The following afternoon, the rain had stopped, and slivers of golden sunshine were slicing through the heavy gray and white blotches of clouds blanketing the sky.
Seeing the sunshine made Sam feel better and he started his daily diary entry by writing, “I love Bangkok!”
Nok’s cousin showed up at around this time, knocking hard on the door, shaking it.
But it was not only him, he was flanked by 3 other guys. All muscly and dressed in black shirts and black jeans and all with tattoos covering the entirety of their bodies. 3 of the 4 had longish black hair shaved at the sides and ponytails in the back, except for one guy, a dude missing several teeth, whose smallish head was shaved bald.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer The men pushed in roughly as he opened the door, one saying something in broken English about “she leave thing on balcony” and the men swarmed and huddled around Sam, forcing him forward to the balcony, his 17th floor balcony overlooking the Olympic-sized pool.
He screamed for help, but one of the men slapped a palm over Sam’s lips, silencing his cries. Shivers raced down Sam’s spine and his heart beat like a jackhammer.
As they shoved and surged forward, through his spacious suite, he knew. He knew the score. He knew from the warning blogs he’d read, and on the plane over he’d read Stephen Leather’s novel “Private Dancer.”
He’d taken precautions, but the “Land of Scams” had gotten him. He’d been scammed. The last few days were a sham. A farce. A fake. A performance. A simulation. An X-Rated Truman Show.
It had been a grand fake. The girl was a snake, an actress, a ghost and a vampire.
Everything was a lie!
Everything was a simulacrum!
The palm trees out there were probably fake. The smiles, those thin smiles were fake too. Hell, the sun was even fake, he’d bet, some great big lamp installed by the TAT, the geezers and their cowering manservants in pantaloons.
Overpowered, the sweaty palm cupped and muzzled his mouth and Sam wriggled and whimpered and tasted its saltiness.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer One of the men, who smelled strongly of cigarettes, was muttering what sounded like orders in Thai. One of them was giggling like a hyena.
Like a rugby scrum, the huddled mass burst out to the balcony. As he neared the balcony railing and saw down at the pool below, he was suddenly grateful for at least one thing…
He was grateful that- for at least a short time- he got to be a rock star. He got to feel like one. Live like one. Drink all day and fuck lots of women. Stay in a luxury hotel room in an exotic location. He got to live that life.
But it was now over. And that was okay. He could go in peace.
Then he released. Let his twisting, fighting limbs go limp.
He accepted the percentage. And he quit the dream.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer
ALIEN IMMIGRATION TO THE IMPERIAL CITY
A tropical sun hung high in the baby blue morning sky, caking the crowd in its molten golden patina.
The aliens outside queued and huddled in clumps. They’d come as early as 4 a.m.
The line of aliens already spilling into the busy road parallel to the massive government complex.
Some aliens defensively held umbrellas to block the sun’s scorching rays, while others hid, drenched in sweat, shielding themselves with thick stacks of paperwork.
At the head of the line, a skeletal man in what looked like an airline pilot’s uniform stood in defense of the complex’s massive, impenetrable blue glass doors.
The doors standing nearly 90 feet high. In his curled, white latex-gloved hand he
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer clutched a pyrometer, which he pointed at the aliens’ heads, beeping and clicking at each skull.
A bugle played from somewhere above. The aliens then shifted their feet and began to shuffle inside, into air conditioning so cool it was like walking inside a refrigerator, and the aliens were made to walk backward as they passed through the mouth of the gargantuan sliding glass doors.
Once inside, the aliens were met with a lion tamer without a lion. He was a severe-looking man, with small green eyes, a nimbus of frizzy red hair, a hairy red chest, and he wore only aqua-blue genie pants. His bare feet were swollen, ashen and without toes. Sweating profusely, he was swinging a leather whip, which he snapped as he instructed, in broken English, that each alien perform three consecutive dabs in order to carry on further.
The obese, infirm, elderly, disabled or any alien unable to perform his instruction either had to pay a small fine or just go fuck right off.
Passing the lion tamer, the aliens shouted their passport numbers, backwards, at the next security pillar, a sumo wrestler in a tutu, and upon the sumo’s nodding approval, the aliens entered the Fuck-You-Machine, which was a combination MRI machine/X-ray/conveyer belt/baggage inspection/peep show screening instrument.
The aliens lay stomach flat, face down on a pallet, and were then fed into the Fuck-You-Machine, via its moving conveyer belt, screened, and then slid down a towering, twisting slide that fed into a five-foot-deep ball pit filled with stolen cell phones...
After swimming, wading out of the pit of stolen phones, the aliens were greeted by a circus clown in a noose necktie; the clown looked like Ronald McDonald and had spring legs and a grossly enlarged right hand and incised into the clown’s enlarged right hand was a QR code, which the clown dipped into a bucket of candy red paint.
The clown slapped each alien on the forehead with a red print of the QR code, providing the aliens a code that allowed them the opportunity to receive a number and maybe a chance to see the Snakeman.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Aliens fresh from the tub of stolen cell phones each received their QR code, via head slap, and then proceeded further, following a set of red arrows down a dark feeder hallway, which narrowed to a crawl space leading to an asshole-shaped latex hole the aliens were made to force themselves through before the aliens finally emerged, panting and on their bellies, into the stomach of the complex.
The complex was big, bright, even colder than the entryway, and ovular as an egg.
Its center was hollow but lining its edges were three layers, three floors of bureaus. Each floor had offices for offices and offices for stamps and offices for stamps required to receive other stamps, offices for stamps that allowed for further documentation and apostilles and offices for documents requiring copies and signatures and verification, verifications of verifications, and, finally, an office requiring perfunctory repetitions of each or any sequence… Each and any sequence accomplished in an unyielding, algebraic-like sequence difficult to explain but understood eventually- with due diligence and a comfortable pair of shoes...
The aliens followed the arrows. Immigration officers in spacesuits hopped by on penis-shaped pogo sticks, whizzed by on skateboards and Segways and answered and asked no questions.
A pudgy alien in smart goggles, a white poncho and white latex gloves yelled at his hand machine, his voice muffled by his N95 mask.
“Look, if ya don’t take care of that fucking reptile, I leave the WORST REVIEW
EVER on TripAdvisor!”
A pack of bare-chested Cossacks riding Siberian tigers thundered by the weary, incoming aliens; the Cossacks yelping and twirling nagaikas and having an entirely unclear purpose.
The high-arched ceilings of the five-domed complex were video screens showing advertisements for various sanitary products, face masks, home delivery services, and robot parts. Intermittently the screens displayed the national flag in bright red and green bursts that’d hit and illuminate every angle of the complex like Christmas lights.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer At the end of the red arrow path was a bureaucrat in a black scuba suit and matching, short black cape. He had no face and thrust a flamethrower aloft, the little blue flame at its nozzle burning brightly in the chilled air.
The scuba suit bureaucrat had sensory organs like a bat. Holding his flamethrower like a hose, he then began blasting ropes of fire, torching aliens in socks and sandals, or the non-blind wearing sunglasses inside, or any alien ending a sentence with the word “dog.” The bureaucrat setting the offenders alight and flicking sign language phrases as the accursed became running red and black balls of flames.
The accursed ashes would then be promptly hoovered up by an officer spacesuit; the spacesuits collecting the remnants like wayward golf balls before flushing them down an exposed public toilet/trash can/enema machine at the corner of the complex, right next to the hot pink escalator that’d preemptively move in the opposite direction of anybody trying to walk up or down it.
Those lucky enough to pass the faceless scuba suit bureaucrat were ready for the next leg of the immigratory process. The Crocodile Cunt.
The Crocodile Cunt was perched on a floating lily pad in a small manmade lotus pond in the center of the complex. A series of concrete box steps led to the Crocodile Cunt. The Crocodile’s mouth yawned wide open, and inside the dip of the mouth were a set of marbles, on each marble a number.
Aliens, one at a time, ran, skipped or jumped over the concrete steps, up to the Cunt, and attempted to snatch out a marble ball.
A few were successful, plucking out the marble ball, then dashing off to wait in the line for the line for the room of mirrors.
But, of course, not every alien was so lucky. Many had his/her fingers, hand or arm bitten off. The amputees crying out, gushing blood and plunging, splashing and crashing and sinking underneath the lotus pond’s surface. The pond’s gurgly, reddening waters sucking the aliens down, faster than an alcoholic guzzling the day’s first beer…
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer The surviving aliens were then made to present their marble to a chatelaine in a wedding dress and black veil, the chatelaine armed with a solid gold AK-47. The chatelaine guarding a turnstile and shooting dead those aliens stupid enough to attempt any sleight of hand, knock-knock jokes, or other trickeration…
Aliens then churned through the turnstile and followed along another set of red arrows leading to a room that led to the room of mirrors. Once QR face scans were completed by a flying dildo drone, a set of jagged teeth doors swiped open.
Ten or so aliens were allowed to pass at a time.
In the room of mirrors, a rotund green man with a shark fin haircut stood naked, arms clapping at the ceiling, his Buddha belly jiggling, rippling like a big bowl of Jell-O. His mouth stretched into a happy grin. Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days”
played loudly from a roving speaker bot, and the green man’s upper body swayed, out of rhythm, to the beat.
The shark fin man’s feet were nailed, like a hasty crucifixion, to the reception desk, and at his side stood a ladyboy officer in tap pants.
The ladyboy officer had a most masculine face, a perfectly angled square jaw and big bulbous breasts. Then Officer Ladyboy dropped to her knees, bowing in front of the shark fin man, kowtowing, then she started suckling, slurping and playing his floppy penis like a flute.
Aliens passed by, were required to fist-bump the shark fin man, then followed more red arrows, arrows that forked down two dark hallways in two directions.
One set of arrows led to another mirrored room that was a gas chamber. Its doors slapping shut. The entering aliens euthanized by happy gas. The floor falling open, the aliens dropping below into the pit of captured cannibal crypto bros, like raw meat tossed to lions in a zoo…
The other set of red arrows led to the lair of the Snakeman. Upon approach, the aliens felt the air become far colder, so cold they could see their breath fogging before them. Then they started to smell a strong scent of sandalwood as they legged toward the lair…
The Snakeman’s lair was an open-doored, hotel type room that was made from pure gold.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Gold everything. Floors, walls, cornices, ceilings, TV, bed, chairs. Everything shiny, glinty pure gold, everything glittering in the room’s arctic temps… There was even a golden effigy of the rapper Trinidad James, caked in golden dust… The rapper’s effigy crucified with golden nails at the entrance of the open doorway…
A faint wail of bagpipes sounded from a roving speaker bot…
The Snakeman was a manbeast in invisible clothes. He had the torso, legs, chest and arms of a gangly human being, and the head of a king cobra.
The Snakeman sat cross-legged upon a solid gold stool, and his harem of seraglios, each painted gold, were shackled, ankle and wrist, by lengthy golden chain leashes affixed to the ceiling, and the seraglios either twerked somberly to the bagpipes’ wail or burned sandalwood incense and prayed and licked at the Snakeman’s feet.
Upon the aliens’ entry, the Snakeman, in a voice that sounded like a parent scolding a child, demanded each alien jump up and down twice. Then recite his/her passport number, frontwards, backwards. Then the aliens had to spin in a circle. Then do a pirouette while reciting their passport number in multiples of five. Then do a headstand and recite their passport number divided by two, then by three and rounded to the nearest decimal.
Aliens who spoke any of the requested numbers incorrectly fell through a trapdoor in the floor… The trapdoor leading to the pit of captured cannibal crypto bros…
Those aliens who answered the passport riddles correctly were bestowed upon them a chip, an electronic chip, implanted into the jawbone, the chip slapped onto the aliens’ faces by a seraglio; the chip allowing the aliens the honor and privilege of existing in the Kingdom. In 30 days, though, if the aliens hadn’t evacuated, or died of the Virus, they’d be required to repeat the immigratory process.
As an exit, the fortunate aliens were moved, via travelator, to a pink, lotus-shaped shuttle pad, outside the government complex, where the aliens were fitted into bubble wrap suits and then launched by a slingshot that resembled a pair of thong underwear.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer
The aliens were then free to run through a minefield full of rampaging Cossacks, tigers, wild boars and elephants. The aliens free to flee to the safety of the pagoda gates framing the Imperial City.
BANGKOK VOODOO DOLL APP
Easing into the tuk-tuk’s backseat, Bird looped her arms around my neck. Her head was thrown back and her face was hanging like a half-moon over her pill-blue surgical mask. Staring at me pensively, her hooded eyes thinned.
Fake lashes fluttering, she tilted her head sideways, and shoved me off her, playfully, and muttered a Thai curse word as she whisked her raven black hair over her right shoulder.
Then she lowered her mask, revealing puckered, pouty pink lips. It surprised me she’d even wanted to breathe, with the pandemic and all, not to mention the
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer city’s atrocious air pollution. Sukhumvit Road’s toxic vapors were their usual gnarly, rendering respiration akin to sucking on a running tailpipe.
Coughing at my hands, I felt warm wet droplets of breath and noticed that, for some unholy reason, I wasn’t wearing a face mask. I rarely leave home without one. Even before the pandemic I’d always wear a mask. Bangkok air necessitates wearing a mask. It’s deadly, the Bangkok air. Albeit it’s not as deadly and terrifying as the roads…
The roads, oh, the fucking roads. The roads in Thailand are a damn warzone, a chaotic jungle of rubber, concrete, and steel…
But traffic was too clogged to be malevolent. It was moving slower than a retard on Xanax.
Bird’s pink lips curved into a smile. Her teeth white and thick as pearls. Then her shimmering smile slowly died. Her face shifting from a smile to scowl and her opal eyes dropped as she whipped out her phone from her ass and flicked the Oppo on.
She then started stabbing at the Voodoo Doll app, happily slashing and cutting her ex-boyfriend’s threadbare body with a variety of kitchen knives. The poor bastard’s pudgy mug had been photoshopped over the doll’s head and his contorted face seemed to be quivering.
Sneering devilishly, she muttered, “He no love me…” in her singsong Thai accent, hitting a lingering down tone on that last vowel. She shoved the phone back down her ass and dug out a hot pink motorcycle helmet from under the seat, strapped it on and lowered the mirrored visor. I could see my reflection in it. My face flushed crimson and my forehead crinkled under my silver cowboy hat.
I was wondering why the fuck we were in a tuk-tuk, anyway. I never take one of these things. They’re mostly for the tourists. I’ve been in Bangkok for 7 years. I’m no tourist. Though, in the eyes of the natives, because I’m a “farang,” a paleface foreigner, I always will be, in a way, a tourist, no matter how long I stay…
Looking forward, I spotted the driver slumped at the wheel. The skeletal, late middle-aged man, with a face reminiscent of a Thai Snoop Dogg, was gurgling, spitting up chunks of what looked like purply pieces of puke.
“Hey! HEY! Who gave coronavirus to the tuk-tuk driver?” I squawked as I gawked, suddenly gasping as I felt a surge of acid scratching at the back of my throat.
Then I swung my head to see Bird on the back of a nearby motorcycle taxi. She was waving me over, like a traffic cop. Jumping out of the tuk-tuk, I threw the driver a 100 baht note, in case he didn’t die.
Then I mounted the motorcycle, sitting behind Bird, and I snuggled up to her.
Hugged my arms around her soft, slender hourglass frame. My arms on her tender hot flesh, I felt a rush at the silky touch of her bare midriff under her baby blue half-shirt. Her light brown, milk chocolatey skin looking so damn delicious I could eat it.
I was a happy cannibal. And we rocketed to high speeds on that bike, the driver ragging on his 2-stroke engine, the engine buzzing like a chainsaw as we weaved furiously through the idle traffic, the way only motorcycle taxis in Bangkok can.
Traffic laws, which are arbitrary and mostly voluntary in Thailand anyway, seem to apply even less to motorcyclists…
Our exhilarating, roaring motorcycle ride was wildly fun. Its usual art. An oeuvre suicidal, brilliant, efficiently quick and kamikaze, filled with fits of starts and stops, skillful maneuvering, near collisions, frenetic speeds, and welcome whaps of face-cooling air…
(My buddy Crazy Carl said that Thai drivers, particularly the motorcyclists, motorcycle taxi drivers, most all believe in reincarnation. So they don’t fear death.
Their thinking being that they’ll just come back anyway. Crazy Carl said some must look forward to death, because being a motorcycle taxi driver in Thailand probably sucks… He said the ones happy in this life are those carrying protective amulets… Always try to ride with a Thai motorcycle taxi driver who’s wearing an amulet, Crazy Carl preached…)
When we reached the hotel, which was on a side street in lower Sukhumvit, I noticed Bird was gone and that the motorcycle driver had no head.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer I paid the headless motorcycle driver and, in the process, found my money had bloodstains on it.
The headless driver waied me and zoomed off into the humidity of the night, a gigantic plume of black smoke spitting from his exhaust pipe, almost as big as a mushroom cloud. The smoke was so thick and dark that the glittery neon skyline in the background appeared as if it were an impressionist oil painting.
The hotel was cold as a morgue. It was a dimly lit, teakwood cave, full of tiger-skin rugs, rainbow sashes and pink frilly drapes. The hallways looked to be an intricate complex of tunnels that didn’t seem to end or start.
At the front desk, the hotel staff were foamy brown blobs. Floating about, they were dressed in traditional Thai attire of golden pantaloons, colorful sarongs, and pointy hats with tips like temple spires.
A short fellow checked me in. He had a heavy black garbage bag over his head, with slits cut out for the eyes and mouth. He was like the Thai version of the Zodiac Killer.
Zodiac’s bony arms twitching, he spoke to me, telepathically, in a Tony Soprano-ish New Jersey voice, imploring: “Look, don’t you never wrong a Thai woman.
They’ll cut your dick off while you’re sleeping. My sister, she sliced off like four dicks. But she don’t throw ‘em in the duck pond, like youse always hear, yanno.
Nah, she’s saved ‘em. Keeps ‘em… Trophies in a glass case…”
I rode the complimentary hotel Segway through a maze of winding hallways, and the Segway braked, automatically, when I arrived at my suite. Right after I stepped off, the Segway zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzz-zipped away on its own.
I slid my room card, hard, and the door beeped a Black Sabbath riff. Then I turned the L-shaped handle which caused the cherry red door to shatter into more than a million fragments resembling rose petals.
Inside, I found Bird already there.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer The room was small, painted peach pink. It was practically a cabin in a gay cruise ship. And in its center, it had a jacuzzi without water instead of a bed. Inside the jacuzzi were stacks upon stacks of heart-shaped valentine pillows, and I kicked off my shoes and jumped into the jacuzzi, eased in next to Bird. A Muay-Thai kickboxing match was on the wall-mounted flatscreen TV.
Bird slung her arm around me, and I took a good long look at her unmasked face.
She looked like a man. It occurred to me that she must be a ladyboy. How could I not have known?
Normally, they’re not my thing. But it’s been a while since I did anal sex. So I thought of giving it a go. Even in Bangkok it’s hard to find a woman willing to do free, consensual anal sex, and if this one wouldn’t do it, well…
The only ladyboy I’d been with was many years ago. I met her in the back of a bar, late at night, in Pattaya. I was stumbling drunk, and I can’t remember how or why, but I know she gifted me thrilling, toe-curling head in a toilet stall. It was like an out-of-body experience.
But immediately after I jizzed in her mouth, she retched, crumpled, and hugged the crapper and hurled. And I was so freaked out by her vomiting that I yanked up my pants and ran away.
After that, I remember eating fried scorpions on the beach. Then I passed by a pack of violent ladyboys who were beating and robbing a middle-age German tourist on a side street. Then I vaguely recall passing out, sleeping rough, in the doorway, in front of (what I believed to be) my hotel because the front door was locked, and no one answered the doorbell.
That was my only ladyboy experience.
It was late. I was drunk. And I couldn’t see that ladyboy’s face too well in the dim lighting of the bar bathroom.
But this one, next to me, in this pile of red pillows, I could see. I inspected every inch of her face’s symmetry. It was mannish. She had a real square jaw. She definitely looked far too much like a dude for my taste.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer She cuddled up closer to me, eying me ravenously. She might have a female body, but it seemed as if she still had a male brain and a male sex drive. The way she was looking at me, it was like a starving man eying a piece of meat. I started to realize what life might be like for women, dudes glaring at them this way, every day, and I made a mental note to try to be less of a perv in public. Or at least wear sunglasses more.
We’d been locking eyes for a few sultry seconds, but I couldn’t take it. She was too manly. I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t bring myself to try anything.
So I swung my gaze back to the TV. On it was now cockfighting.
Two torsos, with large erect penises, dueling and clanking them at one another.
And then the scene shifted to another style of cockfighting, that of chickens.
This piqued her interest. Still staring intently at me, she said, in that nasal honk, singsong accent, “Papa, he have rooster. He go boxing, boxing rooster. He love rooster more he love me. More he love mama. Mama want kill rooster.”
Hey, I could understand. I spent a few weeks on a road trip in Isan and myself had wanted to kill a few roosters. The feathered fucking things crying and wailing and cockle-doodle-doo-ing all night, outside.
I’d plotted horrific ways to kill the animals, too, dreaming of grabbing an AK-47, going John Rambo and cold smoking those RAH-RAH-RAH-RAA-ROOOOOO ass feathery motherfuckers. Or kidnapping the creatures and throwing them into a river with concrete shoes like a mob snitch. I was imagining all sorts of shit that’d throw PETA people into paroxysms.
In the end, I settled on earplugs and simultaneously cranking the loud AC and ceiling fan. Earplugs are essential equipment for living anywhere in Thailand, really…
Bird was getting antsy. She was clearly upset I’d not been returning her advances.
I could see her, from the corner of my eye, frowning. And she upped the stakes by slipping down and off her black miniskirt.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer She was wearing mesh, see-thru gray panties and through them I could spot a hairy cunt. She was post-op. Almost definitely no anal sex, I figured. Dammit, this night was the pits!
“Why you no love me?” she whispered, running a meaty hand, playfully along my arm. Her long purple nails sharp as talons.
And she scooted up closer, her soft, fragrant hair brushing delicately at the nape of my neck.
Then she pressed her big perky tits to my chest, grinding towards me, closer and closer, her flat little nose now nudging my cheek.
And closer, closer, she got, our bodies locked. She was practically wrapping herself over me like a blanket, her minty hot and humid prickly pulses of breath tickling at my ear, touching me in tingles.
Okay, I pondered, I can close my eyes, hit it doggystyle. This is some cyborg pussy, this post-op shit. I gotta try it. Only live once, right?
I sprouted wood, just thinking of how artificially tight the constructed cunt could be. How, with the right technology, it could be even better than anal.
Horny as a porn star, I shut my eyes, pressing them tightly closed, and my heart throbbed as I clenched my teeth and shifted my body facing directly opposite hers.
I felt the warmth of her body heat, her big fake silicone tits pressed to the thunderous drum of my chest. But when I went in for a kiss, her hard tits and body heat melted into a void of cold conditioned air, and I fell face first and plopped into the pile of pillows.
Opening my eyes, I saw nothing but red.
She was gone. But where to? I rose to my feet, my eyes darting in all directions as I jumped out of the empty jacuzzi. Then I searched the whole tiny hotel suite. But found nothing.
Looking into the bathroom mirror, I saw that I was in a big banana yellow chicken suit.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer One might think it’d be too toasty in a chicken suit, in the tropical heat of Thailand, but it was actually rather breathable and cozy. I supposed the material to be silk.
I hurried out of the suite, into the hotel hallway, and jogged along the twisting cave-like corridor, looking for my ladyboy. But she was nowhere. The halls, empty and quiet, felt like The Shining.
I trudged into the lobby. It was empty too. Frustrated, I went full retard and fucking trashed the place. Kicking over tables, tearing up paintings. Cursing at the top of my lungs, I picked up and flung a desktop computer, sending the monitor and mess of wires crashing through the hotel’s front window.
Then, on the front desk, a tablet computer appeared, chirped, and vibrated…
“ZAAAAAAAAWAAAAAADEEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…”
On the tablet’s screen was a QR code next to a flashing photo of a torso in golden pantaloons.
But still no Bird.
No sign of her anywhere.
Stepping outside, into the muggy air, I bent forward, held my hands to my knees, and drew in a series of deep breaths. Next to me was a seven-foot-tall spouting penis fountain that was illuminated neon pink. And I paused to ponder a whir of white noise.
Then I saw out into the alley, where a hunchbacked old man, an unshaven, balding, fat farang, stood with his arms outstretched. He was in a green Singha singlet, and had on baggy mauve camo cargo shorts that were soiled, fucking dirty as a Wuhan wet market. On his feet were cowboy boots with spurs that appeared to be shooting fire, as if they were afterburners.
His head thrown back, the fat farang was staring intently at the smoggy starless sky, howling like a wolf.
He then lowered his gaze, spun around and tossed an empty beer bottle at me, and the glass bottle exploded as it shattered on the penis water statue, casting a bolt of white lightning, followed by a burst of pink smoke.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Once the pink smoke cleared, a neon orange orangutan stood in a mountain pose, in the near distance, staring at me, menacingly.
The orangutan, walking on its legs, like a man, had a malicious expression on its face and lurched forth.
I backed up, slowly, purposely, wondering what sort of defenses the hotel had against orangutans. And the beast only picked up its pace, and ran, full steam, in my direction, baring its fangs, its huge gaping mouth salivating, wet at the ready.
It was far too fast for me to outrun. And in mere milliseconds, it was feet away, chasing me recklessly through the streets of Bangkok.
The Orangutan and I were as motorcycles, roaring like jumbo jet engines, ripping through busy Sukhumvit sidewalks, bashing into pedestrians, knocking over street vendors. And as I attempted to hurdle over an elderly monk, I inadvertently karate kicked a street-side cooking cart, sending it flipping over, boiling water and red-hot cobs of corn shooting like shrapnel, maiming passersby.
A motorcade of motorcycle taxis, riding at Mach speeds, whizzed past us like missiles. And I jarred towards an intersection, but a tuk-tuk barreled forth, blocking my path.
So I stopped to face the wrath. And I spun around to punch my pursuer. Seeing the enraged orangutan, an arm’s length from me, I did my best Floyd Mayweather, planted ten toes to the ground and launched a left jab at the beast’s ugly mouth, which was big as a canyon and flying at me with the speed of a bat.
But as I threw that slicing jab, the orangutan shapeshifted, forming into a swarm of hornets, which disbursed, into the stink of Sukhumvit Road air, and there the hornets became mere directions of night.
From behind the remnants of the swarm stood Bird, jutting her square chin.
Scowling, she clicked on her phone, causing an explosion, a bomb BADA BOOM
pink fireball. Then I found we were back in the hotel room together. Supine, we lay like bodies on a heart-shaped bed.
Both of us in white hotel bathrobes, Bird lay panting. Her eyes leaping from her skull as she swiped vigorously at the Voodoo Doll app.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer KILLING MR. POTATO HEAD
The evening’s reception was a resounding success. There must have been over 100 people in attendance!
Smiling through sweet sips of champagne, Mr. Wu gazed proudly around the pristine reception hall. The place was nothing short of immaculate, with its teak walls, jade sculptures, marble-top tables, and crystal chandeliers...
Mr. Wu drew in a deep breath. Then he nodded in satisfaction, and his eyes twinkled as he soaked in the sights and smells of the feast, and his ears perked up at the clinking of wine glasses, hum of chatter, and choruses of laughter.
This was it. His years were coming to fruition. He’d bought a big house and a fancy car. He’d married a beautiful woman and had a beautiful baby. Yes. This was it. He was on his way to being a true tiger. He could see it now. The IPO, the private planes, Swiss bank accounts, luxury ski trips, interviews on TV. It was happening.
By Buddha, it was happening!
Mr. Wu’s daughter, Lin, eyed her father with disgust. Her eyes blazing as she sat rooted to her chair. Watching her father drink and be merry, it made her sick.
Watching him brag about “his” business… Ugh, it boiled her blood.
Lin hated everything about her father, starting with his personality. She hated him as a person, first and foremost. But she also really hated his appearance.
Particularly his head. The shape of his head, it was weird. It was like a big, boiled egg, like his face was just a drawing on a boiled egg. Oh, and the way his forehead slopes at too sharp an angle, like a ramp, as it curves to his scalp, to her, that was also highly unnerving.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Not only did he have a big stupid weird head, but she hated his short legs and arms too. With his short legs and arms and big bald head, her father reminded her, unflatteringly, of a Mr. Potato Head doll.
How could any woman be with a man like that, she’d pondered, in dismay… She’d suspected her mother had had an affair. That he wasn’t her real father.
God, she really hoped he wasn’t.
Mr. Wu’s wife, Shan, sat by his side, like always, steeped in silence. While Mr. Wu bloviated, Shan incessantly checked her phone, tapped on her tablet, kept track of products, sales, and clients. Shan was a shrewd, serious, silent, and solemn woman. A woman with eyes like crystal balls. A woman with eyes that always appeared to be staring directly at you, like an Andy Warhol painting.
Shan was a woman of few words. But when she spoke, her words were elegant and refined, shot at measured clips.
And when she spoke, people listened.
Lin glowered at her father, thinking of ways to kill him. She’d most enjoy murdering him with a blunt object of some sort, she fantasized. To feel the flaying of his flesh… To feel his bones breaking as she beat him to death... His big stupid head bursting and squishing open like a watermelon…
God, she hated her father. She hated him more than anyone. It was a secret hate, though, one she’d never confessed. It was a secret hate that manifested itself in fits of silence, lack of eye contact, and, during college, a series of online “hookups”
with older men, of varying ethnicities.
She’d read once that a woman’s first relationship with a man is the father/daughter relationship, how that sets the tone for all future relationships with men.
The mere thought of that made her want to jump off a bridge.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer As usual, they left before the drinking games began. Above them hung an inky-black, starless sky, featuring only a fuzzy outline of its low-hanging crescent moon, and Lin and Shan crossed through the parking lot, in lockstep, arm in arm, stepping swiftly in the heavy cold and its growing darkness.
Shan clutched Lin’s arm tighter. Her opal eyes bulged. Then she peered around, panoramically, and swung her gaze, touched her lips to Lin’s left ear, and whispered in wet hot pulses that perhaps the car had been bugged. That Lin’s father had possibly planted a listening device in the vehicle’s dashboard.
The pair swallowed their words, piled into the Porsche. Their ride home featuring a symphony of sighs, sign language, screenshots and knowing nods.
It was just past midnight when Mr. Wu stumbled home, stinking drunk. His unwelcome arrival like a sudden nosebleed. His arrival announced as he slammed the door, shaking the house’s foundations. In a form of mimicry, a madman’s cries cut the air, and he was acting the fool, kicking the couch, shouting incorrigibly.
Shan, her face twisted in broken sleep, padded forward, her arms crossed defensively over her chest.
In a red flowery bathrobe, she descended the winding staircase.
The noise hushed into gaping silence. But only for a minute or two. Then the screams began, grew louder, shriller. Shan’s pained shrieks echoing, piercing the character of the night, rousting Lin out of bed.
Lin groggily stepped down the winding staircase. Then a frisson of fear passed over her like an electric current. Words were dead and meaningless as she laid weary eyes on her father, Mr. Potato Head… Mr. Potato Head all red-faced, in the atrium, gripping a brick-shaped butcher knife. Mr. Potato Head pinning her mother against the double door. Mr. Potato Head pressing the blade of the knife to her mother’s throat.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Lin ran to the kitchen, grabbed the first blunt object she saw- a frying pan from off the stovetop- then dashed into the atrium, and cocked back the frying pan like a baseball bat and whapped her father upside his horrible big bald head.
Mr. Wu grunted, and the air left his lungs as he dropped the knife, the knife landing with a clink on the hardwood floor. Then Mr. Wu crouched and wallowed in pain, cupping his hands defensively over his skull, and he waddled sideways like a crab, in a lame attempt to escape the oncoming blows.
Lin continued to hammer at her father’s big stupid head with the frying pan, hitting him again and again. The pan clanking as it beat at his skull, the metal reverberating in high-pitched jangles, like a blacksmith hitting hot iron.
Lin lost herself in the violence. It felt so good. Her serotonin surged. Bashing her father’s big bald head was such a release, such a huge release that it was almost orgasmic.
It was the first time she’d ever fought back against her father. After everything he’d done. And there’d been a lot he’d done. There’d been countless slaps and shoves. There’d been countless threats. He’d beat her, her mother with impunity.
He’d belittled them. He’d been such a tyrant.
But that was ending. Ending now. And Lin let a bloodcurdling, celebratory howl.
And she swung the pan harder and harder, heaving it at her father’s horribly ugly head, which was gushing blood and beginning to resemble a pepperoni pizza, the way his yellow skin was peeling back over his skull to reveal thick clumpy red patches.
Mr. Wu lay unconscious. Shan then tugged Lin away, hugged and comforted her.
Lin dropped the blood-splattered pan, curled and cried into her mother’s bosom.
Lin begged her mother to finish him off. It could be self-defense. They could finally break free of him.
Shan gently broke their embrace. Shook her head. Rubbed her red face and stared off into the unknown distance, wistfully.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Mr. Wu woke up late the next morning, in the anteroom, his head throbbing and pulsing, his skull feeling like someone was tap-dancing on it.
He pushed himself up from the floor, lurched into the kitchen. No one was there.
Then he moved slowly and lifelessly, like a zombie, making his way into the backyard, where he threaded through the freshly planted rose garden, and he purposely stomped on a few budding plants.
The garden led him to the bean-shaped, empty swimming pool, and he circled the swimming pool, the bright blue crater, a few times, unsure what he was looking for. Perhaps someone just to tell him what happened to his head, and why he’d awakened, on the floor, in a crown of blood.
BANGKOK BAIT AND SWITCH
Stepping cautiously over a chunk of uneven pavement, Chucky quickly shifted his weight, caught his balance. Then a wayward motorcyclist brushed by him, flying like a bat out of hell down the sidewalk.
Such is the pedestrian's struggle on the streets of Bangkok…
Turning on his heel, at the neon-lit entrance to Soi Cowboy, Chucky swung his gaze and spotted a smallish man lurking in the shadows. The man, who appeared of Khmer descent, stepped forth, and crept toward Chucky, like a cat stalking prey.
The man wore ratty flip flops, jorts and a puke green Chang beer tank top, and in his hand, he held a small black pipe that was packed with yellowy crystals. The
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer man's bulbous eyes darkened and bulged as he jutted the pipe forth, nodded for Chucky to take hold of it.
Chucky, though not an old Asia hand, knew well enough what this was. Cold shivers of fear spread over him, and he cringed and walked away as briskly as possible, avoiding that pipe like it was a live hand grenade. He knew the deal. He knew simple possession of even a small quantity of illegal drugs could land him in a tiny, stinky, fucking shit-hot jail cell, packed in like sardines with 50 or so other people.
Unless, of course, he paid something like a $10,000 bribe to the local police, the
"boys in brown," who were probably watching from afar, having themselves set up the scam.
Though he'd gladly puff weed or whatever else might be offered, in the right circumstance, Chucky wasn't dumb enough to take drugs from a random, sketchy stranger. Especially not in a public place in a Southeast Asian country… This was one bitch ass bait and switch he'd definitely not be suckered into…
And not that Chucky needed much of an extra buzz anyway. The "pre-game" shots of rice whiskey he slammed before heading out were taking root, coursing through him. Just at the right time too.
Entering Soi Cowboy, the adult playground, he swiveled his gaze left and right, left and right, soaking in the sights, the assorted punters, brightly lit rows of girly bars, and best of all, the scores of scantily clad Asian skanks standing out in front of bars, waggling ass and tits, the demimondes calling out drink specials, lambasting any male passersby with cloying bursts of winking flattery.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Walking slowly, scanning the scene, most of the demimondes Chucky spotted were fuckable but none were worthy of posting about on Stickman, Teak Door, or even that fucktarded Thaivisa forum.
Okay, sure, like all of them he'd do for free, and one or two he'd pay a small sum for, if he were inebriated enough. But none of them warranted a second look. It wasn't until he laid eyes on HER, however, that he halted in his tracks.
"Sawadee KRAP!!!" boomed Chucky. His brows beaded with sweat, his gait off-step, a result of his creepingly severe intoxication.
The university-aged girl outside the bar smiled widely. She was all teeth and eyelashes. Her ears perked up as she sniffed in the pungent aroma of Chucky's alcoholism.
Chucky's head bobbed like a pigeon, and his lips curled into a goofy smile. His pupils dilated. Whoa! This had to be one of the hottest chicks he'd ever seen! No hyperbole either. No beer goggles, nothing like that. He was drunk but not that drunk. This girl was amazing! She was light-skinned, succulently slim, had legs up to her chin, and her curly, shoulder-length platinum dyed hair was glistening under the flashing glow of the bar's marquee.
Chucky thought about all the water buffalo he'd buy her. That is, of course, after he got behind her and banged the sloppy shit out of her sweet ass.
"Hello, han-sum man," the hot young girl cooed, "where you go? You come inside for drink, ka. Have happy hour, drink special." The way she accented the second syllable in special, speh-SHULL, ooh, it was plain adorable, got him all woozy, weak in the knees.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Then the hot young demimonde slid down from the stool she'd been perched on, tilted her pretty little head, and motioned Chucky to accompany her inside.
Chucky instantly noticed how much shorter she appeared, once on her feet. She couldn't have been more than 5'0 or so but her legs still looked ravishing… Ah, TIT, this is Thailand, Amazing Thailand, he thought. How remarkable that such a petite girl could have those swimsuit model-like legs…
"Shall I compare thee to a summer day?" proclaimed Chucky in a faux posh British drawl. He enjoyed quoting Shakespeare to bar girls, if nothing else to amuse himself, seeing their puzzled reactions.
The hot young girl just smiled wider at him, reached for his hand and led him into the bar. Her tiny hand was warm, soft and smooth as silk. Following her inside, he lowered his gaze and gasped, his jaw hitting the floor at the sight of her tight little Asian ass all rippling and wiggling under the fabric of her miniskirt. Then in they went through the center part of a loose red velvet curtain hanging over the bar's front doorway, and the curtain swished at their shoulders as they entered.
The bar was freezer cold, dimly lit, and reeked of cheap booze, cheap perfume, and stale cigarette smoke, and was only sparsely populated. Only a few punters at opposite ends of the floor. The tired "sexpat" stereotype, of all go-go bar patrons being fat, old bald White guys was again being disproven. The bar's punters were actually diverse in age, appearance, and nationality. Like many Bangkok bars, it was a venerable UN of girl gawkers.
The music in the bar was loud. Body shaking loud. Even louder than most bars.
Not good music either, like the classic rock Chucky dug. No AC/DC or Motley Crue.
Nope, it was fast, repetitive, annoying Thai dance-pop. The same kind in almost every Bangkok go-go bar. The kind of music he wouldn't listen to for more than a
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer second. Unless, of course, it was accompanied by naked or half-naked tits, ass, and pussy.
Sinking into a leather seat, in a booth, Chucky glanced around at the bar's catalog and was distraught to see the demimondes, the go-go girls inside were nowhere near as hot as the chick outside, under the awning. The inside demimondes appeared older, fatter, and one was covered in faded bluish tattoos, even had a few face tattoos. Yuck, Chucky winced. The hag looked more like a prison inmate than a go-go dancer!
The only thing consoling him at this point was the smoking hot pussy sitting next to him. Now she, she was hotter than the summer in Isan, and, comparing her to the hags in the bar, her pussy's stock shot up exponentially.
So he wasted no time. Bought her a "lady drink," and they began chit-chatting.
Her English was pretty good. Holding a frosty Singha beer by the stem, he sipped on his suds and swept his eyes over every beautiful inch of the scorching hot young demimonde's hourglass figure. Fun, friendly, easygoing, and with a smile seemingly plastered to her face, she laughed at his lame attempts at the Thai language, and touched his arm multiple times, sent him all the signals. Then it was time to close, and Chucky leaned in, cleared his throat, and asked her, in a firm voice, "Hey, how much for short time?"
"Cannot," was all she replied, giggling.
"Cannot?" Chucky quizzed, his head cocking back. His eyebrows then lifted so high they nearly flew off his forehead.
"Cannot do," she insisted. Her perpetually widening smile fading into a nervous, crooked little smirk.
"Why not?" Chucky asked. There were a few bar girls and dirty massage bitches who'd refused to boom boom him, since he had a somewhat large jimmy, at least compared to many of the local guys, the bitches' boyfriends, husbands, etc…
Those sluts sucked him off, jerked him off, sure, but wouldn't let him run his snake in the grass. Wouldn't let him tap their tiny, tight Asian pussies…
"Too big?" Chucky shouted into her ear, the bass from the annoying Thai dance music was really rattling his body and seemed to grow louder and more menacing by the minute.
Then Chucky cupped his hand over hers, tugged her hand, and laid it flat over his hardening, purple-headed yogurt slinger, and rested her hand over the crotch of his cargo shorts. The girl lightly petted his semi-hard one-eyed weasel, then giggled, drew her hand away, fast, as if she'd touched a scorching hot surface.
"No, no too big," the girl chortled.
Now Chucky was offended. So it wasn't big? Were the other girls lying? Then he briefly pondered the old maxim of "How do you know a bar girl is lying? If she's talking." It probably rang true, he thought.
"Me no do," the young girl confirmed, "the boom boom," then she gyrated her hips, mimicking intercourse. Seeing the super sexy demimonde shake her hips, gesticulate like that only pissed Chucky off, and teased him, terribly.
"I just do drink," she went on, resting back into the booth.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Despite being tipsy, the revelation dawned upon him, hung over him like a heavy fog. He knew what this was.
It was a coyote.
A "coyote" was a girl who only talked to guys, drank with them, and then juiced the unfortunate guys' cash, without giving up any ass in return. The whole
"coyote" thing, he'd read, was a fad imported from Japan, where lonely salarymen go to bars, after work, and pay women to simply sit and drink with them.
Upon first learning about coyotes, Chucky thought it was the most pathetic shit ever. Why would any guy pay a woman to simply drink and sit with him? With no chance of sex? What kind of sad, beta-male, bitch ass shit was that? And now it was befalling him. Now he was that beta, and a chilly feeling churned in his gut.
The only thing that didn't make him stand up, pay and leave ASAP, was that at least the coyote was letting him fondle her. He'd been rubbing on her slim, smooth thighs, reaching back and goosing her firm little snuggly ass, and squeezing her teeny tits. She'd even let him spider his hands up under her bikini top, pinch her cute, bottlecap-sized nips.
Sadly, though, she had swatted his naughty paw away when he'd tried to go down under, below the belt, and burrow down below her equator, tunnel into her black miniskirt, and conduct a little spontaneous, impromptu gynecological inspection…
As fun as it was to molest the young demimonde, he found it boring and lame that this was as far as it'd get. What the hell is wrong with these guys, going to coyotes, he silently seethed… Why would this even be a thing?
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer It pissed him off. The coyote could have had a warning sign or something. Chucky took his hands off the coyote, scanned around the bar, looking for a demimonde with a number. Swinging his gaze around, the euphoric rush of the alcohol kicked in further. But he remained cognizant enough.
He was worked up, molesting this sexy young piece of snatch and wanted to find a warm soft body, a nice juicy pussy to smash. He knew that if he could find a demimonde that had a number on her, he could ditch the dick-tease and rent a good Asian ass for a fun half-hour or so. That'd be more than enough time for a quick fucky sucky. Shit, usually two to five minutes were enough to get what he needed.
(This was one of Chucky's favorite things about demimondes, pay for play pussy.
They didn't care if you came too quickly. Although sometimes he'd be disappointed if HE prematurely ejaculated. But only because it felt like a waste of cash.)
Swinging his gaze around the bar, he was further disappointed to see only a few demimondes on the dais had numbers. They looked miserable, too, were frowning and doing the "Bangkok Shuffle," the bored, half-ass bar girl dance, that was merely a series of weak jerks and turns.
Of the available demimondes he saw, one was snaggle-toothed, and another was fat, her stomach stretched out from baby damage. The other numbered pussy was the head-to-toe tattoo, prison inmate thing. Hard pass. He wouldn't even fuck any of those dogs for free, let alone pay.
Sensing Chucky's dismay, the coyote turned on the charm, asked him if he'd like another drink. The waitstaff, a gynecocracy, a chubby crew of middle-aged ladies
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer with made-up faces bleached disturbingly pale, far paler than the rest of their bodies, the fat bitches looking like something between sumo wrestlers and circus clowns, had also been pestering Chucky, every couple of minutes, cajoling him to buy drinks.
(One of the chunk-muffin servers even tried to flirt with him, get him to buy HER a drink. Yeah right!)
Turning icy with rage, Chucky just shook his face. Snarled. The coyote then picked up on his angst and told him "8" does boom boom. 8 was the prison inmate chick.
No thanks, Chucky shook his face again.
He knew he'd lost in this bar. He'd been bit by a coyote, hit with the bar bitch bait and switch. This was apparently one of those asshole bars that hires a hot young piece of snatch to sit outside, lure punters in, and then gets them drunk enough that they'll fuck anything. Hence how flabby and tattoo face girl over there stay employed. Just despicable.
Chucky then smiled, remembered that face tattoo demimonde he'd hired, one rainy late night, as he was stumbling home drunk. She'd been sitting outside, at a bar, near his apartment. Despite the face tattoo, she looked pretty decent, had an otherwise pretty face, nice body, and big tits.
Once in his bedroom, she'd shocked him by slipping out a pair of fake teeth before giving him a "gummy," and it was one of the best blowjobs he half-remembered. But he couldn't recall much after that, if he'd banged her or not. If he did, it was probably doggystyle, he surmised, which was usually how he treated the occasional butterface he'd bang.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer For a second, he wondered if the tattoo face demimonde on the dais was the same girl from that night. Could it be? He squinted and zoomed his gaze on her.
Nah. The tattoo face in this bar had smaller tits, kinda saggy tits too, and a flat, bony ass. Definitely not the same demimonde. Fucking prison girl wasn't even doable…
Then he considered asking the coyote for head. There'd been a bar in Pattaya with a "naughty boy corner," where a punter could go, get his knob greased, off in a smoky, dark corner, for only $20 or $30. But then he remembered the coyote had braces. Big, silvery metal braces, and he wanted those nowhere near his dick.
Discouraged, he ignored the protestations of the coyote, who'd implored him not to leave. Chucky paid his tab, tipped the chunky clown face waitress 20 baht and made a beeline for the door, feeling dejected.
But as he left, his mood shifted. Re-entering the sticky hot air, seeing the pumping neon of the Bangkok night, he realized where he was. Bitch, he was in Bangkok!
The city was full of bars, dirty massage parlors, and idling escorts.
His soul eased as he remembered that in Bangkok, as long as you got the cash, another mouth, another pussy, another ass always awaits…
IF I WERE A UYGHUR
*** From a Friend ***
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer CIRCA 2017
I'd been working in China for 5 years, at an international company.
On weekends, when time allowed, with coworkers or alone, I'd regularly make runs to a nearby shopping mall to buy food, mostly imported stuff. The sprawling mall, a Wanda Complex, had a massive, warehouse-like grocery store that featured an impressive array of imported products.
On a sunny Sunday afternoon, I'd gone to that mall, by myself, and purchased a block of cheese and some frozen foods. Being summer, the weather was muggy, hot as a furnace, and I was keen to catch a cab back to my apartment, stash my food in the fridge and freezer, cuddle up beside the a/c, and watch a good movie, read a good book before sleep.
Maneuvering through the store's chaotic checkout, I fended off the queue jumpers, paid, and gathered my bags. Then I rode the escalator up from the basement level.
Initially, I didn't notice anything amiss, but as I stepped foot onto the escalator's landing platform, I stopped mid-stride, gasping in shock when a uniformed, potbellied police officer, literally, jumped in front of me, blocking my path. The guy had leaped out of nowhere, like a fat tiger. The fat tiger cop was holding a smartphone, an iPhone, and was pointing the phone only a foot or so from my face. Wordlessly, he wrinkled his nose in disgust, began tapping the phone's screen, snapping multiple pictures of me.
A chill ran through me when I saw the fat tiger cop was flanked by 5 or 6 other officers. The coppers were all in uniform, and the police formed a defensive circle that ringed around me.
One of the policemen, appearing 30ish or so, stepped forward. He had a gaunt face, a weak chin, and a spring to his step. He spoke nearly perfect English, and his voice had an ugly, sharp edge to it, sounded almost like an ice scraper picking at a car window.
The gaunt face asked my nationality and requested to see my passport. I answered, handed over my passport, using both hands, in polite Chinese fashion.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer He received my passport with only one hand and fished out a smartphone from his front right-hand pocket, snapped a picture of my passport's picture page. Then he patiently flipped through the document, snapped a picture of my residence permit. Afterward, he requested that I "wait a couple of minute (sic)." Then he sauntered off, dialing a number on his cellphone before lifting and pressing the device to his ear.
Locked inside the perimeter of policemen, all the coppers stood silent, still as statues. All the coppers were brooding, staring intently at me, and I could feel the heat of their blazing eyes. Knots of passersby began gawking, pointing at me, and I heard a lady say loudly, in a scurrilous tone, "laowai!" (foreigner). A sizable audience had soon formed, of local Chinese, of all ages, and they were all staring and pointing at me, watching me with widening eyes and mortified expressions, murmuring amongst themselves. Suddenly I'd found myself the unwelcome object of everyone's attention.
Honestly, it was humiliating. I felt like an animal in a zoo. I'd never stirred up trouble or picked any quarrels. I'd always kept to myself, never partook in any sort of prohibited political activity or religious activity. Honestly, too, I've always been somewhat apolitical, focused on work, business. It was hard for me, as a middle-aged, middle-management cog in an international conglomerate to imagine I'd ever really be in this situation.
My mind, of course, started racing. As the crowd of gawkers grew, I stood motionless, as if my legs had turned to stone pillars. I noticed too that my frozen food was beginning to thaw, beads of water dripping from the bottom of my plastic shopping bag, like incipient drops of a rainstorm. I wondered what the heck the coppers wanted. If maybe there was an incident in the South China Sea, or an attack on Taiwan. I wondered what China would do with its foreigners if an armed conflict, a hot war broke out in the Taiwan Straits…
I was a bundle of nerves. Then I imagined myself in a Chinese prison. I imagined myself in the film Red Corner. I imagined myself in a tiny, stinky, freakishly hot or bloodcurdlingly cold chamber of hell, with rats and cockroaches crawling over me, and the Chinese cops chaining me to a wall, prodding me with medieval torture devices. I recalled the Nazi dentist from the film Marathon Man, that film's
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer famous line, "IS IT SAFE?" And I envisioned a CCP torture session being far worse than anything the Nazis could do.
Unable to escape the feeling of impending doom, I reconnoitered, panned my gaze. Then I had a wishful fantasy about using my frozen food as a cudgel, beating one of the Chinese cops, smacking him in the face with a frozen steak and making a run for it.
But alas, even my fantasy felt feckless. I knew that, realistically, the chances of escape were slim to none. Not with the ever-present panopticon of surveillance cameras. Not that I'm Rambo, either, or even Jean-Claude Van Damme. Heck, I'm a slightly overweight office worker who's not been in a fistfight since middle school.
I could see the cops, security organ personnel, swarming, like hornets, descending upon me, blows raining down on me, batons and fists and kicks, and me with a bloodied face and broken bones… So, yeah, no thanks… I certainly wasn't making any video game moves… Life isn't a video game, after all. Life doesn't come with a reset button…
So I just stood pat. I felt pale as a corpse. I stared, morosely, hanging my head, watching the food in my shopping bag slowly dripping and melting.
A few more harrowing minutes later, the gaunt face returned. His thin, bony face was furrowed but his eyes were alert, though a certain light from his eyes had appeared extinguished, and he spoke with a faint smack of disappointment.
Gaunt Face told me everything is "in order." That I may leave. Then, again with a single hand, he passed me my passport.
I wasn't going to ask any questions about what had transpired. I just nodded, smiled politely, collected my passport, turned on my heel and briskly walked away.
I was looking forward to getting my food into the fridge before it thawed completely. But most of all, I was damn happy to be out of there. Damn happy not to be hauled off to a Chinese prison.
It wasn't until a year later that the news surfaced, about the Uighurs being rounded up, across China, and herded into "re-education" and "vocational"
centers. Being a person of Mediterranean descent, with a somewhat dark
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer complexion, I'd once or twice been asked, by local Chinese, if I was a "Xinjiang"
person, a Uighur.
Then it dawned on me. The Uighurs I used to see around my neighborhood in China, they'd all disappeared, around that time, and those policemen from that muggy afternoon, outside the grocery store, they must have been from Communist China's version of the Stasi, and they were probably conducting a sweep, detaining Uighurs and transporting them back to Xinjiang, where they'd be placed into "vocational" centers.
Then another horrifying revelation dawned on me.
That is what would have happened to me if I were a Uighur.
STORIES FROM THE WEST
#SPOILER ALERT!
Rumors had been spreading like wildfire. "Manumission" was the talk of the town.
It was to be a new art gallery, opening soon… Right on the same grounds that'd been the site of such horror…
The empty lot had stood vacant for 6 years. Despite the prime location, no one wanted to build there. After all, 98 people died, 124 injured, when an F4 tornado touched down, briefly, carving cruelty through that glass and steel-plated building, hollowing it out like a wrecking ball…
In addition to its infamous location, Manumission's structure itself was a big reason for the hullabaloo. A six-story high building, it was half a block wide,
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer shaped like a pyramid, and had thick, black-tinted windows that sparkled in the sunlight.
At night, the pyramid lit up, in riots of color, bursts of neon brighter than a Christmas tree, with "Manumission!" in bold red lettering, wildly circling the whole of the structure like a television news crawl gone haywire.
Everyone passing by the unusual structure gawked, was agog at its peculiar appearance. Pictures of the building soon went viral.
Soon after, "Anamnesis" leaflets were dropped via genital-shaped drones, plastered all over the city.
The leaflets featured collages of frames from the 1989 film Weekend at Bernie's interspersed with comic book-style drawings of Kanye West. The drawings depicting Kanye, in a wedding dress, scaling the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.
Each leaflet was sunburst gold and had blood red, Times New Roman font on its front center, promoting the gallery's opening exhibit. The exhibit simply entitled:
"ANAMNESIS: SPOILER ALERT"
The flyers were a bolt out of the blue and so striking and outlandish that they prompted scores of rumors, began long Craigslist and Reddit debates over just who was opening the gallery and exactly what "Manumission" and "Anamnesis"
meant… Was it a publicity stunt? But for what? No one knew for sure… The proprietor behind the gallery was listed as "System Bandit Company" and had no website, no social media, and only a P.O. Box address listed in the Caymans.
On the Sunday afternoon "Manumission" opened, the air was soft and warm, and there was a long line curling around the block. The anticipation was palpable. A buzz was in the air, and the crowd's murmurs and thrums began to blend into a uniform hum, its din growing louder than a hundred televisions. The hubbub soon drowning out the hiss of the nearby highway…
Many in the gathering crowd appeared nonchalant, while others were at the ready, with croaks of laughter, feral grins, and faces aimed at and away from screens. Then there were others in the line who weren't even initially aware of what the hype was about. They just wanted to join the crowd. Those who
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer happened by, joined the line spontaneously, were those seeming to take the most photos, video.
The crowd was diverse but skewed young, 20s, 30s, and most appeared hip, or appeared aspiring to be hip, or were those simply too hip to ever actually be hip…
Many wore colorful hats and vintage clothing… A big bear of a man, a hipster, with a pox-scarred face, walked slowly, in long strides, alongside the line, livestreaming the scene…
One heavily made-up young girl, with a great cloud of purple hair, was by the pyramid's entrance. The girl was pacing like a caged panther and was excitedly gesticulating and doing duckfaces as she snapped selfies of herself in front of the front of the line.
The air stirred, and the crowd suddenly hushed when a boom sounded from atop the dark pyramid: DUN DUN DUN… DUN DUN DUN… DUN DUN DAA DAA DAA DAAAAA! It cried out, sounding something between the 2001 theme and heavy metal guitars.
The colossal triangle's front doors slid open, split apart from the pyramid's bottom center, like the unveiling of stage curtains. Inside, the pyramid appeared pitch-black as the mouth of a cave. A faint mechanical buzz whirred from within.
Then came a cone of uneasy silence.
The curious crowd stood ensorcelled, unsure how to proceed. No one dared take the initiative to step in first.
A Black man, a rough sleeper, of about 60 years of age, ambled by, dragging his left foot. The man had a humpback, a weak chin, and his cheeks and forehead were scored by a series of deep crevasses, making his profile look like a wind-battered cliff. His worn army uniform was caked in dust and muck.
As the man limped along, he stopped in his tracks, then swiveled his wild-eyed gaze at the crowd, then at the opening in the pyramid's face.
In a gravelly, high-pitched voice, the man mumbled something about "dancing 'til my toenails fall off." Then his rheumy eyes bulged and twinkled and a playful smile broke over his chapped lips. Slowly, he limped toward the pyramid. His lame
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer left leg pulling and scraping over the sidewalk. The man mumbling incoherently, pulling his leg like a sack of potatoes as he disappeared deep into the darkness.
A couple of seconds later came a shrill, wolf-like howl. Cautiously, the assembled onlookers crept inside, one by one, holding their glowing camera-phones in front of them, like tiny square shields.
Several others who entered let out a similar cry, an ear-piercing scream.
But none came out.
The hipster bear's big blue eyes widened. His mouth curled downward. The blood drained from his face, and he turned pale as an early morning's mist. Carefully, he assayed the pyramid's ominous entrance. Then he drew in a protracted, deep breath and tiptoed inside, crinkling his nose as a bitter smell, like a medicine, greeted him, and a gust of ice-cold air slapped at his skin as he entered the antechamber's dark doorway.
The interior of the pyramid looked like a museum in between exhibits. Lots of open spaces and chrome, marble, mirrors, and shiny surfaces everywhere.
On the hipster bear's phone, which he carried on a selfie-stick, stark images emerged… Onlookers in disbelief… Mouths agape… Arms folded… Faces twisted in confusion… Some were kneeling, others weeping while watching sped-up, looped video…
Video footage of their own deaths.
The footage flickering as holograms, shooting up from the white marble floor like tunnels, water jets from a fountain.
Some were dying in car accidents, some were lying in hospital beds, one was aiming a handgun at his head… There were furious, grotesque figures, clawing at one another, in a spreading circle of red… A pot-bellied man in a grocery store, grimacing, clutching his chest… A woman in hair-curlers tripping over a cat and tumbling down a flight of stairs…
Above each hologram flashed pointillist, fiery red lettering:
#SPOILER ALERT! #SPOILER ALERT! #SPOILER ALERT!
GOLFING WITH MICHAEL JORDAN
“Don’t tell me your name. Don’t try to shake my hand.”
“Here are the rules: You do not speak to me unless you are spoken to.”
“You’re not getting an autograph. You’re not getting a picture with me… I know you’re expecting a tip, but you’re not getting one. The only thing you’re getting from this is that you have the privilege of being with me today. Is that understood?
Yeah? Okay? Let’s go.”
Seeing him in person was surreal. I’d seen him millions of times on screens, TV, billboards. I’d worn his jersey and his shoes. And here Michael Jordan was, on a sunny, cool spring afternoon, standing in front of me. So close I could smell his cigar.
And not only was he talking down to me, but Michael Jordan had just refused to shake my hand.
It can’t be understated how freakishly tall NBA basketball players are compared to regular-sized humans. Michael Jordan, too, more than anyone I’d ever seen, just seemed impossibly tall. Like taller than the tallest skyscraper.
He had a certain glow to him too. I’d noticed that with celebrities that’d played our course. Bill Murray certainly had it. But Michael Jordan had it more than anyone. Perhaps it’s the “it” that people talk about. That hard to define, “star”
quality, and there really was something surreal watching Michael Jordan, Air Jordan, stand in front of me in plaid shorts, a purple polo shirt and gray tweed flat hat. The Jumpman himself, chomping on a cigar while eying, unsheathing and inspecting golf clubs.
Being starstruck, it took a second to register his refusal of my handshake. And that he possessed a character quality different than indifference. His demeanor
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer was more one of disdain. It was evident in his lack of eye contact and the icy, antagonistic tone in which he spoke to me. And even more so with what he’d said.
The club had strict rules regarding workers around celebrities. If you asked for autographs, selfies, or fanned out on anyone famous, you’d be shown the door.
Quickly and without severance pay. So it was odd he had given me these particular instructions. I’d driven for and carried clubs for other celebrities and found most cordial, if nothing else, and some quite garrulous, joking and roasting everyone, like Bill Murray.
But Mike was something else…
I was driving the golf cart and Mike was seated in the back. While smoking his cigar, I heard him speaking on the phone, talking what sounded like business, and his dialogue was full of curse words. This was prior to his Last Dance documentary, so I must admit that I was more accustomed to squeaky-clean Mike, McDonald’s Mike. Space Jam Mike. I couldn’t have envisioned Michael Jordan, in Space Jam, calling Bugs Bunny a “flaming faggot.” So it was just weird hearing MJ cursing like a drunken sailor. I guess it can be quite revealing to see how celebrities interact with others. How they talk when they’re not being coached by a publicist.
Going from hole to hole, Mike was playing like crap. He was shanking balls. Had balls plunging into the water. Balls in the rough. After each awful attempt, he’d erupt in more expletives, shouting creative combinations of four-letter words. If human beings had ratings, like movies, golfing Michael Jordan might have been rated NC-17.
This being his first time on our course and maybe not knowing its nooks and crannies, I could have provided a couple simple pointers, like I offered Bill Murray.
But I was under strict instructions to keep my trap shut. And I did. And having heard about the way Mike made a bitch of the gangsta rapper Chamillionaire, in public, at an awards show, I was glad I kept silent...
I found it odd that Mike was golfing solo. He’d had a couple of big beefy security dudes with him, but they’d vanished before the first hole. Most celebrities have at least a few others with them, often a small army, but Mike was by himself.
Given his demeanor, status, he might not have many friends, aside from yes-men and hangers-on. It must be hard for Michael Jordan to make real friends, with his
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer wealth and so many people wanting to take advantage of him. Like a lot of the ultra-rich, famous, he can probably only be friends with other rich people. But still, it was strange, watching him spend the afternoon golfing alone.
It was even weirder hearing him fart. Michael Jordan, gearing up to smack a golf ball, and he just lets a loud, wet one rip…
After he’d completed the course, I drove him back to the clubhouse where he was received by his security detail, my boss, and a few smiling businessmen in expensive suits. As he left the cart, he didn’t utter a word or even look at me. And he made good on his promise not to tip.
As he walked off, I wondered if he’d always been so inhospitable to his underlings.
Or if his success, his outrageous fame and fortune had transformed him. After all, this is a person, especially with his freakish height, who can’t walk anywhere in public without paparazzi, people pointing and pestering him for autographs and selfies. And what a target he must be for scammers and lawsuits. That must harden the soul to some extent.
In a sense, that level of celebrity is Faustian... His life not really his…
While I envied his wealth, the freedom that much money could create, I didn’t envy his life, and I didn’t want to be “like Mike.”
It’s sometimes said that people “shouldn’t meet their idols,” and I could have done without caddying for Michael Jordan.
But when the Last Dance documentary was released, and so many pundits were shocked to see Mike cursing, speaking candidly, him lashing out at others… I, myself, was not... Nope. I wasn’t surprised at all.
THE RUSSIAN SNAKE CHARMER
Ivan was the clown of the construction crew.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Though he’d been in America for over two decades, he still spoke English with a heavy Russian accent, and his unique cadence and pronunciations were probably what made his jokes, and just about everything he said, that much funnier...
One of the older guys on the crew used to compare Ivan to the comedian Yakov Smirnoff, and one of the younger guys used to say Ivan sounded like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Another guy used to call him “Dracula.”
But the Russian took the ribbing in stride. He never got angry or offended. If anything, any laugh he got would encourage him. The man genuinely seemed to take joy in amusing others.
Not only would Ivan crack jokes, usually dirty jokes, but he also had a strangely endearing tic of shouting out curse words. Often at random, like he had Tourette’s. Hearing his Russian-accented cries of “motherfucker” (pronounced as
“mutterfucka’’) ringing out, daily, around construction sites, brought a smile to everyone’s face…
It could be that Ivan was in a persistently happy and goofy mood due to his drinking. Like many Russians, the man enjoyed his vodka. Though he was never stumbling, slurring, vomiting, Charles Bukowski type drunk. Nah, he was more just tipsy, and always with a faint whiff of vodka on his breath.
That being said, the man was no slouch. Ivan was adept at pacing his drinking throughout the day and remaining functional and productive on the job. An important trait when it comes to construction work. In the mornings, he’d always clock in on time, and always kept his thermos of vodka at an arm’s length distance.
According to his next-door neighbor, the Dominican, Jorge, Ivan would never hit the sauce too hard- until the evening - when he’d finish off whatever was left of that day’s bottle of vodka. Jorge said that Ivan passed out, nightly, on the couch, while watching reruns of Married with Children.
(Allegedly Ivan learned to speak English by watching reruns of Married with Children, and in staccato bursts of broken English he’d quote Al Bundy, as well as Dostoyevsky, around construction sites.)
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer But despite his nightly boozing, Ivan never once showed up to work with any visible hangover, and he worked just as hard as anyone on the crew and was liked and respected by all.
His work ethic was what earned him his respect. But it was certainly his sense of humor that made him so well-liked. An inveterate joker, Ivan always had a smile stamped on his face. And the distinguished-looking, stout, spunky man just looked jolly, with his tomato red, permanently sunburned skin, and chubby cheeks that glowed like polished apples.
As for Ivan’s background, not much was known. No one knew why or how he came to America. There were rumors that he’d been in the KGB, that he’d escaped from a Russian jail, that he was in a circus, that he was once a journeyman cage fighter, and that as a child Ivan wrestled bear cubs, like Khabib Nurmagomedov.
(Although Kentucky Karl said how everyone in Russia “fucking wrestles bears and shit.”)
Jorge said Ivan had been married to a tall, obese woman, the lady about a head taller than Ivan, the woman the size of a refrigerator, and that one day she’d up and disappeared, and that Ivan never spoke of her. This, inevitably, prompted some to suspect Ivan had murdered her.
Jumpy Jim averred Ivan had probably poisoned her, because “that’s how Russians usually kill people,” but Black Ted said he bet Ivan strangled and buried “the bitch”
somewhere out next to Jimmy Hoffa...
But really, almost nothing was clearly known of Ivan’s past. The most he’d confided to anyone was what he said to Jorge, who’d jokingly asked why Ivan was so happy. Ivan, with a smile playing out over his lips, replied, in a sharp tone, that,
“Nobody smile (sic) in Russia.”
Ivan, though, he was smiling all the time. And yelling “mutterfucka” and pulling silly pranks, doing goofy voices. Normally no one could figure out what the voices were supposed to be, impressions or what, but they sounded so ridiculous, in his Russian accent, so pretty much whatever he said had everyone in stitches, kept
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer the minutes moving, the atmosphere light, kept everyone’s spirits up. Especially on those hot, dog days of summer.
Ivan’s humor, on every construction site, was beloved by all and was always a perfect panacea to the drudgery of manual labor.
The day of the snake started like any other summer day. It was hot as hell out. A steamy haze. The air heavy as a hot compress. Just walking around felt like swimming through lava. The heat index must have been about 125F. It was the type of thick hellish heat that makes one’s sweat just stick to ‘em like a plaster.
Like the sweat has nowhere to go. Like even the sweat is sweating. Like every inch of your skin is slick and dripping as if it were covered in warm candle wax.
But by afternoon, after a quick thundershower, it’d cooled down some. And the guys were moving steel beams when a shrill scream exploded into the air, someone screaming bloody murder. Everyone dropped their equipment, slowly backed away. Jaws dropped. Then the guys formed a semicircle, and inside the circle was a two-foot snake. A dark green scaly serpent. A biblically evil creature, all cold-blooded and slithering and hissing, all menacingly flicking out its forked tongue…
No one really knew what to do. Except Ivan. Smiling, from ear to ear, as always, he sauntered right up to the snake. With a glitter of calm in his steely blue eyes, Ivan told everyone not to worry, because the snake “is no poison (sic).”
Then, just as casually as yanking the chain to a lawnmower, Ivan knelt to his haunches, and scooped the snake up into his right hand and rose to his feet, dangled the snake in the air, like a puppet on a string, and then he snorted and laughed, uproariously.
The construction crew gasped. Some excoriated him. Others begged him to unhand the reptile. But Ivan was unmoved. He just smiled, wide as a toothpaste ad, as sunshine flashed on his teeth. Then he declared that everyone should see him do this trick…
And with that, he threw his head back, yawned open his lips, pressed his eyes shut, and held the snake over his mouth, like a cherry on a stem. Then he lowered
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer the snake into his mouth, and the snake (which was eerily calm throughout) peacefully slid its head into Ivan’s open throat and dipped down further, pushing in, like a dipstick into an oil pan.
There were oohs and ahs from the onlookers. One guy, a mulletheaded redneck type, retched and stomped off in dismay.
But then everyone silenced when Ivan started to convulse, almost like an epileptic.
Shaking, Ivan’s eyes remained shut, and he dropped again to his knees, then wrenched the snake from out of his throat and released it. And with that, Ivan’s face clouded over, and he collapsed, in a heap, falling to the ground, where he lay frozen as a block of ice, flat on his back.
(Though, somehow, the snake still remained calm. The serpent Zen as a monk as it slithered off into a hole in the ground nearby.)
Ivan, however, remained motionless on the ground. Then it appeared as if his chest was rapidly lifting and falling. Then it appeared as if he weren’t breathing at all...
Curse words and panicked yells rang out. The semicircle inched closer, closed in around Ivan, though no one seemed sure what to do. One guy, who’d been filming the entire incident on his phone, kept his phone trained on Ivan and stepped forward, zoomed in on the Russian’s frozen face.
Jorge, his frown deepening, his bushy black brows knitted in a puzzled tangle, grabbed a two-by-four, and paced cautiously, closer to Ivan, and poked, gently, at the Russian, searching for signs of life. Another one of the guys broke into tears.
But as soon as Jorge poked at Ivan a second time, the rubicund Russian’s eyes burst wide open, big as boulders, and he sprung to his feet, howling and laughing hysterically.
His laughter drowning out a chorus of groans, Ivan then pointed at everyone and slapped at his knees in amusement.
Then, wheezing hard, almost as if he had emphysema, he tottered over to his thermos, twisted it open, and chuckled once more. Then he triumphantly yelled out “mutterfucka!” before gulping down a big swig of vodka.
MAN WITH A PONYTAIL
We were in a Grateful Dead, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pearl Jam and basketball phase. We smoked weed, wore tie-dye shirts AND balled. And we balled hard, harboring hoop dreams, grandiose aspirations of being the next Big Bill Walton, Larry Bird, Chris Mullen, Luc Longley… or maybe Kurt Rambis…
We were trashy suburban teenagers. Honkeys with ponytails hooping. A couple of us had game, hops, too, and could slam dunk, turn heads on the playground.
Mind you this was pre-Mac McClung. Pre-Steven Adams. Pre-Luka Doncic. This was the White Men Can’t Jump Era… But we broke the mold… Blazed a new path…
And “blaze” we did. Daily. We’d even play high. We’d rip bong hits, then storm the court, dripping with sweat, playing ‘til way past sundown... I don’t know how we did this, in retrospect. Back in those days, cannabis wasn’t as high quality so that could have played a role.
With all the legal weed, dispensaries, the net, it’s weird reflecting on those pre-legalization, pre-web, pre-dark web days. How you had to know someone, have connections, in order to score.
If all our plugs, our normal connections were dry, we’d head down to the “hood”
to buy weed. However, this entailed a risk of robbery. Or so we’d worry. And when we’d journey to the “other side of the tracks,” we’d bring a knife, mace, stash a baseball bat in the backseat, or my friend would sneak one of his dad’s handguns, conceal it in his ’89 Ford Escort’s glove compartment.
The worst rip-off I can remember, though, didn’t come from a drug run to the hood. In fact, we never once got ripped off there. The dealers, “streetside pharmacists,” dudes there were always cool, hooked us up properly with killer, crystally red-haired Jamaican buds… Nah, actually, it was a high school classmate of mine that gave it to us the worst. Another honkey.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer This honkey was the sort often then referred to as, unfortunately, a “wigger,” but also known as a “yo.”
He was the type of White kid who spoke in Ebonics, wore baggy pants, oversize shirts, Reebok Pumps, Charlotte Hornets Starter jackets and stocking caps. He had a hi-top fade, eraserhead haircut like Kid from Kid ‘n Play and cut lines in his eyebrows like Vanilla Ice. He beatboxed, breakdanced, slap-drummed on lockers and freestyled in the hallways... He was our school’s Eminem, Andrew Schultz, or maybe a Michael Rapaport… Or he could have been the kid from that old Offspring music video, “Pretty Fly for a White Guy.”
The yo and I were in Shop class together, and he was strongly disliked by a couple of my friends. Because they hated any yo. One of my friends, a particularly violent and fat hippy had wanted to beat the shit out of the yo. Just because he claimed to hate “fuckin’ wiggers.” Even stranger, the yo backed down, in the hallway, when shoved and challenged to fight the fat hippy.
(This might have been the first and only time in the history of American high schools that a kid in a Starter jacket refused to fight a fat dude with a ponytail, in a Grateful Dead shirt, but I digress…)
Maybe my friend’s racially charged animosity wasn’t what it seemed. Perhaps it was a premonition. An omen to keep away from the yo...
Like lots of hip hop kids, the yo smoked weed. And I’d join him, sneaking off from Shop class to burn blunts by the football field. There, under the empty bleachers, we’d trade cassette tapes, mixtapes and bootlegs, listen to our Walkmans. And he introduced me to NWA, Cypress Hill, Das EFX, House of Pain and Funkdoobiest, a lot of which I liked, and I introduced him to Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Zep, and got him to breakdance to “Casey Jones,” which he claimed to dig.
The yo had high-quality cannabis. Kind buds… And while smoking, he told me his cousin, who went by the unique appellation “Teddy Bear,” was moving pounds of the same cannabis. Some sticky, skunky Vancouver BC shit. The chronic… At a price too good…
Four other friends and I pooled our cash to purchase two pounds. We were scheming to then sell the stuff as nickels and dime-bags. My friend who’d
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer invested the most had saved up for a while, had planned to peddle a pound of the stuff back at his boarding school.
I wasn’t there when the “buy” was scheduled. But my friend back from boarding school and another hippy friend went to meet Teddy Bear. Details were murky, but Teddy Bear, also a yo, was with another yo and somehow the yo pair separated my friends, had them wait in different spots. Then the two yos vanished after receiving the cash. Leaving us dry and certainly not high.
My friend back from boarding school had put in the most cash and was angrier than anyone. It turned out his older brother had also put in cash. And his older brother was not at all a hippy. Actually, he was sorta scary. This was a dude who was like 25, had a shaved head and had been in prison. A dude who had lots of muscles, tattoos. A dude who worked at a motorcycle shop…
My friend’s prison dude brother rode his Harley to my high school to confront the yo. Tight-lipped and angry-eyed, Prison Dude lay in wait for the clang of the three o’clock bell. Prison Dude pacing the school bus stop like a cagefighter during pre-fight introductions…
However, the yo pleaded ignorance, threw up his arms and claimed twice that he
“din know noffin’.” That wasn’t a satisfactory explanation, and Prison Dude shifted his weight, clubbed the yo with a hard right hook to the jaw that sent the yo drunk walking, staggering and tumbling to the pavement. Prison Dude proceeded to start kicking the crouching yo in the ass. Flung a steel-toe boot right at the yo’s red boxer-clad ass that’d been hanging like a target from his saggy Guess jeans. Prison Dude got in a good four or five kicks and a stomp or two before being chased off by school security guards.
The yo had literally gotten his ass kicked…
What was most intriguing was the outcome of the yo’s beating. The yo’s jaw had been broken, and he’d spent a lengthy time in convalescence. But when he returned from the hospital, the following school year, he was a changed man.
He’d become a hippy. Grew his hair long, was wearing tie-dye shirts, patchouli oil.
He’d started playing guitar, too, and had gotten heavily into The Grateful Dead.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Even weirder was that the yo-cum-hippy had become violent, was regularly getting into fistfights. He eventually got expelled after savagely beating up, hospitalizing a scrawny freshman in a school bathroom. Fucking slammed the poor kid’s face into a urinal after jacking his pager…
Some years later, I heard from a friend of a friend that the yo-cum-hippy had become a professional musician. And that he’d become embroiled in a legal battle after being accused of stealing another folk singer’s identity. Allegedly he’d been performing the singer’s music and was actively touring, playing shows in bars, clubs, and state fairs under that folk singer’s name.
He’d allegedly stolen the folk singer’s likeness, too, and was even pulling his chestnut-brown hair into the same scruffy style of ponytail.
I’VE BEEN SIGNING NIGERIAN SPAMMERS UP TO GAY PORN WEBSITES
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE JUST BEEN SELECTED TO RECEIVE $20 MILLION!
“ … “
No, not really, but I’m sure we’ve all received nuisance emails like this. Normally from someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince.
Such spam emails have been rolling into my inbox, furiously, for weeks.
I’ve got no idea how my email address found its way to Nigeria, to these spammers, but clearly my email has been thrown to these modern-day grifters, and the spammers have been pouncing on my email address like it was raw meat thrown to caged lions in a zoo.
Every day, I receive several emails, usually from various purported royal family members. For some reason, the Nigerian royal family seems really excited and happy to bequeath tremendous sums of cash to a perfect stranger…
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer It looked so simple too. All I had to do was provide them with my full name, social security number, and bank account number, and WOW! $20 million, $10 million, $11.8 MILLION were ALL MINE!
Of course, as most of us must also know, this is a con, a swindle, a racket, a trick, a cheat, a flimflam, a hustle, a hoax, a bunco… a low-down dirty boondoggle!
These particular spam scams have been around for ages, too, and I once saw a fascinating documentary about this phenomenon.
Being that this racket is so well known, it’s surprising that these emails still even exist. Sadly, though, some folks must still be falling for this, otherwise these emails would not still exist.
Since most of these emails originate from Nigeria, I got interested to learn a little more about the country, so I googled it, and then went down a Wikipedia wabbit hole.
In doing so, I was rather dismayed to learn that in Nigeria, homosexuality is considered a crime and that gays are often beaten, murdered, and even jailed, simply for being who they are… What the fuck?! In the 2020s? Really?
In fact, according to Wikipedia, 14 states in Nigeria have Sharia law and carry out the death penalty for same-sex relations, death by stoning, to be exact. In other regions of Nigeria, gays can receive prison terms of up to 14 years in jail!
Coming from a country where gay marriage is legal, and where a football coach was just forced to resign, largely because of idiotic anti-gay slurs he’d used in an email, I was definitely saddened to see how much worse life is for LGBTQ in other countries, especially in Nigeria, as well as other countries in the developing world.
Which brings me back to the spamming scammers that’d been attacking my email inbox on a daily basis.
In the documentary I watched, the scammers were all men.
(And I’m not sure why. Perhaps the women there have better, more effective scams to pull, or are just smarter and better humans than these spammers…) After reading that the majority of the country is homophobic (up to 94-97%
identifying as homophobic, according to a Pew poll) I figured, statistically, the
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer spammers would likely also share these beliefs, so I decided to avenge their email attacks by launching a little assault of my own.
My plan: I decided to fuck with the spam scammers by signing them up to gay porn websites.
I posited that doing so would both annoy the shit out of them as well as force them to confront their homophobia.
Every “419” spam email I receive now, I copy the return address, and then sign the spammer up to action-packed newsletters for sites like “HOT HORNY HUNKS
SUCK COCK.CUM”
The recipients of such newsletter invitations will be the spammers, and I like to envision their reactions, as they log in to their email accounts, the anger playing out over their faces. Their eyes bulging. Their lips curling in disgust as they view the message awaiting them in their inbox. Oh, how I wish I could be like Facebook or Instagram and be able to flick on the spammers’ webcams, watch their responses!
Obviously, the thought of the fraudsters possibly being, themselves, a closeted homosexual, that did cross my mind. But hey, if that’s the case, then maybe they found a new gay website to enjoy, and good for them!
There’s also, possibly, legal, social ramifications that could arise. What if the spammer, as he sat in a crummy net café, in Lagos, what if the person sitting next to the spammer saw his screen, saw him open an email with a picture of a dude sucking another dude’s cock, or a big beefy jock, football-playing fuck, bending over, flashing his naked, muscly man ass for the camera, what if someone saw him looking at that?
Would the spammer be hauled off to jail? Beaten? Killed? I’m not sure, and I wouldn’t wish physical harm upon the hoaxer. However, it’s hard to feel too much empathy for those who swindle, steal money from others, steal identities. Such spammers are criminals who often exploit gullible seniors.
So, hey, if that scamster got his ass hauled to jail over, ironically enough, an email, then yo, I say that’s just karma, bitch.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Not that I believe signing these con-artists up for gay porn will stop or deter them, but hopefully it at least annoys them, makes them confront their homophobia.
And, what’s more, I do wish that one day, perhaps Nigeria can have a better, more equitable society. One that’s not such a breeding ground for hate and spam scams.
BUM BASHING
Hank and Jimmy were the biggest bullies in our high school. They were the stereotypical “bad kids.” They wore lots of black baggy clothes and had multiple facial piercings. Hank even had a tattoo of a Chinese character on his forearm before it was a fad.
(Of course nowadays, since he wasn’t Asian, he might be accused of cultural appropriation, though it’d be hard to picture anyone saying that to his face.) The two were inseparable, and if it weren’t for the rumor about Hank raping a drunk girl, on a sofa, at a party, it might have been thought the two were lovers.
The two were always beating up on nerds, scrawny kids, foreigners. There was a pudgy little Indian kid named Kartique (pronounced “Karta-kay”) and they’d kick the crap out of him, call him “Farta-kay” and steal his lunch money, damn near every day.
The worst I heard about them (well, maybe second to the raping) was that the two liked to go “bum bashing.”
Bum bashing, I didn’t even know what that was until my friend Tim filled me in.
“Bum bashing is when people go out, normally under the cover of night, and beat the shit out of bums, homeless,” Tim told me, in the cafeteria, as he chomped on a corndog.
Tim had gone on to say that Hank and Jimmy would allegedly carry baseball bats, pipes, hammers, whatever blunt object they could get their hands on, and then
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer they’d set off in the night, find homeless sleeping rough in parks or in alleys and then savagely beat the ever-living shit out of the vagrants.
Tim and I then joked about dispensing a healthy helping of vigilante justice on the pair. Maybe slapping an electromagnet at Hank and Jimmy’s faces, watching it vacuum off their facial piercings. Then we talked about flinging gasoline on them, as they stood behind the gym, smoking cigarettes, setting the fuckers on fire.
We fantasized about numerous horror movie scenarios, numerous gruesome ways to murder the two. Even though they never picked on us as much as other kids, still, Jimmy had punched me in the stomach once and stole my Chicago Bulls stocking cap and Harry had slammed Tim’s head into a locker and stolen his Gameboy.
Yup, even though I already despised them, hearing about their penchant for “bum bashing” pissed me off to no end.
For real though, despite stinking worse than a bus station bathroom, the homeless in our city were mostly harmless. Most were elderly, with mental problems, many were Vietnam veterans. I always felt for those vets, too, since I’d had an uncle killed in ‘Nam.
For real though, those veterans deserved better. Dammit, that was the last thing they deserved, getting beaten on by those two snickering shitheads. The more I thought about it, the more my blood boiled.
Soon after that cafeteria chat, I saw a story on the evening news about a homeless man, in his 70s, who’d been found, beaten to death, not far from our high school. I’d suspected the perpetrators to be Hank and Jimmy. But I didn’t have any proof, aside from the rumor I’d heard. However, I’d considered calling the police.
As much as I hate snitching, murder, especially that of a senior citizen, now that’s fucked up, and the more I pondered it, the sicker I felt, and I contemplated calling the cops and leaving an anonymous tip.
But I decided not to, after I heard the news.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer It was a damp, chilly and foggy Monday morning, and I got to school late after missing the bus. My friend, Tim, who was my only friend, really, back then, had seen me in the hallway, between classes, and he ran up to me, giddy as can be.
His breath smelled strongly of mint chewing gum.
“Hey, you hear about Hank and Jimmy?” he asked, his eyes bulging and blazing with excitement.
Shaking my head, “Nah, what about those asshats?” I asked.
“They were out wilding last night, slashing tires, breaking windows, beating up on bums. But, like, a younger homeless veteran spotted them wailing on an old guy in a cardboard box, and the veteran ran over, went fucking Chuck Norris on the pair, beat the both of them... bad… Beat ‘em bad, I mean, reeeeeeal bad. Hank’s neck is broken. Dude might never walk again... And Jimmy… Yo… Jimmy is dead…”
“Dead?”
“Dead. Got his skull caved in. And the veteran is in jail.”
I lacked the language to respond, I was so floored by the news. Jimmy was the first person my age I knew who’d died. Even though I despised him, still, his sudden, violent death hit me like a gut punch.
Hank showed up to school, a couple months later. But he wasn’t the same guy. He was emaciated. He had these heavy bags under his eyes, making him look almost like a raccoon. He kept quiet and was transferred to the “special needs” classes, where he sat with the mentally retarded kids. Later that summer, he was convicted of the murder of the old homeless man, and was charged as an adult, sentenced to a lengthy prison term.
The young veteran pled guilty to lesser charges and got off relatively lightly, with only a short prison sentence.
I’m not inclined, usually, to believe in karma, but sometimes, sometimes I wonder…
SOPHIE’S CHOICE
Over 20 times he’d called. More than 100 text messages he’d sent. His desperate tantrums had Sophie’s phone buzzing, beeping like a cardiac patient.
Wouldn’t he just go away?
She’d deleted him. But… he’d returned… A voice from her graveyard of ghosted guys… His every text message landing like kicks to the cunt… clawing… spectral hands thrusting up through the dirt…
And on this chilly fall night, he was here. Outside her apartment. In the slimy rain.
Her jilted ex pacing the parking lot. His presence ghastly, cadaverous… menacing as a shark in the water…
In the gathering tempest her ex appeared ringed in a nimbus of rage. Then he froze in place, lifted his gaze, and lasered his eyes at her as she stood staring at him from between her front room’s blinds. Then he thrust his phone into the air and started playing their favorite song: “Sweet but Psycho.”
They’d both loved that song. They’d sung it in unison. Danced to it together.
Before, the song seemed so sweet. But now, as she listened to its distant, tinny squeal, from the speakers of his smartphone, it wasn’t cute. Or sweet. At all. It was frightening, sinister… To her, it sounded worse than nails scratching a blackboard… Sounded even worse than Ed Sheeran…
Mike the Mohawk Guy, he wasn’t sweet, in any way.
He was a FUCKING PSYCHO!
Watching the stalker-y scene develop, Sophie pondered her options. Should she:
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer A) call the cops
B) go out there with a canister of mace and blast the mohawk fucker in the face Part of her wanted to call the cops. Over 100 texts in three days must be against the law...
But part of her wanted vengeance. She’d tired of his philandering. She’d seen the girls’ texts on his phone, and his friends, on social media, almost every one of them was female. Did he think she was stupid? That she wouldn’t notice?
And why was he so surprised when she’d given him the boot?
He had perfect facial structure and a hard body that’d make Michelangelo proud.
He could so easily find another girl.
But instead of moving on, he’d begged her to “give it another chance.” He’d actually cried too. A grown man. A grown man, a grown man with a beard, crying like a baby. A 35-year-old, bearded man sniveling and high-pitched whining on the phone, his voice cracking.
To her, a grown man crying, unless extenuating circumstances were at play, might be the cringiest thing ever… God, that might be even worse than loudly farting in front of your lover…
Like, just when she heard that first crack of his voice, that squeaky “urmph” when he started to cry, just… ugh...
She thought he sounded like such a bitch...
Facts: they’d only been together for three months. Three months. She wasn’t that emotionally invested. And she’d even cringed when he’d said, “I love you.”
Three months in and he “loved” her? This guy with a mohawk? This guy who’d wear skinny jeans, rumpled hockey jerseys and corny T-shirts saying things like,
“I’m FBI: Female Body Inspector.” Or: “I’m not gay, but $20 is $20.”
None of it made sense. She found him something of an enigma too. Although he always had money, he was ambiguous about his work. He’d prevaricate. Never really say what he did. He’d mentioned “crypto” and an online business, but when
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer she’d asked for a link to his business’s site, he told her the site was “under construction” and most of his work was “conducted through email.”
Email? Who the fuck still emails? People still using AOL and 56K dial-up modems?
No one sends emails these days, except spammers and “princes” in Nigeria.
Hmm… Maybe that was it. He could be a sketchy, dirty scammer, swindling lonely elderly out of their retirement cash. Ugh, she quivered in revulsion. Or maybe he was a drug dealer. What if he sold fentanyl? Oh, that’d be so creepy… If, like, it was him who killed Prince…
Whoever and whatever he was, his mohawk head stayed circling the parking lot...
Like a bloodthirsty shark…
Fortunately, though, he’d lowered the phone. Quit the retro, 1980s movie antics.
But he lingered, lowered his phone to his side, like a gun to the holster. Her heart then skipped a beat when he contorted his pale, puffy face and she saw him pull open the passenger door to his black Honda Civic, reach inside the car.
Sophie stepped back from behind the blinds, breathing heavily, terror raising goosebumps along her arms, cold fear creeping through her joints and bones.
Then she started praying he wouldn’t break out a machine gun, go Columbine.
Inching back, she prepared to run and dive into the bathroom. Jump in the bathtub as if a tornado were coming. But then she sighed in relief, her shoulders slumping as he produced a big, gaudy bouquet. Then he jerked the red roses into the sky. Then he put on a pathetic smile and dropped down to one knee.
Like, oh my God... Just… What the actual fuck?
Sophie thought that this might be the Colin Kaepernick of stalking.
Sophie just wanted to be done. Done with him. She quickly shuffled away from the window, scooped up her phone from the kitchenette counter and stabbed a finger at the phone’s side.
She pictured her fingers as knives. Her hand like Freddy Krueger’s. Her fingers slashing Mohawk Guy’s throat. Sticky blasts of his warm blood splashing over her,
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer like hot water from a showerhead. Her beaming, radiant as a smiley happy version of Carrie.
But the device didn’t bleed. It just died a silent death. Went blank. And hanging her head down at its empty screen, Sophie wished she could do the same thing to Mohawk Mike. Just press a button and have him go away.
Sophie’s roommate sat motionless in the living room. The girl with the pink teddy bear ear buns, rooted to their U-shaped sofa. The girl glued, as always, to her phone’s phosphorescent force. Throughout the entire ordeal her roommate hadn’t lifted her gaze or said a word. Probably didn’t even notice. She and Sophie mostly communicated by text messages.
For a second, Sophie contemplated plopping down next to her roommate, on the sofa, ranting about Mohawk Guy. But seeing the discomfiting inelasticity of her roommate’s face, her unblinking gaze, the raccoon circles under her roommate’s eyes, Sophie decided she’d rather rant online instead.
Sophie harrumphed, scoffed and shook her head full of purple hair. Then she stomped into her room and tried to slam her door shut. But her bedroom door was so flimsy that it didn’t really slam, and flinging it to its hinges, as she did, felt thoroughly unsatisfying.
Then she looked around her room. Her meager room. Sure, it was stuffed with stuff. Amazon packages. A flat-screen TV. A tablet. A closet jampacked with clothes and shoes. For such a humble room, it sure had a wealth of possessions.
Then she thought that this… This is where, what, and who she was. This was her
“lot in life.”
This was her: she was 30. Single. Doing gig work. Living with a zombie roommate.
In piles of debt. In and out of hookups or having a series of dysfunctional, short-lived relationships. Would it always be like this? She had no five-year plan.
Maybe, she pondered, her mind racing… Maybe… Maybe the mohawk guy wasn’t a freak. Maybe he wasn’t a stalker. Maybe she overreacted. Guys have friends
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer who are girls, right? And those girls everywhere on his phone could be relatives, coworkers, or business partners. She didn’t know. She didn’t even ask. She’d just made assumptions.
She’d always made assumptions. She’d always catastrophized…
Her once trendy teenage angst had hardened into a type of terminal blues; the doldrums starting in high school, soon after her parents’ divorce.
Her distrust of men started after her father’s affair and was solidified by her dad’s absence. Aside from his occasional, obligatory visits.
She hated those visits too. Her father’s awkward fits and starts of small talk. His trying to be “cool,” using outdated teenager slang, declaring everything to be the
“bomb.”
She hated her father’s beer breath and sweaty brows and the width of his shoulders as he stood next to the swing set in the backyard. The way he’d speak without moving his lips; his greasy skin, distracted gaze and his bloodshot eyes and the heavy black eyebags on his tired face; his lizard-quick facial expressions and his clammy hands…
Her father’s oily voice wet in her ears… His constricting suits and neckties… Her father’s face wrinkling with rage. His neck veins popping like exposed pipes as he’d stop mid-sentence to yell into the Bluetooth earpiece stuck in his ear, the device limp, black and heavy as a dead beetle…
Then came her mother’s catatonic alcoholism. Her mother always passed out or about to pass out on the pleather sofa. Her mother in various sleep poses. Her mother softly snoring. Her mother’s mouth agape, short pink tongue stuck to the curve of her lower lip, like a pitiful dog.
Her mother’s vacant stare, facing half-eaten TV dinners and rows of empty wine bottles… The whiff of puke on her mother’s breath… The TV always loud and always on… The TV tuned to sitcoms from the 80s. Full House. Growing Pains.
Those teleplays colored by laff-tracks, smiley hair crimes and neon clothes…
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Then another surge of cold fear broke over her at the realization, the potentiality-of winding up like her mother… A lump on the couch. A big puke-breathed snoring clump of covers in front of a blaring television. A zombie… Dead but not dead.
That seemed a fate worse than any other. And Sophie decided that no, no, nooooooooo! NO!!!!! She didn’t want that!
And she didn’t have to be that. She could act now. She could break the cycle. She could give the mohawk guy another chance.
In fact, she would.
She would do that. She’d ask him the questions she should have asked. She’d open up to him and stop being such a snowflake.
Maybe… It was her fault all along. Maybe everything she’d adduced was incorrect…
Maybe she was the asshole in all this. Maybe she shouldn’t have looked down on him for crying on the phone. Maybe he was just sensitive. Like Drake. She loved Drake. A man sensitive but still strong. The more she thought about it, she could see Drake crying on the phone. Drake expressing his feelings, showing his vulnerabilities. Maybe the mohawk guy was like that. Maybe he was just sensitive, and maybe that’s okay.
Maybe… Maybe he was her soulmate. Maybe they’d have kids, a happy life, a nice house… She started to picture their names, “Mike and Sophie,” written in cursive…
Maybe… Maybe she could make him shave off that mohawk, that dead animal stuck to his head thing... Maybe she could make him wear better clothes…
Maybe… Maybe he really was an entrepreneur and was cooking up a revolutionary app or website or online business that’d take the world by storm!
Maybe, one day, one day he’d be a famous billionaire… Maybe he’d be the next Elon Musk. Billionaires are weird and sensitive, too, right?
So, she crinkled her nose, swallowed her pride, drew in a deep yoga-like breath.
Then she powered up her phone, with purpose…
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer When she rushed out of her room, she saw her teddy bear-hair roommate still transfixed, staring at the little blue square of light in her hands as if she was trying to remember something, and so Sophie didn’t stop or say a word as she opened the front door to a wall of cool, wet evening air.
Wearing only an electric blue bathrobe and Hello Kitty socks, she realized that this could be the first time since she was 12 that she’d leave the house without makeup. And she couldn’t care any less…
As if fired from a cannon, Sophie shot into the hallway, ran down three flights of stairs, two steps at a time, running frantically into the slimy rain, right into the parking lot.
Panting and wheezing, she was ready. She was ready for him. Her soulmate. She was ready to kiss and hug and to talk about the future. Their future.
But… He wasn’t anywhere. His car was gone. And when she called him, he didn’t answer. Nor did he reply to any of the ensuing 100 text messages.
AFTER SCHOOL
Inspired by a scene from Welcome to the Dollhouse…
Theresa walked with a limp, her impaired gait stemming from a childhood injury.
While riding her bike, she’d been sideswiped by a delivery van, thrown into a muddy swale. Although she was lucky to be alive, her right leg suffered permanent damage and disfigurement.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Following the incident, she’d spent a lengthy convalescence in the hospital, and that was when and where she’d discovered a passion for reading.
Books showed her new worlds and offered an escape from her mundane life in middle America. Aside from occasional car accidents, there wasn’t too much happening in her idyllic little lakeside bedroom community, and while reading, sometimes her mind would drift to thoughts of traveling, visiting faraway, exotic places, or even just moving to a big city, like NYC or LA, somewhere sophisticated and cosmopolitan.
In school, Theresa rarely socialized outside of study groups. Rather, she preferred to sit quietly, reading, between classes and during lunch. On the bus, too, she’d be reading, her head always bowed to a book. Basically, she was never without a book in her hands. Books, to her, were ideal friends, in that they always had useful, amusing things to say, and they were always there when she needed them.
Not to mention books never stared at her, or squinted, pointed or asked her, often sardonically, “Hey, like, what’s wrong with your leg?”
Her world had been quiet, one of books and study. Until he came along…
She’d figured he’d just transferred in from another school because she’d never seen him before, though his long, sharp face was vaguely familiar.
The new boy was tall, skinny as a scarecrow. And he looked like a misfit, a stereotypical juvenile delinquent. He wore backward baseball caps, T-shirts with pictures of serial killers, and he had an oversized steel wallet chain dangling from his baggy pants, and as he walked through the halls, the chain made a jingly sound, like keys rattling.
Strangely, he was the first boy to ever pay attention to her. Normally nobody paid attention to her. The first time she saw him in the hallway, their eyes met, and she’d quickly averted his gaze, turned her cheek.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer But his gaze was unwavering. His brown eyes growing as he stared her down. To her, it felt almost as if he were a lion in the Serengeti and she was an antelope, a wounded antelope too, with how she limped. His eyes were unyielding, affixed, and blazing with a scary, animalistic glint. His eyes like an angry dog’s. His stare sending a chill down her spine. There was such an ugliness, too, in how he trained his glare. It was penetrating. Unnerving.
That first time he saw her, he made no attempt to speak with her. He just stood, leaning against his locker, brooding and glaring at her; his upper lip curled; his arms folded over his chest. Veering further to the opposite side of the hallway, she felt the cold weight of his gaze, like it was a block of ice pressed to her neck, and she wished she knew magic or something and could make herself invisible so she could just disappear.
But, unfortunately, she couldn’t make herself invisible, despite attempting a few spells from a fantasy novel she’d read. And his staring continued. His angry dog glaring growing seemingly more hostile by the day. And it’d started to feel, to her, as if he were everywhere in the school, like he was stalking her, lying in wait, ready to pounce. As if his brazen face were behind every door, his obtrusive eyes under every desk.
Even in the girls bathroom, she could sense the sting of his presence. As if he were there, staring down at her, watching her piss and shit.
Like her, he was also a loner, never sitting or talking with anyone. He’d sit alone at a nearby table in the cafeteria, during lunch, just glaring at her. He’d glare at her every day in the cafeteria, then in the hallways too. After school, as well, at the bus stop, among the knots of students, he’d be standing by his lonesome, his arms folded, his eyes just like the laser scope of a rifle, his eyes steadily locked in on her… burning…
She didn’t quite know what to do about it. She’d always minded her business, avoided conflict. No one had ever tested her like this. Since she was enrolled in
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer only honors classes, she didn’t mix with kids like him, and the kids like him normally bullied others, normally boys. To her, it was uncomfortable, unchartered territory.
Being an only child, she didn’t have a sister or brother to confide in, ask for help.
She eventually mentioned it to her busybody mother, over an early evening pizza dinner, but her mother brushed it off, giggled and said that he “probably just had a crush on her.” Her mom encouraged her to be brave, strike up a conversation with the new boy. Maybe they could “study together.” Her mother was constantly suggesting she find more friends to “study” with.
So she took her mother’s advice, overcame her frissons of fears, her pusillanimous inclinations. That next morning, she worked up the courage and went over, between classes, to talk to him. Meekly, with minimal eye contact, she politely introduced herself to him. His answer, though, shocked her.
“I’m gonna rape you,” he told her, in a condescending voice, his thin lips curling into a sinister grin.
Taken aback, all she could mutter was “what?” and her brows knitted as a fit of nausea plaited over her, her panic collecting and hardening, as if a chunk of concrete were forming in her stomach.
“That’s right. I’m gonna fucking rape you. After school. Today. You’re getting raped.”
Then he sneered at her, turned his cheek, and calmly walked off, the chain on his baggy jeans jangling.
Paralyzed with fear, she paused among the clumps of students crisscrossing by her in the hallway, feeling like a car that’d broken down in the middle of a busy highway. Then her mind started spinning in circles. She was young, sure, but she knew what “rape” was, she knew what he meant.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer But she’d long figured any rapist would be a weirdo in an old beat-up van, or a shifty-eyed freak in a trench coat, some perv lurking near the playground. She never expected the backward hat guy of… that… She pictured him beating her up, robbing her, maybe growing fangs and biting her like a vampire, or even killing her, hacking apart her body with a chainsaw, but not… this…
It’s not as if she’d had much experience with boys. Actually, she possessed none.
She’d never done anything with a boy. She’d never had a boyfriend. But she knew what sex was, and rape was a sort of nonconsensual sexual intercourse, she knew.
For years, she’d been reading sex scenes in books, so she was aware of sex, as a concept, as an activity, that, usually, adults and older teens did. But it was in that Sex Ed class, just recently, that she first saw graphic illustrated pictures, drawings of penises and people… doing… that… and it’d totally grossed her out. Sex, to her, seemed so revolting. Like, why would people want to do that? Because it felt good? It only looked dirty and disgusting to her.
Especially penises. A penis, yuck, what a disgusting thing! A penis, to her, looked like a hideous reptile, a creepy crawler creature that was a cross between a snake and a turtle. Just the thought of that gross, hairy, slimy thing hanging from a boy’s body, that gross snake thing, ick, slithering… inside her… it made her shudder and feel nauseous. And this was what the delinquent wanted to do? Shove his disgusting reptile thing in between her legs? Ick!
(After first seeing a picture of a penis in the Sex Ed class, Theresa had trouble understanding how boys were even able to walk, with that snake thing hanging and dangling, between their legs. At first, she thought that there must be a shell or something it could crawl into, right? Maybe that’s what the testicle sack was for; surely, penises didn’t just flop around, down there? She wanted to ask the teacher about this but wasn’t able to muster the nerve to raise her hand.) (Then it dawned on her that if all men have penises, then her dad, her grandfather, her science teacher, they too have… YUCK! And if they all have those creepy snake things, did even her 90 y/o great-grandfather have one? Does he still have one? Or do old penises wither, fall off with time, like a dead tree branch?
She hoped for her great-grandpa’s sake that penises did wither and break off,
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer because they were so yucky, and she didn’t like to think of him having one of those things…)
After thawing from the shock of the encounter, Theresa limped briskly to the library, sat down to a study table and ruminated on the delinquent’s proclamation, how he might follow through on his rape threat. Would he run up behind her?
Drag her off somewhere? Certainly he wouldn’t do it in public, in front of the school, or at the bus stop… Or would he?
How would she fight him off? How could she? She knew she couldn’t outrun him, not with her lame leg. She also didn’t have a weapon, nor did she know how to fight. Then she thought about telling one of her teachers, but maybe they’d say the same thing as her mom, that the new boy had a crush on her or something and that she should be his friend. It was all so embarrassing too. And would the teachers even believe her?
After school, she padded out to the bus, walking on eggshells and trembling, gritting her teeth as she was expecting the worst. But her tormentor was nowhere to be seen. She kept looking over her shoulder, thinking he’d be behind her, about to attack, but he was nowhere.
That evening, though, she kept seeing him, kept seeing his sharp, angry face, his fiery eyes. She couldn’t concentrate, could barely read. She’d imagined him in shadows, him standing in dimly lit corners; the delinquent scowling, frowning, his arms crossed, his telescopic gaze trained…
Then at night she had trouble sleeping, thinking he might climb in through her window, jerk down his pants and attack her with his horrible snake thing, so she’d kept her covers tucked tightly over her head and left on a nightlight.
When she saw him the next day, her heart started drumming, and a lump of panic balled up in her throat. Her eyes widening in alarm.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer He seemed paler than before, his skin chalk white. But his eyes appeared darker, as if his pupils were clumps of coal. As he walked by her, in the hallway, she smelled a strong whiff of cigarette smoke, and once he noticed her, his eyes popped, and he stopped mid-stride, his clanky chain hushing silent. Then he stalked toward her, bent forward, and whispered in her ear, his breath blowing cold as the winter wind. Speaking in a churlish tone, he stated that today, for sure, he would rape her after school.
Once more, she was petrified. All that day her mind raced, ruminating on a plethora of gruesome outcomes. And again, after the final bell rang, she lumbered out to the bus stop, gloomily, sternly, with compressed lips. But again, he was nowhere to be seen, and she went unharmed.
Back home, she sat bolt upright in bed, gnawing at her dilemma; her thoughts whirling, her fears churning. Then she glanced over at her bookshelf and saw the spine of the book, Carrie. She thought of Carrie, the character from the eponymous Stephen King novel, and she drew strength from the anti-heroine, thinking how badass Carrie was for taking revenge, finally standing up for herself.
Though Theresa didn’t possess any magical powers, like most people, she could at least get her hands on a weapon. And she would. And then suddenly a soothing, warming rush of tranquility becalmed Theresa as she decided then and there that she WOULD NOT be a victim.
The next morning, she woke up early and stole a knife from the kitchen counter. It was razor-sharp, a German, 13 cm serrated utility knife, stainless steel, with an ice-hardened blade. It also had a sheath, which made it easy to carry and conceal in the front pocket of a pair of loose sweatpants.
Theresa knew enough about human anatomy to know the best spots of the body to attack and slice open, including the major arteries. If the delinquent ever really tried to shove his ugly turtle snake thing into her, she was going to whip out the knife and stab him in as many places as she could.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Thinking about it more, on the bus to school, her rage festered. Gazing out the window, passing by the murky greenish waters of the lake, the angrier she became, and she even considered preemptively attacking him, just strolling up to him in the hallway and slashing him, maybe cutting his disgusting turtle snake penis thing right off!
How dare he! How dare he terrorize her, threaten her! All for what, too?! She’d done nothing but try to be his friend. Hatred began to boil over inside her. She’d never detested anyone as much as that sharp-faced, creepy, backward hat-wearing shitweasel. She really, really wanted to stab him. If not in his horrible penis, maybe in his eyes, fucking stab and gouge out both of his eyes so he couldn’t stare at her anymore. The fucker!
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, to act preemptively. She remained on the defensive. And the same pattern repeated itself. Every day, for the following couple of weeks, he’d pass by her in the hall, reeking of cigarettes, and he’d whisper evil, threaten to rape her, and then every day, he’d disappear by the final bell. And he never touched her.
Each time he taunted her, she dug deeper into her front right-hand pocket, gripped tighter over the blade’s cool, ergonomic handle. And each time he taunted her, she came closer to whipping out the weapon, jabbing it into his stomach, right around his belly button, and she’d relished the squishy sound she imagined the blade making as it broke through the layers of his skin.
Then she’d smile devilishly inside, imagining twisting the knife around, slicing through the hot, soft gloopy mass of his intestines, his insides slippery as soap, his warm blood splashing at her as it spurted from his guts, his blood-spattered bowels spilling from his stomach like a sack of dead snakes.
She’d smile inside, too, picturing herself painted in blood, standing over her tormentor. The fucker in a pool of dark blood, flopping like a fish out of water…
But then the threats suddenly ceased when he stopped showing up regularly to school. And on the few days he’d come, he’d turn up looking rough, ghost-like
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer and corpse-colored, with red whelps on his face and big purple, blue and black bruises dotting his limbs. His cussedness seemed to have vanished along with his color, too, and he wouldn’t say a word to her, or even look at her. He’d simply walk down the hallway, vacantly staring at the ground, his chain jangling.
A month or so later he’d shown up to school with his arm in a heavy cast and sling.
Then he stopped showing up to school, at all.
Another month later she was online, researching a paper for her sociology class, a paper about school violence. While flicking through an archive of newspaper articles, she saw a story, from 7 years ago, about a young inmate who’d been killed in the state prison.
Clicking on the link, she saw a familiar face. It was him. Beyond any doubt it was him. Her tormentor.
Hairs prickled on the back of her neck and goosebumps raised on her arms as she read on. The article stated that Tanner Roche, then 15, had been convicted of a school shooting, at her school, over 10 years ago. He’d opened fire in the cafeteria and killed four kids before finally being subdued by fellow students and staff. Following his arrest, he was charged as an adult and sentenced to 110 years imprisonment.
Three years later, after being transferred to an adult facility, he was discovered in his cell, naked, with his throat slashed.
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer
LET LIONS RUN LOOSE IN THE CITY STREETS
“It’s a slow burn.”
Steady raindrops, fat, and red as blood, flowed in vertical streams. The rickety-clack rainfall pounding loud as a train at the roadside motel’s windows and awnings. The heavy clouds of Heaven above, opening, as if God were gutting an elk…
“It’s quantitative, the cucks and their boogeymen, using sticks of dynamite as dildos… Like it’s an easy enema, you know… But the cat’s out of the bag, and it’s the foulest of beasts…”
A flush crept up Fuckethead’s pendulous cheeks as he counted his blessings. His eyes popped. After all, he’d just escaped the rampaging lion that’d been terrorizing the city for weeks.
“A slooooow burn…”
Fuckethead then convulsed, briefly, then did angry fits of ballet as Europe’s “The Final Countdown” began blasting from a phone in the bathroom…
“ … “
“It’d been a slow but controlled burn, beyond any cozy assumptions. Our assumptions arrested in motion… Our gunboat rowing upstream. But hey, look, goddammit, calories do burn quicker when you’re running away from a rampaging lion.”
A reading light in the corner of the dim motel room was flickering. Neon, animated hieroglyphics were dancing on the room’s white walls. Moving like cartoons, the hieroglyphics displayed scenes of utter depravity: A man with one leg sawing off another man’s arm… A camel, with a large erect penis, doing jumping jacks and lunges…
“The slow burns… They were seasonal. Comforting as a kidney stone, welcome as a swarm of wasps at an outdoor wedding… But the burns, for all their flaws, the burns never shook the pillars, were never used as anti-think weapons… But the burns eventually blistered, became the violence of insatiable desire… Triggered a host of consequences…”
“It’s children’s worst nightmares, really, and even men of steel will rust… But that cowardly cat… That cat is fucking suicidal. That cat is going kamikaze… That cat is clawing its way out of a wet paper bag…”
A naked 90-year-old woman lay sound asleep atop the motel bed. Her frail body had been painted bubble-gum pink, head-to-toe, and she lay spread out like a starfish.
Fuckethead sat on the right edge of the motel bed and became illuminated by a white halo, surrounded by it, the same way the white of an eye surrounds the black. Then Fuckethead started sobbing and panting sighs as he sharpened a sickle…
A wrinkled lion suit was covering the old minifridge-sized TV, opposite the motel bed. The lion suit splotched in bloodstains…
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“I’d been watching the Will Smith slapping Chris Rock video clip from the Oscars…”
whimpered Fuckethead, choking back tears, “I watched the video 794 times. I watched it in slow motion. I watched it sped up. I watched it on a continuous loop for over two hours… I just couldn’t take my eyes away…”
Fuckethead really was weeping nonstop, shedding enough tears to rival a rain cloud. Fuckethead lamenting his many misfortunes, the captivity of his introspective exile…
“The pink elephant was the size of a show pony. But it was focused and prepared… It played matador with the lion. Got bloodied real good. But, even after innings, its tusks were still intact and gleaming like desert mirages… A real triumph of the spirit, I’d say…”
“You see? You see what happens? When we bring snowflakes and sensitivity into the lion’s den? You see what happens? When we worship Kardashians and butt stuff instead of an omnipotent God?”
“… After all, it’s that plunge, into the hazy idea of gloom. It’s the plunge that’s attractive, not the splat, not the mess left for the cleaners… Nah… It’s the pink elephant, on IG, with its dick out, bungee jumping off a house of cards…”
“It’s more than the implications of candlestick charts and international penis size surveys… It’s the question of who exactly is measuring thousands of penises, their methodology, and, obviously, such a survey’s motivations…”
Around Fuckethead flew a noisy, baseball-sized mosquito. The insect had a face like Mark Zuckerberg. But Fuckethead paid the mosquito no mind…
Bloomberg TV began broadcasting from the phone in the bathroom. The phone was propped above the toilet, and the phone’s reflection bounced off the toilet water…. But still… no news about the recent spate of lion encounters…
“It’s the masses kept clean by Reddit mods in trench coats… It’s every Hollywood action film where the hero has to race against time to rescue his kidnapped wife/girlfriend/daughter… It’s the silencers of voices… It’s the masses kept hungry by zookeepers… It’s the masses’ migration patterns, and the human farmers, human farming, until the masses lose that certain softness of youth… It was all once manageable, the creature’s pacing… But now… Now not so much, fucko…
Now the burns are beginning to pick up… Burns imitating that feeling of Chernobyl…”
“We’re getting molested by invisible hands… Forces of fuck… God getting Uluru in a slingshot… But it’s the burns, the scarecrow sun still expanding… It’s an imp progressing with the reddest eye…”
Aside from his helmet, the pink bucket, with its two arrow slits for eyes, Fuckethead was entirely nude. His slim body slick as a dolphin’s. He’d long tired of shaving and waxing so he had all his body hair removed by electrolysis, and underneath his tailored business suits, in the boardroom, in panoramas of blond-wood serenity, Fuckethead would wear women’s underwear, often with crude penises, breasts, and curse words, drawn in eyeliner, on his chest and thighs.
“The yields, goddamn you, the yields weren’t matching. We were at an inversion point. And it was truly believed transitory forces, flare-ups, were at work. But it was wildfire. Hellfire. An uncontrolled burn. Nothing slow. Nothing like gonorrhea, or even a simple setting of genital hairs afire…”
“That lion… That lion is hunting, dammit. That lion is muting voices…”
Fuckethead rose from the motel bed and padded over to the window, which was misted.
“It’s the hungry ghosts, kept hungry, the ghosts getting herded, like sheep. It’s the ghost collectors, hedging, with their data and baseball card collections of souls.
It’s the ultimate hippo bankers. Who says the lion is the foulest of beasts?!”
Fuckethead then prepped himself, sucked in a deep breath. After all, he was taking on the destroyer of delights, the killer of companionship…
“Stand tall as Tyson Fury… Be heavy and hot as a flaming pile of alligator guts…”
“It’s never an easy choice, the slowness, the heat. It’s never easy. And it’s never going to be easy. Never… Be it running away from a rampaging lion… Or firing a flamethrower at a housefly… Or even just slap-hunting holograms of Harvey Keitel… It’s not easy… And it’s nothing, NOTHING, like our pastime of forcing intellectuals to jump on a trampoline… Nothing at all… None of it is easy…
Dammit… None of it… Axl Rose was wrong on all counts…”
Trumpet sounds blared from the phone above the toilet.
“It’ll be thousands, thousands of rampaging lions, thousands of lions swarming the city streets… It’ll be ‘The Running of The Lions’ instead of ‘The Running of The Bulls!’”
“It won’t be a pink elephant… Or a new popular mood disorder… It’ll be the next Madonna or Taylor Swift, covered in lion shit, running up a down-moving escalator.”
Fuckethead squatted and scooped up a utility hammer from the manky, orangish motel room carpet. Then Fuckethead rose, like an animated corpse, and his halo slowly shed, like a snake’s skin, falling to the floor in fading ribbons. Then
Cancel Culture | Kim Cancer Fuckethead thrust his sickle into the air, like an Olympic torch. Then Fuckethead yodeled and kicked open the motel room’s front door.
“Run, Fuckethead, RUN!!!!” shouted a young girl’s voice.
Then Fuckethead ran, barefoot, right into the blood rain. He was a naked man, wearing only the pink bucket on his head. The crude drawings on his chest and thighs were tattoos and bled as Fuckethead tore off running into that cold, red rainy night.
Mr. Fuckethead, crying a string of pearls, ran clutching his hammer and sickle.
Fuckethead yodeling and waving the instruments wildly as he sprinted into everything.
“The sun coming out from behind a cloud! A slow burn coming!!!!!!” Fuckethead roared, his frantic voice fading and finally vanishing with the rainfall. “IT’S A SLOW
BURN!!!!!!! A SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
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GENDER FLUID
