How to Be a Dick in the Twenty-First Century (by Chris Struck)

from Give My Love to the Savages

I’m switching it up today by reviewing a short story instead of a poem. This one is a twist on Kafka’s Metamorphosis where instead of waking up as an insect, our protagonist wakes up as a giant penis. Clearly meant as satire, “Dick” as he conveniently already known is a prototypical tech-bro billionaire who happens to be black, and we’re given early on in the story a laundry list of reasons why this could be some sort of karmic justice for him (womanizing, asshole behavior that you might expect from such a figure). After he’s drugged, raped, and taped by someone whom he had previously done the same to, Dick enters a period of seclusion where he attempts to construct an AI to understand what has happened to him. While waiting for the answer, he becomes addicted to pills. After he manages to rehab himself to discover that his computers have crapped out into a Blue Screen of Death, he begins to try to rehabilitate his life, captured in the following paragraph:

I sold most of my worldly possessions. I found a recipe for a natural non-habit-forming stimulant on the internet. It was just a smoothie with veggies and fruits and nuts. I guzzled them by the glass. I began hanging out with my lesbian friends again. I took the time to learn their names and not just think of them as lesbians. I went back to nature. I learned how to ferment things. I started smoking cannabis, a fair amount of it. It regulated my moods and gave my life a lustrous merry sheen. I undid my creative legal web-spinning and made my skyscraper into affordable housing for single and abused mothers. I moved myself into a small brownstone on the Upper West Side and rented out the top two floors to Jamison and his family for dirt cheap. I started calling him by his real name, Cleetus, which he seemed to appreciate. I’d totally forgotten why I’d give him the name Jamison to begin with.

The whole thing is pretty absurd.