Inner Circle of Hell

I believe that I have the antidote to Fifty Shades of Grey – the book that I credit with getting President Trump elected.

President Trump got elected because of an S&M novel? — you might ask.

Let me explain.

Fifty Shades of Grey was a book in which a young woman agreed to let a rich guy beat her for fun and for a chance at the lottery of his affection. That book would’ve never become a best seller in a different political climate and I think that it reinforced a subversive psychological trend which allowed Trump to win.

When a population is confused by subversion – up is down and down is up. The bad guy might secretly be good and the good guy might secretly be bad. This is what we’ve come to expect after watching the sociopathic anti-heroes in Breaking Bad, the Sopranos, Deadwood, House of Cards, Dexter, Sherlock, etc… We like to watch the bad-guy-hero subvert the established order because we are brewing revolutionary sentiments and we want to love those who control us. It is like widespread Stockholm Syndrome. This is in marked contrast to the standard, white-hat cowboys of yesteryear, back when everyone was on board with the reds-are-bad, we-are-good paradigm.

Those who fell under Trump’s spell were like the protagonist of Fifty Shades, Ana Steele. Ana’s life had been relatively kind to her. She had been fed, housed, and educated, yet she remained relatively poor while hoping for a big windfall. Like a Trump voter, she is drawn to people who are rich, privileged, twisted, and opportunistic – predators. Christian Grey is a predator and the limpid, little protagonist, Ana, gets off on their power imbalance.

From this perspective, the political rallies during the last election were nothing more than collective, psychological S&M. “Tell us how we are getting screwed and we will cheer!” “Tell us how you are going to take care of us at the same time that you take away what little power we do have!” “We will be so obedient, master!” This lines up nicely with the attitude of lithe, little Ana.

What kind of stories can help us build up stronger cultural resistance to this dynamic? To inspire defensive reactions against ‘the alpha’ we need to see a protagonist identify his or her boundaries. We saw some backlash against the government kidnapping children from immigrants and we saw a green light given to a frat-boy judge who perjured himself about his drinking habits after being accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old. These events have defined our boundaries as a nation until the next election. If people vote against Senators who confirmed Kavenaugh, then we will have some new boundaries. I hope that happens!

New narratives can work against cultural weakness by showing people coming together to defend ideals from opportunists with power. We saw something like this in Hunger Games, but more often we see Marvel comic book heroes called in to fix problems and destroy hordes of zombies. This encourages people to sit back and do nothing, giving people like Trump the green light to gain power with the sorts of messages he used. I think we need some new, inspiring narratives to reshape our cultural zeitgeist.

If I’m being optimistic, I see Trump as an inoculation against a much worse form of demagoguery. A weakened form of the hate virus might strengthen the immunity of the body politic against stronger forms which might arise in the future. For goodness sake – don’t let the nation go into shock and stop creating new narrative. When people stop talking, the virus gets stronger.

I don’t want to describe what I think when I’m being pessimistic.

……

At the beginning of this post, I said that I have an antidote to Fifty Shades of Grey. If you know someone who has been poisoned, this short story is for them! It took the form of eccentric travel writing and it is the antidote to Sixty Shades of Grey:

…….

A place that is the inner circle of hell for one person may be paradise for another. Take London. It is a place that many tourists put on their bucket lists. Parks, museums, old buildings, tweed, shopping. The attractions are not spread far and wide and the space comes across much like a very crowded, small town or theme park with the world’s noisiest underground trains. The locals have learned to tune out the screeching brakes, whereas the tourists all cringe and cover their ears. This is one way locals get a home-turf advantage. Another is to invert all of the directions. Up is down, left is right.

Respite from the noise and inversion can be found in museums or parks where symmetry and antisymmetry play no important role,… yet what an odd picture of life emerges. In the national portrait gallery, the ‘Facebook’ of the 1500-1700s, the world blurs out at times and pops with vivid color and photorealistic precision at others. It makes one wonder what level of devilish blur affects us today.

In the inner circle of hell, one might wish to meet the devil himself to find out if he is as horrid as imagined or if he is really just a nice guy in unfortunate circumstances. Was that young woman his son’s girlfriend or a prostitute paid to keep him company for the evening? Some questions are better left unanswered. Whenever you wonder if it is his daughter or grand daughter or mistress, it is almost always his mistress. Millenials are poor.

This is sort of the theme of a novel I wrote.

As I walked in a pleasant park during my visit to London, I saw that young prostitutes wore long, cheap, conservative, old-fashioned floral dresses and were often escorted by an equally young pimp in nondescript clothing. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they were just a young couple from the banlieue taking a tour through the wealthy part of town.

This one is in evening attire and is a bit more high-end.

The somewhat older mistresses dressed in a more expensive version of what the young prostitutes wore. For example, in addition to the floral dress, they would have an expensive looking cardigan and a nice handbag. They walked along flower studded paths, holding hands with their beaus, feeding the ducks, smiling and simpering in ways that a wife never would. In the background of this bucolic scene, a lonely, bleached blonde heiress, paced back and forth with her tiny dog.

After the heiress left, I sat down next to a nice tree and took out a book, but within an hour, a handsome, well-groomed young man in khaki trousers sat down in the grass across from me — in my direct line of sight. He took out a strange, well-packed sandwich and began to eat. I felt like a monkey in a zoo looking at another monkey. I was curious, but rather confused by what I saw.

He wore a blindingly white polo shirt and carried a backpack and a faded, green umbrella, although it was a sunny day. It hadn’t rained since early morning and I thought that the spotless, just pressed condition of his clothes suggested that he had just left his nearby home to enjoy some sunshine in the park, yet the umbrella did not match this narrative. He certainly did not look like a commuter who had just finished a ten hour work day – as the umbrella implied. Something in this picture did not compute. I was curious, but also a bit wary.

He looked too fresh, clean shaven, and appealingly packaged and he had deliberately placed himself not more than three meters away from me.

Why had he chosen this place to sit? There were many other places to sit, yet he had chosen the one directly in my line of sight.

I felt that I was looking at a predator and when he looked at me and smiled, I knew that my gut reaction was correct. This guy was bad news. I quickly gathered my things and left the park, feeling like I’d dodged a bullet.

In that moment when I saw his eyes, a memory of an old nightmare flashed to mind.

In that dreamscape, I knew that the man in the park did horrible, awful things.

He would invite a lonely tourist woman back to his home on the outskirts of London – but it wasn’t really his home. He made them think he was inviting them home because he was attracted to them, but his motives were far darker.

An astute observer would’ve felt alarmed when he put on a pair of glasses and a hat to disguise his appearance on the train, but he made sure that his victim was bedazzled enough with his smile and lovely, symmetrical face not to notice such details.

“I’m near sighted and feel lost without them, but you’ll help me find my way,” he joked, giving the slightly inebriated and entranced woman a squeeze around her waist.

“Well, the hat is cute,” she would say, eager to be accepted by this fascinating local man.

Once his prey is isolated in an unfamiliar, derilect suburban neighborhood and closed within an unfamiliar house, he strikes. The handle of his faded green umbrella is used to bring the victim to her knees where she cries in pain and asks “why?” as he strikes her again and again.

He smiles ever so slightly and continues the beating, dragging the terrified woman by her hair to a chair or table where he further restrains her and stuffs a dirty kitchen rag in her mouth to stop the noise. At this point, many victims pee in their pants when he looks them coldly in the eye and opens a drawer of instruments which cause pain.

The torture goes on for hours and he is well practiced. He takes a break to listen to some music and then returns for more. The pain is endurable and forgettable, but his words are what they remember.

“You actually thought I found you pretty?”

“You are disgusting. Fat. Deformed. Your hair looks like it belongs on a corpse,” he said as he tore a chunk of hair out of the woman’s head.

“You are barely human. Some say it is not your fault. They say you were poisoned, but I think that people like you should’ve never been allowed to breed. Your faces disgust me. Even the women you put on your television programs look like mutants. Imbiciles.”

He spat.

“Do you see this face? This is how a human is supposed to look. Irresistable, or? At least for morons like you.”

“When you spoke in the bar and on the train, I couldn’t believe how stupid you were. It was like listening to an ape grunting.”

“Your kind should be eliminated.”

“When I find things like you in my park, I see vermin. Vermin that need to be exterminated.”

He then pulled out another fingernail.

When he was done, he didn’t want to have a mess to clean up, so he took the woman outside for a walk. She reeked of shit and piss and mascara ringed her eyes, but he’d wrapped her hands so that she wouldn’t drip any blood or have any visible wounds. She would be presentable enough for a ride on a city bus or train and no one would ask her any qustions or offer her assistance. No one in the city ever does.

He didn’t worry about the police, because every house in this part of town looked the same and she’d never be able to identify the place he had brought her. Once she was sufficiently disoriented, he would give her a transit card and leave her penniless, wandering in the night in search of the bus stop.

“It is a few streets down and towards the left. Don’t get lost. It is a bit chilly tonight. Take care!” He grinned with icy glee in his eyes.

He would walk in the opposite direction and call a car service to take him back home to his penthouse suite overlooking his hunting grounds in the park.

Most of his victims would find their way back to their hotel by morning and they would hide what had happened to them. They would bandage their wounds and fly back home, never telling a soul about what really happened. Sometimes, the woman was a college student away from home for the first time ever. Sometimes, it was a mother taking a little holiday for herself.

He only ever chose the ones who had come to the city on their own. He could spot them a mile away.

At least, this was the story that sprang to my mind when that young man smiled at me in the park.

……

The image in the header is artwork by Albert Dros.