Istvan Bio 14
Let's workshop this author bio, which is set to the tune "American Nightmare" by the legend himself: Myka 9
Once well on his way to epitomizing the American Dream, M. A. Istvan Jr. made good sacrifices from an early age and, although by no means becoming a poster boy for blind conformity, nailed so much of what tradition deemed admirable. One of the few literate in his lineage, Istvan earned multiple degrees (two BAs, three MAs, a PhD) and secured quality publications and teaching accolades as a budding professor of philosophy. Of course, just as time capsules are buried on the assumption that the future would have people to dig them up, his box-ticking sacrifices were made on the assumption that the future would have habitable order. But if learning his wife was lesbian (just as he was going out for tenure-track positions) and if now not having his son under his roof every night were not nightmare enough, out of the blue—out of the blue at least for an apolitical academic such as himself—the social infrastructure required for him to reap the benefits of past sacrifice, if only just medical insurance and a livable wage (all he ever asked), crumbled under him.
The chief cause was a doublet earthquake, instigated by the outrage algorithm of the cyber realm. The one quake enticed us, made it virtually irresistible for us, to cancel—silence, shame, excommunicate, terminate—our fellow humans for doing what artists and philosophers (all truth-seekers and mirror-raisers) do best: triggering people, stirring up potentially unsettling realities. The other enticed us, made it virtually irresistible for us, to lower the bar as to what qualifies as triggering—yes, even to the North-Korean depths of failing to genuflect intensely and frequently enough before an evermore-conflicted altar of idols (many of which we spit on solely in virtue of honoring the others). As if all the money in the bank became no good, his very poetry—the questioning and explorative and troubled poetry well-intentioned white leftists encouraged him to vent since kindergarten (so that he did not end up abusive and dysfunctional and addictive and jailed and dead like the rest in his fatherless food desert)—guaranteed much ruin for him. Branded with the yellow badge of humiliation and persecution that reads not “Jude” but “Störer” (and with additional letters WCM, which stand for “white cisgendered male,” designating him as the lowest of the vermin), Istvan can no longer call home the academia currently under the occupation of white leftists.
Help him, he begs everyone (but especially those with expertise), not to turn into a Cain too disillusioned and bitter to see any point in sacrificing as a productive member of society. Although he has yet to turn to drugs or murder, his boyhood self cannot stand the sight of what he is becoming. More prone to lie, cheat, and steal like those Beaconites from whom he strove so hard to rebel, he finds himself now in an American Nightmare of suicidal ideation and jailtime, a twilight zone where he has hit and cheated on his women (sometimes with their own family members). Just the other day he trapped a garden-ravaging squirrel in a havahart trap and drowned it in the bathtub, watching until the final glugs of air (like in Sonic the Hedgehog). And in his anger he plans to do the same, perhaps this time barehanded, to the feral cats breeding and breeding in the derelict drug den next door. If only by reminding him that he can help himself, help him turn away from the path of realizing the Cain within us all.
This piece is unpublished
Visit the legend: myka9.com
