None of my
friends have noticed it yet, but you have. You have the ability to
read between the lines, to understand that our lives are blighted
by this undercurrent of subtext, of narrative
significance. Anyone paying attention could have guessed by
now who’s really telling this story.
You’re not so innocent either. I’ve caught you
leering at some pretty personal moments. Are you having fun being a
voyeur? Just violating the shit out of everyone’s privacy? Are
these teenage romantic entanglements panning out the way you
wanted? They never do. Maybe it helps, being able to see everyone’s
thoughts described in plain sight. Broadcasting the internal
conflicts, the compromises, the doubts... Does it make it easier
for you to accept the emotional faltering, the missteps, the basic
inability to reach out and seize the opportunity for happiness
repeatedly dangled in their faces? Knowing their thoughts are
transcribed by a third party, does it fill you with a sense of
unease, of sickness, sensing that the observations made of their
mental interiors may be tainted?
Who the hell do I think I am, I can hear you
wondering. You know who I am, of course. The better question is,
who do you think you are? What exactly is so special about
you? Nothing, of course. I am specific. I have a name, an
agenda, a vision. I am a monolith of concentrated
narrative authority, relaying events to you, and swaying them as I
see fit. Whereas you are pointedly nonspecific. You are the
generalized, impotent witness to all this. You are essentially as
beholden to me as those whose lives I describe. I even have the
ability to decide what “you” actually means. I can take the
“you-ness” away from you, and put it inside another passive mark,
such as John Egbert. You didn’t even notice when I did it, and you
had no objections then. Why would you object now?
So what makes John so special? The answer is
something I’m sure you’ve suspected all along but would rather not
face, which is: probably nothing. He isn’t special. He’s quite
ordinary, I assure you. Boring, even, and getting less interesting
by the minute as he’s forced to confront his absolute lack of
heroic purpose except as a pawn to be manipulated by a fatalistic
reality.
But I’d also like to make it clear, he’s not even
that remarkable in his unremarkableness. He’s simply convenient for
it. Anyone can be endowed with this you-ness, if I think it
achieves a certain goal. Even if the objective is merely to
demonstrate the gambit’s potential, to reveal the effortlessness
behind it. To make a show of who matters and who doesn’t, and even
if they do matter, for how long and for what purpose, as dictated
solely by the allocation of this faculty. You-ness can be stripped
from the lowly Egbert just as easily as it was given, and then
bestowed upon the mighty Serket, but even then only long enough to
dismiss the vainglorious spotlight hog from the narrative forever.
Good riddance.
But I haven’t revealed myself to you just to boast
about the abilities arising from the gradual obliteration of the
constraints on my consciousness. I’ve only taken a moment to answer
a few questions. Not ones I heard you ask—because again, you are
nonspecific and therefore do not matter—but ones I
imagined you asking. And by imagining these questions,
they became less fake, and as such, demanded similarly non-fake
answers. No, in truth, the time has come to make my presence known
in order to start bringing my plans to fruition. It’s time to get
down to fucking business.
John needs to wake up.