The Blackout: a droll story
The kids aren’t ‘all right’
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He never knew there were so many kids in the neighborhood. Once the kids realized it was going to be a long time for power to come back, they slithered out of their cloistered snail shells of social media and gaming - to gather at the river front. That’s where Joe first saw them. He scowled in their general direction and spat.
The blackout had leveled the otherwise dimly lit suburban town into a hot mass of suburban sloth and inertia. Who’s hunkered down in their generator-less domiciles, anxious and hungry, cursing at their unconnected smartphones. Food and sleep they could eschew — a cell signal: never! That was surely hell.
Power only mattered to the kids insofar as their media devices was concerned — nothing else. If they had no power, they had nothing, so out the kids came, making their way to assemble at the riverfront — a pubescent assembly of dental appliances and polo shirts, all above Joe’s pay-grade..
They were pale, lethargic, un-athletic boys, with flaccid parsnip-like arms and legs. Bony-assed, they also lacked any dimension in the crotch area — like homunculi. Jeremy could not even throw or catch a ball, but he ranked in the top of some of the online gaming platforms.
The novelty of the blackout soon excited them — roused them out of, or extirpated from, their odoriferous social media caves, something that rarely happened. Naturally, if they were going to jazz it up like a ten year old’s birthday party, they went to another neighborhood — rarely their own. Joe thought “do kids from this neighborhood go to their neighborhood to bugger it up?”
Jeremy and Justin “you mean like Justinian — the Roman Emperor. He was an asshole,” thought Joe, were the most spastic of the group. Their pubescent voices cut the smooth night air like St. Elmo’s fire. They competed for the loudest, or for who was most over enamored of his own gob. Every so often — an excited, high, gurgling effeminate goloss would rise above the conversation, only to be overtaken by a whine of higher decibel. What the fuck were they talkin’ about? That’s what Joe wanted to know, or at least said he did. He didn’t, really. The boys were talking so fast it was impossible to know.
Most of the boys and girls in the neighborhood had biblical patriarch names — like Joel, Jeremy, Sam, Jeremiah, Jacob, David, Noah, and Sarah (matriarch). That’s just the way it was around here. As if in these names self-fulfilling prophecies of glory were assured. Joe knew of a newborn up the street what somewhat broke the tradition. His parents liked to think of themselves as ‘progressive-minded thinkers’ — naming the baby “&*@(*.” “You heard that right,” Joe said. “&*@(*. What the fuck -? Don’t make fun of it — that’s a violation of his civil rights.”
He continued “if I want to change my name to ‘shithead, I have my reasons — and my rights. But there’s a guy in the White House with the same name already …” Was the reason someone would name their kid &*@(*, or Shithead, is only as a means of baiting people to make fun of it so they can sue them for discrimination?
“In fact, forget you ever heard the name &*@(*, because you’re likely to refer to the baby as he or she, as the case may be. This is what some come to think of as sexist: please refer to the creature as “it,” until such time as ‘it’ makes known ‘its’ sexual identity. Even then it might not be okay. Remember, Americans are as easily offended as they are entertained. There is no telling someone what to do — don’t even suggest it. Better yet, don’t even look at them,” Joe ruminated.
Some local kids on skateboards soon joined the aforementioned eunuch circle, mindlessly clacking and kicking their boards, cacophonous in the low promenade, up the building façade, and to Joe’s burning ears. Supposedly, the more noisome one is with his board, the more kiddie-props he gets. The boys all unquestioningly follow this ritual, yet none of them really was ever noticed by anybody. At least these smaller kids didn’t say much. They just stared blankly, listening to Jeremy and Justin, looking downward, absent-mindedly clanking their boards loudly on the curb, masticating huge gum-wads. There was far cooler stuff on Hulu to watch.
“if I want to change my name to ‘shithead,’ I have my reasons — and my rights. But there’s a guy in the White House with the same name already …”
But Joe was right about something: these kids today — some of them — didn’t grow up ‘right.’ Not like he had. Their parents let them brazenly roam about publicly — encouraging them to say whatever they wanted, no matter how imperious that was or tyrannical that sounds. That’s why they had no clue that they were disturbing the neighbors — not that mattered. Rather, as Joe like to say “they could care a rat’s arse.”
One couldn’t complain to their parents — Sarah and Larry. They were likely to call the police if you did that. Sarah and Larry had strong feelings about American individualism: any boy or girl, no matter how tiny or insignificant, was entitled to the same adult privileges regardless of not having earned them, if only by constitutional right to free speech: indeed, Sarah was once overheard telling Joe over the phone “they can say whatever the fuck they want.” and summoning her attorney to prepare to “sue” him. ‘Sarah’ well preceded the ‘Karens’ people like to talk about. Her medicine cabinet was overflowing with psychotropics.
Parents exercised no constraints on these kids social lives — letting them fester endlessly in their rooms, under their covers with Facebook and Tik Tok, masturbating five or six times each day, as if they were twelve, not seventeen. “That’s right,” said Joe, “went through puberty five years late.” As long as they were out of the parent’s hair and didn’t get arrested, the kids were alright.
Before long, Ellie showed up — another delayed pubescent, Ellie was seventeen going on thirteen. Her body was a teenager’s, but her mind simply wasn’t, which sometimes presented awkward instances socially. Ellie was one of the few kids who could keep up with, or even out-talk the eunuchs. “She can’t shut the fuck up,” thought Joe, “for love or money.” Ellie’s chatter was her way of distracting unwanted attentions. Her shrill voice cut right the river water, like an electrical storm, and shot back out like glass fragments shattering the minds of those within ear-shot.
As overly horny were the eunuchs, they weren’t turned on by Ellie, but somewhat annoyed of her sudden competition for attention of the little skateboarders. Once as it became apparent that Ellie was gaining the upper-hand in the talk-a-thon, they gradually flitted away like hyenas. Once the kids were gone, the boys were content to continue kibitzing between the three of them.
It was getting dark when Joe noticed their guffawing faces popping in and out of the streetlamp glow. This meant that they were officially out too long. The clinking of their nervous giggling reflected harshly back to Joe’s ears, as if they were standing right next to him, yelling. But he couldn’t make out a word they said — as if they were speaking a foreign language.
Joe thought he heard another skateboard clank: “one of the rats probably escaped,” Joe thought. No, this time, it was Jeremy’s skateboard. Both he and Justin could barely stand on a board, but their expensive skateboards were intended to suggest they had such requisite skill that necessitated posh kit. Yet, for many years now, they carried them with them merely as totems or props — sometimes banging them and crashing them like chimpanzees. Both boys had their boards stolen or wrested away on a number of occasions.
In point of fact, Justin experienced a compound fracture of his arm, from a skateboard fall, at six years of age. He wasn’t actually riding at the time, but sitting on the board when another skater fell on top of him. To Justin’s relief, Jeremy was the only other kid who remembered this. In truth, Jeremy had spilled the beans to Ellie a few years ago, in order to impress her. She was the only one she told, but she undoubtably told everyone — she was a blabbermouth. Thus, was Justin a tad reticent and modest extolling his own skating prowess.
Before long, only the lone voice of a mindless dog bark could be heard on an endless loop. A fog now lay over the eventide river, buxom and inert. The little skateboarders were home staring at their black monitors, waiting for signal, chewing on wads of sugar and chemical infused candies of absurd color. In the dank of their social media dungeons the eunuchs silently fumbled about in their drawers for yet another unrequited go.
