Only Americans Burn in Hell Read online

  Because the world has gone stupid and elected a rogue member of the Celebrity branch of American governance into the Executive, allow me to point out the difference: representation in the traditional three branches of government really does matter, because the people who end up in the government are the people who make policy and laws.

  In other words, these are the people who determine whether or not you will be able to make a living wage.

  These are the people who shape your lives.

  People who end up in the Celebrity branch of American governance are the people who make movies and television and huge profits for the same old shits who rule the world.

  In other words, these are the people who are taking your money.

  I know of what I speak.

  I’m one of them.

  I’ve duped you into buying my turgid work.

  Unless you’ve pirated this book.

  If you have, then good for you!

  Do me a favor. Steal The Future Won’t Be Long!

  And, yes, reader, I know the arguments about why it’s important to see diverse faces in television and in films.

  And, yes, I realize that no one agrees with me on this topic.

  But I’m sorry, arguing about the shadow theater of the entertainment industry is not politics.

  What did everyone at the Vista Theater see when they made a bold political statement by giving money to the people who’d ruined the world?

  Wonder Woman was a film made by people baptized in the primordial ooze of unconscious American life.

  The attendees saw a story about the unexamined glory of American foreign policy, of the meaningfulness of war and violence, and a story about how a woman could be like a man in her ability to simulate genocide.

  A woman named Diana lives on an island full of lesbians. Her mother is the Queen of the island. Everyone lives in paradise, doing what everyone who’s ever met a lesbian knows that all the world’s lesbians do, which is train for perpetual war. This goes on for millennia until one day an American in an airplane crashes on the island. Diana rescues the American, only to find that the reason he crashed is because a bunch of Germans were firing materiel at the plane. The Germans invade the lesbian paradise. The lesbians murder all the Germans. The Germans murder some of the lesbians. The American gets naked and feels insecure about the size of his penis on an island full of lesbians and then confesses that he’s working as a spy against the Germans, who have developed biological weaponry. Some nonsense happens where Diana gets convinced that Ares, the Greek god of war, is responsible for the chaos. Diana and the American go out into the world with the intention of murdering a bunch of Germans and stopping Ares from developing biological weapons. Then Diana goes to London where, as Celia once discovered, English shit is widely acknowledged as Europe’s most toxic. Then she goes to France with a motley crew of drunkards, and for some reason only the dark-skinned drunkards are capable of belief in the supra-natural. Then Diana kicks the shit out of some Germans for about forty minutes, performing ritualistic genocide that saves the fictional world while adhering to an unspoken embrace of American foreign policy. Somewhere in here, weirder members of the audience cheer and cry because they’ve imbibed enough primordial ooze that they believe the appropriate solution to the horror of men is to adopt the tactics of men. In other words, the committing of genocide has become so ingrained and unexamined in the American psyche that there is no longer any purpose in questioning whether or not one should commit genocide. The real question is who gets to kill. And for some reason it’s important that women have opportunities to butcher their fellow living beings. Just ask the ACLU. Then Diana kills Ares, who turns out to be an Englishman in a bowler hat, which is probably the only realistic thing in the entire film, and then the war ends and everyone is happy because Diana has committed genocide against the right people at the right time and there’s no way that the roman numeral at the end of World War One could possibly predicate a sequel.

  At least the genocide simulator of Wonder Woman gave some people at the Vista an opportunity to dress in goofy costumes.

  And it was those costumes that brought Celia and Rose Byrne to the premiere.

  The magic bullshit window had chosen well.

  Celia and Rose Byrne were clothed in Fairy Land’s haute couture, which over the last season had moved into animal pelts.

  Had they arrived anywhere else in Los Angeles, their outfits would have drawn a lot of attention.

  At Wonder Woman, they were just making a political statement.

  They arrived through the magic bullshit faery window, popping dead center into the lobby of the Vista, right in front of the concessions counter.

  They saw a lot of people going into the twin double doors of the theater.

  They both remembered Tom a Lincoln at Gray’s Inn.

  They knew what it looked like when people went to a show.

  Celia and Rose followed the crowd inside.

  They found two seats to the back right of the theater.

  They watched the movie.

  * https://www.aclusocal.org/en/news/want-take-political-action-weekend-go-movies

  Chapter Six

  Willkommen im Dschungel

  Around the time when I started writing Chapter Twelve of this book, right between two paragraphs in which I insult George R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones, I underwent an unexpected religious experience.

  To make sense of this: at the beginning of June 2017 AD, I decided that I should go see the band Guns N’ Roses perform live at the Staples Center.

  What can you say about Guns N’ Roses?

  Back in the 1980s AD, they were total Hollywood scumbags, the dregs of the dregs, homeless trash who became the most famous people in the world.

  It’s the greatest faery story ever told.

  The band carried on for about five years before flaming out.

  Lead vocalist Axl Rose was left in control of the name, but all of the other original members quit or were fired. A period of twelve years followed.

  This period included the album Chinese Democracy, mocked because it took forever to be released, but which is actually pretty good.

  Anyway, they were a great band, and their iconography haunted my childhood and is about 70 per cent of the reason why I live in Los Angeles.

  In 2016 AD, three of the original members reformed the band and ventured out on a reunion tour.

  I saw their August 19th, 2016 AD show at Dodger Stadium.

  Because 2016 AD was a year in which I had made a significant, but not substantial, amount of money, I bought a General Admission ticket to the pit.

  It cost about $280.

  I was way in front.

  I was next to the stage.

  The whole thing was filmed by a professional camera crew.

  If there’s ever a live DVD, you’ll see me. I’m the guy with no hair looking very uncomfortable as he stands next to a group of models who are younger than the songs being performed.

  When a second American leg of the tour was announced for 2017 AD, with the Los Angeles dates in late November, I decided that I should buy another ticket.

  Because 2017 AD was a year in which I earned an even more significant, bordering on substantial, amount of money, I bought a General Admission ticket to the pit.

  It cost about $550.

  Which is manifestly insane.

  But I have a lot of disposable income.

  This is because I don’t spend any money.

  In the twenty-two months following the release of my novel I Hate the Internet, I made just under $200,000, net, pre-tax, pre-agents’ commissions, and the only things I bought were a cemetery plot and two tickets to see Guns N’ Roses.

  On June 30th, 2017 AD, I purchased a General Admission pit ticket to see the Guns N’ Roses show at the Staples Center.

  The show was scheduled to occur on November 24th, 2017 AD.

  Because I like useless ephemera, I paid an extra $5 to have a physical ticket
.

  The ticket arrived about a week later.

  It was sent via postal mail.

  Then, in August of 2017 AD, right around when my novel The Future Won’t Be Long was published by Penguin Random House, ensuring that I made significantly less money in 2018 AD than I did in 2017 AD, I found a surprise in my postal mail.

  I’d been sent a second ticket.

  I compared the two tickets.

  Except for the barcodes, they were identical.

  Barcodes are bits of black ink and numbers printed on every ticket. Whenever you try to enter an event, someone’s there with a device that scans the barcode and ascertains the ticket’s validity.

  The tickets had different barcodes.

  There were two options: (1) believe that the second ticket supplanted the first or (2) believe that both tickets were valid.

  I opted for a soft belief in the second option.

  I now had two tickets to see Guns N’ Roses at the Staples Center.

  Which meant that I had to find someone to come with me.

  I called Arafat Kazi.

  Arafat Kazi is my best friend.

  He used to be the fattest man in Bangladesh.

  Now he’s an American citizen and had recent gastric bypass surgery. Hundreds of pounds of fat have melted off his body, but their absence has draped him in a suit of empty skin.

  He’s also a drummer.

  We met in 2001 AD, when he was an undergrad at Boston University.

  One of the very first things that we talked about was his taste in music, which in those days was almost entirely Heavy Metal.

  He was into Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.

  The worst bands of all time!

  One of our few overlaps in taste was Guns N’ Roses.

  We built a friendship talking about the band.

  “Dude,” I said into the telephone. “I have this extra ticket to see Guns N’ Roses that was mailed to me by mistake. You’ve got to come to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving.”

  “Okay, dude,” he said. “I’ll do it. Can you pay my plane fare?”

  Fast forward to November 23rd, 2017 AD.

  Thanksgiving Day! Celebration of genocide with disgusting food!

  Around 9PM, I picked Arafat up at the airport and brought him to my apartment.

  I suggested that he sleep on the pull-out, but he insisted on taking the floor.

  He passed out around midnight.

  About twenty hours before Arafat’s arrival, an astonishing thing happened: somehow The Future Won’t Be Long was shortlisted for the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

  The Literary Review was a London magazine for, quote, People Who Devour Books, unquote.

  The Bad Sex in Fiction Award was an award that, quote, honoured an author who has produced an outstandingly bad scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel. The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction, unquote.

  The shortlisting of The Future Won’t Be Long generated more emails than any other thing that had happened in my life.

  When I woke up that morning and examined my inbox, it was flooded.

  Draw your own lesson, reader.

  Here was mine: people remain unbelievably primitive.

  The emails had a 50/50 split.

  Half of the people felt bad for me and wanted to make sure that I was okay.

  The other half understood the shortlisting for what it was: absolutely fucking awesome, even if it did produce a moral compromise.

  The moral compromise emerged from the fact that I am a hopeless case.

  I loathe human attempts at establishing status.

  I object to the general idea of awards and literary awards in specific.

  But.

  The Bad Sex in Fiction Award?

  For the first time in my life, there was something that I wanted to win.

  I knew that I wouldn’t.

  The shortlisted passage wasn’t a sex scene.

  It was an absurd, pretentious character describing her reaction to sex in a manner that was absurd and pretentious.

  There was no way that it fit the bill.

  My novel does, in fact, contain an actual sex scene.

  It’s two pages long. It’s disgusting. It’s redundant. It’s perfunctory. It’s so pretentious that at the moment of climax, it mentions James Boswell, a writer from the Eighteenth Century AD.

  So why wasn’t it nominated?

  Here’s my theory: the actual sex scene in The Future Won’t Be Long is the description of a down-and-dirty homosexual encounter.

  Major league assfucking!

  And all of the passages shortlisted for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award were exclusively heterosexual.

  Clearly, the pretentious passage for which I had been nominated was a stand-in for the pretentious passage which contained a description of actual sex.

  I was weighing this in my mind while I waited for Arafat Kazi to get off his plane.

  Everyone else in the airport terminal waited with anticipation for the arrival of their friends, lovers, and family.

  And I was there too, and I was trying to decide if the liberal intelligentsia believed homosexuals are incapable of having bad sex.

  With Arafat crashed out, I fell asleep around 3AM after beginning to write Chapter Twelve.

  When I woke up at 10AM, he wasn’t in the apartment.

  I checked my email and found the following:

  Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 9:18 AM

  From: Arafat Kazi

  To: Jarett Kobek

  Subject:

  Hey dude, I couldn’t sleep from friction of excess skin on floor, so I got a hotel. About to go to sleep for a couple of hours. It’s 9:18 am.

  Sent from Arafat’s iPhone.

  We met for a late lunch at Musso & Frank, which is the oldest restaurant in Hollywood, and also the setting for a short story that I wrote about the film director Wes Anderson using a urinal. The story is titled “Wes Anderson Uses a Urinal.” You can find it in a recently published anthology called Mixed Up: Cocktail Recipes (and Flash Fiction) for the Discerning Drinker (and Reader).

  Before I left for lunch, I checked my ticket on the website from which I’d ordered it, and discovered something that I hadn’t noticed before.

  Despite tickets to the pit being General Admission, my purchase had been assigned a seat.

  The reason I’d adopted a soft belief in both tickets’ validity was on the basis of General Admission. Why would any General Admission ticket be assigned a seat number?

  Ipso facto, one ticket couldn’t replace the other.

  But now my belief was shattered. It was clear that there was only one seat.

  Ergo, one ticket.

  A sensation of dread crashed on me.

  I’d made Arafat Kazi fly out to Los Angeles and bought his plane ticket and we’d been talking about this stupid concert for months and now he was staying in a hotel because the empty skin which draped his body had made it impossible to sleep on my apartment floor.

  And he wasn’t getting inside.

  Before I left, I made a vow to the universe: if Arafat Kazi got into the pit to see Guns N’ Roses at the Staples Center, then I would stop worrying about the outcome of my life.

  I would take it as a sign that everything would be fine, even if my last novel had commanded a high advance and turned out to be a commercial failure.

  I’m not sure why I made this vow.

  It happened while I was urinating.

  Shades of Wes Anderson.

  I went to Musso & Frank. I ordered a hot turkey sandwich. Arafat got a French Dip sandwich. Then we ordered dessert.

  I had a piece of key lime pie.

  Arafat had something called the Diplomat Pudding.

  I had, and have, no idea what’s in a Diplomat Pudding.

  It looked disgusting.

  We left the restaurant and walked for a few blocks.

/>   Arafat used his smartphone to hail an Uber, which was a private car operated by a company that’s single-handedly set back the American labor movement by about seventy years.

  The car brought us to his hotel. We sat around his room for an hour and a half, talking about Muslims in America.

  Arafat’s a Muslim.

  I’m half a Muslim.

  Break out the misspelled placards!

  “Dude, I know people, you know,” he said, “who have jobs as bank managers, who are nice when you see them, and then you go back home and see that ten minutes after you parted, they’ve posted about Sharia law on Facebook.”

  “I read about this poll a few months ago,” I said. “They asked people of every possible demographic how they felt about people from every other demographic. And, dude, Muslims polled worse than anyone else in America. With every single demographic. When they asked Muslims about other Muslims, dude, they still polled worse than everyone else.”

  “Well, dude,” he said, “I think you’ve got to realize that even though people express a public opposition to the rhetoric, when that rhetoric comes from the top, it still seeps in.”

  Then I convinced him to change his clothes.

  He’d packed an outfit that he wanted to wear to the concert, but earlier that afternoon, he’d decided against it.

  We argued, but I won the day with the following thought: “If you’re dressed like a circus performer, there’s a better chance of them letting you inside.”

  This was the outfit: hot pink pants and a striped multi-colored psychedelic shirt.

  Arafat also had a cap which matched the shirt.

  He changed his clothes.

  It was incredible.

  He really did look like a circus performer.

  We took another Uber to the Staples Center, which is a circular-shaped venue where the Los Angeles Lakers play basketball and imbue the city’s cocaine addicts with a sense of regional superiority.

  The driver parked across the street from the venue.

  We got out of the Uber.

  We walked over to the Staples Center and discovered that there was a special line for people with General Admission tickets. It was much shorter than the normal line, which was full of sane people who hadn’t paid $550 to see middle-aged men perform thirty-year-old songs.