Playworld

by Adam Ross

I simply went along with things. As to my shame, that was retroactive, it was in hindsight. For what could we know, then, really, living in our tiny world on that infinite little island? And how lucky we were, as we grew older, to begin to unlearn such things—but not yet, not then. I am no apologist—“We were boys”—I grant no pardons. Our education was spatial. Racial. Tribal. Urban. American. But mostly—and this is the most important thing—it was dominated by Kepplemen, over whom we were each failing to gain leverage. And who wore the costume of love. And who was, day in and day out, teaching us fury, aggression, complicity, desperation, exploitation, and, most of all, silence.

Something happens to you, say something good or bad, it doesn’t matter, and you let yourself feel it, and because it’s practically the first time, you don’t rationalize it or analyze it or overinterpret it, it’s just the thing itself. You don’t build a shell around it, it pierces you, it enters you, and, swear to God, if I could go back in time, you know what I would eliminate? What I’d lobotomize from my brain? The future. I’d let myself experience everything as it happened like you do now instead of wondering like I always did.

And yet what sort of God arranged fate thus? Was God on the side of Mr. Bauer, I wondered, or was that only Mr. Bauer’s god?