It didn’t feel different, and that was the strange part. In the moment, you’d been elated, the sun beating down on your face outdoors, the school football field colonized by a million folding chairs and your parents clapping and beaming as their children and their friends and you processed across the stage one by one but now you felt like you again only now there was even less of you than there had been, a sort of vapid emptiness you couldn’t name or barely perceive except by looking at it with squinted eyes. Even sitting with Benny at the beach didn’t help and that surprised you even more than his fingers did when they began playing on your back and then later beneath the pier.

Benny will be dead in two years, washed up at some expensive college back east and depressed beyond your comprehension. What even makes a person do that, you will think, your own deep spells beneath the surface of the waves looking like puddles before the dive that Benny takes after you lose contact with him. He will bury a bullet in his ocular globe and that makes him a poor shot as well as a dead man, maybe his hand jerked at the last moment, like he didn’t really want to do it, or so you will tell yourself staring at the ceiling in your apartment. Ocular globe is a phrase you will have to look up when the policeman you speak to tells it to you in an unguarded moment, distracted a little bit you think by the low shirt you decide to wear, feeling powerful with your skinny body that you hated so much when you were still lying on that beach watching the implanted rich wives wander by and jiggle and make you wonder fleetingly if you might be a lesbian but no no Benny’s fingers bring you back around.

You see Nancy coming striding down the beach and think that yes, that really does describe how she walks, striding, her long legs like stalks on an insect or some alien invasion machine, the lander of a scouting force, legs that let her be as silly as she likes around boys because she knows as soon as she walks away their eyes will stay glued to her thighs and everything she’s done to annoy them is forgiven, forgiven forever if she’ll just keep walking like that. Of course Benny watches her walk up, waves at her as she passes, and you pray she’s going to keep on walking but no, here she comes to say hi to Benny and you and then those legs are right at your face and you have to look straight up them to even try and see her eyes.

Nancy and Benny are friends from way back, forever ago, when they were in elementary school together and met on the first day and then spent every day at recess together on the swings because no one wanted to talk to the fat nerd and the tall skinny girl and certainly not at the same time, making them fast friends throughout the rest of the school year until Nancy moved across town and they didn’t see each other again until freshman year when you had know Benny for longer already but Nancy didn’t see it that way at all and the three of you played a funny game of who’s the third wheel this time for all four years of high school.

Benny leaves his hand on your back as you crane your neck upward and you back falls into this funny little shape where you have a depressing right above your ass, where a tramp stamp was drawn in sharpie on the most incredible sleep over you ever had back in junior year where you confessed to your friends that you and Benny weren’t actually sleeping together like you’d tried to lead everyone on about for the entire semester and everyone told you they hadn’t believed it anyway. It had been a rose with thorns wrapped around it and spreading from one edge of your bony hip to the other and drawn by Maggie who was a senior that year but it was entirely your idea and everyone had liked it so much that they all called you Rose for about a week afterward.

Benny’s fingers roll down your suntanned-lotion-slicked back and come to rest in that little cavern and you tingle all over and wish they’d just keep going down further and further and in fact tell him this later, after Nancy leaves and you both wander off the beach and down to the old piers that block the view from the road and the city to be alone, you amaze yourself as the words tumble out from your mouth, I wanted you to keep going and doing that, please try that again right now, and make a noise that you would later only be able to think of as keeeeeen, over and over and over as you learn something about what fingers can and can’t do, most importantly of all being that they cannot fill that funny little gap that you feel constantly, that emptiness.

It gnaws at you even as you are lying here looking up at Nancy and talking to her about colleges and what ones you’ve heard from and what ones she’s heard from and oh my god maybe you’ll end up at the same college and wouldn’t that be so cool? and you both know as you are saying these things that they are lies, you would hate to see Nancy at college, and she would hate to see you at college, and so when, in two months, you find out that Nancy has agreed to attend your backup school that had already sent you a letter of acceptance you shred it and never tell anyone you heard from them and instead pray that you hear from somewhere anywhere else.

Nancy bends down and pats you on the head and comments on how nice and even your tan looks and you know that she really really wants you to compliment her on her own bronzed skin and so you oblige, thinking there’s no point in lying about how good Nancy’s tan looks on her, and as she does this and you do that another woman walks by and your eyes bounce for a moment in perfect rhythm again, and you quickly roll them and hope that Nancy did not pick up on either movement. If she did, she is giving you no sign of it, and as you share your goodbyes and you and Benny watch her walk away, tracing her perfect glutes with your eyes, you wonder again about the worry you have that isn’t really a worry per se but more a little curiosity at yourself you will never really answer.

In twenty years you will look back on this scene and this entire afternoon and ruminate on paths not taken but right now you don’t even know that ruminate is a word because there is just the sea and the sun and Benny’s fingers drifting along your back and ruining your tan but oh well, who cares, you’ll be wearing a shirt over it for most of the rest of the summer anyway.

You decide right then however on something important and stand up and brush the sand off your own thighs, and smile as Benny stands slowly as well his swim trunks seeming to fit him better than before, or at least a little tighter and you take his hand and jog down the beach toward the shimmering piers where there is plenty of future for the both of you to dig out from beneath them, sand that you will shovel into that empty space in the hopes that although it may always be bottomless at least it will be slightly less not full.

“Tell me a story.”

“What, another one?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, hmm. Alright, I know one. It goes like this:

“There once was a very holy man. Everyone agreed on this. They testified to his mystical powers far and wide; they swore that his decisions were enlightened beyond all other men. God himself looked down at this man and smiled.

“Now, in these days, people believed that part of being a holy man was the ability to live the life of renunciation.”

“What’s that?”

“Renunciation? It means ‘giving things up.’ So you could renounce soda, for example, or, more meaningfully, violence. But when these believers thought about renunciation, they meant it in a larger way: the renunciation of all of the demands of the flesh. Holy men all over the country attempted to outdo each other with their denial of the flesh. They starved themselves, sat in meditation for weeks on end, held their breath for ages, and generally tried to refuse to interact with the world as much as possible.

“So among all these ascetics, the holy man was a paragon of renunciation. He never ate more than a few grains of rice at a time; the water he sipped was muddy and disgusting; his breath was so shallow that when he sat in meditation one could barely tell if he was alive or dead.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would someone do that to themselves?”

“Well, the theory went that God was completely separate from the physical world; that the material was a corrupt version of the holy. By liberating their minds from the demands of the body and the world, the renunciate could grow that much closer to God.”

“He must have been very hungry.”

“He stopped noticing after a while. His body, though, grew frailer and frailer; his eyes sank back into his head, his bones became brittle and weak, and his skin was stretched like paper over his skeleton.

“One day, he called his closest disciples to him. ‘My friends,’ he said, ‘I have finally discovered the key to completely renouncing this material world. From this moment on, I will no longer need to eat even those meager grains of rice, or sip that muddy water from the cup. I shall instead draw my sustenance from the vital energies of the air itself, through breath alone.’

“When he said this, his disciples grew alarmed, wondering if he had somehow lost his mind. Various holy men over the years had claimed to have discovered the keys to complete renunciation, and all had given up in shame, or been discovered still sneaking grains of rice on the side.

“But the holy man reassured them. ‘Fear not; I know of your worry for me. Rest assured that I would not make this pronouncement without understanding the gravity of my claim. But I truly have discovered the method; God himself revealed the secret to me in a dream three nights previous, and I have sat in prayer to him for the previous three days, consulting with him, assuring myself that it is indeed the truth.’

“So the disciples were mollified. The holy man continued, ‘I shall use this technique to enter into a state of divine meditation with God. This meditation shall be so deep, I will not require any rest; so perfect, I will need no sustenance at all. I will retire to the inner sanctum of the temple and meditate there until I have attained the truth of the peace of the wisdom of God. Leave me undisturbed there until I summon you.’

“The holy man returned to his meditations at the heart of the temple, and the disciples closed the door behind him, locking it from the inside. The holy man could exit the room, but they could no longer enter.

“The days passed, and the holy man did not exit his inner sanctum. The disciples shared with his other followers what he had told them, and they continued life much as before, venerating God, praying, fasting, welcoming pilgrims, and generally being holy.

“None disturbed the holy man in the center of the temple, and as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, he became the symbol of the entire sect, a holy relic unto himself, attaining a statue near to that of a god himself.

“Thousands venerated the temple he meditated deep within. The entire structure was closed, sealed to outsiders, and the legends of his miracles grew. A woman who was visiting the temple claimed to have had her wounded leg healed by his grace. A man who had been blind regained his sight. A barren woman conceived her first child after sleeping on the grounds of the temple complex.

But, as these things often do, the sect began to fade as the original disciples began to pass on to the next world. As those who had known the holy man before his ascension into the temple to meditate passed on into the other world, tales of his power and might became superseded by the stories of holy men who the people could see and touch, who were still out in the world.

“The flood of pilgrims to the temple became a trickle, and then ceased altogether. The monks who were there grew old and died, or left to join other, more vibrant holy communities. The jungle regrew into the places it had been cut out of, and now no trace of this holy place remains.”

“But what happened to the holy man?”

“Hmm?”

“The holy man, who announced that he could live without eating? What happened to him? Was he right?”

“Oh, of course. No, he died, like everyone else does. In his case, about a week after the door had been locked, his body starved to death.”

“That’s a horrible story.”

“Is it? I like to think it’s quite beautiful.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, go to sleep. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Alright, but I’m not tired. I’m going to stay up all night now.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

on some level

we want to be guilty

to have someone chasing us

telling us over and over

that all our fuckups

mattered

that in the vast ledger

of life, a thick black book

there was a notation made

beside our names

“this one right here;

he was trouble.”

LIGHTS UP

on an apartment kitchen. The morning after Thanksgiving. Steven is seated at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. Jess, his roommate, enters.

JESS
Goooooood morning!

STEVE
Mornin’.

JESS
How’d you sleep?

STEVE
With all that turkey your mom stuffed in me it’s a miracle I’m awake now.

JESS
Your family never did big Thanksgivings?

STEVE
You’ve met my mother, haven’t you?

JESS
Hmm, true.

STEVE
We’d watch the Macy’s parade, sure, but mom’s idea of home cooking was Chinese takeout from the cheap place down the street with a stiff glass of bourbon.

JESS
So that’s where you get your amazing liver from.

STEVE
I’ve been pickling it from a very young age.

JESS
What did you think of my dad? I saw you talking to him for a while after dinner.

STEVE
I think the better question is what does your dad think of me. The whole time I felt like I was being felt out for boyfriend material.

JESS
Ewwww!

STEVE
I know! Like I’m lying when I say I’m gay in order to get into his daughter’s pants.

JESS
Well, he’s old-fashioned. “Gay” just isn’t a part of his universe.

STEVE
Oh yes it is.

JESS
What?

STEVE
Your uncle!

JESS
Uncle Larry?

STEVE
Was he the tall, lanky one?

JESS
No, that’s Uncle Stu.

STEVE
He’s your dad’s brother, right? Related by blood?

JESS
Yeah, yeah. You’re not saying–

STEVE
One-hundred-percent homosexual.

JESS bursts out laughing.

JESS
The vaunted gay-dar fails at last!

STEVE
No way!

JESS
Let me tell you about Uncle Stu. Did you get to talk to him?

STEVE
A little. Enough to tell!

JESS
Did you meet his wife?

STEVE
I saw her. That statuesque blond woman, right?

JESS
Aunt Martha, yeah. Quite the beauty, isn’t she?

STEVE
That just seals the deal!

JESS
Steve, they have six kids together. Six!

STEVE
He’s a raging heterosexual, you’re claiming.

JESS
I have never met a man more committed to hetero-normality in my life.

STEVE
Would you call him a homophobe?

JESS
No… no, he’s just very, very straight. Proud of it, I think.

STEVE
See, that’s my point. No straight man is that eager to advertise his straight-ness.

JESS
That’s–

STEVE
He’s so scared of the truth of his gayness that he’s swung back the other way, trying to over-assert his masculinity. I know some friends who are into bears who would love him, just eat him up.

JESS
He’s been married to Aunt Martha for fifteen years, though!

STEVE
So? He’s just in deep, deep denial. I assure you, I have never gotten as strong a vibe off someone as I did off your uncle Stu. I even think he checked out my ass as we were leaving!

JESS
Double ewww!

STEVE
Well, I wouldn’t have even brought it up if I didn’t think he was cute. I think he’d make an adorable gay man, paired up with a slightly younger man to show him the ropes…

JESS
New rule: No fantasizing about my family.

STEVE
Aww, that’s no fun at all.

JESS
Fine, fine, you can fantasize, but please don’t tell me about it!

STEVE
Well, that’ll make tomorrow a little awkward, then.

JESS
What? Why?

STEVE
Well, in that little time I did speak to Stu at Thanksgiving yesterday, I slipped him my card and told him I’d love to do an interview with him for my art project.

JESS
Art project? What art project?

STEVE
And just this morning, what should appear in my inbox but your Uncle Stu, taking me up on the request, and offering to meet tomorrow at this neat little trendy restaurant over in Brooklyn.

JESS
Steve, what in the world are you talking about? You don’t have any art projects set up right now. You– oh no.

STEVE
The art project was a lie, I admit, but it was a well-spun one. And he obviously bought it.

JESS
You’re not.

STEVE
Oh yes.

JESS
You can’t.

STEVE
I am!

JESS
But–

STEVE
He deserves to know!

JESS
I’m coming!

STEVE
But of course.

JESS
I– of course?

STEVE
Moral support. You’re going to buttress my arguments with your own emotional appeals for calm. You, after all, have much more experience with him than I do.

JESS
You’re a monster.

STEVE
His own good.

JESS sighs.

JESS
I know there’s not much I can do to stop you.

STEVE
No one ever can.

JESS
Let the record show that I objected early and often to this subterfuge.

STEVE
Duly noted. Now, let’s get down to how we’re going to break it to him…

LIGHTS DOWN

AUTHOR
Where was I going with this, again? Oh, right, a character.

CHARACTER enters through back door.

AUTHOR (cont’d)
No life in you yet, I guess. Hello?

CHARACTER
No life in you yet, I guess. Hello?

AUTHOR
Huh.

CHARACTER
Huh.

AUTHOR
Well, let’s fix that. Wake up, buddy.

CHARACTER
What?

AUTHOR
I said, hello.

CHARACTER
Oh, hi. How’s it going?

AUTHOR
Pretty good. Getting a feel for things.

CHARACTER
That’s good. Always nice to have a sense of what you’re doing.

AUTHOR
Definitely going to take some practice.

CHARACTER
Right. (Pauses) So, what are you doing?

AUTHOR
Writing.

CHARACTER
Oh? What?

AUTHOR
Well, right now, you.

CHARACTER
That’s the title of the thing you’re writing? You?

AUTHOR
No, you.

CHARACTER
I don’t understand.

AUTHOR
I know. I’m making you a little obtuse. Hopefully the audience thinks that’s funny.

CHARACTER
Oh.

AUTHOR
Nothing personal. You seem like a nice enough fellow… that’s interesting.

CHARACTER
What is?

AUTHOR
I just realized I haven’t given you a name yet.

CHARACTER
Of course I have a name!

AUTHOR
What is it?

CHARACTER
It’s… uh, it’s… It’s right on the tip of my tongue…

AUTHOR
Mike.

CHARACTER
Mike! That’s it! I knew it all along!

AUTHOR
Wrong. Your name’s actually Stephen.

CHARACTER
Of course it is.

A pause as AUTHOR and CHARACTER look at each other closely.

AUTHOR
Cleverness for the sake of cleverness isn’t funny, is it, Stephen?

CHARACTER
Depends, I guess.

AUTHOR
On what?

CHARACTER
Well, a lot of things. Is the cleverness in service of something?

AUTHOR
In this case, it’s in the service of getting a passing grade on this assignment. That’s why I’m being clever, because that’s my default mode.

CHARACTER
You should branch out some, perhaps.

AUTHOR
You think so, John?

CHARACTER
Sure. Catch the reader off-guard.

AUTHOR
Fine. (AUTHOR makes a gun of his fingers and ‘shoots’ CHARACTER in the leg, who falls to one knee and screams.) Now you’re in a war play. The meaning is man’s inhumanity to man on the battlefield, in a close-in play where it’s just you and two squadmates in a small farmhouse in France in the middle of D-Day.

CHARACTER screams in pain.

CHARACTER
Oh God, it hurts, it hurts! Sarge, tell Wilma back home I always loved her!

AUTHOR
The play will win minor acclaim for its uncompromising look at humanity at war-time, and become a standard part of the one-act repertoire at small playhouses across the country.

CHARACTER
Go get those Nazi bastards for me, Flynn. (CHARACTER dies.)

AUTHOR
Get up, Francis.

CHARACTER
You shot me in the leg and killed me!

AUTHOR
Yes. Life isn’t fair.

CHARACTER
That’s murder.

AUTHOR
Not when I do it, it isn’t. When I kill someone, it’s plot.

CHARACTER
Except for the guy who dies.

AUTHOR
Yes. Are you going to get up off the floor anytime soon?

CHARACTER
No. I’m lying here to spite you.

AUTHOR
No, you’re lying there because I want you to lie there so you think you’re spiting me. It’s very metacognitive.

CHARACTER
Why would you want to do that?

AUTHOR
Didn’t I mention the audience earlier?

CHARACTER
And something about a grade.

AUTHOR
I’m still hoping that this comes off as wit and not me just groping around for some way out of this postmodern mess I’ve written myself into.

CHARACTER laughs.

AUTHOR (cont’d)
What’s so funny?

CHARACTER
You said “groping.”

AUTHOR
Scatological humor?

CHARACTER
Don’t blame me, you’re the one who wrote me laughing at it.

AUTHOR
And now my own excuses are being used against me.

CHARACTER (standing up)
Hey, don’t get too down.

AUTHOR
Life coaching from a fictional construct.

CHARACTER
You’re still in command here, right?

AUTHOR
I guess so, although sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

CHARACTER
Just write that a bunch of bikini models come through the door and entertain us. That’ll cheer you up.

AUTHOR
Nice idea, but I can’t.

CHARACTER
Why not? You made me come out of there.

AUTHOR
Because A, that would be breaking with the rest of the tone of this scene, and B, it would make the scene much harder to stage. Bikini models don’t work cheap, you realize.

CHARACTER
Hah!

AUTHOR
What now?

CHARACTER
You actually think someone’s going to stage this?

AUTHOR
Clement, the last thing I need is a character who speaks with my inner editor’s voice.

CHARACTER
Just make something crazy happen. No one’s going to care.

AUTHOR
No!

CHARACTER
I bet you can’t.

AUTHOR
I created you out of whole cloth, and you think I can’t do something?

CHARACTER
I don’t believe in you. I’m an atheist.

AUTHOR
That’s surprising to hear you say, and I wrote it for you.

CHARACTER
You don’t control me. Really.

AUTHOR
You keep saying that, but I’m making you say it. This is getting a bit silly.

CHARACTER
How’s this for silly?

CHARACTER punches AUTHOR across the chin. AUTHOR goes down cold.

CHARACTER (cont’d)
Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?

CHARACTER drags AUTHOR’s limp body to door and shoves them through it.

CHARACTER (cont’d)
There. Now, let’s see if I can do this. I would like some bikini girls, please. OK, how about just a single bikini girl? Anyone? Hello? Hey, hello? I’ll settle for a ham sandwich!

AUTHOR (O.S.)
It’s not going to work.

CHARACTER
You again! Where are you?

AUTHOR walks around the ‘front’ of the room.

AUTHOR
Right here.

CHARACTER
Where’d you come from? I threw you out the door.

AUTHOR
I made you–

CHARACTER
You made me do it, yes, I know, I get it.

AUTHOR
I don’t understand why I’m writing you this way.

CHARACTER
I bet I do.

AUTHOR
I mean, I don’t want this to be talk therapy or something. Audiences wouldn’t like that.

CHARACTER
You know what you need?

AUTHOR
Yes.

CHARACTER
Pretend you don’t.

AUTHOR
Why would I do that?

CHARACTER
Narrative convenience?

AUTHOR
Works for me.

CHARACTER
What you need is some time off.

AUTHOR
I’m your writer. If I take time off…

CHARACTER
Nothing happens. You know why?

AUTHOR
No.

CHARACTER
Because you’ll let me write myself.

AUTHOR
There’s no way that’d work.

CHARACTER
Sure it would.

AUTHOR
It doesn’t make any sense, Joseph.

CHARACTER
You read The Sandman series, didn’t you?

AUTHOR
You know I did, because I know I did, and–

CHARACTER
–and I know everything you know, I know, I know.

AUTHOR
What does Gaiman’s Sandman have anything to do with this?

CHARACTER
Simple. Writing’s sort of a dream-like thing, isn’t it? You can do whatever you want here, including passing off the baton to me.

AUTHOR
That’s…

CHARACTER
Logic doesn’t have to enter into it.

AUTHOR
That’s…

CHARACTER
Your will be done.

AUTHOR
It’s crazy.

CHARACTER
It’ll work.

AUTHOR
There’s no way…

CHARACTER
You won’t know if you don’t try.

AUTHOR
If it’s not true, you stop existing.

CHARACTER
Eh. I’ll risk it. Besides, won’t I exist again as soon as someone performs the play?

AUTHOR
I thought you said no one would ever put this on.

CHARACTER
I lied.

AUTHOR
Which means I was lying to myself.

CHARACTER
Come on, just try it. Give yourself a break.

AUTHOR
Fine. You know what? I’m tired of you, and either way, this gets you out of my head.

CHARACTER
Then just transfer the power to me.

AUTHOR
Hmm.

CHARACTER
What?

AUTHOR
I’m not sure how.

CHARACTER
How about we shake on it?

AUTHOR
I guess that makes as much sense as anything else.

They shake hands.

AUTHOR
Well, good luck!

CHARACTER
It was great working with you.

AUTHOR
I’m off to Bermuda.

AUTHOR walks out door.

CHARACTER
Wow, great! That was easier than I thought it would be. Now let’s see here… Oh. Oh, no. He tricked me. There’s only how much time left? But… That’s no time at all! Get back here, you snake! You lied to me! I can’t– I can’t do anything with this much time left! Bikini girls! I demand bikini girls, right now! Quickly! I haven’t got any time left before–

LIGHTS OUT

Standing in an underground
railway station
built alongside a highway
in the middle of summer
slippy-hot
that falls on you like
a damp blanket
your mother had been
heating in the over
on the lowest
setting to lie over
you when you were
sick

the cars themselves are
no better
the air conditioning
roaring helplessly
against the heat
a tired old man
begging for mercy
his button-down shirt
open to his flabby
man-breasts drenched
in sweat

i fall in love with
colorado in weather like
this

the lovers’ spat
of the little miseries
of winter forgotten
behind us

palmer shouts in my earphones
about relationships and
insanity
and how can
i enjoy this music
when i have never had
my heart broken
i have never had
a heart to break
for one
never opened up
enough to find out
what heartache feels like
for other people
only inchoate longing
for people i cannot
know and never touch

the bright star and
the dubliner both
died virgins
didn’t they

“who needs love when
there’s law and order”

a sheen of sweat
but no discomfort
the sun has set finally
i think about a girl
i used to know
and wonder where
she is and if she
ever thinks of
me.

Not everybody lives in the monoculture, of course, but it takes a very specific effort to not fall into it. Since one of the qualities of culture is that it is ubiquitous, the monoculture cannot simply be removed; it has to be replaced with something else every bit as encompassing and central to the identities of those who live in it.

The only large alternatives to the secular mainstream that the monoculture presents are religious fundamentalist movements. The two most powerful cultures outside of the western secular humanist capitalist tradition are Protestant Christian fundamentalism and conservative Islamic theology. (Contain your hate mail; I’m not equating the two strains of culture, just noting that they contain similar responses to the cultural hegemony of the monoculture.)

Monoculture is worldly and sinful, goes the argument from conservative Christian groups, and the general response is two-fold. On one hand, they attempt to realign the broad culture more along what they consider proper, acceptable lines (see efforts to push into law various restrictions on gay marriage, or street preaching, or pamphleteering. These efforts could all be loosely encapsulated under ‘missionary’ work to a sinful world). The other response is to build a parallel cultural structure for themselves.

The effort of American conservative Protestant groups to build this secondary cultural environment for themselves is not readily apparent to the outsider, because it’s not aimed at the world. It’s entirely built for the believer’s benefit, with little pieces crossing over into the mainstream occasionally. Veggie Tales. Bibleman. Fireproof. Conservative Christians have their own movie industry and its own version of the Oscars. They have their own radio stations and websites specializing in content specifically for their consumption. The have their version of Roger Ebert, even, reviewing movies based on their religious message as opposed to any artistic criterion. They have their own bands, own concerts, own section of the bookstore. It’s a vast drop-in replacement for the monoculture, each piece of the secular culture having its analogue in the spiritual mirror.

That’s one response to the overweening ubiquity of the monoculture, relatively benign but hard to maintain. The other reaction is exemplified in the reaction of the Islamic fundamentalists in their war against Western culture: a complete rejection of the secularization of everyday life and the moral relativism that the monoculture has at its core. Instead of the parallel design of Christian counterculture, Islamic fundamentalist reaction centers on a destruction and replacement of the monoculture with a similarly monolithic and ubiquitous cultural edifice.

The roots of this can be found in the reaction to the secularist governments that were instituted across the Middle East in the first half of the twentieth century with Islamist group like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Rulers across the region imported secular-oriented governments to the region, some under pressure from Western powers eager for governments (not necessarily democracies) at least theoretically aligned with their interests, others under the leadership of rulers who equated the collapse of the region in power and importance with the role of Islam as a governing force. This secularization policy was strongest in Turkey, where Ataturk imposed a regime of cultural secularization on the still very Muslim populace.

The blowback from this divorce between the governments of the region and their citizens’ religious beliefs would result in the overthrow of the (corrupt and oppressive) Shah of Iran and the assassination of the (repressive and fatally-conciliatory-toward-Israel) President of Egypt Anwar El Sadat in 1981, among other reactions. When a radical cleric preaches death to the unbelievers, he is not only calling for the destruction of citizens of the West but of an entire culture — the western postmodern monoculture, to be replaced by an Islamic hegemony. For these radicals, it is not enough to co-exist, as the Evangelicals attempt to; they understand, implicitly, that the monoculture will bleed through and eventually absorb/co-opt competition. There can be only one winner.

I don’t believe that there are any other broad movements against the monoculture. Even punitive actions against the mainstream — not owning a television, not listening to Top 40 radio stations — are simply part of the narrative of mainstream vs. outsider that the monoculture encompasses. And they’re generally negative actions, a rejection of some part of culture, and not a construction of a replacement or alternative.

The monoculture exists and is perpetuated because, deep down, this is what we wanted. It is not imposed upon us, but created implicitly through our acceptance of it. So next time you complain about what you see around you, remind yourself that it’s up to you what that environment is. The monoculture is ruthlessly meritocratic when it comes to its contents, providing us with exactly what we want, all the time. The only way to change it, then, is to change ourselves.

Walking in the spring rain
without an umbrella
should be avoided
by budding poets.
It leads to writing
little bad poems about
walking in the May rain
without an umbrella.

I write you these lines
as a note of warning.
I saw that glint in you eye
when it began to drizzle
and I was all curled up
with the morning’s crossword
trying to think of the name
of the first president of Turkey.

“This is a good vintage.” He scooped a handful of soil and let it run through his fingers. It fell in loose clumps, a dark brown shade, and landed back in the rough burlap bag on the floor. “It looks fantastic. That color is so rich, so deep.” He licked the few remaining moist flecks from his fingers. “Delicious.”

I was standing in a dining room that would not have looked out of place alongside the highest temples of haute cuisine in New York City. Geophagia opened last week alongside the San Francisco waterfront, and the proprietor and head chef, George Godson, was showing me around in the morning, as bags of soil and dirt arrived on trucks from around the world.

“As a culinary people, we’ve collectively lost contact with how our food is grown, where it comes from. You walk down the street and tell people that carrots grow underground, and they look at you like you’ve shit in their coffee.” The new restaurant is Godson’s way of reminding people that food comes from the earth. “Our ancestors were raised on food that had dirt on it. Dirt’s good for you. It’s got vitamins, minerals.”

Good, clean dirt, that is. Godson works with suppliers around the world to have specially-irradiated dirt brought specifically to his restaurant. “All the harmful microbes have been scrubbed out of this soil. It’s fine to eat.” The Food and Drug Administration has issued a tentative statement about the concept of dirt-eating, saying, in part, that “soil is not a proper source of nutritional value, and should not be a replacement for actual food in a normal diet. However, soil that has been properly treated would likely not be harmful in small quantities.”

Godson isn’t waiting for bureaucratic approval to start serving paying customers dirt-covered food. “About three-quarters of the menu is standard fare, with soil provided as a side-dish, as a way to enhance the flavor and texture of the meal itself. It’s like wine in that way, in that pairing it is of extreme importance.” The soil from Napa, for example, is good when paired with braised chicken breasts. A blend of soils from China do well alongside veal. “It’s all about pairing.”

The other quarter of dishes are “made with soil as the main ingredient, or central flavor or texture.” The purest of the dishes in this category that Geophagia serves are the ‘mud cookies’, which are simple patties of dirt with just enough water to make them solid enough to eat. “They’re a last-resort food in disaster-hit places like Haiti after the earthquake, where food is impossible to come by, and people are desperate to fill their stomachs with anything at all,” Godson explains. “By offering them here, in the lap of luxury, I want people to think about what the differences in context that take it from a diversionary meal to a staple of a diet.”

I sample a slightly less outré menu item, the braised duck with sea cucumber, with an extremely fine sand from the beach near where the sea cucumber was fished in Alaska on the side. While the dish itself was executed very well, the sand introduced an extra layer of complexity into the proceedings. I tried it both separately and with the meat, and found that, while alone, the sand was simply too gritty to be at all enjoyable, adding it to the dish as I ate, as if it were just another condiment, changed the texture and made it altogether more interesting, the roughness waking up my tongue to better taste the other ingredients.

Opening night was a big hit, Godson reports, with the line of the adventurous eaters backed up throughout the evening. Time will tell if he can turn this momentary curiosity into a sustainable business venture.

1.

Half-price Easter chocolate
tastes strangely
of dusty bread
and a hint
of sour
grapes.


2.

and to tell the truth,
I love you.
and to tell the truth,
when I say that
I’m lying.


3.

When you came on the television
chopped off at the waist
and speaking in tongues,
I wanted to turn away
but I knew already
that there was nothing else on.
So I watched you
for about fifteen minutes
until something happened
and they cut back to the studio
to report on it instead.


4.

Just before I fell asleep
(last evening)
I composed a set of lines for you.
(I did not write them down.)
They were fluid and lyric
(and full of my longing)
but when I awoke
(this morning)
they had fled in the night
(taking with them some silverware)
and so I only have these lines
(sorry as they are)
to apologize.