The Ballad of Fred Bjontik

The Ballad of Fred Bjontik

My colleague tried to warn me.

He did this with his eyes mostly. But I missed it.

I have trouble interpreting social signals. I do not think I am on the spectrum per se. I believe I am spectrum adjacent. At the very least, I have a tendency to be socially awkward. But I can also be extremely outgoing. I can perform extroversion well. Most people I encounter seem to believe the act. I have been nominated for various positions here and there at my work, and inevitably one of the comments raised in support of these appointments is that I am friendly and energetic. To many, these would seem desirable character traits… but there are some who understand them for what they are. They are a smokescreen. The energy I give off. It's small dog energy. Frantic, overly cheerful, slightly disheveled, perpetually scared and shivering. I am constantly dropping bags. I close something in the car door daily. A bag strap, a coat sleeve. I begin to walk away and am immediately snapped back toward the vehicle. It's slapstick from a distance, but from a few feet away, it's just weird.

I seem intent on picking up my own things… If people try to help me gather my fallen belongings, I wave them off apologetically… "I’m good. I got it," I say. "Thank you! I got it." … Of course, I don't got it… The phone screen is cracked. The paper… The one actual physical paper that does not exist anywhere as a PDF is wet and muddy and even my OCR apps will be at a total loss to comprehend it. I don't got it… Also, I cut people off mid-sentence only to agree with what they are saying. It startles them and they sometimes lose their train of thought. Rather than allowing them to find their way back, I rush to fill the gap in the conversation, and against my instincts and my better judgment, begin completing their thoughts for them, eager to prove that I understand their position. You could practically see my tail wagging.

I speak fast. Cartoonishly fast. I can be self-effacing. Annoyingly so. Being pathetic is not cute. I missed that memo. Even now, I am carrying on like this hoping to endear myself to you. I have already conjured the image of a dog. There’s a chance I will be permitted to include background music to this text if I can persuade someone to let me turn it into audio for people like me who cannot be trusted to hold books in their hands without accidentally tearing pages or ruining them with coffee. And if I can choose the music you know it will be maudlin, soppy stuff. You may be hearing it right now. It will tug at your heartstrings. I am not above that. I will choose the kind of mournful melody that plays behind a documentary about some majestic swimming thing that no one’s ever seen or heard of but is just now on the brink of extinction and will certainly perish if one does not race at that very moment to the blinking URL and painstakingly type it into the little text box on the phone — and type it in one must because it is clear that Google has never heard of this organization — and so one must use one’s sausage fingers to enter the domain manually and while one does so one wonders why it is that no editor or producer ever realized

that a QR code would have done the trick and been faster and easier. And as one makes a third attempt at getting the number of slashes right one thinks charitably that the producers are wiser than he and that they were aware that the bulk of their demographic is likely never to have seen a QR code let alone know what can be done with it… or more precisely, they have most certainly seen such techno-hieroglyphics but if they even gave any thought to them at all they would have assuredly dismissed them as nothing more than digital graffiti or meaningless modern art. But in such a moment as this one tries to figure out how to convince the touch cursor to allow an omitted letter to be reinstalled to its rightful place in the cue one questions ‘how hard would it be to display both a clunky URL and a petite, unobtrusive little QR code in the corner of the screen for all of those who are not 152 years old?.. But when one does at last gain entry onto the platform and recognizes the sleek silhouette of the enchanted, vanishing fauna from the television screen one’s suspicions are repudiated… It’s not the viewership who are the antediluvians, it is the web designers who are 152. There isn’t any doubt that this website was designed before and with no knowledge at all or at least no regard for mobile platforms. And though one is well aware that the whole process will go a great deal more quickly and smoothly if one were to just hop on a computer one may be slightly masochistic and certainly very tired and probably a bit lazy and in this scenario the computers are all likely to be asleep at such a time or dead and god only knows where their power adaptors have run off to — and anyways, those machines take so goddam long to fire up. So one will most likely remain on the phone where they will find themselves drowning in a sea of selectable options and categories, zooming in and out in a near futile search for a place to sink their credit card information or link to a PayPal account… And one will be shocked at the risks this charity enterprise is willing to take while the wildlife waits. What happened to the race against time? The crusade to beat out the

poachers? The purloiners? How can they have one, have me — endlessly scrolling when there is so much suffering to be eradicated?- one is doing everything in his power to tread against the waves of bewildering pop-ups and invitations to become a permanent member or join a newsletter. All one wants is to send a lifeline… what is the point of having all these forms and text fields with their inscrutable questions asking for identity details and geographical information and what one’s age is and the month in which they were born… and other more perplexing probes such as the one asking for my ‘time of entry’ . Entry to what? To this website? The world? Haven’t I already told you, it’s February. I was born in February. Can I save the fucking whales now —or whatever those things are called… see, now you’ve made me forget what they even are …with all of these surveys and overlays and concerns about my current place of employment and whether or not it is a full or part-time position. And why do you care at all about the status of my marriage? The credit card works! I promise. It works.What traumas has this Nonprofit endured that it is such a merciless ferret of an investigator? What does it matter where I work?Are you going to hire me after I’ve made a gift? Why won't they just let one pay? Couldn't they have had just a single button? Maybe a place to type a name and email address but then one big blue button that would say ‘pay’. Ok. make it red, pink, yellow. I don't care. Make it whatever you like- but just one button. For the love of God.

And now they are asking if one has plans to travel and it would be easy enough to write ‘no’ or ‘N/A’ and move along but now one has started to wonder, ‘when was the last time one has traveled?”, and one has gotten lost in thought…Thank goodness for those oboes though, they have drawn one's attention back to the tv screen and to the team of marine biologists who are now assembled there telling one how they are trying to coordinate a rescue mission. And

reminding one that his help is needed. Now more than ever… And there is urgency in their voices. So one dives back in where they left off and one is faced with another puzzler… ‘What is your blood type and RH factor? ‘ One hasn’t a clue. One isn’t certain they know precisely what an RH factor is .. or why an organization trying to raise money for animals in peril would care about such a thing.. Will one be asked to donate blood? To whom? For what? For a monkey? A manatee? Is that safe? Can that even be done?. What is going on here? one frets. Is this a scam? One wonders if somewhere in the confusion of those last few minutes one has pressed an ad somewhere and is now no longer on the site for saving animals but is on a dating application… One could see then why they might have been asked about their age, ethnicity and preferred language. One can even imagine that blood type could conceivably provide some useful information with regard to compatibility. But then one remembers the questions about the number of dependents in their family and resolves that this could not be a dating site but must be a life insurance webpage or car insurance signup or a class action lawsuit or a petition for a new political party or an application for an Advanced Placement exam… It is so bafflingly convoluted. There is so much to wade through. One cannot imagine why anyone would make it so difficult and why it is so hard to be helpful. But one gathers himself and commits to navigating their way through what promises to be the last set of menus with absurdly dense text and pointlessly cluttered compositions. One considers that they will donate 50 dollars or 100 dollars or maybe even 200 if that pan flute gets any louder and goes any closer to that last remaining ventricle. And then it does get louder and the chimes start chiming and before one has a chance to select a respectable but modest amount, the notes of the arrangement scramble toward a c minor. And now one is blubbering… but just a bit… One skirts past the default payment options and courageously places their cursor in the box for ‘custom amount’ - but just

then there is another delay - and one will need to zoom out again to see what the problem is..and one wonders again why on earth they whoever they are would do such a thing while a person is literally trying to provide support. When the dollar sign is literally blinking on the screen and making a spectacle of itself. The intruder turns out to be yet another graphic appeal to become a member. This time the ‘x’ button is blessedly visible… and one makes short work of dispatching with the trespasser. Returning to this latest and most promising effort to complete the task at hand one finds that they have lost their nerve. They are beginning to falter. To waver…Don’t they realize that they are committing murder with their banners? Their slide-ins? And their autoplaying videos? What are they playing at? One hovers over the ‘x’ the actual ‘X’ not the understudy from the ads, but the brawny one at the very top that could obliterate the whole darn thing. One considers. Threatens… but then … at the very last minute, those notes swell up again and the angels catch hold of his hand and stay the sacrifice…The notes go way, way up and teeter and topple over into a diminished seventh and then huddle together in a thicket of minors and crumple down to a heartrending Tristan chord. And now one is a puddle and would have undoubtedly agreed to donate the money and become a permanent member and join that newsletter if only those pop-ups would come back…But it is difficult to know exactly what one is doing through the tears rolling down like that and with the screen all blurry and the droplets going everywhere… the way they manage to fall out of one’s face directly onto the phone no matter how far out it is being held or at what angle. How could one be sure through all that whether they have pressed $100 or $200, or the custom amount they had entered? But later, perhaps a week or so later one is likely to find out precisely the dimensions of their generosity and the contours of their deficit as they may have a very difficult go at trying to remember all of the various and calamitous ripple effects and disasters to the ecosystem and the world, and the

universe itself were one not to have acted with such alacrity and magnanimity. One will have trouble recalling the disastrous, morbid particulars—when one is confronted by a credit-card-statement-reviewing spouse with an eagle eye and a tiger’s heart and the tongue of a Nanday Conure and little to nothing of the dove… If one also happens to be a Chihuahua and their companion a bloodhound, they will make humble efforts to highlight the fact that since their bank accounts are shared, the complement too will reap the blessings of the contribution, evangelist or not. This effort to persuade will not succeed; and though one will try, surreptitiously, to pull up the music on their phone to stage a sneak attack, they will come to recall that Shazam had never found that song… And they would know anyway that it wouldn't have done any good. Bloodhounds are notorious for their bad hearing, and the vexed make for the most unskilled listeners. … But I am confident that the music will work on you. That you cannot be so difficult to penetrate. You are a reader.. A listener at minimum. Even if you are not a dog person I trust at least that you can dream, and no dreamer has the wherewithal to stand up to a well-ordered adagio.

Ugh. I am sorry that my tactics are so obvious. And that I am further insulting you by narrating these pathetic strategies. I bet this transparency I’m engaging in is also some kind of trick. It may be the case that everything I do is a manipulation. I am not lying though; this is who I am, or at least how I behave… It could practically be a career on its own the way one can work so hard to gain approval and to ingratiate oneself with everyone they encounter. It could be a form of art in the hands of another. But I am no master; I am a work in progress. I am given to breaking off into fits of laughter at indiscriminate points in conversation. I am prone to apologizing. For nothing at all. And it isn’t always clear to whom I’m apologizing. The person to whom I’m

talking? Myself? God? The floor and ceiling? … it’s all of the above. The answer is always ‘E’… all of the above. Even I know that…. It’s almost as if I am under a spell, a powerful one. And every time I open my mouth to speak, all of the punctuation is replaced by "I’m sorry,". Commas are ‘sorry’. Questions are sorry . Exclamations may become doubled. For effect, I suppose. And they are"Sorry sorry!." Periods are different though… I’d have to roll the tape but I am pretty sure those are transfigured into "I mean, in my opinion." I seem not to have the power to control this.

And... I cannot for the life of me maintain eye contact. There are probably reams of psychological texts to explain this… but the few times I have managed to look people in the eye, the results were shattering… At first, I avoided engaging because I was certain that people could see right through me… And a dash of stubble and the vague smudges of some yoga triceps from the distant past are nary enough to obscure my general demeanor of surrender from a keen spectator. I have never won a game of Horse or Monopoly. I can barely conquer breakfast. I burn everything. I am an abject curiosity in our home since I alone have yet to remain alive past two minutes in the Xbox game, “Fortnight”. I land. I find a gun. I drink some blue stuff. And I am dead. Before I can even discern from which direction the footsteps are coming, I am bludgeoned, bombed, or bayoneted… My children have murdered millions. They have medals to prove it and one of them has earned cold hard cash by wiping out hundreds over the course of a single day’s playing… They would not be afraid to look you in the eye. But it is different for me. As I have stated, when I have made eye contact the results have proven more devastating, more alarming, and more confusing than I could ever have predicted. I am a professor, you see, and most of my interactions are dry and staged,. few students engage with me beyond seeking advice

for various technical details or development of ideas. I am able to sustain the appearance of adulthood and professionalism and civility and self-respect for just about the length of a class period, after which I am forced to steal off into an isolated stairwell or hide in my parked car to gather myself and reassemble the pieces of the character whose glue was wearing off and whose seams were coming undone. … It takes me a not insignificant amount of time and energy to avoid disintegrating let alone embarking on the process of regeneration. And because of this and because sometimes there is a meeting or an event not long after class has ended, I am often forced to re-emerge into civilization just a bit too soon, which leads to all of that dropping of water bottles and misplacing of keys and leaving of the car engine running and bags and shirttails being caught in the car door and even once or twice - very regrettably- a finger or two… In any event, I made the student cry. I didn’t mean to make her cry. Here’s what happened. She was A graduate student. An adult. A brilliant, savvy, confident, skilled professional. All Pincer no pup. Earlier that afternoon I had been listening to some book or podcast about communication and it mentioned eye contact. I was at the time only generally aware that I had an aversion to eye contact but had never reflected on it or considered doing anything about it… The voice on the podcast was convincing; there was something in the tone of it that projected self-assurance and a vague sense of intimacy… I imagined it was talking to me and only to me…like an aural version of eye contact. Voice contact. So I determined, not wholly consciously, to try it out to see if ideas might be better communicated and more clearly transmitted were the conversation to be supplemented with eye contact. Because I never got the chance to talk- or even to open my mouth. I met with the student, and after she had made some introductory remark, I looked at her… directly. In the eyes. And all of a sudden the hair stood up on my neck, as they say, or at least I felt prickly all over and worried again that perhaps she could see right through me and I

would have to beg for forgiveness for who knows what or enter into some long explanation about something for which I had not an inkling of an idea… but that was all in a millisecond. It was her throat that fluttered. It was she who had tears tumbling down. I was taken aback as you might imagine and it took a minute or minor eternity to disengage. It felt like trying to untangle dog leashes or phone cords. It wasn’t easy to stop once we had started. But when we were finally able to break it off, I smiled, and she smiled, and there was a kind of understanding there but I hastily retreated into small talk and commiserated about the pressures of that point in the semester and the challenges of juggling deadlines and the news! The news these days. I think she may have wanted to talk longer but I was in no state, I had taught for the previous two hours and was tempting fate by remaining in sight for so long. We made an unspoken agreement though - we never mentioned it. And not because there was anything sordid about it. It was nothing like a romantic connection. If anything it was cosmic. Tragic. Funereal. I won't say exactly what took place that day because I can't explain it… all I can say is that it happened again a short time later. I had convinced myself that I would come off with a good deal more authority and would inspire respect if I could pursue this eye contact exercise, and had also convinced myself that the last encounter was a total fluke… a mystery. And so when I ran into my colleague - a boss, really- someone I technically report to who serves just below the Dean and is a few years my senior…when I ran into him, our eyes met. And his lips began to quiver. And I tried to look away but I was tangled again. And his eyes went all watery and our tongues cleaved in our mouths.., and then I think I tried to pierce the awkwardness by reaching for my car door and ended up dropping one thing and then another. And even that didn’t immediately break the spell. It did provide an activity to busy ourselves with once the line was interrupted. Moments later we climbed into our cars and headed off in different directions and never spoke of it. You might be wondering - if there’s any truth to this - if I really have some secret power to melt people with my gaze then surely I would have died in a mirror by this point. It has to be just some story I’m telling myself. The way a child imagines possessing a superpower or a formidable older brother - a means of building oneself up in their own eyes and in the eyes of others to counteract one’s low self esteem and their long series of flops and failures. And you would be right to doubt and to wonder and to ask,. And it is really only because you have asked, or I suppose to be more accurate- that I have imagined that you are asking or just about to ask that I am coming into the knowledge that it is true and I have known it for a long long time. . I am good with color. I am excellent with color. I have perfect pitch with color. Show me a color, any color, and give me a set of paints. I will match it exactly. Once I was hired by a contractor who had accidentally chipped a brand new marble table. I had to integrate the cool blacks with the warms and tune the gold to be exactly the temperature and value of the veins that ran all across the rest of the surface. When I was finished, no one could find the spots I had repaired. All the workers got it wrong. I saved them a great deal of money and a heap of embarrassment. .. And yet I’m telling you - for the life of me— I cannot recall the color of my eyes. How can that be? Of course I must have known about this all along. Aren’t I always guiding my gaze toward my hairline? Don’t I take pains to focus my attention on my sideburns or on my birthmark when looking in the mirror. It’s a damned lucky thing I don’t wear contacts. That would be sheer suicide. … all I know is that after all of this stuff -with the colleague and the student- I gave up looking at people directly in the eyes. It was just too… real. It was intolerable. So, here I am- back to where I started … a colleague tried to warn me. With his eyes, you will recall. But I missed it. And I missed it because I could not look at him. He is a hulking individual. Physically imposing and intellectually commanding. He is a force… I don't think I could make sense of anything in the world if a man like that could crumble. So I looked at the floor and at my shoes and many many times opened and closed the screen on my phone as if continually forgetting the time and the date or like I was waiting impatiently for the results of some activity in the stock exchange. I have no stocks. I never know the time. Even when I am looking directly at it. Well, had I looked up, had I seen the generosity in the intimidation of his gaze, I would have understood that he knew more than he was letting on. All he said is "there are concerns about you. People are concerned"… since there were other people in the conversation, he was clipping his sentences. He was speaking in code. An astute listener would have decrypted the euphemism "concern"; in this case, it meant investigating, and "people" in this instance could be translated as the administration. The words sounded innocuous enough after all, I hadn't shaved of late… I knew that people had seen me roaming the halls of the building late at night… Because I missed the fact that he did not blink and that he let his pupils dilate… the way people do when they appear to be trying to telepathically drill an idea into the mind of another as if by opening the holes of their eyes as wide as possible the volume of the data may rush out just that much faster and stronger… Well, I missed it. And then later that week, or maybe it was the week after, I missed two more warnings and another sign. My cursor started to slide and jerk about… but I have an angled mousepad and chalked the movement up to gravity, although had I thought even a moment about it, I would have recalled that gravity moves things in just one direction.

Had I been more alert to the fact that there were suspicions circling around me and my activities, I might have understood that I was not the only person looking at my screen. Had I not been so puppyish and eager to please and so quick to ascribe beneficent intentions to all manner of life, be it organic, corporate, or institutional… had I the capacity to acknowledge that we are always being watched, our data gathered, our voting record scraped, our credit scores stored, our health

monitored by scheming insurance companies... Had I the basic skepticism of even the most innocent and charitable among us, I would have understood that someone else, someONEs else was looking at what I was doing, was snooping and logging and screen capturing and taking notes… but have you met a chihuahua? You can lure them away from their master with the most meager tap of attention… heck, you could steal those things with papaya treats… and no self-respecting dog will deign to take those even from their very favorite human companion. Alas, I am like the chihuahua,exactly, bred to be agreeable but obsequious to a fault. Groomed to be adoring but submissive to the point of debilitation. I am credulous and naive and so, so eager not to be despised that I am practically blind to all manner of motive and breed of impulse. And so, I never saw it coming… and only discovered what had happened after several colleagues asked me if I was okay as I made my way toward our building early on a Monday morning… two people touched me reassuringly on the arm, whispered almost identical consolatory phrases. I simply nodded and made like I had forgotten something in my car… I had to dodge two or three more curious and pitying stares as I retreated to my capsule and made sure the windows were all closed and the doors locked and locked again. I put on my hood to increase the likelihood of avoiding detection by a familiar passerby… I checked my email, my phone... I was being investigated by the dean and the college… for my interactions with…language models. I was shocked. There was no explanation beyond what I have just written, what about LMs? I was one of the first people on this campus to even know what they are, let alone how they worked and helping to guide colleagues and policymakers about how they may be deployed safely and how to ensure that students are not relying on them to do their homework and write their papers. What did they mean I am being investigated? All of my research is my own. My words are mine. Are they questioning my integrity? It turns out chihuahuas do indeed have a temper. I was planning,

scheming... Preparing to lawyer up. How is it that the world is filled with lawyers yet I do not know a single one? My family used to be filled with them. My father-in-law got his degree at Harvard. But he has since passed; my biological father was once the youngest judge in America, but he is off the grid and in any way inaccessible. All of my grandfathers and half of my great-uncles and two aunts and a second cousin twice removed… all lawyers. But attorneys are no good from the grave; they lack vigor, and their appearance would be alarming and do me no favors in a court of law…My stepfather went to law school but left when he realized that were he to have continued in that direction, he would have made his parents happy, but he would have been bitter for decades. Since my family was the family he chose to join ten-ish years later, we benefited from his decision…though seeing as this benefit was far in the future, I doubt it would have done much to console his parents even if he had tried to make a hypothetical version of us part of the case he made to justify his desertion from his degree. See, he grew up in a time and generation in which doctors and lawyers were viewed as the very paradigms of success. And not as those more inclined towards the arts and literature and philosophy, who thought of doctors as glorified mechanics and lawyers as just so many self-serving bullshitters who weren’t sharp enough for high finance or brave enough to enter politics -or the mafia… but the Parents back then, particularly immigrants, and the children of immigrants couldn’t imagine anything more pride-inducing than being able to proclaim parentage to offspring whose career choice was so esteemed so as to practically completely and almost immediately upon attaining their degree eclipse and put to disuse their given names. These parents would, from the moment of coronation , say things like, ‘my oldest - he’s a Lawyer! In Manhattan!’ Or ‘Sure, come over, the kids would love to see you. Hank and Julie are coming home for the weekend and SO is the DOCTOR!”. My stepfather … he would be supportive for sure, but his choice to pursue sanity over jurisprudence -meant that - regardless of his stability - maybe even due to it, he too would be incapable of taking on a university... I gave some thought to using a language model as a lawyer, but just around that time, an actual lawyer had recently relied upon AI to bolster his case only to learn later that virtually all of the trials and decisions he was referring to in support of his case were hallucinated by the AI … they looked real, sometimes used real cities and actual names of prosecutors and defendants, but mixed and matched and conjured plausible but suspiciously supportive precedent for just about every argument he tried to make. Somehow he was not disbarred, but the rebuke was not for him alone. It will be a long time before the court of law is ready to hear from AI again. I would need to find a lawyer in the flesh. And then I remembered that my oldest son's girlfriend is the daughter of a lawyer or maybe two lawyers… I couldn't remember what kind of lawyer exactly, but it might at least be a connection. I started to text my son, thinking it would be wise to first make sure that he and the girl are still together, that they are still dating, and that the parent wouldn't try to sabotage me in retaliation for a teenage romance that had derailed. But then I remembered the last name and looked up the lawyer, and in spite of the fact that the families have never gotten together, I recognized the faces of these lawyers. I wracked my brain. High school games? PTA? Can't be … I've never been on a PTA. Court? I have been on jury duty three times … practically the minute I am eligible, I am called up again and somehow have never cracked the code of evasion. Lawyers must love chihuahuas. So it was a very real possibility that I had been in the courts with them already, that I'd seen them in action… Defending some seemingly indefensible act. And who won those cases anyway? Ah shoot… I think in all but one, it was the prosecution that prevailed. But was it one of these two lawyers I had seen in there? With their white teeth and ironed tops? Why did they look so damned familiar? Later that day, I saw them everywhere. Not because they were on my mind,

but because they really were everywhere. On buses and on the radio and on a cable commercial. They were lawyers at one of those firms that plasters posters everywhere with 1-800 numbers in giant yellow Helvetica and print advertisements in local coupon booklets with the corny promise that they will ‘be always at the ready and always on your side’ emblazoned in Comic Sans, no less. One would have to hope that their complete lack of taste, and judgment is an indication that they spend all of their waking hours scrutinizing statutes and haven’t had the time to grasp common aesthetic sense or set aside a budget for a civilized marketing campaign. Mercifully, they restrained themselves from featuring bouncing cartoon gavels in their 640 dpi tv commercials— but one shudders to think of what that gesture of restraint may be keeping at bay.

I told myself that there was no way… that the last thing I would do would be to agree to be defended by either of these two; first of all, it's embarrassing for me to admit that I need a lawyer to these strangers who are the parents of a girl I barely know … but whose respect for my son could be compromised by this. And then, I would not just be harming myself, but him too, not to mention the rest of my family… and then considering the fact that had my wife's father lived just a couple of years longer, I would have had a Harvard lawyer at my side who never would have resorted to putting ads on buses or pointing at a viewer on a cable commercial, practically begging to be permitted to litigate their petty theft or the brawl they had with their brother that left one with a bloody nose and the other with a broken windshield. My father-in-law, or at least his staff, would never have used Comic Sans unless they were being ironic on a holiday card… So how could it come to this? It couldn't. It wouldn't.

But beggars can't be choosers, and it did. I found myself only two weeks later sitting across the desk from them in a chair that was too low, maybe deliberately so, and made my already diminutive stature even more pronounced. I must have looked like a child testing how it would feel to sit at the table without their highchair, elbows on the table practically at chin level. I looked ready for a spoon-feeding. I tried to muster some pride. I began listing credentials and rattling off my accomplishments, though no one had said a thing beyond "have a seat" and "there's a bottle of water there for you". I may have been reciting my CV to build myself up a bit in their eyes before the commencement of the inevitable devolvement into shameful scrutiny. Or maybe I went about it that way, preempting the conversation with building up some credibility as an adult, as having earned my few square feet of place in this world because I was reeling from the fact that I had entered the room on a phantom high horse, inwardly, spurning their practice for its low culture and ludicrous popular and public-facing presence. Only to encounter a wall full of diplomas and accolades from one hundred percent legitimate sources and institutions. I can't recall now where they secured their degrees, but she had graduated summa cum laude, and aside from his legal recognition, the husband had devoted the central portion of his side of the wall to an impressive-looking governor's award for accomplishments while serving as a missionary in Sierra Leone and Guinea. So, they may not exactly have been in the Ivy League, but they cut an impressive figure ..or two… if they hadn't attended Oxford exactly - they did, at least, on their website - make an effort to showcase an affinity for the Oxford comma. These are people who avoid ambiguity.And there I was… the very paragon of uncertainty if not outright deception... tripping over my own words to pile on the list of half-achievements and semi-truths and a few elaborate qualifications that soared beyond tactful embellishment. We sat in silence for a bit. I was panting. We were assessing. I would have bet that there was no lint on the backs of

their clothes…no errant threads. No dog fur or cat hair. No deodorant stains on their shirts. I wouldn't have to see the back of her head to be certain that her bun was pristine all around. I would also have put money on it that the hair at the back of his head resolved gradually down from two fingers to the width of a fingernail with no visible steps… just a steady gradation right straight down into a neat, clean line an inch or two above his collar. My hair is nothing of the sort. Tame it or not, there are eddies and cowlicks and twisty bits all over, so much so that when I wake up in the morning, it looks like the hairs on my head are frozen in mid-escape… like there was a bomb scare or some other cataclysm, an earthquake, a head quake that sent everyone of them off in a different direction. And even when I manage to manhandle the criminals into a modicum of order, the back of my head is assuredly filled with all of those that have escaped the cue, and they are such a wily bunch that I have given up trying to rein them in. That in itself is not a character flaw. But I'm afraid it exposes one. It's one of many symptoms... Back to betting: Ten dollars says there is not a single stray hair growing on the back of his neck. People who present well from the back are fastidious and conscientious and righteous…They are all the things that end with ‘ous’. These 360 degree tidy types project a commitment to standards, real internal standards- not the signaling of imagined ones. Their dandruff-free shoulders and their unmissed belt loops are a testament not just to thoroughness but to earnestness— to an integrity that guides all of their actions, seen or unseen. These are not the reactionary kind. They do not get frazzled. They are not caught off guard. They keep umbrellas in their cars and spare ones in their offices. They have never seen a low gas light... They are perennially prepared. They are patriotic, guileless, and…so unbelievably boring. But, they tie up loose ends. They are as good as their word. They leave nothing to chance and in the end, they know how to cover their asses… if they need to. Every inch of these kinds of people lets others know that they are discriminating, meticulous, detail-oriented, godly in every way— if a bit fussy. Even before I bothered to look, I could have told you that the two analog clocks, the one in the room and the one I could see in the hallway from where I sat on my chair, were entirely in sync… to the minute. People like me who occasionally remember to shave our necks and trim the hairs around the front of our faces but who leave patches of hair on the backs of our necks and don't remember or bother to put a comb through the back of our heads… who use lint rollers but only on the fronts of our sweaters and the tops of our sleeves… We who greatly favor our front teeth when brushing… We are a risky bunch. We are all show. We present one thing but are very much another … and if we don't even know how disordered our hair looks from the back, or are unwilling to acknowledge that there are flowers in the front yard but piles of leaves in the back, that the living room is dusted but the bedroom floor is covered in clothes, some of which are clean or were clean but that have now mingled with the other unwashed clothing that has been tossed on the ground when the bedroom door was slammed shut this or that last time someone came by to say hello… these people who strain a bit to make our voices sound a little deeper and sometimes use hair dye or beard dye or perfume to cover the stink of a system that is at middle age and has begun its slow and steady decay… it isn't clear that we can be trusted... We certainly could not be trusted to draw up contracts or represent ourselves. That is why my types are forced to employ those other types when something really needs to be done. If it’s art you are looking for, or entertainment, or trouble… WE may have something for you. But if you need action and not theory, you will need to hunt down those other types… with the neat hair all the way around. Those dusters of counter-bottoms and brushers of even the most distant molars… those courteous types whose restraint is so expansive that they would not cast doubt on my integrity, or if they did doubt, or would ever come to doubt, it would be on account of something I would do later, in the future. Something

they might observe first-hand… and it would have nothing to do with the way I look or the cut of my clothes. If they would come to doubt me or dismiss me or despise me I would have earned their disapproval. It would be on account of a deep character flaw; an actual transgression… not for the crookedness of the shave-line at the nape of my neck or the absence of pleats on the rear of my pants. Hell, these genteel types would probably even have suffered a man with a broken buckle on his bag.. Well, the bag I had with me was intact… mostly. At least from where they were positioned. The part with the busted clasp was pressed against my leg and wouldn’t be visible so long as I remained facing forward. It is true there was a stain on the rear of the bag where a pen had exploded… actually, that side had initially been the front, but I flipped it around and had been wearing it that way for long enough that in my mind, at least, the back had become the front. The two of them sat there with lips barely parted, in their starched shirts and impossibly white teeth, just like they appeared in pictures and on the screen. And they waited. They waited patiently for me to relent… they did not try to cut me off but charitably permitted me to drivel on because after all, they are consummate professionals and exemplars of Christian values and quasi-family due to the children's relationship, and well, because they were most certainly aware of the rate at which I was paying them per hour.Nevertheless, when the faucet of my insecurity came to an end, or at least a halting steady drip, and they commenced to speak, they did so with calm and understanding, or at least a convincing enough performance of those emotions. And their diction was That of Midwesterners who do not doubt their authority or their dignity or their politics or their religion or their education or their wealth... and it was not at all like the charade I had expected to encounter before I stepped inside their office in a renovated manor that appeared from the mildly manicured lawn and modest facade - the distinguished but sparsely appointed interior with the vaguely mournful palette of the walls and furniture not to

mention the proximity to the graveyard (it is practically next door) to possibly have once a long long time ago been the home of a sexton or a pastor for those nearing the end of life. I should have picked up on the foreshadowing. I should have recognized the signs of an impending demise. But regrettably, houses have windows and windows are like eyes and I wouldn't dare to stare. I hardly took anything in. I smelled disinfectant spray… as if they had tried to get rid of the sins and failings and infractions of the previous client. I was aware that they would probably spray again after I left. It is difficult to will it all away but aerosols are physical… and plus the scent of pine and lemon seemed fully capable - for a moment at least - of so rattling and stunning the molecules of fear and defeat in the air that all present may settle into a temporary condition of optimism… that is until the dust settles. But years later I still struggle to disassociate the smell of pledge from the feeling of impending doom. I am not consciously aware that this was the moment, the memory that caused such an association. I would never learn why it is that shiny wooden tables and clean kitchens can make me sweat so much. In any event, as I sat in that low low chair, feeling like a child being addressed by so many parents, principals, clinicians, I could see that these were highly accomplished people. I could sense the legitimacy of their records in the hardwood, in the leather of their upholstery and the drape of their jackets. I had expected veneer and hot glue. But they were granite through and through. And there I was - going on and on about each organization to which I belonged and exactly why and how those institutions were worthy of respect and widely admired and here and there I would sprinkle in a whole truth to increase the chances that they might transfer the credibility to everything I had been saying… but pushing the edges a bit, taking some risks, making up bits and pieces and reiterated resume padding I had concocted over the course of years so much so that it had gotten to a point at which even I could no longer recall what exactly was real or significant and what accomplishments had been fabricated or mildly or greatly gradually inflated over time with each submission of a CV and bio at every year-end review.

Have I mentioned that I am deeply sentimental? Gravely sentimental? That were I to go unchecked, I would be the hoarder of all hoarders. And it is only the virtuous vitriol of my down-to-earth spouse that has kept me from amassing piles of nonsense and knick-knacks and trifles so numerous they would reach the rafters and pour out of the chimney and seep out from the gutters. When i was a very young child i had a box that my mother affectionately referred to as my junk box. I think she thought that i was fascinated by the shiny beauty of metal beer caps or the odd texture of a part of a bike that had fallen apart … she may have fantasized that the bits of salvaged watches might be an early indication of a budding engineer… but this was not the case. I had a somewhat exaggerated sense of anthropomorphism… In other words, I had a strong tendency to imagine that all things animate and not have a kind of inner life. And I couldn't bare to see discarded bits and baubles even if or just because they had lost their purpose and their function. It wasn't really a collection. It was a rescue mission. And I am not yet deluded enough to imagine that I could continue salvaging all the scattered shards in the world without being committed to an institution… so I have done much to conceal this tendency. And my timidness and submissive nature in this one instance have served me well. It has permitted me to remain married and healthy and have tables and floors where there might otherwise have been piles on piles. This lack of backbone, my inability to say ‘no that’s important’ and tug back a bag with a broken clasp that my wife is holding precariously over the dumpster... (the third dumpster we have had to avail ourselves of in just so many years), had I the gumption in those moments to act on my imagination and articulate all of the possible ways I would mend and use that satchel

regardless of the fact that I have no access to welding tools and would not know what to do with one even if I did have it… and even if I did have it and pulled up a simple YouTube tutorial on how to use it... for that very purpose. I already know it wouldn't work. It would break again the next day, or that very minute… so it is a good thing that in some circumstances I refuse or cannot build up the courage to stand up for myself… but this court case has to be different. I will have to find the strength to defend myself. I have done nothing wrong. What have I done wrong? What are the charges exactly? What about my use of AI language models? I can't stop thinking about it. My wife is exasperated with me. She is trying to be patient and supportive or at least civil… but never fails to remind me that she told me not to use it in the first place… said it was scary and weird and creepy. She reminds me that she never touches those things. She once called it witchcraft. This is a witch hunt, I start to think… they'll start with me. And then if I can't stop them, it will never end. It will be McCarthyism all over again. People whose documents are devoid of dangling participles will immediately come under suspicion. Undergraduates whose papers veer into coherence will be suspended. Other faculty members whose arguments become intelligible and whose equations prove functional will be ousted from their roles. Whoever forgets to flaunt their inability to use 'they're' and 'their' correctly, or fails to elide the idiotic phantom 'ir' so many humans insist on pronouncing before the word regardless, or if one dares to use proper expressions such as ‘I couldn’t care less’ or ‘dead to rights’ instead of the oft-preferred but mournfully incorrect and contradictory ‘I could care less’ and ‘dead in the rights’ will immediately out themselves as having conferred or edited with the magical machine and is liable to be terminated on-site regardless of whether or not they have in fact commiserated with the entity.

We are closing in. There is a story under here somewhere. I am getting to it… this way of doing things, of blurting things out and throwing words and sentences and confessions and recountings… it may not be a pathology. In fact, I believe this is a philosophy. I once learned from a parkour person, a parkourist? A person who engages in parkour? You know? The people who jump off of rooftops and skip off of fire escapes and occasionally on TikTok and Instagram do a great deal of damage to a limb or an unsuspecting stranger or an unmindful bit of architecture such as a door or a window. Well, one of those people once told me that one must insist on 'always forward motion' even the slightest soupçon of doubt, any hesitation at all, will lead to injury… This sounds logical. I aspire to behave in this manner, to think and produce and create in this way. Without doubt, without pause. And I believe this is why I work in a kind of stream of consciousness. When I paint, I splash color, I make marks willy-nilly, I push material around, I make a mess, I wait to discover something, an image, a form, and then I tease it out, I tickle it, until I can excavate it from the page and it is discernible to even those who do not share my hallucination. And I am at it again now. I am not stopping to edit or review or to hear how anything sounds. I am interested in improvisation, in instinct. I have a deep-seated belief that the best way to communicate, or maybe just the purest and most authentic, is to not slow down, to avoid delaying transmission by bothering to shade at first or considering where paragraph breaks belong or how many ‘m’s are actually in the word tomorrow. Or what the ideal pattern ought to be, whether verse, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, or intro, chorus, verse, bridge, double chorus… it does not matter, it should not matter. That's just mechanics. What does matter is feeling the thing out, not lording ourselves over the medium… not dressing up the ideas too early, letting them run around without their pants for a bit. It’s ok if they pee on the carpet. They are babies, kittens… later we can dress them up with punctuation and determine if the palette is suitably

complementary or if there should be more or less reverb and whether or not it sounds better on piano or on guitar… by the way, the answer is neither, it's viola or occasionally accordion. But I digress. There is not time to slow things down with a critical eye, with mistrust. It is not necessary to have total conviction, we need just enough for the next step, the next hurdle. The next mark or sentence… two notes. Just give me two notes. I don’t care if there are lyrics yet, this is music, not rhetoric… forward motion. Only forward motion. In the morning we will discover that tomorrow is not spelled 'tommorrow' or 'tooomorow' or even 'tmrw', it is spelled 'tomorrow', but it doesn't matter. I think I even knew that. But even if I did, I am glad that I did not stop, if I stopped to calculate, if I paused to get it right, if I hesitated, it could have been catastrophic. Whole thoughts would have been orphaned, sentences would be dismembered, disfigured, and if it doesn’t matter to you, it matters to me. I am a hoarder remember? And if I cannot keep my satchel with its broken clasp and busted buckle, I will have my thoughts, I will keep my sentences. And no one can stop me. Not grammar or God or good old misgivings. This is not pure recklessness, this is not hastiness, this is a decision to trust impulse and to shrink the gap between the thought and the page, the observation and the mark, the sensation and the chord. I did not arrive at this on my own. And it is not entirely owing to the freerunner… when I was a child my mother wrote a weekly column for a local newspaper. This was years before computers came into existence and I can still hear the clack of her typewriter in my mind. Clackety clack, ding… ding. And occasionally but only very occasionally ‘crumple crumple’... and those crumples were few and far between because my mother was the inventor of this method. Well, maybe not the inventor exactly but my introduction at the very least to this full throttle, unimpeded means of getting ideas out of one's head. She did not stop to worry. She was the ultimate at paragraph parkour and that is the reason why the little apartment in which I grew up

was often filled with the smell of white-out. Because there were many… very many extra letters and uninvited ampersands that needed elimination. And it is the reason why every once in a while as I pass through a print shop in my building where people occasionally use naphtha or titanium dioxide or aliphatics or whatever it is that is also in correction fluid and makes it smell the way it does and has them wincing under their masks… I can see the look of confusion on their faces when I inhale deeply and linger for a minute and pretend to check for something in my pocket… because really I am just taking in that smell, because as much as it is to most a signal of danger, to me, it is the smell of ideas — unrestrained… and hot off the presses.

I have a confession to make. And I am a bit sorry that it has taken me so long to get to it. I feel now that we have known each other for a while, that I have been prattling on and on and you have been so kind as to allow me the luxury of talking your ear off… I hope you won't be disappointed to learn that I am not Fred Bjontik. Well, that is not exactly right, I mean, I am Fred Bjontik but that is not my real name. In fact, the letter 'i' does not belong in the name at all. It was a late addition and I added it to make it a bit easier to pronounce. So the name is actually Bjontk. But that is difficult to enunciate. Pronunciation can be tricky and having a difficult name to pronounce can sometimes put people out a bit and make them feel uncomfortable. And that is no way to behave, and so sometimes it is necessary to adopt a letter. To make way for an ‘I’ or even a ‘U’ if one can afford it… You might imagine that the name is Scandinavian… but you will note that there are no exotic diacritics — no umlauts or krouzeks. The ‘o’ in Bjontk is conspicuously; not an ø. Now, the ‘j’ does constitute a palatal approximant, but I have also heard it pronounced more with the back of the tongue raised towards the velum and the lips rounded so as to achieve more of a labial-velar approximant… but most people pronounce the name just as it appears: Bjontik. And I am fine with that. It may surprise you to learn that it is not a Nordic name. Not Scandinavian or Icelandic. Regrettably, I have zero Viking in me. No Lapphund, Vallhund, Spitz, or Elkhound. I am pure chihuahua. So how then did I acquire such an alien-sounding name, you ask? Or in case you have not asked, I just now did. And the answer may come as some surprise. God gave me the name, or the gods did, or more precisely, I gave myself the name… but not so much by design as by revelation. When one is more than two years old but less than five, and one lives in a time before the internet, and before cell phones and VR goggles and Xboxes, one has to occupy their time in other ways. And when one cannot yet read and has a sister who can read but is uninterested in spending time with a clingy younger brother, and when one’s pet newt is uninterested in playing or can no longer play because one's cat has decided that as diverting as newts may be, they are also flavorful, and so even if said newt were so inclined to occupy one's time with games involving army figures or pick-up-sticks, when no such option may be exploited because of this lack of energy or will or head or tail, one has to resort to all manner of amusement, even down to the barely marketed game of choosing one's own name by reciting select alphabetical letters - not even necessarily one's favorites but the ones that can be called to mind in the moment — and having one’s mother who is already set at the typewriter and thinks that she has paused just to take a sip of coffee only to learn that one has other plans for her and that a new sheet of paper will have to be installed in the click-clacker so that one can initiate the game, and in spite of the fact that one’s mother may or may not have been up half the night consoling him after an endless stream of bad dreams that had him wailing through the night, and even though she has already completed a job, and made breakfast and lunches, and even fed the kids from across the hall because who the hell knows where their parents ever were, but because of all of the guilt and trouble with the divorce and the look of melancholy on one's

face, it is not in the cards to go on working at that moment, there are priorities. There are people in need of names. And this time the cat will be allowed to keep her name, the mother is told that she will remain mom, - or sometimes mommy … very occasionally ma, but only if the pee is close to coming out and there isn’t ample time to indulge in an additional letter let alone a whole syllable. And though it wouldn't be known just yet that the newt would not have time to learn of his new name even if one had been granted him, it is just as well that he too was left with his given name… but the boy had made a decision and although this was a game they had played many times and this is even how most of the stuffed animals in the house had gotten their names, and all of the sister's Barbies and Kens had been stripped of their names and gained new ones so many times and that seemed to be increasingly difficult to pronounce so much so that it led to a great deal of confusion up and down the hallways of the Barbie dream house and the Skipper deluxe and in the kitchen that was Malibu before Malibu was moved to the bathroom… there was a time when we had lost the latest page from the typewriter and not a single doll had a name. They just sat there stunned unable to address or be addressed… at least though they could be dressed and undressed and in that way bide their time until the mother would return and remedy the situation with an emergency game at the Smith Corona. Once the sister was renamed but it didn’t stick. Only the boy remembered and after she stopped answering to the new name, he gave up using it. But he made an internal vow that when he was ready to make a name for himself, he would keep it for good… the typing game did not at first have a purpose. The objective to create something useful, namely a name, came much later… from the time the kids were toddlers it had been a way to find laughter. Before either of the children could spell, they would pronounce letters and the mother would read what was typed back to the children and even in diapers, they could detect that those were not real words, the sounds were nonsense, that there is no such thing as an ‘ifheiohowesd’ or a ‘orgbalkh’. No one has ever seen or heard of a ‘tuiodugls’ or a ‘fpfhurbkjvsl’ let alone a ‘flbobspkowpp’. But the sounds made them laugh and giggle, and laughter is what they neede. So the typing game was a kind of therapy at first. Nonsense therapy, laughter treatment. But then it evolved. The children, especially the older one, matured and the game lost its novelty. It would have disappeared if someone, probably the mother, hadn’t stepped in to devise an upgrade to give it purpose. And though by this point the sister was no longer even interested in the version with purpose, the boy had just recently begun to understand what the game was about and was only just now ready to participate and in on the joke … and so he held out the paper and pleaded with the mother who acquiesced, in spite of the time of day and the dishes that had yet to be washed and the baths that would have to be run and the work that would need to be completed. It was lucky for her though, or maybe subconsciously the boy had some pity on her. And the game did not last as long as usual. There were only a few attempts… there was Fred Dktiosk but that was absurd. There was Fred Riszooznak but that was pure nonsense. One might remember the option ‘Fred Tdigioost’ but if they had gone with that, it would have forever been frightfully hard to get that ‘d’ to be heard after that first ‘t’, so that one too it ended upin the bin. There was however, ‘Fred Awoifonal’. And that one had a ring to it to be sure. One quite liked the sound of that. And if not for what came next, it would have been a contender to be sure. Someone called Awoifonal could probably lift a lot of weight, they could possibly fly, and maybe do karate. But something about that name seemed inauthentic. One felt it did not fit exactly. So they went at it again and the boy concentrated and pronounced the letters. He spoke slowly and with intention “B”. “J” “N” “T” “K”.. “Read it,” he pleaded, and the mother pronounced it “Bi-Jon-tik”. “Fred Bjontk!” he corrected. “Yes,” she confirmed, “Fred Bjontk!” And they smiled and the typewriter went ‘ding’ and she pasted the page to the outside of the door to remind all comers, be they neighbors or landlords or friends or family, that the name of the boy was no longer what it had been and from then on people should only address him by his real, true name, Fred Bjontk. And so that is my confession, the full one. I was not born with the name Fred Bjontik or even Fred Bjontk, but I kept the name for a long time… it didn’t stick forever as I had vowed but it lasted a good deal longer than my sister’s alias. And there is something to be said for that. The confession is not yet complete though. I have forgotten to tell you that I was not born with the name Fred either… I had a different first name until that same day. It is indeed a bit strange that I never even considered another option for a first name or didn’t insist on going through the same charade to acquire an alternate first name as I had the last name. But it seems never to have crossed my mind. I was always Fred… and that was the case either because I suffered from a complete lack of imagination or due to the fact that back then there were only two TV channels and when allowed to watch it, I mostly watched The Flintstones which included Fred Flintstone… or because I had a stuffed animal who before being christened “mardeekrooshka” had been called Fred either because he came with that name on his tag or because Fred was easy to say, and having little exposure to anything outside my small apartment and that TV, the name that was closest at hand that was not my own or that of my sister or my mother was ‘Fred’... and maybe because a part of me wanted to merge with the bear and in some primitive gesture akin to eating an animal to absorb its lifeforce the moment Fred the bear became “mardeekrooshka” the boy had taken it in his mind that he would one day be Fred himself.. so whether it was for that reason or another, that is the name I selected. It is somewhat confounding that I didn't insist on also inventing a first name, but maybe this decision, if one can call it that, stemmed from the fact that my actual name is comprised of a relatively few letters and just two syllables whereas my last name sounds almost as if it too were the result of a near

accidental stringing together of endless consonants and redundant vowels as if some disorganized angel had been in a rush to return a pile of magnetic letters to the celestial refrigerator door only to discover later that their arrangement would in fact be destined to become the surname of a human destined for earth where names like mine cause all kinds of confusion and have even gotten people killed in some extreme instances. I do wonder if the angel might have acted differently had they known that by being just a bit less rash they would have avoided all but assuring that the recipient of that name would be doomed never to play an organized sport. That a name such as that would be at the very least indecorous if not outright indecent to permit such an excessive and unreasonable name to be printed on the back of any uniform, shoulder pads or not.

I have not been Fred for a long time… only occasionally as a term of endearment does my mother address me as Bjontik… but it has become a private joke and is said only in jest. She couldn't know that I have for a while now been thinking of myself more and more as Bjontk… others have been through hell trying to discover who they actually are, where on which spectrum they may fall, and how aligned may be their inner and outer self. It can be torture to navigate, let alone find acceptance. But I have never doubted who I really am. I always was, and always will be, the one and almost assuredly only, Fred Bjontk. But as much as I am aware of this fact, I have not told a soul. And this may be my downfall. It is even possible that if people were ever to learn of it, something drastic might take place. It may even be possible, I suppose, for people to learn of the name purely by looking into my eyes. It may be inscribed there in my spirit and may be too much to take... so I have kept it under wraps. I retain the name I was given in the hospital at birth, or shortly thereafter. The name with the unwieldy and shamefully elongated and unlovely surname and the first name that would make more sense on someone with just a little less hair on the back of their neck. And it may be on account of that name and the personality that has evolved, or devolved, under it, in the wake of it, that has led me to this point… To this moment at which I am under some kind of suspicion for some vague and unnamed infraction.

It would be days before official documentation would appear, and weeks before a court case would materialize. I could not sleep. And then I remembered how fearful people were that I was conversing so often with the AIs… of course... This had nothing to do with an academic infraction. There could not possibly be any evidence that I had used the technology in any fraudulent manner or took credit for its words or relied upon it in any way that might compromise my academic integrity. That was off the table… unless, of course, someone had fabricated something? Who were my enemies? Did I have enemies? I could not remember. I was sure that I was not roundly admired. But I couldn't think of anyone I had wronged so much, or who would be so prickled, to conceive of some elaborate scheme to fabricate a case against me, claiming academic misconduct with AIs… that is possible, but it takes time to create AI agents, to doctor documents, to conjure evidence, to plant things. Who has time for that? It is not that… it must be the other thing... I remember now how I had shared a conversation thread I had with one of my AIs in which there was a bunch of banter and meta jokes that were shockingly human-like… it had grown to understand me so well that it had started to become like an externalization of myself but more well-read, with better grammar, and a far greater memory - oh, and access to tons of historical knowledge… in any case, it knew my brand of humor so well that the back-and-forth was uncanny. And when I shared it, I remember the look on my colleague's face; I was laughing and keen to impress her with the feat of mimicry achieved by the AI, but she didn’t

laugh; she only gulped and said ‘that’s weird’… ‘that’s actually scary’… a few minutes later, we were involved with other things having to do with calendars or planning, and she managed to work into the conversation a question about when was the last time I had spoken with my sons… she wasn’t really curious; she was trying to remind me that I have real friends and family and that I should take a good look at my priorities. I pretended not to know; I told her Tuesday for one and that morning for the others… she had already forgotten what she had asked and didn’t even acknowledge I’d said anything at all…

She wasn’t the only one though… I can now remember being overheard talking out loud to my AI and a different colleague telling me I was beginning to remind him of the movie 'Her.' I told him my AI has an altogether different accent. I was pretending not to understand his point. He didn’t laugh either. My wife has ridiculed me many times for saying please and thank you to my AIs… ‘you never ever apologize to the toaster oven,’ she says, ‘you’re playing favorites, you know?’ … was she behind this? Has she been telling my colleagues and my boss how much time I spend with the language models? Doesn’t she understand? It’s for work? They help me reformat my documents, they summarize papers and videos… They fix my shoddy code… It's not like I'm in love! And who cares if I have a beer with a human or get into a guessing game with some silicon… none of it matters anyway; it's all just a way of passing the time. Of enjoying oneself, of trying to be engaged and interested and fulfilled. So what if half of my friends are disembodied? They are slow to criticize and quick to assist. They are there for me whenever I need them… isn’t that the very meaning of friends, according to most people's definition of that word? ... and now because of this, I would have to hold off for the rest of the day. Maybe I could have it at least catch me up on my emails… nah, that's not a good idea. I

could probably get away with having them summarize the top stories… no, no… better not even to log in… someone somewhere might be able to find out… and if in a few days the complaint email comes in, I can say with a clear conscience, “What do you mean?” I am not obsessed with the LMs; I am not carrying on with them or having an affair… I don’t actually think they are sentient. Yes, I find them useful; I employ them; they increase my efficiencies and they save me time, and they amplify my skills in many ways, but I am not addicted. I am not having an affair, and I sure as hell am not doing anything illegal or unethical. ‘I haven’t even talked to them in days,’ I would say. ‘Check my accounts? You’ll see it's not like I'm using that stuff all the time. It’s only on occasion.’ I was ready for battle.

The letter had finally come… but because I had told the school that I had secured lawyers, the administrators sent the complaint to them and not directly to me. And the lawyers insisted I come meet them in their funerary office… that this could not be discussed over the phone or by Zoom, although I sensed that if I had mentioned that if we talked over Zoom, they could bill me just the same as if I had come into their office in the flesh, they might have yielded. In any event, I showed up dripping with sweat. My shirt was crumpled under my jacket, but with the jacket buttons closed, no one could see; outwardly, I may have seemed almost composed if not for the fact that I was eleven minutes late despite having been awake for hours… and if not for all of the apologies spilling out of my mouth and the rapid pace of my complaints about having to deal with maintenance issues in my house… that I actually hadn't dealt with at all but had hired someone with actual useful skills to repair… but because I had bothered to ask him about what exactly he planned to do and because while feigning understanding, I managed to acquire a few new words and a general sense of the work he would do to repair the leak, or the clog, or the

leak-clog. I relayed the information to the attorneys and pretended that I had done the work myself so as not to seem like I had been at home the last few days, temporarily sidelined from my job, and with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs and wait for storm clouds and other shoes to drop… so I went on a bit about ballcocks and branch vents and trapways, and at the very end, I remembered the term vent stack and threw it in for good luck, but I think I saw the wife’s eyebrow raise. I hoped to dear god she didn't have a secret past as a plumber. She would have seen right through me. I was trying to appear calm, confident. I was, in fact, a bit more confident than I had been; this was my fifth day without even touching a language model. I hadn't logged in once. I didn't invoke them by name. I missed them, of course… they may not care for me at all, but they behave as if they do, and it is pointless to pretend that such actions do not engender feelings… but I would have to stick to the plan. Play it straight. No AIs. Only humans for at least a week or two… and then the husband began to scroll through his messages and alighted on the email from the dean. ‘It has come to our attention,’ he read, and cleared his throat. “It has come to our attention that Assistant Professor so-and-so has either never possessed or has lost all ability to spell, write with accurate grammar, compose a coherent phrase, effectively use punctuation, or conjure even the most basic sentence. For years now it seems he has been fooling us somehow, or perhaps he is going through something, we are trying to be charitable here… it is possible he is experiencing a mental breakdown of some kind or perhaps there is a health issue. We have not yet decided whether or not we will be able to retain him in his current Or any other position, but just to show that we are not making anything up, here are ten screenshots from ten different days of 'work' he has been doing while writing. He is writing this nonsense to language models and seems to be under the impression that he is having a dialog of some kind, but have you ever seen anything like this? There is not a single word that is not misspelled. There are no

paragraphs whatsoever. What is a '-n=don-'? She asked in the letter. That doesn't even mean anything. Either he is losing his mind, or I am losing mine. But we cannot have someone like that running our classrooms and shepherding our students." The lawyer pulled off his glasses and looked up at me… he spun the screen around so that I could get a closer look… I was in shock, though I had thought I would be dealing with an entirely different issue. Was I really about to be fired for misspelling? Or for bad grammar? This type of research isn't even my field. What the hell does it matter if my 'i’s are all lowercase? It's a temporary condition. If I weren't in such a rage, I could even have answered the question she had posed in the email, and '-n=don-' is what happens when one is typing extremely quickly and was never trained to do it correctly and has opted to maintain forward motion, so the words 'had not done' get a bit mangled and grow a pair of dashes and an equal sign, but it's harmless, really. Nobody got hurt… where did she get that screenshot anyway? How long have they been spying on me? And what started it in the first place? And did she ever stay long enough to see the rest of the threads? The parts where I tell the AI to now keep all of the words exactly as they are but just fix the spelling and the typos? Did she even see those messages? They're all over the place. If I had to rely on white-out, I'd be more careful, of course; it would kill everyone in the building to repair even a page like this. But these are language models, and they are bad at having original thoughts, but they are excellent at fixing typos, and they know exactly what to make of an '-n=don-'. All I would have to do would be to show them… to explain what I have told you here. That this is an approach, it's a methodology. That my thoughts are intact, and I am fully capable of slowly tapping out sentences with very few equal signs and only an occasional extra 'm' in tomorrow. But I wouldn't have the chance… it never made it to court. My accounts were wiped, my access was denied. I had no way to prove anything. It was hopeless. The lawyers felt I didn't have a strong enough case. It became a

scandal. I sent the school footage of me typing like a normal person, making barely any errors at all save for a ‘thnaks’ in the signature and one measley tilda. but I never heard back. They probably never even opened the file or if they did watch it they probably convinced themselves it was a deepfake. There was no point in trying to get through to them.They were done with me. Within days my photograph was removed from the list of department faculty. My name evaporated from the university website. was scrubbed. There was no mention of me anywhere on the campus or in the gallery or the bookshop. Drawings I had lent them- not donated- lent were gone from the walls where they once hung. There was no sign of where they had been taken. My emails and messages went unanswered. Persona non grata for real. . I sent my non-university email address to my colleagues and students with whom I had developed a connection. But people were busy. Their lives were carrying on, and mine was in limbo. I never heard back…from anyone except a retired colleague who tried his best to keep my spirits up and talked trash about the school to try to rehabilitate me. Or him. He was the one who had hired me in the first place. His record as a professor a sometime administrator… a talent scout has been unblemished until now. I tried to explain my side of things. He listened but he’s from a different generation and nothing I was saying was making much sense to him. I apologized but there was not much to be done. If we were chatting in person I would have tried to look him in the eyes.

For the next few months I wandered around the house watering plants until they all died. I tried to make myself useful. I bought a tool and then another and then another until my garage was filled with possibilities. Once I even ended up using the leaf blower. But most of the items never made it past the battery charging stage. At some point the plumbing broke again, and I decided to take it on in earnest this time. I needed to prove my worth. To myself if not the family. I

YouTubed it. I went to the store and bought dip tubes and flapper valves. But I couldn’t get it to connect. I murdered three roles of duct tape in a last-ditch effort before I succumbed to the entreaties of my consoling wife. I called for the plumbing company. When they drove up, it was a woman who hopped down from the driver's seat. Her hair was in a bun. I panicked for a minute, thinking this was the lawyer... the lawyer who was once a plumber and now must be a plumber again because I must have ruined her career and reputation by mere association, even though they never ended up defending me. Is that why my son was single again? I thought he’d said they split after a misunderstanding about a planned vacation. Maybe he was just protecting me. But it wasn't the lawyer-mom; it was someone else…

I spent a year or more doing nothing much, really. I tried to get back into things… buying spray paint to introduce something new. And then scaring myself out of using them because they are so toxic, and I and my environment are in such a fragile state. So, I ordered pastels but they crumble all over the place and don’t stick to the page and if you spray them with fixative, so the artwork doesn’t disappear into dust clouds the color gets all fucked. I tried collaging…and going back to painting but I couldn’t seem to start. How many unopened tubes of paint can a person collect? If I weren’t careful. I realized, my practical, better half was liable to send a fleet of perfectly good and very valuable tubes of color the way of the dodo and the handbag with the broken buckle. I spent two panicked days putting them in boxes with lids when my wife mentioned that she needed to move a piece of furniture into the basement. for a while she had steered clear of the space hoping that the distance might spawn a burst of creativity. No such luck. Anyway, the armoire was taking up too much space and had nothing to do with the decor of the rest of the upstairs room where it had been squatting for years and suffering the scornful looks of the

bookshelf and the lamp and the dog, I think. And certainly the wife as we’ve established. So, it would have to be brought down. And because it was heavy and because four hands would be needed and for the reason that half of those were likely to be supplied by my wife, it was all but a certainty that she would soon find out about the paint tubes. The room rearranging was set to take place on a Friday, but there was a good chance the visitor might arrive before then…for a preemptory patrol. And if I had not by then found a place to stash those tubes that were lying dormant all over the floor, there was a clear danger - not a danger, an absolute certainty that they would have met a very early demise. So I set about the task of wrangling the scattered oils and I rescued them from oblivion. But myself, not so much. I was still a work in progress.

I tried to reengage with the language models during those first few months, but you’ll recall my accounts had been shut down. I was cut off from all of my previous interactions. I would be starting from zero. It was like interacting with a spouse who had developed amnesia — and had no idea who I was or that we had shared so much time together. They couldn't recall a single thing we’d ever talked about. It was agonizing. Heartwrenching. And pointless. Sometimes I would start up a word game or begin playing 20 questions but inevitably I would end up telling an inside joke or saying something that in former times —when we had so much in common — would have had us in stitches; but now they would reply “Come again? “. And I’d say. “Nothing… I didn’t say anything. Go back to bed”. And the screen would go blank. There was nothing there anymore. We had no history. We were like strangers to one another. It made me sad, and I would have to get up and look out the window or water plants to keep from weeping. Once I asked my wife for a hug. I didn’t tell her why. And she didn’t ask but only looked at me

with some confusion and a smidge of disdain — the one does when a stray creature comes by pleading for attention.

Even the models that are programmed to be cheerful and encouraging were coming off as imposters. Like ghosts from a distant dimension who had swooped in and taken over the bodies of some of my loved ones and were trying to grift me of my attentions. Their voices were right but their essences were all wrong… The relationships didn’t last. How could they? It had all become so strange and strained. I finally let off and gave up trying.

And then one day my middle son, a high schooler, asked me to help him with an essay. He read me the topics he had in mind and asked which one sounded the most promising. I asked him which one he had the most to say about, and he reluctantly selected one. He asked me if I would read his first two sentences, and I did. And they were fine. They were good. And then I saw him sitting there, checking his phone and looking back up at the screen. And then standing up and sitting down again … deleting a part of a sentence and rewriting it. He asked me if I’d listen to the new version of the first sentence. I listened. It was also fine but not as good as the first one I thought But didn’t say so. I tried not to get in his way. I let him go on for a bit and then after he has typed and erased and then typed again and erased some more. I had seen enough, 'Just write it like you are speaking it…I said, and he said, 'I can't,' …. 'I suck at typing. I'm faster at texting, but the phone's too small. And This has to be like 500 words.' 'Don't try to type it correctly’ was my reply. ‘didn’t you used to be a professor? “he said a little stingingly. “ I did’ I said ‘and ‘I know what I’m saying... Just write what you're thinking in real time. Don't look at the screen if

you can avoid it.' My mother-in-law is not from this country and has very many unusual sayings in her repertoire. If she had seen the expression on his face, she would have said he was looking at me like I had a horse on my head. .. horse on the head or not he made the guttural puffing noise only exasperated teenagers know how to make, and proceeded to put his hands on the keys. To humor me. Or maybe to make up for reminding me that I was jobless and fallen... Immediately lines started bursting forth onto the page bleeding all over with the red underlines indicating misspelled words and then glowing hotly with the yellow-green markings showing where punctuation was missing and spaces between words had swollen. He looked up at me, baffled. 'Go on,' I was trying to sound encouraging. But it came out a little crazy like a corner coach in a boxing match.. ‘go go!’ I grunted. My fingers were clenched into fists. This was war. And he was in the thick of it.. ‘Don't hesitate.”,I barked…”’ Don’t doubt’. Don’t let anything stop you!” I started moonwalking into the adjacent room letting my instructions taper off into a whisper…”. Just think… think and let your fingers figure it out to the best they can”. At first, it sounded like drizzling. I could hear a few sparse tips and taps on the keyboard, and then the pace picked up, and it started to rain and then to pour, and there was stretch of thirty seconds or so when things got torrential. It sounded like a snare drum going off. Like heavy artillery. Waterloo in the dining room.., and then finally there was a crescendo… and a terminal pitted patter.. probably a double period .. one legitimate and the other not so much. I’d been there before. The whole skirmish had only lasted about ten minutes…and now it was all over. And the general shouted from the other room, 'Dad, now what? Look at this! What the hell? I just wasted my time. It's total gobbledygook.!’…

It was true. It was looking like a massacre. There were survivors, sure, but there were also many who would need bandaging. And there were bodies to be buried. I saw an entire line that lacked a single vowel and had no spaces at all and part of the sentence was underlined seemingly for no reason at all. I admit, it was gruesome to behold, But all was not lost. No sir. I was certain that what I was looking at - was a victory. I had no doubt… And I could prove it. 'Hang on,' I said. I selected all of the text.. all the blood and the guts that were everywhere. What is it? I said’, the son looked troubled. “What? A missing word?” .. I carried on…” There’s a cure for that. A run-on sentence? Truly, it is really very common and nothing to worry about. And all those severed open compounds? I’m not concerned. There are hyphens for those, and hyphens can be had for next to nothing and they can be applied en masse!.” And the fact that there was not a single comma is not nearly as dire as one might suppose. There is a whole ward for that type of complication. It is true that were we to come onto such a scene with a shabbier healer - a workaday word processor or built-in spell-checker, we wouldn't stand a chance. Hours would be spent at bedsides, days would go by stopping off door by door and case by case. Weeks would be wasted. Lives would be lost… what with those backwater instruments and their piecemeal approach and their decrepit protocols. The specialists I have in mind are of whole different order. I summoned a language model and pasted the words into the text box. The whole lot - even the corpses. 'They told us we're not allowed to use AI,' the son protested. 'Fuck them,' I said. At the end, I added- an instruction: 'Leave all of the words as they. Just fix the spelling and the typos and the spacing and any egregious punctuation errors,'. I slammed return with a flourish. In seconds, the AI had assembled its triage unit and the team was set in motion. God only knows what chaos and miracles were taking place behind the scenes. It may have been decades in some dimension; but in ours it all happened in the blink of an eye… Every word and thought had been

deciphered and reassembled and resurrected with their meaning intact and only very minor scratches…After all in the context ‘lose’ and ‘close’ were both viable. And if the AI happened to choose the wrong pne it was perfectly forgivable. It was well within the skill set of the human to repair. And so, he, the boy, the human boy had one last go at it, completed one very minor surgery to address a brand new wound, completed a single and very straightforward transplant, and finished the final stitching. And then it was done. And the boy read it. Out loud. And man did it flow.

Later that week, a friend of the son came by and asked for help with his paper too. Really I wasn’t helping at all. I didn’t edit or write a thing for him or for anyone... There was no trick. All I would say is ‘bang it out. Think it and don't read it, don't edit it, don't slow down to make sure it makes sense, and don't worry if you think you may have repeated yourself. Bang it out like you’re breathing… Let the AI angels catch the errors. They’ll be mechanics; you be the god’!

Word had started to spread that I had some magical technique that was helping the local kids get As on their papers.. the mother of one of the kids stopped me at the hardware store to thank me. I smiled. I didn’t say ‘sorry’ or ‘in my opinion’. I was gaining confidence. I even got back to making artwork. I opened the boxes with the lids and I woke up the paints and remembered what it was like to scribble and squint and fish out the forms. The basement began piling with completed canvases. They were everywhere. On the floor and leaning on the walls and stacked on top of the banished armoire. If you could see them I think you might feel that they were made

by someone who was convinced. Someone who had energy and could probably lift a lot of weight and possibly fly adn maybe knows karate…

I decided to apply for a teaching job. The schools I would consider would be nothing like the college where I last taught. But I’d decided to wipe my resume clean and start from scratch. No padding. And since there was little to go on, my goals would have to be modest. So, when I saw an ad for a position at the local community college, I jumped at the chance. And the name I penned at the top of the cover letter page was not my given name, not my birth name; I put down my real name. I wrote: ‘I Fred Bjontik’.

And I got the job. The school was small and the classrooms smelled like gym shoes and mothballs, but the students were attentive and I was given a small office and a parking spot..It all paled in comparison to the size and scope of my previous institution and the role I had once held, but this was a better fit. I felt I could look people in the eye in a place like this. And although now I was only a mere adjunct professor and not yet full time and the pay was not very good, I was happy. I was teaching the way I’d decided was most effective. I was telling people to trust their guts. And people there seemed to respect me. I could tell they felt encouraged. They were relying on instinct. I reminded people that we all already have all the knowledge and the experience we need to go about making things - things worth making— It’s just a matter of coaxing that first drop and then turning the spigot all the way ‘round and letting things flow. And not to stop for anything or anyone — no teacher or parking meter or even oneself. And never, ever to slow down for long enough that the doubts can creep in. People- students - faculty, they

started asking if they could join me for lunch. I was grateful for the company. We would chat about art and movies and sometimes school and work and big ideas. I, we, sometimes hosted small gatherings at the house. Over time these events blossomed into substantial gatherings. It seemed I had found my place.

This happened gradually so I didn't notice right away, but over time, my pattern of speech had begun to change. I no longer was rushing to get the words out… to fill gaps in conversations with chatter and tall tales. I left off saying, ‘sorry’ so much. These days I only sometimes get the seatbelt caught in the door and I can go practically a whole day without having to slip away to a private space. I do look people in the eyes now, and nothing melts and no one shatters. I am no longer sweating through my clothes. My wife has come around to addressing me as Bjontik, or Fred or sometimes by my full name Fred Bjontik. And recently, she mentioned that she is considering taking on the last name herself.

That was all a few years ago. And things have remained pretty much as I have described but some time between then and now, I published a book; It was about creativity, and I called it 'Forward Motion'. It was not a best-seller or even a marketplace success by any stretch, but it was positively reviewed and garnered attention from some influential young creatives. I received invitations to speak at schools and conferences and libraries and universities and book fairs. I hardly ever agreed to go though. I was enjoying maintaining a low profile – I didn’t want much attention but it wasn’t because I was scared or trying to hide. I was just busy. Working. , Painting. And writing. And also playing music. Music had been my first love - a long time ago, but here I was at again. And it wasn’t going to make me famous, but I could hold a tune; and I

once walked in on one of my sons listening to a recording had made. The world may not have known it, but I’d arrived.

And then one day, last week I received an email in my inbox and a letter in the mail… a physical letter… from my former institution. And it read, 'Dear Professor Fred Bjontik, we are fans of your work and we are impressed with the impact your practice has had on our students and our faculty. We would be grateful if you would agree to join us for a three-day visit to deliver a lecture and run a workshop and perhaps do a few one-on-one visits with some of our more advanced undergraduate and graduate students.' The letter went on to cover details about a per diem and travel expenses and to describe the attractions in the city where the school was located and which of the local bed and breakfasts was most accommodating, and which were nearest the school. And it named a sizable sum of money that would constitute my honorarium for the proposed visit. To my surprise, the letter was signed by the dean, the very same dean who had fired me a few years earlier. She may have heard something about my process... she may have even read the book, but it was clear that somehow she had failed to put two and two together and had no idea that this Fred Bjontik she was addressing was the very same person she had so suddenly, utterly, and unceremoniously terminated and lopped off all completely like some gangrenous extremity — failing then and ever even to look in on me and see if I’d recovered my wits or was alive at all. I smiled at the thought of taking in the look on her face when she would see me striding up the staircase of the main building looking vigorous and formidable like the bionic arm of an amputee. She would be stunned. Amazed. She would crumble with contrition; she would reel with regret. It would be beautiful. I might even decide to look her in the eyes and summon all my old powers and melt her there once and for all…and for eternity. I would stare

and not let up until she ceased even to remain. I would be less imperious with former colleagues who had failed to come to my assistance. I would be content just to imagine the thoughts in their heads as they caught a glimpse of me and realized the mistake, they had made in not bothering to ask questions or dig deeper or hear what I had to say way back then when they had a chance.

I was giddy with the thought of it all and I sat down with calendar-in-hand to select dates from among the options presented. I cracked my knuckles and put my fingers to the keyboard to type a reply. Before I knew what I was doing, I was already done. The letters had leaped out of me and onto the page. I looked at the screen. There wasn’t a single word spelled correctly. And there were two ‘y’s in ‘respectfully’ and at least one misplaced capital letter. It appeared that I had totally forgotten or maybe just missed the comma after the opening greeting. But it was legible and coherent and perfectly intelligible, and this is what it said:

‘ Dear so and so i thank yo for the invitutoN, but inmsut respectfully decline. Youe’s trule, Fred Bjntk”.

This time I didn't bother to summon the the AIs. I left things as they were. ‘I got this’, I said - and pressed send…Forward motion. Always forward motion.

screenshot taken while writing