Two Stories

Unica Zurn, Untitled, 1959

Keratin Supremacy 

I often wonder if people other than myself touch their hair with a frequency only rivaled by the number of computations performed by the world’s fastest supercomputer. I believe it is located in China, but I cannot be for certain. I can only be truly certain about my lack of certainty in most anything, especially supercomputers. 

I believe the supercomputer may serve as the perfect analogy for the socio-economic conflict in which the United States and China find themselves embroiled. Whereas the US was once deemed the undisputed world power, China has quickly established itself as a formidable economic rival with geo-political aspirations comparable to America’s. They’ll use their supercomputers to achieve that goal. I’ll permit myself to be certain of that. It’s hard to fathom that an increase of a few PetaFLOPs will deter the Chinese from establishing computational supremacy. 

I’ve grown complacent like America. I’ve grown inattentive and indifferent like America. I surely won’t win any sort of race to determine computational supremacy. I’m uncertain I’ll win any future race in which I might partake. This is not to say that I abhor the sensation of victory, but I am cynical; I know that life will continue on, relatively unaltered. Even accolades are bound to lose their luster. 

This belief has not deterred me from continuing to touch my hair, in the vain hope that constant evaluation will somehow demonstrate that my follicle density remains high, that I truly am a hypochondriac. It is understood that the majority of men will experience hair loss of some particular variety, with many experiencing what we might deem “premature hair loss”. The possibility that I could be one of the afflicted minority has become an existential fear of mine. I do not fear going bald, but it has to occur in accordance with the terms I lay out. They are as follows: 

1. If I am to go bald, it must occur gracefully

2. It must begin no earlier than my 35th year 

3. It must be unnoticeable to everyone until I elect to shave it

4. It must not result in any loss near the crown of my head

I am one for whom uncertainty is a debilitating condition; The fact that it is nearly impossible for me to determine whether or not my hairline is receding or whether my scalp is losing density causes near-total paralysis. I am not rendered immobile, rather my energy is invested in the futile task of repeatedly manipulating the position of my hair to disguise what I fear is occurring. 

What is ironic about this fear is that it is conditioned exclusively by pictures. The fear manifests itself not when I feel my scalp or touch my hair, but when I compare images of myself from years prior and believe, without apparent justification, that my follicles have decided to disappear. Reality now seems to be found in its representation, a third-order simulacrum, rather than the uncomfortable parameters of the real. Whether or not I actually am losing hair is unimportant; The possibility, as made evident on the screen on my cracked iPhone, itself a product of the same illusory politics that guide advances in computer processing, is more compelling. 

Everything seems to be done now to stave off some tentative inevitability, as exemplified by the race for computational supremacy between the Chinese and Americans; each party has already resigned itself to a certain fate before it has even come to fruition. I would rather believe my hair has already disappeared before it can be certain I’ve lost it, so as to bypass the inevitable possibility that nothing goes according to my specific terms. I still keep touching my hair. 

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I And The Village, Marc Chagall, 1911

The Divine Right Of Kings 

There’s a type of man I’m not, but one which I thought I could be until all attempts at approaching such an identity inevitably proved futile. I am 18 years old and searching for meaning. It would be expected of me, being an impressionable adolescent, to turn to those thinkers commonly associated with people in my age cohort but I find them repugnant. I don’t feel the need for someone to tell me to clean my room constantly, nor do I feel compelled to embrace the kind of conservatism propagated by such individuals. That’s the kind of masculine posing I find abhorrent, although occasionally appealing. I’ve spent far too much time online to not entertain it.

What we are taught - through the unconscious process of socialization which takes place well before the notion of “subjectivity" becomes established - is that masculinity and femininity comprise a rigid, inflexible set of conventions and behaviors, ones that establish a distinction that cannot be overcome. I used to believe this. I’m certain that many of the other disaffected young men online, those who’ve never cleaned their rooms, believe this. They also believe in a kind of entitlement which I occasionally refer to as “The Divine Right Of Kings”, one that conflates domination with discrimination, popularity with prejudice, admiration with animosity. Accordingly, anything can be rendered a conquest, so long as you approach it as such. 

I don’t think I behave in such a manner, but I often believe I do. Or believe that others consider me to. There have been times when innocuous comments are misconstrued as genuine admissions of bias, and harmless inquiries as inconsiderate interrogations. It is this apparent insensitivity which I try to fight against, but which leaves me powerless, bereft of any capacity to respond. Is this the intended consequence of our societal reckoning with the fleeting vestiges of patriarchal domination? Maybe I understand why so many men like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson and Elliot Rodger. The possibility makes me shiver. 

What I desire, more than almost anything, is to cease being alone. I think that’s true of many of the men who turn towards hyper-masculine presentation to alleviate their perceived inadequacy. I know what it’s like to feel woefully inadequate to such a degree that it breeds resentment. It is the resentful man I’m not, but that I very well could’ve been. A chart once referred to me as a Gamma male, i.e. worthless, undeserving of love. Another chart once referred to me as undesirable, as did Tinder and Hinge and other comparable applications, all of which seek to establish some form of hierarchy. The man whom I could’ve been seems to long for hierarchy as well, albeit of a different form, equally pernicious.

The internet unifies all of these disparate entities. The internet is also responsible for my distress, as it is uniquely capable of magnifying the intensity of my apparent inadequacy. Elliot Rodger turned to the internet and killed people because he couldn’t find a way to overcome his inadequacy. I often wonder if that’s the man I could’ve been, blinded by irrepressible resentment, completely devoid of meaning. It was good I decided to turn away from such caustic rhetoric.

Maybe some of us aren’t deserving of love; I’m content to accept that as my fate, so long as I can find a way to tolerate loneliness. I am 18 years old and searching for meaning, just so long as the pursuit doesn’t transform me into someone I’ve so desperately sought to distance myself from.