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Crimeslop

I was going to read more of Another Country, but it was really starting to bum me out. Baldwin’s genius made my ribs feel like they were cracking, spilled colloidal silver all over my lungs. I have a jar of Wickle’s Pickles and half a half gallon of milk and the password to my parents’ Amazon Prime account. The thing about me is, I only learn from the best. I’m an intelligent person and a serious writer. I make sure the Gustav Klimt bookmark is sticking halfway out of my Modernist Female Poetry Collection Volume IV so everyone on the 34 recognizes me as such. On the other hand, my grandfather is the smartest person I know, and if he can turn on NCIS: New Orleans after a long day of reading the 1937 Soviet Census for fun, shouldn’t I be able to kick my feet up, too, given that my work chair really hurts my neck, and I am more than likely anemic?

The show I choose follows a DA’s son who is accused of murder. His mother, her mouth permanently ajar in a little O of anguish and syrupy subjugation, opens some hate mail that has been sent to their house. They’re all written on postcards, in the same handwriting, in the same black sharpie. This jolts me out of my slop slumber. I could overlook a DA’s wife not knowing what an arraignment is, but this was too far. Not only do all of these people possess the same blocky, all-caps handwriting, but they’ve all chosen the simple postcard as well. I’m not denying the value of a postcard in bringing a sharp, concise blow to the sanctity of a casually violent nuclear family; but if I was in this situation and I really wanted to hand it some greasy haired, pseudo-ironic Clavicular-quoting, brown fingernailed little date rapist, I would probably choose something that could be filed neatly in an envelope, if only to include arsenic or crude sketches of mangled penises in addition to my brilliant letter. The art direction is so upsetting that I can now only give half of my attention to Chris Evans’ wooden dad-who-just-takes-it-too-far act. I must scroll through Ivy Wolk’s Instagram story chronicling her latest guy troubles to calm myself down.

It’s my own fault for moving on from To Catch A Predator clip compilations, where myself and who could be described as my friends can laugh at the inadequacy of possibly mentally disabled men bringing lemonade or pizzas to the homes of thirteen year old girls with unusually large breasts. We need Chris Hansen back more then ever! They should have put him UNDER the prison SMH! Who else is watching this after Epstein Island LOL! cry myself and my fellow justice purveyors, our hatred of diddlers binding us together across barriers of race, class, and age. I’m trying to retire this hobby. My ‘screen time’ is better spent reposting GoFundMe links to help struggling non binary acupuncture practitioners with abusive roommates. Still, it eats at you that you’re walking around in a post-Hansen hellscape, feeling in your gut that so many molesters are spilling out into the world like roaches from underneath your refrigerator. And certainly the flat gray color grading of my Amazon Prime original did not give me the same fuzzy feeling that Chris Hansen’s very concerned, very rectangular face did. What was missing from my bloated, grubby heart the most was the ecstasy of permanent humiliation, the thrill of some sad sack’s face contorting and melting from the realization that his life is over, that his eighteen month prison sentence will be the easy part, and he will be tracked methodically for the rest of his life, not even allowed to hold a job at Walmart, thanks to the vigilance of the Hansenheads.

I’ve already viewed everyone’s Instagram stories. The episode is over. I look up some police body cam footage. ADOPTED CHILDREN LOCKED IN HOUSE OF HORRORS FOR TEN YEARS BY SICK FOSTER MOM! COPS TELL GRANDMA THAT TWO YEAR OLD OD’S ON FENTANYL! In Hansenworld any victims are entirely abstract; decoys to hook wound the perverts and leave them gasping for air. Now there’s a woman screaming on a sidewalk and gasping for air on the screen in front of me. A bored looking police officer just informed her that her teenage daughter was shot by her boyfriend. I sort of feel sorry for her. But it’s difficult to feel sorry when the channel’s logo – an AI generated knife with glossy, thick blobs of blood dripping from it – is bouncing around the screen, obscuring the faces of the not-a-mother, the cops, the still children watching on bikes from across the street. Then, an image of the dead girl – tight blond curls, head thrown back in (possibly staged) laughter. This in particular eats at the commenters. She was gorgeous, they moan; she could’ve modeled. That’s a classic formula: laughing, gorgeous, then dead.

In my stupidity I placed the jar of pickles on top of the Baldwin; now I realize it’s left a circular stain on the cover. My hand shakes as I lift the jar. Brine spills onto the rug. My houseplants are all dying, and the sun is starting to come up.

I remember reading side by side with my grandfather on the porch, back when he was still well enough to drive to the store for ice cream two or three times a day. I remember Edward Gorey anthologies and a plate of watermelon on my lap, swatting away the flies. Some summers there were baby bats sleeping between the slats on the porch roof. This was before I was blessed with the divine knowledge that everyone is out to get you, back when I still thought about things like animals and fruit and the way my grandfather’s hands turned the pages of his Nabokov novel so gently, rather than the important stuff – such as, is this guy in the TJ Maxx parking lot trying to traffick me? He was staring at my Honda Fit just a second too long. This was before they built the big house across the street (modern, with lots of glass) that stopped us from looking out across the bay to the sailboats.

I cover the brine spot on my rug with the Baldwin and try to close my eyes for a few minutes. Although I haven’t worked on any poems, although my night could be described by some as a complete and utter waste of my fleeting hours on this earth, it has to be better than the 24 hour news cycle in the office – tales of crossdressing perverts and drunk frat boys hit by cars and a woman with one arm stabbing passerby by the Schuylkill. ‘It’s a sin,’ is what my coworkers all say, clicking their tongues, then moving on to dissect last night’s Summer House episode. I can’t partake in those discussions. Honestly, I don’t watch a lot of TV.

About the artist

Tatiana Kent is published or forthcoming in Salt Hill Journal, Scaffold, Blood+Honey, and The Bookends Review. She lives in west Philadelphia. You can find her on Instagram @greenbannisters.