Auto-Sear

09.03.25

Conscious here of sounding like a later-phase Black Mirror episode; the worst part is the utter banality of it, and that everyone also already knows it, except of course for this fucking guy, on the 7 train, playing a game on his cellphone without headphones, at a volume no one thought was even possible to achieve on a cellphone, and at regular intermits, the same celebratory noise occurs, for aligning digital bananas, or clearing rows of rubies and topazes and peridots or whatever, and it’s just this 16-bit wahoo, which, how could that be rewarding enough, every fifteen goddamn seconds, to keep this guy going from 52nd Street straight on through to Grand Central, one wonders. Our pleasure centers have eroded down to their nubs. The outer borders of our brains smooth as wet balloons. It’s bleak, but even saying it feels pointless. Everybody already knows.

I can hear the backlash now, to what I am about to say, because of course I can and I’ll bet you can anticipate it too: but even knowing that not everyone is standing on the same socioeconomic perch that I am, I wonder if you can’t afford headphones if you can afford an $800 phone. There are cheap Bluetooth headphones on Amazon that go for like $20.

(Or you could just, read.)

Which all but means that our suspicions are correct. (Do you see how I’ve made you complicit, with all this assuming that I’m doing?) That it’s just a hull breach in the societal contract. It’s not that people can’t; they don’t care. They don’t care if they intrude upon you, and you’re lucky if it’s just sonically.

Here’s an anecdote that’ll sound like a small and stupid thing had this not all been roiling up inside me in aggregate like hot molten mercury. I am on the train and I’m sitting next to a woman whose purse she’s got like draped off her shoulder, resting on her thigh. I am beside her, reading. (Well LA-DI-DA!) And as I’m performatively reading, I feel a slight bump on my thigh. No big deal. It’s her purse; it’s slid and hit me. NBD. Few seconds later, it happens again. She realizes, I’m sure, which is why she quickly scooches it back up onto her shoulder. A few seconds later, again. A few seconds after that, again. But she is realizing each time. Which means, each time she’s clocking the situation and making the same adjustment. I’m thinking, lady, how many repetitions of this will we go through before we make some fundamental change to our approach. Including myself here. I could get up and sit elsewhere. It’s just the principle eventually. I will just bother this person, albeit slightly, in perpetuity, forever and ever amen, or at least until 34th Street Hudson Yards. And I’m not mad. (He insists, as he types this story up over a dozen hours later, so as to post on a blog no one reads, with no discernible prospect of financial or personal gain, immediate or otherwise.)

I just- I just feel bad inconveniencing others and feel increasingly alone in this position.

Saint Dillon.

Last of his kind, last of the kind.

Lay summer flowers on my grave.