Excerpt: Cockfighter's Ghost + G.O.L.

This is a story about two people who met on the internet. One of them, a girl, was actually a celestial being but didn’t know it. Her name was Calypso.

The boy, secretly a hermaphrodite, was born Montclair Veno Garamond-Ponce. When he met this celestial being, in a grimy budget hotel, he introduced himself as Jack. Jack had $300,000 and a blank notebook.

*

Jack had $300,000 because his grandfather, Frank Garamond, invented the tape drive. Many people think he invented the typeface, ‘Garamond.’ The Garamond typeface was invented by a friend of his, who owed him money. Frank also bred horses.
Eventually, Frank died.

One day Jack got an envelope in the mail. Inside, he found a letter from Ferdinand’s lawyer and a key. The key opened a safe deposit box in Palmyra, Virginia. Inside was a briefcase filled with $300,000. On top of the money was a yellow post-it note. It said:

MC-

You were always a sweet boy. Don’t fuck up.

-Frank
*

Jack stopped eating at McDonald’s after that. He considered that fucking up. He bought an expensive laptop named after a fruit, and signed up on an internet dating site.

Jack was also interested in Eastern Philosophy.

Jack didn’t have many friends.

*

Now Calypso, she was born among Gods. Gods don’t know how to fuck up, but they screw around a lot. It’s hard to explain what this looks like. Google “nova” or “black hole” and stare at the images, wearing 3D glasses until your eyes cross.
Gods are mostly made of light, except they’re smart. A God is conscious light that dances around accomplishing everything at once. Compress all of history into this conscious, ambitious light, and you’ll have a partial grasp of their movement, and their behavior. A word that comes to mind: ‘erratic’.
Calypso decided, erratically, to manifest human form. Her parents were as shocked as Gods could be— momentary solar flares registered all over the universe. It was beautiful.

*

One day, Jack was browsing profiles on that dating website, which was called LOVECUTE.COM. Most of the people were boring, ugly, or both. On this particular day, however, Jack found a profile named AQUAROFLEX. Her pictures were grievous impersonations of Cirque De Soleil concerts. Feather, gauze, bubble wrap, gaffer’s tape, liquid latex, fur, corkboard, sheets. Her eyeliner always! Exquisite, She dunked herself in iodine. She grew a second head, gnawed a paintbrush, and juggled chainsaws. In one dim slide, her face looked translucent. She reminded him of an extrusion map. Jack fell in love.

*
After vomiting, he drafted a message. The message was as follows:

To: Aquaroflex
Subject: Ghost streamers

Dear AQUAROFLEX

One percent of the proceeds for this message go to a marine habitat supporting oversexed jacalopes.

I inhabit a negentropic vortex beyond work or study. Life is meaningless. Due to these circumstances, I am free. I am free of the day-to-day conceptions of ordinary life. My mind is a yawning clam. The oyster within, potent as lightning, yearns for destruction. You are that destruction.

The feathers, especially, interest me. A hail of whirling cloud. Once I dreamed that a lizard invoked Shiva. Shiva climbed out of its throat, a blue fireball, and began lecturing me on the perils of masturbation. Specifically that male essence is necessary for kundalini to move from my penis, up the spine into my forehead and enlighten me. I wanted to be one of those LOVECUTE guys who wrote messages to girls without mentioning their penii. It appears as though I’ve failed. I just wanted to talk about feathers.

Last night I conjured the energy of my house. It coalesced into a whisper which became a witch. She ambled from offstage, dressed in heaps of black cloth and necklaces. As she gesticulated, they tinkled. A dimensional “window” opened, and ghosts poured in, multicolored streams of thick light.

All they said was, YOU CAN’T FUCKING SEE US. WE’RE PURE ENERGY.
You radiate a similar heat. Optics play through liquid crystal towards me, as light. I can’t see you yet, but I want to.

Write back.

Sincerely,
Jack.