4

Pabst added Kamtchowsky’s blog to his blog roll, and she added his to hers. His had a black-and-green background, with multicolored text in Helvetica. It manifested a serene sense of nostalgia for the 1990s, the decade that had seen him develop from a fat little dwarf into a person of normal proportions, albeit completely devoid of beauty and vitality. The blog was thick with references to the singers and songs that had once sent him running from the quinceañeras of all those girls who were out of his league. Milli Vanilli, Jazzy Mel, Ace of Bass, Technotronic—the entire soundtrack that played in the background whenever the innocent face of Flora G. or Caro T. or Maru Z. appeared. Nowadays, Pabst listened to these same songs as he worked himself into a froth of humiliation—an appetizer he’d only recently discovered—very exciting.

In the fantasy world of his wanking, the plot was structured as follows: the birthday girl made her way from table to table, posing for a picture with each group of invitees, and Pabst came up to her from behind, spun her around, grabbed her by the shoulders and locked his lips onto hers, pressing himself up against her breasts as best he could. She pushed him away in disgust, wiping his saliva off her chin; his feet got tangled in the hem of her dress, and he tripped and fell to the ground in full view of everyone. Bringing this mental residue to life, Pabst stroked himself harder and harder until it started to hurt; he wanted to put an end to the whole mess once and for all. The abrasions grew more and more painful; ejaculation tended to take a while, which gave time for the other guests at the imaginary party to make all sorts of unpleasant comments, competing amongst themselves to see who could insult him with the greatest degree of precision and ingenuity. The culmination was a mixture of tears and semen, and it felt extremely therapeutic.

His blog was peppered with encoded references to this habit in the form of short poems:

Lore—no law, no lei

has stained—the Dress—with salsa

the Salsero shakes and—won’t dance to Vilma Palma.

He had lost all contact with his classmates from those days of mediocre betrayals, of wiping boogers and zit-pus on the bottom of the classroom desks, so there was no one left to offend. And nobody read Dickinson any more.

On his blog he maintained an updated list of online resources for sharing pirated software, as well as an interesting selection of macabre pornography. It wasn’t that contemplating the systematic abuse of pregnant women gave him as much pleasure as cyber warfare, but that his mind, already polluted with obsessions particular to unassailable self-esteem, had concluded that the access protocol for modern empathy involves the intelligent, glamorous use of cruelty.

Pabst had established deeper and more interesting relationships while sprawled back in his desk chair caressing a plastic bowl and masturbating than ever before in his life; he had gotten to know nicer people, who enriched his life with funnier, defter, haughtier comments, and he had an arsenal of mp3s and jpegs to share. Out there—that is, inside the heads of others—the same epic play of the pollywog scrivener who assists at the call to Being was being staged. Pabst had glimpsed the underlying structure of this logorrheic art of the I in love with its own vulnerability, and thoroughly enjoyed terrorizing the weak.

To Pabst’s own solitary surprise, verbal sadism and high-speed typing weren’t the only skills that could be combined to produce highly tolerable tête-à-têtes and contacts leading to personal satisfaction. New psychopathic plains emerged spontaneously, and Pabst was proud to see that a certain subterranean connection between evil and voluptuousness had (at long last) begun to play in his favor. Much as “lactescent,” “milky,” and “spurt” can be satisfactorily combined to evoke the mental image of semen, Pabst’s discursive brutality and his superciliary control over discussions—demonstrations, both, of his superiority—were together apt to attract (much as certain orchids use the smell of the insects decomposing within them to attract still more insects, who are apparently convinced that they are somehow different from the others, that they can feed there safely) those who sought some strange, tortured, doomed beauty; some majestic castle to which only the few are admitted, and allowed the short-lived pleasure of sliding unprotected yet unharmed through the cacti. Through his daily regimen of hating all and sundry, Pabst gained access to a new self-image, one richer in the flair of lucid Adonis than Pabst could ever have managed on the strength of his physical attributes. All of which is to say that Pabst told lots and lots of people to fuck off, and was told to fuck off by lots and lots of people.

At long last he was able to make good use of the personal liberty for which his education had prepared him—a sharp contrast with the crap uses his garbage life had thus far been able to make of it. Exercising his anonymous right to violent aggression, Pabst fought bloody battles against invaders and enemies (all of them potential admirers). Trolling about in his native element, he seemed preternaturally gifted at creating irritation and discomfort in others, as if born with foreknowledge of the winding paths of electronically manifested disdain.

Pabstian cruelty was most often decoded as “critical” in some sense, as part of some larger program of self-improvement, thanks to one very simple principle: striking a passive-aggressive or openly destructive attitude obliged one to articulate the weaknesses of that which was being read/disdained, texts whose I, unweaned of its need for attention and thirsty for distinguishing traits, was always fodder for discussion. His regular visitors, their absurd nicknames favoring “alternate spellings” using k’s instead of c’s or q’s, insulted his posts with varying degrees of candor, precision, and lucidity, turning his blog into a theater of war. Pabst’s taunts consisted of categorical judgments sprinkled with references to films, TV series, people with facial burns, pop miscellanea from the ’80s and ’90s, nudists, zombies, Sideshow Bob, giant squid, and all kinds of other irrelevancies. His observations were concise, categorical, and invariably right. The Internet provided a context wherein the protocols of association permitted one to control both one’s own spontaneity and that of others, thus providing a social context that was far more sophisticated than the mere bad weather of raw behavior. Violent as they may have been, Pabst’s relationships with others came to seem like a twisted form of affection: in the long term, paying attention to something and disdaining it became one and the same project. Dealing with a certain amount of contempt was not only possible, it may even have been healthy. Each act walked the fine line between spontaneous conduct and performance; and even in the worst of cases, one always had the consolation of thinking oneself “misunderstood,” which linked the writer to his or her favorite forbears, namely other misunderstood individuals, tortured souls, film characters, accursed poets, et cetera. Even masochism itself grants its victims a certain distinction. In such a swamp, the path toward existence postulates that any given child can find access to an audience in exchange for making him or herself visible, and thus vulnerable. Of course there was hatred embedded in the judgments of others, but—and this was the most surprising discovery of all—there was love, too. The search for like-minded beings gave all the pollywogs the opportunity to praise themselves over and over, yielding sensations in turn multiplied by thousands upon thousands of hyperlinks, producing a style of communication that was both intimate and open all at once.

As Pabst himself explained it, in the playful style of early Wittgenstein:

Regarding Solitude as Inalienable Resource for the Administration of Nourishment to the Ego

1. Embarrassment on behalf of others causes an infection in one’s own eye: momentary euphoria.

1.1 It is an interactive process: the individual actively participates in making the infection worse.

2.1 The (psycho)logical portrait of bare (human) facts is thought (of embarrassment on behalf of others) itself.

2.1.1 René Descartes seated by the fire in his meditation room: immovable pieces of furniture are immovable persons. Little René has a wig on, caresses his curls. He is at the center of the world: without leaving his armchair he commences the activities, his je and his pe . . .

2.1.2 In these moments of pleasure, little René seems to forget that his curls are clearly inferior to those of Leibniz.

2.2 The act of partitioning the set of all desirable things logically requires the ability to make oneself despicable.

At the end of the post there was an image of the folk singer Soledad, twirling her poncho. As for the victims of Pabst’s ire, some were accustomed to it; they soon stopped attempting to defend themselves, and always came back for more. (As Pabst was the first to admit, the medium made it hard to actually see them bowing down like servants before their master, acknowledging the Reign of Pabst once and for all, but each typo, each spineless rebuttal, each grammar or spelling mistake in their responses served as a distant column of smoke—proof positive that their home village had been torched.)

Kamtchowsky liked Pabst’s blog; also, he was thin, and towered over her by almost a foot. It wasn’t the 1990s but their very childhoods that were back in style. Now that Kamtchowsky and Pabst had the criteria necessary to appreciate their youth aesthetically, they no longer skittered about like tiny fawns terrified of the rest of the herd.

Strictly speaking, there is nothing exactly ugly about any of Pablo’s facial features. Considered as an ensemble, however, they give the sensation that a mistake has been made, that he is some stumpy species of mammal that should never have made it past the starting gate in the race against extinction. The revulsion he inspired can perhaps be explained by its subordinacy to the syntactic consensus regarding what it means to belong to a given species.

Splayed out on his bed, with Kamtchowsky’s dark foot in his hand, Pabst reflected on all this:

–In the 1970s, on the other hand, it was impossible to sound cheesy. You could announce that your object in life was to be a tormented poet, and no one would laugh at you. Now it’s different. Our age group is more highly evolved, aesthetically speaking, by which I mean that our mental posture is spontaneously critical of the events that occur, not merely dragged along by preordained actions. I have no idea how many neurons must be called into play to configure that sort of perceptual arc, but surely it is a substantially more complex operation than simply “believing oneself to be a constituent force” of something. Furthermore, one must take into account the fact that the conditions that make someone “interesting” at any given moment correspond to a specific, legible modality. Your environment can always be used to justify being a jackass, but not all justifications are valid. That is to say, adherence to an ethical structure that makes it harder to descend into imbecility can immobilize you—the effects of said adherence produce a kind of paralysis—but at least the inherent dignity of reflection and self-awareness are kept intact. Of course here I’m referring to the middle class, specifically to the middle class youths most likely to engage in healthy introspection.

Kamtchowsky mentioned that the generational difference was perhaps a function of the distance between suffixes and prefixes. As seen morphologically in things like “consciousness-in-itself ” and “consciousness-for-itself,” the Suffix Generation focuses on that which results, that which extends a posteriori (syntax never lies) from consciousness; the following generation, on the other hand, discusses the issue of consciousness in terms of the biases inherent in its gaze, and thus opts for the prefix, for the preceding and therefore intrinsic characteristics of this selfsame ability to reason (e.g. self-consciousness). Pabst agreed enthusiastically; the significance and preponderance of huge posteriors amongst the Suffix Generation was beyond question. Classics like Los caballeros de la cama redonda (1973), Expertos en pinchazos (1979), El rey de los exhortos (1979), A los cirujanos se les va la mano (1980), Te rompo el rating (1981),i and certain blameworthy camera angles in the films of Enrique Carreras showed all too clearly the growing prevalence of carnal suffixes on Argentine soil. Likewise, the advertisements for Hitachi televisions—specifically those with the slogan “Hitachi, How Good You Look” superimposed on Adriana Brodsky’s derriere—express concisely the protean quality of information tucked into privileged areas so as to convey certainties.

This gluteal liberation, undergirded by the rebirth of Argentine democracy, found an ideal habitat in a particular kind of sex comedy: those with military settings. Examples of this include Los colimbas se divierten (1986), Rambito y Rambón, primera misión (1986), and Los colimbas al ataque (1987).ii The adult nature of these films contrasted sharply with the anodyne clothing and de-eroticized vocabulary of the gang of adolescents in the television series Pelito (1982–1986). The series’ innocent family-based plot lines involving divorce, daddies who smoke, and what to do with the poor little black classmate (most notably the character of Cirilo Tamayo in Señorita Maestra, 1983) portrayed a love between boys and girls that was as stereotypical as the anal fetishism of the military comedies, though at least the girls of Pelito were safe from lordosis—as were those of Cantaniño cuenta un cuento (1979). Nonetheless, neither the prominence of anti-slut moralism nor the phenological custom of crossing oneself at each sighting of a noteworthy ass can successfully explicate what Pabst and Kamtchowsky took to be a more widespread sociological phenomenon.

Moving smoothly to block Kamtchowsky’s first objection before she’d even made it, Pabst admitted that for his digression to be sustainable, he would have to establish a correlation between the Prefix Generation and the current-day obsession with tits—as things stood, it was still far too early to tell. All the same, the theory didn’t need to be all-encompassing in order to be accepted (here in this bed full of crumbs, books thick with underlined passages, computer cables, and packets of Sweet Mints) as an irreducibly wise hermeneutic manifesto.

Pabst and Kamtchowsky were profoundly politically incorrect in their praise of McDonald’s. They loved that it regularly hired senior citizens—the only local business to do so—especially old women who had nothing to do with their lives. Its absurd molesto-clown mascot notwithstanding, McDonald’s was the only truly democratic space they knew of. Everyone stood in line as equals, and no one got more than they’d hoped for; the thirty-year-old employees with Down syndrome smiled widely even though they weren’t allowed to work the cash register. At times the place was a Limbo full of slum-dwellers, but most often they did their begging outside, leaving the middle and lower classes to cohabit in peace.

Pabst and Kamtchowsky went out fairly often. In those days Buenos Aires was a cultural amusement park bursting with protoentertainment options. Kamtchowsky’s relative celebrity—a documentary she’d made about herself had caused quite a stir in certain circles—brought constant invitations to the city’s rash of exhibitions, multimedia happenings, screenings of youth-oriented films, and performance art pieces of varying degrees of topicality, forcefulness, interest, and mediocrity. As neither Pabst nor Kamtchowsky was at all attractive, they could wade into conversations about the relative sex appeal of other entelechies with precisely the amount of earned resentment necessary to make their opinions colorful and fun. Their disdain for themselves and their families was an inalienable good whose elasticity in the field of autobiographical analysis gave cover to their commentaries on everyone else; for example, as Jews, they smelled particularly Jewish precisely because of their anti-Semitism.

The social balance at these events was less delicate than at the private parties they often attended, where, according to the revisionist vice then in fashion, the menu was precisely that of the childhood parties their parents had thrown for them: Cheetos, popsicles, hot dogs. Every party had the equivalent of a clown, usually some geezerly egotist making a fool of himself. Those who’d emerged victorious from the womb during the Years of Lead meandered around like little animals hypnotized by their own hypersensitivity.

The financial well-being of the attendees’ psychoanalysts depended on their ability to convince the youths of a modest truth: that once armed with the sinister petulance that comes from “assuming the burden” of belonging to a dysfunctional family, they could kindly forgive themselves for their phobias, mistakes, body odor, and lack of general culture; these were pseudo-illnesses to be exhibited as bizarre curiosities, or, more precisely, as clear proof of one’s distinction amongst equals. Anything placed under the redemptory halo of words like “sickness” or “problem” tended to awaken kindness in others, creating the protocols necessary for communication between flawed egos particularly susceptible to contagious infections such as empathy. The innate idea of a “personality” was easily substituted out for a Science Corner interminably packed full of neurasthenic pets. Treating egoic diseases (the what-how-when, the instructions and antidotes) was as simple as treating a disease that attacked iguanas: the iguana should eat one of these bugs every so often, and make sure it stays out of the cold; the person can’t stand these bugs, and likewise can’t stand the cold. Thus it was that little by little, everything once seen as a moral defect was converted into visible proof of one’s individuality.

The more nervous Pabst and Kamtchowsky felt at festive occasions, the more carefree they pretended to be as they sipped from the cup of dissipation. Neither Pabst not Little K were sufficiently trained to survive a running Cooper Test throughout possible worlds, lying sportingly so as to avoid the judgment of others, which was of course inadmissible. Their youthful politesse led them to take for granted that following each new interlocutor’s opening comments (usually only half-understood, as the music was invariably loud, and only half-agreed to, as early reviews are generally bad, even when deep down they’re good), one or the other would smile a certain smile, having just been granted the title of “deep thinker” for the duo, a mistake that would inevitably lead to additional future misunderstandings.

Kamtchowsky preferred not to admit it, but she was obsessed with sodomites. Standing there at the edge of the wall of humanity that lined the dance floor, it was hard for her not to stare at them idiotically as they moved to the music. She didn’t exactly envy their happiness, their fleeting success as a race, their tight little tees; she wondered how it was possible to achieve sufficient dilation for one’s sex life to be centered on anal rending. While it was obvious that as a muscle the anus had its place down there in the shadows, she wasn’t clear how often one could, so to speak, jog eight laps around Palermo.iii

Pabst kindly offered to ream her in the ass so she could stop obsessing about it once and for all.

–I don’t want to. I get too much pleasure just thinking about it. I’d rather leave it as my body’s one pristine, unreachable destination.

Thus, having located a new Neverland within the borders of her backside, they hugged, and slept until dawn.