Love. This is what I’m talking about. Human love. Killed by the Alien, the Other. Aliens are gonna come down here and fuck with our primary emotion. (Which I used to think was fear but have since become convinced by my daughter is love.)
Aliens come to Earth. Love gets fucked. Not in some obvious sense, in which the others lock us up and prevent het/animal/sex fucking—they’d have the opposite desire. No. I’m talking about in the way future, when we start to merge with them—when they share their energetic jolts with us. That’s the scary moment when we let go the handles on the swings and shoot for the sky. When what we are fundamentally changes. That’s what I find scary—and I’m surprised if you don’t too.
“But what if it’s not bad,” Sheth says. His eyes follow the soccer girls’ legs. “I mean, they’re going to give you the chemicals, on a tray, and ask you to pick it if necessary. You’re going to pick it, when the ennui gets too bad. Even if your ennui is caused by your basic genetic preference for life and how to live it, that pill will solve it—intrinsically.”
Soccer girls (beauty beyond belief) playing in arabesque, loops, rings, ringlets of hair. Not all White, but the Blackies who play have smooth matte skin, white socks knee-high girders hurling them from location to location, gutter balls of glory, snakers of grin, the utter steamroller of lusciousness coming at me. Well, to me and Sheth both—but mostly to me.
“If I take that pill,” I begin, “then everything I’ve done is wrong. Up to that point. Everything a lie.”
Sheth starts to interrupt.
I stop him. “Let me stop you there,” I say. For I am a man born with a problem to every solution. My idiocy reigns supreme. “What we are talking about is the de-centralizing, the de-mantling of humanity. A creature that was supposed to be important to God—but which he has forgotten. We are no different than Jesus on the cross being forsake, having been forsaken by God the Father and attacked by—well, yes, the Romans, but attacked by—Demons, Aliens, Reptiles, the ugly of the insane, fantastic of the galactic, rot-bottom bad creatures residing in evil bodies. This is important! It’s important to me, little Padawan, that you hear this (hear it like you’re the last person on Earth).
“WE ARE UNDER ATTACK by an enemy who is so smart that before we even begin to fight, before we even know the enemy is there, we have lost the battle and we’re off doing some genetic breeding program with them the purpose of which is to undo the human race. To undo, the human, race. Now that may be ok where you come from, but in my neighborhood we fight to defend it. We don’t back down. We’ll never back down. It’s what we’ve been taught. Protect us against the insane, the inhuman, the demon that is in the skies. And they’re not about to take us all up in their spaceships. We’re not all about to go to Alien heaven. Mark my words. They’ll be holding us all at a distance for years. And when they’re done, all it’s gonna mean is the dismantling of our oil industry. The way my father and my cousins make their money. That’s how we’ll make our money till we die. No Alien bastard is gonna come down here and tell me what to do with my land. This land is your land, this land is my land—fuck that, you’re Alien, motherfucker. This is our planet. And we’re gonna die here if we want to.”
This is what I told myself, even though it was pulling at the back of my gray matter that we had been put here by the Aliens. They were on this Earth long before we were. Had chosen to stay hidden. Because we’re too fucking crazy.
Why make us in the first place?
And where is God in all this?
Where is the anti-secular, religious faction? Where are we represented with our religious freedom that extends so far it beats the other guy’s nose? I am used to being able to park diagonally in the parking spot at Friday’s—will that change now that Aliens are here? Will we have to reserve space in the front seat at church for Aliens? Will my President argue? Give me reason to hate my star brother? To send him packing? If I tune him now—let’s see.
My fellow Americans. We have been afforded a cosmic opportunity. Yes, it’s true the US has been exchanging information with Aliens for the last 70 years, costing trillions of dollars in you getting screwed because your taxes were being used to fund a Secret Space Program. And all the while you didn’t get any benefit or any information from this arrangement, only your money stolen and your face lied to. Four score and seven years ago—
Well, you get the point. Drastic reduction in terrestrial nuclear arms, fantastic new weapons that will do nothing in case the Aliens try to destroy us. They’re inter-dimensional beings who have been alive for billions of years—I think if they hit “go” on the zork adapter they can turn our planet to dust in about 11 parsecs. But we’re up here building space nukes to keep us safe from Alien civilizations who have never attacked us in that way, with nuclear weapons and such. I mean—right? Don’t we have every reason to believe that if Aliens attacked us front and center—strong—they would win?”
“We have every reason to disbelieve the opposite.”
“Now you’re trying some math proof on me. I’m a police officer. Not pre-calculus or whatever is going on inside your mind.”
“I’m just saying—“
“I know what you’re saying. Don’t forget that I am a Presidential-telepathic ruthless bone herder of a cop and you’re a stinky kid!”
“I haven’t forgot!”
“Well make sure you don’t forget!”
“Ok!”
“And don’t forget what I’m about to do to you. I’m here to oversee. And if I don’t like what I see I’m going to kill you! Understood?”
“Ok, yeah!”
“Now shut up and listen to your elders. What was I saying? You’re a punk kid and I’m the elders. Aliens are coming to sit in the front pew of my church. They won’t know how to sing but I’ll show them. But they’ll stink so I can’t! Aliens always stink in the movies. And the real crime isn’t that Aliens are here or not here. It’s the way the government talks about them. Just like they talk about the others—like you! Black people’s worth isn’t being decided by what I think about you—it’s that what I think about you determines your worth in society. So it matters how we talk about things. For instance, if I put out a bulletin saying you, Sheth, are wanted for murder, then a bunch of blood-thirsty cops are gonna come and find you and they’re gonna string you up to a tree and they’re gonna tell all the neighbors who saw it not to say anything. And they’re not going to say anything. ‘Cause they don’t want to get killed by the cops. That simple. And I think you see my analogy to Aliens ‘cause I just don’t think I can explain it to you anymore today. No? Well check this out. Aliens make a deal with the government—didn’t they know that the government doesn’t speak for all people? Don’t they know of our government’s fear mongering? So then you put up a smear campaign on aliens, making them the attackers of this world. And they are. Reptilians and demons and such. But how do we know who’s good and who’s evil? I guess it’s kinda like real life, with Jesus and the Devils and such but I can’t even figure that out—what’s the hope with me and Aliens?”
Sheth’s head and my head squeezed into the square-shaped window in the gym of his high school, me disregarding half of what Sheth says, me disregarding the other half—me shuffling this boy around by the neck skin—toting him here to this window to simply fulfill my lust for white girls in soccer shorts, no longer knowing whether they’re potential mates or potential daughters (feeling they’re both) and only having the slightest inkling of what that means for me, that I’m in love with someone who could be my daughter, that Sheth is friends with someone who could be my daughter and who I would also like to fuck. Maybe the Aliens have ordained this and are standing by waiting to mark the choice that I make on a piece of paper. They’re standing behind the curtain in the back of the gym. They’ve shape shifted into the gym teacher. Their organs are like insects but their faces like ours. Their hearts black as tar—no feelings, no respect, no love. And they don’t know our history. (We Whites in America like to think our prejudices form a particularly huge portion of our culture—our hatreds are a significant part of us.) And I guess they do. How much of me is made up of who I hate? How much of me is made of snide remarks and silent judgments and people I’d rather not be. Or subjects I’d rather not study. What about the hate of knowledge that’s other than mine? What about my hate for injustice? My hate for not following the law? What about my hate for noise and for those who break the law? Do I have to give that up to be part of this Alien world? The things they have started to teach us. Where am I without sending to jail and putting to death?