Opening Section of ''Hypocorism'' (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Oud Hindi, by Bortnikoff
Oud Hindi (2024, Dmitri Bortnikoff)—a woody-fruity fragrance that, despite a brief but pungent oud opening of composted wood chips and desiccated blue cheese and sunbaked cowpats whose remaining bacterial VOCs seem tamped down by a covering of dried hay, is a perfect kid-glove entryway into the artisanal space—
soon after first spray resolves—with the help of a sweet package of tart cherry and honeyed ambergris and airy florals (sunny-citrus orange blossom, dewy-nectar pink lotus)—into what seems a vanilla ice-cream float of lightly rum-spiked cherry cola until soon enough the ash of a slightly mentholated cherry-vanilla cigarillo takes the foreground (the cigarillo effect not due to a tobacco note but the effect of several tobacco-reminiscent elements like oud, guaiac, and ambergris)—
the overall effect being a tart-oud fragrance that, despite having fallen through the cracks (which is nice because the jealous part of me can hoard it for myself), brings that old-wood aura Bortnikoff is known for (that impossible-to-nail-down aura of musty attics and dusty libraries and earthy ossuaries filled with fresh flowers, all the wood dry as a bone but having been through countless cycles of wet rot in the past), but still something nearly as accessible as a Clive Christiansen (candied tonka bean roasted by the same plantation Assam I get in Dahn al Shams);
the overall effect being, in other words, cherry-vanilla fragrance whose time-earned bite of Indian oud (distilled in the cocaine era when Kouros was still growling straight from the bottle) comes across less like fresh animal waste or musky goat pen or rancid cyst goo and more like a well-aerated mulch of woodchips and composted manure that gives off the persistent Band-Aid glow of Gucci Guilty Absolute and the cedary sweetness of Mississippi Medicine, a tannin-rich medicinal mulch that gives off an aroma quite close to Lao Oud were it not for a few central differences:
(1) Oud Hindi, due especially to the ethereal-translucent effect of the ambergris-lotus combo and then the unique cherry note, comes across as much more frolicky and sunny, sour and shimmering, than the chocolate-coffee-beeswax-resin rich Lao Oud; (2) Lao Oud, containing Laotian oud and birch tar, brings slightly more of a scorched Band-Aid or varnished wood impression than Oud Hindi, which has a lotus-vanilla combo that brings it much closer to Santa Sangre (almost like a more candied and less creamy twist on that fragrance).
*Let's workshop the opening to my story, novel-length now, that examines the intricate power dynamics and linguistic structures at play in a man's passionate relationship with a girl he deems too young.
*This story is where my heart belongs. And this wonderful young lady has my heart.
Opening Section of “Hypocorism”
His school-pickup spiel elicited teen eyerolls of classic daddy-daughter theater before it even really got going. Her teeth sucking (“Tch”) as she scanned the ceiling made him feel as if he were driving his own daughter to some ice-cream social circa 1952, a Father-Knows-Best figure unable to stop himself from rehashing the leave-room-for-Jesus dance rule into the rearview. But she was a big girl who liked to ride shotgun. “Shotgun shawtee,” she called it. And this afternoon he was baggy-eyed and shifty, her two-day field trip to D.C. having him brimming to the point of bowlegged ooze.
Hazards still blinking down the freeway, he dug the back of his head into the vinyl as if the pressure would jam the primal gears of the hypothalamus. “It’s just important we do this right.” But the exaggerated mouth mimicry, surprise snark caught when he glanced over, nearly had him snarl “Fuck it” (fuck the brakes, fuck the transmission, fuck who the fuck sees) and clamp her bratty throat mid pantomime, perhaps even grabbing the gun from under the seat to turn the slip-up uglier—neck-biting brandings of savage devotion (“Kill any nigga try to stop me fuckin this”) cresting, rubberless and rabid (“You wanted my baby right?”), into ear-nibbling whimpers of surrender (“Need you more than anything baby girl”) riding out with whispered repetition (“more than fucking anything”) on the dying aftershocks of pelvic paroxysm.
She could recite it by heart, his worried lecture—always pulsing like paternoster beneath their teasing and tension. It used to be a simple refrain. “This is nothing but trouble.” But she kept saying “Fuck it.” Then it became “This is nothing but trouble, baby girl.” The “Fuck it,” in turn, became carnal in her mouth, ugly as swirled soft serve—the lecherous phrase sliding, as if on a mucus trail of swan calligraphy, from dare to order. Her tone, sticky as the ethics, made the double entendre too flagrant for him not to give. Yet his give—guarded—was the give of a cheapskate, the give of someone she might have called “anal” or “hypervigilant” had she the words. “Extra” is how she put it.
A trusted adult needed to be in the loop before things got physical, too physical. That had become the rule. He was a professor, an ex-professor. And that had become the lecture. He would pull back if ever she tried to put his hand between her thighs. The rule demanded it. The limbo, of course, had begun to lose its cuteness over the month. They were only human. But they were inseparable. The rule, that meant for him, needed to be demanded. It allowed them to remain on one another’s journey while mitigating the risks of the power imbalance—risks present, he made clear to her (that had always been a major unit in the lecture), no matter how mutually welcomed and mutually sought.
The auditor could not just be anyone off the streets. The minimal requirements had already been sketched in the article that, especially at the height of the safe-space hysteria, could not but spell termination for any male lacking the academic protections of the nonwhite and yet still on enough of a foolhardy martyr kick not to use a pseudonym (or, at least after the fact, claim queerness or transness or some other saving grace off the counter-orange epoch): “Pound Town,” a socially-radioactive paper where—in response to scholars who insisted that the asymmetrical power dynamic between human and animal rendered bestiality morally impermissible even when mutually enjoyable and mutually opt-out-able, voluntary and non-distressing for both parties—he proposed that the sustained presence of a qualified watchdog could render the worry moot. He merely needed to tweak the details for the case at hand.
The silent third, a hardline overseer no more afraid to intercede than if the girl had been their own child, needed to be sex-positive and open-minded, nuanced enough to judge case by case, and yet someone whose blessing could not be bought—at least not in any overt way too untethered to ratiocination, too noisy in the closet. Snagging a proctor, for instance, by means of crack rock (chief countermeasure here to the Kensington hunch of Tranq)—that would scream unchecked bondage to the bollocks, an imbalance good neither for his self-conception nor for her welfare. Having sat in the sedan too many chubby days awaiting the school bell in this bombed-out block of dumpster divers winging perfectly good burgers over the shoulder in slavering search for a fent patch to suckle (no matter the farming of smartphones), it would be a lie to say that such cheap grease had never crossed the man’s mind. But whatever seal of approval offered by such a pair of eyes would remain too noisy, thumping like the floorboards of Poe, for him to sleep at night—hard enough already. Whatever seal of approval offered even by a moral witness otherwise ordinary but still paid for their time (and rightfully so) would ring suspect if not hollow for someone like him who, although a specialist in metaphysics, saw ethics as the most important branch of his field.
The temptation to bribe, tingling up from his blue charioteers, only made him dig his heels in. The nightwraith dream of himself up north, leaned up against one of the El corridor’s blue steel pillars, casting out with his fishing pole a powdered-baggy lure weighted with split-shot sinkers, feeling in his real teeth the leaden give of having bit them down onto the line—that sweaty dream had reoccurred too many times, waking him in the breathless rush of reeling in a monster, for him not to patrol himself with the intensity of a tablehead in a home whose very roof depended on it. His contrarianism could be perverse like that, bent inward in spirit like the zombies were in body. Sentinel over his own impulses, he insisted—as if he were Kant at war with Hume—on the rule all the more.
He insisted with the same self-defeating bullheadedness that had him, against all advice, submit that bestiality paper to journals. “What are you hoping to achieve? You have no cover!” His colleague was right, of course. Multiple managing editors reported “deep concerns” back to his home institution. He had pictured their uppity heads pedestated by infinity scarves—alliance markers, white-male-gaze thwarters. He had pictured their spiderweb-tatted nipples hardening against the titanium barbells into the anchored fullness of Canetti cruelty, their faces panoptic with performative perturbation as they typed with the passion of mandated reporters confronted with a suicide threat in the form of academic manuscript. Still he hit every Wiley submit button he could—every Springer, every Brill, every Oxford. Would they have been wrong?
To say the little girl resented the rule would be fair. Her mouth, drab as mandrill vulva, hung at the thought of tongues meeting, bridled lust venting through sighs that had developed a smoky patina of frustration in the days before she went on the D.C. trip. But she respected him for sticking to it, for disproving the quiet doubts she gave voice to early on. “Niggas out to get a nut. They ain’t stand on shit but they own asses. No discipline, I swear. How a bitch gonna find someone solid? I know how to say ‘no.’ I need a nigga that can say ‘no.’” In a sneakers-over-smarts world teeming with thugs and malingerers catcalling through blunt smoke on every corner and crumpling under Olde-English impulse (a Philly now shot through by smartphones valorizing, even in households otherwise sheltered, shallow minds quick to barter decency for dopamine in the stampede for likes over legacy), his tight-leashed stability—although easily clownable in the pocket-protector voice of a white male, the Judas of our time—felt safe. “You really my peace, I swear. My brain quiets. And you don’t play about me. You actually check me. I need that. You care where I’m going.” Even as her frustration simmered against his stubbornness, she respected discipline—her own eyes tilted toward betterment. “I ain’t tryna be scrolling. If they was one gift you could get my ass it would be a flip phone. Niggas’ minds lost. Even a bitch’s dreams be in TikTok.”
The waiting stretched her to the verge of being first to say “Uncle.” She had even said “You made your point, nigga”—the meaning clear to him, despite its vagueness amplified by its out-of-the-blueness. She wanted to prove, at the same time, that she was not the little girl society saw. Had it been reducible to that alone, however, she would not have been the exception she was—the problem she was. He would have left. No, she liked that he needed the rule. She loved it—the sternness of it, the grounding quality (yes, of titanium barbells)—however much it hurt. The boundary, even if it locked them in an agonizing holding pattern, meant he knew his own shadow. This man who introduced her to the nasal irrigation that put an end to her cute but chronic sniffles—who better to be her protector?
“I’m sorry I repeat the same shit. I—.”
“It’s fine. Not gonna lie—I kinda missed it.”
“I’m in my head, man. I know. I’m thinkin. I’m thinkin.”
“Try doin.”
“A-ha.”
“Cooked.”
“Ah-frickin-ha.”
“I mean, ain’t standin on business a verb?”
“You kill me girl. Jesus.
“Dead.”
“If you dead I guess you ain’t getting no gift.”
“What gift?”
“Oh now look at her. Demon to angel.”
“Tch. Tell me.”
“. . . .”
“Please.”
“Look in the back.”
“. . . .”
“The box. Bring it up.”
“That’s for me?”
“Yes.”
“You fixed my mouthpiece!”
“You say I ain’t doing shit. What about that? If you get your head out the gutter you’ll see what I do.”
“How you fix it?”
“I have this really good glue. It was the only thing that held down the rubber treads on my front steps. Even construction epoxy didn’t work. And shit has held now four years.”
“Thank you so much.”
“I just took a toothpick and filled the crack.”
“You can’t even see it. Oh my God.”
“I mean you can literally try to bend it—yeah, right where it snapped. See? Solid.”
“Wow.”
“I did replace the—whatever you call them.”
“Teeth guard.”
“But it’s not held together by it.”
“It like brand new.”
“And you see I got you both the black and clear. The black they said at the store was extra squishy so—. And look—extra reeds in that bitch too.”
“Nigga listened.”
“You mean—.”
“They size three. I just moved up to that. Thank you so much.”
“Yes. I most definitely did not just pick at random. I did specifically ask for threes.”
“Stupid.”
“The question is whether the bitch will play. I mean, I know any small crack can fuck up the flow.”
“It looks so good. I don’t see how it can’t.”
“If I fucked it up, I’ll buy you a better one—early birthday.”
“Thank you so much.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“So—.”
“So what?”
“You gonna have at least the common courtesy to tell me?”
“Here this nigga go. What you on now?”
“Don’t think I don’t know.”
“Oh my god. Why you lookin like that? You the only nigga make me feel safe and on my toes at the same time”
“. . . .”
“Tch. Stop.”
“How was the FBI convention motherfucker?”
“Dead.”
“Where you really go? I know your ass aint got no family doing this shit. You on that deep cover shit.”
“I just sat at home and ate ice cream, caught up on shows. Shit gets tiring. 8th grade math is more difficult than I remember.”
“Hmm.”
“And you know you aint the only creepy-white-man case I’m on.”
“Is that right?”
“But you the best.”
“Why’s that?”
“Cus you the only one aint sluttin a bitch out.”
“Watch your mouth little girl.”
“Dead.”
“. . . .”
“Sorry.”
“I’m sorry I’m so silly.”
“You know I like when you tease me.”
“So baby, for real—how was it? You actually learn anything, or nah?”
“No.”
“Girl.”
“Tch. Like, why we walking fifty miles to see a giant pencil?”
“So you could come back and get a foot massage.”
“Oh my God. Yes please.”
“I like you saying that.”
“Nigga with his ‘yes’ and ‘please.’”
“Hmm.”
“Not gonna lie—I like sayin it.”
“I missed you like crazy.”
“Tch. Tell me about it. We going to our spot right?”
“Definitely.”
“Wish you let me send you pictures, though.”
“See that exactly why I think your ass is in the FBI—possession charge on top.”
“Stupid.”
“Just gotta be careful.”
“I know.”
“So anything else?”
“At least the weather was nice. I packed like shit would be cold.”
“I mean it’s crazy. Shade trees already poking out with green.”
“Tch. We missed the blossoms, though.”
“There’s still a few days. We’ll go to the park soon.”
“Okay.”
“. . . .”
“But yeah, hotel was dirt.”
“Roach motel?”
“You ever eat plastic eggs? Cuz that shit was like plastic. On God.”
“Damn. Neon color too?”
“Yes. Oh my God. How you know?”
“Not my first rodeo babe.”
“You and that shit. To think a bitch used to think ‘cock’ was the whitest shit you say.”
“I’m corny. I know.”
“Tch. And let me tell you. Three girls in the room.”
“Damn.”
“But one go chasing some boys so it was just me and this other bitch.”
“Boys? Where the fuck were the chaperons?”
“Here we go.”
“I mean, I thought the shit was chaperoned. Why you think I was cool with it?”
“Dead. They had one to each floor. But that ain’t stop this bitch. She do OnlyFans.”
“You jokin.”
“Let me find out nigga gonna be loggin in now. Dead.”
“Where the fuck her parents at? Tell me how—. No, tell me why—.”
“That aint all of us. So don’t be in your head bout ‘the kids these days.’”
“Motherfucker you told me your friends were fucking in elementary school!”
“I can’t be tellin you shit.”
“And so what, you—.”
“Yes, I stayed in the room, with this white girl. She was nice.”
“So you made a friend?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“But I think me and this bitch planted cherry blossoms together back in like 3rd grade.”
“You didn’t say anything, I mean to her.”
“No.”
“Damn.”
“I know you like resolution. But sometimes it be okay to be chill. Dead.”
“Okay okay.”
“Her breath stank, though.”
“Interesting.”
“Not being mean, just facts.”
“Got you.”
“And let me tell you, bitch had that Ohio playlist.”
“Ohio?”
“‘Ohio’ mean lame.”
“Oh. None of that pussy poppin?”
“Dead.”
“‘♩Hey throw that mahfuck. Hey throw that mahfuck.♩’”
“Stooop.”
“How it go? ‘♩I’m only five foot but my throat 6’6’’. You mad cuz ya pussy ain’t fat like this.♩’”
“Oh my God.”
“. . . .”
“And let me tell you. I really missed rinsing my nose. I brought that bottle but I couldn’t get the water so I didn’t use it.”
“Good. Only distilled water. I’m serious.”
“How many times you tell me the same shit?”
“Just looking out for you.”
“But you see I listen.”
“I do.”
“. . . .”
“How come you didn’t go chasing boys?”
“I got a man.”
“Oh.”
“Yep. He my stink.”
“He give foot rubs?”
“Yes. And he like a nerd. But like a killer when he take off his glasses. Like you ever see Split? Like that nigga.”
“Hmm.”
“But I like weird. I like crazy.”
“Crazy?”
“He a writer. He say shit you can’t say. He ain’t give a fuck.”
“You like that?”
“Oh my God, yes. But that nigga need to go wild in life too—crashout, somethin.”
“Wild? What fuckin standard you holding this guy to?”
“Just saying. But it’s okay cuz he gonna take me to get wings.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Well, look at the time. I better be dropping you off.”
“Hmm. Maybe a bitch really in her delulu era.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“So, for real. You have any fun? Tell me your favorite part?”
“Chick-fil-A.”
“Girl!”
“The roller coaster too.”
“Oh shit. Busch Gardens? That’s where I went too!”
“Let me tell you bitches losing lashes. So weak.”
“You weren’t scared?”
“I’m with all that. You already know.”
“That’s what scares me.”
“You know what scares me? Tch. Let me stop.”
“What? What scares you?”
“Being in your head. A bitch go crazy. Dead.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“Stop. I’m playin.”
“I know.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Oh I did learn things too.”
“Like what?”
“Like you know Hamilton, the play?”
“Yeah. I didn’t see it but——. I was literally just sitting here reading an article about how Toni Morrison was critical of it. That’s the author of one of the books I gave you.”
“The Blue Eye.”
“The Bluest Eye.”
“Night Watch—that shit got me too much. So if it good like that, then—. Tch. Can’t wait.”
“Sorry, though. I interrupted. You see that there, Hamilton?”
“Nah. I learned crazy shit, though. Like this nigga younger than me runnin a whole company.—In the Caribbean. —Like without his parents. You know that?”
“No. What was the company?”
“It was like Amazon. Cuz say one boat comes in with sugar——.”
“Or slaves.”
“Anything. Hamilton would buy it and then ship it around the world.”
“So he ran a trading company, in effect.”
“Exactly. But shit complicated cuz this nigga coming from Spain and that nigga from wherever. Different places equal different money, feel me? He had to figure out what a dollar from Spain meant in British money or whatever. And that shit changes.”
“Currency exchange.”
“That’s what they called it, yes.”
“So it’s like Amazon plus a bank and FedEx all in one.”
“But like eBay too. Cuz sometimes he connected people and took a cut.”
“Damn. Don’t tell me it was like OnlyFans too.”
“Stupid.”
“Actually—probably better in a way.”
“But you ain’t know all that?”
“My education sucked. My son’s nasty with history though.”
“Niggas doing all this so young. Shit crazy.”
“I think of the damn writers. Jane Austen writing at 12. You got Rimbaud. The chick that wrote the Outsiders (I gotta show you that movie)—she was in high school.”
“It amazes me. Imma do my project on that. Cuz technically we was supposed to be doing work out there for it.”
“Technically, huh?”
“No I did, though. You know I’m good.”
“Receipts.”
“Tch. I was thinking about it. It’s in my head.”
“What’s the project?”
“She call it a ‘Persona Project.’ Like I gotta write like I’m one of these historical niggas.”
“Like you’re one of them?”
“Yes.”
“So like a speech?”
“Or anything like they might write: a letter, a diary, a speech.”
“I like that. Gives me hope in education.”
“But you actually can’t quote the person. It gotta be all in you own words”
“Even better. It’s about internalizing what the person thinks—how the person thinks.”
“You sound like this bitch. Dead.”
“It really cheers me up. Good shit.”
“Mad niggas going with speech. Imma do a diary. I like doing diary shit.”
“That’s a great idea.”
“You already know.”
“That really allows you to explore interiority.”
“Like the private shit, I know. See? You see the shit like me.”
“Why am I feeling so excited for you?”
“Tch. What nigga? Why wouldn’t you be?”
“No, I mean like my body’s buzzing. I can’t explain it. I’m proud to see you excited if that makes sense.”
“It does.”
“Yo! We can stain the paper with tea bags—burn the edges and shit to make it look old.”
“Um.”
“I can spray it with one of my moldy book fragrances—that lignam effect. Opus 2—I got several options.”
“What nigga? No.”
“That’s the shit we used to do though. The spray, though—that’s next level.”
“Nigga think I’m in fifth grade.”
“Then if you gonna be all big I wanna see you make the shit big.”
“Hmm.”
“Like make it sophisticated, layers.”
“You already know my shit gonna be best in the class.”
“You a big fish in a small pond girl.”
“Nigga we in Philly.”
“Still, wait until college. Watch some of the people you’ll meet.”
“Okay. As long as they let me bring you.”
“But seriously. It’s not just about outdoing your peers. That’s easy for you. You gotta outdo yourself.”
“I hear you but——.”
“Maybe even throw some shade.”
“I see you with that word. Okay.”
“Like if you knew that the guy publically said x but his personal thoughts were different you could explore that.”
“You wanna write it?”
“I’m just saying, you can get sick wit it.”
“Tch. I don’t know how crazy imma get though. My life stressed. You and music come first.”
“Baby, how many times—?”
“You know what I mean. Like—me and you one. So I’ll revise what I said: music comes first.”
“Better.”
“Yes and please. Dead.”
“So Hamilton—that’s your dude? You seem to know a lot.”
“Tch. See, everyone doing Hamilton. Niggas predictable.”
“You gotta be unique, huh?”
“You already know. But as you would say, shit bigger than me. Cuz like you be predicable and that just feed the shit.”
“Feed what?”
“Like everyone putting everyone in boxes. Niggas only see what they want to see. And like cuz I’m different that shit hurts.”
“No true connection.”
“Exactly.”
“What are the constraints?”
“Tch. I don’t know. People just sheep.”
“Sorry, I meant on the project.”
“What you mean?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking about what the fuck you were just sayin!”
“Stop.”
“I mean the parameters. This is that class that focuses on slavery right?”
“Nigga every class about slavery.”
“I can picture your kinky ass writing some master-slave sex diary.”
“Nigga that you. What I just say about—. Let me stop.”
“Yeah you better. Because I know your ass. This ain’t no box-vision.”
“Can’t tell nigga none of my dirt.”
“It’s safe with me.”
“Tch. Anyways.”
“So no thoughts? Hopefully this isn’t due soon.”
“Like so tell me what you think.”
“Okay.”
“You ever see Amistad? It’s a movie.”
“Yes, of course. Throwing the slaves overboard—. Shit stays in my head.”
“I hated that. But yeah at the end there’s this nigga—.”
“‘Trafficked person’ I think is the politically correct term baby.”
“Tch.”
“Well that was until around the summer of 2020. Now it’s ‘King in chains’ or—.”
“Stop. No, I’m talking about this white nigga, this old white man. He used to be president and he said to the court that the slaves that took over the boat wasn’t technically slaves.”
“Oh yeah. Friggin Hannibal Lecter, right?”
“Who?”
“What’s his damn name? Look up Hannibal Lecture real quick.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Yes, this nigga.”
“Just tell me his first name—the actor.”
“Anthony.”
“Anthony Hopkins. That’s it.”
“He handsome.”
“You like em old huh?”
“You already know.”
“So you doing him? Who was he again?”
“See here he go in this shit: John Quincy Adams. That was a president.”
“Alright. Cool.”
“No one doing him so—. But yeah Imma do him when he was young. He was another one of them niggas doing crazy shit as a kid. You know about him?”
“Wasn’t he flying planes when he was like five?”
“Tch. Stop.”
“I mean helicopters.”
“. . . .”
“Sorry. No, I don’t know anything.”
“He sailed to Europe at ten—by his own damn self.”
“Man about the world!
“And then he was like in Russia to meet with leaders.”
“A diplomat—like an oversees representative?”
“He was like the translator. Cuz he knew french and that was common. And mind you this nigga my age!
“Wow.”
“You believe that? It’s just so different.”
“Different times.”
“And Benjamin Franklin too. He was working at like ten. That was gonna be my nigga at first cuz I did projects on him before. But yeah, nigga writing essays like you at like fourteen. Made up a whole fake name. Crazy, right?”
“You were a child and then bam—you were an adult. That was how it was.”
“Niggas my age was like rich with they own businesses. The fuck?”
“. . . .”
“And I’m not talkin they was given the shit. They made the shit happen. See that’s what interest me. Cuz they was just kids.”
“Adolescence wasn’t always a thing. The push was to become self-sufficient quick. But now—. I mean, I always say this. But I feel adolescence is not just to eighteen or whatever. Shit goes on into the thirties.”
“Dead.”
“We got adults walking around wearing Hello Kitty key chains.”
“Cooked.”
“And I’m not trying to be mean. I’m a creature of the times too.”
“I get that but I hate to be babied too, though. That’s that boxes shit.”
“You don’t like to be babied. Miss I’ve-Been-a-Fuckin-Good-Girl?”
“You different nigga. I’m talking society. Okay, I ain’t opening a business. But I feel like—. Nah nigga, I know I could if I was allowed. Like I’m talkin even now, not then.”
“. . . .”
“Like I ain’t allowed even to play out, do gigs. And I’m good enough. So it’s fucked up. And like you like to say that thirty point. And I feel you or whatever. But I’m like stop goin around sayin that shit cuz shit bad enough for me right now!”
“I’m talking averages, though.”
“I know. But I’m talkin me.”
“I got you.”
“And like it a mind fuck too. Cuz okay you tryna protect kids right? So you say like people need to be treated like kids until not just eighteen but thirty and all that. Like you say about how it was in your college with the bunny rooms.”
“Safe spaces.”
“Yes. And it make sense. But sometimes the change make the shit be. Feel me?”
“I do. A self-fulfilling prophecy—like when in adjusting to reality you reinforce the reality.”
“. . . .”
“Like when you classify people and build institutions around that classification, the people inhabit the classification—enact it—more. And that then validates the classification.”
“Oh my God nigga. That’s what I mean. What you call it?”
“A self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“A self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“There’s probably a better term. Technically you’re not talking about a prediction or prophesy.”
“In a way, though, yeah I am. You predicting people to act like kids even when they’re thirty and that makes them more likely to do that. Like you was telling me about the low expectation on black students.”
“Yes in that sense I guess it does work. Nice.”
“Or like the safe spaces, feel me? Cuz why have bunnies to pet if you don’t expect them to need them? But then that’s like when the mom gives money to her kid even though she know damn well that nigga a crackhead.”
“I love your mind.”
“You treat people like they too young to do whatever and they become that way. Cuz yeah, most kids aint ready to play jazz in no club. Like they aint even dependable to show up. Like I get that. But—. The keyword “most.” Tch. It’s so many factors.”
“Yeah.”
“Like parents protect them too much, and teachers. Discipline go wit love too. You be on my ass. That’s why I appreciate you.”
“Thank you. That’s my love language.”
“Benjamin Franklin like literally had to work to live. But like people my age they got excuses. And the teachers aint doin shit cuz trauma serious and so they ain’t have to take the test. And then they just on the phone looking at goofy shit or playing video games.”
“Brainrot. Glizzy.”
“See? And now I’m a bad influence on you.”
“You’re right, though.”
“Hmm.”
“No I mean the over-protectiveness. It’s definitely a thing. It’s part of the larger trend of getting soft due to convenience. Like just having supermarkets and before that farming—all that came with many positives but there’s a trade off: diseases, less about doing for ourselves.”
“Means less if you can just get the meat at McDonald’s.”
“Exactly.”
“But it aint all about supermarkets and cuz shit easy, right? Other shit going on. I feel like I wanna study that. I want to know why.”
“Sociology—that’s probably the right field. Maybe I have a little sociologist on my hands!”
“What’s causing kids staying kids so long. I know you like me to figure shit out myself. But you should just tell me the answer. Dead.”
“I don’t have the answer.”
“I’m just playin.”
“Shit, some scholars I’m sure argue the opposite: we becoming adults too fast.”
“But that aint what you think, though.”
“I’m really not sure. I mean, this porno culture. That grows you up pretty quick. And then your friend on fuckin OnlyFans! Jesus Christ.”
“But this aint that. Cuz okay, you big in one way. But that aint mean you carry big. Feel me? Like it aint mean you live the shit.”
“But there are many other—. I mean, children and adults receive now a lot of the same content on TV. The impact of that—it’s bigger than you can imagine.”
“But nah, though. That make adults more like kids. Cuz like you say all the time: shit marketed to the youth. That’s why all these old bitches tryna act young.”
“Sharp points.”
“And like yes, you can point to all these small points: like kids exposed to porn or—. Just like at school: we doing school-shooter drills. That some adult shit. Nigga, they have us thinkin about college and what we wanna be. And my ass aint even in high school.”
“That’s exactly the things scholars who argue childhood is shortened—.”
“But like I said, just because you grown in specific ways don’t mean the whole grown. Like a bitch can have a baby at 11. That mean she a woman?”
“And also you’re not talking about young children but teens. You’re saying that adolescence is extending—not necessarily childhood in the preadolescent sense.”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t thought about it but when you mentioned school I was thinking about how school’s the big culprit. Yeah, you learning skills to get into college. But college is just another place where you continue being adolescent.”
“Dead.”
“What I mean is adolescent in the mind or, I don’t know, adolescent in some fundamental way you’re circling around when you say a person can be grown, grown on certain vectors, but still not be grown in an essential sense—a sense that warrants them counting as grown.”
“You even said college kept you young.”
“Damn man, yeah. School might be a big factor. It wasn’t mandatory back then. But now it’s expected that you you go to college—thirteenth grade.”
“So kids stayin out the real world longer.”
“The expectation to focus on school comes with the expectation to be more like kids: the expectation not to work on being financially independent or to take on many worldly responsibilities or whatever.”
“That makes sense.”
“It’s also the style of school. It’s so focused on busy work. Think about it.”
“See, nigga. I knew you had answers.”
“You’re trained to take exams that actually don’t mean anything. So it’s not just the insulation. It’s the insulation in largely meaningless routines. It makes you—. I mean, straight up it makes you like a follower. You get rewarded for compliance right from the beginning when even little boys have to sit in desks.”
“. . . .”
“I can’t pinpoint it really—well, besides saying that it makes you more reliant on experts rather than on yourself.”
“And now AI.”
“After all these years of school—I mean, it’s really ridiculous in my case: over three decades of unbroken school. Think about that shit.”
“Not for me nigga.”
“I still have this thought that I can only think something if someone else thought it. It’s like a lack of confidence. It’s stupid. It even goes to my perfumes. I’ll need to look to see if someone else observed what I observed. Otherwise I have this shakiness about saying what I feel. I’ll literally smell that apricot-suede of osmanthus. But I’ll have to look it up to see if it’s right.”
“Nigga need to open up to intuition. Know your truth.”
“. . . .”
“And schools teaching what not how, feel me? It’s like more memorizing facts than learning skill.”
“And a lot of the facts don’t matter.”
“I don’t want to memorize the dots. I want to connect the dots. Feel me?”
“What’s crazy is—. I mean, yeah—. I gotta quote that.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Sucking everything I can from your youth!”
“Hmm.”
“But think about it. Teens have more raw brain power than any other age.”
“Facts.”
“And yet what do we do with them? We corral them into rooms out of the sun. We have them do busy work. So much of my creative energies were funneled toward writing papers—papers to demonstrate competence. That’s what Einstein often talked about—how schools kill creativity and progress in thought. I don’t know. I’m getting off topic.”
“I could listen you you all day.”
“And it’s not just that kids are insulated from all this responsibility. Look who they are insulated with. They are literally warehoused with kids their own age. That allows them to indulge in being immature for longer. And then throw in birth control. They can hook up with each other without the consequences forcing you to settle down.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“I think it’s important to learn from adults. They have wisdom. I want to learn what worked before. Like, a bitch expected to make the shit up? And niggas wonder why kids thinkin they dogs. It’s not that that’s bad all by itself or whatever. But I think it’s cuz of what you said.”
“That kids are literally cut off from adults.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s real. Apprenticeship with elders has gone by the wayside. You have very few kids anymore working on the farm surrounded by adults all the time.”
“Cuz for real if you out there on a farm like that it’s like you tryna be an adult. You tryna be like the person who’s teaching you. It’s only natural.”
“That’s exactly it. In my day it was ‘adults are lame’ and ‘parents just don’t understand.’ That was bad enough. Now it seems even worse—that ‘adults are are creepy.’”
“Dead.”
“It’s like we’re almost at the point where it’s inappropriate to be spending time with adults—perfect, of course, for a society that tucks away the wisest in old-age homes like they’re some eye-sore nuisance.”
“I hate that. My grandma had all this wisdom. But we literally scared of old people. Even just old skin—shit bothers us.”
“They say that, I mean your friends?”
“Yeah. Like they can’t even look at it.”
“Shelted like the Buddha.”
“I don’t know that.”
“I’ll tell you about it. But all I’m saying is that youth obsession, that’s the big thing in our culture. It’s the boy bands and girl bands or whatever. Young bodies on a pedestal, every which way you turn. And adults consume the same entertainment as these teens (at least more than ever before). No wonder ‘teen pussy’ is the top porn search term.”
“That’s you nigga. Dead.”
“No wonder all the Botox.”
“People afraid of getting old like I said.”
“I saw a sign at the damn Urgent Care: ‘Botox Offered Here.’”
“Dead.”
“There’s so many factors. I mean, just take social media. Shit always reminding me of the 90s. It’s hard to turn away. I already struggle with nostalgia as it is. But this shit makes you a junkie. So many of my old classmates, from what I can tell on Facebook at least—they seem attached to the past, all white like King Théoden and shit.”
“I don’t know that either.”
“I’ll show you, girl. But yeah—. And then even if I manage to scroll past that shit, the messaging is still youth centered: it’s all about exploring identities and not getting tied down, personal fulfillment versus personal responsibility. No wonder more and more adults are reading YA literature—Young Adult.”
“. . . .”
“And that’s a fact. They are. I mean you should see these countries where school demands are crazier—like in South Korea. They got an adult-level understanding of math or whatever. But they’re stuck as teens. That’s your point.”
“We need to write a book nigga.”
“Honestly, if there’s all these adults consumed with youth culture and stuck in the past and reading YA fiction and fucking wearing Pikachu shit and Hello Kitty—I mean your manga stuff you like says it all.”
“That’s some advanced shit, though.”
“Sorry, I know. I’m sorry. I just mean the obviously sexualized little girls.”
“Of course you notiuce that.”
“I mean I have fuckin eyes. I think that we’re gonna see a rise in minor-attracted people. It’s gonna become a thing. Society breeds it. Luckily the harms will be mitigated by sex bots.”
“That shit natural though. Why you think a 9 year old girl can get pregnant?”
“Well, (1) I do think it is ‘natural,’ whatever that means. I’m wary of the term. It’s used like a cudgel, like the term ‘problematic.’ It’s used that way even in the damn fragrance community—uncritically. Because, in truth, everything—even nuclear reactors—are natural. The only way something would not be natural is if a factor in its being—like a causal factor, a factor that helped in some way to bring it about—were something outside of nature.”
“Like supernatural—ghosts and shit.”
“But—. I mean, I’m—. My understanding of nature is more encompassing. If there were such a supernatural realm it would just be a part of nature. So the only thing that would not be natural would be something coming out of nothing—literal nonbeing.”
“Deep.”
“But put that aside. That wasn’t the point. Actually it was—. Make of this what you will. But it was only after the agricultural revolution that girls became fertile that young. Before that it was more like your age. So not as young as you think.”
“Why was that?”
“More steady supply of calories. They started having periods earlier”
“But that just mean, though, if they had the calories, bitches would’ve had periods. It’s not like they could just fly or whatever if they had the calories. So like, it still seem set pretty young to me. But if the food aint there, shit won’t be. Like them gymnastic bitches.”
“Counterfactuals and metaphors—you a damn philosopher poet!”
“Gassin me.”
“Nah, these are great points. And so yeah—. I mean, look at incest. That has been around—and in the adult-minor form—since before humans were humans. So yeah my point is not that society made it—definitely not. But it seems to be enabling it. I mean I can’t turn on the TV without girls your age dangling like pieces of meat.
“That’s your mind.”
“I think it’s more intentional than you think.”
“I know. I’m just kidding.”
“I see homosexuality in a similar way. The shit is ‘natural,’ to speak like the hoi poloi (the regular people)—more natural than the christian conservatives want to face. But—and the conservatives are right on this, even if they overstate it—shit also picks up just by it being represented, especially like now, in a positive light. It’s a social grooming—which doesn’t mean bad. There’s another term that’s been fucked over.”
“‘Grooming.’”
“Yes. Anyways, rant over.”
“If that shit a rant, I’m bout it. You teach me.”
“You teach me too.”
“Thank you. On God, though. Me and you really be solvin shit. I love that we do that shit together. I don’t know. It just gets me.”
“You my teammate, girl!”
“You already know.”
“Before we write that book, though—can I get you some wings?”
“Yes!”
“Good. And watch what I do.”
“What?”
“Imma be like ‘Can we get an extra side of ranch? This girl right here’s going to need it to cool down after basically just writing a book.’”
“Stupid.”
“‘I’d like the largest order of wings you have, please. We need plenty of fuel because this one right here—. Look at her. This girl’s big genius dome needs even more calories than that ass!’”
“You play too much.”
“. . . .”
“Oh I ain’t spend that money too. So—.”
“None of it?”
“Nope. Here you go.”
“Cutie Pie, that’s yours.”
“. . . .”
“What’s with the face?”
“You can call me that all day. Please and thank you.”
“Of course, Cutie Pie.”
“. . . .”
“. . . .”
“Mmm. I feel that shit right up in here.”
“Where? Here?”
“No.”
“Here?”
“No.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm.”
“Tch.”
“What?”
“What you doing? Checkin receipts?”
“You smell good.”
“Stoppp. I’m all nasty.”
“Nah.”
Mutual masturbation, up front on the odd chance that the world might roll up on them, had become their extracurricular ritual in the swelling meantime. This compromise to their no-touch limbo took root, there at their spot at the forest edge of the cemetery, too early for the better angel of his liking. More than once he had stopped raising fingers, waiting for her to exit alongside booger-flicking classmates that made him want to place his head in the guillotine all by himself (“Jesus dude. The fuck you doin?”), midway in his calculation of the pathetic number of days that had passed between when they first met and when she began handing him—hand to hand—glistening ribbons of her mucus for his personal lubrication, whole elastic sheets of transparent heat that would keep intact like tempered fondue through his first strokes.
She liked to push against boundaries even here. “May I sit on it? Please?” That was her role. It flattered him. It made him feel better than any TRT, another deferral for another day for years now of risk aversion. She pushed harder sensing that he could make do—even be right as rain, especially since he always had purpose in his writing—with the consolation prize, sensing that watching the smell-o-vision while he jerked off could hold him long enough for time to handle the moral issue for him. “You good just doing this, huh? Let me find out Imma marry this nigga and this all he want to do. I can at least put it in my mouth.”
She did not push too hard, though. Little boundary violations, a necessity in all romance (an unasked-for-taking of the other’s hand, even a lean in for a smooch at the movies)—she was just playful. And she also knew that his fortitude, although informed by kindness and mercy, could lose its smile. “Little girl, look at me. I said ‘No.’ Can you give me a nod on that? Good.” TikTok clips spliced from the steamiest moments of black Tubi (her bookless generation’s version of sleazy beach-read pablum)—she had shown these to him, in communication of what turned her on. But that stern core that stood ready to sacrifice being liked for what is right, that stubborn core that would insist the child stay in their room no matter the “I hate you” from behind the door, was something she preferred over reckless ravaging. It made her feel safe. Safety—that was the main thing with her.
“I know you missed me,” she said as they came to a park at the top of the cemetery hill. She swiped his mustache with her slime. He snatched her by the wrist before her hand could get away and brought her fingers to his nostrils. She bit the side of her lip as he stared her down with bloodthirsty adoration. He closed his eyes, as in the secular prayer of any fantasy, and exhaled, tasting the fingers with the tip of his tongue like a cocaine cop. He opened his eyes. They were still hollowed out by hunger despite the pause. “You’re my life,” he said and let her go to pull off her pants.
She squatted over the flattened passenger seat, back arched against glass. He grunted his body—e-brake hump dug into his ribs, armrest console into his spine—just right to position his nostrils, flared for greedy memory, under the jasmine indoles of the brown eye’s crow-footed pucker. And there he feasted, a child dazzled by the cuff geometry of home, for as long as it took. There he remained transfixed by the creamy clicks of swollen tension, the residual bulges of baby chub (squishy enough for that grandma urge to squidge like Thanksgiving cheeks) and the deluxe bloom of inner lips (protruding enough for that scientist urge to twist like spring-cleaning drapes) all churned by kid fingers into a Velveeta slop with that self-mutilating fury of shock-eyed newness searching his own eyes with an open mouth like a mirror of answers whenever she met them below her: schlup-schlup-schluck schlup-schlup-schluck (“Hnnnn. . . . Mmmmph”)—the something-about-to-give frenzy of macaroni sounds, feral cousins of feline eyelids and cheeks squelching in amplified face massage, broken like pocket jazz by intermittent Vulcan salutes (self-initiated with cruel moans of sorcery) revealing that too-tight-to-be-true chokepoint of fibroelastic constriction for which possessive paranoia had him check. The resistance even to the strain of two-handed splay (“Spread it, Sweetheart”), the obdurate closure, snapped him back each time to the milkweed pods whose fused seams he would pry open in the midsummer fields of a childhood silken with promise. “Wider, baby girl. Wider for me.” He had his orders. Knobby roots reached down into that outer-dark stream from which all rivers flow.
The glimmer of mucosal marbling, bruised plum to bubblegum pink, drew him ever nearer the gamey petals, pleats whose cumin-prune booze would make a joke of Rochas Femme (his ex-wife’s signature scent)—his nose huffing, like a famished breatharian, at a hover just shy of touch. She teased but never dropped it on his mouth. She followed orders like a good girl even though she stunk like a bad girl. Her musk felt fit for him, a sweaty tang repellent as peach nectar squeezed over a pink orchid with petals too frilly not to keep spitting at. When his son was a toddler he could bite his fingernail growth off like it was his own. The closest thing he could connect it to was that. She seemed made for him, his people.
She had been eating the gummy snacks he always had ready for her. It showed teal in her saliva, her taunting tuahs (“Tuah”) dead-on with llama dominance (thwack) despite the distance to the twisting piston audible on the driver’s side. He was already gakked with her discharge. But she knew what drove him crazy: a helping hand, a complicity, that somehow stayed lockstep with femininity, with downright submissiveness, no matter how bold and nasty it got. Blown pupils, black like overloaded cat, said that her eyes fed a brain as sleazy as his. He could see her watching him work himself. He sniffed himself dizzy like she was glue, which she was.
A seat towel proved largely a formality in the shame-free space he safeguarded with his life. Her juices gushed like a grownup (“Make that fuckin mess, big girl”), the oceanic metallics of clear squirt mixing in his mouth with the fawn dribble of white cream as he watched the space from hole to hole kegel like a greasy subwoofer in a hood hatchback. Swallowing whatever he could of the mussel warmth became, after her reprimands about him dragging his heels (“Tch! Nigga you be stallin!”) and especially as her school trip started to loom too close for him to ignore any longer, the sole merciful contact he would allow—merciful but also, to say nothing of its falling short of the impossible merger that would satisfy his divine greed for nothing short of Mary, frustrating in its unreliability without the milking aid of that finger husbandry he hoped one day to floor her with: come-hither hooks to the tubal crown’s textured engorgement galloping faster into bladderward jabs of paternal severity. Technically, it was the sole merciful contact aside from hugs (she liked long ones full of reassurances in a Donald Duck voice he had not known he could do: “Ewwy-thing wiww be o-kway! Take a deeb bweath!”)—hugs and, of course, his alarming arcs of propulsion (nothing new but never not shocking): solar-flare arabesques that, timed to the stresses of his verbal fury (“Such a fuckin big girl!”), this afternoon gunked both their faces, his tongue flailing in audible exorcism under the mineralic fallout as he held the contorted bridge of netherworld yoga.
The fine nap dusting her lips still had the fleecy loft of a lamb. The starkness of that image alone (and how it was now gakked enough to seem like a clot of hair from the sink drain), to say nothing about how sometimes she would hold her arms up like a toddler for him to pull off her top or how she loved tickle torture or how she was poor and with virtually zero parental presence, meant he had to stick to the rule. It did not matter how insane her time away made him. He had given in too much already.
So he repeated the rule. He repeated it as if repeating it were progress. She needed to confide in one trusted adult, just one, whose permissiveness came not at the expense of blindness to the power-dynamic concerns: a third presence (“female, motherly,” he said) whose progressivism he tried to imagine, in the heat of climaxes waiting for the school bell, extending to the button-slurping extremes of fuck the police. The family fantasy (“Suck that little bitch, Mama”) collapsed every time, however, under the weight of his passion for his one and only. She was the bearer of mystery: the desert in Lawrence of Arabia, the sea in Moby Dick. The gonzo auditor—whether cast as the Esperanza Spalding of Junjo or de-aged into the Meagan Good of Eve’s Bayou—could barely hold even in the mere form of a tagalong mouth free-floating like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
