#2-7 (hypernarrative)
In Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, there lives a man whose name is Ben (short for Benjamin) Wilcox, an otherwise-normal young man in his twenties, but for unknown reasons can only find sexual gratification by sitting on his own penis. From what he can tell, Ben said, he cites no traumatic events or strange happenings from an earlier, perhaps more impressionable time from earlier in his life such as childhood, which might help to shed some light on the source of his peculiar behavior. "It's just always been that way," he told a curious blogger via e-mail. Ben Wilcox was born on January 14, 1982, to Stan and Elaine Wilcox (nee Huffman), both too of Coeur d'Alene. Stan Wilcox was the head of the sales department for a rural provider of DirecTV, now retired; Elaine is a real-estate agent who is currently studying for her broker's license. Ben works as an assistant manager of a local hotel.
In 2004, also on January 14, a man was bludgeoned in the head by a falling meteorite while watching television in the living room of his home in Asheville, North Carolina. The man (David B., full name withheld) survived the incident - the meteorite's velocity decreasing considerably when crashing through the roof - but now can only both read and write at a third-grade level, and has difficulty following instructions, causing him to be "let go" from his job at the post office. He now claims disability and is plagued with frequent migraines, a condition which he insists he never suffered from before that day. The meteorite was given to a nearby college where it sits in an air-tight container in a back room of the Science & Technology department. Upon examination it bears a curious resemblance to an average circumcised penis, not just in shape but also in its length and circumference.
On that fateful night David B. was watching an episode of The West Wing he had taped last week but hadn't gotten around to watch until that evening. The actor Alan Alda, no stranger to the small screen by any means, also had a supporting role on this show. His most recent movie before joining the cast of The West Wing was in the movie starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt, "What Women Want", a comedic story about a man who suddenly had the ability to read women's minds, which also featured actress Marisa Tomei. Several years before, Marisa Tomei was in a movie called "My Cousin Vinny", a comedy from 1991 with Joe Pesci that also featured a small but notable role played by actor Ralph Macchio.
Exactly four years after the unfortunate incident with the meteorite, 2008: Ralph Macchio had dropped off his youngest daughter at 4-H and was driving his 2007 Honda Pilot minivan down a main thoroughfare in Long Island, New York, wondering how many people had downloaded a short film he had directed and put on iTunes. He hadn't checked for a couple of days, but hoped that more people had looked into it because of a recent interview he did for a local newsweekly, where it was mentioned. Feeling a little hungry, he stopped into a service station and bought one package of Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, a bottle of Dr. Pepper, and a corn dog. The girl who rang him up at the register, Shannon Mercer, 18, did not recognize him.
This did not bother Ralph Macchio. He sat in his minivan and ate the corn dog and watched cars drive by and thought about how everything used to be. I don't mind, he thought, but it's really weird how life is. I was on the cover of Tiger Beat, twenty years ago. Tiger Beat. I couldn't even go to Rite-Aid without teenage girls screaming and trying to rip my clothes off. I had to get bodyguards. Brooke Shields wanted to sleep with me, but I didn't take her up on it. Everything was going too fast back then. I mean, what the hell. I love my wife, but...Brooke Shields.
While he was enjoying his corn dog, a cash register at Best Buy in Davenport, Iowa, negotiated the purchase of The Karate Kid Ultimate Collection on DVD, for $31.46 with a Visa bank debit card belonging to Jacob Potter, 29, a temporary office worker. The Karate Kid Ultimate Collection consists of the movies "The Karate Kid", "The Karate Kid Part II", "The Karate Kid Part III", and "The Next Karate Kid" which does not star Ralph Macchio at all, instead a young Hillary Swank several years before she won an Oscar. No one was aware that Jacob had purchased the five-thousandth retail copy. Happily, he drove back in his late-model Dodge Neon to his rental home in Davenport, using his pre-paid cell phone to notify two friends of his, Chris and Barney, both of whom he had known since high school, that "(they needed) to come over with some beer", "(he) still has a little bit of schwag still left", and "we're gonna get our fuckin' Karate Kid on tonight."
Waiting for him at home was his live-in girlfriend Rachel, cooking chicken breasts and Uncle Ben's Instant Rice and listening to Sufjan Stevens, whom a friend (a guy who has a huge crush on her but wouldn't dare admit it) recently introduced her to by way of Seven Swans. Upon listening, she realized she quite liked it and decided it would be "good stuff to chill out to." Rachel prided herself on working very hard, already having received a promotion recently at the customer service center she worked at, even though she was only twenty-two. The news of her new position had set off some passive-aggressive remarks by some of the people who had worked there longer, but hadn't advanced like she had. While Rachel tried to shrug off the derision of her co-workers, it still bothered her, and it made her exhausted by the end of the day in ways she didn't immediately recognize.
Jacob comes home with his two friends pulling into the driveway about five minutes later. One of them rolls a joint and passes it around not long after the first disc begins to spin in the DVD player, transmitting the data to the flat-screen TV displayed prominently in the living room. Rachel abstains and silently eats her dinner on the couch amidst the trails of smoke and buzzed, over-excited snippets of what seems to pass for conversation amongst the three men, slowly questioning what's actually so great about this movie, anyway.
As the movie comes to a close she realizes that everyone is probably going to sit there until they've actually watched all four, even though it's Monday night, even though Jacob has to be at work at 7:30 the next morning. She's bored and thinks about calling her older sister, not really about anything but just to talk, but she assumes that her sister is probably busy because she always is. She decides to just go to sleep, not really mad or even disappointed, not feeling. Jacob is too occupied to notice her walking into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, then going to the bedroom. She changes into a t-shirt and pair of pajama bottoms. It's cold and she thinks about going back out to the hall to turn up the thermostat but doesn't; she buries herself under the covers and curls up a little tighter than usual, then nothing.
According to the meteorologists there was a cold front, at that time arriving over Davenport, which stretched across the rest of Iowa and surrounding states for several hundred miles, which on its furthest end was currently exiting the stratosphere above Excelsior Springs, Missouri, where Jason Ouderkirk, 31, a freelance website and database application designer who is also studying for his insurance agent license, was behind the counter of a British Petroleum station owned by Pankaj R., formerly of Mysore, India. A few days before, Pankaj's nephew had borrowed his Dell Inspiron laptop to surf the Internet, inadvertently infecting it with several different types of spyware and malware. Unable to deal with the problem himself, he asked Jason, who was a regular customer and knew to be "a computer guy" to help him out, which he agreed to.
Jason felt somewhat impatient, shuffling his foot and looking at the clock, waiting for his pirated copy of Windows XP to finish its re-install. He noticed Pankaj's eyes, friendly as always but this time with a hint of worry in them, or anticipation, which he attributed to his friend's uncertainty about computers and whether or not what was being done to his would actually fix the problem. A middle-aged woman with an old coat and long, stringy hair comes in and buys two packs of Virginia Slims and a few lottery tickets. One of the fluorescent bulbs overhead flutters and spits, implying that it will need to be replaced soon.
What if this is all there is, Jason thought.
He didn't know the answer to his question and experienced a sudden heaviness in his chest; a piece of his soul dislodged and caught in his throat. He took a drink from his opened bottle of Diet Coke and watched the status bar creep forward on the monitor. What if this is all there is and maybe it was because nothing in his life lately has been concrete or even secure in any way, the happenstance and good fortune with his freelance career having to do with little more other than his own perseverance and just really dumb luck, the mysterious rise and ebb of an unknown tide. It made him at that very moment feel vulnerable, punctuated by the swell of frozen air coming through the glass doors as they opened and closed, and opened and closed, and opened and closed.
Immediately after the job was finished he drove to a Japanese restaurant in Kansas City North to meet a friend, a young woman with blonde hair who used to have to work in the same office that he used to have to work in. Three easy adjectives to describe her: intelligent, pretty, down-to-earth. And while it always felt good to have her company, these feelings were eclipsed by the aftermath of the rude collision of his thoughts while at the British Petroleum station, one of many lifetimes with cruel uncertainties, unknown amounts of unknown variables from beginning to end. His attempts of conversation were several attempts to start an engine of a car that for some reason just didn't want to turn over. He forgot how to use chopsticks and the music being piped in to the nearly-abandoned restaurant attempted to be romantic but through the diffusing lens of one foreign culture to the next came off instead as melodramatic and awkward like desperately trying to breed panda bears in captivity.
After an hour but not quite two he felt prepared to get into his truck and head back out into the void and the cold and indigo night. The girl went home, and thought that a long hot soak in the tub would be nice.
In 2004, also on January 14, a man was bludgeoned in the head by a falling meteorite while watching television in the living room of his home in Asheville, North Carolina. The man (David B., full name withheld) survived the incident - the meteorite's velocity decreasing considerably when crashing through the roof - but now can only both read and write at a third-grade level, and has difficulty following instructions, causing him to be "let go" from his job at the post office. He now claims disability and is plagued with frequent migraines, a condition which he insists he never suffered from before that day. The meteorite was given to a nearby college where it sits in an air-tight container in a back room of the Science & Technology department. Upon examination it bears a curious resemblance to an average circumcised penis, not just in shape but also in its length and circumference.
On that fateful night David B. was watching an episode of The West Wing he had taped last week but hadn't gotten around to watch until that evening. The actor Alan Alda, no stranger to the small screen by any means, also had a supporting role on this show. His most recent movie before joining the cast of The West Wing was in the movie starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt, "What Women Want", a comedic story about a man who suddenly had the ability to read women's minds, which also featured actress Marisa Tomei. Several years before, Marisa Tomei was in a movie called "My Cousin Vinny", a comedy from 1991 with Joe Pesci that also featured a small but notable role played by actor Ralph Macchio.
Exactly four years after the unfortunate incident with the meteorite, 2008: Ralph Macchio had dropped off his youngest daughter at 4-H and was driving his 2007 Honda Pilot minivan down a main thoroughfare in Long Island, New York, wondering how many people had downloaded a short film he had directed and put on iTunes. He hadn't checked for a couple of days, but hoped that more people had looked into it because of a recent interview he did for a local newsweekly, where it was mentioned. Feeling a little hungry, he stopped into a service station and bought one package of Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, a bottle of Dr. Pepper, and a corn dog. The girl who rang him up at the register, Shannon Mercer, 18, did not recognize him.
This did not bother Ralph Macchio. He sat in his minivan and ate the corn dog and watched cars drive by and thought about how everything used to be. I don't mind, he thought, but it's really weird how life is. I was on the cover of Tiger Beat, twenty years ago. Tiger Beat. I couldn't even go to Rite-Aid without teenage girls screaming and trying to rip my clothes off. I had to get bodyguards. Brooke Shields wanted to sleep with me, but I didn't take her up on it. Everything was going too fast back then. I mean, what the hell. I love my wife, but...Brooke Shields.
While he was enjoying his corn dog, a cash register at Best Buy in Davenport, Iowa, negotiated the purchase of The Karate Kid Ultimate Collection on DVD, for $31.46 with a Visa bank debit card belonging to Jacob Potter, 29, a temporary office worker. The Karate Kid Ultimate Collection consists of the movies "The Karate Kid", "The Karate Kid Part II", "The Karate Kid Part III", and "The Next Karate Kid" which does not star Ralph Macchio at all, instead a young Hillary Swank several years before she won an Oscar. No one was aware that Jacob had purchased the five-thousandth retail copy. Happily, he drove back in his late-model Dodge Neon to his rental home in Davenport, using his pre-paid cell phone to notify two friends of his, Chris and Barney, both of whom he had known since high school, that "(they needed) to come over with some beer", "(he) still has a little bit of schwag still left", and "we're gonna get our fuckin' Karate Kid on tonight."
Waiting for him at home was his live-in girlfriend Rachel, cooking chicken breasts and Uncle Ben's Instant Rice and listening to Sufjan Stevens, whom a friend (a guy who has a huge crush on her but wouldn't dare admit it) recently introduced her to by way of Seven Swans. Upon listening, she realized she quite liked it and decided it would be "good stuff to chill out to." Rachel prided herself on working very hard, already having received a promotion recently at the customer service center she worked at, even though she was only twenty-two. The news of her new position had set off some passive-aggressive remarks by some of the people who had worked there longer, but hadn't advanced like she had. While Rachel tried to shrug off the derision of her co-workers, it still bothered her, and it made her exhausted by the end of the day in ways she didn't immediately recognize.
Jacob comes home with his two friends pulling into the driveway about five minutes later. One of them rolls a joint and passes it around not long after the first disc begins to spin in the DVD player, transmitting the data to the flat-screen TV displayed prominently in the living room. Rachel abstains and silently eats her dinner on the couch amidst the trails of smoke and buzzed, over-excited snippets of what seems to pass for conversation amongst the three men, slowly questioning what's actually so great about this movie, anyway.
As the movie comes to a close she realizes that everyone is probably going to sit there until they've actually watched all four, even though it's Monday night, even though Jacob has to be at work at 7:30 the next morning. She's bored and thinks about calling her older sister, not really about anything but just to talk, but she assumes that her sister is probably busy because she always is. She decides to just go to sleep, not really mad or even disappointed, not feeling. Jacob is too occupied to notice her walking into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, then going to the bedroom. She changes into a t-shirt and pair of pajama bottoms. It's cold and she thinks about going back out to the hall to turn up the thermostat but doesn't; she buries herself under the covers and curls up a little tighter than usual, then nothing.
According to the meteorologists there was a cold front, at that time arriving over Davenport, which stretched across the rest of Iowa and surrounding states for several hundred miles, which on its furthest end was currently exiting the stratosphere above Excelsior Springs, Missouri, where Jason Ouderkirk, 31, a freelance website and database application designer who is also studying for his insurance agent license, was behind the counter of a British Petroleum station owned by Pankaj R., formerly of Mysore, India. A few days before, Pankaj's nephew had borrowed his Dell Inspiron laptop to surf the Internet, inadvertently infecting it with several different types of spyware and malware. Unable to deal with the problem himself, he asked Jason, who was a regular customer and knew to be "a computer guy" to help him out, which he agreed to.
Jason felt somewhat impatient, shuffling his foot and looking at the clock, waiting for his pirated copy of Windows XP to finish its re-install. He noticed Pankaj's eyes, friendly as always but this time with a hint of worry in them, or anticipation, which he attributed to his friend's uncertainty about computers and whether or not what was being done to his would actually fix the problem. A middle-aged woman with an old coat and long, stringy hair comes in and buys two packs of Virginia Slims and a few lottery tickets. One of the fluorescent bulbs overhead flutters and spits, implying that it will need to be replaced soon.
What if this is all there is, Jason thought.
He didn't know the answer to his question and experienced a sudden heaviness in his chest; a piece of his soul dislodged and caught in his throat. He took a drink from his opened bottle of Diet Coke and watched the status bar creep forward on the monitor. What if this is all there is and maybe it was because nothing in his life lately has been concrete or even secure in any way, the happenstance and good fortune with his freelance career having to do with little more other than his own perseverance and just really dumb luck, the mysterious rise and ebb of an unknown tide. It made him at that very moment feel vulnerable, punctuated by the swell of frozen air coming through the glass doors as they opened and closed, and opened and closed, and opened and closed.
Immediately after the job was finished he drove to a Japanese restaurant in Kansas City North to meet a friend, a young woman with blonde hair who used to have to work in the same office that he used to have to work in. Three easy adjectives to describe her: intelligent, pretty, down-to-earth. And while it always felt good to have her company, these feelings were eclipsed by the aftermath of the rude collision of his thoughts while at the British Petroleum station, one of many lifetimes with cruel uncertainties, unknown amounts of unknown variables from beginning to end. His attempts of conversation were several attempts to start an engine of a car that for some reason just didn't want to turn over. He forgot how to use chopsticks and the music being piped in to the nearly-abandoned restaurant attempted to be romantic but through the diffusing lens of one foreign culture to the next came off instead as melodramatic and awkward like desperately trying to breed panda bears in captivity.
After an hour but not quite two he felt prepared to get into his truck and head back out into the void and the cold and indigo night. The girl went home, and thought that a long hot soak in the tub would be nice.