A Lattice of Coincidence By Jaclyn Frances

Vetatur Fumare CC




A Lattice of Coincidence
Finding Inspiration in Familial Trauma & Mid-80s Sci-Fi Camp


“A lot of people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything.”- Miller, Repo Man (1984)

It was the summer that Trump bombed Iran, and my brother sends me a short, sinister video on Facebook messenger, which I rarely open.

The video shows two men, and one of them is talking about how the left is brainwashed: to go join their “little Pride” parades, to have abortions, to be gay. It ends with the declaration that America must become Muslim to avoid the chaos. 

Earlier that summer, I had read Black Pill by journalist Elle Reeve, which exposes and explores incel culture, white supremacists, and the alt-right. In it, she describes a fringe belief in White Sharia Law, where white nationalists co-opt the Islamic tradition and argue that America should have complete control of women, stripping them of their rights and freedoms. 

My brother was never religious; in fact, he didn’t worship much of anything other than a thrill, which often came via a line of heroin on a piece of tin foil. There were times when we laughed together (often aided by a shared bottle of Jagermeister), and there were times when I thought he might kill me. I recall him, high, as he stood at the top of our stairs waving my grandfather’s shotgun, or when he, homeless, leaned into his old Chevy truck, grasping for a wrench as I sprinted away, clutching my leather jacket. I recall the fist-shaped holes in our pastel colored walls, and the late-night fights between him and my father, shadows of their bodies wrestling on our pristine green suburban lawn as the cops are threatened to be called.  

*

At the No King’s Protest in June, a performance of outrage at the impending rise of American authoritarianism, I paraded down the streets of my childhood. I was reminded of the Women's March in 2016: a collage of clever signs in an attempt to create a semblance of community, of voice, of hey there are others out here too feeling the same way. The next day was Father’s Day, and my brother offered a flurry of random, homophobic comments inserted into awkward, borderline delusional conversations.

Re: men golfing on the TV: Those guys are just convincing themselves that they aren’t gay. 
Re: paper plates with cute rainbows: What is this, PRIDE shit? 
Re: my defense of aforementioned golfers - What, are you GAY? Everything is wrong with being gay.

After my isolated and fearful defense of the not-gay golfers, he asks me if I believe in God. I told him I didn’t know, but that I’ve found peace in not knowing.

I reminded him I was half gay (do I dare say Bi)?. And I told him it was hurtful that he thinks that something is wrong with me. And I told him I wouldn’t see him again if he kept saying things like this. 

A week later, he decided to send me that 5-minute clip, as if it could rewrite decades of reading, listening, and learning: all the ways I cultivated an identity built in love for others and myself. And yet I try to be empathetic. That once came naturally; I used to think it was the essence of who I was.  

So, I researched conspiracy theories. I read about how lonely men latch onto them when they have nothing left. I read about how they are often found in a glimmer of truth or pain or injustice. I know my brother is lonely, locked up in his trailer park or liquor store with no one except his dog and his phone. I worry that I pity him, the man I once somewhat admired for his recklessness and sense of realness. The man who taught me how to defend myself, who sprayed water up my father’s nose to make me laugh. The boy who once threw me a surprise birthday party in 6th grade, when I walked home from school and opened the door to a living room full of decorations and presents that he had curated just for me. 

My mind wants to save him, to get that back, and then I remember the moment I told him, at age 35, to do his own laundry and he said he wished I had never been born. 

Yes, I like to think I'm empathetic. My students, from all walks of life, connect with me, from the ones with red hats sitting on their desks like trophies or talismans to the kids who cannot tell their own parents their pronouns. 

While the extent of my empathy is waning, there have been signs still giving me hope in myself. Signs from God or the universe or my own subconscious, that I can continue. Perhaps, a lattice of coincidence. 

I had been thinking about how everything is folding in on itself - teachers asking AI to show   their students how to write, our quirks and kinks becoming consumed by an algorithm, white supremacists adopting Islamic tradition. And then it appeared in the living room of my childhood home, as my brother barked at me about Sodom and Gomorrah, and how all women are secretly trans. 

I ask ChatGPT where this idea could come from - 

“when you dig into red pill ideology, the connection starts to make more sense…extreme mistrust of women and gender identity…you can’t even tell who’s trans anymore…all women are fake.” 

“Transvestigators are online conspiracy theorists who claim that many, or even all public figures, especially women, are secretly trans.” 

It was maybe 10 years ago. At his birthday dinner, my brother brought a trans woman as his guest and introduced her as his new girlfriend. She drank only water, like she didn’t want to impose, like she wanted to go unnoticed, out of fear. I remember feeling bad for her. That she was with him. I always thought any woman deserved better. I never saw her again, but she often enters my consciousness when I am freshly startled by my brother’s changes - the slow shift from love to shame. 

*

I go to the farmers market, despite being scared. Despite that morning talking to my husband about buying a gun to protect ourselves from my brother. After trying peaches and buying tomatoes, I talked to my mom about the video. We talk about how the people who need therapy are never the ones that go. I’ve seen four different therapists, and I’m sick of talking to them about conversations that aren’t happening with people who aren’t present.

Earlier that summer, I attended a sound bath near Joshua Tree -- where a spiritual healer plays sound bowls intended to open the body and the mind. I approached it with openness, yet skepticism. During the experience, as I felt my body being raised to the Heavens, I felt the need to expose my neck: a part of my body I had covered since childhood, with blankets, with my bare hands. In connecting with my child-self, a memory rose to the surface of my brother, 5 years older than me, chasing me around the house with a fake bloody hand. I locked myself in my bathroom and screamed. 

How long has my fear of him consumed me? 

After the farmers market, I watched Repo-Man, a 1984 film featuring Emilio Estevez. He plays Otto, a “white suburban punk” who gets deceived by a repo man and, out of desperation, becomes one himself. Underlying the entire film are conspiracy-theorist characters trying to track down aliens; aliens hiding in the same Chevy Malibu that Otto is trying to repossess. 

In this Lynchian exploration of a Los Angeles wasteland, there is a minor character named Duke. In the very first scene, he grabs Otto by the shoulders and moshes with him. There is always some physical or spiritual contact between him and Otto. A swat on the head. A look that lingers too long. A fixation on peach fuzz. But he literally shoots at others instead of confronting the parts of himself he can’t face. Everything is folding in on itself. It was the same reflex I saw in my brother: a violent aversion to the inward collapse. 

The film explores the search for meaning through cults: Evangelism, UFOs, Scientology, country, crime, or John Wayne. As Otto runs through LA in his white shirt and tie, he adapts to the wasteland, seeing others finding meaning in things outside themselves.

In the end, Miller, the wise but deranged mechanic, invites Otto to join him in the now-glowing, otherworldly Chevy Malibu, flying above it all: above a city where people cling to anything to distract from the inward collapse. T.S. Eliot stated, “For you know only a heap of broken images.” Is this what they see? 

I want to believe in Miller’s escape. His peace in transcending the search itself. But does he have a brother he’s forgotten about, or tries to remember? Does he get sent “broken images” through screens that make him lose sleep? Can I float high enough to forget the hurt? Was he once a “white suburban punk”? He is fearless, a citizen to no one but himself. Is that all of us? And can such a thing be shed? 

Maybe we can reinvent ourselves, our relationship to each other. You are my brother. I am your sister. Do I listen to new-age therapy speak that tells me to assert boundaries, to leave my brother’s loneliness intact? Or do I invite him on a sunrise hike? These are the questions that float in my consciousness, as I end the day thinking of ice cream vendors in Los Angeles being deported to prisons in countries they’ve never even visited, and the slurs my father and brother would say to describe them. 

As everything closes in on itself, I hope that at least my empathy can ascend like the Chevy Malibu. Maybe that’s all I can offer - to stay soft, stay watching, and not break the lattice of connection that entangles us all. 

“No explanation. No point in looking for one either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.”

​

​
Jaclyn Frances is a writer and English teacher. Her inspirations include Sylvia Plath, Bruce Springsteen, The Sopranos, and wild sunflowers. She lives in LA with her husband and their two cats. Her work has appeared in Stone Pacific Zine and Azaråo Literary Journal.