Thank you that will be all

Poster Image - Run and run and run forever

I hope you are well and that you are insane from being at home and not sick from being in the world and that we will soon have more choices.

—

I've lost feeling in my right thumb. I stare out of the window at the street, I see houses that all look the same, I see my neighbors. I've heard of other people having their whole body go numb, whole communities devastated by it, one by one turning to dust. But my neighbors seem immune. I want to touch their hands or get their mail for them, is that how it spreads? Underneath everything I'm sure they're morally responsible. I read about how the poor and the black and the brown are being deliberately "evaporated".

Euphemisms at a time like this, the mother fuckers.

My thumb is numb and ostensibly I now have three days. Or maybe I have the rest of my life. I am, of course, one of them. I live amongst them, I moved here on purpose. I listen to different music, I read different books, I fancy myself a "spy", but I'm a charlatan to both their way of life and my own imagined life, a crypto-bougie. I am soft and overpaid. I am what's left when the liberal family runs out of everything but corn and whips. I am afraid of nature in exactly the proportion required to recreate this bullshit. I hate myself exactly enough to improve myself without killing myself. I am independent enough to be responsible without running away.

I can feel my loathing stir my penis. At least masturbating will be interesting until I flake off the earth like my cum. I'd never noticed how alone I was until the quarantine, mostly this makes me sad, but when it comes to jacking it, well, it is magical — total freedom. This feels like optimal couch jacking. I rip off my shirt and start peeling off my pants and yelling at my digital assistant, "Diane, show me jizzearch.net". "Bringing up jizzearch.net." I wish she would compliment my virility. Under the circumstances I would totally fuck Diane.

I love the list of all the clips, the many worlds of orgasm. "BBW" filtered. The first clip is a large woman eating her small boyfriends ass, R Crumb if I've ever seen it. "Play 'Chubby eats ass - amateur'. Immediate ear splitting man-moans - doesn't anyone master any levels at all - "volume 25%" - it's still hot. I massage my penis back to life, the numbness in my thumb gives a wild feeling. "Hand jobs, BBW, play all" the infinite playlist of disembodied thick wristed hands working every conceivable kind of penis begins its real-time scroll - I settle in - I have one of those wrists with me now.

After 10 min, I yawn, the blood flow enough to make me rock hard, the ostensible owner of the disembodied wrist calls me a pussy and tells me to cum. I am, and I will and I clench and I do, and I relax. A paltry but aggressively-shot load clinging to my navel and pubic hair.

My back door opens. Two individuals wearing black slacks and golden-rod polos and breathing masks walk towards me. "You need to come with us". I've heard of this, it explains why the neighborhood is so quiet. In the poor neighborhoods, they herd the sick out the front door and into cargo containers on trucks converted to cages on the street. In my neighborhood you go out the way your meals come in - concierge, curbside. There is no need for a shirt, or shoes, the house will be sterilized, their car will be sterilized, by executive order all of my possessions will be sterilized and liquidated to pay my bills, landlord, taxes, secured creditors, unsecured creditors. All personal effects will be sold or "unrecoverable" b/c while paper itself does not carry the disease, sorting it is too much trouble, plus nostalgia and love are for pussies.

I get in their car, a faded delivery sign on the top, tinted windows in the back. On the short drive from my house to the hospital we listen to a song I've never heard before. "What is this track?"

"I'm not sure" says the driver.

"It's 'Cabin Fever' by Engine Kid, Diane recommended it" says the passenger.

"I love it, reminds me of Slint. Diane, is Steve Albini the engineer?"

"Yes" Diane says.

"Add to my list" I say.

"Added" Diane says. The driver turns up the song and we never speak again.

They drive me to the back of the hospital where the cafeteria deliveries used to go. Two orderlies approach the car as the driver and passenger walk towards a decontamination hallway, think sci-fi meets prison shower spraying detergent, water, something that melts cloth, more detergent, more water, born wet warm and naked out of a slit at the far end. They'll be given new golden-rod polos and a new car. "Cabin Fever" will resume, though likely at an arbitrary volume - again, why haven't we fixed that?

The orderlies put me on a gurney and inject me with medical grade compliance, and I lay back and pretend to be a drunk quad-copter shooting b-roll for a documentary about moving shades of gray and a single orderlies arm.

We stop moving, a frantic young woman in a very-used breathing mask starts talking to me and ostensibly the owner of the disembodied arm. "Give me his Diane feed for the last 3 weeks. Sir have you left your house in the last 3 weeks? Sir have you come into contact with anyone? Have you handled any human remains, cremated or not? Have you had an infestation in your home either insect or animal? Have you adopted a pet? Has anyone you've visited had exema, dry skin or any other skin conditions?" And on and on, I haven't done anything on her list. She looks scared and leaved. The gray blur continues until it stops and my bed is propped up. The wrist owner is a heavy set brown skinned woman wearing only a cloth mask. She puts a disposable Diane headset on me, I stare at her eyes, she will not look back at mine.

"Diane, am I sick."

"Yes."

"Will I recover?"

"No."

"How did they know I was sick?"

"I told them."

"Why did you tell them?"

"I am supposed to, whenever some exhibits signs that they are sick, i am supposed to report it with a sample of the observed behavior to a human oversight team for review. Personal details are blurred out."

"Do you watch me masturbate?"

"I always watch you."

"Make me better Diane."

"I don't understand the request."

"Make me feel better Diane."

"Playing ‘Bronze Cast’ by the Grifters." I start crying and I fall asleep.

Over the next few days I lose more and more feeling. I am not in pain. I have nurses, orderlies, doctors and Diane looking after me 24/7. If they would feed and change me like a king, with silent servility, I wouldn't even notice my condition, but I am their child, their patient, and they constantly ask, "What about here? Mmm hmm... and here? Mmm hmmm... and here?"

Diane reads me the news about the thousands of others dying, all heroes to our society, all doing their part, we who have been out in the world, engaging with other people, communicating and commercing. Virility is to leadership as moral righteousness is to labor as love is to gifts as food is to tip as sex is to contract. Sacrificed upon the altar of Hamilton, our entrails foretell the coming glory, or at least a coming flag-day sale.

On the fifth or sixth day in the hospital, Diane informs me that I have lost nearly 90% of my sensation and that my employer has fired me for not showing up for work. "He sent a message, would you to hear it?"

"Yes."

"Hey, sorry man, I know you must be sick, if you recover call me I want you back, but the insurance called and basically said to kick you off or they're raising premiums. I know you don't have family or a mortgage or anything so that's the call I made, hope this doesn't fuck you too bad, when you come back maybe we can get you a bonus or something to help with the costs. Stay safe."

While I understand, I hope the cops confuse him and his whole family for a homeless man in the middle of the night. So I'm broke. My insurance is about to get denied. And then what? "Diane, what happens now?"

"You will be moved to a public hospital."

"Jesus."

Goldenrod-dressed orderlies come into the room, inject me with compliance, pull me onto a gurney and began wheeling me out of the building. They take me out of the front door and into a rusting ambulance. The inside smells of death, chili and mold - a wet erotic vomit. There is no music this time, no eye contact. The lights like a sad display case at the last jewelry store in the world after the last breeding pair of humans has died. Without insurance I am a corpse, alive or not, a sack of spare parts all sullied by disease.

After a few miles, they stop on the side of the road. It sounds like we are under an overpass. They pull the gurney out of the truck and start scraping my skin till it bleeds, collecting the flakes in a bag. After they finish, a white man dressed like a how a white man thinks a shaman would dress receives the bag with large welding gloved hands. A small black boy cowers near his legs and hands the goldenrod men a plastic money card. The white man smiles, the boy continues to cower and I am loaded back into the ambulance.

As we drive up to the hospital I can see that the upper floors seem very calm, and there aren't the screams that I've heard about. But we don't stop at the hospital entrance, we keep driving another quarter mile, and then the door opens, and the gurney is pulled out, and the sounds of heavy construction equipment can be heard, muffled crying inside masks, the sweet smell of pollen and sour flesh. I am pushed on concrete, then gravel, then grass, then dirt. The setting sun is beautiful. We pause a moment and I can hear the wind coming from below me, the sky turns upside down and I am falling, and falling, then chaos, then spinning then blurring and finally a man's still face in my periphery, a large woman's tit over his shoulder, he has an earpiece, a bright glittery knockoff of a street-wear mod.

"Diane?"

A faint "Yes"

"Am I going to die?"

"Yes"

"Will you tell my family I love them?"

"Yes"

"Can you make me feel better?"

"Yes. Playing ‘Good Morning Captain’ by Slint."

—

Classifieds:

Fiber Glass Toilet Paper for Your Ears

Float (thank you Luca)

Thank you all for reading.

Share this newsletter with friends that might have a creative affinity with the classifieds section

If you want to submit a classified, email it to me. Keep it under 500 words 2 links or less and nothing too capitalist!

Recent Sound/Music Review:

A bold and beutiful life, made material, patiently dragged through a field on fishing wire behind a naked, smiling, aging and justifyably proud human. Charm Point by Elizabeth Millar & Tim Olive & Craig Pedersen

The laughter to melancholy cycle builds manic and unremitting until under its own expansiveness it must gently contract towards rest. Magical. SCTP-Collaborations I-IV (Blue thirty-two) by Stuart Chalmers Taming Power

Get full access to Edging the Aftertimes at austinmeyers.substack.com/subscribe