “But that’s just, like, a subset of what I’m talking about,” said the other. They even sounded the same. “There used to be, like, a cultural lineage behind it, starting with the beatniks. Lenny Bruce—”

  “—and, like, Norman Mailer had that article about how quests for authenticity are perforce inauthentic—”

  “It used to be a subculture but now it’s kinda melted into this confederation of resuscitated subcultures, like post-punk-hardcore-New-Wave-sixties-counterculture-late-eighties-emo—”

  “—right-but-also-it’s-an-economic-designation-right-like-these-young-people-with-something-to-prove-about-money-so-they’re-either-rich-and-want-to-feel-like-they’ve-succeeded-without-privilege-or-poor-and-want-to-either-reject-or-surpass-economic-value-systems-and-you-know-both-stances-require-alienation-from-the-commercial-mainstream-so-they-have-to-commit-themselves-to-esoterica-or-faux-sincere-ironic-appropriation-of-pop-culture—”

  “—right-yeah-so-like-right-at-the-crossover-tipping-point-they’d-flee-to-other-undergrounds-but-now-that-the-long-tail-makes-everything-effectively-popular-those-distinctions-don’t-matter-anymore-so-it-really-is-an-economic-designation—”

  “—but-then-how-do-you-explain-all-the-like-all-the-identifiable-stereotypes-right-like-what-are-skinny-jeans-but-the-millennial-beret—”

  “—or-like-the-overgroomed-beard-a-perfect-emblem-of-masculine-ambivalence-emerging-from-a-progressive-subculture-rooted-in-regressive-nostalgia-and-pride-mingled-with-shame-not-to-mention-sincere-aestheticism-performed-through-ironic-mediums—”

  “—who-love-good-coffee-but-complain-about-what-good-coffee-places-do-to-their-neighborhoods-and-who’ll-collect-vinyl-from-the-nineties-but-sneer-at-the-bands-they-followed-three-years-ago-whose-breakout-success-they-themselves-enabled—”

  “—hold-art-openings-in-vintage-clothes-stores-music-shows-in-car-washes-bars-in-converted-barbershops-in-an-again-ironic-expression-of-the-sincere-impulse-to-live-the-bohemian-lifestyle-while-evoking-the-authentic-vocational-self-sufficiency-of-the-parents-who-bankroll-their-freewheeling-endeavors—”

  Linda was stunned by the ecstatic tsunami of irritation massing and cresting inside her as she listened to this tedious pukesome conversation—she glanced from idiot to idiot, as if observing a Ping-Pong match between players who missed the table every time. She drank her whiskey.

  “—but-since-self-awareness-and-semiotic-savvy-is-pre-requisite-they-can-tweak-it-enough-to-conform-but-not-enough-to-be-pigeonholed-and-so-as-a-subculture-it’s-un-precedentedly-sprawling-unbounded-by-geography-fashion-demographic-so-it-feels-more-like-an-all-pervading-endgame-than-any-countable-anthropological-system-and-like-I-know-like-it’s-trite-even-to-point-it-out—”

  “—or-even-to-point-out-that-you’re-pointing-out-that-you’re-pointing-it-out—”

  “—still-what-I-mean-is-it’s-a-heuristic-worldview-a-mass-postmodern-covenant-unallied-to-any-value-system-but-that-of-signification-itself—”

  “—well-because-bohemianism-was-once-defined-by-the-insiderism-of-outsiders-and-the-tyranny-of-recherché-taste-but-like-Zygmunt-Bauman-says-there’s-no-more-outside-to-be-inside-because-of-the-appropriation-dissemination-and-fragmentation-of-tastes-via-the-Internet-like-there’s-no-more-culture-as-such-only-content-coursing-through-platforms-enthroning-everyone-atop-their-personal-microaristocracy-of-arbitrarily-differentiated-taste-and-yesteryear’s-comme-il-faut-fascism-of-exclusion-is-passively-enforced-by-posting-flattering-images-of-you-performing-yourself-as-streetwear-model-or-art-critic-or-social-agitator-or-party-photographer-or-globetrotter-or-fabulous-trainwreck-inflicting-upon-everyone-pinhole-exposure-to-a-glamorous-lifestyle-residing-in-some-unreachably-distant-nexus-of-cool-which-was-a-sewer-tunnel-in-Bushwick-of-late-and-is-now-some-ineffable-IP-address-whose-glamour-is-only-the-shadow-of-the-medium-so-that-everyone-exists-in-an-outside-generated-by-the-inside-like-Baudrillard’s-remainder—”

  “—everyone-here-is-one-definitely—”

  “—and-I’m-not-saying-it’s-even-a-bad-thing-I-mean-look-at-us-like-oooh-we’re-standing-here-drinking-forties-and-wearing-whatever-we’re-wearing-and-bullshitting-as-if-we’re-above-any-of-it-but-nobody-is-and-it’s-not-like-we’re-hurting-anybody-or-there’s-any-such-thing-as-authenticity-even-if-you’re-not-striving-for-it-so-ultimately-it’s-just-a-sociological-category-and-an-arrangement-of-fashions-and-if-it’s-this-or-temping-then-so-be-it.”

  They turned jitteringly to Linda. “What-do-you-think-Liza?”

  Linda looked around—what could she kill them with? Those ironikitsch gold record wall clocks? Sheer contempt? Linda was torn by her almost horny desire to put them in their place, and her disgust for the antimatter vortex of taxonomy. The word that tainted every tongue that spoke it; the self-love that dared not speak its name. Deny you were one and you were one; call yourself one and you were a failed one; criticize one and it backfired instantly, since only the aspiring hip or resentfully unhip had a stake in disparaging hipness. It was a pejorative, but one that boring people overextended to malign all creative people. Why and where to draw distinctions for the transcultural culture of distinction? Who gave a fuck about the generation?

  With a start, Linda realized the two guys were one guy standing next to a mirror. And where did they go? She looked around, flinching when she caught her own reflection.

  To her relief, a fresh infusion of drunk people came clomping in from the stairwell, refugees from other parties, hefting bikes and twelve-packs. When the DJ went to the bathroom, Linda put on UGK and flicked up the master volume. She nudged through moving bodies into yet another living room, where the music was playing from recessed wall speakers. She sat on an ottoman and scooped out some coke with her white press-on pinkie nail, snorted behind a privacy curtain of hair. She hated the pretentious rituals of conspicuous concealment, everyone breaking their necks whenever two people walked toward a bathroom. Integrity meant doing your drugs in public and alone.

  Having done them, though, it was nice to walk through bodies in a strobe of glamour, champing at the insides of your cheeks, eyes tracing the newly interesting rooms like a machine die. Pleasure might be a deceptive sophistry, but it was better than subscribing to some hoary ideal of seriousness, of subtlety at the expense of the obvious. Seriousness was articulation. Leave the body out of it.

  Leave the body out—Linda realized she was dancing and nobody else was. She stopped and stood vanquished near a ficus. An underdressed girl in sunglasses was wending through the crowd with a large messenger bag. Linda would’ve thought she was a panhandler who’d wandered in if not for her bike helmet. The girl sidled up to a group of people, laughing whenever they laughed, then broke in and squashed their conversation flat. She tried again with a second group as the first laughed at her. When she passed nearby, Linda recognized the round butt and gnarled hair and felt a gong of surprise. “Oh my god,” Linda called out, hooking the girl’s sleeve. “Hey. Hey. Cory!”

  Cory turned. “Oh, whoa.”

  They embraced over Cory’s lumpy canvas bag. “’Sup hoodrat! What’s with the indoor sunglasses,” Linda panted.

  Cory took her sunglasses off, and her face gave its eloquent account. Hammocks of violet flesh hanging under her eyes and a cheek zit requiring clinical drainage. “Work’s fucking me up,” she said.

  “Come sit.” Linda patted Cory’s back through her dense cables of hair and eased her onto a couch. Linda felt a throat-squeeze of compassion for Cory’s bustedness. This was not shabby chic—it was the beauty sleep denied. “Do a bump with me.”

  “I still don’t do that shit.”

>   “Whaaat? You smoke weed like err’day.”

  “Weed’s not a—” Cory seemed to want to say more, but let out a leonine yawn that probably began as a scream.

  A nearby subwoofer splattered out dubstep that made the loose folds on Cory’s T-shirt blur on the downbeat. Linda had already keyed out a small hill of drug and offered it to Cory, the other keys jingling on the ring. “Do it.”

  Cory shook a baggie of white powder at Linda. “I’m on this already. Excedrin and baking soda. Jesus, I’m gonna pass out.”

  Linda took the bump and licked the key clean. “Girl, you look like you just learned about death. Go get some sleep. And food.”

  “I can’t, I’m working. We’re promoting at private parties now. My company. There’s no cover here. I have to go to three more tonight. You know whose party this is?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Some Internet rich guy.”

  Yes, it was a dickhead party. Linda’s critical apparatus switched lenses from telephoto unease to wide-angle disgust: the framed Chris Ware panels, the wall-mounted collector’s guitars and Godard poster. Everyone had very uncreased necks, which meant no prolonged inclining of the head, which meant no reading. (Linda’s own neck looked like a finger, but she reassured herself that the creases were like tree rings marking her substance.) She hated that she was legitimizing it by being here.

  Cory let out another yawn you could walk around in. “Ulgh. I have to go. Good seeing you.”

  “No, c’mon, stay.”

  “Sorry. Work.”

  Cory hugged Linda and pressed a glossy flyer into her hand, affixed with a small baggie of her fake coke. Linda considered leaving with Cory, since she’d be goddamned if she left with Eve and Jared, but Cory had already moved on. How had they fallen into such low profile? Success had seemed so foregone in college, when Cory was doing her hunger strikes and Linda was at least still writing. When they roomed together in college they’d finely balanced their negativities—Cory’s distaste for coolness had shamed Linda out of several Adorno-quote tattoos she would’ve definitely regretted, and Linda’s sarcasm had shamed Cory out of claiming that she ate only chickpeas with hot sauce to be frugal/healthy/vegetarian. Plus Cory had den-mother tendencies that had found their perfect subject—even that one time Linda passed out in Cory’s bed and then wet it, Cory made her raspberry leaf tea and filled a knotted-up T-shirt with microwaved dry rice to rest on her forehead. Though their rapport wasn’t based on caretaking so much as mutual admiration for qualities they didn’t covet themselves, which made everything easy. Cory once said she had an intricate recurring fantasy about intervening in a sexual assault and then counseling the almost-victim through her trauma and reporting options, which Linda found hilarious and touching.