i heard it at least 3 or 4 times before, first from the children and later directly from the source. “sagging pants is how those people signal to each other they want it in the ass.” as a fear mechanism, or a rural husband’s tale, don was completely confident in the veracity of this horror. it snaked out from behind urban corners where his fears seemed to congeal and linger. this extended to other legends and apprehensions of the varying depredations of manhood that lay in wait outside of chiropractic offices in disused churches, surrounded by fallow cornfields and delineating brush. earrings would be ripped out of his son’s ears were they found, as surely the damage would be lessened by a fast if bloody extraction. subluxations were endemic, certainly emanating from this world and not the other. 

shortly after the offices changed and we were driving town to town, establishing safety perimeters at small town fairs, the imperative to act was obvious. “i’m filing off all serials, and i have a guy who can get them without.” for us, this was good news as a whole arsenal of high powered weapons were now available for us to test and later brag about as a means of rehearsing for the unspecified date when the state would attempt to shuffle us to the fema camps now being constructed.

there’s something more focused on the readiness of it all, the weary world awareness, or perhaps hyper alert but unsurfaced aggression. i think don’s cutout of john wayne in the small cabin at the top of the hill and his obsessive quoting of eisenhower prevented him from taking further measures. it was enough that he could keep his hair buzzed close on the sides and flat on the top, aviator glasses so that even the casual observer could immediately sense he was a helicopter pilot as well as a man who drank bush light around a fire with his brothers.

in a way, there was no ideology or politics involved. this was absolute centrism, or desperate conservationism. the wood interiors, exposed wood beams, hunting trophies, and air compressors formed a barrier like talismans surrounding an ancient city. they had their own life and their own friends who, like them, were rich but knew how to bend the wealth to uncorrupting ends. no caviar, sushi, designer goods. instead beretta, f550, floating coolers of bacardi mixers for the women trailing the black inner tubes in the red cedar river on the 4th of july.

memory-amnesia
trauma-identity
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reflexivity - i have none.
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reflectivity/projection
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can an empire know itself?
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would it remember?
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why does the tv seem real?