Connor Coyne

The student revolutionary hung her head. Now that MTV had opened a house for The Real World in her favorite Marxist neighborhood, the process of gentrification seemed complete. It was exotic, really, to most of the world, this feeling she felt, but it isn’t giving fair credit to say that she felt it naively. She had thought this to be a fertile recruting ground, under the Blue Line, under the station, whatever was lost, whatever had been spent here in the midst of capitalist splendor: it was still a place where the smell of cheap newsprint and tamales rode the streets in rich and interweaving flavors. These were people to be recruited. But Viacom told her what she already knew, secretly. This neighborhood was already lost. It had been lost from the beginning. It wasn’t old bourgeois, but it was something new and equally contradictory. It called her attention to herself; the economic contradictions in her own history. But she didn’t want to give up. She believed this was really, really, really, really, really, really important. She urgently needed to be part of the solution, not one in the deck of problems.

Time to buy some tamales for a quick break, a burst of energy.

Time to ride the Blue Line one stop further on.

Earnest, a cryogenically frozen astronaut, was excited to be the first human being recruted to study the experience of sex on Mars. While extensive experiments had been performed on scientists in Earth orbit and on the moon, NASA had to be thorough in anything and everything, and the gravitation field of Mars (and the affect of trace amount of atmospheric iron oxide suit permeation) was an unknown quantity. So they had selected Earnest to test out sex with several partners. They had queried him extensively on his preferences (which ranged from white to black, buxom to flat, raven-headed to blonde) and on his sexual preferences (which were even more inclusive and varied) and promised that all of his desires would be satisfied so long as he submitted his data. It was certainly the best gig he had ever gotten. The whole trip – two-and-a-half years – he dreamt all sorts of kinky dreams involving whipped cream and honey and riding crops and bunny outfits and jumping so so so high in the air.

If the dreams were this delicious, he thought, what would the reality be like.

Finally, the ship touched down and the computer thawed him and his partners. Trembling with excitement he approached her chamber. He knocked. No reply. She must be shy! he thought with delight. Almost bursting with excitement, he reached out and pushed the door open. On the floor he saw a modest bicycle pump and a wrinkled flesh-colored plastic doll.

Vladimir Nabokov woke up one morning and found himself in a big bedroom without any ornamentation except for a large bed of fused wrought iron and a single framed painting on the wall. He climbed out of bed and stepped barefoot, nightgown swooshing around his legs, up to the painting. On closer inspection he realized that it was actually a photograph, blurred like the ink had been streaked by wet fingers against wet photo paper. He strained to recognize the features of the man there, a man wearing a short old-fashioned hat – not quite a fedora – with a wry, a cynical, a vaguely superior smile. The man there, streaked as he was, would not interview without seeing questions in advance. He liked butterflies a little bit too much, and had little nice to say about communism. And that was the moment when Vladimir realized that he was just a character in someone else’s story.

“Son of a bitch!” he swore, and knew this was uncharacteristic.

How utterly ironic.

Sitting on the lawn. Gentle branches overhead. Gentle leaves. (How can leave be gentle.) (They’re the ones with the smooth edging, no sawtooth fronds, so that in the chance that they are clipped off in a rough wind, there is virtually no chance of them cutting up against your skin.) Gentle wind. But that jazz isn’t gentle that blasts back over the audience of the forest preserve. That jazz band up on that chopped up white pine stage isn’t gentle as they squeal discordantly across themselves and leave a tangle of sound and noise in the ears and brains of the fifty odd listeners. No, they ignite that place like an atomic bomb and all those people have their hair blown back by the sound, and their shadows tattooes on the gentle green grass.

Daphne dances.

She doesn’t like it, strictly.

There’s something wrong with this DJ.

She can’t put her finger on the problem, exactly. He seems to have the genres set appropriately and in balance. He’s nice in that he weaves in the artsy stuff without clearing the dance floor. A glitch in the drum and bass. He can’t seem to keep his decades straight, but in this case, it’s a good thing. The club is performing well, too. Too much fog seems like a cheap stage effect; here it just curls around the feet, almost invisible, an illusion of incense since the club went smoke free. The lights aren’t strobes; they don’t beat down on you, but they do sear with the kind of intensity typically reserved for a desert sun. She is certainly sweating enough to feel like the night was worthwhile, but something is wrong here. Something doesn’t quite add up. Something is lodged in the back of her brain. There is something wrong with this DJ.

Is it the Ray-Ban sunglasses that look like he fished them up off the floor after some hipster stepped on them?

Is it the corduroy pants that don’t really go with his plaid shirt (which looks way to hot, for real).

Or maybe it’s the third arm that extends from the middle of his chest and helps him spin the vinyl.