The Ballad of Harvest Lightning

    Hobby Lobby was a nightmare. I had never been inside one, so I wasn’t prepared for the aisles stretching endlessly in every direction, teeming with Christmas items. There was nothing for Halloween, even though it was still a week away, but a small corner of the store was dedicated to fall items, so I grabbed a bunch of fake leaves and a roll of ribbon decorated with pumpkins and rolled the hell out of there on my knee scooter. 

    The following day my brother and I drove to Ithaca, where my sister was getting married. We would be up there all weekend, staying in a faux French hotel. Blue Mountain –yellow and orange with foliage- loomed above us like a wave, and we dove right into it to emerge on the other end of the tunnel in slate country.

        As soon as I rolled into the hotel, we were thrown into the social maelstrom. The lobby was full of arriving guests, some of them relatives I hadn’t seen in years. By the end of the night I was exhausted from trying to hide my social anxiety behind a mask of friendliness and humor. I felt self-conscious about the scooter, and in the crowded room I kept bumping into people. When everyone started dispersing to their rooms I did the same. I took out my autumnal decorations and, like the Peanuts gang resuscitating Charlie Brown’s pathetic tree, I transformed my rickety mobility device into a stylish transport designed to make every bridesmaid blush and every groomsman question his manhood. 

The makeover did what I had hoped and made me feel slightly less self-conscious about my being disabled. I maneuvered through the wedding with only a single sleepless night of crushing loneliness. People commented on my stylish ride, whom I christened Harvest Lightning. She was especially admired at night, when I switched on her lights. I accepted the compliments with modesty and grace but secretly I loved the attention. 

    I stayed at my mother’s another week after the wedding. We took day trips to the Reading Public Museum and the Barnes Foundation, two institutions that could hardly be more different from one another. Having to use a scooter –decked out or not- made it difficult to pay full attention to the exhibits. I constantly had to make sure I didn’t bump into any masterpieces or hit a crack or bump and go flying. Still, I was grateful that being physically disadvantaged didn’t prevent me from taking in the Renoirs and shrunken heads, that I was still able to enjoy a cheese steak at Pat’s. 

    Before I’d embarked on my trip, I had called the airline to request wheelchair assistance. At the Portland airport, everyone had been astoundingly helpful. A chatty young woman who was going back to school for computer tech even though her boyfriend, whom she lived with in Kelso, had his doubts about her ability, though what did he know since he worked in a warehouse for Amazon, had wheeled me across the bafflingly beloved teal carpeting past the check-in lines, where a TSA in training had awkwardly felt up every part of my body while I remained sitting in the chair. Every step of the way, everyone was courteous and helpful.

    Flying back was a little trickier. Newark is nobody’s favorite airport, but it’s the only one in the area that has direct flights to Portland, so I wind up being there a lot. The place was more chaotic than usual as they were undergoing massive remodeling. I eventually made my way to the assistance desk, where a woman told me I needed to get my boarding pass and check my bag first. I tagged both my items but the man at the bag check told me I needed to leave my scooter at a spot across the enormous room. I told him I couldn’t walk without it and he immediately got flustered. He walked me back to the wheelchair desk, where the woman had abandoned her post to go to the restroom. The bag check man told me to sit in a chair and he took my scooter away. That morning, I had removed all the decorations, assuming they’d think the string of lights was a detonator or something. Stripped of her foliage, Harvest Lightning was reduced to a black skeleton. 

    I sat there for a while, repeatedly glancing at my watch, before the woman returned to the desk and told a young man to wheel me to the terminal. He immediately informed her that they had double booked him. Eventually another young man was assigned to push me. We got through security fairly smoothly before having to go downstairs and outside to take a shuttle to the proper terminal. He had me get out of the wheelchair and said someone would be by to take me down the bridge onto the plane. He took the chair with him. The plane started to board and no one showed up to help me. I kept trying to get the attention of the two ticket takers, but they were both distracted by an issue with one man’s ticket not scanning. Eventually I just got up and hobbled down the bridge by myself. 

    We sat there for a half hour while they sorted out some issue dealing with “an issue with excess baggage weight,” according to the captain. Then we sat on the runway another half hour waiting for other planes to take off. I was irritated and stressed out, but along with the wheelchair assistance, they had upgraded me to a seat with extra legroom, so I eventually managed to relax. Adding to my comfort was a vacant seat between me and my neighbor, a lovely but slovenly college student. She kept spilling seltzer on the empty seat and I kept helping sop it up. The flight attendant kept saying she liked my drawing. She looked like she was about 12. 

    As I hobbled off the plane there were three attendants lined up with wheelchairs. Two of them were young but the third was very old and obese. This last one held up an electronic pad and asked me, “Are you George?” I said no, and went to talk to one of the other attendants. “Sit right here,” the old man said. I again told him I wasn’t George but he insisted, so I sat down, and with some difficulty he wheeled me up the ramp into the airport. 

He talked the entire time, telling me he had come out of retirement to work here, despite the fact that he had plantar fasciitis as well as neuropathy in both feet. I instantly felt guilty but he was good-natured about his pain. We sat where we could see both the luggage carousel and the door where the larger items come out. 

My duffel bag arrived first and the old man struggled to pull it off the carousel. Just the week before, an off-duty pilot sitting in the cockpit had attempted to crash a plane. The plane had made an emergency landing right here in Portland. “I saw them when they took him out and cuffed him,” the old man said. We both agreed it was a horrifying story. By this time the carousel was empty and the old man went to talk to the attendant. “That’s all of it,” he said. I asked about my scooter and he once again talked to the attendant, then wheeled me over to lost and found, which was a very narrow little room stuffed with bags. A weary woman took my information and filed a report. She told me it should arrive the next morning. I sat there trying not to scream

The old man wheeled me out to the curb, where I called my friend who was picking me up. 

    I spent the next day calling and texting the airline but got nothing but automated messages telling me they were still searching for my baggage. United Airlines had experienced record profits this year. Its CEO took home ten million dollars. 

    I had an appointment with a new therapist that afternoon, so I took my crutches and slowly made my way across town. The therapist was nice and I enjoyed babbling on to her about myself but the appointment was barely 40 minutes and she said she couldn’t see me again for another six weeks. 

I made my way home and after hours of texting was told that my scooter would be on the nine o’clock flight. At ten someone called me saying it would be delivered to my apartment by eleven. By midnight I gave up and started drifting off to sleep, when I got a text saying there were only two deliveries before mine and that a man named Edwin should be there by one. At one I got a text from Edwin saying he would be there at 1:30. At 1:30 he texted again to say he would be there in fifteen minutes. At this point I could barely keep my eyes open, and to keep from missing him, I hobbled down and leaned against the front of my building with my crutches to wait. At 1:45 a car came tearing up the road, screeched to a halt, and a man jumped out. 

“You waiting for a mobility thing?” he yelled. I said yes and asked if he was Edwin. Without answering he pulled my scooter from the trunk, set it on the curb, and sped off. 

I had another doctor appointment the next day, and when I got home from it I unpacked the leaves and ribbons and lights and that night Harvest Lightning sped through the rain, flying through the dark until she hit a crack in the sidewalk and nearly pitched over and after that I slowed the fuck down. 

Ghosts

     Summer weather returned to Portland as a storm of violence burst over Israel. Sunday afternoon Mich picked me up and we missed the turn a few times before finally making it to the Multnomah Arts Center for Lee’s memorial. 

    At one end of the banquet hall was a stage where a jazz quintet was setting up. Photos were projected onto a screen and there was a row of tables heaped with Italian food along one wall. I wheeled over to get some food before the rush. I’ve been cutting back on carbs to help my foot heal better, but I allowed myself two pillows of ravioli and filled the rest of my plate with salad and meatballs the size of tennis balls. 

    No sooner had I sat down when someone pointed out that some tables across the room were heaped with a mountain of his t-shirts, plus a few crates of records. We were encouraged to help ourselves to some keepsakes. I scooted over immediately; I’ve inherited my father’s inability to resist a crate of LPs. I pulled out two Pharaoh Sanders albums and one by Jackie McLean, then wheeled back to eat. The band started up and sounded terrific. 

    An elderly couple asked if they could sit next to me; they had known Lee from the convention center, where he’d worked events for the last few years. The woman was tiny and wizened; she told me she’s just celebrated her 90th birthday. Lee had been 70. I’m 50. Jasmine had only made it to 40. It’s morbid but I’m unable to resist making these comparisons, any more than I could resist wheeling over to grab a few more records, once I’d decided enough people had taken their share. Lee Morgan, shot dead in Slug’s Saloon at age 33. Albert Ayler, found dead in the East River aged 36. Lee never had lost his Brooklyn accent. 

    The place was filling up, and as I wolfed down my meatballs I looked around to see if there were any single women. There were not, but I did spot The Silver Fox, who used to host Museum After Hours down at the art museum. Every Wednesday our Grand Ballroom would feature live jazz music. I used to swing by after my shift but it was basically a glorified pickup scene for divorcees. You’d see the same sharks every week, circling as Linda Hornbuckle (2014, age 59) or Paul deLay (2007, age 55) wailed in the background. They’d stopped holding the event years before but Lee had never stopped complaining to me about it as if I had been the one who had canceled it. Sometimes I would tell him I’d heard rumors of it coming back, just to get him excited.

    His friend Whitney, who had organized everything, got up on stage and sang a song of mourning in Hebrew. I didn’t bother trying to stop my tears. When she finished she passed around a microphone so people could share reminiscences. I didn’t really have any good stories, and it felt pointless to repeat the same things everyone else had already said; that Lee loved music and food, that he was constantly kvetching about Portland’s lack of good pizza, its dearth of bagels. I tried to imagine the pat phrases I will be reduced to when my time comes. “He sure did draw a lot. And always with the foot problems.”

    Lee’s African drum group got up and drummed, a wild rhythmic salvo to accompany Lee on his journey, to carry on his heartbeat. Explosions rocking Gaza, boots stomping the desert. Mich drove me home and I put on The Albert Ayler Trio’s recording of Ghosts, recorded in 1965, when Lee was 12 years old. I lay in bed and let its chaos scramble around inside my head, scouring it clean with breathtaking fury.

Chainsaw

    On the first day of autumn it was as if someone had flicked a switch to turn on the rainy season. I felt restless, so I forced myself to get out of the house and do a few errands. The light rail seemed to be taking a very long time. I heard some people talking about how one of the trains had hit a car. 

    Eventually the train showed up and it was packed. No one moved for me so I sat precariously on my knee scooter and held on to the pole. Everyone was talking about the train that had hit the car; no one had any details but they all had opinions about it. I picked up my prescriptions at Safeway then headed to the downtown Office Max. It was a lousy location and a lousy company but I’d been buying my pens  there since I’d moved to Portland so I felt a certain amount of fond animosity towards it. The store used to be two levels then at some point the basement part became a TJ Maxx. At some point that closed and after limping along for years the rest of the store was finally closing down. I was hoping they’d have some good sales but the pens were only 10% off. I grabbed the last package on the shelf. 

    Downtown smelled like rotting fish, the way it always does when the first rainfall mixes with the crow guano on the brick sidewalks to make a sort of rancid slurry. I got back on the train to head across the river to get something to eat. Once again no one moved for me. Men sprawled across the seats as if they’d been tossed there like dolls, deep in the sleep of addiction.

    I got off at the convention center and rolled up to Burgerville. It was the weekend of the Rose City Comic Con and despite the rain the streets were filled with people in costume. Everyone seemed really young and I couldn’t tell what they were supposed to be dressed as. I felt even more old and out of touch than usual. 

    The woman behind the counter stared at me blankly without saying a word. I had to repeat my order three times and she still didn’t get it right. I sat down with my number and watched the colorful characters parade past. There were plenty of Comic Conners in the restaurant as well, clutching bags advertising Stranger Things and Dark Horse Comics. Vampires sucking milkshakes, Anime princesses gobbling French fries. At the next table over sat a young man and woman dressed in British school uniforms. He was paunchy with a man bun and a samurai sword across his back. She was gorgeous, heavily made up with bright pink hair. Her uniform was distractingly tight. They had a child with them who appeared to be dressed as a chainsaw, with the blade sticking out of his head and a handle on his back.

    As my food arrived, the woman ordered the child to blow his nose. He didn’t seem able to, so she told the man to help. After a few minutes of watching the spectacle of sniffling and snorting she stood up and held a napkin to the child’s nose. 

    “Go ahead and blow, baby,” she said. “Harder. Harder. That’s it. Harder. Yes. Yes. Don’t stop. Don’t stop, baby. Harder. Harder. That’s it, baby. That’s it. You can do it. Harder. That’s it. Yes. Yes. Yes.” This went on for an uncomfortably  long time. Finally she gave the kid’s nose one final wipe and said, “I don’t see any more boogers. Not really sure why that that took so long.” The chainsaw looked up at her with his mouth agape. They all got up end left and I finished my meal and got back on the train. No one moved to give me a seat. A group of robots and aliens laughed in the corner. I sat on my scooter and held on tight and watched the rain splattering the windows as we headed back across the river. 

Tightrope

     It was a beautiful sunny day and the stands at the fairgrounds were full of families. Below us stood a cage, or two cages, filled with tigers. The ringleader introduced his special guest, Wonder Woman. It was the late seventies and the Wonder Woman TV show was on, though this wasn’t Lynda Carter but just some woman dressed as the character she played. Our seats were pretty high up but her sexy red, white, blue and gold outfit is seared into my mind as she cracked her whip at the big cats. 

    “You don’t remember that at all?” I asked my brother recently. He did not. A few days later I asked my mother and she didn’t recall any of it either. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” I said.  

    The only other thing I remember about that day was an older man walking up a rope that stretched diagonally from the ground to the rafters of the grandstand. He passed right over our heads, carrying a pole for balance. I can very clearly see his white shoes; they were cleft, like a camel’s toes, to help him grip the rope. I remember thinking there was something dishonest about this. As he passed overhead, he looked down and winked at me, though I know for sure I’m making that part up. 

    Years later, our father took us kids to the Ringling Brothers Circus. Unlike that earlier experience, neither of my siblings contests that this one actually happened. All I remember are the elephants shitting behind the tents. It’s so lonely being the only one who remembers something, especially a spectacle as surreal as an Amazon princess taming a pack of wild jungle beasts. I know I didn’t dream it, though the memory has the feel of a dream. The old man on the rope winks at me again. I yell up to him that I hope he falls and breaks his fucking neck. 

Marmalade

        They discharged Lee from the hospital so he could die at home. Val drove Julie and I out to his condo. Not knowing what the accessibility would be like, I took my crutches instead of the scooter, and it’s good I did since his unit was on the second floor. There was no parking so Val went and parked across the street and came back and led us upstairs. A young man answered the door of a darkened apartment. Val apologized and he told us we probably wanted 205-B instead of A. So I hobbled down the hall and down the stairs and across the lot and up another set of stairs and down another hallway until at last we were greeted by the woman who I’d met in the hospital last week. She hugged us all and started to weep.

        The visit was a blur of women coming and going. They said there was a 24 hour nurse but he was in the back room taking a nap. I wasn’t really aware of much other than Lee’s body. He was propped up on a hospital bed in the living room, facing the door. The walls were covered with concert posters. He was conscious but not lucid, words dribbling from his lips in a stream of slurred glossolalia. I sat next to him for a while as the women flitted about the kitchen. He had lost a lot of weight over the past two weeks and his skin had a grayish pallor. He kept trying to rip his tubes and bandages off and I kept gently pulling his hands away. He didn’t fight me. The skin of his wrists was scaly, his arm hair stiff. I thought of my father, just a few years older than Lee, who at that very moment was in the hospital for another fall. Instead of being there I was here, staring into the face of a man who was unquestionably dying, little more than a shell breathing and muttering and doing very little else. 

        I’ve been losing more and more friends over the years but somehow I’d never actually seen anyone this close to the end. The deaths had all been sudden and remote and while the shock is awful, this was obviously very, very different. Actually seeing it, smelling the sweet lotion they put on his flesh to mask whatever smells his body was emanating, was a completely new experience for me. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say much, just gave him some water when he stuck his tongue out like a lizard. He kept trying to scratch and pick at himself and once he managed to throw the blanket off. Suddenly, there was his penis, vulnerable and exposed to the brutal world. I quickly covered him up and held his hand. His wrinkled fingers were soft and dry. He mumbled a word that sounded like "marmalade" but probably wasn't. 

        At one point a German woman stopped by who made it a point to tell us she was the head of the HOA. It seemed obvious that she was there less from caring about Lee than concern about all the strangers coming and going. She did not linger, and we left as well, after what might have been days or weeks but was probably about an hour. There was nothing else to do or say. He wasn’t opening his eyes, was only grunting occasionally. We didn’t know it but he would be gone within hours. In the hallway outside the condo I found the blackened husk of a dragonfly splayed out on the concrete. I picked it up and pressed it between the pages of my book then slowly made my way back down the stairs. 

Happy Days

    A few days after my visit to Urgent Care my phone rang. It was a man from the Center of Disease Control telling me that the lab had called him with my test results, as they are required to do when they come across any fairly uncommon pathogens. He explained that the bacteria in my foot is the same which causes diphtheria, though he assured me I was in no danger of contracting that. Shortly afterwards my GP, whose name I can never remember, called me. I’ve never met him in person, we’ve only had a few video appointments, in which his face shimmered like a phantom against a wall of light. He told me he was talking to the infectious disease department to figure out a course of treatment. That night I picked up my new script and he said he’d try to find a foot doctor who had an opening. I asked if he knew anyone good and he said no.

    That weekend I got nervous and went to Urgent Care again. The same  jockey-sized physician’s assistant saw me and took more photos of my foot and said I should just keep taking the antibiotics. I asked if he knew any good foot doctors and he said no. 

    The following Tuesday we had first aid/CPR training at work. We spent the afternoon breathing into the parted rubbery lips and clicking the chests of the limbless torso. “Be prepared to do this for hours if you need to,” our instructor warned. “And remember, you’re going to break some ribs.”

    The following day my GP managed to get me a last-minute appointment at a foot clinic. As I rode the bus across town I braced myself for the worst, prepared myself for the news that the infection had entered the bone and my misshapen foot would, at long last, need to be completely amputated. 

    My new doctor was young and lovely and met my gaze with huge brown eyes as I gave her the basics of what I was going through. She carefully unwrapped everything and scraped and hacked at my foot, then took x-rays and sat and went over them with me. The infection was serious, but had not reached the bone. She said I should stay off it and come back in a week. My terror of amputation evaporated but was replaced by a wave of lesser but still powerful anxiety about what would happen next and how it would affect my job. There is always more fear waiting in the wings.

    She sent me to the hospital to get a bunch of blood work done. In the waiting room I emailed my bosses to let them know that I was happy to keep working but would not be able to be on my feet. On the way home the head of the department called me to tell me not to come in to work the next day, that HR would be contacting me. I was surprised –when I’ve had foot issues in the past, my old bosses always found sit-down work for me to do. These were not my old bosses though, and I felt myself overcome with dread and paranoia. This is how they are going to get rid of me, I thought. 

    HR sent me a terse email the next day with instructions on filling out forms for a new state medical leave program that just happened to be starting in a few days. I didn’t really understand it but in the meantime I would use up what sick and vacation time I had. After that I had no idea what would happen. 

    Saturday Mich once again picked me up so we could visit Lee, who was still in the hospital. He was supposed to leave last week but instead they’d had to operate again. It had not gone well, and they were sending him home as soon as they could get hospice care set up. I walked on my crutches past the office where I had seen one of my many useless foot doctors to the ICU. The visit was awkward. I didn’t know what to say, and then felt bad for not knowing what to say. My humor –the tool I reach for most in awkward situations- remained out of reach. Mich was also subdued. Lee was quiet as well; I couldn’t tell if he even knew or cared if we were there. What can one possibly say in the face of death? What good can words possibly accomplish? It seems like language is the least accessible when we need it the most. 

    Another of his friends arrived during our visit, and she immediately went up to the bed and warmly grasped Lee's hand and held it as she smiled sadly down at him. I felt humbled by the eloquence in this single gesture, and saw in this woman a compassion I did not feel capable of. 

    I had a ticket to see a play later that evening. I wasn’t about to let my limited mobility stop me from going, so I hopped on my scooter and got onto the train to head across the river. A tiny local theater company was putting on a production of Beckett’s Happy Days in the abandoned Victoria’s Secret store at the mall. Most of the mall stores have closed, but they’ve been trying to revitalize the place by lowering the rents to allow smaller local businesses move in. My favorite comic book store is there, and a nice little record store, and a bunch of other shops. And the ice rink is still operating, though it was closed for the night. A very widewoman was driving a Zamboni around, leaving the ice shiny and reflective in its wake.

    A few flyers pointed the way to the old lingerie store. A woman sat taking tickets just inside the entrance. Sheets of plastic hung everywhere, corralling you to the middle of the store, where thirty folding chairs set on the floor or on risers in front of a pair of red sheets that looked like shower curtains. I sat of to the side so my scooter wouldn’t be in the way. A young woman sat behind the old check out counter which had been converted into a makeshift sound and light booth. 

    The play consists of a woman buried up to her waist in the ground, or in this case a cloth-covered mound. Beside her is a bag filled with belongings that she occasionally rifles through. Her husband or partner sits just out of sight behind her; you can sometimes see his arm or back of his head when he moves around. It is unclear how their situation came to be but it is apparent that it has been going on for some time, and their provisions seem to be dwindling. The woman prattles on cheerily to the audience, to the man, to herself, insisting on how wonderful everything is. It would be unbearable –and it almost is- if it wasn’t so comical and strange, and while the woman’s acting was a little broad, I really loved the show in all its hysterical bleakness. I thought of Lee in the hospital, I thought of my parents, I thought of all the people I know who seem to be inexplicably sinking into the earth.

    When it was over, they led us toward one of the staff exits, since the mall was closed for the evening. As we filed past a security officer he smiled and said hello and I recognized him. He used to work downtown and would come to the museum’s coffee shop. I hadn’t seen him since the beginning of the pandemic. We chatted as he walked alongside us across the mall, then left us as as we filed through a set of double doors into a long, narrow corridor. I was last in line and as I heard the doors slam shut behind me I saw up ahead a steep set of concrete stairs leading up. There was no way I could drag my scooter up that many steps. I called out to the people ahead of me but no one turned around or stopped, they were all focused on escaping the buidling. I wheeled back to the double doors and tugged at the handle but they were locked. I banged on them and called the name of the guard, the sound echoing along the dimly-lit corridor. 

    I pounded and pounded. 

Squirreluccino

     Mich picks me up and we drive way out to the edge of civilization to visit our friend Lee in the hospital. It’s the same complex where I had my foot treated for a while; the last time I was here, it was Colon Cancer Awareness Month, and in front of the main entrance stood an enormous inflatable colon you could walk through. I describe it to Mich and she says, huh. 

The woman at the front desk directs us to the ICU. I’m surprised to see that we’re nearly the only ones in the entire building wearing masks, despite the recent uptick in COVID cases. 

We hear Lee talking before we reach his room. When we enter he hangs up and we sit down. He actually doesn’t look too bad, despite what he’s been through; emergency surgery in which they removed his spleen, part of his stomach, and a “ton of gook” that had collected in there, obstructing his bowels. They aren’t sure what the underlying issue is yet; the biggest concern is cancer, of course. Tubes sprout everywhere and machines whir and beep quietly in the background. 

I tell him about the inflatable colon and he says, huh. I make a note to work on my delivery. He warns us that if we hear a sound like rain it’s just him urinating into a tube attached to his penis with a  condom-like thing. I’m looking forward to hearing it, I say. 

We all chat a little while. They are both native New Yorkers and still sound it despite being in Oregon for decades. Lee especially sounds like he just got back from a Brooklyn Dodgers game and is going to stop at Katz’s for a quick nosh. Today he is somber but in decent spirits. I’ve spent so much time in his position, in a bed just like this one, with well-meaning visitors nattering on, that I feel like I’m inside his body, feeling my back get sore from lying down too long, shivering beneath the paper thin sheets. 

At some point his nurse comes in and takes his vitals and says it’s almost time for the shift change, and less than a minute later the new nurse comes in and takes his vitals again. She is tall and voluptuous and very pregnant; as she squeezes past me I find myself sweating at her exquisite ripeness. 

When she leaves, the conversation starts slowing down. I hear a sound like rain hitting the window. “There it is,” Lee says. Mich drives me home, chattering pleasantly about her own health issues. As someone who has struggled with a chronic illness most of his life, it’s interesting seeing everyone else around me starting to catch up. Not gratifying, exactly. Not really.

I feel drained by the visit, and anxious to wipe it from my memory completely. Although it’s a beautiful night I don’t feel able to do much other than flip through the Facebook dating app I’ve been using for the past week. I’ve done online dating before, of course (my misadventures on OKCupid have been distilled in my book Pomeranian, copies available upon request), but since I’ve only recently acquired a touch screen phone I’m still new to the world of dating apps. It’s a much more streamlined experience than I’m used to; there isn’t room for much information, you’re just encouraged to look at the picture and swipe left with your finger to dismiss it, right if you think they look interesting. Some people do write descriptions, but after a week of going through these, and not getting a single person liking me or responding to my liking them, I’m ready to give up, and find myself flipping through the dregs of the site rapidly, barely looking at the faces, which are by now nearly all either unattractive or so fake looking you can tell they were either created by or heavily modified by some computer program. 

        One of these latter causes me to stop though. Her –its?- face is so robotic, so caked in make up, her body so perfectly plastic, that it almost takes my breath away. I feel a weird nausea, like I sometimes do when I get a peek into the seedier corners of the uncanny valley. Digital filters and effects and emojis all make me sick, but this seems somehow even worse. Beneath her picture he description reads:

        For lease by ower: 1986ish model-original features. Dual front airbags. Suitable rear cargo. 

        And so on, getting a lot of -yes, mileage out of the used car analogy. Beneath that, she makes a statement about not having any tolerance for bullshit, followed by, “Yes I have a pet squirrel.” 

        Sure enough, scrolling down I find a photo of her sitting with a gray squirrel on her head. The squirrel is much too large though, the size of a cat, and has obviously been added digitally. Her face is the same as it is in all her photos –not just similar, but exactly the same, as if the same image has just been altered slightly and placed in different locations. At the bottom of her page is a collection of her photos from Instagram, and sprinkled among the weird, robotic images of her- buxom but always fully clothed, and almost always sitting in cars- are more images of the squirrel, though in all of these the squirrel looks normal-sized. Here is the squirrel poking out of a pocket. Here the squirrel is sitting on a steering wheel with its nose in a glass of foam which she explains the people at Starbucks prepared –she says they’ve dubbed it a “squirreluccino.” All her Instagram photos are accompanied by long, extremely filthy captions. She says she wants to make people laugh, so there are plenty of examples of raunchy humor –she describes “the gluck gluck sound a gal makes when her mouth is full of (here she has, er, inserted an emoji of a zucchini)” but the captions beneath the squirrel photos are oddly chaste and self-deprecating. 

        “Just a slightly overweight squirrel who is too lazy to walk, chilling in my pocket,” reads one. “Your dose of squirrel content that none of you asked for,” she says, before describing how distraught she was when the animal went missing for two weeks, then showed up at her door as if nothing had happened. “It is her house…I’m just the peasant that feeds her and pays the bills!” 

        She complains that the squirrel tore up her $119 Miss Me jeans in order to make a nest, and the photo of her wearing the torn pants is not at all provocative. None of them are; her perfectly-proportioned body has all the erotic charge of an inflatable doll. Meanwhile, she makes an elaborate home for the squirrel from pieces of cat trees. The squirrel is never named, though she calls it a her, and the photos are a few years old –a Trump 2020 sign is clearly visible in one. 

        The entire thing is so utterly strange to me, someone who only chooses to scrape the surface of the web. Is this a real woman, probably a prostitute or stripper, who really just wants to make people laugh and share her life with a small, furry creature? Or is this all some strange AI project, possibly a scam or prank of some kind? I’m baffled but fascinated, despite (because of?) my repulsion. I suddenly remember Lee, a real life non-robotic human who is stuck in the hospital with tubes coming out of him, and think I should shoot him an email, but instead go back to looking at the pictures, reading every one of the captions, most of them awful –“What can I say, I’m just a girl who likes sunsets, tacos, and getting my back blown out.” Finally I realize this whole thing doesn’t really lead anywhere healthy, and after one last look into those empty, blackened eyes, I finally swipe left.