SHIRLEY'S TEMPLE
CLOAKING 101
I
The easiest money I ever made was through plausible deniability. The juicy opportunity found me when I was a young hustler earning the hard way, because the hard way was the only way I knew (and I liked that shit, still do).
Running multiple bar-dice games at once was challenging. It combined two things that do not agree with my constitution: mental math and shots of whiskey. In short order I became dangerously proficient, thanks to the combination of steady practice and the sting of immediate material consequences following a fumble.
It took an iron-clad present-ness, which meant it was a doorway to flow state, which meant it was its own kind of heavenly reprieve from myself. It was not half-assable. A thirsty crowd in an alcoholic city can smell weakness like blood; they will capitalize on even the briefest flickers of sloppiness. I, the bartender, represented the Establishment, the closest embodiment of The System, with the power to wipe tabs and swipe cards. They were well within their right to pounce.
We were breaking the law but it was not uncommon for off-duty cops to join us and roll a few rounds. Gambling and alcohol, the great equalizer, power to the people.
This basement kingdom was an elite training ground for the dark-ish empath, for reading people and steering the energy of an altered crowd. Men and women shared their secrets with me, leaning in close to be heard over the punk band playing twenty feet away.
I accepted every gifted round because it sealed our camaraderie and put more money in my little jar. I would usually dump the contents of my glass on the floor when my counterpart was knocking theirs back, eyes shut tight. I had already learned from experience that blacking out on shift was neither cute nor lucrative.
At 4:30 a.m. we would kick out the stragglers and pick up the teeth from the inevitable fight. My twenty-year-old body would be twelve shots deep, lucidly smoking cigarettes and counting cash before heading off to 8 a.m. class.
Z owned the bar and he hired me on the spot. He spent every single night posted on the last bar stool, his body too large to roam around his crowded underground establishment. He was always the first one to arrive and the last one to leave; none of us ever saw him enter or exit.
Z had a very honest foot fetish and a kind, lonely heart. He regularly floated the proposition of giving me an hour-long foot massage (”no funny business”) in exchange for doubling my tips. I considered this opportunity, but ultimately declined. He then suggested I simply work a shift barefoot so he could watch from his post. This seemed a sincere safety hazard because I regularly blessed the bar with shattered glass. Also, extremely gross and sticky.
And thus, Z never experienced the gift of my feet in any capacity. It hurt to leave money on the table, but a new opportunity was coming.
All I had to do was duplicate my apartment keys, hand them over, ignore the suspicious boxes in the back of my closet, placate the building manager with dabs when necessary, and — most crucially — keep my mouth shut shut shut.
If my services were ever required beyond that, they would involve smiling, batting my eyes, denying everything and playing dumb as a sweet baby rock.
My first glimpse into a prosperous reality was not through honest trade, hard work or rebellion. Just a silent rearrangement of the rules, done from a position where I could still benefit from them.
II
For larping as such an anarchist, my inner cop is loud. She dick-swings into my reality often, for example, every morning that I wake up after 6:30 a.m.
Even one minute later and I am castigated by a potent cocktail of guilt and petulance. I am meditating angrily. Massaging my lymph nodes, pissed, plunging the innocent French press with a dissociated frustration. These holy morning minutes, meant for maintaining my cortisol levels and brushing fingertips with God, are overshadowed by the failure of my rising.
I am my own Panopticon. I harbor a deep disgust for Idleness that I cannot seem to shake, it pains my body to be still. Michel Foucault would call me one of the “docile bodies1” – a model factory worker; rest is earned and uncomfortable.
The first step to becoming a nasty little subverter is refusing to see “them” as the big boys in charge of reality. But when surveillance is internalized, there is no clean enemy to locate. There is only the irritating clarity that a part of me so, so badly wants to be told what to do.
I’d rather yank out my own molars than write an essay about current events. I believe they call that “knowing your lane”. Shit is significant, shit is murky.
The only question that feels reliable is: What am I going to do about it? Not as some delusional call to arms, but an investigation of temperament. With what I’ve got, right now, where am I still pretending to be powerless?
Martyrdom is the hottest form of rebellion. What is more electric than flipping the middle finger to a Goliath? What could be more meaningful than dying for your freedom in front of an audience? Do you have any idea how many times I’ve seen Braveheart?
It may be the purest boyslop2 of the twentieth century. Mel Gibson, sweaty and handsome-adjacent, makes the Ultimate Sacrifice while backed by a stirring soundtrack3. One that my dad would reverently insert into the CD player, misty-eyed in our living room, in moments of necessity.
If attention is the feminine currency, then glory is the masculine’s reason to live. Oh buddy, I ate it up. My young rebel heart wanted that operatic meaning, the grief, the adoration, the selfless exit. Not to mention the obvious PROOF that I am a good person. Goosebumps.
Subversion offers none of this romance. It’s mundane, low-status, and marks you as an NPC. The subversive person appears boring and docile in order to slip by undetected by the powers that be.
Cloaking is a trickster practice. You assume the mask without confusing it for your face. You smile through bureaucratic, mind-numbing games while stealthily running your own. This is the ancient art of the okey-doke, practiced by criminals of every collar.
I need to be scheming and plotting. I need slow-burn sabotage, the turning of things inside out, the wearing of their skin. I must commit (more) tax evasion. I want to look like an obedient citizen while something complex and illicit cooks underneath. All my existential misery might evaporate if I could transmute this compulsion for Productivity into something meaningful.
I long to braid my insatiable appetite for mischief with a genuine love for my neighbor.
III
There is a very specific preparation required to enter a room filled with 100+ people disguised as The Leader and pull it off. The following steps ensure the crowd won’t smell you, the imposter, and rip you limb from limb:
Wake before the alarm. Pray quickly and earnestly. Then begin moving and do not stop. Fling open the hotel curtains, fill the air with music, jam cotton into any empty spaces where expectation could creep in. Execute multiple beauty steps like a robot. Tongue scrape, moisturize, braid, hold a handstand for as long as possible. Pack your bag with your neurotic safe foods and spring water in a glass bottle. Wear all your jewelry at once as a sort of armor.
Cloak up, eyes closed in the elevator. Ding.
Enter the lobby, new avatar for the next five days.
Arrive smiling and begin to wade through the personal agendas and motivations of the many individuals asking you for orders. Luckily they are loud and easy to hear: the actor is insecure and needing explicit praise, lay it on but not too thick so he has something to work towards. The crew is exhausted and underpaid, the camera op likes talking about his three rescue dogs, ask him to show you photos, remember their names.
The producer needs some crisis to attend to in order to feel useful; you conjure a benign fake-problem for her to focus on until everything falls apart for real (her greatest unconscious desire, but God willing, this will not happen today).
It appears, regrettably, you are the self-serving-politician-flavor of an authority figure, the kind you claim to despise the most. How rich. So be it.
Within this juggling act of people-pleasing and subtle manipulation, you are able to fence off a quiet corner to craft and actually make something. In its finest moments, this feels like art.
When hierarchy works, it distributes the weight and offers a place to rest. See: real BDSM, dogmatic religion, old-school corporate devotion with a pension. Structures with a reciprocal power exchange (a rare breed), easing the exhausting labor of deciding everything ourselves.
Most domination survives not by force alone, but through the relief of surrender. Autonomy is metabolically expensive.
The hotel bar is a swanky apostrophe of curved marble under high copper ceilings. A Navy vet with a glucose monitor, a trio of investment bankers and an iced-out Persian teen wearing sunglasses indoors make up the scattered clientele. I’m holding a menu, staring at the swirly script, and absolutely nothing is happening inside my skull. We wrapped an hour ago; I am no longer in charge. The inevitable crash is approaching.
I can’t read and I can’t order. I can’t make a single decision after days of decisions.
I fantasize about a competent someone sliding wordlessly onto the stool next to me, maybe a capable man or a Viola Davis type. They know what to do. They order for me, they order for me forever. Big things and small. I am led around like a lamb and I never worry my pretty little head about it. What exquisite relief, to hand it all over.
Bartender is blinking at me, wordlessly asking - are you dumb? I might be. I order a Shirley Temple, the least authoritative drink I can think of.
She delivers it a few moments later, announcing: “ONE SHIRLEY’S TEMPLE.”
Just like that, she’s changed my life forever. I’ll never be able to say it any other way.
People controlled not by obvious force, but through routines, expectations, shame, productivity, and the pressure to be industrious. Foucault’s thing is: instead of dragging people into the town square for public torture or executions, modern power started domming through everyday routines, making us economically useful money makers.
A term of sincere endearment.
Swept the Oscars in 1996 despite the entire story being wildly historically inaccurate, whatever who cares. James Horner’s bagpipes remain undefeated.
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Interesting. Youre doing hidden rythm from the other direction now