Chapter 1

During the commercial break before returning to the featured presentation of James Whale’s Frankenstein the television tells me to stay tuned for a live news update at six using the same stock footage from a year ago.

People holding signs over their heads that say: UPDATES COMING SOON? and FREE FOR WHO? 

The ever-revised FMCA (Freedom of Medical Care Act) is back on the ballot. The update time between versions 4.4 and 4.5 was quicker than last time. And no one I know thinks this version will pass but everyone I know secretly hopes it does.

That’s your social currency. Are you for or against this update.

Along with many other minuscule anal-retentive details the first update (FMCA 1.0) illegalized pornography. Citing that it caused too much stimulation too easily and that the accessibility could never be truly monitored totally. So it was outlawed instead of regulated. Like drugs it was illegal on paper but everybody was privately finding ways to use it. The infusion of government policy and private pleasure under the banner of medicine has been greatly disputed since before the first update went through. 

To bargain with the population the federal government has made available digital scanners at any local DMV office (since FMCA 1.3). These devices are strictly for accessing pornography. All content accessed is recorded and kept for a five-year period. Available for potential employers and mental health professionals. But there are uncomplicated ways around this. 

Think: LimeWire in 2003.

I’m still waiting on a call back for a job. Any job. I’ve just been sitting here applying for positions and working out karma. 

You have to apply to a minimum of three jobs a week to qualify for unemployment.

I’ve been telling my roommates that I’m still waiting to hear back on my reinstatement into the university. But I’m never getting back in. Thanks to the FMCA what I was watching on my laptop was technically contraband. So the university wireless internet flagged me—this, on top of D’s and F’s sealed my fate. But I keep the lie going.

My roommates are my parents. 

Now what to do with the rest of my day? I try to put off the inevitable for at least five minutes. If I can wait five minutes before I do it (one slice on the clock) that means I did it as a choice and I’m not an addict. 

I distract myself with thoughts of an enlightened individual. Maybe I should go vote.

I set my laptop beside me on the couch, put my headphones on then turn on the subtitles on the television. I wonder if there is a ballot station nearby.

I click open a new incognito window in my traceless internet browser with my VPN on. Maybe the library.

Then I type in the words: SEXY STONER SUCKS BONER. I should know more about my local government officials.

And hit ENTER. Nevermind.

Like yoga, I follow a video guide for working out my karma. This one in particular has been one of my staple videos this week, it take around 72 hours before I get burnt out and can’t get off to it anymore. Visual novelty is a real problem these days. Most videos have an arousing shelf life of about seventy-two hours. The most reliable account who makes the kind of content I like consistently is digitalpornzine. Or DPZ for short. Run by homemade pornography superstar Everhet Byzantine. He has a righteous backlog of content that feels infinite and all his videos have at least a million views. The guy must be a billionaire.

I could do what he does. I could do it better, but unfortunately my parents are still alive. And I can’t ask them for money. Even if they had some I couldn’t take it without showing them what I’d spend it on.

Commercial ends and the television screen cuts to black. The television is an antique ArtoScreen. A bulbous cathode ray tube style from the nineties. In the brief moment between the end of the commercial break and the resumption of the movie, I see the fisheye image of myself on the screen; the space around me widening with myself at the center, shrunk.

Frankenstein’s monster starts screaming right as I put some gum in my mouth and chew. And I get that minty-tingly feeling. The monster on TV walks like it’s perpetually almost falling on its face. Slinging its legs forward and propping itself up trying to stall the ever-tipping nature of the universe.

I look up at the TV from time to time for pacing purposes. If I’m getting too close to losing it or if I’m stuck buffering.

When the time comes I stand up with my pants splayed open like a corpse mid-autopsy and do an awkward shuffle-waddle to the bathroom making sure not to touch anything and leave black light evidence.

As I’m discharging my guilt into the toilet bowl, my own little sea of forgetfulness, I hear Frankenstein’s monster on the television screaming like it’s being burned alive. It’s near the end of the movie already? Time disappears when you’re working out karma. Or maybe it’s the gum.

I was right, it’s the scene where Frankenstein’s monster is screaming because they’re burning him alive and doesn’t have the ability to articulate his feelings with his voice. Not yet, I should say. He’s like a newborn baby. Shot into the world against his will. To a doctor he never chose.

Now I’m just staring at myself in the toilet water. The strands of cellular life writhing before I flush them.

I’ve worked on my karma so much and so consciously that it feels like punishment. I’ve cognitively reframed it with a spiritual diagnosis and not a clinical one. I just see it as a form of karma spillover from some dead relative or past incarnation. That famous European disease called guilt. All of the collateral ethnic cleansing via rape during colonization guaranteed everyone in the world has a few periods of chronic masturbation.

But it really flares up when I come back home. It’s like spiritual sinus congestion or I’m allergic to my family. Where I’m constantly needing to discharge some accumulated gunk inside me, be it emotional or physical.

Sometimes I think I’m dying to be a dad but I don’t know if I’m just over this stage of life. I just want to be a part of different group than the one I’m currently attributed to. Some identity markers where I can distinguish myself apart from my fellow man. It’s the only thing I can think to do since I can’t kill myself. When I was a kid, my dad said, “You are indestructible and one with the universe. You couldn’t kill yourself if you tried.” So, now I’m just focused on killing the meantime in ways that are fun and relaxing and hopefully high paying.

None of the FMCA updates pass the first time they’re submitted. They’ll send it back and the politicians will contact the royal families. Then a petition is filed and it’s resubmitted after they make amendments to it. And the amendments are banal in nature, nothing more than a slightly disruptive flex of political power; to waive age restrictions to anything, redefine some jargon, and make one word mean fifty things.

FMCA 4.5 supporters are pushing the boundaries of what “doctor” means. Or what a “doctor” is or does. With FMCA 4.5 they’ll reinstate private healthcare along with religious exemptions. Instead of having to be forced to vaccinate your religious leader was now being added to the list of executive powers along with your primary physician.

But I couldn’t give a shit, I just keep wondering when they’re going to bring porn back. That’s the update I’m for. 

Makes sense. I guess. I don’t really know. Nothing about it really concerns my daily life. I’m vaccinated and healthy and I don’t smoke anything. The worst thing I do is I drink soda and chew a little gum but it’s not a problem. Seriously not an issue. I mean now that I’m back at the house it’s always around. But it’s only temporary. So there’s no reason to draw any attention to it.

Now what is important for me to do is to keep with my daily routines so that I don’t get stir crazy and do something irrational.

The crashing glass sound of a jingling key ring surges the muscles in my shoulder. 

I slam my laptop shut, someone is unlocking the front door. 

James Jacob Hatfield is a displaced engineer, a painter, and many other contradictions. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Barely South Review, Chaleur Magazine, Havik, and others. His ekphrasis poem “torrents of lahar, No. 36” was anthologized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. He is a Sterling Fellow and a Weymouth Fellow. He is the creator and curator of the Gemini Sessions Substack. He lives in Durham, NC.

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