message 23
the chips on my soldier
Hey y’all,
I’m writing this from a new computer, which means it’s easier to load images without hearing a whirring fan going on and on nonstop. The beginning of the year has been a bit crappy, to be a bit frank. I left a job that I realized only after I fully quit was filled with incorrigibly lousy people at the helm. I kept placing as the runner-up in job interviews, one and then two and then three in a row. There’s something unnerving in being told, after several weeks of sparkling conversations and clean skates, that you were undoubtably the second-best person they’ve found for a role. I once read that silver medalists are usually chronically miserable—much more than the lucky dogs who eked out a bronze. Who wants to be the best of the losers? I can’t cash a “we loved learning about you and your many achievements”; I can’t even figure skate, let alone in a sparkling gown. I could pawn my silver chain but I don’t do Florida shit anymore. After a while your brain feels like a whirring fan going on and on nonstop: loserloserloserloserloserloserloserloserloser. Try lutzing over that! But—but—I’m also writing this with a new job offer in hand and can unchain myself from that incorrigible idea. Now there’s a little bit of time to write nonstop, which isn’t that crappy, to be frank. Even if I’m your second-favorite, I hope you’ll at least say something filthy in my ear while we’re dancing—one and then two and then three. I don’t look too lousy in a sparkling gown. I’d love to learn about you and your many achievements. Call me your lucky dog.
—Keegan
Here’s a couple collage sets and a prose poem thing. Fair warning: the first collage set has old magazine photos of dongs—KJ
The Age of Junk
The chips on my soldier
a)
A famous academic once tweeted that writing has always been easy for her and that she simply couldn’t understand when other people who wrote for a living found the task difficult or painful. You can believe her because she used to tweet upwards of 200 times a day and recently won a MacArthur Genius Grant. “Hooray for you,” I said before putting the phone down to wipe.
b)
“I’m not sure why you chose such a plainspoke manner for this section.” His comments littered the side of the Google Doc I had put together. The Intellectual History conference planners had slapped us together after I posted on their boards that I needed two people—any two people—for the panel I wanted to do on consumer identity. The theme of the conference was “Problems and their Publics.” There is a clear correlation between the pluralization of words that typically remain singular in English (“public,” “society,” “personhood,” etc.) and how masturbatory the event will be. There is a clear correlation between how many years someone went to an Ivy League school for their PhD and the degree to which they will singlehandedly crap up prewritten conference proposal language with rhetorical questions and philosophy references that give nobody else pleasure. There was a third person but he may as well have been a golden retriever with a wedding band. I don’t remember if this is the conference that we did with 2 audience members or with 25. The conference had a panel with the guy from the American Conservative alongside the guy from Jacobin because I guess that’s cute. The conference had a self-fashioned tenured radical discussing god knows what: imaginaries, vagaries, giggles, intrigues, dogshits.
c)
Number of gay artists in nearly twenty years who have said I was hot / said I should mount them / said they needed a mustache ride / said I should come over / said I should fly over / said maybe daddy needed to be shown the ropes / said maybe daddy oughta use their ropes / said we could even do MMF / said I should top them and then make them breakfast: 58
Number of said artists who have said they like my work: 3
d)
“While there are flaws with this thesis, the writing is overall serviceably workmanlike.” The oldest of the three professors rattled off his thoughts as I remained standing at the other end of the table, clutching a mixed media piece I thought could further illuminate the horrors of Japanese-American internment. Five months of writing left me with a tortured DuBois reference and a wobbly set of premises. When you’re nineteen, you remain convinced anything is possible: writing for people who can’t teach you how to write well; pursuing studies in a field that will never hire you; dreaming of getting out of Florida anytime in the next decade. The three professors went page by page, pointing at every moment my writing gave them nausea, every relentless semicolon and adverb. The youngest started tapping against the manuscript. “I have to ask, though: Isn’t English your second language?” I held the canvas closer, wondering if I had said during my defense any of the words I normally screw up: pro-NOUNCE-iation, epis-TEEMEO-logical, dish-WASH-er. All clear. “No. Why?” “Huh, I thought we talked about this, being from South Florida and all. Well—“ she tapped the manuscript again—“there’s one saying that I just had to point out here. On page 15, you say ‘Their very presence stuck in the craw of the Roosevelt Administration.’” The middle one perked up: “I circled that, too.” “Right, right. That’s not a thing. I think you meant claw. It’s things like that that made us wonder.” They all had tenure.
e)
“John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.” Etc. etc. etc.
“The humanities are dying!” “Are the humanities dying?” “Florida is the death knell of the humanities.” “Is Florida the rectum of American education?” “Is Florida the rectum of America?” “Are there any Disney Gays that aren’t bottoms?” “How many poems can you write in Orlando after taking a dick?” “Did the queers and Black people kill higher education?” “Will DeSantis stop at targeting queers and Black people?” “Can a people have a history if the state considers it socialism?” “Does DeSantis realize he’s copying the Johns Committee to the letter?“ “Does anybody realize linking queerness and Blackness to socialism and, in effect, anti-American danger is the oldest move in the playbook?” “Does DeSantis realize what a little faggot he looks like signing his Disney-snuffing bill into law while wearing Cuban heels?” “Does anybody realize DeSantis has a degree in history from Yale?” “Yale also gave history degrees to George W. Bush (BA), Brett Kavanaugh (BA), and Ben Sasse (PhD).” “The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has uncovered slave labor on Florida tomato farms deep into this century.” “There are fewer than 150 academic historian jobs this year.” “You think there’s even 150?” “Half of all historian jobs go to graduates of eight programs.” “For years, Wendy’s has refused to verify their tomatoes don’t involve slave labor.” “There are 536 Wendy’s in Florida alone.” “You can do anything with a PhD in [history/English/anthropology/American studies]!” “Should you lie about even having a PhD in [history/English/anthropology/American studies]?” “Maybe if you got a PhD in [history/English/anthropology/American studies] at [Harvard/Brown/Princeton/Yale] you wouldn’t be in this problem.” “Ben Sasse was a Yale history PhD and then he became senator of Nebraska and then he suddenly resigned this year to run the University of Florida despite having no connections to the state: look at how far you can go outside of the academy!" “Have you considered working at a museum or do you think you’re too good for that?” “Have you considered working at Wendy’s or do you think you’re too good for that?” “The New York Times has uncovered tens of thousands of immigrant children working in factories, legally released upon arrival in this country to traffickers who hold them in debt peonage.” “Who has a history?” “Who has a history?” “Who cares?” “Who gets to have a history?” “Who gets to have a history now?” “Who gets to have history when they’re alive?” “Who gets a history?” “Who cares?” “Who gets a history?” “Who cares?” “Who cares?” “Now?” “Who gets a history?” “Who cares?”
f)
My PhD advisor insisted on the beauty of a five-sentence paragraph. “The platonic ideal,” he would muse in a distant New England clip. When I told him I was genderqueer, he asked if we “needed to have a conversation about it.” After writing letters of recommendation for like three or four college teaching jobs, he emailed me to note that he “had to use masculine pronouns because grammar conventions would make a singular ‘they’ awkward.” “I just appreciate that you wrote them,” I replied, far too stupid at the time to realize nobody would hire a historian from Florida.
g)
Every halfway decent piece of creative nonfiction is about 4 percent bullshit. This is worse than a fairly grown tomato but still leaner than an undergrad thesis (15%), a letter of recommendation (24-30%), any tweet thread (min. 45%), or conference panel proposal (clotted cream). How do you feel when milkfat coats your tongue? Every artist who ever hit on me liked the wiggle of my thighs. The grudges I let die in my mouth are even thicker.
Sight & Sound List
Thanks for reading etc. More soon enough etc. Tell a friend and/or a publisher etc. —KJ