Pump.

A diary entry. Sort of.

Pump. The bass is pumping away as 40 or so people try to fill a cavernous nightclub, dead for the 4^th of July weekend, filling it hard with their flailing and their looking cool. It takes a lot of space to look cool. I’m doing it, too. My legs are crossed, I’m serious. We’re all so f*****g serious. About what? Nobody knows for sure. Maybe we’re not here. Maybe we’re elsewhere. Maybe I’m sitting in a lab studying mitochondria. That’s very serious. I’m very serious. Maybe he’s not a 50-something-old transvestite out for a night on the town while his wife is away. Maybe he’s front and center at the G7 Summit listening to the president of France talk about finding a cure to cancer. And maybe she’s not really a 19 year old dyke performing masculinity on its serious side - no dancing, no smiling. Maybe she’s actually the president of France. We are plants. Planted as the bullshit, no good, left over trite, from our doppelganger, someone much more interesting than us. And we get all of the serious, all of the frivolous, all of the boring. The faces are up-lit, tinfoil smart phones casting a sun catcher’s glow on the down-turned waddles of the more-important, the I’m-only-here-because-someone-made-me-come, the I’m-the-paparazzi’s-wet-dream-they-just-don’t-know-it-yet, but any second, I am, I was, I will be. My face is up-lit, too. Someone named Natalie has written me back on a dating site. I’m not ready to write back. I’m only here to browse, only here to judge people’s profiles based on content and grammar. Could I love you? Could I be attracted to you? Probably not. I’m only attracted to me. Because this is the story of the narcissist. Yes, I’ll see you, I’ll meet you, bring a mirror, be quiet, tell me I’m pretty. It’s so much easier to tell in person whether or not someone will reflect what I need to see. But not here, not anywhere. We are no longer humans, we are back-lit screens. I’m so funny, I’m a meme. I’m so clever, I’m an app. Look at me, you can upgrade to know the real me … for a drink. Surprise, there is no “real me” … but thanks for the drink. Eric is in a gay bar, he’s all by himself, staring at his phone. All alone. Lauren says, “hi,” Mary says, “hi,” I say, “hey”. And he begins to tell us this yarn. I like that term. Yarn. He’s a ball of lies unraveling before us. I enjoy it. I don’t believe it, but I enjoy it. He tells us that he’s going through a divorce. Tells us about a plastic surgeon husband, tells us about his house in Berkeley, he went to Berkeley, the plastic surgeon found him there, married him when he was 19, he’s 32 now. Tells us he had butt implants. And this is when his story unravels. Nobody would choose that a*s. Lauren is groping his a*s, telling him that she can’t tell. She can’t tell because it’s all a lie. Nobody would choose that a*s. Unravel, strewn across the floor. He says he has a Mercedes. I wish I knew more about the Mercedes so I could inquire. But I like this story, it’s funny, it’s interesting. He tells us he has a nanny for his dogs, a house in VT, a condo in Boston. He’s a string of lies, each better than the last. I decide to collect him, a liar for my collection. I will keep him under a bell jar and occasionally lift the top when I need a lie. His hat is a superman hat. Rich people don’t wear superman hats. Unraveling fast now. A four year old son. But he buys us all a shot so we upgrade to learn his new name. Aim, shoot, swallow … hard. Our society hates liars, but why? Is the truth so much better? Do we care? The lies a person tells are so much more informative than the truth could ever be. Eric wouldn’t say, “I grew up in VT, I’m flaming, I’m lonely, I drove down here to get drunk, to get laid”. And thank god he didn’t. What would we talk about? What would we say? That’s nice, how nice for you, your life is a string of disappointments, poor choices, drunken nights with strangers, cheap shoes. Your fly is down, how nice for you. I’m a collector of phrases and references. My conversations are just Jenga games, keep at it long enough and I’ll pull out the bottom block that you began with and watch you come crashing down. Maybe it will be funny, maybe you will laugh, or maybe I will have collected a lie, and now I’m showing it to you, not to shame you, not to prove you wrong, just to show you. Because now we both know, now it’s interesting. Hello, liar, I like you, I’m a liar, too, aren’t we all? Now we can have an honest chat, now you can spin your lies at dizzying speeds, build the tower, give me a challenge, give me something real. He names his ex-plastic surgeon Jeremy. Tells us he’s on his second nose. Nobody would choose that nose. Tells us he has cheek implants. His face is round, boring. Tells us he gets botox, his forehead frowns at me. Pull out the block. Topple, topple down. I’m watching my reflection in the doors that lead back to the club. My 50’s style Bettie Page, cherry-covered dress with the halter top tie is shifting its hips back and forth, spreading its legs apart in a listening-to-lies stance. I watch the burning tip of the clove cigarette bounce around the reflection like a sing-along song (tomorrow morning my lungs will feel stuffed with scratchy cotton balls). I’m gesturing, pulling out the blocks, taking it all in. Shift, move, the cherries are restless. They want more. But there’s nothing here, just iphones, smart phones, so much smarter than us. We can stop being interesting now because we have these phones. What more is there? What else could we possibly add? It’s all been done. We’re regurgitating, reproducing, vomiting back, vomiting up. We have ceased to be interesting. We are just projectiles. Bionics who charge our smart phones in the palm of our hands. My ex, the plastic surgeon, implanted me with a charging dock. Put your phone here, in my a*s, and I’ll charge it up for you. No, seriously, try it. If you bite my lip, hard, you’ll get three extra lives in that candy crushing game. Turn my n****e at the same time and a video of nursing kittens mewing at their mother will flash on my abs. They’re there, my abs, implanted just under the muscle, feel it, pet my mewing kittens, power up, let me charge your iphone … if you can bear to be without it for a moment, for a second, bury it deeper (moan) and I’ll unlock your screen. The cherries on my tits heave, they are anxious, they want to leave. I am bored again. Bored by the lying, bored of the placating, nobody chooses the house in VT, certainly not you. My computer is waiting for me, my nakedness is waiting for me. I want me. I want to be home with me, fuzzy knee high socks, boy shorts, a flashdance sweatshirt. I perform, I lie … even by myself. I don’t want to vomit my lies at someone. I am this. I am a cherry dress. My hair is short so maybe I’m a dyke. Maybe I’m actually somebody’s 50’s wife. I think about the yarn I’m going to tell … next time. I time traveled, I had cancer, my hair grew back, it was the radiation in the time machine that cured my cancer (ask the transvestite, he knows all about it), but now I’m stuck in your era and I don’t know anything about this modern day life. Teach me, train me, and maybe I’ll stay. What is a “smartphone”? You want me to put it where? And that will work? We didn’t have jeans, we called them dungarees. You know yours are unzipped, right? Time-travelling-dyke-cherries is in a lying contest with Berkeley-feel-my-a*s Eric. I’m home thinking about it. Waiting for the internet to come back up. Waiting to jerk off to some video. People don’t have sex anymore, we watch porn. When the internet is down we have to use our imagination. (Oh, so that’s what that’s for?) I jam desperately at the re-set button on the router. I can’t imagine, I can’t, it’s too much work, I don’t know what I want. Strangers. F*****g. No ties, no attachments. We like our sex a la carte. We need our people a la carte. Three second memes, 5 second orgasms, before we move on. We have become temporal. We are all ADD. There’s no amount of pills to stop us from needing this, this entertainment, constant and changing but entirely the same. I turn off the lights, that’s enough for today.