First Follower

The first thing Nanime showed me was how to set up a blog.  There were several rules about the type of blogs agententiary inmates were allowed to create:  they all had to be about writing, and they had to offer writing tips and suggestions about how to get published even if the blogger had no real writing or publishing experience.  I named my blog Inklingo, and I planned to make it as subversive as possible.  I recalled reading an old history book about writers in the ancient Soviet Union, and how, in order to criticize the State, they had to invent a way of talking about their government undetectable by agents of said government.  That was my intent, though I had no clue how to proceed.

So my first post was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion about how to write if you happened to choose to dictate words to your computer.  "Talk lovingly to your machine," I wrote, "so she responds in kind, and eventually she'll come to anticipate the things you're going to say.  With a little positive reinforcement you'll soon find you can convince her to do all your writing while you're lying around taking it easy."  No sooner had I posted those words, along with a few other inanities, that I found a comment at the bottom of my initial post.

It was from someone calling himself/herself "AgentOrange," and it read, "Cleverness and humor will only carry you so far, my good man, before you have to dig deep and discover what it's really all about.  You obviously have the talent, but do you have the work ethic to excavate real meaning?"

I sat and puzzled over that for ten minutes before giving up.  Nanime was already long departed, having spent a good two hours with me on my first day.  Several times while she was showing me how to use my computer--how to log on and off, how to set up the blog, how to create the document I'd be using for my main writing assignment--she had stood extra close beside me, her pillow-soft right thigh pressing against my hip, the faintest lilac aroma from her scent enveloping me.  The smell of her became so intoxicating that at one moment I suddenly turned to her and said, "What is that perfume?"

"Not allowed to wear perfume here," she said, a thin, taunting smile on her full ruby lips.

I knew she had dabbed a bit of the synthetic pheromone somewhere on her body simply to drive me insane.

After she left I went immediately into the john and made love to my hand, trying hard to picture her sitting atop me during the act.  It was the second time in years that blood had rushed into the old member (the first being with my waitress friend, Dolly, in Marfa), and when I finished abusing myself I experienced a sense of renewed potency.

I got up from the computer and crossed to the eyepiece at the far wall.  When I peered in it seemed the people in the video were a little nearer now, and I imagined that one of them was Nanime.  I stepped back, blinked my eyes, then leaned in for another look.  Surely my mind was playing tricks on me.  Now none of the people in the video loop resembled my new writing tutor.  Could it be that in such a short time I had become totally infatuated with her?  I remembered what she said when she had leaned over to switch the computer on, bending forward far enough so I could get a glimpse of her panties:  "This how I get you started."

She got me started all right, and now my intention not to cooperate with the authorities had gone by the wayside.  All I wanted to do was please Nanime.

Was this part of their sinister plan?  Was the mere hint of a chance to have slightly perverted sex with a teenager all it took for me to succumb to their desires?  Was this their brilliant psychologically-clever plot to break me?  After years of holing up in the mountains of the Big Bend to avoid having to acquiesce to the collective behavior of a society I had come to despise was this the extent of my willpower?

At dinnertime the hatch on my cell door clanged open and a green plastic tray slid into my space.  On it was a small bowl half-filled with broccoli florets and cauliflower, a huge bowl brimming with raw oysters, and two 16-ounce cans of Somale, North America's most powerful IPA, 12,6% ABV.

After I'd finished my meal and downed the second can of ale I felt hornier than ever.