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3

Just looking down at Ray made Officer Apples irritated. The kid was such a waste.

The kid was tall, had a sturdy, athletic build, had hands the size of hams. He could have been a football or basketball player. Could have gone into combat sports.

This kid could have done a lot of things, Officer Apples lamented.

Besides, just the way the kid dressed was upsetting, the kid in electric-green skinny jeans and an ugly, matching tank top. Not to mention the puffy, bubble-gum-pink basketball shoes he’d had on earlier.

Officer Apples snarled and ruminated .

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer The kid is something between Gumby, Lebron, and a crack baby.

A storm brewing between his ears, the officer’s inner rage began to boil over, like a kettle left too long on a stovetop, and he ground his teeth and clucked loud as a cicada.

Officer Apples crept closer, leaned in toward Ray. The cop’s face so close that Ray could feel the bristles of the copper’s bushy moustache tickling at his earlobe.

Warm pulses of the officer’s breath burbled at Ray’s jowls.

“Ray Ray, a cashier at Nordstrom had her engagement ring stolen. Ripped right off her finger…” Officer Apples seethed and paused, thinking of that sad-eyed kid with the horrible haircut, the one looking like a rainbow-colored animal had plopped down and died on his skull, the kid who’d literally snatched the ring off the poor girl’s trembling hand.

Looking away for a split second, before swinging his gaze back to meet Ray’s, the officer bellowed, “What is the NAME of the kid who took it?!” and specks of spittle exploded from the officer’s mouth, hitting Ray’s cheeks, like the first raindrops of a violent thunderstorm.

Ray’s eyes darkened as he kept counting ghosts. Then he whimpered, shook his head, and repeated, his voice breaking, “I ain’t do nothing, sir!”

Sometimes suspects attempted verbal jujitsu with the officers. Some cursed. One even spit in Officer Apples’ face. But this kid… This kid had purpose. Not even this cold shower of verbal abuse could loosen his lips…

Officer Apples had had enough. He had the evidence. The camera stills. The videos. The social media posts. He had Ray leading the flash mob. He had Ray with a baseball bat. He had Ray bashing in storefront doors and display windows, swarming in force with his posse, like a furious cloud of murder hornets. He had Ray ransacking, snatching handfuls of gold necklaces, stacks of designer shirts, pricey basketball shoes. Probably the same hideous pink pair the kid had on before…

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Ugh… This motherless fuck… This kid is a disgrace…

What a pile of fucking horseshit… Total and utter horseshit…

Officer Apples clucked once more and flared his nostrils.

“Hitting a ‘lick,’ right?” Officer Apples whispered, sardonically, into Ray’s ear.

Officer Apples was close as a drill sergeant, only an inch or so from Ray’s face. Ray crinkled his nose at the heavy mist of Officer Apples’ aftershave, his garlicy breath.

But Ray remained steadfast. Remained silent.

Officer Apples groaned in exasperation. “Ray Ray, I can either be a good friend or an awful enemy. Which would you prefer?”

Ray sat still as ice; his mouth twisted shut.

“Hmm, so you’re not like that gangster rapper, ‘Teriyaki Six Nine?’ You’re not a snitch, huh?” Officer Apples murmured, “not a… rat…”

Ray sighed, then squinted his eyes, hung his head low and stared down at the buttery shine of the linoleum floor. His expression soured. Instantly he appeared incensed.

“No I ain’t,” was all Ray said, in a calm but menacing tone.

Officer Apples guffawed. A dry, spiteful laugh. Then his smile again died on his lips.

This… This fucking horseshit...

This wasn’t getting anywhere.

Officer Apples again thought of the terrified cashier, the pretty young girl, with those rosy cheeks and ringlets of gold hair, the girl who’d had her engagement ring snatched off her finger, and the girl’s tearful description of the events... Then he thought of the jewelry store’s owner, the Afghan refugee, who’d hidden in a storeroom and watched helplessly as streams of armed thieves poured in, raided and plundered his store, made a mockery of his American Dream.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer And all for what? Why would these kids even be doing this? They were citizens of the greatest country the world had ever known. Where the hell were their parents?

Where were their fathers?

What happened to allowances? Chores? Couldn’t these kids have just mowed lawns to get some pocket cash? Taken a part-time job flipping burgers? What the hell were the schools teaching these kids these days? Critical Race Theory crap instead of Civics?

Anger swept over Officer Apples like fire through dry grass; his ruminations running hotter than hunger.

What happened to the kids in America? What happened to going out to rock concerts in the warm breath of summer? What happened to headbanging, mosh pits as a panacea for teenage angst?

What the hell happened to rock and roll? Nowadays the kids don’t even sing or play instruments. They just lip sync to hip hop Billie Eyelash mumble-shit music and do dumb 10-second twerking videos on their stupid fucking phones. And Pokémon? Headphone parties? Those lame rave DJs in mouse costumes, pumping their fists like Arsenio Hall… Ugh...

What a bunch of horseshit.

What a bunch of fucking horseshit…

Anger, like a cobra, coiled inside Officer Apples. Then his rage shifted to revulsion.

Officer Apples was aghast, disgusted. Disgusted with this kid, disgusted with everything.

This fucking animal… This flippant, motherless fuck…

Officer Apples turned his gaze, took two steps away from the chained prisoner.

Then Officer Apples swung back around. His eyes lighting up like hot coals.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer In his mind, he pictured it, saw it transpiring. Just if he were hammering a nail, Officer Apples was raising his nightstick high and bringing it down with a savage, perfect precision. Rapping the cudgel right across Ray’s hands. The violent blow landing on the kid’s knuckles, with a hard crack, a sound akin to a heavy piece of splintered wood being snapped in two.

He could hear Ray unloosing a wailing squeal of pain, almost a horrible impression of a coyote. He could see Ray instinctively attempting to clutch and nurse his battered hands but being arrested in motion. The young thug then folding his frame over the table, pressing his eyes shut, and growling to strangle back the burn.

Officer Apples’ mind raced and his rheumy eyes bulged big as boiled eggs. His face contorted into a horrific, malicious mask. Hovering over Ray, like an apparition, the officer started to slowly lift his nightstick into the air, which caused Ray to flinch, and a tiny whimper burst from the kid’s lips.

Then Officer Apples froze for a split second, lowered the cudgel, and casually holstered it. Then a devious smile broke over the cop’s face, and he unloosed a tremulous laugh, turned on his heel, and padded out of the interrogation room, clucked again and muttered something about “smash and grab!”

DUDE! YOU FUCKING PISSED ON ME!

Pranks can be great fun and an excellent way to enhance a friendship. But there are instances when a prank can go too far. Such as the time back in high school…

on Homecoming night...

One of the homies had stolen a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from someone’s dad and snuck it into the school. This was pre-Columbine, pre-9/11. Smuggling contraband was easier in those days as security checks weren’t as stringent, often were non-existent…

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer It was Terry, Jim, and me. And we’d slipped out the back of the school gymnasium, where the homecoming dance was being held, and crept like bandits through the crisp fall evening, then set up shop out on the baseball diamond.

This was where and when Terry broke out the bottle.

We took turns swigging the potion, and Terry gagged. Then Jim made twisted faces, his arched eyebrows flying halfway up his forehead as he coughed, hissed and wheezed...

But when the bottle got to me, I don’t know, it just felt smooth going down my gullet. Wasn’t much different from soda. At least at first.

“Whoa, he’s like, chugging it like water,” I could hear Terry exclaim, his eyes narrowing but barely visible under his Oilers stocking cap. Both stood slack-jawed in amazement as I cleared the neck of the square-shaped bottle. And then some.

Strangely, I didn’t feel anything. Not instantly. And we proceeded to smoke Marlboro Reds, recount the latest episode of In Living Color.

It was around when Terry was doing his Homey D. Clown impression that nature came calling, and I excused myself to go piss on home plate.

As I unbuckled my belt and lowered my jeans (never been a zipper-only guy, way too many steel teeth, way too close to…) I heard footsteps crunching over the stiff November grass.

“Push him!” Terry shouted, and with that, I spun around, cock in hand, and blasted a charging Jim with a steady stream of silver piss, thoroughly wetting the waist of his blue jeans and the hem of his Metallica “Ride the Lightning” T-shirt, and Jim froze in his tracks like he’d run into an invisible wall and threw his arms up in the air, his face contorted in terror.

Then Terry emerged from behind Jim, rumbling toward me, like a linebacker, with a look of venom in his barely visible eyes.

So I turned my piss-rifle on Terry. My stream strong as a showerhead. And I was suddenly feeling powerful and righteous, as if I were shooting holy water at a vampire.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer But Terry had cat-quick reflexes and jumped back, eluded the silver stream, was almost like Keanu dodging bullets in The Matrix.

Terry, being clean, unhit, was able to laugh it off. Once I finished pissing, still aiming in Terry’s general direction, I slipped my member away, buckled up and lifted my acid-washed jeans, and started to guffaw.

But Jim wasn’t too amused. Not at all. His face darkened, and the ponytailed fuck cried out, “Dude, what the fuck?! You fucking pissed on me!”

“And you shouldn’ta tried to push me. That’s what you get for fucking with people trying to piss,” I shot back. And it was then that the liquor started to seep in. My eyes going glassy. A warm, euphoric wave washing over me, and I was experiencing that blissful, freshly buzzed feeling.

Jim himself was starting to look drunk too. On anger. His pale blue eyes growing larger; his breathing picking up, near hyperventilation. Then Jim did his best warface and charged at me again.

We were about the same size so there wasn’t any physical advantage. But Jim was wet with piss. And I wanted no part of wrestling with that.

So I spun around and ran.

I ran away. Fast as Emmitt Smith. My knees pumping high in the air, and I was running at a speed I didn’t know I was capable of, with piss-soaked Jim and his long blond bobbling ponytail chasing after me, and we tore through the baseball field, and then back into the gymnasium, which was packed with students, teachers, punch bowls, glittering disco balls, flashing lights, “GO TEAM!” banners, and a sea of gyrating adolescents grooving to Young MC’s “Bust a Move.”

Jim and I didn’t get too far into the dance floor when we were apprehended by our gym teacher, the former volleyball player, the towering woman of about 6’7.

Our Amazonian gym teacher scooped us up by the scruff, like naughty puppies, and then immediately crinkled her nose at the pungent piss stink Jim was emitting.

(It’s probable I’d eaten asparagus that night…)

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Then our reformed hippy of a vice principal strode in, took custody of Jim and also made a pained facial expression. Then the gym teacher dragged me to the office.

Called my parents to pick me up.

Though I’d been buzzed before, the chase and nearly getting into a fistfight with a friend had all but killed my high.

Once my father arrived, in the minivan, with a look on his face like he’d just stepped barefoot in dogshit, I panned my gaze and noticed Jim on the other end of the parking lot. He was staring blankly off into space, wearing gray school sweatpants and a matching gray school sweatshirt. I can’t imagine what he told the vice principal.

Both of us got two days’ detention.

Jim and I ran into each other, in the cafeteria, a week later, and squashed our beef. But we never talked or hung out as much and eventually lost touch…

THE TIME MACHINE OF HER THOUGHTS

Tommy.

She could never forget him.

He was the wildest, funniest, craziest person she’d ever known. Although it’d been almost 30 years since she last saw him, 30 years since that fateful day at school, still, his face was painted all over her memories.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer She’d constantly think of him. Especially late at night, as she lay awake, staring at the ceiling, next to her snoring, fat farting ball of a husband.

Tommy…

Serena sometimes wondered why… Why had she been thinking so much about Tommy? It wasn’t as if her life was lacking. Materialistically, aesthetically, anyway.

She had a big sprawling house up on a hill, expensive cars, two beautiful kids.

Her husband, despite his somnambulant noises and noxious bodily emissions, was affectionate, and he was a fantastic father and provider. Beyond all doubts, she was living the “American Dream.” So why… Why was it she longed for Tommy?

And why was it she felt so vapid, so spiritually empty? Why had she been on antidepressants for the last five years? Why did she drink a couple too many glasses of wine…every single night… Why?

Why couldn’t she stop thinking about Tommy, her high school boyfriend? It was so long ago that they knew each other. So long ago that they could unknowingly pass by one another in public.

But still. But still…

Tommy lingered and remained the protagonist of her most surreptitious, nocturnal thoughts…

God, it was all so long ago. They were only 18. They wore baggy clothes, flannel shirts. They looked like rejects from the cast of Clueless. They listened to Nirvana and Coolio.

God, it really was all so long ago. She was the quiet, skinny girl. He, on the other hand, was anything but quiet; he was a household name in their neighborhood, infamous for his idiotic exploits. The day he came to school with a mohawk, jumped up on a table and started that food fight in the cafeteria had sealed his legend...

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer They’d been boyfriend and girlfriend only briefly. Ever so briefly. But she’d been ruminating on that time, nostalgically, romanticizing those carefree days. She’d been thinking that it was the peak of her life. Those times with Tommy, in his arms.

He was her first and she was his. Her first love. The first guy to give her butterflies.

The first to make her heart skip a beat. The first to make her forget the existence of time.

Tommy…

Tommy was so unconventional, so exciting. He’d always play pranks on her, calling her phone, at night, when she was in her bedroom, his number blocked,

*69. Whenever she’d answer, he’d do funny voices. Impersonations of Joe Pesci and other mob movie characters were his specialty. He could make her laugh so hard that she’d cry. To her, he was funnier than any sitcom or standup comedian.

He’d even initially courted her through pranks. He sat behind her in social studies class and would whisper funny things to her, crack jokes and do crazy voices.

During lunch, he’d sit at a table nearby and chuck fries or M&M’s at her.

Normally, she’d be annoyed, or even revolted by such antics. And her friends certainly were. They’d warned her about Tommy, said he was a total loser.

It was true that he was one of the misfit kids. One of the outcast, rebel without a cause youngsters. Those freaks that sat in the back of every class. Those freaks who wore lots of black and had facial piercings. Those freaks who smoked cigarettes in school bathrooms and spray-painted street signs. Tommy and his crew were the sort of stereotypical “bad kids” you’d see in a corny afterschool special, the sort of rotten apples selected to participate in one of those “scared straight” prison visit programs where menacing, heavily tattooed inmates get up and scream in kids’ faces... They were those type of kids…

Serena’s stuck-up friends vehemently hated Tommy and his whole stupid motley crew. And while Serena agreed that Tommy’s compadres were morons, for sure, him, though, Tommy, oh, he was special.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Maybe it was his eyes. His sparkly blue eyes. His eyes so effervescent, gleaming like sapphire gemstones. He had these long curly eyelashes also. She’d have to use mascara to get such eyelashes, but his were all-natural, and they were stunning.

Aside from his eyes, Tommy wasn’t exactly remarkable, at least from an anatomical standpoint. He had a rather plain face. He was taller than her but not that tall. He was skinnier than her but not so skinny that he looked weak.

Strangely, however, somehow, someway, despite his being gracile, he walked with a distinct air of confidence. As if he were a one-man-army. As if he were made of steel.

Along with his eyes and humor, it was probably that confidence that attracted her.

Or maybe it was his insouciance. It was as if Tommy didn’t care, and she’d never met anyone like that. It was as if nothing could faze him. He’d never be angry or stressed. Not when teachers yelled at him. Not during scary thunderstorms.

Never. He was always cool as a cucumber. She never remembered, not once, seeing him without a smile stretching over his lips.

God, he made her smile too. Made her laugh so hard. All his silly voices and the crazy contortions he’d make with his face.

He could even be dirty as a pig, and she’d listen to him, enraptured, for hours, on the phone, her ear sore from pressing the receiver to it, but she couldn’t get enough of his insane banter; even when he’d joke about having anal sex with her, surprise anal sex, saying how next time she bent over to pick something up, he’d run up behind her and mount her like a baboon, penetrate her anally. Then he’d make wild animal sounds, prognosticating, foreshadowing the surprise

“buttsexual” experience. How he’d take her “bootinity,” give her that “booty work.”

For the record, he never did that and never tried anal with her. And again, such antics would normally revolt her, but the way he’d talk would be so funny and ridiculous that she couldn’t put down the phone.

In actuality, he was romantic, and would sometimes break into her locker, leave a flower, chocolates, and a sweet note for her. Sometimes they’d ditch class and

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer sneak off into the woods behind school, sit on a log and cuddle and kiss forever.

He was an amazing kisser too, so passionate. To this day, no one has ever kissed her like that.

She’d imagined them running away together, eloping, moving somewhere romantic, like Paris. Them growing old together. Riding off into the sunset. Being together forever.

But sadly, as all things do, their time together ended. But not how she thought.

Them together in Paris, eating candlelit spaghetti dinners, them holding hands, them walking along the river, living their final days like that, nope, that was not to be. That was not how it ended.

It ended with him pulling another of his dumb pranks. But not on her. On the school….

His idiot friend, the shifty-eyed kid who always wore the backwards Metallica cap and the cut-off jean jacket, oh, and the other dumbass, the chubby kid with the rattail, those two, those Beavis and Butthead forerunners, had “double” dared Tommy to pull a fire alarm.

What a dumb thing to do, pulling a fire alarm. Why would anyone think that’s funny? Plus, it carried the punishment of automatic expulsion from school. Plus, they were only one week away from graduating high school. Yet, Tommy still did it, and despite his wearing a hooded sweatshirt, he was fingered on security footage.

Tommy got expelled for pulling that fire alarm and was promptly sent off to military school. Shortly after, his parents moved. Then his trail went cold. No one knew anything about his whereabouts, other than he was sent off to military school. Being sent off to military school, in those days, was similar to being banished to Siberia. And this was before the internet age, so it was way easier to lose track of someone.

They never got to say goodbye, and she cried, every night, for weeks. But she found solace in books and became immersed in her studies. Then she eventually went to an elite school, got an MBA. Then she worked in the corporate world,

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer earned truckloads of cash, and married a corporate raider, a hedge fund honcho, and after having kids, she decided to become a homemaker.

And yes, she loved her cute kids more than anything. And yes, she loved her big hairy bear of a husband too. But still, but still… she found something missing.

Every day for her seemed to be the same. Every smiling waiter at every fancy restaurant, every fancy department store, every 10,000-square-foot house in her neighborhood, every Audi, Mercedes, Maserati, Tesla, Porsche, Ferrari, every spa, every place she went, it all seemed the same. Every day conjoined, cast a spectral, Siamese twin of itself. Everything was so boring. She missed the excitement of being young. She missed the feeling of anything being possible. It was as if now, everything was done. Everything was written. As if she were sleepwalking, simply going through motions. As if her life were a scripted play.

She longed for those days when everything was so new, so fun and funny. To her, nothing was funny now. Everything, everybody she knew was so serious.

Everyone was depressed. Everyone was seeking an escape. Everyone in her neighborhood, like her, was on pills or drank too much. Despite her pricey gated community’s glitzy exterior, the place was soulless. It was an evening gown, jewelry and makeup on a corpse.

So she’d taken to watching old TV shows, old movies, listening to old music. She’d fantasize, think back on her schooldays. Those wild high school days in particular.

But mostly she’d think of him.

Tommy...

Finally, she decided to search for him. But she couldn’t find him on Facebook or anywhere. Did he change his name? Move to another country? Did he pursue a career in the military? Did he go to Afghanistan, Iraq? Did he die there? What happened to him? It was the mystery, the not knowing that bothered her most.

She considered hiring a private investigator to track him down but decided against it. What would be the point of that? What would she even say to him?

How could she not come off like a creepy stalker in a Lifetime movie? Did she

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer really think they’d have a miraculous, romantic reunion and run off to Paris? Now?

Come on, she thought to herself, life isn’t a Danielle Steel novel…

Whatever happened to him, whatever he became, she hoped he was well, and she hoped he was happy. Or at least content. She’d like to think he found a nice girl, settled down, was living a more fulfilling life than her. She hoped so anyway.

Whatever happened to him, he’d always be a part of her. He’d always live on in her memories. And she’d keep him in her fantasies. Forever. And in her fantasies, he’d never get old. He’d never go bald, never grow ear hair and nose hair, never grow a big floppy bulge on his belly. He’d never snore or fart in bed. He’d always be young and handsome. He’d always be her Tommy, the class clown with those hypnotic, iridescent eyes.

In the small hours of night, she’d see him. She’d see him when she’d close her eyes and enter the time machine of her thoughts. She’d see him, at night, in that realm, that watery space between sleep and consciousness. Her mind racing, she’d lay on her soft, custom-made mattress, and she’d worm and toss and turn to a silvery sheen.

All she had to do was press her eyes shut, and she’d see him. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face, his smiling face. Every time she closed her eyes, she’d be back there, back in the 90s, back in high school, back in Tommy’s warm arms. She’d be with him again. Back in the woods behind school. And he’d make her laugh and kiss her like no one else could.

And every time she closed her eyes, entered the bliss of her fantasies, she would once again be young and free.

Tommy…

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer HOME ALONE KIDS GETS CANCELED

“I mean, how would you know? They could be microscopic. The aliens could even be smaller than atoms. They could be here already. They could be inside you. In your guts. Crawling up your colon, coming out your…”

“Okay, I think that’s enough information.”

A phone from the office upstairs rang out, sounding almost like a fire alarm, interrupting the group discussion.

“This place has a rotary phone in the office.”

“A typewriter too.”

“What’s a rotary phone?”

“But do aliens believe in Jesus? That’s what I’m wondering.”

“Yo, you’re fricking right the aliens believe in Jesus. God created Jesus so He created aliens too.”

“Aliens are God’s creatures. I bet the aliens have churches, megachurches and shit… Aliens on some intergalactic Joel Osteen shit…”

“Please watch the language!”

In the windowless basement of the church, the support group sat in a circle. Most of the participants were somewhere between 30 and 50. The oldest seemed to be the haggardly motorcycle lady, at around 60 or so. The motorcycle lady sat looking extremely disinterested. Her legs were tightly crossed, and she cocked her head to the side, rolled her eyes, and brushed a long lock of stringy gray hair behind her ear. Then she went back to biting her nails.

The youngest of the group was maybe 20, a catatonic ginger with a chipmunk face.

The ginger was dressed in all black and sat, expressionless, in an electric wheelchair, his hands balled into fists and his crystal blue eyes fixed on the cream-colored tile floor.

“My turn? Yup. Okay, like, I used to think I saw dead people, ghosts. Like that kid in the movie.”

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer

“Isn’t that kid dead now?”

“I heard he got put in jail for smoking crack and stealing a car.”

“Happens to every child star. Except the Home Alone kid. He turned out alright. I think.”

“Nah, the Home Alone kid made racist comments about Asians and got cancelled.

I read about it on Twitter.”

“Wait, isn’t he married to an Asian?”

“That gives him NO excuse!”

The ginger in the wheelchair coughed loudly, then swallowed his phlegm.

“Me? Yeah. Well, uh, just last night I talked to my sister, for the first time in years.

She’d gotten hooked on meth. Then robbed a 7-11 at knifepoint. Then stole her ex-boyfriend’s sister’s car. Then did two years in a federal penitentiary, came out covered in tattoos.”

“Face tattoos?”

“Yup, a big red pentagram on her forehead. I saw it on Facebook.”

“Nah, that’s not going to help with the job search. Can you imagine being an HR

person, calling someone in for an interview, and then the applicant walks in, has face tattoos, a flipping pentagram on their head? Geez Louise.”

“Then the face-tattoo-person turns back to crime. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Well, face tattoos are far more accepted these days. But maybe not a pentagram.”

“Actually, she got a job as a customer service rep for a moving company. Works from home, from her trailer.”

“That’s weird, man. Picture that, calling up to ask a question and you’re talking to someone with a tattoo of a pentagram on their head.”

“Better than someone from India. I can’t understand their accents.”

“That’s racist.”

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer

“Racist that I can’t understand what they’re saying? Really?!”

“You and the Home Alone kid. You’re both racists!”

“Cool it, you two.”

“My sister got trained for phone work in prison. It was part of her vocational classes, taking customer service calls. She also learned telemarketing.”

“Oh my God, I am never screaming at another telemarketer.”

“Yo, for sure you better not yell at that telemarketer. That telemarketer breaks out of prison, hunts down your ass.”

“Please watch your language.”

Heading the group was a frumpy woman in her 30s. She had freckly, pallid skin and bushy blond hair that’d been tied into a thick ponytail. She wore a gray pantsuit and shiny black shoes that appeared too formal for the occasion, making her look more like a businesswoman than a counselor. Her voice was throaty yet strangely stentorian.

The bone-thin 50ish fellow, sitting near the elevator, belched loudly and everyone collectively groaned. But he paid it no mind. He just sat, bobbing back and forth, scratching his left arm compulsively, his small eyes darting about the room, frantically, like a frightened cat’s. Every couple minutes he curled his upper lip, made a clicking sound with his mouth, sort of like a cicada.

“In the future, robots will do those jobs. Robots will do everything. Robots will be attorneys and accountants.”

“It’s not your turn yet, please…”

“Look, already, you call up your bank or something, and it’s a robot answering, and they make those typing sounds when you talk to them, as if it’s a person.

Honestly, I find the whole thing creepy.”

“I don’t know. I don’t mind it when there’s a touchscreen menu in a restaurant. I don’t have to bother with waiting to call over a person to order my food.”

“I saw a story on the news, ‘bout a restaurant using drones to deliver food to tables.”

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer

“Hey, that’s better than a waiter. I hate calling out, excuse me! Excuse me! Like the person’s name is ‘Excuse Me.’”

“At most places they wear a nametag. Or they tell you their name.”

“Like I’m supposed to remember their name. I forget my own name sometimes.”

“I can’t spell my name.”

“Even if they have a nametag, I still call them ‘Excuse Me.’”

“I like calling people by their name. Even a stranger.”

“Excuse me!”

“What a horrible job, being a waiter.”

“In France, being a waiter is a well-paid, respected profession.”

“Come on, I mean, if you’re a waiter, you’re basically someone’s bitch.”

“Language.”

“Oh, so you’re a misogynist too!”

“I said cool it! Remember that I need to sign off on your paperwork, you guys.”

“Please don’t use gendered-language!”

“Yo, that’s why they spit in your food. Because you don’t call them by their name.

Always saying ‘excuse me.’”

“No, it’s because you’re a racist! That’s why they spit in your food! Because you’re a racist! And a misogynist!”

“Hashtag FUCK YOU!”

“Cool it!”

“You ever had a waiter with a pentagram or other face tattoo?”

“I’d welcome that. They’re being honest. True to themselves.”

“I can imagine a robot with a face tattoo.”

“I for one am looking forward to the robots. As long as things don’t go all Terminator, I’m cool with it.”

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer

“Universal Basic Income. I’m with it.”

“No one would rob a 7-11 if there were UBI.”

“Robots would rob 7-11s.”

“Robots would rob other robots.”

“Robots wouldn’t be racist. If there were robot police officers, like Robocop, they wouldn’t shoot...”

“Oh stop!”

“Robocalls.”

“Nah, since the robots are made by people, they’d be extensions of us, be as flawed as us. Racist and all that.”

“Stop accusing the robots of racism! Be nice to the robots! God made the robots!”

“But do the robots believe in Jesus?”

“Just don’t call the robots ‘Excuse Me.’”

A bell, which sounded like a wind chime, gently jingled from the freckly pantsuit lady’s purse, signaling an end to the meeting.

“See, right there, that’s a robot, a little square robot. They’ve already infiltrated us!!”

“It could be an alien too. An alien robot. A microscopic alien robot!”

“Excuse me!”

“Okay, okay, everybody. Thank you all for coming. I’ll see you next week. Please bring over your paperwork so I can sign you off.”

I SHOT MY TEACHER

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“Bang bang!”

The students in the classroom panicked. Jumped to their feet. Shrieks, gasps, and curse words blended into the cacophony of chairs licking linoleum, sneakers squeaking as my classmates stampeded toward the door, and one kid even jumped out an open window.

(Luckily we were on the first floor…)

Now let me tell ya, the teacher I’d just shot, Mrs. Henry, oh, she was such a bully, such a fucking Nazi. She’d torment the kids, call everyone “genius”

condescendingly, and she really seemed to take a special sadistic joy in making kids cry.

People like her, I gotta say, I’ve never understood. I’ve never understood those who are cruel to children. Even when I was a kid, I didn’t understand grownups like that. I mean, discipline is one thing, but abasing, abusing kids, that sort of behavior, I could never get it…

And whatever malice possessed Mrs. Henry, whatever caused her to engage in such vituperative behavior, oh, it was strong. It was a demon inside her. It was dark, and it was evil.

For fuck’s sake, the lady just looked evil too.

She had a certain prehistoric reptilian look, almost like a twin sister of Jabba the Hutt. She even had a voice similar to James Earl Jones, too, a sonorous boom of a voice, and it’d cut through us, like a sharp knife, slice open our souls. Hers was a voice of pain and horror, a voice that bashed and shattered you like a baseball bat breaking through a plate glass window.

Perhaps Mrs. Henry really was a malevolent space creature from a galaxy far, far away. I could see that… Or perhaps she was the muse, the inspiration for Jabba the Hut… I could see that too…

Mrs. Henry sure was about the same size as Jabba. Just a massive being. And look, I’m not super fit. I’m not ripped. I’m not The Rock or anything. I got a couple extra

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer pounds on me, a little spare tire going. No one’s perfect and all that. And I’m not trying to “fat shame” her or anything, err, well, shit, maybe I am, because, seriously, let me tell ya, ole’ Mrs. Henry, she was HUGE. She might have been the fattest person I ever saw. Fat as one of those people you see on Maury or whatever trashy daytime talk show. One of those gargantuan beings that have to be forklifted from their bedroom. That fucking fat. For real.

Mrs. Henry must have weighed damn near 400 pounds. And she had that certain unpleasant scent obese people often have, that reek of something between piss and perspiration, though on most days her stink was masked by a particularly overpowering, nauseating perfume that smelled like a cross between chemicals and fake roses… I’m not sure which of her stenches was worse…

I mean, really, I’m not sure how one gets that large, how one gets to be around 5’4 and 400 pounds, but I’m guessing it might have been all the soda she drank. I don’t think I ever saw her without a 2-liter of Coke nearby. Betcha that lady sucked down a gallon a day of the sugary stuff.

Or I guess it coulda been from lack of exercise too. Shit, I don’t think I ever saw Mrs. Henry walk. Anywhere. At all. Hell, I’m not sure she could actually walk.

She’d use a mobility cart to circle the classroom and cruise the hallways between classes. And it was when she wheeled through the hallways that she dished out the worst of her abuse. Sniping at and insulting students as she rode by.

To see ole’ Mrs. Henry rolling forth inspired terror in us all.

Mrs. Henry seemed to relish it too. She seemed to feed on our fears, sniffed for blood, and took a particular glee in putting kids down, especially the awkward, shy, quiet types. The wounded animals. The weak, the vulnerable, those straggling from the herd. Those were the ones who got it the worst.

Yup, thinking back further on it, I think that was the only time I’d see Mrs. Henry smile or laugh, when she’d insult people. It really did seem to bring her joy.

I mean, whatever it was about you, whatever was most embarrassing, she’d go after. Your dental headgear, your braces, your acne, your garlic breath, your shitty grammar, your shitty math scores, your high-riding jeans, your hand-me-downs, a color clashing outfit, a stain on your shirt, any sort of body odor (ironically enough), your bad teeth, nose hair, ear hair, you had too much ear wax, uneven

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer sideburns, unruly bangs, an embarrassing haircut, an untied shoe, hell, any of your funky ways was fair game.

(And if you did anything notably bad, Mrs. Henry would never let you forget about it. Like the tall cute Hispanic girl, who got caught picking her nose, in class, and Mrs. Henry went on to terrorize the girl practically every day about it…) The lady was always launching zingers. She was like a fat female Jeff Ross, an angrier Bill Burr, or Don Rickles’ pissed-off poltergeist conjured from a Ouija board.

Probably even meaner.

I tell ya, that Mrs. Henry really should have been a roast battle comedian. I think she’d missed her calling. Maybe that’s why she was so bitter.

Whatever it was, she sure as shit was bitter. Yessir, that ole’ Mrs. Henry was bitter as fuck. She was a meanie. A grinch. A scrooge. A Stalinist. Evil incarnate. And everyone was totally terrified of her. Crowds would part, like the Red Sea, as she’d ride down those bone-gray school hallways, in her mobility cart, her face screwed into a sourpuss snarl, and an icy, wicked glare flickering in her deep-set eyes…

Yessir, clear as day, I can still see ole’ Mrs. Henry rolling by, menacingly, launching drive-by putdowns… Mrs. Henry hurling insults, like Molotov cocktails, at any student in the vicinity. The lady was such a terrorist. A fascist. Fucking hell on wheels.

Now I never saw or heard of Mrs. Henry slapping, spanking, or hitting any of the kids, striking them physically. And I guess that’d be difficult to do, from a mobility cart.

Nah, for Mrs. Henry, her words were her real weapon. And brandish them she did.

Whenever she’d call on a student, had him/her come to the chalkboard, and if he/she got an answer wrong, she’d castigate, belittle the kid, call them “stupid”

or scoff at them. Oftentimes kids would run out of the classroom crying. But mostly we’d take it, silently, keep the pain to ourselves.

Sometimes we’d talk about it in the lunchroom. Sometimes a kid would flee her class, or be lambasted by her in the hallways, then he/she would come sit down,

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer in tears, to the lunch table, and spill his/her guts, call Mrs. Henry a “fat bitch” and all that. But no one had the temerity to stick up to her.

We’d wonder aloud how it was that she kept her job, acting like she did. Why on Earth would the school keep such a fascist around? Was it teacher tenure?

Look, this was before the days of social media, so it was easier then to keep a rogue teacher under wraps. And really, this was a drastically different day and time. A different America. A tougher America. It was a day and time when parents didn’t fight with schools or teachers much. Like, if you went home and told Moms or Pops that your teacher was calling you names, your parents would probably say you deserved it and tell you to stop being a bitch, put on your big boy pants, shut the fuck up, and go wash the dishes and then mow the damn lawn.

These were pre- “woke” times.

But fuck that. Discipline was one thing, however Mrs. Henry insulting people, making kids cry, mocking them, humiliating them, calling them names, it wasn’t right. It’d been gnawing at me the whole semester. Boiling up inside me. Bubbling up in my throat like vomit.

And when the cute little blond ballerina girl I had a crush on broke down in tears following one of Mrs. Henry’s tirades (the ballerina had done a poor job cutting a piece of cardboard), it was then I decided that someone had to do something.

And that someone would be me.

While ditching gym class to read Richard Bachman’s Rage, in the school library, I suddenly had a lightbulb moment. Oh yeah, motherfucker, I’d give ole’ Mrs. Henry, Jabba, a special surprise. I’d teach the teacher a lesson she’d never forget…

A week later, on a stormy late winter morning, with the bald trees swaying in the chilly wind, I strutted into school, feeling like a million bucks. I was wearing a pair of mirrored aviator glasses, combat boots, and had on all black clothes, and in my waistband, I’d brought a fun little toy, a plastic pistol that I smuggled in easily.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Walking into the classroom, with the gun stuffed under my NIN sweatshirt, I felt the cold weight of the weapon pressed to my stomach, and the weapon was making me feel 10-feet-tall.

Walking into the classroom, I saw Mrs. Henry perched behind her desk, in the front center of the room. Mrs. Henry, the fat fucking caustic tub of shit. Mrs.

Henry, the big ball of lard, her hideous face all scrunched up, and she was berating the meek little nerdy kid in the front row, the kid’s horn-rimmed eyeglasses all fogging up and slipping off his long pointy nose, the poor kid frowning and slumping in his chair.

This was it. I’d had enough. And I decided it was now or never to show up the flabby fucking tyrant.

Strolling over toward her, I felt like Clint Eastwood, in one of those old Western films. I even had the swagger. I approached her like a cowboy, like it was a showdown at the O.K. Corral. Shit, I could even hear an ominous whistle, old-timey Western music playing in my head.

Seeing me sauntering over, like I was John Wayne reincarnated, Mrs. Henry swung her repulsive lizardy face toward me, and halted her verbal abuse of the meek kid, whose parents had recently died in a fucking plane crash, dammit. I then chortled and screamed at her, commanded that she “SHUT the FUCK up!”

Her face, her anger, withered and died, deflated like a balloon that’d been untied.

I don’t think anyone had ever spoken to her like that. She sat in a mortified silence, for a couple of seconds, then her fierceness returned, and her startled face twisted back into the monster I knew. She was again the big blubbery being, the Jabba, the plus-size Satan, and I could see her curved chest heaving, her readying a volley of verbal torment.

That’s when I reached under my sweatshirt and whipped out my gun. Pointed it right at her face, holding it with both hands, aiming it at her forehead.

“Wahh!” was all she could muster, in a creaky wheel type squeal, and she threw up her chubby, greasy paws, lamely, like a pathetic crook being busted by the police. Her jaw dropped limply, then her eyes pressed shut and her face knotted into a mask of terror.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Then it was pandemonium, everyone in the class roaring and running.

I thought of something witty to say before I pulled the trigger. But it wouldn’t matter anyway. Actions speak louder than words.

Then I did it. I pulled the trigger. I shot my teacher.

But not with a bullet.

The gun was actually a water pistol. And I shot her in the face with Coca-Cola.

Mrs. Henry sat firmly planted in her mobility cart, which was parked behind her desk. She didn’t even try to escape, wheel away, or zoom off. Nope. She just sat there. Trembling and hyperventilating. Mrs. Henry frozen, stuck as a stick in the mud as the mess of sweet brown syrupy soda streaked down her face. And that ole’ Mrs. Henry’s sure was wearing a shocked expression; shit, her face was contorted as someone choking on poison gas.

Suddenly I smelled piss and spotted a yellow puddle below Mrs. Henry’s desk.

“Bang bang!” I screamed at her, sardonically. Then I wiped the sweat from my brows, and chortled again, this time like a hyena, and my heart palpitated as I let the water gun fall to the floor. Then I took off running, feeling like God!

Of course I was later arrested and expelled, sent to a reform school. However, to my surprise, Mrs. Henry refused to press criminal charges.

I also heard that, following the incident, she kept mostly quiet. Didn’t say too much. To anyone.

And at the end of the school year, she retired.

FEAR OF THE FEAR OF FLYING

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer March 2002

“Listen, nothing will shock me. I’m a psychiatrist,” proclaimed the tiny woman, speaking loudly over the white noise whir of the plane’s engines.

The tiny woman must have only been 4’11 and half her height came from the mop of tangly jet-black hair that sprang from her little egg-shaped head. The tiny woman had bronzed skin and wore bulky, squarish eyeglasses that occupied most of her ovular face.

The long-legged, buxom blond flight attendant squinted, bit her lip, looked the lady over and guessed her age at around 50. The flight attendant then figured the tiny lady was probably telling the truth. After all, she’d just stepped in from the first-class cabin and was wearing several gold rings, a gold necklace, diamond earrings, and had on a loose-fitting Chanel dress and matching designer sandals.

“Hey, try to take a deep breath,” the tiny woman sounded as she stepped down the aisle and sat next to the passenger in seat 24A. The passenger in 24A had begun violently hyperventilating the second the plane took off and had screamed an explosive horror-movie wail as the landing gear bumped up into the plane’s belly.

The panicked passenger sat unresponsive, quivering, gritting her teeth. Her hands strangling the armrests, her eyes were bulging, almost jumping off her face.

The panicked passenger’s outburst had freaked out everyone on the plane. She’d gone from a nondescript woman to a threat, a potential terrorist in mere seconds.

Everyone aboard was watching her in dismay. The wolf-eyed, balding ex-military type across the aisle seemed to be sizing her up, mentally shuffling through the quickest ways of killing her.

The young Sikh two rows behind the petrified passenger had unhooked his belt and was narrowing his eyes and popping up his head over the seat, like a malevolent gopher, and was readying a leather belt, fashioning it as a possible whip or garrote. Given the stink-eye he usually received on planes, especially in the days after 9/11, he was ready for anything.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer The elderly man in suspenders, next to the Sikh, sat shaking his head and muttered to himself about how he missed the days when “most ah you had to worry about on a plane was a dang crying baby… And you could smoke too…”

Probably no one on board would’ve suspected the passenger in question to cause a scene. She was just another late-middle-aged, slightly overweight woman. She wore a clean red floral-patterned dress, and her hair had been cut short, like most women of a certain age.

Although she was on the tall side, at least for a woman, at around 6’0, aside from that, she was about as anonymous as they come. As anonymous and invisible as any typically dressed, overweight aging woman.

“Okay, breathe in for four seconds, hold your breath for four seconds, then exhale for four seconds, then repeat,” whispered the tiny woman, as she leaned into and held the frightened passenger’s hand and counted breaths.

“One, two, three, four.”

“One, two, three, four,” repeated the passenger, almost suffocating on the words, her cheeks puffing out like little half-moons as she then held in her breath. After a few breathing cycles, her chest stopped heaving and she rested back into her seat, wiped her watery eyes with the back of her hand.

“I’m afraid… I’m afraid of flying…” confessed the passenger, in shaky syllables, as she shifted her gaze and stared directly into the tiny woman’s upcurved, caramel-colored eyes.

The tiny woman smiled at her, caringly. It was a genuine smile. A smile that crinkled the skin at the corners of the eyes. A smile that showed dimples. It was a smile of honesty, compassion, and understanding.

Then the tiny woman stated in a maternal voice that “you should think about the statistics,” that “flying is the safest method of transportation. Your chances of anything happening were far worse in the car ride to the airport. But most people don’t fear cars the way they fear planes.”

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer

“Too many movies,” said the passenger, her speech stabilizing and her breath calming down, “I watch too many movies. And too much news.”

“I know,” responded the tiny woman, and the two shared a laugh.

MIDDLE SCHOOL FRIEND

I hadn’t seen her since the last day of middle school.

But I recognize her the instant I see her at the entrance gate.

People say how the world is a small place. And maybe it is, when you find yourself on a test run, with a person you sat near in 8th grade biology class, 30 years ago.

Details are hazy, but a fog soon clears in my head, and I remember the time I stole a box of tampons from her locker. I’m not sure how I was able to break into her locker, but I did.

It’s clear as day… It was the afternoon of that epic food fight, in the cafeteria, that soggy day, when the dining hall full of 8th graders erupted into bedlam. Tossing bread, sloppy joes, pudding, cartons of milk, apples, mac n cheese, tater tots…

The cafeteria a happy hurricane of crappy food. Crappy food flying in every direction. And me, I was throwing tampons, until our principal, a tall Black woman who used to play semi-pro basketball, all 6’6 of her, stormed into the cafeteria.

No one dared throw food at the principal; in fact, upon her entering the cafeteria, the whole room hushed silent, and the masses of brace faces, zit faces, embarrassed adolescents went still as a diorama. The principal’s arms akimbo, her face was contorted in a mask of anger, and I noticed she got even angrier after seeing the scattered tampons strewn about the white-tiled cafeteria floor.

Everyone stood frozen in terror, possibly expecting that any second our principal might start snatching kids, chewing their heads off, literally or figuratively. I’m not sure if he was the first, but a fat kid we called “Rerun,” bolted out of the cafeteria,

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer running far faster than a kid that fat should be able to run, and, almost on cue, everyone else followed suit, kids sprinting, scurrying off like frightened cats.

And I remember she’d fallen, twisted her ankle, nearly got trampled by kids escaping the principal’s wrath. The principal, towering over the kids, was like Godzilla moving through Tokyo as the panic ensued.

Yet I remained, helped her up to her feet. Ringed my arm around her shoulder.

Then I helped her to the nurse’s office, feeling as if we were soldiers maneuvering through a battlefield…

Yup. It sure had been a while. A short lifetime.

I hadn’t seen her since middle school. Those wanton days. When everything was terrifying, forbidden and fun. When days were a month and a month was a year.

Time felt different then.

After middle school, she’d transferred to a “sports” school... It was weird like that, back then, how I’d have classmates who’d transfer schools, and after that, they’d basically vanish. This was far before social media, so once a person transferred schools or moved, they were gone. Dust in the wind… You’d need a private investigator or you’d have to put their picture on a milk carton if you ever wanted to find them again…

But she’s returned, if only for this moment. She’s across the tube. Her eyes are narrowed to slits, but I can still see her blues. Her face is similar to its former incarnation. It’s round as a pie. And her cheeks are chubbier and redder than I recall. She looks somehow like a 44-year-old 14-year-old. It’s off-putting.

We’re clad in white jumpsuits, strapped by smart ropes to our bucket seats. The engine is a whir. Barely audible. There are various beeps. A flash of white light every few seconds, a spark or two as we touch the curve. Then we’re rocketed and sucked through, out the other end in minutes. A safe passage, safely passing a series of sonic miles.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Exiting the cartridge, I approach her. There’s no need to make introductions.

We’d been competing in a staring contest throughout the journey. We know each other.

“What do you do now?”

“I’m a middle school principal.”

I see she’s grown to over 6’5 and is dwarfing me. She says she played shooting guard in the WNBA.

“Divorced, no kids.”

“Divorced, one kid.”

“Living the dream?”

“I’m trying.”

SPONTANEOUS OUTBURSTS OF DANCING

I love funk music. Possibly too much. When I hear James Brown, Prince, Parliament Funkadelic, I don’t know, man, it just… Sets me off.

Like fireworks.

For real, I lose it. The funk comes on, and I can’t resist. I must dance.

And I’m a horrible dancer too. I’ve got no rhythm. I’ve got two left feet.

But I don’t care.

I let loose and the music courses through my veins.

When I’m at home, it’s not a problem. But if I’m out, if I’m at a supermarket, and

“Uptown Funk” comes on the loudspeaker, I can’t contain the urge. I must dance.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer I’ll be in the fruit aisle, shaking my groove-thing.

Yes, people will point, yell, aim smartphones at me.

But it doesn’t matter. Because I know what I have to do.

I must dance. Throw my limbs around, punch, kick the air. I must dance.

Breakdancing, Salsa dance moves. It’s whatever comes to mind. And body.

The music, the funk just takes control.

As it should.

THE GREEN BANDIT

FRED CITY, FUCKSTATE: There have been numerous reports of a tiny man, around 5’0 tall and of sleight frame, wearing a neon green spandex jumpsuit, running through city streets, and snatching cellphones away from those walking while texting.

After grabbing the phones, the man stops and hurls the devices into traffic, and then laughs loudly while dashing off.

Panicked pedestrians, in a quandary, are often unsure of whether to go after the man or chase after their phones. Most have cursed, yelled at the man and then pursued their phone.

The man is described as having a cannon of an arm, able to throw the phones, upwards of perhaps 40 to 50 yards, usually in a discus motion. He is also lightning quick, according to eyewitnesses, running nearly as fast as a cheetah.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Furthermore, the “Green Phone Bandit,” as he has been dubbed, is fleet on his feet, and utilizes a variety of stiff-arms, juke moves, and hurtling techniques to evade capture. In addition, witnesses report his spandex suit to be slathered in a greasy substance, rendering it difficult for passersby, good Samaritans to apprehend him.

One security guard attempting to tackle him stumbled, slipped and headbutted a parking meter. The parking meter was unharmed.

The bandit has been apparently targeting Apple stores and Starbucks. The majority of his attacks have taken place within the vicinity of such establishments.

Witnesses report that the phone snatcher is a ginger, wears Reebok Pumps and has the word “think” in multiple languages scrawled in black ink all over his tight-fitting green clothes.

One witness reported the Green Bandit had emerged from a manhole. Several witnesses reported him kicking open the trunks of parked cars, bursting out screaming gibberish. All of the cars involved had Theranos stickers on their passenger side windows.

It’s not known at this time if the phone smasher has any association with the company.

FRED City Police are investigating but don’t seem to care. If you have any information about the Green Bandit, or if you are the Green Bandit, you can basically just go fuck yourself.

Now back to the nonsense…

JACK DORSEY YOGA DREAM

Drunk off the Korean liquor, I swam into bed, stretched into a crucifixion pose.

There I spun, floated into the mouth of sleep.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Soon I dreamt I was back at college, holding a stack of Bibles. I was heavy as the weight of a planet, but my soul was like dust, my soul dispersing, in a trillion mites, moving through a blustery passage of autumnal air.

My bald head felt like a solar panel, collecting courage in golden shine.

Milky clouds parted and a fire red sun hovered forth, over the horizon, and its heat rose in ripples, sizzled the sidewalk, shifted the season.

I was sweating. And I was searching. For the library. Everywhere. I wandered and wandered. My feet were claws. I was a cognoscenti with an invisible gun to my head. I was a knife to a toddler’s neck, an intruder in an Armani suicide suit.

I was diffident and chimerical. I was a belly-dancer making a declaration of war.

Stalking the mysteriously vast, verdant campus, the campus seemed ancient yet novel. It was a complicated system of bushes, trees, flowers, and glass buildings.

It was a matrix, a whole new world. A world bigger and weirder and far more fragrant than I remember it. Almost every building had been reshaped, remodeled. Once gray and square, the structures were now clear as freshwater and either triangular as pyramids or tubular as penises. Everything was towering stacks of glass.

It was as if the college had been destroyed and rebuilt by gay aliens. Freudian flashers. Or extraterrestrial Egyptians with Napoleon complexes.

The students on campus all looked so young. Many were in grizzly bear suits; some were in bikinis, and were girls going wild, twerking and dancing like strippers as they pranced about the college. And many egg-shaped bodies were wearing VR goggles, and a ziggy zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-zooming by on neon-flashing hoverboards.

An aboriginal tribesman, in only a loincloth, his body painted bright bold colors, held a sharp wooden spear, and darted through the campus. He was chasing a cheetah creature. The cheetah bolted by, its mouth frothing. I was amazed at how adroitly it maneuvered through the masses. And the smile twisting at its lips displayed admirable mirth.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer It dawned on me, like a lightning bolt, like God’s command, that I should be looking elsewhere for the library. But where? In the eyes of the masses, I still was only a fairy. A face for the toilet. A cockroach on hindlegs. Dead as wood.

Worse yet, I was an iconoclast. I’d violated the sacred library covenant. Flicking my gaze at the Bibles, at their yellowish pages, I couldn’t believe I’d kept them for so long.

Passing by a young, petite nun, with rotted teeth and the body of a goat, I saw the nun’s upper lip curling in the hush of the wind. In her tiny hands, she clutched and displayed, over her chest, a handwritten sign asking for Jesus money because her cat was starving.

About to slip her $20, I asked her if she smoked crack. She said no. She said she didn’t even smoke weed. I told her she should smoke weed, passed her the $20, and politely suggested she talk to Jesus about learning coding or robotics.

Around and around and around I went. My footsteps were in hieroglyphic patterns. Every path I cut through the campus led me elsewhere. None led to the library.

I saw the shiny triangular football stadium. I saw a pyramid pavilion. A carrot-shaped gazebo. But still no fucking library.

Then I trudged by a shivering longnecked slender man in a ski mask and silver wetsuit. His legs looked far too long for his frame. He was playing “Hangar 18” by Megadeth on a set of bagpipes as he stood defiantly in front of the sprawling flying saucer cafeteria that had an assortment of dining options way superior to when I attended the school, only 15 years prior. (Dammit, sometimes I’d skateboard a mile in the snow to get fresh, hot donuts! You ever skateboard in the snow? DON’T EVEN FUCKING TRY!)

I found my way to a domed building. It was nondescript. Solid gray, with no windows. It had only a five-story-high open double door leading up to its golden dome.

A force of concern, a signal of nature drew me forward, and from behind the dome, I could see the library’s clocktower. Figuring I was following the correct direction, I allowed the flow, knowingly hopping on one leg.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer I hopped and hopped, into the dome; inside, it was like a massive post-apocalyptic subway station, empty, with veins of corridors branching in multiple directions. But every corridor led to a dead end. A closed door. Or a door painted over a wall.

I hopped backward, still on one leg, out of the dome, and saw the clocktower of the library was a balloon, a hot-air balloon, floating upwards slowly, toward a fluffy white ball of clouds.

The cheetah ran by me again, but I didn’t spot the tribesman. The cheetah stopped, after it passed me, and did a U-turn, trotted over.

The cheetah lifted its gaze and our eyes connected. Blasts of electricity bolted between us. The cheetah shocked me with an all-knowing look. It knew where the library was. I knew it knew. It knew that I knew that it knew.

Lifting my wing, I let my stack of Bibles tumble to the ground. Then I tore off my wolf gray Armani suicide suit, and, like a male stripper, I ripped my white dress shirt to shreds and then wiped away the shirt’s stringy bits, like fallen hairs, and Kung Fu kicked off my possum pussy wingtips.

Donning only my tiger-print man thong and knee-high beige llama socks, my hairy body was joyously exposed to the elements. Then I bent forward, collected my Bibles, stood upright, and triumphantly mounted the cheetah, like a horse, and I yodeled, and the creature called God.

The cheetah kicked up steam, sprinted fast as fuck onto the outside road, then hit the highway, and we ran through rush-hour traffic, the cheetah weaving through the gridlock, motorists double-taking, rubbernecking, snapping cell phone photos of me, a hairy middle-aged man, in a thong. Me, a hairy man, with a stack of Bibles, tucked under my arm. Me, riding a cheetah, a fucking cheetah, like a galloping horse, through the machinery and hubbub of the highway.

The cheetah took an exit, barreled down an offramp, toward an abandoned building. The cheetah then stopped in front of the massive decaying tower and growled.

Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer I stepped off the cheetah, and the animal darted off. Then the aboriginal tribesman reappeared, this time in a jetpack, flying after the cheetah, shouting tribal chants.

I hopped on one leg toward the dark tower. It was an empty library, alright, commandeered, the property purchased by Twitter. An electronic billboard flickered atop the rotting remains of the structure, displaying a picture of Jack Dorsey, naked, in a yoga pose.

In front of the building was a beeping attention box; its yellow lights pulsed like I was looking down at it from a plane, as if approaching a city at night…

Beside the box was a firepit, constructed from a circle of broken Korean liquor bottles. In the pit’s center was a burning pile of Bibles.

CONFESSIONS OF AN ARSONIST