From Monday in a Sewage Drain
My name is Arthur Kellog. Yes, like the cereal. It's ironic, considering what I'm about to say, so much that I've considered from time to time changing, something that might lend me a little more credence in the fringe Sociology world, such as it is, but I never seem to get around to it. Roses and smelling sweet and all that, I figured. I was wrong, as you'll see, it matters a great deal what you call a rose, but I was ignorant then, before my time down here, deep beneath the sub-memories of the city streets that even now spill their detritus into my living room, the aftermath of parties and their morning coffee alike.
I started up above, working in the streets like a normal person, like everyone else. I started with the Gaia theory - that far-out post-60's mumbo-jumbo about how the world is alive and made up of individual cells - human minds. Except I started with the much more reasonable notion that culture was sort of alive - well, I didn't dare use the word alive then, but I guess I'm getting ahead of myself - that culture was the meme that a nation or city shared. It rides us like a gentleman on a unicycle, a parasitic thing that feeds on our fears and taboos and offers nothing useful to the people it inhabits except reasons to hate each other. We'll get to that in a second though. We'll get to that in a second. If this ever gets published, it will be with some humor that I will present "Kellog's Theory."
So culture is a thing, I realized, the way that "law" or "anger" are a thing; it's a social construct, obviously. In fact, it's so obvious, sometimes we don't even think about, imagining that geographical locale is the determining factor, or even language. You can't think like that. You've got to examine the micro-culture, the culture of friends and family and neighborhoods and towns and cities. It's too simple to look at the big things, like "American Culture." I started with something much smaller. I started with Kinkos.
I worked Kinkos for something like six months. It's a culture; they have a lingo and a procedure, a chain of command. It was my theory that each piece - each person - shared a part of the whole. As above, so yada yada. My boss - Trent - used to remind me constantly of my position, saying, "We're only as strong as our weakest link", like the weakest link a store that sells copies is of some monolithic importance when the 12:30 rush came in. I played the diligent little monkey for the first three quarters of that time, taking orders, getting things right. As my studies improved, I learned something that might seem obvious to my readers, but were of great use to me; many of the things I was going to have to test were values of the larger culture. I couldn't steal from the register, that was certainly a taboo as well as a rule. I wasn't supposed to slack off on break, or even leave the building, but that was a rule, not a taboo (which means slacking off was the cultural aspect.) I learned that disobeying a superior was taboo, but saying you did so was not, at least to your peers. I learned that swearing at the customers was disallowed, but the customers were allowed to swear at us just fine. I couldn't sleep, but I could take stimulants.
I conspired to get myself fired, but the important part was to break the taboos instead of the rules; the culture established the unspoken expectations of our behavior, but the rules dictated what lines we weren't allowed to cross in order to keep our jobs. That was the key distinction; I had to figure out what sorts of things I was allowed by the rules but not by the culture. The first thing I tried was wearing a pink tie to work. Petty yes, but in the name of science, worth it. I got a few stares from the more homophobic among my coworkers, but it was a good start. A few days later, I showed up an hour before my boss, hoping my over-eagerness would disturb him, but it was mistaken for ambition or brown-nosing. Shortly after that, I began speaking primarily in what I could remember from my college Spanish classes, only relying on broken English. At this point, my coworkers began to suspect there was something wrong with my mental health and my boss began to suspect angrily that I was getting something over on him, but still I persisted. I began wearing bright green dress shoes with black slacks, continued speaking in broken English or Spanish, began eating only packets of sugar for lunch.
It took almost two full months, but they stopped scheduling me and Trent tried to put me on medical leave - said I needed some time off or something. I stopped showing up, and they stopped calling. I was convinced, briefly, that I had managed to put myself so far outside the local culture as to sever my relationship with those within (something I owe to not being very close to them in the first place), but realized it was impossible for me to replicate the experience without appearing to be insane. Indeed, the hallmark of a cultural reject would appear to be insanity, though not all so-called insanity has to do with cultural rejection. I decided to take my experiment to the next level.
I realized I could get fired from any job I liked in this manner, but that was a predictable side effect. I needed to try to this technique on the whole city. Further, I had to make sure I wouldn't be arrested or labeled as homeless - the insane, the delinquent, the homeless all are roles within the broader urban culture, so I needed to make sure I didn't fit into any of those subtypes. I needed to be my own thing. In preparing, my research told me that the homeless, who themselves rejected the values generally associated with the "proper" American way of life were still acknowledging the culture by being the logical repercussions of nonparticipantion.
So I bought an expensive suit with what money I had left and began trolling the streets late into the night. At first, I tried to do this in largely public areas to avoid getting into a physical altercation with a mugger or some other trouble maker. I got some strange looks, especially when I sat on street corners and asked for change. Once, a woman stopped with her daughter and simply stared at me for a full 56 seconds, before pulling the little girl away, who was frustrated and full of questions. The homeless constantly asked me for money, and more than once I was quickly roughed up. I lost my jacket in the first two months, and my shoes in the first three. I had to replace both of them with my ailing grant money, but I was glad to still be alive.
The behavior was having the desired affect, but simply breaking taboos was not enough to advance the theory. I needed to up the ante, in silly, petty ways if need be. I began carrying an umbrella in sunshine. I read books upside down. I stood in the road for minutes at a time. I gave money to people who didn't need it. I begged from people who had none. I was, in short, a cock. For a very long time. So much so, that I in effect actually became homeless. I started to feel like I was getting close to something, so immeasurably close, that I gave up on material goods. It was remarkably liberating. Until they happened to me.
I was walking home alone one night, or at least to the hallway of my old apartment building. It was after two in the morning, and traffic had started to reach that pre-dawn lull before the morning commute. It wasn't quiet, but it was a different kind of noise - that buzzing of breakers and televisions turned to static in open windows, the sound of birds making their way, the sound of snoring from park benches. I rounded a corner, stepping into a large parking lot across the street from my destination, when I noticed some movement behind a parked Toyota near the street.
"Hello?", I nervously inquired. I man stood up; he looked to be in his 30s. A janitor, perhaps, covered as he was in denim and suspenders, and he had a metal box under one arm. He stepped toward me, but looked as though he were sleeping - his eyes were mostly closed, and stepped with an unsure gait. Like a sleepwalker. "Hello?", I said again, with some more understandable urgency. He stretched his arm out, and walked forward faster. I've seen my fair share of zombie movies, and degree or not, I ran away from him. I ran in the opposite direction, the way I came.
I saw an Indian man waiting there, also with his eyes closed. He opened his mouth, and in a slow, heavily accented voice, said, "Cola. Wrist...watch. Time. Morning. Work. Work." Confused, I took a step backward, and stepped straight into a small Latina women wearing what appeared to be a company maid uniform. "Home...less," she said. "Television. Cheese park bench kitten car. Car." She swung clumsily at me with a (thankfully) closed bottle of bleach, and struck me in the left eye, a deep throbbing. I probably could have dealt with her, but something stopped me from hitting her - surprise, maybe, or fear. I continued running, passing a man in the street with a baseball bat who threw a hotdog at me, and through an alley where a man in gray rags tried to stuff me in a dumpster.
I don't know what happened. The city still continues up there, away from me. I can hear it, and sometimes I even explore a little up there. They didn't follow me down here, but when I go back up - always during the day - I feel strange. Like people don't see me. Like I don't know what I should be doing. Like an alien. So I hide down in the sewers, where they don't find me. Sometimes I hear noises near the entrances, or think I see movement in the dark, but they let me sleep.
They're antibodies. They are the force that keeps culture sane and whole. They are trying to eliminate me, angry that I won't commit a crime or get a job or submit to homelessness. Or maybe I'm homeless already and that's why they let me be. Maybe this is what they wanted. Maybe they just shepherded me into my new life. I don't know. But they... react. The culture reacts. I know this now. The culture is alive, and it is angry with me. Sometimes, when I sleep, I can feel it seething up there, not just angry at me but angry at everyone. It wants something; it is hungry.
It wants me to do something."