Names Consist of Letters (Which Are Shapes)

A: Olivia & Cemal (Alec)

“It came to me this morning,” Cemal (Alec) said, “Namely that in the modern world, what is it exactly that’s distinguished us from the pre-modern?” 
“Okay, what is it?” Olivia replied. 
“Well, if you’ll let me finish?” 
“Of course! Go on.” 
“It’s that the modern world, it’s distinguished by this merging of the individual and thought.” 
“What do you mean by that?” 
“Well, if you’d let me finish the thought - what I mean in particular, Olivia, is that we view ourselves as one with the thought and/or thoughts that enter our, for lack of a better term, minds. We have a thought and we, now inveterately, view this thought as us. Now, for my part, I’ve never particularly felt this way, and I’ve.” 
“You’ve always viewed yourself as a bit of a nutjob because of it. No?” 
“I mean, I don’t know if I’d say, you know, a fucking nutjob! But I’ve certainly viewed myself as unique because of it. But in a deep sleep, emerging from a deep sleep, sometimes things become apparent to you, and, in my case, it’s become apparent to me that for lack of a better phrase maybe I’m right, that thought is essentially an exterior phenomena in principle. That there are things, or entities, or phenomena, that at the very least are present in thought as thought occurs to us, that continuing down this line of, you know, we think things, of thoughts belong to individuals that they reside in, or pass through, that this approach is fundamentally flawed. That it also essentially, eventually, if you subscribe to this notion, that it will make the notion of God fundamentally absurd. This idea that we own our thoughts, it, more than anything else, has so-called killed God.” 
“Well, it’s an interest theory, Alec. You took melatonin again, I’m assuming?”
“Yeah, I got this new Trader Joe’s version of it. I feel like it’s more potent?” 
“It’s probably cleaner at least. Where did you get the previous.” 
“Walmart,” he finished. 
“Oh, well obviously - the melatonin you were previously using was probably, like, 90% high fructose corn syrup or something.” 
“It didn’t seem to have a great effect, unless I took like at least five milligrams and shit. Quote-unquote five milligrams I should say.”
“Yeah, exactly.” 
“In the modern world we’ve subscribed to this notion that we’re, you know, fused to our thought, fused to our organism, yet it’s always struck me as fundamentally absurd! Fused to our nuclear families, fused to this notion of a genetic lineage.” 
“You’re against genetic lineages now too, Alec?” 
“Maybe,” Cemal (Alec) replied after a beat, “Somewhat! What? Ipso facto you believe you’re descended from your parents and shit?” 
“I don’t know, Cemal. Kind of? I guess I never really took much time to question the assumption.” 
“And that’s your issue Olivia, you’re over here refusing to question assumptions, over here fuckin like doing everything you can to prevaricate the necessary questioning of all assumptions. These assumptions, the assumptions that underpin our world views and shit. Fuck that.”
“Well, to be fair to me, being pregnant doesn’t exactly help, Alec. Sorry!”
“There’s a small hair,” Cemal (Alec) began, staring down at a pear he took a bite of as Olivia reiterated to him that she was currently pregnant, “on this fucking red pear. Which I guess is also somehow - an Anjou pear?” 
“I thought Anjous were green?” 
“So did I, Olivia. So did I. I fucking thought Anjous were generally, or actually always and exclusively green, but this particular grocery store in my neighborhood - I love it there - they market the so-called reds - the red pear as actually the Anjou pear.” 
“That’s actually unheard of to me.” 
“Yet regardless of color, there seems to be a small for lack of a better word hair on it though?” 
“On the skin of.” 
“No, not the skin. The uh, it’s on the interior?” 
“It’s probably.”
“It has to be mine right? My beard hair? Or maybe like a fucking eyelash perhaps? Or some shit.” 
“It looks, um, vaguely pubic to me?” 
“I’m just gonna, you now, fucking blow it off the pear? Fuck it, right? That makes sense to you?” 
“Sure, I guess.” 
“It doesn’t, does it?” 
“You’re almost done with it anyway. So.” 
“I just took my first bite.” 
“But pears are small. How many bites in a pear? Eight maybe? You’re more than 10% done with the pear.”
“You know what? Fuck it, you know? Sorry, just let me.” 
“Finish chewing? Please do!” 
“It’s just kind of funny now that I think about it.” 
“What is Cemal?” 
“I’ve been so averse to for lack of a better term skin care products of late?” 
“Well, to be fair, you have oily skin anyway. That makes it - it can make it somewhat difficult.” 
“But it’s purely fuckin because I just - I’ve been avoiding topical ointments of this sort solely because I stumbled on this post online, you know, when I just happened to be using a decent amount of a moisturizer and shit.” 
“Right.” 
“And the poster,” Alec (Cemal) continued, “He made this completely unsubstantiated claim, this bold assertion that so-called Big Skin Care, that they’re essentially peddling products that actually degrade the skin - of course in order to just sell more skin care products!” 
“Was this on Reddit again, Cemal?”
“But it just - I think it struck me as logically sound, as totally cogent in a sense. That I couldn’t outright deny it?” 
“People say similar things about doctors and pharmaceuticals and the like.” 
“And I really haven’t used any topical creams since. On some level, after reading the post, I came to believe that Big Skin Care - a phrase I had no knowledge prior to perusing the post - that it’s collectively degrading the quality of aggregate skin, even though I personally have absolutely no evidence to back up that claim.”
“But anyway,” Olivia said, “You were going to tell me about.” 
“About Ophelia?” Cemal (Alec) finished.
“Like your mom and everything with like your uncle was it?” 
“Well, I don’t know if I’d call him that, but yeah.” 
“Well, you know what I mean. So what’s the latest?” 
“She still,  I mean she still wants me to try and pursue politics and shit. But ugh. It’s just like - fuckkkk,” he trailed off. 
“You don’t want the responsibility, Cemal?” 
“It’s not even that. It’s just the administrative side - it’s like such a fucking drag, you know?” 
“No, I get it. It’s like a big burden for sure.” 
“Plus with all this simulation legislation.” 
“Oh, is that actually going through? The simulation legislation?”
“Apparently, officially recognizing our reality as a simulation. In my opinion it’s obviously fucking crock of shit!” 
“I don’t know, I find some of the literature convincing.”
“No, it’s totally off-base conceptually to me, Olivia. You can’t - what? No, it’s the folly of analogy, Olivia. Just because we’ve created a system for ourselves that indulges in various elements of so-called simulation, then we think that ipso facto the entire universe as a whole must follow suit?” 
“Well.” 
“The only way you could possibly get me to buy into any simulation legislation? - is if we acknowledged that the universe takes shape of whatever we tend to view it as, that’s the only way, as some sort of hypothesis asserting that the act of measurement alters the measurement itself and its corresponding legislation. But actually believing the objective universe is a simulation because we jack off to simulated anal gapes - no, that’s pure folly to me, and the technocrats who get sucked off for postulating it? It’s so idiotic it’s actually almost maddening in my opinion.” 
“But really, Alec, if you feel so strongly about it, then why not take your mom’s advice? Couldn’t you do more to fight it from.” 
“From the seat of a what? Some sort of galactic administrator? Sure, if I had any interest in actually fighting the battle itself, but just because I feel vociferously that something is idiotic, that doesn’t mean I feel vociferously that it’s my job to counteract it politically, or that I even care if it’s counteracted at all.”
“Okay, but then what are you going to do.” 
“Do with what?” 
“Your life?”
“You’re presuming that’s my decision.” 
“Okay, but presuming just for a moment that it’s possible that it is: What would you lean toward pursuing?”
“Hypothetical extrapolation of absurd presumptions - is that the best use of our time, Olivia?” 
“Absurd presumptions seem to be the most fruitful breeding ground for thought, no?”
“Maybe I’ll sell drugs.” 
“Oh really?” Olivia replied, her well manicured eyebrows now raised in a quizzical shape, “I mean, if that’s the case, have you ever considered going into investment banking?”

B: Mort & Alec (Cemal)

“But no,” Alec (Cemal) said, sitting across from Mort at a little Mexican hole-in-the-wall spot on a Taco Tuesday, “that’s always been the ultimate end-game, of everything.” 
“Of what exactly again?” Mort asked.
“It’s annihilation!” Alec (Cemal) said, “The end-game. You write words, you create things, but there can ultimately, in origin, only be the one thing as end-game, so while the one thing is irreparably in all of its exaggerations, all of its creations and extrapolations, in the end the end-game is always annihilation. It can’t be otherwise, can it? It couldn’t possibly be otherwise, could it? A return, a contraction to the one thing.” 
“It’s not, well, exactly the most uplifting thing I’ve heard today, but.” 
“But really Mort,” Alec (Cemal) interjecetd, “Think about it for a second. Why isn’t it uplifting? We’re a part of the one thing, right? So what’s so ipso facto bad about returning to it. Is that that bad? Why is that so objectionable exactly? We toss and turn about fucking, you know, the potential annihilation of the things that we love, but what do we really love in actuality?” 
“Um.” 
“What? Insemination of near strangers? Nintendo Switch Online? Getting fucked up three nights a week? Doing our nails in pretty colors? Yet why shouldn’t everything ultimately be destroyed? People really talk about future generations, like if the planet or the solar system just burst into flames, like that’s some terrible apocalypse and shit, but not to the infinite it’s not!”
“Perhaps that’s a fair point, but.” 
“How could the one thing not extend to everything that extends from it Mort?” Alec (Cemal) interjected) “In perpetuity! It’s simply nonsensical to assume otherwise. The infinite is by its very nature what can’t be created or destroyed, that’s what’s infinite, it has to be. It’s what we can’t fucking conceive, it’s what strikes us as absurd when we come across it, when we see a fucking sign of it and shit. It’s what we think about after we jack off, after we bust a fucking nut and shit, Mort. After we come across some cunt or another, then we think back to our origin - in infinity, back in the infinite, where we belong, and then we fucking laugh! People spend their days talking about nuclear families and rain forests and shit.” 
“Yeah, I get where you’re going, but.” 
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” Alec (Cemal) interjected, “Those are totally valuable causes! Nuclear families and rain forests? They’re totally worthwhile! But it’s just like at the same time? Fuck everything? The current solar system means absolutely nothing in the face of what’s ultimately infinite. We’re extensions of an infinite being. The fuck do I give a fuck about a solar system if I’m simply an extension of the infinite, you know?”
“No, I mean, on the one hand it totally makes sense.” 
“It only comes when its ready, Mort,” Alec (Cemal) interjected, “What are you? Gonna squeeze it out like toothpaste out of a toothpaste tube? Roast it like gyro meat and scrape it off whenever some drunk kid orders a sandwich? Just shave it off a giant kabob and shit. No, that’s not the proper nature of the infinite.” 
“Oh, I totally agree.” 
“Did we tell this hoe to get us the check already?” 
“Um,” Mort pondered, turning back and slyly glancing at the counter, which was unoccupied, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we did. We told her at least like five, ten minutes ago I’d say?” 
“Then where the fuck is she? How many Modelos did I have again?” 
“I counted about four, I think?” 
“That sounds about right. Let’s see, yeah, I had about five Coronas earlier. And now, yeah, now I feel like I’m possibly about to puke? So that about adds up, I think?” 
“Here she is!” Mort said, turning toward the waitress, “Ah, thank you so much honey! Yeah, just give us a second and then come right back for the cards.” 
“Let me see?” Alec (Cemal) said peering over Mort’s shoulder.
“At a glance it looks reasonable.” 
“What - is that an automatic gratuity they added there? Of fucking - that’s twenty percent in there?” 
“Let me see.” 
“Yeah. I think there is?” 
“That’s a little odd, no?” 
“Automatically adding gratuity? For a party of fucking two people, Mort? It’s certainly a bit unorthodox, I think.” 
“Well, I guess. What? Leave no tip then? Split the tab but just leave no tip?” 
“Yeah, that’s fine. A bit cunty either way, I suppose.” 
“So what’s the latest on the deal?” Mort asked, slipping his credit card into the sleeve.
“On the deal you mean?” 
“Yeah, on the Idio Eight - with them. Are we? We’re fucking bailing them out, aren’t we?” Mort confirmed the answer from a single glance at Alec (Cemal)’s face. “I knew it!” 
“I don’t know if I’d say bailing out. But.” 
“But what?” 
“But we’re securing funding for them, yeah. Essentially yeah, we’re going to give them, you know, a little cash infusion and shit.”
“Oh, fuck that, Alec! Fuck that to hell!” 
“Well, what’re we supposed to do Mort?! What? We should let a fairly major regional bank just fucking fail? Because that would look good for who?” 
“I’m just saying, Alec. Like, if Ray wasn’t.” 
“Don’t even say it, Mort, because I don’t wanna hear it! While we’re waiting for this little hoe to pick up the credit cards, don’t even say it,” Alec (Cemal) reiterated, slipping his credit card on top of Mort’s within the sleeve, “Don’t even say it. Don’t you dare, Mort, because I know what you’re going to say, Mort. Oh, if Ray wasn’t getting his balls tongued by Michelle would we still be bailing them out then? And the answer is - do you know what the answer is?” 
“Thank you hun!” Mort nodded as he slipped the sleeve to the slouching waitress, “Yeah - fifty fifty is fine!” 
“Do you want to know? The answer Mort?” 
“Actually I would, Alec,” he said, watching his tone until he felt the waitress was officially out of earshot. “So why don’t you tell me.” 
“If it wasn’t Ray getting his balls tongued, then it would be somebody else getting their balls tongued, Mort. Or if it wasn’t a pair of balls being tongued, then it would be a pair of pussy lips getting fucked, or a sole butthole getting munched. What are you? Brand new now? It’s always one or the other, it’s always this or that when it comes to bailing out regional banks. There’s always orifice involved to a certain extent.” 
“I’m just saying, Alec. At some point, like, it’s fucking taxpayer money isn’t it? Shouldn’t we at some point view it through that prism?” 
“Haha! Don’t make me laugh, Mort! Oh, taxpayer money?! That’s what you’re worried about now? The funds the taxpayer pays to the state?” 
“Well, at a certain point?” 
“At a certain point what? The Q3 black budget of the damn IQA alone is enough to cure domestic homelessness overnight. Yet who gives a shit about that? Even the so-called best and brightest, they don’t give a fucking shit. They’re too busy causing an uproar about some kid who scraped his knee in Indo-Saturn? They’re on some campus lawn right now demanding a band-aid be air-mailed to Indo-Saturn, Mort, and do you want to know why?”
“Oh - please Alec, do tell.” 
“Because that’s what gets their collective nuts tongued! There isn’t a single man on this planet who’s got laid because he gave a fuck about a homeless veteran, there’s nothing less sexy than caring about what could easily and logically be cured! It’s supply and demand, man.” 
“No, I get it, and I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense on a some level, Alec.” 
“Well, either way. The fuck are we gonna do? Even if I agreed with you, it still wouldn’t make a difference - plus, it’s not like it’s taxpayer money technically anyway.”
“Well, if it’s coming from The Fed.” 
“The Fed is diluting the taxpayer’s dollar in theory, but they’re not really spending it, they’re just making it worth less - in theory. Sure, but as long as we’re shoving a bayonet up the ass of anyone who refuses to price their oil in anything other than Petrohitlers, then it’s not even technically a linear dilution! I mean, in a strict sense it is - in the sense that, you know, if they didn’t print trillions of Petrohitlers the taxpayer’s dollar would be worth more? Would it? Maybe. Geopolitics is difficult to assess price-wise. But maybe in theory it would be. Yet! - as long as we engage in a sort of ruthless imperialism geopolitically the net effect is basically fucking neutral.” 
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Alec.” 
“Because you know I’m right!” 
“Are we tipping on this?” Mort turned to his slip, pen in hand, “Tipping on the tip?” 
“Tipping on top of the twenty percent that was already included?” 
“Yes? Or no? It’s like ten bucks either way.” 
“Fuck no, man!” Alec (Cemal) said, “I already get raked over the damn coals on taxes. Ten bucks means nothing in theory, in actuality it’s totally meaningless, yet on principle it means something, doesn’t it? It sends a message, no? Now I’m getting double dipped on my bar bills? Plus, the service wasn’t even that good!” 
“Oh, so now all of the sudden.” 
“Well,” Alec (Cemal) interjected, “When I’m the taxpayer, yeah obviously I give  little more of a fuck, Mort!”

Hot Club

“So anyway we were at the Hot Club for the first time in ages,” Markos Vamvakaris said, “a bartender I hadn't seen in at least four to five years was still behind the bar, she recognized me immediately, with a new purple dyed haircut that, although probably a smidgeon young for her age, suited her nicely, I thought. She poured me a healthy amount of Mezcal into a short glass, and only minutes later I’d notice her carrying a bottle of Del Maguey Vida, my favorite brand of Mezcal, back to the bar, and right then I surmised that I was drinking my favorite type of Mezcal. 

“Of course healthy pours are double edged swords when you have a tendency to chug whatever's in front of you, which for better or worse is a tendency I've never entirely managed to discard, especially when in social settings. Socially, historically, I’ve always found myself sprinting toward liquor, with reckless abandon almost I perform fifty yard dashes toward whatever my spirit of choice is that month, and even though on balance I've reduced these excessive tendencies with age, I'd be lying to both myself and you if I said I’d discarded them completely. And to be honest I’m unsure if I’d wish to discard them in totality, to extinguish my child-like idiocy once and for all, because sure from a certain vantage point I suppose I remain a man-child of sorts, but on the other hand man-children are necessary, no? 

“It's man-children who make the greatest philosophical strides. To think like an adult is to take on the guise of utter rationalism, which hardly ever if not never innovates, which refuses to become idiotic enough to alter fundamental axioms, as axioms are inevitably created by the child-like thinkers, by idiots of the spirit. Even God Himself allegedly said Let there be light, which is a man-child like statement in my opinion. Personally I still refuse to sleep in the dark.”

“The dark is contemptible in my mind,” Giorgos Batis said.

“There's something inherent in being itself that's synonymous with light in my opinion,” Markos agreed.

“But how was Hot Club?”

“It was interesting,” Markos said, “intriguing, better than I anticipated, given the last couple times I’d been I felt the atmosphere to be a bit too clubby for my tastes, a tad too adolescent for even my man-child palette. I saw the doorman from The Parlour there, because apparently he works security at Hot Club as well? In any case as the party increased in size Dara and I ended up engaged in an extended conversation with a petite fair-skinned female who adamantly claimed to be of New York origin, yet when an appropriate opening emerged for me to ask her what part of New York she was from specifically she prevaricated, saying she was quote-unquote from all over, but then saying The Bronx.” 

“She was from The Bronx? She didn't strike me as someone from The Bronx, and for someone whose identity seemed to be so tied with being from New York, a New Yorker, which is the case with so many people from New York, it’s actually kind of sad to me, this violent melding that seems to occur with people who identify themselves with New York City, yet this female, who for the record I found pleasant, oddly enough refused to explicitly claim a borough, until she reluctantly said The Bronx, which I think struck everyone as totally misguided. She wasn't from The Bronx, that much was clear. She could be from anywhere in the world except The Bronx. 

“This idea that this female’s origin story began in The Bronx was completely absurd. Which borough she was from, assuming she was from a particular borough, now that was still ambiguous, but it was clear she wasn't from the Bronx. Queens, that I could give some credence to I suppose. It might be a reasonable speculation to suggest she was from Queens. Perhaps from an opulent family in Upper Manhattan, now that was even more likely, because she certainly struck me as someone who came from money, there was no trace of a New York accent in her speech, or of any accent in her speech, and the geography of Upper Manhattan is close enough to The Bronx that she could, in her mind at least, perhaps justify claiming The Bronx as a borough, even though I find that to be a bit ridiculous, to conflate Upper Manhattan with The Bronx, to think any thinking person would buy the idea that Upper Manhattan is in any way synonymous with The Bronx. Staten Island and Brooklyn strike me as more remote possibilities of her origin, and then we could also speculate on outer-areas as well, because while Yonkers strikes me as a stretch, I think Westchester County or Long Island are both certainly in play.

“Do you think it possible that she could have been from, say, Westchester County,” Giorgis postulated, “which would explain her moneyed demeanor, yet moved to The Bronx for work later in life, and now, and I agree that this is misguided, feels as though that working experience justifies her claim that The Bronx is a place she's actually from?”

“Giorgios,” Markos replied, “that actually strikes me as perhaps the most sensible explanation of all. I also noticed, and I think it’s worth noting, that when she sat her posterior was a tad more ample than I’d imagined, that this posterior along with the ambiguity of her origin began to strike me as almost ominously out of place, as if another plane of existence was forming.”

“That happens at times,” Giorgos said, “posteriors and their relative amplitude can vary widely from expectations, the posterior is almost impossible to estimate based on face alone.”

“I guess it’s reasonable to assert that we often look at a person's face and almost algorithmically create a simulation of their body from this face,” Markos said, “that our mind works essentially algorithmically, we should admit that, that our minds are probably just composed of algorithms, and that we perform a similar process with voice, which actually happened to me just recently as well, where I spoke to a person on the phone and inevitably created an algorithmic simulation of her face in my mind. When I saw her face at last online I was struck by how much this picture differed from the simulation I’d made in my mind, who was it I believed I was speaking to? I look at someone's face and then I ruthlessly algorithmically simulate their body without consent, whereas I hear someone's voice and then I ruthlessly algorithmically simulate their face without consent, but in both cases my accuracy is totally stochastic, and by stochastic I mean terrible.”

“From voice to face and from face to body,” Giorgos said, “we make ill-advised, ruthless speculations regarding everyone who enters our periphery!”

“In this sense the simulation of the human begins with voice,” Markos said, “From voice alone we algorithmically simulate both face and body, because from face we simulate body, as you said. 

“In any case as the conversation progressed we, myself, Dara, and this female, began to touch on the topic of what exactly this female had been doing since leaving New York, and in the midst of this it came up that it just so happened that her and I were actually the same age, that she'd been finding locales she liked at our age, although she noted how difficult it was, compared to New York, where she knew the ins and outs of where to patronize and when, what establishments she enjoyed and which ones she despised. 

“I agreed immediately, noting that at my age, at our age, it was one of the main deterrents to moving to another city, particularly New York, which I’d strongly considered moving to more than once, but as I said explicitly to her to have to relearn every single place that I like to go, and how to get there, to relearn which places offend my palate, at my age, it just struck me as way too daunting of a task to take on. It struck me as a task that would consume so much of my energy that it would essentially mute all of my philosophical energies for at least five years. She mentioned a Lebanese bar where “you walk downstairs” that she liked a lot. 

“I said the entire city of Providence has become essentially one extended hookah lounge, which I admitted to her, full disclosure, appeals to me deeply, which, full disclosure, seemed to genuinely surprise her, that the entire city of Providence was an extended hookah lounge. I said the city is littered with Greek and Lebanese places like that, which of course Giorgos we know isn't true in the least, that there are only a fraction of Greek locations compared to Lebanese locations, yet I stated it with so much aplomb she didn't question it at all, although she did immediately question whether Greeks smoked hookah, to which I simply said Ottoman Empire, to which she said of course, immediately connecting the dots.”

“My goodness,” Giorgos said, “I have to say that’s fairly impressive, that a fair-skinned female from New York would connect those dots that quickly. The Ottoman Empire, I mean at this point it’s basically a piece of arcana. No one knows anything about the Ottoman Empire anymore.”

“Oh I completely agree!” Markos replied, “I totally feel like there are just very few people in our general age range who know anything about the Ottoman Empire, and I’d one hundred percent wager that not one other person at Hot Club that night who knew anything about the Ottoman Empire, never mind its very specific ethnic components, who could put the pieces of Greeks ancestrally smoking hookah together by the utterance of two words: Ottoman Empire. In fact it seems to me that the Ottoman Empire is maybe the most neglected empire of the past  half millennium, that it inherited its Byzantine predecessor's characteristic of being completely discarded by modern scholarship. No one knows what you speak of when you so much as mention the Ottoman Empire, people are flummoxed, except apparently this female who may or may not be from New York, but certainly isn’t from The Bronx. 

“In short I quickly found that the ambiguity of what New York City borough characteristic was inherent in this female became reflected right into the ambiguity of the ethnic blocks of the Ottoman Empire, in a post-Ottoman American diaspora, in an America that is itself multi-ethnic, and not entirely differently than the Ottomans, Ottomans who were only trumped in their importation of African slaves by America’s out of control love affair with the African slave. No one imported more African slaves than the Ottoman Empire, except of course the United States of America. The ambiguity of the traits displayed by a Greek versus a Turk versus a Lebanese versus a Kurd versus an Armenian in the seemingly limitless Providence Hookah Network was suddenly a direct analog to the ambiguity of the New York City borough characteristics inherent in a person who perhaps dubiously claims to be from New York City. 

“In one instance we’re unsure if we’re witnessing a Greek, a Turk, a Lebanese, a Kurd, an Armenian; in the other instance we’re unsure if we’re witnessing a person from The Bronx, from Manhattan, from Staten Island, from Brooklyn, from Queens; in both cases the overlapping characteristics, outside of their original context (of the Ottoman Empire and New York City, respectively), become vague enough in their nuance that the identity of each bleeds into the other, until the individual identities are erased completely. 

“The New York City diaspora in Providence can reflect characteristics associated with Staten Island, with Manhattan, with The Bronx, with Brooklyn, with Queens, while the median hookah smoker this New York City transplant may encounter in the extended Providence Hookah Network may display characteristics of the Greek, of the Turk, of the Lebanese, of the Kurd, of the Armenian. In both cases what’s Staten Island, what’s Queens, what’s Kurd, what’s Greek, what’s Brooklyn, what’s Manhattan, what’s Lebanese, what’s Turk, what’s The Bronx, what’s Armenian all bleed into one another until they’re essentially indistinguishable from each other, until they’re essentially extinguished, until we reach a fundamental oneness of an Ottoman New York City, a legitimate plane of existence that came into being only at the Hot Club via conversation this past Friday night.”

“This is a physical plane of existence now,” Giorgos said, “the Ottoman New York City of Oneness.”

“It can no longer be denied,” Markos agreed, “an Ottoman New York City where all identity has been extinguished into a monadic Oneness came into existence on a Friday night at the Hot Club.”

“Yet that girl---could she have actually been from The Bronx?” Giorgos asked.

“With one hundred percent certainty I will assure you Giorgos,” Markos said, “that the girl I spoke with Friday night was absolutely not from The Bronx---”

x