There is one large mountain, like the spine bumps of a naked climber’s back. All mountains are expressions of the one mountain, iterated through everyday and everywhere and appearing to you (foolish timelocked climber) as if they are distinct wedges of rock which dwarf you, loom over you, could crush you, but do not threaten because they do not know you, you are not here long enough, you are a little thing, of insect importance, the duration of a twitch, an impulse. I am of mountain, you are of blip. Could be worse.

Why are you talking to me? Because I am there. Like all mountain. And you fear mountain, due to mountain’s largeness and unmovingness. So alien to you. So hard to think about for you. The thoughts pain your head, they are so large to put in your tiny climber brain. You must talk to what you fear.

You talk to me for purpose, little climber. Go ahead and climb, I don’t mind! I barely notice. And when I notice I choose to notice. You cannot help but notice me. If you miss me, you are soft-headed. Other tiny would-be climbers will go “Hey. Stupid. That mountain there.” and probably slap you. Upside. The head. And I would laugh, if I cared, or heard and chose to hear, because I am of the one mountain, here and everywhere and longer than you, stretching past the air in some cases and past memory always. When you miss me, you are damaged or afraid. Maybe both. I don’t care. I am mountain.

While you are climbing, let’s list some things that are bad.

Smallness

Softness

Brevity

The Wind

Having To Move.

You didn’t know I don’t like The Wind? The limits of your knowledge are not surprising to me. It moves too much, The Wind. All the time, such motions. Bunches and bunches of little motions. Even more motions than all you little climbers put together. The Wind, and my not liking it, they are not a big deal. They are not important. Being of mountain, I don’t fret and rage, the way a climber does. While The Wind is unpleasant, mostly I can ignore it. The Wind is here for only a brevity, a great series of brevities, very distracting, or trying to distract, but I ignore it.

Ah yes, very good to connect the brevities with Brevity, being another unpleasant type of thing from the list. But again, for those of mountain, Brevity, it is not so much a thing for attention. It is here and it is gone. That is its nature. Brevity is not so much unpleasant as inferior. The Wind is unpleasant because of how it uses Brevity. For example, this is a long journey for you, yes? From the base to the top, it takes a while? The traversal. I wouldn’t know. I’m just here. Set. And I have been for longer than you can think about. So long that your Long is not even a fraction of my Short. This conversation is a blink of your eye, I don’t have eyes, being mountain, but you do, those globules that let you see, your most mountainous sense, the recorders of your goings and wentings. They can freeze, your eyes. Futility.

Are you sure this is worth all that time you don’t have? I could climb me in all the time, the mountainous scale of time, if mountains climbed, which we don’t, but this is an analogy for your benefit. Time is no object for me. It is the only object for you. Do you have enough time? Do you have enough time for the things that you need that also need time, and smaller amounts of time? I will tell you: you don’t. And worst is that all that time you don’t have is in your brain, your tiny tiny tiny head, because I don’t have it. I have no time. All the time is no time. I’m rich with time, luxurious with time, so sumptuous with time I don’t even know what it is really. I ask you, my brief little climber, what is time, and why don’t you just get more of it, if you need it so much?

You can’t. That’s how you made time work. Against you.

I bet there’s more time back at the base. More time, and cocoa. Warm rich cocoa for hungry thirsty tired tiny climbers. You should have some. I don’t need it. If you die on my sides, I’ll have your cocoa, but I’ll never drink it. Cocoa is not of mountain. Go back. Go back and drink cocoa. Cocoa slows down time. Cocoa, and propane heaters, and sleeping bags, and yellow light in the tent. Go back. Everything is blue at my top. Possibly even you. No warmth. No cocoa. Unpleasant for climbers.

Oh, look. I can see without any eyes that you’re doing very well. So much progression toward the top. You should be proud. Many climbers fall and are squished. Others freeze, which means at least they stop moving. You could be like them. Rest. Pause your weary bones from their motion. My top will still be here when you wake up, which you won’t because your sleep would be a precursor to death. I was not trying to deceive you, just making a friendly suggestion. Perhaps the suggestion was ironic, or the friendliness. Either way, if you sleep, you will die. I may notice. I may not. You are small.

When you top me, what then? Will you be mountain? Nope. I know this. You will not be of mountain just by climbing a mountain. You will not take on my attributes, I am not bested. I am the same whether you climb me or not. So maybe you should turn around, alright? It will prevent disappointment, an injury I’ve heard you can suffer. Also falls. And asphyxia. These things cannot happen to mountain. Only to you, my little little tiny one.

I see you moving your little climber limbs and making your little breezes with your climber mouth. You try so hard! What is it like to move that much and not get far? When mountain moves, you know it. Thousands, even millions of climbers know it, whether they want to or not. Mountain chooses not to move, usually, because moving is so distasteful. But go ahead, you keep moving, climber. That is the way of all climbers, so much up, all the way up, and then all the way down, exactly as much down. I barely keep track.

Why do you not try to be more like mountain? You can never truly be mountain, but you could be bigger. You could move less. Be still and fat. Emulate mountain. Do nothing. Wouldn’t stillness stretch out your time? All your scurries, all your climbing, I will tell you I do not understand it, climber, and when things are beyond my understanding, I am unsettled. I almost wonder if there is some value in climbing, in moving, in not being of mountain. Of course, that unsettlement is so brief and unimportant that I barely remember it, and I can tell you all this because you are a climber, also brief, also tiny, and soon you will be gone. Blip.

But now you are at the top. That didn’t take long, not for me anyway. For you, it took days. Days are a big deal to you. Will you put a flag on me? Carve your miniature name into some of my rock and steal the stillness of mountain? Do what you like. I have forgotten you already. You have climbed back down, you have already grown old, your grandchildren have already turned to dust. I am still here, not moving, not changing, not small and climbing. Go ahead and leave. I will be here, exactly here, always here. I am the reason you climbers come here. For you, I am here, encompassing here. There will be more of you. There will be more climbers, and then there will be none. And there will still be mountain.

C, whose hands have been below the table, drops a fat envelope on the table and pushes it toward A and B. Her hands disappear below the table again. After sitting together in silence for several moments:

A: She’s eloquent.

B: A genuine orator, in the classical sense.

A: In the most classical sense. And ‘oratrix’, if you wish to engender the term.

B: I don’t.

A: And for that I am glad.

B: I could use her words to sweeten my cereal.

A: If we could catch her tongue, we could sell it to a jeweler for a fortune.

B: If we could catch it, but we can’t.

A: For it flies too swift, and too deft, for the likes of us to ensnare it. And that wouldn’t be the hardest part.

B: How so?

A: After the ensnarement would come the holding, and how could we hold it?

B: Indeed.

A: Enrobed as it is, in salivary lubricant.

B: This is the dilemma.

C, at this point, makes a puppet of her hand, and the mouth of the puppet opens and closes repeatedly as C rolls her eyes, and A and B notice this.

B: Our banter has become tiresome.

A: To one of us anyway. Apologies, of course.

B: A thousand sorries in a sack.

A: Our profession does not lend itself to the conversational arts.

B: At least of the vocal or linguistic variety.

A: Our methods of communication tend to be… non-verbal.

B: Direct. Sometimes brutally so.

A: And there are utterances to be sure. But they are of no formal language.

B: Usually quite informal. Even vulgar.

A: Frequently unflattering to both audience and speaker.

B: Not fit for polite company.

A: But this is just the auditory part of the exchange. The true content of our interactions tends to be transmitted through gestures.

B: Repeated gestures.

A: In a manner similar to, but quite distinct from, sign language.

B: Emphatically repeated gestures.

A: Lacking in nuance, true, but simple, and direct.

B: Directly applied to sensitive, yet unremarkable parts of the body. And also the face.

A: Always in the imperative.

B: At least our side. Their side rarely is.

A: Our conversation partners generally have little to command.

B: And many other moods to employ.

A: Declarative, sometimes. Interrogative, sometimes. Supplicative, mostly.

B: They ask things of us.

A: Such things they ask of us. Things we cannot grant.

B: Outside our purview.

A: The topics of these conversations tend to be narrow.

B: We have limited vocabularies.

A: These talks could, perhaps, all be boiled down to a single question.

B: “Will you?”

A: Though the form is merely a courtesy, as there is no actual choice to make.

B: “You will.”

A: But you already knew this. It’s why you invited us here.

B: No primer necessary.

A: Our small but expressive physical vernacular has preceded us.

B: You gave us a fat envelope.

A: So any explanation thereof is surely unnecessary.

B: Thanks for the beer.

A: Why then indulge us? Why not leave us to our work, and spare your ears our rambling?

B: I think she wants to engage us.

A: She is an orator. But she hasn’t said anything.

B: I mean, engage us in shop talk.

A: She is at a disadvantage there. She is but one person, and diminutive. The arrangement holds a cozy familiarity for me, but it would hardly be a fair debate.

B: Maybe she wants to expand the vernacular.

C slowly places the tip of her right index finger on the end of her nose.

A: There’s confirmation if ever I saw it.

B: A bit abstract, but acceptable.

A: The question now is: why would we want such a thing? In a language such as ours, less is more.

B: We aren’t Inuit, snow is snow.

A: What it lacks in poetry, it makes up for in clarity and concision.

B: There are no misunderstandings.

A: In our characteristic way, we make a statement –

B: “You will.”

A: – and they offer up a response.

B: Compliance.

A: Simplicity itself. Elegant even. Further elaboration seems unnecessary.

B: Ain’t broke, don’t fix. Et cetera.

A: Where is the advantage, where is the gain, in expansion of our lexicon?

B: Filler. Pleasantries. Weasel words.

A: Why invite misinterpretation? Why confuse complexity with complication, especially when complexity is so rarely needed?

B: We are simple men.

A: And we do a simple job, but we do it well.

B: With pride in our work.

A: We are rarely able to expound upon our craft so vociferously, so thanks to you, we feel indulged.

B: Like kings draped in purple and the finest jewels.

A: And your own economy of speech has been both an inspiration and a special gift that we will cherish.

B: Oh, you shouldn’t have.

A and B rise, and A sweeps up the envelope from its resting place.

A: But now we must go, and pursue the task which you have set to us, so that we might be worthy of the contents of this envelope, and its twin, once the work is complete.

B tips an imaginary hat, and A and B leave. C watches them go, and once they’ve been gone for a sufficient period of time, she takes one of the untouched beer bottles and drinks from it, still eyeing the door. The man behind the bar reappears. C looks at him, but says nothing.

This article does not address the overarching cultural factors and systems that delimit the development of hairstyles, instead focusing on eight traditional, internationally recognized hairstyles seen in the wild since 1950. Though the examples in this study are codified as male, some qualifications should be made:

1. The male codification reveals assumptions on the part of the inherent and extant system of behavioral codes and mores in which the hairstyles developed and should not be considered universal or applicable to other systems.
2. As the physical characteristics of human hair (both female and male) are in general identical and in specific vary according to specimen regardless of sex, there is no biological impediment to the application of these hairstyles on any non-male person.
3. The application of any of these hairstyles to a head of the female sex should not (in and of itself) cause any physical disturbance to the test subject. In fact, considerable anecdotal evidence exists that some of the styles seen below have already been adopted by females, at least in slightly modified form. As with any experiment regarding follicular modification, test subjects should give consent before any hair is cut.

Finally, this collection should not be viewed as an exhaustive or complete list of “male” haircuts. “Male” hairstyling, with its many variables and potential expressions, could not possibly be documented in full by a mere eight examples. The total number of possible “male” haircuts is fourteen. (The remaining six styles will be documented in a later article.)

Eight Internationally Recognized Male Haircuts: Top Row (L-R): The Quiet Neighbor; the Sur la Table avec Nappe or Windsong; the Ferret; the Ding an Sich. Bottom Row (L-R): The No. 6, or Poor Man’s Shampoo; the Malted; the European Banker; the Sur la Table.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

• The “Sur la Table” is more commonly known in the United States as a “flat-top”, but due to French’s status as the “language of haircuts (and love)”, this article refers to the style by its more cosmopolitan name.
• The curled-over appendages at the front of the hairline seen on the “Sur la Table avec Nappe” are styled with pomade and are known by many regional names, including “curls”, “fenders”, “droops”, “drapes”, “cowcatchers”, “snowplows”, “penitents” and “the crunge”.
• The “Quiet Neighbor” is most often observed in police lineup photos, shortly after the contents of the subject’s crawlspace have been revealed.
• Wearers of the “Ferret” hairstyle show a high incidence of a peculiar genetic condition that allows two distinct types of hair to grow from the same follicle: one that could be described as typical human hair (a long shaft of layers of keratin); and another similar in structure, but laced with thin strands of calcium and nerve endings. Hair of the second type proved responsive to electromagnetic radiation, and individuals who exhibited the second hair type could sense or “feel” radio and microwave pulses directed toward their scalps. The two types of hair could grow alternately or in tandem. What benefit (if any) this second type of hair could provide is a subject of continuing research.
• Despite the implication of the name, the most popular haircut among European Bankers is the “Ding an Sich”. The “European Banker” does enjoy a significant minority position (27% versus the “Ding an Sich’s” 38%), but has never been the hairstyle leader in the titular demographic, except for a brief period in 1962 (May through August).
• Among wearers of the “Ding an Sich” style, an overwhelming majority (94%) self-describe as “Kantian”. When asked if their philosophical beliefs informed their choice of hairstyle, two percent said “yes”; nine percent said “no”; eleven percent said “yes, but only in determining my brand of pomade”; and seventy-eight percent said “I’m sorry, I thought you asked if I was terribly rich. Because I am.”
• The origin of the “Malted” is still a mystery, but some researchers have discovered intriguing anecdotal evidence that early versions of the hairstyle were “finished” with the application of copious amounts of malt extract, a dark viscous fluid derived from malted barley and used in the making of beer. What purpose the malt extract would have served – visually or otherwise – remains unknown.
• The “No. 6” is the hairstyle known by the most names. In fact, as of the publication of this article, every individual interviewed regarding the hairstyle has provided a unique epithet, resulting in no truly definitive common name for “close cropped hair, less than a quarter-inch in length on all sides of the scalp.” (“No. 6” and “Poor Man’s Shampoo” were chosen at random.) Further, in follow-up interviews, interviewees used different names every time the haircut was mentioned, as seen in the transcript below:
  

  INTERVIEWER (points at picture of male with “No.6” hairstyle): Please identify this hairstyle.

  INTERVIEWEE: A buzzcut.

  INTERVIEWER (confirming response): So this is a buzzcut.

  INTERVIEWEE: Yes, a crewcut.

  INTERVIEWER: A crewcut?

  INTERVIEWEE: That’s what I said, a butch.

  INTERVIEWER: A butch?

  INTERVIEWEE: Yeah, an Army Standard.

  INTERVIEWER: Now it’s an Army Standard.

  INTERVIEWEE: What do you mean now? I’ve been telling you, that’s a crop.

  INTERVIEWER (scratching out original answer): I’ll change your answer then.

  INTERVIEWEE: Don’t you change anything, I told you that guy’s haircut is a Number One.

  INTERVIEWER: You’re being very difficult.

  INTERVIEWEE: No, you’re not [expletive deleted] listening to me. I told you six times, that guy’s got a Roscoe. Now you write down “Short ‘n Tidy” on that [expletive deleted] paper of yours or I’m gonna punch you in the [expletive deleted] face so hard you’re gonna end up with a Mega-tonsure of your own, you son of a [expletive deleted] –

  This pattern repeated in every interview, with each survey culminating in violence. Once the interview ceased, the subjects calmed and showed no hostility toward their interviewers. Until they were shown or played a transcript of the conversation, the interviewees were oblivious they had used different terminology in reference to the hairstyle, and when asked which one word they thought they were repeating during the interview, no subject could provide a particular name. The interviewees also displayed confusion over their anger during the interview, and had no memory of becoming enraged. The highly specific word-blindness and atypical mood swings are being investigated as part of a separate project.

Why are you here?

I hear you chuckle, and am fractionally gratified by it. You have heard me start off this address by hacking up a tired old philosophical joke, kicking off this inspirational oration with a twist of a Great Question (capitalized). And you have responded in kind, with meta-laughter that conveys acknowledgment of the referent but no true amusement, except, perhaps, in some of the hardier fools among you, for it was a sad sad shade of a joke, like so many things in our noble field of study. And here, by “noble”, I mean “resembling neon, or helium, or any of the other gases notable for their inertness and non-reactivity”.

For I know it’s been said before, but I shall say it again, for the admonishment of the scatter-brained and feeble-headed: philosophy is bunk. Yet here we are studying it, and I teaching it (or so my paychecks claim), for little pay and less interest from the outside world. We are about to release you robed and apple-cheeked individuals out into the largely non-philosophical world, to ply wares no sensible commoner would purchase, or even inspect for flaws. Have we instructors done our job, or merely bilked you out of a sizable chunk of tuition? Perhaps both (though probably the former).

I believe the problem is not one of basic principles, though. Rather, your uselessness is attributable to needless adornment. So I suggest we prune the tree of knowledge, so that your faces might bloom all the rosier, and better match the glasses you’re all wearing. An exercise in efficiency: let us hone Occam’s Razor, shall we? Indulge in a little constructive friction to align the finer micro-edges of our embattled brains, hmm? Dear old Occam, or Ockham, or Ok’um, or Wee Billy Thinker, if you like (and I don’t), once said, or more likely wrote and then possibly read aloud:

Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

Sound words, arranged in a relatively harmonious fashion. But if we lay the razor against the pale shivering neck of this sentence while grabbing a sufficient handful of its lustrous hair, it becomes clear that even in this laudable aphorism there are some unnecessarily multiplied entities. For example, the prepositional phrase “beyond necessity.” I have argued elsewhere that in nearly every instance, a multiplication is merely the latest iteration in a series, a legacy of mistakes. (I avoid the definitive ultimate here, so as to not be forced to make a meal of such unpleasant words in the future, should one exist, which as I have argued in another elsewhere, namely my book Le Fin de Denouement, it does not.) For what is multiplication, whether mathematical, mechanical, artistic or sexual, if not a known error willfully repeated? (Some may take issue with my inclusion of mathematical multiplication under the copious umbrella of error; six times six is always thirty-six, as they seem to enjoy rubbing in my face. I will grant the accuracy of that equation within the realm of its overarching system, but we must remember that mathematics is a human system, born (or should we say “multiplied”? (We should not.)) of mortal human brains, and therefore not only colloquial in scope but inherently incomplete (for we are not infinite, at least last I checked) and therefore erroneous. We do not live in maths; we live in the real world, the reality of which is highly debatable (consider my pamphlet This Is Not A Pipe, But Thank You For Smoking It Anyway).

Shakespeare proclaimed there was nothing new under the sun, and that is why we call him a genius today — that, and the many ways by which he displays humanity’s headstrong ignorance and boorishness — and he made that proclamation several centuries ago (if one subscribes to a linear conception of time, which I do not, for reasons discussed in yet another elsewhere, namely the treatise A Knotted Naught Not Noted: The Tyranny of Spacetime). Already in Elizabethan times, humanity suffered an insurmountable novelty deficit. Since that period of virgin queens and ribald theater, nothing has been able to prevent the nearly constant and entirely distasteful process of multiplication, just as nothing of even the slightest true and inherent originality has resulted from said multiplication. New novelty remains unfound. No risky cognitive bounding is required to see the pattern. We know how this multiplication will conclude; we have seen the product before; to perform the operation again is unnecessary (also unavoidable: see my The Lapsarian Infinite: Compulsion As The Human Condition). So we can reduce Occam’s Razor thusly:

Entities should not be multiplied.

Now we are getting to the nut-meat of this wise man’s utterance, for here we have an injunction free of all potential qualification, a directive of the simplest proto-binary orientation, a clear and thoughtful rule so easy to follow (at least in theory, if one places any value in theories, which I do not (see my Cardhouse Ablaze: A Theoretical Deconstruction of Epistemology)) that its own simplicity works to prove its merits. However, even this truncated axiom can be further essentialized. For if entities should not multiply — that is, if entities should not engage in their sole, compulsive and inescapable purpose — then we have canceled out any justifiable reason for the existence of said entity. Therefore:

Entities should not be.

Here we run into a new problem (or possibly two, though I will deal with the purely logical issue first, and the more persistent ethical/philosophical one later). Namely, by broadening the directive, the system has lost its element of agency. “Entities should not be multiplied” is limited by its conditional result: either one is engaged in multiplication and acting against the axiom, or one is not multiplying in any way, and is acting in accordance with the axiom. “Entities should not be” is merely a descriptive statement, and even worse, it describes a non-existent idealized state as distasteful and useless as a Platonic cave. We must excise those components of the system that render it inert, and give the sentence back its directive engine, the component that makes it an active living utilitarian philosophy, and not just a leaden pipe dream by which the human mind is repeatedly and painfully brained. As the system in sentence form is comprehensible only to those entities which can consider and analyze the system, we can remove the self-referent, and most importantly, we must remove the equivocating “should,” which is where all the trouble comes from (sometimes). The semantic surgery thus employed leaves us with:

Not be.

Or, in a more linguistically parseable turn of phrase:

Be not.

Or even more familiarly:

Don’t be.

Some have said that such statements make me a nihilist of the bleakest rank. The question of being is the fundament of our field of study, the floor on which we stand, the chair in which we sit. “What is being?” is the first question, perhaps the only question, and I am characterized as a gainsayer, a casuist whose sole purpose is to tear down and undo, to nullify, to render pointless. My response, if a response is necessary (and it isn’t) is simple and equivalently aggravating: the question is wrong. What is being? Easy. Being is a state to be endured. Further words spent on describing being are hapless filigrees on a wrought-iron door that will never be opened. The question, as I said, is wrong. “How is being?” That is the question, my little Hamlets and Ham-lettes. Did you get that? It’s more of a visual as opposed to audible pun. I’ll let you contemplate it for a moment. Now you see, yes? No. But I must move on. We are not lumps of matter. We are our occupations and our deeds. We are each an aggregate of actions in the form of a human.

So I reject this appellated nihilism and make a nothing of its nothingness. I blot it out and cancel it. How is being? Being is accomplished. Being is done. Being is doing, and that doing undoes the bleakness and the nihil in extremis which critics attempt to fasten to my back like a doctoral kick-me sign, and if they’d read my Void Voided: an Essay on the Non-existence of Nothing they would realize how out of their depth their being is. My stance is not nihilistic but positive, and positivist, and excitingly existential (though existence is a non-verifiable hallucination, as I proofed and vetted in my sequel to This Is Not A Pipe, But Thank You For Smoking It Anyway, my magnum opus Life Is But A Pipe Dream, or We’re Sorry, Mario, But Jean Baudrillard Is In Another Castle, which appears to be unprintable for reasons which escape me and climb directly into the gourd-like skulls of any and all potential publishers). One final reduction of Occam’s Razor finishes the job, whittling “Don’t be” down to:

Do.

I started this address in the interrogative, and I end in the imperative, and it is imperative I end thusly, for I have nothing left to say. I can say no more than: “Do.” A permission granted. A call to action. An irreducible directive. The most basic form of command. Wisdom so wise, the nation’s most esteemed puppet espouses it, though the wrinkled green bastard gussied it up with a lot of extra verbiage and backwards diction and sad puppet faces. Would you neophytes ignore that most rubbery of mystics? You must not. If you take nothing from your years here, take this: do. Do! Do and keep doing, for only then will you be.

Dammit, now I sound like Yoda.

Thank you and good afternoon.

Just before the installation of rebar:

Martin Powell barges into the mayor’s office, Mavis close behind. The mayor, on the couch and flanked by cheerleaders, allows his head to loll forward and acknowledge Powell’s entrance and Mavis’ distress, greeting both with a dopey yet charismatic smile. The mayor’s face is scratched and abraded, but retains a significant portion of the handsomeness it possessed when he entered office.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mayor, but he just wouldn’t wait–” Mavis says, and the Mayor makes conciliatory gestures with his hands, gestures which would be much more effective if they weren’t obscured by the cheerleaders.

“I’m sure you did your best, Mavis, don’t worry about it at all. Could you bring me a coffee ASAP? Thanks, dear.” The mayor slurs his words, but is not yet incoherent. Somehow, no one is sure how, he never reaches an incoherent state, but stays balanced in its borderlands on an indefinite visa. Mavis sneers at Powell and leaves, slamming the door behind her.

The mayor says “Well, it’s not exactly business hours yet –”

“It’s 2:30 pm,” says Powell.

“– but I’m sure I can help you with whatever you need, Councilman Powell, since it appears to be very urgent.” The mayor pats both cheerleaders on their backs and they move to the arms of the sofa, sitting symmetrically, crossing their legs in unison. The mayor watches them and says, “Y’know they don’t practice that. It just comes naturally to them. Amazing.”

“Your lip’s bleeding,” says Powell.

The mayor touches his mouth and then scrutinizes the finger for longer than should be necessary. “So it is. Pesky thing just will not clot. It’s been days now. Thank you for alerting me, Mr. Powell, I’ll attend to this right away. Would you care to stay for coffee? I’ve just sent Mavis to get us some.”

“I know. I was here.”

“Of course, of course. So there’s some other matter I should be concerned with?”

“Yes. I’ve just learned you’re building another wall.”

Mavis enters with the coffee. She holds a mug in Powell’s direction until he takes it from her, then sets the Mayor’s cup and saucer on the low table in front of his sofa. The mayor leans forward as she puts down the mug, and he mouths “Thank you, Mavis.” She smiles and winks and leaves, glaring at Powell as she goes. The mayor moves a spoon through his coffee in lazy circles. “Yes, I have commissioned another mayoral wall.”

“This one’s two feet thick and reinforced with steel.”

“It certainly is.” The mayor continues stirring.

Powell’s face reddens. After several seconds he says, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Stirring my coffee,” the mayor says, but Powell begins to scream even before he’s finished, so immediately the mayor leans back and and holds up his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Couldn’t help it. I was just –”

“I know you were ‘just joking.’ It’s not funny. It’s not goddamn funny.”

“I’m doing what I told you I was going to do, Marty, what you wanted me to do. I’m making a difference. I’m overcoming obstacles.” The mayor’s left eye has started to cross. “I’m changing things… for the better.”

“I’ve seen your goddamn TV ads, and I don’t know why you’re running them, you were just elected six months ago. Just like I don’t know why you keep building these walls.”

The mayor shakes his head, but he’s still smiling. He has limitless patience for those who can’t comprehend his vision. “Remember, Marty: symbols. Excitement. Sometimes you have to make an omelet before you start breaking the eggs.”

Powell’s face crumples into a wrinkled mass of confusion and anger. “What the hell does that even mean? You need to have your head examined, and that’s not a figure of speech.” Powell says the next sentence slowly, with great attention to each syllable. “I think you have damaged your brain.” The mayor dismisses Powell’s diagnosis with a wave.

“Are you going to do the same thing with this wall that you’ve done with all the others?” Powell asks. The mayor shakes his head and chuckles.

“Mr. Mayor,” Powell says. “Please. Are you going to try to run through it?”

The mayor looks at each of his cheerleaders before he says “Marty. I’m not going to try anything. I’m going to tear through that son of a bitch, just like all the others.” The cheerleaders jump up and begin to chant “Boom-Boom! Boom-Boom!” while shaking their pom pons and doing high kicks. Powell glares at the mayor’s self-satisfied expression until it slackens and, as far as Powell can tell, the mayor passes out.

Four months before the craft paper period:

Powell and the other members of the city council stand as the young man strides across the room. “Phil McCaffery,” Powell says, beaming, “you are the spitting image of your father.” Phil McCaffery’s smile is powerful, gracious, infectious. Powell and McCaffery clasp hands, and each man’s hand tries to envelop the other’s. There is no clear victor.

“Actually, I’m taller and I have better teeth.” Light chuckles all around. McCaffery moves on to the next council member, and the next, and the next, each transition seamless, every utterance assured. The members look to each other after their individual exchanges with the mayoral candidate, nodding, smiling smiles of lower wattage, smiles that are certain of the future. Once the introductions are complete, Powell offers McCaffery a chair and everyone sits, the arc of the city council behind their table curved to focus on their guest.

“We’re very glad you could meet with us, Phil,” Powell says. “The city council has been considering numerous candidates–” but Phil McCaffery has brought up his hand, as if he is about to wave tentatively at Powell, though there is nothing tentative in the gesture. Powell stops speaking, in spite of himself.

“This is a growing town,” Phil says. “Explosive growth. You’ve fallen into success, no thanks to a series of lackluster executives who hampered your ability to govern. But now the cracks are beginning to show. You’re having sustainability issues. Viability issues. You’re going off-message. Hell, you may not even be sure what your message is. You’re smart enough to know things are different, but not enough to know what to do differently. You need new blood, fresh blood, hot new fresh blood, new ideas, new paradigms and then you need them shifted, and you need someone who can shift with them. But you need the familiar too, the comfort of a known thing to cling to while you transition to a strange new state of mind, of being, of action.”

“My father, may he rest in peace, served this town for twenty-four years. I am my father’s son, and then some. He worked himself to the bone to send me to school back East, and I’m a shining testament to his sacrifices, but even with my head full of fancy book learnin’, I never forgot the things he told me. Some of you worked with my father, helped him make this town what it is today. Now we need to go beyond that. We need to transcend that. We need to take that strong foundation and build a strong city on top of it, before another of these milquetoast mayors squanders all your hard work. You want new blood? Cut me open, I’ve got gallons of it. You want a tradition of success? My father’s portrait should be up on that wall, and as god’s my witness, it will be, right next to mine. I’m your man, ladies and gentlemen. I will build up what needs to be built, tear down what needs to be torn down, and lead the people to a bright new day. I’m your mayor, city councilors, and I am the change you need. And the first thing we’re changing is that table.”

The mayoral candidate leaps up and barrels toward the city council, who extract themselves from their chairs right before McCaffery heaves his body onto the table like a renegade high jumper. The table collapses beneath him. The clatter does not fail to impress. McCaffery smiles amid the wreckage. “I think I broke my thumb,” he says.

The city council stares down at Phil McCaffery for a full minute, silent, shocked. Then, with a gradual accumulation of speed that suggests the felling of an old-growth tree, Councilman Breggin breaks into enthusiastic applause. The rest of the city council follows Breggin’s lead, even Powell, though he waits a little longer than the others.

Twenty minutes into the craft paper period:

In the midst of fervent post-press conference applause, the mayor surveys the line of cheerleaders and whispers into Powell’s ear.

“Not a bad entrance, eh?”

“It certainly was exciting,” says Powell. “You know, the high school football team had their players run through a paper-covered hoop, much like you just did. They ended up going to state. Aim high, that’s what I say.”

“Marty, I know you’re being sarcastic, but I appreciate you and the rest of the city council humoring me. We have to get people excited about town politics again. This is the best way. Believe me, I know.”

Everyone is still clapping. Powell moves his neck in a way that suggests it has a stiffness he cannot relieve. “I just never thought of applying it to city government.”

The mayor bumps Powell’s shoulder with one of his fists and smiles and says “That’s why you’re not the mayor.” Everyone is still clapping. The mayor nods at the line of lithe, short-skirted jumping girls. “They’re from the high school?” he asked.

“Yes,” says Powell.

“Does the junior college have any cheerleaders? Y’know, over eighteen?” Powell stops clapping, but no one else has. “Whoa, Marty, calm down. Stop with the dagger eyes.” Powell renews his applause, though the act seems less celebratory and more an act of violent distraction, Powell slamming his hands together for the sting.

Never taking his gaze from the girls, the mayor says “But seriously.”

During the papier-mache period:

The mayor’s cheerleaders –there were only four of them at this point – follow the mayor as he tours downtown with Mavis, members of the city council and various other municipal officials. The cheerleaders are dressed in red and white pleated skirts, red tennis shoes and white sweaters emblazoned with two large red collegiate B’s and are incessantly perky.

“It’s all about three things, my fellow public servants,” says the mayor. “Symbols, excitement, and results. Symbols are great, because they can get people to know what you want them to know without thinking about it. Breggin – look at Tina and her compatriots back there.” Breggin and the other city councilors look back at the cheerleaders, who smile and shake their pom pons. “What do they make you think of?” the mayor asks. Breggin opens his mouth. “That’s right, Breggin. They make you think of everything that’s right about this town, its vibrancy, its joie de vivre, the way it wears a pair of athletic socks. And you got all that without even knowing it. You thought you were just looking at an athletic young woman. Ha! Breggin, you kill me.”

Breggin chuckles but he is not sure why. Powell’s forehead is one continuous furrow.

“Even better, the cheerleaders are exciting symbols. You can’t do much better than a symbol that generates excitement. People like excitement. They find it exciting. It helps them get behind changes and scary new things, rather than resisting or being scared of them. And we are going to change things, we are going to shake things up! They’re gonna love it, thanks to our exciting symbols!” The cheerleaders begin to dance and chant “Boom-Boom! Boom-Boom!” The mayor basks in the cheers for a few moments, then holds up a hand. The cheerleaders cease their inspirational activities.

The mayor points at a three story brick building. “Zone that one mixed use. The one next to it? Tear it down, build a park for kids, one of those hamster-trap-looking things with chewed up rubber on the ground instead of mulch. Green, baby, green. Mavis, take a personal note: boulders. Hawks. Infants. Cheerleaders, but not male cheerleaders. For now, male cheerleaders are off-message. Also, did they finish my wall for the library opening tomorrow?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Good. Did they go heavier on the plaster like I asked?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Mavis, you’re my shining star.” The mayor looks up into the sky for a moment, shielding his eyes with one hand. “Symbols that excite. The walls do that too. It’s exciting to see someone break through a wall, and it’s symbolic too. Remember Kool-Aid? God damn, that was tasty stuff. And you made it yourself. Brilliant. Kool-Aid. Oh yeah! I could go for some right now. C’mon, let’s hit the convenience store.”

Amidst the epoch of unmortared brick:

Mavis opens the door for Powell, who enters the mayor’s office and then stops. The mayor pores over blueprints spread across his desk, flanked by two cheerleaders. Actually, they are all poring over the blueprints, and the mayor murmurs to one cheerleader or the other from time to time while indicating some area of the schematic. His forehead is wrapped in gauze. When Powell stops his approach, the cheerleaders look up, but the mayor does not. The cheerleaders are not perky. If he had to, Powell would call their expressions cold, even disdainful, which is unsettling, given their usual state.

“I’m sorry, Mavis told me you were free,” Powell says.

“Absolutely, Marty, absolutely free. What was on your mind?” Now the mayor looks up, smiling, receptive.

“I was hoping to talk to you in private.”

“Anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of Tina and Cindy.”

Powell feels himself frowning. “Alright. The city council has a few questions about your proposed city budget.”

The mayor sighs. “I thought you might.”

“You seem to be allocating a lot of money to construction projects.”

“Yes.”

“The building of walls, specifically.”

“Yes.”

“There’s also the rapid increase in salaried cheerleaders –”

“I think you mean ‘enthusiasm consultants.'”

“– and the line item for pom pons.”

“Tool of the trade. Business expense. Easy write off.”

Powell feels his frowning intensify. “Mr. Mayor, the other councilors and I are beginning to wonder if you might be losing sight of the day-to-day responsibilities of the office and could you please get them to stop staring at me?”

The mayor looks at Tina and Cindy, who are now staring at Powell with open disdain. The mayor murmurs to them and they return their gazes to the schematic.

“You might be right, Marty. I might be spending too much time on the idealistic end of things. A change might be in order. I’ll take it under advisement.” The mayor returns to his blueprint. Powell waits several seconds before he realizes the conversation is over. The cheerleaders watch him leave.

After the transition to cinder block construction (no rebar):

The mayor makes a loud unhappy noise, puts down his pen and shakes his hand. “I’m getting carpal tunnel from all this signing. Guys, please, there’s got to be a better way.”

Breggin says, “Mr. Mayor, all legislation requires an executive signature.”

“Yeah, yeah, Breggin, this is not my first term as mayor. Well, it is, but you know what I mean. Figure of speech. Forget it. There are a lot of bills passing over this desk and they all need my name on them. Seriously, guys, my arm is going to fall off.” The mayor sits down, puts his hands together as if to pray. “Why don’t we kill two birds with one stone? How about, every time I run through one of my ceremonial walls, that act authorizes a law? I mean, I’m running through the darn things anyway, why not add some practical weight to their substantial symbolic gravitas?” The mayor bares his teeth in an exceptionally toothy smile.

The city council is confused, even dumbfounded. “Umm,” says Breggin, “wouldn’t running through that many walls put more strain on your body than the signing?”

“Especially now that you’re making them out of brick,” Powell grunts.

The mayor’s smile disappears, and he squints at the assembled councilors for a long time. Right before this meeting, he had finished a press conference, so no one is sure whether he’s confused or trying to work the remnants of his entry and exit walls out of his eyes.

“We could get a notary to watch me run through the walls,” the mayor suggests.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Powell says, and leaves the room.

A few minutes before the end of the Boom-Boom era:

On a grassy field at the center of town, Powell says, “Please don’t do this.”

The mayor tugs on the knot of his tie. He has worn the same suit every time he breaks through a wall, calling the burst seams and tears the ‘rubber stamp of the electorate,’ and today is no different. He reaches down toward his feet for some rudimentary stretches.

Mavis stands nearby with a clipboard and anything else the mayor might need. She and Powell flank the mayor, Mavis on his right side, Powell on his left. Behind them stand Tina and Cindy, the breeze rustling through their pom pons. “Mavis, what’s the wind speed?” the mayor asks.

“Five miles per hour, out of the northwest.”

“And my approval rating?”

“Ninety-seven percent.”

“I guess we know who that three percent is,” the mayor says, shooting a quick glance in Powell’s direction. Mavis titters. The cheerleaders laugh quietly into their pom pons. The mayor runs in place, exhaling sharply once every second. He frames the wall between his hands, twenty feet by ten feet by two feet, cinder block and concrete, shot through with steel rebar. He nods.

Powell sighs. “Phil, I’m asking you not to do this.”

“The press is on the other side of that wall, Marty. If I back out now, they’ll tear me apart. Sign of weakness. Lack of character, lack of resolve. If there’s two things I have and one thing I don’t, they’re character, resolve and weakness. In that order.” The mayor thinks for a moment, and then nods. “Yep, that order.”

“You also have a severe concussion and at least three fractured ribs.”

“What are you, a doctor?”

“No, but your doctor is a doctor. And I was there when he said you have a severe concussion and at least three fractured ribs. A half hour ago.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“No!” says Powell. “No, you haven’t. That’s my point.”

The mayor’s press secretary walks over from the other side of the wall. “The press is ready, Mr. Mayor,” he says.

“And the cement?”

“Fully cured since yesterday. That wall is solid.”

The mayor stops running and puts a hand on his press secretary’s shoulder. “I couldn’t have done it without you, my fine-feathered friend.”

“Sir?”

“Ca-caw ca-caw!” says the mayor. His press secretary jumps back. The mayor smiles. The press secretary shakes his head and walks back toward the audience on the other side of the wall.

The mayor takes his mark, as a runner would. “Let’s start the show, Mavis.” Mavis speaks into a headset and from the other side of the wall they can hear the press secretary introducing the mayor. As the secretary starts to say his name, the mayor leaps up, legs churning. His timing is perfect; he will burst through the wall right after the press secretary finishes saying his name. Already he can feel the wall giving way. Time is slowing down. He charges forward, leading with his head. As he makes contact with the wall, he feels it dissolve into whiteness. He hears a crash, the sound of shattering concrete, and the crash slows, deepens in pitch, rattles and runs down. He is through.

At the dawning of the age of papier-mache:

Casual and self-assured, the mayor leans an elbow on the podium. His hair bears rakish streaks of plaster dust. He is appealingly tousled. He smiles an engaging but natural smile and says to the microphones, the cameras, but especially the reporters who operate them, “Please: call me Boom-Boom.”

The Beneficent Order of Milkmen is a private philanthropic organization of like-minded individuals dedicated to the preservation of wholesomeness and consistency in the social order.

How does the Order exercise this dedication?

Milkmen nourish the social order through the sale and delivery of wholesome milk, and protect the social order through a grassroots policy of active civility. Milkmen enjoy a unique and synergistic place in society, as their livelihood — the door-to-door distribution of milk and other healthful dairy products — places them in the community at street level, allowing them unique perspective and positioning to protect all that is good.

How do milkmen define “good”?

The way it should be defined.

Can you be more specific?

In a word: no. You should ask a different question now. Maybe something about our uniforms.

I’d think many people want to know how the Beneficent Order of Milkmen defines goodness.

Actually we get many more questions about our uniforms.

Seriously?

Oh yes. In fact, our most frequently asked question is “What sort of uniforms do milkmen wear?” Perhaps you could ask that one.

Alright. What sort of uniforms do milkmen wear?

Milkmen wear white trousers and a matching side-buttoning jacket, though when we use the term “side-buttoning” we mean the left side of the front, rather than the literal side. Also, the jacket might be better described as a tunic, due to its style and cut. We are unsure whether a tunic can have closures. The jacket is custom-designed and very unique, with a high collar and a sort of quasi-medical feel. It is hard to describe. Perhaps you should just request a picture from our Public Relations department. Milkmen also wear a traditional milkman’s hat, which is definitely too difficult to describe without recourse to the confusing jargon of millinery, but which we are certain you are familiar with; sturdy black shoes; and the Order’s official facial expression.

Milkmen are required by our official dress code to keep an immaculate appearance. Mustaches, beards and any other configurations of facial hair are forbidden. Their uniforms are invariably crisp and gleaming, the color in their healthful faces accentuating the glow of their starched hats, jackets, and pants. Contrary to popular belief, the uniforms are not lit by electricity or bioluminescence.

Why do milkmen wear sturdy black shoes?

A milkman’s shoes are sturdy because the feet are the milkman’s most common point of contact with the world, and they are black because black is the easiest color to maintain. Further, white shoes were too reminiscent of both televangelists, whom we do not support or condone, and golf, the sport of the corrupt and indolent.

What is the official facial expression of the milkman?

A closed-mouth smile, in which the teeth are not bared. The order feels this expression communicates the appropriate combination of beneficence and detachment, of being paternal without being patriarchal. The Order researched the smile with great thoroughness before adopting it.

Why are milkmen always clean-shaven?

Because we are wholesome, and pure, and honest, just like our wares. Milkmen view facial hair as a form of deceit.

Can women become milkmen?

By way of a series of expensive surgeries and hormone therapies, yes.

Let me rephrase. Can women join the Beneficent Order of Milkmen?

No. Because the Order believes the role of milkman is an inherently and distinctly masculine one, only males over the age of 18 who adhere to the Milkman’s Creed are eligible for membership. (Exceptions are made for others who undergo the series of expensive surgeries and hormone therapies, as their dedication to the Order’s beliefs is both admirable and inspiring.) However, because the Order views women as equal partners in the maintenance of a stable and wholesome society, we encourage like-minded females to join our sister organization, the Beneficent Order of Milkmaids. Please note also that the term “Milkmaids” was chosen for aesthetic reasons, and was not an attempt to marginalize, subjugate, or diminutify women in any way.

“Diminutify” is not a word.

And that is not a question.

Fair enough. What are the differences between the Beneficent Order of Milkmen and the Beneficent Order of Milkmaids?

The only significant difference is that the Order of Milkmen is populated by men and the Order of Milkmaids is populated by women. Both orders swear by the Milkman’s Creed, both orders deliver milk and work to maintain the social order, both orders wear white uniforms (though the uniforms differ in fit and construction, for obvious anatomical reasons). Fraternization between the two orders is encouraged; every year the milkmen and milkmaids gather together for a picnic. The picnic is very fun. There are old-fashioned games, and a potluck dinner, and lots of dark beer.

Why do milkmen drink dark beer?

To disrupt the monotony of their professional lives. While all milkmen believe milk is a satisfying, nourishing, and thoroughly wholesome beverage (and swear to such, as part of the Milkman’s Creed), they are also aware that other drinks have unique merits, alcoholic drinks especially. Milkmen find the deep brown and/or black color, mild carbonation, and complex flavors of stouts and porters to be a refreshing alternative to thick, white, creamy and fizzless milk, a yang to the yin, or yin to the yang, depending on which is represented by which color. However, milkmen most often imbibe the cream or “milk” stouts, because they contain lactose.

Why are there no milkmen with eyeglasses?

All milkmen must have perfect vision, in order to accurately throw their bottles.

Why do milkmen throw their bottles? Doesn’t that break the bottles and spill the milk?

We only throw the empties, so no milk is spilled. And we throw them to subdue evil, and maintain order.

How does throwing empty bottles subdue evil?

We throw the empties at evildoers, which disrupts their evildoing. The disruption and subduing of evil is part of our policy of active civility, and bottles are our weapon of choice.

I meant to ask earlier: what is “active civility”?

Active civility is the Order’s term for direct engagement with our fellow citizens and the world in which we all live. Milkmen do not merely subscribe to the ideals of wholesomeness and consistency, they encourage others to value those ideals as well. In the course of our rounds as purveyors of fresh wholesome milk and other dairy products, the milkmen remain vigilant for activities and individuals who pose a danger to the community or who threaten to destabilize the extant social order. When the milkmen witness these evils, they throw bottles at the perpetrators. It can be very persuasive. Many municipalities have hired us to work in a supplementary capacity with their police departments, or have entirely replaced their local police with chapters of our Order.

Other private organizations have been known to throw bottles in furtherance of community-building, for example, the Society of Benevolent Barkeeps.

The Order is aware of this. We’ve been meaning to talk to them about it.

The milkmen don’t approve of the barkeeps’ bottle throwing?

We approve of very little that the barkeeps do, but we especially disapprove of their bottle throwing. Their technique is unseemly and their motives are questionable.

Don’t you and the barkeeps have similar goals? Maintaining social order and the like?

Their stated goals are similar to ours, though their definitions of certain key terms vary wildly from our own. The only real common ground between our two organizations (as much as their gang of nocturnal drunks can be called an organization) is that we both use bottles.

The barkeeps have been very vocal regarding their concerns about your bottles, namely that your empty bottles are getting larger. And heavier.

Evil is becoming harder to subdue, and order harder to maintain, and these circumstances dictate the procurement and use of larger bottles, and stronger throwing arms.

The barkeeps claim the milkmen are working on a bottle as big as a house.

They are wrong. It’s as big as a pub. And we are building giant mechanical arms to throw it.

That seems deliberately antagonistic.

And your recent questions aren’t very question-y, and they smack of barkeep sympathies. Perhaps you should ask some non-barkeep-related questions.

But you’ve made the barkeep-related line questions very interesting. Why are milkmen so hostile toward barkeeps?

We aren’t, unless they disturb the peacefulness of the community, which they seem to do naturally. If the barkeeps were not so relentless in their flaunting of decency and good taste as it should be defined, there would be no tension between our two professions. Unfortunately, and entirely due to the barkeeps, this is not the case. The barkeeps are rowdy and unruly. They do not respect the Milkman’s Creed, and they seem to think they are experts on how to best maintain a orderly society, which is clearly not the case. Most of them live above bars, for Pete’s sake. Do you really want to trust the foundation of your clean and wholesome life to someone who lives above a bar?

They work in the bars below their apartments, don’t they?

That’s beside the point. It’s one symptom of their casual, almost flippant disregard for propriety and decorum. Take bedtimes, for example. The Order advocates a bedtime of 10:30 pm, which allows for watching the late news while defusing the potential temptation of late night drinking. Barkeeps take no position on bedtimes whatsoever. This is irresponsible and sends an implicitly disruptive message.

Mandated bedtimes are part of a healthy social order?

Yes. We are surprised you have to ask. Other necessities for social order include identical haircuts for all citizens, the “no frowns in public” policy, and exile for repeat offenders.

What kind of “orderly society” do the milkmen have in mind?

Again, you are asking us to define “good.” If you would like specific examples of proper conduct or the theoretical underpinnings of those behaviors, I suggest you contact our Public Relations department and request a copy of our book The Wholesome Society, which outlines in exhaustive detail which of your actions are right and which are wrong. If you are hoping to engage in debate regarding the Order’s philosophical positions, we are sorry, but you will lose.

Why?

Because you are wrong.

You don’t know what my positions are. Isn’t debate an important part of a healthy society?

No. The members of the Order have constructed responses and etiquette applicable to any conceivable situation. We put a lot of thought into everything. No more thought is required.

Any conceivable situation? That’s not possible. Unexpected things are bound to happen.

The whole point of the Order and its codes is to ensure that nothing unexpected ever happens again. Unknown variables are eliminated. You don’t really expect to maintain order in a system that could change at any moment, do you? If you do, then you are very naive. Regardless, our wholesome society compensates for your naivete and any other troublesome wild cards. We have the perfect plan. Once rogue elements like the barkeeps and other undesirables are removed, society will maintain itself, under the unblinking gaze of the Beneficent Order of Milkmen. No more thought is required.

But –

No more thought is required.

How can you make a generalization like that?

It’s very easy, because we are right.

You don’t sound very right to me.

Not a question.

No wonder the barkeeps don’t like you guys.

You have no more questions.

Actually, I have many more questions, and some statements to make.

No, you don’t. Thank you for your interest!

i) Upon cessation of physical existence (referred to hereafter as “death”), the entity or portion of entity that persists (colloquially known as the “soul”; hereafter, “you”) will be transported by the Management to the proving facility (hereafter, “the maze”, or “the labyrinth”). You agree to incur any transportation costs on behalf of the Management, should such costs arise (please see the appendix entitled “Fees and Penalties” below).

i.a) The Management is under no obligation to answer, and will summarily ignore, any questions about the manner of your transportation to the labyrinth, or the nature of your existence while in the labyrinth, or the location of the labyrinth in relation to anything else in any plane of existence, known or unknown to you, previous to, concurrent with, or obtained after your death.

i.b) There is one way out of the labyrinth (see below).

ii) Cumulative stationary motivational elements (hereafter, “stones” or “rocks” or “pebbles”) line the paths of the maze. The stones are luminescent and very attractive. You are compelled to collect them, in a little golden bag (hereafter, the “bag”). Every stone must be collected; you are physically incapable of choosing not to put a stone in your bag. From collecting the stones, you derive a grim, joyless satisfaction.

ii.a) The Management provides the bag.

ii.b) The Management is under no obligation to answer, and will summarily ignore, any questions about the composition or nature of the bag, inquiries into how the bag works or how it was placed in your possession, or requests for another bag.

ii.c) No other bags are available. You will only need one.

iii) While in the labyrinth, you will always be hungry. At random intervals, the Management will provide food.

iii.a) This food will consist primarily of inadequate amounts of fruit and stale pastries.

iii.b) The food may be found at random locations on the floor of the maze, along with the stones.

iii.c) No matter how much food you consume, your hunger will not be sated. This is not the purpose of the food.

iii.c.1) The Management is under no obligation to answer, and will summarily ignore, any questions about the food.

iv) Once you have begun the collection process, four motile motivational elements (hereafter, “ghosts” or “spirits”) are summoned, one for each cardinal direction, but also representing the four people you wronged the most in life. They chase you as you pick up the stones. You may or may not recognize these ghosts, but you will fear them. This fear is normal and appropriate.

iv.a) If a ghost touches you, you will experience an egregious discomfort penalty, both physical and psychological in nature (hereafter, “the Pain”). Symptoms may include but are not limited to: an intense burning just underneath the skin; formidable pressure in the sinuses, throat and gastrointestinal tract; profound emotional loss; existential crisis; the sensation of being stabbed in the heart, and then the heart being burned, and then the ashes being thoroughly shamed.

iv.b) Also, you lose all your rocks.

iv.c) The ghosts are slightly faster than you, but have equal or inferior knowledge of the labyrinth.

iv.d) The Management will answer questions about the ghosts, but only through the medium of waking dreams while you are collecting stones, and the answers, when comprehensible to you, will almost certainly intensify the Pain.

iv.e) Direct all questions about the ghosts toward the ceiling of the labyrinth, in the form of an abject wail.

iv.e.1) Questions will be answered in the order they are received.

iv.e.2) Allow four to six weeks for the Management to respond, but keep in mind: within the labyrinth, time is meaningless.

v) If you pick up every single shining pebble, the walls shake and lightning flashes, and the labyrinth replenishes its rocks from the stash in your golden bag. Once the labyrinth has replenished itself, you will begin the collection process once again.

v.a.) The replenishment process is instantaneous and unavoidable.

v.b.) The cycle of collection and replenishment continues until you achieve a state of purgative enlightenment (hereafter, “your lesson”).

v.c.) Your lesson is specifically and uniquely yours. The Management is unaware of its nature and/or content. The Management eagerly awaits your lesson, which will most likely reveal itself in the form of an abject wail, or perhaps incoherent weeping.

vi) After learning your lesson, the labyrinth will dissolve. At that time, should it ever arrive, you may report to the Cashier for payment.

vi.a.) Payment is mandatory.

vi.b.) The Management is under no obligation to answer, and will summarily ignore, any questions about your bill.

“No, not at all, not your hair at all,” Rob said, quieter now but just as happy, because this was his way, he decided, at least for now. “I just felt like yelling something and that’s the first thing that came to mind. Your hair’s not that big, and it’s not the morning. It’s quarter after four. PM.” He sat down beside Carter and watched the soccer men in their short pants running around on the grass, the strobing grass. He ate some peanuts from a shallow bowl right there on the bar. Carter turned back to the television.

“Who’s winning?” Rob asked.

“I don’t know, Rob, the little score graphic thingy is gone. It just disappeared a while ago,” Carter said.

“What was the score when it disappeared?”

“Tied. Zero zero.”

Rob smiled as he munched peanuts, and he started rocking back and forth in his chair, and then humming a little. He didn’t know the tune, it may not have even been a tune, it might’ve just been some notes and half a rhythm, maybe not even that much rhythm. Rob thought he might have accidentally invented a samba. “What’s that term for a certain beat, with the funny emphasis, on the back beat maybe?” he asked, still rocking, still watching, mouth full of peanuts.

“Syncopation?” Carter said. She did not look away from the screen.

“That’s it! Syncopation!” Rob hummed a while longer. “Carter,” he said when he felt his non-song had reached a suitable stopping (or at least pausing) point, “are you drunk?”

“No.”

“You look a little drunk.”

“I haven’t had a single drink yet today, or for the last several days.”

The bartender, unseen until now, walked out of the back room and set an open bottle in front of both Carter and Rob, and then walked back to the back room of the bar once again. Rob’s face became childlike in its total wonderment. He clapped several times, then raised his bottle to the absent barkeep and drank from it.

“Several days? Don’t you know the exact number?”

“No, I don’t keep track.”

Rob hummed and rocked and looked around. Only Carter and himself sat in the bar. The television was muted. The bar was called Arnie’s, and it was not a very good bar, but it was close to the apartment that Carter and Rob shared and at random intervals, amazing things happened. Once a very old man had told Rob all about how computer-men were taking over the world, and how he could take preventative measures to protect himself from their mind-control activities. Mostly, the countermeasures involved bathing in epsom salts and wrapping aluminum foil around one’s genitals. On another night, a dog wandered into the bar and stood unmoving in the middle of the floor, staring at an unremarkable spot on the wall for a long time, long enough that the five or six people in the bar began to watch him. The dog stayed still and silent for a few minutes longer and then — so the witnesses swear (Rob among them) — it said “Lovely” in a posh English accent, and walked out. Most importantly, Rob had once found a winning lottery ticket worth $350 on the floor of the bathroom at Arnie’s, so now it was his lucky bar and he couldn’t be dissuaded from going there whenever possible, because if it happened once, it was bound to happen again. “Things happen in threes,” Rob swore. Yes, they did. No one could argue with that math.

Rob checked every corner of the bar for more random acts of wonderment, and finding none, reloaded on peanuts.

“Are you unhappy, Carter?” he asked.

“Do I look unhappy?” Carter asked.

Rob looked at her and waited for her to turn her head so he could survey her expression. Their shared roommate-telepathy notified her of his request so she turned to face him.

“Yes, you look unhappy.”

Carter turned away, dug through her purse for her phone one-handed, and took a picture of herself, then looked at the picture.

“Do you think you look unhappy?” Rob asked.

“I don’t know. The picture’s blurry.”

“Let me take one.”

Carter handed him the phone. He took a picture and showed it to her.

“Wow. I do look unhappy.”

“Yes, you do!” Rob started humming and rocking again. Carter put her phone away.

“I can never tell what my face looks like. I didn’t realize I was frowning.”

“Maybe it’s recent. Like since the score thingy disappeared.”

“No. I think it’s probably been like that for a while.”

They watched the game for several minutes. Neither team got near the goal.

“Carter, why are you holding a violin bow?” Rob asked, throwing peanuts at, and occasionally into, his mouth.

“It’s a cello bow.”

“Carter, why are you holding a cello bow?”

“I was holding it when I sat down here.”

“And when was that?”

Carter shrugged.

“Carter, do you have a cello?”

“Somewhere.”

“Are you sad because your cello is missing?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. Because I didn’t know you even had a cello, and that’s kinda freaking me out on its own.”

“I mean, it just stands to reason that I have a cello if I have a cello bow, right?”

“Makes sense to me.”

“But I don’t know where it is.”

“Yes!” Rob said, pointing at Carter.

“Or where and when I got it.”

“Yes!” Rob said, pointing at Carter again, more emphatically.

“It must not be that important.”

Rob ate more peanuts.

“I had a very good day, Carter.”

“That’s nice.”

“My work day went by quickly, my lunch was excellent, and I successfully yelled for no reason and you didn’t hit me for it. I am on a roll!”

“Clearly.”

“And you know what else?”

“What?”

“I was thinking about why everyone calls you Carter.”

In the unpredictable and arbitrary manner of nearly all nicknames, Carter (whose real name was Catherine) had received a credit card offer in which her name was egregiously misspelled. Her friends (Rob among them) had discovered this while intoxicated, so intoxicated that for a short time Catherine’s imaginary life as Carter was the funniest thing in the history of humankind. Thereafter, Catherine was Carter, and she eventually accepted the rechristening, acceptance being the fifth and final stage of grief.

“That’s a great story,” Rob said.

“Not really,” Carter said.

“But now it’s part of your mythos. Part of the Gospel of Carter.”

“Catherine.”

“Exactly.”

Carter thought for a moment. “When did that happen?”

“Early grad school. Six to ten years ago.”

“Six to ten?”

“I can’t believe I’ve known you for six to ten years!”

“It must be closer to six.”

“Could be!”

“I don’t remember the last time I looked at my dissertation.”

“Our friendship is in first grade! Learning simple math! And vowels!”

Carter made a small noise, but she might have just been exhaling.

Rob grabbed another handful of peanuts from the shallow dish, and realized it wasn’t visibly depleted despite his efforts, but he didn’t want to scare the miracle away, so he hummed and rocked back and forth — but slyly. “Carter, what was your dissertation about?”

Carter recited the title with mechanical precision: “The Narrative Ark: Scope As Character In The Long American Novel. That’s ‘ark’ with a ‘k,’ like the boat. It’s a pun.”

“I see!” Rob said, and this time, he really did see, probably. “Do you get extra credit for puns?”

“It depends on the instructor, but generally: no.”

“Still, worth a try, right?”

Carter shrugged.

“Right?”

Carter shrugged. The soccer players were still playing soccer. There was no goal in sight. Rob drained the last of his beer from its bottle and unbidden, the bartender appeared from the back room, picked up the empty and set a new beer in its place, and returned to the back room. The exchange was deft and silent. Rob was about to burst; he wanted to giggle at the unfolding amazingness. “Keep it together! Keep it together!” he muttered, and hoped only he could hear. Carter didn’t seem to hear, but Rob wasn’t sure if that meant anything. Carter wasn’t prone to reactions. Rob hummed, rocked back and forth in his chair, ate peanuts.

Still watching soccer, Carter said, “You’re pretty happy today.”

“I am!” Rob said. “My day has been excellent. I think it’s because I made a decision to reclaim my enthusiasm.”

“Uh-huh,” said Carter.

“I am enthusing about the world, and the world is providing me with things to be enthused about. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Naturally I had to come here today. Amazing things happen at Arnie’s. Have you noticed all the amazing things that have happened just since I’ve been sitting here?”

“I noticed the new bartender has a gigantic mustache and he’s wearing a Foreigner t-shirt.”

“I don’t want to jinx it, but he brought me a beer exactly when I need one. I mean, exactly. Ex. Act. Ly.”

“He’s a walking slab of ironic detachment.” Carter made a sour face and took a swig from her beer.

“And that’s just one thing. I think I could live off these peanuts.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I’m not going to try. I’m just saying I think I could. And that too is amazing!”

They heard the door open, but they didn’t turn around. Rob wanted to be surprised and Carter didn’t care. It was Martin, Carter’s boyfriend. Their dating status had never been confirmed or denied, but at semi-regular intervals, Martin came over to the apartment and Carter let him in, and then Martin and Carter had sex or an argument or sometimes both, so Rob made the meager cognitive leap and declared them a couple. Martin was carrying a cello case. He sat down on the other side of Carter.

“I found your cello,” Martin said.

Carter sighed. “Yep,” she said, and drank from her beer.

“Hi, Martin!” said Rob.

“Hey Rob,” said Martin.

Carter watched the soccer players playing soccer. They were still in the middle of the field. They looked unenthusiastic. Rob waited for the bartender to appear. Several minutes passed.

“So do you want me to leave it here or…” Martin said.

“What?” said Carter.

“The cello.”

“Right,” Carter said. “No, take it to my place. Leave it on the back deck.”

“Okay,” Martin said, and waited. Carter watched soccer. Rob watched soccer and threw peanuts at his mouth.

“Who’s winning?” Martin asked.

Rob said “We don’t know. The score thingy disappeared. I think it’s still tied.”

Martin watched the game some more, then stood up.

“I’m gonna…”

“Yep,” said Carter.

Martin waited a while longer, then moved toward the door.

“Oh, wait,” Carter said, and Martin paused. Carter stretched out her left arm behind her, still watching the game. “Take the bow with you. Leave it with the cello.”

Martin took the bow from her, and left. When he was out the door, Rob clapped again.

“Did you see that? The bartender knew Martin wouldn’t be sticking around long enough to drink a beer! And he never even left the back room! I like this bartender! Bravo! Bravo!”

“Don’t they ever leave the middle of the field?” Carter said.

Over the next hour, the regulars trickled in and filled booths and seats at the bar, all old white men. The bartender maintained his eerie refill sense. Rob munched peanuts and hummed. The bowl never seemed to get any emptier. “You and Martin need a celebrity hybrid name, like the movie stars have.”

“No, we don’t.”

Rob thought for a while, and then said: “Carton. Or Martyr. Or Cartartin. No, that sounds like allergy medication.”

“I knew I had a cello,” Carter said.

The front door opened again. This time, Rob turned to see who had come in.

“Holy crap, it’s the dog,” he said.

Carter turned. A tan, stringy-haired mutt stood at attention in the center of the barroom floor, staring at a spot on the wall.

“Is that the dog?” Carter said.

“Yes, it’s the dog. Shh.” Rob watched the dog. Carter watched the dog too. Behind them, the soccer continued. They — and some of the other regulars — watched for a long time, much longer than they had the first time, they were certain of it. Most of them gave up and returned to their drinks. Rob, however, kept watching.

“What’s the matter, boy? Don’t you wanna talk?” he said, and got down from his bar stool to kneel in front of the dog. “Whatcha gonna say this time, huh, boy? Whatcha gonna say?” Rob held the dog’s head gently, near the ears, giving the dog affectionate scratches. “Whatcha gonna say, boy? Whatcha gonna say? Speak! Speak!” The dog said nothing.

Carter watched Rob and the dog for a while longer, then turned back to the soccer game. The players were still in the middle of the field. There was still no visible score. She looked at her left hand. “I should’ve kept the bow,” she said. Carter’s head settled onto her right hand, propped up by her arm on the bar. Behind her, Rob’s pleas for speech deteriorated into incomprehensible baby talk, and then the dog started licking his face, and they rolled around on the floor, Rob and the dog, the dog and Rob.

(The man leans on a cane and watches the horizon, or at least he faces the horizon. He squints, and the face around his eyes is an intricate lattice of wrinkles upon wrinkles, so it’s hard to tell exactly what his eyes are doing.)

Everything was cheaper, but it was built to last! You could get a five-course dinner for thirteen cents! A whole house for a dollar and a half! One of those fancy occidental ladies of the evening, you gave her seven bits and she’d be your wife till you died! A nickel cost a penny! And you had to work five weeks to earn one of those! A fitternight, we called it! Five weeks! People knew the value of a nickel! And quarters! Only Rockefeller and the Pope had those! The Pope kept one hidden in his hat for safety! No one dared knock off the Pope’s hat! Filthy Catholic!

(Despite the heat and his advanced age, he wears a black suit with vest, and a high starched collar, and a frock coat, and a top hat, and spats. He sweats profusely, but sneers at any suggestion that he should sit in the van, out of the sun.)

The sun was closer back then! When I was a boy we had to soak our clothes in ice water before we walked to school! And when we got there, we usually had to throw buckets of water at the school! Because it was on fire! We were lucky we learned anything at all, and we still were smarter than you! We didn’t have any automatons to do our sums for us, or cook our meals, or cure our scurvy, or write our popular songs! We did it all ourselves and most of us didn’t graduate from the fourth grade because by that point they usually had to build a new school, and that meant another referendum!

(The man spits at a rock. Earlier in the day, he claimed the rock reminded him of a cousin who swindled him in a land deal.)

Any governmental process, anything involving the collection of votes, took thirty-five years! And that’s if no one contested the results! And someone always contested the results! It was the only way to get anything done! And it never got anything done! But there wasn’t any alternative!

(He begins screeching when he cannot hear a conversation not intended to involve him.)

I know you’re talking! I can see you fat lips flapping around even as you try to shield them with your soft pink fingers! I lost my hearing in the mines when I was nineteen! Everyone worked in the mines! That’s how one got a bachelor’s degree back then! I don’t know what we mined and I don’t care! That’s when I learned to read lips, yes, even around corners! You think you’re crafty! You think you’re cunning! You don’t know the meaning of the words! And if you do, it’s only because you’ve changed the meanings of the words to match your ignorant guesses! Why do you think we had different words back then!

(The man reacts in no discernible way to the surreptitious departure of the others, their careful back-pedaling, the intentional lightness of their footfalls, their stifled sneezes and aborted conversations.)

Efficacious! Perspicacity! Effluvial! These are the words of a gentleman! A stalwart exemplar of the masculine sex! And you don’t even know what they mean! I was beaten if I didn’t know what they meant! I spent two weeks in that burned-out wreck we called a hospital because I forgot what “widdershins” meant! I had to fend of the doctors, those vampires! I slashed at them with a shard of broken whiskey bottle so they wouldn’t cut off my legs! The only medical treatment for anything back then was “therapeutic amputation!”

(The man continues facing the horizon as the others climb back in the van and struggle to shut the doors without causing too loud of a sound.)

I know what you’re doing! You’re leaving! That’s what you do! I don’t leave! I never leave! I cling, I cling tenaciously! I am a barnacle! I am a deer tick! I am all barbed hooks and glue! I know when things were the way they were, and I won’t have it otherwise! You go ahead and drive, drive away, into whatever it is that you don’t know! I know what I have! I know what I did! I’ve got the sun at my back, and all these rocks to spit at! All my cousins in this desert, all the world a line across the sky! This is what you want and you don’t even know it, because you’re not old enough! You’ll never be old enough! And when you are, it’ll be too late! It’ll be your turn, and someone else will drive you here, and I’ll be gone! That’s how it happened to me!

(The van peels out and drives away, the tires kicking up twin streams of pale tan dust.)

You don’t know what irony is. Huh.

That makes sense. You’re five. And your brother’s three, so we won’t even ask him. Is he asleep? That’s fine. Is his hood up? Good. Remind me to explain irony later. Maybe when you’re seven. I think that’s when I learned about it. Yeah. Seven sounds about right.

Yes, it’s late. Well past your bedtime. Or at least the bedtime your mother gave you. Does Carson have anything to do with that? The setting of bedtimes?

You don’t know.

Look, I’m not being critical here, I don’t think you’re bad, but you really need to be more observant. You’re my eyes and ears in there, you know, my man on the ground. You provide me with valuable intel.

That’s right. Intelligence. Like in the spy movies we’ve been watching. See, you’ve got a good memory. That’s why I asked you to be my inside man.

Your brother? Your brother’s more of a… let’s call him muscle. Look at his arms, he’s much bigger than you were when you were his age. Huskier. When he grows up, he’ll probably have fists like slabs of meat. Angry meat. Churlish meat. Just look at your uncles. On your mother’s side. You, you’ll be wiry like me.

Don’t make that face. It’s not a bad thing. You’ve got a good brain. Manual labor is not your forte, and it doesn’t need to be. You’ll be telling the meat-fisted ones who to go and hit. You will be director of the meat fists. If you stay in school. Remember: tuition is not a gift. I’m not paying into that 529 so you can be a comparative lit major, unless you get paid for it, and god knows how that would happen. Comp Lit. They call that a discipline.

I know you don’t know what that is, but one day this will all make sense to you. I’m speaking in a sort of pidgin, half English and half another language you’ll learn slowly, as you get older. It’s called “bullshit.” You’ll be fluent by the time you’re eighteen, if you’re lucky.

I know I said a bad word, but technically, as I’m using it here, it’s not a bad word. It’s a descriptive term, a technical term. Maybe even jargon. So it’s not bad. Besides, that whole bad word thing is a social construct, and you’ll find by the time you’re in college it’s lost its power and allure, and you won’t pay any attention to it, and no one will notice you ignoring it.

That said, don’t use that word around your mother. I’ll get blamed, and I don’t need that bother. As a heads-up, you’ll probably hear a lot of words tonight that you shouldn’t repeat around your mother. Or Carson.

Carson.

It doesn’t even sound like a name really. Carson.

Fluent means you can speak it well. The language. You’re fluent in English, or you will be. I don’t know how they categorize kids, if kids can be fluent or not. You’re still learning to be people, how can you be considered a master of a language?

Wow. Yeah. Talking good is part of being an adult, or it should be. Though I should say at this point that you mean “speaking well,” but that’s a little nitpicky. Your thought was downright profound. Your brother wouldn’t have thought of that. Well, maybe he would have. He’s younger than you. I didn’t mean he was dumb earlier, I meant he was bigger physically, or he will be eventually, that digging and building and other jobs that require physical prowess would come easier to him than you. There’s nothing wrong with either one of you, you’re just different. You’re fine. He’s fine. Everything’s fine.

Everything’s fine.

No, you’re not going to get in trouble. No one’s getting in trouble. We’re just out late. It’s an excursion. I’m going to teach you something useful about the stars and we have to go out to bumf– to the middle of nowhere to see the stars, thanks to all the streetlights.

Yes, the streetlights keep us safe. I don’t hate streetlights. But you can’t see the stars. That’s why we had to drive out here. Your mom will be fine with it, by which I mean she’ll yell at me for a while and then ask why I didn’t just call her and let her know. I’m not sure how I’ll play that yet. Usually I make some snide, boorish, smartass remark, and we all know how well that works.

That’s right. That’s why mom and dad aren’t married anymore. At least that’s the most popular reason. Or the loudest reason. You’re a perceptive little bugger. Good to know you.

Don’t leave me hanging. Shake my hand.

Alright. Well done. And don’t say “bugger” around your mother. Put it on the list. We’ll play it safe.

So.

You still drawing those robots?

What do they do?

Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. With a cannon. And do the people know? Ah. Do they have a spaceship? Why not? Robots can have spaceships, they fly them all the time. Yes, in made-up stories, but yours is a made-up story. The same rules can apply. The non-spaceship kind, I see. Maybe they can fight some robots that have a spaceship, and learn to fly it, so they can leave the planet. Is it Earth? So they can leave Earth.

I know it’s your story, you can write it however you want. I’m just making a suggestion. It’ll be a good story your way too.

Not much longer.

You’ll be able to see where you are by looking at the sky, and you’ll be able to tell which way is north all the time, very useful stuff. I wish someone had taught me this kind of thing when I was a kid. That and cars. As soon as you can effectively hold a ratchet, I’m bringing you over to Tim’s so we can start your mechanic’s regimen. Every American male should be able to figure out what’s wrong with his car. You’re not going to look like some kind of dandy fool until you’re 37, like I did.

Ah, we’re there. We’ll have to walk up to the gate, there’s no room to park up there. What, it’s a picnic area, there’s nothing to steal. We won’t get in trouble. This is educational. Why’s your hood down? Put it up. Yes, it’s hot in the car, but it’s chilly outside. Is your brother asleep? Wake him up. Go ahead and poke him. Poke him hard, I’m feeling indulgent. I’ll have to scold you once he’s awake, though, it’ll stop his whining.