The peel-back

Rot—technically Greg Rot, or technically Greg Hargrove, but legally just “Rot” since 2001, known in the nineties as “Human Rot” to some. Forty-seven, skeletal, sunken cheeks, spiky graying hair, neck tattoos, sleeves, black Crass logo T-shirt (without the band name), tight black jeans.

“Have a good weekend, Professor Rot.”

“You, too Lindsey.”

It seemed like all his students were soccer players for some reason, and cheery.

Most of the quarter, he’d do his duty and lecture them on the sacred importance of thesis statements, topic sentences, and credible sources. Today was supposed to be the one day that gave him something to live for, but after four and a half hours of protest rhetoric theory, he finally had to face the void that was his life.

“I was there, on the streets of Seattle. When Stewart talks about the Black Bloc in the reading? That’s me and my friends.”

Nobody in the first two classes was impressed. That was expected. But this was Portland State, and he could always count on a couple anarchist students who might actually get something out of this. They were easy to spot. Sometimes they’d be quiet in the back, sometimes front-and-center and eager to answer all questions. They were his people, and he’d recognize them from day one. In his mind he was imparting his vast knowledge and experience directly to them, preparing them for the battle they were always surely already in but had never theorized, demystified. Rot thought that was his job. But today, when the two quiet anarchists in the back, complete with the face tattoos and the jean shorts that had been markers of the scene for a few years, when they made absolutely no show of recognition to his claims of Black Bloc cred, that’s the exact moment when three decades of punk-as-fuck activism, research, pedagogy, and agitation vaporized, right there in Cramer Hall, Room 221.

“I was in the Black Bloc” suddenly sounded like his father: “I was in 1^st Recon Battalion, Vietnam.”

“Hey Professor Rot,” one student said just as the two punks floated silently out the door. “It’s crazy you were talking about The Battle of Seattle. My mom was there.”

“That’s fucking rad!” He forced something that probably came off as enthusiasm, but he wasn’t confident the student would buy it. “Did she fuck shit up?”

“Ha! Yeah! My dad told me she looted that one Starbucks, but she’s never admitted it.”

“That’s fucking awesome.”

“Maybe I’ll interview her for my final paper.“

“Rad. ‘The rhetoric of public protest, mom. This is research.’”

“But I don’t think I’m gonna tell her about the ego function of protest rhetoric.”

He could tell by the tone of the student’s voice that he hadn’t understood the theory Rot had just spent an hour and a half covering.

“Alright, Professor. Have a good weekend.”

“You too.”

The fourth class of the day was uninspired. Rot made sure to clarify this time that “ego” is just a psychological term for the self, not an accusation of selfishness. The soccer players were cheery. Nobody cared. Obviously.

In the hall, he ran into Della. He’d known her ten years now, since he had been on her doctoral committee at Wichita. She had been excited about his research on radical politics, but as soon as she got the degree, she followed other paths and made a big name for herself in academia. He had been puzzled by her disinterest in seeing him when she had been hired in September. Maybe it was a rank thing? He was a mere lecturer in writing now while she was coming on as an Associate Professor of Gender Studies.

“Hey, Della,” he said blandly.

“What’s up, Rot?”

“Rough day.”

“Awww, poor baby.”

They squared off, backs against opposite walls, Rot leaning with his arms crossed, Della arms full of books.

“How’s your first quarter shaping up?”

“Amazing. Better than I even dreamed.”

“Wow, Della. That’s… That’s rad.”

“Yeah.”

He could feel his face sag. He willed the hollowness to show through his pores, maybe leak out some of that vapor from his former self-respect so that she could see. He wanted nothing more than for her to invite him for coffee or chat in her office. But she just added a few pleasantries and moved on.

He stayed there, against the wall. A few soccer players passed and greeted him.

He was thinking of Kansas. He’d had a great job there, as jobs go, teaching graduate-level classes, theorizing the rhetoric of the public sphere with brilliant people like Della. He actually wrote the book on the rhetoric of direct action while there, even got a contract with an academic press that eventually backed out, probably because he got a little cocky and pushed the radicalism too far in revisions.

Kansas was something. He was making six figures and living in a town where one year’s salary bought him a house, but then it was too much money and not enough city for him. More money and no scene meant more drugs. It hit him hard. Portland was just right. He made less than half as much money in a city getting expensive but alive with people fucking shit up, young and old in the scene. The drugs were safer here, and he couldn’t afford as much, so it was a stable balance. But it was becoming clearer and clearer as time passed that nobody needed him here.

Out on the street, it was already getting dark, and there was a little rain. November. He smoked a couple cigarettes in that punk way he always had, two at a time, together. Instead of hopping on a green or yellow train on the edge of campus and then transferring later, he walked toward downtown where he could catch the red line to take him home.

And as he walked, he ruminated. The cigarettes weren’t breaking through. He needed something strong, and so he was running an inventory in his head of the drugs he had at home. Nothing seemed like it was going to be enough today.

At Pioneer Square, there were huge crowds decked out in black and red, which got him thinking of another way to—he chuckled at the corniness—feel something. He imagined the Black Bloc shutting down the Blazers game tonight. They were never great at making a clear statement in their actions, but it was enough to fuck shit up and, in so doing, show how fucked-up shit had always been. Like, blockading the entrance to the arena would instantly reveal to the world the cultural and environmental damage done by bread and circus spectator sports around the world. There wasn’t enough direct action in the climate change resistance movement. Black Lives Matter? Sure, he’d fucked some shit up with the youngsters in the past few years, and it was beautiful. But the world was becoming shit, physically. Even in the 2021 heat dome when the Pacific Northwest was an oven, nobody did anything. What can you do?

Block the basketball arena and everything becomes clear. “Instant consciousness.”

He chuckled now at the reminder of a song from his pretty-successful mid-nineties crust punk band, Shit Rot.

On his phone, he scrolled through his messages and found “Human Gino,” a name that somehow sounded punk in 1993. Gino was the singer in the band and the only other surviving member not in prison. The last message was a family photo from last Christmas: Gino, Liza, and the three kids in matching sweaters. “Dude, can you believe this? I’m such a sellout!” He was a wedding photographer in Connecticut now, but he was the punkest fucking kid back in the day, famous around the world for bleeding profusely in almost every set they ever played. Hit himself in the mouth with the mic. Gouged his own eye with the mic stand. Taking a header into an amp. Hit with Rot’s swinging bass more than a few times.

Gino wrote the lyrics in the most brutal breakdown in any of their songs, where it was just Rot rolling out some dirty-ass bass and whoever the drummer was at the time pounding away on the crashes and snare: “Peel back your fucking skin you fucking shit. Gaze upon your naked flesh and weep. This is the fucking world you’ve fucking built. Your empty vessel drowning in your greed.” Mixed metaphors, sure. Nonsensical imagery, yep. But “Instant consciousness” was always beautiful to Rot. He was shaking his head, analyzing with the mind of his first-year students: “The author makes an effective argument through polarization and appeals to pathos.” Call somebody “shit,” and they immediately see themselves for what they are and change forever.

The train pulled up, and the lighted sign on the front seemed to have an answer for him. “Airport.” A more meaningful target than the Blazers. He hopped on and stood with his hand on the overhead bar, thinking of the airport.

Shut down the airport. That was it. His destiny. He’d peel back, somehow, the skin of the aviation industry. Or, the skins of the passengers? The pilots?

He had no idea how, of course, but he had a good forty-five minutes to come up with something.

This was a far cry from a hundred punks smashing some upscale retail outlet built to gentrify a neighborhood or building a concrete barrier to hem in the pigs at some mass action. He was alone and had no idea what he was doing. In fact, he was becoming aware that something had broken in him, and his thoughts weren’t making sense. You don’t just decide to shut down the airport. You don’t just get on the train to the airport and think you’ll have a plan by the time you get off. You don’t do shit alone. Well, little shit, sure, but this was big. And, what’s more, he caught himself somehow believing that once he shut down the airport, that was going to somehow shut down the whole system. He sneered at himself for even thinking the word “system” like that. What a joke, and yet, he was doing it.

“I’m gonna shut down the airport tonight.” Send.

And then back to the planning.

The train crossed over the river, and the race was on. Thirty-five minutes to figure shit out.

The basketball fans took a couple extra minutes to unload at the arena, and Rot was glad to get a seat and a little more time for the planning.

The first idea was cutting off the fuel. Don’t they have trucks that drive over to the planes and fill them up? A blockade that stops those trucks from getting to the filling station or back to the tarmac? That could work. Maybe he could rent a big truck and crash it into the station? Or he could figure out how to cut the power to that facility and disappear into the night. His head was swimming with all manner of details, or more like questions. Where to steal a big truck? Could he steal somebody’s credit card to rent one? He spent several minutes between Lloyd Center and Hollywood just picturing ways to overturn a giant truck in an intersection without getting hurt.

He checked out satellite photos on his phone to find out where the fuel was stored but then realized that it was on the airport premises behind the gates, so the plan was implausible. What then?

Maybe just running out on the runway would shut everything down, but for how long? He thought he should do it nude and covered in oil so that the security would have a hard time grabbing him. And then that morphed into a self-immolation fantasy, which honestly seemed like the most effective option but definitely not worth it for a, frankly, half-baked scheme like this.

Gateway transit center. Eighteen-minutes to the airport.

So, bomb threat?

“What are you talking about dude?”, Gino finally replied.

“I don’t know I think I just need to make something happen once in my fucking life.”

“WTF?”

“Send a message that actually reaches somebody with some fucking power to fix this shit and motivates them to actually do it.”

Parkrose, normally where he would get off. Fifteen-minute walk home. Fourteen-minute ride to the airport.

He stared at the screen, but Gino didn’t respond right away, so his mind drifted back to the airport. He could see it clearly in his mind, the terminal with its escalators up from baggage claim and its low-pile carpet, Starbucks and clothing stores, basically a shopping mall where you could also get on a plane. How to pull off a bomb threat? Are there still payphones?

He looked up from his phone and noticed the train was almost empty. Just to his left, sitting on the opposite side of the center-facing seats, though, was one rider whose presence couldn’t be ignored. Draped in orange robes and sitting in the god-damned lotus position right there on the hard plastic seats, a shaven-head honest-to-goodness Buddhist monk, or something like that. The dude looked like he was probably sixty, but he was swiping away at his phone. Serenely.

“What the fuck?”, Rot whispered to himself.

Finally, a message came in. “How much have you been drinking?”

“None. Just got off work.”

“Acid?”

“No dude, totally clean. Cleanest I’ve been in 30 years.”

“Dude you are crazy right now.”

“Instant consciousness.”

<Laughing emoji>

“I’m serious”

“Dude, no your not.”

“Gotta go. I’m 1 stop from the airport.”

<Laughing emoji>

When he looked up again from his phone, the monk had vanished.

Or, so he thought until he turned his head and looked further down the train, where he could see him now standing with his back against the doors, hands folded in front of him.

He’d forgotten about the bomb threat idea already and just sort of stared blankly and waited for a new idea to come.

“Direct action and the universal audience” by Rot. The only chapter from the manuscript that ever saw the light of day, published in a book on protest rhetoric edited by an old academic friend. It had been cited twice in ten years. By the time it even came out, he was already aware that his argument was hollow. And here he was living out that emptiness, unable to imagine an audience for whatever action he might pull off tonight and, therefore, unable to imagine an effective action. And that’s really because the object of direct action is always concrete. It’s not primarily an “addressed” discourse. It only functions rhetorically after the fact as a success or failure. His argument had been flawed. Nonsense, even.

The train pulled into the airport, and it was just Rot and the monk waiting for the doors to slide open.

“Looks like it’s just you and me,” Rot said to the monk, who nodded.

They walked side-by-side, or maybe the monk a half a step ahead so Rot could let him guide the way. They entered the baggage claim and the monk immediately picked up the pace. At first, Rot thought something was happening and sped up with him, until he noticed the monk heading right for a young couple waiting by a spinning baggage carousel.

They squealed in delight when they saw the monk, and they all ran and embraced.

Exposed, Rot stopped dead, stood for a moment looking ridiculous, then pivoted and headed toward the escalators, still ridiculous, still no plan.

On the upper floor, he sat at the counter in one of the several bars in the shopping-mall area and drank a beer. Gino wasn’t replying anymore, probably asleep. There were a few emails from students, including one with a photo of that one’s mother in a black hoodie, “Seattle 1999.”

The bar stool was hard on his bony ass, so Rot was ready to leave before too long.

He went and found a comfortable, cushioned seat by the windows and sat with his back against the wall watching the people rushing through the airport. Rot just sat there, not thinking, hardly breathing, just sort of feeling. An hour passed, a second hour. Maybe it was days, weeks.

The crowds began to slow.

He watched as passengers and workers came and went. A woman stepped off the escalator and began walking briskly, then slowed as if she was realizing something, glanced at Rot, and actually stopped, turned around, and walked right back to the escalators.

Something was happening.

The seats around him were starting to fill up. People just sat in those comfy chairs, looking blank. Pilots, janitors, rich-looking fucks, middle-class families.

A voice on the intercom announced the cancellation of a flight to Seattle.

Rot was doing it. They were all doing it together.

A flight to Houston, cancelled. Los Angeles, cancelled. Albuquerque, Boise, Minneapolis, SFO. This was it. The whole system was coming down, grinding to a halt. Nobody was buying coffee. Nobody was flipping through magazines at the news stand. Nobody was even talking. The whole place was silent, serene, broken, and Rot had done it. It was as if that hollowness had seeped out of his pores and, what? Filtered through the ventilation system? No, it was bigger than that. It was spreading faster. There was no understanding it. They all had just realized how ridiculous this whole charade had been. And Rot somehow knew that it wasn’t just Portland. SFO and SeaTac, all the airports everywhere, and this was just the beginning. The whole of human civilization had had its skin peeled back, and it was recognizing all that it had built was shit.

“What the fuck did you do?” A message from Gino, somehow aware, somehow knowing Rot was behind it.

“I should’ve tried this decades ago.”

“?!”

“Serenity.”

“WTF you’re no fucking monk dude.”

“I don’t know. Leaking? Whatever it was, it worked. The world is new.”