Gabrielle Taylor's "Cockluck"
March 04, 2002
It was Friday lunchtime in the bar, and quiet. Auntie and I were drinking Brandy Alexanders and watching teevee. She watched it carnally as she shook and reshook our drinks. Sometime during, Emerson Vorace came in and tried to ask what we were watching and we told him to shut up. During the midway set of commercials he said bitterly, "it's like political porn."
"What?"
"All that CBC stuff is like arty political porn. You put politics into your teevee the way Americans put in breasts. All your shows look like they were shot on an 8mm camera and your actors have names like WWF wrestlers."
"Like... Megan Follows?"
"That's just a porn star name."
"She's Anne of Green Gables!"
"Hey, she's on the internet, and twenty percent of the internet is porn, so she's got a one in five chance of being a porn star."
Auntie said, "all those lonely computers, jacking off at each other."
"Anne of Green Gables? What is your problem?"
He gestured vaguely at the teevee, where Red Green was duct taping some pipe. "I don't know. I feel like I don't get it. Say, is there a phone around here?"
Auntie jerked her thumb. Emerson went around to the phones, and Rachel came over to take his seat.
"Auntie? She told him."
"Who told who what?"
"The girl that doesn't like Matt told him she doesn't like him."
Auntie ate a peanut. "Good."
"She told Matt not an hour ago."
"Was it ugly?"
"Now they're both hurting." Rachel curled a lock of wispy blonde hair around her finger and looked wetly, expectantly at Auntie.
Auntie eventually said, "they would've hurt anyhow."
"He just stood there saying it wasn't her fault."
"It's never nice."
"I... I guess not." She looked blankly up at the teevee and teevee flicker marked her face.
Auntie said, "Hi Hal, Dirk. How'd your paper go, Hal?"
"I've written ten pages out of four."
"How was your day, Dirk?" Auntie said.
"Had to pay for my new parking pass, so don't even tell me what the cockluck is, I can't afford anything better."
"It's got gin in it," Auntie said dubiously.
"Give it straight in a shot glass. Got to the hospital at 8, thinking that was plenty early, and it was lined up to the road. I got an okay volunteer position but not the one I wanted in emergency."
"Why such interest?" I said.
"I'm planning to go to med school."
"Want to clone?" Auntie said with a beautiful smile.
"It's already illegal."
"I know," Auntie said. "It's foolish. If cloning is outlawed, only outlaws will clone."
"Prostitution should be legal too," Dirk said.
"If it's between two adults and doesn't cause long term harm I don't see what the government's business is. The government's job should be to keep corporations from turning everything into Sudbury, to keep people living indoors and fed and clothed and educated and well, and beyond that, it should get the hell away from us. And there needs to be a way to determine if a specific person is capable of functioning as an adult -- the simplest of which is that if they can breed, they can vote."
Dirk and Emerson crooked necks toward Auntie.
"What if they haven't matured by then? Blame the parents?" Dirk said.
"They haven't matured in western society because western society prolongs childhood in dubious ways."
Dirk said, "there's this family in my neighborhood where the parents are like seventy, and they have two kids still living at home. They go to work, I guess, but aside from that they're at home. The parents tried to throw them out but they wouldn't go, and the police won't do anything. They'd have to go to court."
Auntie said, "Usually enhanced resources engender _quicker_ maturation. Yet in our infinite wisdom we _retard_ it -- which is fascinating."
"Distractions," Dirk said.
"Education!" Emerson said.
"Not everyone can benefit from the education system. The system isn't intended to educate everyone to their fullest."
Emerson said, "I fail to see how enhanced resources lead to quicker maturation."
Dirk said, "So much depends on upbringing and early experiences."
Auntie said, "Right -- which makes it all the more interesting that the parents are gradually prolonging that influence with each generation post-revolution."
"In fact, I can't think of a culture rich in resources where their children mature quickly."
"That's exactly what I'm saying is peculiar," Auntie said impatiently. "But in non-sentient life, rich environment translates readily into superior younger product."
"I think the entire life cycle is hastened. Or maybe compressed is a better word."
"Right. Which is part of why I argue the necessity of having a standardized method for allowing a child to be classified adult. As long as adults are allowed to randomly decide what a child is, they'll add more to the definition, and our society will continue to be smothered by one aging generation in charge by luck of numbers. Each succeeding generation is learning more about how to live with all the other ones -- but the one with the power concentrate is the one least able to flex and with the least incentive to learn."
Dirk said, "in general the government has no way to remedy power imbalances which affect the government. There's ways of altering things when they get too bad, but that's not because the government has ways of fixing those kinds of problems, but because when the damage becomes unacceptable people start hitting back."
Emerson said, "maybe the world really is different now though. Maybe things really will change."
"Don't you think I wish that?" Auntie snapped. "Don't you?"
Emerson shrugged and turned to me and said, "say, would you like to have lunch?"
"No thanks," I said, "I've already had lunch."
"I'm up for it," said Hal.
"Okay," Emerson said, "let's go."
Posted by gtaylor at March 04, 2002 11:16 PM