🗽❤️🌃
The digitalised reproduction of the newscaster bobbed worriedly up and down in the centre of the room. It was most hilariously oblivious that the terrified lady was trying her utmost best to hide her impending panic attack.
“The world is in awe: Bitcoin has crashed,” she announced.
Little did the dishevelled lady know that she was making an appearance on 1st Avenue and 42nd Street, where the entirety of the UN Peacekeeping Sector was wilfully chained to a levitating screen.
They watched as she proceeded waveringly to explain the circumstances of the disaster.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple years, the following should be quite oblivious, yet I will still give some additional background information for those who may have recently taken to Earth from other planets.
The most important happening that had occurred two years ago was a complete change over to the use of Bitcoin from traditional currencies. The absence of shifting exchange-rates and transactions fees had made cross-border buying and selling easier than ever before. It was therefore no surprise that the global economy had soared as a result.
A new index of the success of the global economy, known as the ‘iGDP’ (a collation of a country’s real and green GDPs) had even been devised. Last month, the value of the iGDP had broken the previous ceiling for its highest value since the outset of the transformation.
Now back to the day in question: what had happened was that the epic rise of the implementation had met its end. All had been running smoothly till that day and no expert had been anywhere near to forecasting this event.
Evidently the grand fault lay in Bitcoin’s electronic nature.
“The repercussions of this crash are unparalleled,” she explained with her voice breaking at the last digit.
“Keep it together Sharon,” she thought.
Most in the world attending to this broadcast were busy absolutely losing their shit while also trying to figure out whether CNN could have picked anyone worse than this clearly terrified soul to make such a critical announcement.
Back in the office on 42nd street, Nancy Ward-Walton was one of the only to have more pressing matters on her hands.
“I thought we were in love,” sobbed Jean-Carlo in a strong soprano:
“We were looking for a Villa in Tuscany…we…we…we…were going to raise a pair of stags from their youth, and then ride them off into the sunset…” he stammered, words barely distinguishable from beneath the odd moans of heartache.
“Babe, you know I’m working, but I’ll come as soon as I can,” replied Nancy.
“Amorrr no correspondidoo, tiempo perdidoooo,” he slurred, obliviously intoxicated.
Nancy sighed and ended the call. She moved stealthily from her sweaty desk to her boss’ slightly more roomy and East-River overlooking one.
“Mr. Malgani, I’m very sorry but I don’t feel well at the moment… I think I might be sick,” she lied, remembering to stoop slightly in order to keep with the story.
Nancy was by definition a horrible liar and her boss knew immediately that none of the bullshit she had just uttered had any factual basis whatsoever. But Nancy was in luck. It was now exactly 10:45 am, meaning that Pebroba Malgani had recently terminated his break in the staffroom. During this break he had been one of those stuck observing Sharon the newscaster on the big screen. Therefore he now imagined that Nancy was making an excuse to allow her to quietly make her way back uptown to take care of personal matters.
If left to his own devices, Mr. Malgani would have resolved to give the entire office the afternoon off to deal with their own mini-monetary crises. Unfortunately, there was a certain degree of responsibility that came with organisational affiliation.
“Yes, you may go, but the transcript of the board meeting needs to be on my desk by tomorrow morning,” he announced.
Mr. Malgani was only making this demand for the sake of its authorative effect because there was the tiny issue of Nancy being absolutely useless at work. She had failed to complete a single task all week and had chosen instead to waste her time playing Tetris-battle on her iphone. She would probably have been more of a nuisance than a help in any case.
“Yessir,” she saluted, barely turning to look at him.
Once out of his line of sight, Nancy made a miraculous recovery. Under the menacing glare of her scowling co-workers, she slid down the slippery marble floors straight into the open doors of the lift.
She hailed a cab and was in no time stood violently assaulting the doorbell of Jean-Carlo’s apartment. She cursed his lack of a doorman and pulled her short hair into a pathetically small lump at the nape of her neck. This took longer than anticipated, as despite its lacking length, one of the brown strands still managed to snag onto the golden ringlet of her cartilage piercing. She slid her fingers onto the metal jewellery, releasing it from the entanglement.
Looking up, she reached for the bottom of the iron ladder of the fire escape, pulling it lower and lower till it smacked loudly across the pavement. The flimsy bottom of her grimy plastic sandals was placed to balance uncertainly onto the rounded bar.
The experience of elation poured from her most discrete self. Nancy had been 14 when she had first stood on those very steps in the heat of a summer night, when she had stared across the horizon in all its grandiose beauty. From her viewpoint, every single colourful particle had gravitated seamlessly around the nucleus. All parts had unmistakably been working in perfect harmony to maintain a single, smoke expelling entity. Hoping to absorb the magnificent energy of the system, she had remained as still as possible while simultaneously avoiding the possibility of falling to her death.
There had been a time when she had looked forward to climbing this rusty ladder all week. She had only been able to realise this fantasy on Fridays when she had becone burdened with the objective of setting Jean-Carlo free from his parent-constructed cage.
The reason for this extreme sneakiness was Jean-Carlo’s mother, Valeria Romano. Perhaps the best way to describe Valeria Romano was that she was a real-life MILF. This was no joke. During his younger years, Jean-Carlo had come face-to-face with the issue of figuring out if potential male friends actually wanted to hang out with him or were more interested at gawking at his mother for a few hours while she cooked up her tearjerkingly tasty carbonara.
One might then be surprised to learn Valeria Romano to have been incredibly paranoid about letting her dear little son be captured by the ‘banditi’ that were allegedly a pest-like problem in all big cities around North America. Most people were quite unsure of what Valeria meant by this, but the fact was that she asserted it with such ravishing emotion that no one could argue.
The only person who would realistically have had the capacity to contradict the inaccurate lady would have been Jean-Carlo’s Madrileño father, Xavier-Santiago Rodriguez, who, in the absence of his wife, never stopped reminiscing about the crazy nights of his youth, unfailingly emphasizing the naked girls and illicit substances that had been in the mix.
In truth, Xavier-Santiago kept quiet about his annoyance over his son’s lack of freedom due to the fact that he was paralysingly afraid that the love of his life would eventually leave him for someone more handsome and successful. There was one particular Toulousain Edward-Pierre who came to inquire after sugar every now and again that kept him up at night. To the relief of the insecure husband, the couple had retreated back to Madrid shortly following Jean-Carlo’s graduation.
Now Nancy was saving Jean-Carlo again, but now instead from his mother.
Nancy banged on his window.
“Nancy!!!” screamed Jean-Carlo.
He hobbled around, clutching his seemingly second, and hopefully not third, bottle of pink elixir.
“Carissimaaa I am so glad to see you here! Let me let you in,” he slurred.
He struggled with the latch, finally managing to shift it to the ‘OPEN’ position.
She burst into his apartment.
Jean-Carlo was usually immaculately tidy, but in the midst of his emotional turmoil, the sanctity of order that usually ruled every inch of his household had been marred by untidiness.
He sat down on his long grey couch, laying onto his back. The front of his black shirt was stained by indiscernible dark patches.
“Darling, come with me to watch the stars, like we used to do,” he started.
Nancy knew this to be a reference to the times they watched the night-sky in their younger days, to the hours they had spent unsuccessfully searching for shooting stars. They were both smart enough to know that there was way too much light pollution to actually see anything else beyond the halo of the city, but the ritual had became an important symbolic/poetic/friendship thing.
Now a few years later, Jean-Carlo was too drunk to comprehend that he and Nancy were still occupying the inside of the apartment and that the ‘stars’ he was at that moment observing were a set of incredibly expensive fairy lights that had been draped with wide sweeps across his ceiling.
He was still in the state where he could walk, but Nancy knew it would not be long before he would be unable to manoeuvre himself around without being either dragged or carried.
Grabbing him by his hand, Nancy led him to his bedroom.
She pulled off the covers and placed him inside, wrapping him up tightly. There he lay, a pig in a high-end grey and silky and in no-way crunchy and buttery blanket.
As Nancy snuck out of the familiar apartment, she began reflecting on the last breakup of her own during which Jean-Carlo had helped her out in a similar way. The event had occurred exactly three months ago on a Saturday…
‘Post Modern Feminism Revitalized: An Artists Perspective,’ had been the title.
Nancy and had met Michael by the enlarged flower vase near the revolving doors. The two had still been at the beginning stages in their relationship, in that era when the bud that had formed on their first encounter had begun to fully blossom. (Nancy later complained about that metaphor being ‘corny as fuck’, but the author overruled her as it was really too accurate of a description to be dispensed).
Her recollection was aiding her in reliving the date experience:
Hand in hand, they walked in. Their anticipation grew as they drew closer to the personal space of the indie beings of Meatpacking. For some unknown reason, most of these types of creatures wished to congregate at this particular location on this particular day.
All began as planned. There were some FUCK THE SYSTEM texts spray-painted on the walls as well as some incredibly vivid HD flicks of hairy vaginas. In other words, quite a standard feminist exhibit.
The meeting had also progressed according to expectation.
That was till in the third room, where Michael had made an attempt to impress his date.
“All of this like really reminds me of the ‘Fountain’ by Duchamp; I saw with my uncle when I visited him in Paris last year. There are like sooo many interesting interpretations of the whole thing, but the most accurate is that art is ‘something you piss on’,” he stated, a smug smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Oh yea, I know that one! It’s the urinal right? I’ve seen stuff about that too. But the one you saw must’ve been a replica….I’m pretty sure the original was like accidentally thrown out after having been shown in the first exhibition and photographed? I have to disagree with you on your interpretation though – I feel like the point Duchamp was trying to make by bringing a toilet into an exhibit is to open the minds of viewers in order to allow for an expansion of the boundaries of self-expression,” she answered.
Michael’s annoyance had been betrayed by the array of wrinkles that had formed along the bridge of nose.
“No, look. My uncle is like THE most successful art dealer in Paris. He would know,” he justified.
Nancy observed as an air of superior importance formed to cloud her judgement. Nonetheless, she resolved to keep her mouth shut.
Strike two came once they reached the final room. First impressions: a lady dressed in all black, clutching a browned banana. A crowd trickled into this area of the exhibition and soon there was an enormous watchful congregation carefully observing what was to come. When the room had reached its peak capacity, a rhythmic, metallic gong started playing over the loudspeaker.
The artist moved to the epicentre of the room and lifted the fruit high above her head, holding it up with both arms. She stood there for a second and had then started bringing it slowly down to her chest, placing it in the exterior vicinity of her heart. Then, to the crowds’ amazement, she unpeeled the mushy yellow wonder.
“I bet she’s gonna eat it,” Michael whispered.
This comment brought about some stupid giggling reflex in Nancy.
Still holding the half-unpeeled banana with one hand, the disdainful artist reached her other upper body projection into the front pocket of her nylon jumper. Nancy had till then been unaware that they made sporty nylon jumpers this stylish and had resolved to get herself one next time she was in Soho.
“Probably could find something like that in Aritizia….Maybe Maje…” she silently speculated.
When the artist lady removed her non-banana adorning flapper from the black material, the muscles and bones of her hand were clenched into a tight knot. Based on the configuration of her tensed muscles and tightly wound bones, it could be deduced that she was clutching something small.
In a single motion, she stuck the black, fat hair onto the unwrapped end of her banana. While chanting in a strange language – potentially in Congolese but despite having studied at an international school, Nancy couldn’t distinguish between Central African languages well enough to be sure. The lady placed the banana on its side, allowing the disgusting waxy sweetness to come into contact with the linoleum. Suddenly, the performer turned towards the tiny exit on the right of the room. She scampered wordlessly towards it, allowing the ends of her nylon jumper trail behind her like a superhero’s cape.
Upon her comparatively less hurried return, the artist lady had in her hand something tragic. In all its glory, it was the weapon of mass destruction.
She first lifted her arms to a 90-degree angle, then lowered them slightly, leaving her hammer to hang at hip level. Then, she squatted deep. It was the deepest squat Nancy had ever seen anyone do, even deeper than any such motion performed by any yoga ashram during any of her past four yoga retreats. The hammer obliterated the soft object. The flock of art hoes watched open mouthed as banana splattered all over their Balenciaga trainers. The thick hair that had before been sitting firmly on the end of the destroyed object flew in an impressive arch to splatter against the white wall opposite the performer lady.
“You have just witnessed the goal of this exhibit. Our aim is to kill the phallic representation in all of its terrible forms, empowering with it the woman to ricochet to power as represented by the hair,” announced the artist who had unfortunately decorated her jumper with banana mush.
Everyone in the room except Michael clapped.
Once outside, Michael pulled Nancy aside.
“Look Nance, I like you and everything, but I just feel like we have different interests. We both knew this wasn’t that serious right? Can we still be friends though? I’m sure you understand,” he said with a manufactured look of concern forced onto his features.
“Don’t cry bitch, don’t fucking cry,” she thought.
“Yeah like totally, understandable you know,” she chocked, “See you around I guess…”
She ran down the street, not taking a second look back. She ran all the way to Meatpacking into the loving arms of Jean-Carlo.
When he took her in Nancy was a mess, muttering wild incoherencies about having to delete the drafts of their Christmas cards from her laptop and regretting having closed the door on the possibility of ever conceiving beautiful, caramel-coloured and blue-eyed babies.
“I just wanted to be THAT mom at the playground…the one who’s kids are always dressed in J. Crew and have every bit of their lunches packed in separate compartments of their lunchbox,” she mussed.
Wise words escaped the mouth of the more experienced:
“Mija, you are getting ahead of yourself. Why would you even want this man if he doesn’t approve of banana hair you speak of.”
“It was stupid, I should’ve…”
“No carissima you have this wrong, if you love the banana hair and believe it to be true, you follow it, no matter what this delicious piece of ass thinks. I promise, there will be others,” he advised.
That was that. Or not really. Nancy still secretly spent the majority of the next two weeks listening to a ‘The Sound of Silence’ and ‘I am a Rock’ interchangeably – all other musical pieces were too triggering in terms of emotional content. She also sat in her room crying nonstop and bingeing on entire bars of Milka sprinkled with uncooked ramen noodles (she found that these made for a crunchy chip-like addition, pairing nicely with the sweet creaminess of the chocolate).
This was until she realized that her depression stemmed mostly from boredom. If she was such a feminist, then well, she could actually try to obtain some genuine knowledge on the matter.
By this point, she had witnessed too many ‘arguments’ over rape culture and the gender pay gap turn into screaming contests as people with different ideas tried unsuccessfully to drown out the opinions of oppositional forces.
Existing as a woman in 2029, it was a given that she believed the equal treatment of women to be of the utmost importance and for the issues concerning this domain to only be tackle able through appropriate legislation and cultural changes. There was just one issue in terms of asserting her opinion: she had recently read a study showing that presenting people with real emperical evidence contradicting their views on a highly emotionally charged matter, such as politics and gun-control, had no impact on influencing their views (Nancy would like give the citation for this paper but has forgotten the names of the researchers as well as the year in which it was published and suspects this information to be stuck on lecture slides to which she no longer has access).
“Ok, better just keep these thoughts to myself then,” she speculated.
Even if she didn’t tell anyone about it out loud, she knew that she could not be a true feminist until she had read some of the theory underlying the arguments. Maybe this would allow her to produce some well-formulated interjections while witnessing the word wars discussed above.
So, she picked out Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’ on her kindle and began to read. Soon she came across a quote that changed her life: ‘When she does not find love’…Simone had her attention here…she kept reading… ‘empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.”
“Oh my,” she thought.
Like the tide coming in after a storm, a wave of realisation receded over her web of understanding.
Her thoughts combined into an inspired reflection:
“Relationships are just another way we humans fill the space, a welcome distraction before the inevitability of death. Throwing oneself into another helps one to feel whole and to make sense of the meaning of life, but there is no denying that the human emotional experience is manufactured completely in the minds of the interlocutors. In reality, the manifestations of human emotion are very ordinary and generally quite unsatisfactory. Romantic love is a construct, elected to power to by the masses of our attentional capacity.”
The following day, she voiced these ruminations to Jean-Carlo:
“There is nothing in life except real science and true art.”
“You are forgetting Sangria. And food. And sex,” he exclaimed, “Mija, stop getting off on being such an intellectual, you need to let your hair down. Friday night: you, me, a tight dress, Reggaetón,” he said, swivelling his hips in a circular motion.
Nancy sighed. Her epiphany had been like super deep. Jean-Carlo was clearly just not woke enough to understand.
Now the roles had been reversed, and it was Nancy’s turn to help the one who had many a time come to her aid. However, she was perfectly aware that this help would need to be a tad bit more supportive than the help that she required: being half Spanish and half Italian and therefore the most dramatic person Nancy had ever met, Jean-Carlo’s emotional turmoil inhabited an entirely different plane of reality.
Jean-Carlo’s ex-boyfriend’s name had been Gregor. He was of some unidentified mixed nationality origin that Nancy did not know the exact nature of but was surely much more unusually than Jean-Carlo’s Cocoliche roots. The couple had apparently met at the salsa class in Hell’s Kitchen. Nancy knew, based on the fact that she had unwillingly been subject to witnessing some of the couple’s intimate choreographies performed at Jean-Carlo’s banterous gatherings for there was some element of truth to the whole salsa thing, but suspected that the lovers’ initial meeting had actually occurred by the help of more electronic means.
Nancy was not sure what had gone wrong between the passionate couple, but could not know, based on Jean-Carlo’s reaction, whether it had been due to something extremely heart-breaking or to something incredibly overblown.
“Maybe there was another man involved?” she speculated.
Nancy now felt it fitting to admit that she had had a bad feeling about Gregor in the first place, or at least since he had accidentally poured his red wine all over her velvety, blue Gaultier dress at Jean-Carlo’s New Year’s party.
🗽❤️🌃
Safely back at her apartment, Nancy was hit by another bomb: the Bitcoin crash.
🗽❤️🌃
WAST WRTNG 