The First Bad Man

by Miranda July

Obviously her features were better than mine, but if you just looked at the spaces between the features, I won.

I stomped down on the gas pedal and the mini ATV jumped forward, roaring up the next block. The noise shook everything out of my head. What a magical way to get around. I’d always thought of these types of machines as toys for uneducated people who didn’t care about the environment, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe this was a kind of meditation. I felt connected to everything and the motor volume held me at a level of alertness I wasn’t used to. I kept waking up and then waking up from that, and then waking up even more. Was everything redneck actually mystical? What about guns?

“It was essential that you perform the role of a spy, a naughty child,” she would say, excited because for the first time in her twenty-year practice a patient had shifted the field—this was a psychiatric term, shifting the field. It meant everything could be exposed for what it really was, every question answered, total clarity for both doctor and patient, leading to a true friendship inaugurated by the therapist reimbursing all her fees in one lump sum.