Thermos Rights

Kevin, now re-reading the suspected rapist's note, is a one of the pop journalists who makes a living in the Circle District. He is a member of several friend groups. That's not saying much, though, because retaining multiple memberships isn't hard--you just have to stay the whole shift enough times to earn a place at the front, and bring your own interview pad so you don't keep asking to borrow somebody else's stuff.

I wouldn't have minded Kevin picking up the thermos and opening it except a. I'd thrown it through the window myself (even though our Democratic Action Code insists who throws the thermos doesn't matter) and b. I don't think Kevin is a good journalist--he has "hand issues," won't shake strangers' hands, and doesn't drink at all, and his writing comes off as unspoiled and irresolute as Kevin himself.

So I did what you do in a friend group when you feel a lead has been unrightly scooped up by a lesser friend in the same group. I challenged him to a duel.

There is a traditional way to initiate a duel with somebody who has no talent--before showing him or her your Tags or performing the "I got your nose" gesture, you must first provide your opponent with the chance to avoid humiliation by backing off what's yours. You repeat the line one sees pop up so many times in the corner of the screen in emails from an online mentor who has reviewed your work: "I don't think you're ready for this one."

We Cashed In

We cashed in, didn't we, we Americans, on a peculiar tipping point--speaking of tipping points--in economic and intellectual history. For industrialism, didn't we present a pragmatic answer to the whole royalty problem--the goal of pragmatism being to, simply, gain? Europe's pursuit of imaginary and utopian problems, their frustration with kings and prince, couldn't match the clean slates onto which the brains of natives could effectively be blown. Nothing beats that new-car smell, they say. The imaginary problems might make Europe smarter--or at least, not as interested in democracy. But we, fundamentalist anti-intellectuals, don't we just want to treat the masses right and oppress the ones who we need to oppress to make sure the whole business doesn't tank? Weren't we a secular succession of the Reformation, after all, which authorities agree was also a success?

I'd been saving this note to give to the right stranger, not the friend group strangers but the strangers my friend group homing-pigeoned out. I stuck the note inside of a caution-orange thermos and, while the front line of the friend group scribbled notes in their interview pads, lobbed it through the kitchen window of the nutmeg house and into the lap of the suspected rapist.

It surprised us all when the thermos was lobbed back at us through an unseen portal in the house. The caution-orange thermos landed noislessly in some knee-high yellow and green ornamental grass that, I noticed, many of the officers were stomping all over. Kevin, a friend group member, picked it up and the Chief police officer, Daryl, rushed over to shine a miniature flashlight over his shoulder. When he realized the notes wasn't for the police, Chief Daryl snapped off the flashlight and huffed back into position.

Places We Are Awake

Last June, after being given a hundred more years to live but before I'd found my friend group, I'd sat in a wire chair one Tuesday morning reading the paper. On the front page and continued on 2A was a story about our Mayor, Grange. Grange had just finished a photo shoot with The Steamroller that would appear in the accent section of Sunday's paper. According to the story he was currently starring in his 6th film, one in which he would play a disgruntled landscaper at Florida Southern, home of 12 recently restored Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. Grange would play the grandson of one of many 1941 Florida Southern students that had worked back then as a laborer for Wright in exchange for tuition exemption, and whose own work had been overlooked due to the popularity of Wright's designs. The character would get involved in a plot to incinerate several Wright buildings, starting with the sabatoge of newly the newly rennovated Water Dome, a pointless 160-foot-across perfect circle of concrete that, had it worked, would have used a pressure hose system to create the largest man-made dome of water in the world. The film had been under fire for a scene that'd become infamous before the film even hit the big screen. This was the "death umbrella" scene in which attendants of the unveiling of the rennovated fountain are greeted by a 45 foot inverted dome of spoiled orange juice that had been--unknown to the sabateur himself--infused with an experimental neurotoxin by a secret and, apparently evil, population control branch of the government that had existed for god knew how long now. The scene took its time, about 13 minutes, and dwelt on the individual deaths of 17 people--each one got its screen time and no expenses were spare for realism. About the scene Grange commented that it was true, it was somehow the worst death scene he could think of in film, including popular torture porn and war films. But he was just an actor--he doesn't even see that stuff until the premiere.

Plus, he added, "at least folks were bothered by violence instead of sex changes for once."

That story ran through my head now as my friend group and I approached the nutmeg house. I wasn't sure what would happen--the Circle District was still a liberal democracy, and recent laws had been passed that allowed access to crime scenes for groups of a certain size. It wasn't the first time I'd seen or engaged what you might call a minor exploitation of the the new laws passed in the District after the flood, wherein scores of journalists (soft and hard news), entertainment magazines and filmmakers (amateur and syndicated), documentarians, popular historians, and old fashioned poststructuralists of all kinds had taken up permanent residence (what with the previous residents being drowned, shipped out, or having nobly volunteered to hole up for the next ten years trying to locate and sort out public records). Because the Circle District just isn't that big and also because drugs are so easy to get, this "citizens' media" often formed spontaneously whenever some sort of social or criminal tipping point occurred, especially when sex criminals are pursued by the police.

In short, the city had had to cut back on violence between the media and law enforcement (which was dangerously humble as it was). So the Right to Assemble had been annexed to Freedom of the Press, finally joining civilians and media personnel. And whenever I could get enough friends together, were were the press.

Our friend group worked its way past the layers in the skin thickening around the nutmeg house by officers, bullet-proof shields and vests, walkie-talkies and gum. We got ugly looks like were were cutting in the lunch line. Finally my group got up to the yellow tape that marked the cutoff, lodged like a cyst in the leathery shell. I thought of the suspected rapist in the house, liquified with fear, literally yellow and wet and rotted through by what he'd done or what we thought he'd done. Where was he? In the attic, looking down at the quiet, flashing mass growing outside his house under a moonless sky. Or did he have his face crushed against the gauzy curtain, the cold glass pushing into his face as he tries to listen to the clicks and whirs of radio speech and codes side-mouthed into CBs that meant the end for him.

Or maybe he wasn't there at all. Nothing to say he couldn't planned it all out and that he hadn't escaped by tunnel to the levy and was right now speed-motoring off in a skinny boat. Though it didn't seem likely--houses at this sea level don't tend to have basements, and plus rapists just don't seem like the sort that would plan and hire a construction crew to build a tunnel. I do however think of a rapist has somebody who would have a boat. Maybe I'm just being judgmental again. I'm sorry. I'm no expert.