A Totally Normal Dinner
Meet Professor Truth
Previously: At the Renaissance Faire, Deshawn came across a group of people bowing to some sort of prophet. It was…his mom.
○ Opening Era: Spring, 2026, Manhattan
“He emerges!” said his dad as Deshawn entered their little dining room. He did his little bowtie-straightening thing, then picked his tablet back up. “Dinner still hot, Deborah?”
“I’ve been keeping it on the burner,” his mom said. “You can get off that iPad now.”
“Just give me a sec,” said his dad. “Just need 20 more points to unlock some bonus loot. Wooo this game is really good. Check this out, D, I think you’ll appreciate it.”
“Sorry, what?” Deshawn was still in mapmaking mode. He always had a hard time breaking out of it, but his dad gestured him over. Looking over his dad’s shoulder, he saw several snaky lines moving from right to left.
“It’s called Neuroblitz,” said his dad. “See those lines, flowing by? That’s actual brainwaves. Or––what do they call it––E-E-G data. So, check this out, those squiggles up top there?”
There were some squiggles on the top of the screen.
“Those are a bunch of waveform patterns common to most people’s brains. That’s like our shared humanity right there, written into those lines. Pretty cool, right?”
Deshawn had to admit that it was pretty cool.
“Then down below, you got some live brainwaves. That’s what someone in the world is thinking right now!”
“This is a game?” Deshawn asked.
“Right, so, the game is: you watch the brainwaves go by, and when you notice a pattern like the ones you have up top? Then you gotta drag that pattern down to match the live brainwave just in time. The closer the match, the more points you get.”
His mom took the tablet from his dad’s hands and turned it over. “It’s time to eat.”
“What the hell, Deb? I was contributing to science. You now anti-science all a sudden?”
“You really want to know my view?”
“Uh…yeah?”
“I believe modern science is embedded in an authoritarian structure that tends to marginalize embodied and non-Western forms of knowledge, perpetuating a reductionist form of epistemological imperialism.”
“Damn! You just came up with all that on the spot? You’re like the freestyle rapper of academic gobbledygook! Heh heh!” laughed his dad in his honking goose way.
His mom rolled her eyes. “How are you doing, Deshawn?”
“Huh?” Deshawn muttered. Still in mapmaking mode, Deshawn’s brain was busy trying to label the gestalt of their apartment.
It was decently sized for a place in Manhattan: his dad, being in the business, had gotten an insider deal for the top story of a Harlem brownstone. (Which is mother called “the epitome of gentrification” until she realized it was a short walk from her new job.) There was still the original woodwork, exposed brick, and damaged moulding. Normally this might signal a family that rejected the modernity, but actually it was all his mom’s taste.
In fact most of the interior design was his mom’s taste: the vinyl record player; the reclaimed wood dining table; the handcrafted industrial lamp that hung over it, made from bicycle parts by one of mom’s “old friends.” Set around the dining table were an eclectic mix of chairs. Deshawn’s was an old movie theater seat with the upholstery ripped in a couple of places; the drink holder was still intact. It felt unusually counterculture to be the apartment of a Colombia University professor. But it also felt too tidy, too artfully arranged to be truly counterculture. It was as if someone had applied a strict grid to the design of a DIY aesthetic and chopped off any frayed bits that fell outside the grid.
However, the grid had been becoming looser and looser since they got back from the madness at the Ren Faire. For instance, flyers for his mom’s upcoming lecture with the Sovereign Scholars Project now laid scattered across the coffee table in the living room. And now – alongside the novels, books of poetry, and critical theory texts on their sagging bookshelf – there were shoddily crafted zines.
His eyes landed on a framed poster on the shelf just above the zines: THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS it read on torn paper, each letter stenciled on with a different typeface. His mom had put it there alongside an arrangement of family photographs.
“Deshawn?” his mom repeated. Then she saw where he was looking. “Oh yeah that photo was taken the day after you were born.” She walked around to the bookshelf and held up the framed photograph. “Look at you in your gran’s arms. Such a serious baby,” she said in a cute voice. “You came into this world the hard way, struggling all the way out the womb.”
“What do you mean?” asked Deshawn.
“Oh you had a cord wrapped tight round your neck!” said his dad, while his mother pulled something out from behind the photo frame – a folded sheet of paper. “Poor little guy, first impression of the world: being strangled,” his dad shook his head. “But you had your little fists wrapped around that cord! I saw that and I thought, ‘oo my boy’s a fighter, just like his mom.’ The doc told me later that he wasn’t sure you were gonna make it. But me, I was sure.”
His mom unfolded the paper, gently. “I completely forgot about this.”
“What is it?” asked Deshawn.
”I wrote this poem the day you were born. I remember it now. I wrote this poem for a version of myself in the future.” Her eyes fixated on the page as if making out a constellation in the night sky. “I didn’t think it was good enough to publish.”
Deshawn Psi-ed some kind of powerful feeling from his mom.
“Come now, let’s hear it,” said his dad.
“All right,” she said.
His mom read:
I screamed in agony as you emerged into light
From the lake of my womb
And you screamed with me,
Silently,
Suffocating from the umbilical cord
Wrapped tight around your throat
By which I once brought you oxygen
And now deprived you of it.
I watched as your purple fingers
Gripped the coil that bound us
To tear it lose,
Desperate to live,
And be your own.Once you were a boy and I was your mother.
Now you are a man and I am...
His mom lowered the paper and wiped her eyes. “That’s funny, I hadn’t read that since I first wrote it. Funny….”
“What’s the rest?” asked his dad.
“What do you mean?” said his mom.
“‘Now you are a man and I am…’ I am what?”
“That where it ends.”
“That’s it?”
“I knew what I was when I became a mother. But I didn’t know what I’d be when our baby grew big.”
“Well, better find that out fast, look at him! Heh heh!” honked his dad.
“Yeah…” She looked at Deshawn. “Guess I better figure that out, huh?”
Deshawn didn’t know what to say to that.
Then the smoke alarm went off.
“Deb! The chicken!”
”Oh, shit!”
His mom went over to the pan. A plume of smoking was coming out it.
His dad wheeled over with her. “Lemme see.”
“No, you stay right where you’re at, I’ve got this.”
But his dad was already halfway there. “We’ve got to get me some kind of special crippled guy setup so I can cook for you all again. I don’t like forcing you do to all the work.”
“Ethan! I’ve got it! Doing just fine over here.”
“Lift me up a bit.”
“Fine.” She propped him up toward the stove.
“Oh my. That does not look fine. Unless we’re doing some kind of charcoal art exhibit, heh heh! Unless we like our chicken looking like a relic they found over in Pompeii, heh heh! Or like a––wait, what is that? That’s not even chicken.”
“I said it’s just like chicken.”
“Mom says we’re not eating chicken anymore,” Deshawn chimed in from the dining table.
“Since when?” said Deshawn’s dad.
“Since I realized that animal liberation is no less worthy a cause than human liberation,” she said.
His dad scrunched up his forehead. He started anxiously playing with his suspenders. “Animal liberation…?”
“I want us to take seriously the systemic subjugation of non-human animals,” she said. “I want us to abstain from the commodification and consumption of animal bodies.”
“Well, uh…what are we eating then?”
“Tofurky,” said his mom.
“Excuse me?”
“We’re eating tofurky,” she repeated, wheeling his dad back to the table. “Don’t make that face. You haven’t even tried it yet.”
“Deb, you’re kidding. You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m not kidding.”
”I’ve had enough of this!” His dad snapped his suspenders. “What’s with all these new rules? First we replace boardgame night with ‘protest poem writing.’ Then it’s no more Amazon – ‘local businesses only!’ Then we have to go to these all these neighborhood meetings where nothing ever happens, and pretend we’re interested in their crappy little pamphlets––”
“Zines,” she corrected.
”––Then I come home today to find our HBO subscription cancelled. What’s wrong with HBO? You gonna tell me that it’s mainstream media brainwashing or something like that?”
“That’s exactly what it is.”
Deshawn’s dad boggled. “Next we’ll be making out own clothes out of stuff we find in the trash can.”
“If that means non-participation in the outsourcing of manufacturing to a global capitalist network of sweatshops – where human beings are essentially forced into indentured servitude – then yeah. Sounds like an idea to me.”
“What the hell? Where’s our vote in all this liberation stuff?”
“What about their vote? They never opted into this system, Ethan.”
“Uh, Professor Williams-Baruch,” his dad raised his hand like one of mom’s students, “can’t you see a logical contradiction between all this talk about liberation on one hand, and, uh––and imposing all these rules on your family on the other?”
“It’s Professor Truth now. In honor of Sojourner Truth.”
There was a silence.
Then: “Heh heh!” Deshawn could feel uncharacteristic stress behind his dad’s laugh. “C’mon, Deb. Professor Truth? Sounds like a character in one of those web comics the boy reads. Right, Deshawn? Isn’t there already a Professor Truth in those comics you like?”
“I just filed to get it changed. I was gonna tell you all over dinner tonight.”
“OK. All right. I know you’ve got that acting skill, but we’re getting hungry here.” His dad banged his fork and knife on the table. “Joke’s gone on for too long.”
For the past couple minutes, Deshawn had been scooting his chair further from his mother. The more his dad goaded his mom, the more her memeplex self-animated, like a nautilus waking from its shell, unfurling its feelers. Deshawn could almost sense it reaching across the table for him and his dad.
He’d been trying to analyze this memeplex it in the weeks since the Ren Faire. It seemed to be some bold new hybrid of anarchism with social justice, blending the ideology of his mom’s youth with that of her adulthood. Deshawn felt his dad walling himself off from it with each new salvo. He was walling himself off from the whole rest of his mom at the same time.
“I’m being serious right now,” his mom continued. “Surnames are a hostile cultural construct. They obscure our shared humanity while preserving lineages of wealth and oppression. And moreover, the standardization of names was developed primarily to serve as an instrument of state power.”
“Uh, OK, Professor Truth, are we still in the same family then? What are we supposed to do with our last names?”
“That’s what I was excited to make this dinner about. I want us all to be sovereign individuals in this family. We can relate to one another that way. I thought it might be fun to help you two brainstorm your own last names.”
“You mean…you want us all to change our last names?” asked Deshawn, despite knowing he shouldn’t engage.
“Yeah, honey. Wouldn’t you like to choose something that better represents your own individuality? Like, ’Guitar’ or something.”
“You want me to call myself ‘Deshawn Guitar?’”
“Hey, that sounds fun to me,” said his mom. “But no, I want you to call yourself whatever you want.”
“Heh heh!” went his dad, still trying to defuse the whole thing with laughter. “I like Deshawn Guitar! I think it’s got a nice little ring to it! Hey, Deb, how about I call myself Ethan Schematics. You know, for my technical drawings collection? Would be a great conversation starter. I’ll be like, ’The name’s Schematics. Ethan Schematics – oh speaking of which, you wanna see one of my binders? They’re really cool, I promise!’ Heh heh! Maybe I’ll make some collector friends that way. Or maybe it will be good advertising for when I finally get that book finished.”
“Sure, why not,” said his mom. “You should call yourself whatever you want.”
His dad went silent.
His mom walked over to the record player. She took out vinyl and put it on. Their dining room filled with the aggressive riffs of Rage Against the Machine. “You know I went on a date once with their lead singer?” his mom called over the noise. “He was a real sweetie that one. I was right there on the steps of the New York Stock exchange, tongue-out and head-banging, back when they shut it down in 2000, back when everyone thought the whole world was gonna end with Y2K. Whew! What a time!”
She looked at Deshawn and his dad.
“I know it’s a lot to digest, boys, but, hey, liberation from obsolete hierarchies tends to come all at once or not at all. That’s simply how it goes.” Meanwhile, she shoveled burnt Tofurky onto their plates. “Now you two just give it a try, OK?”
Next release: Something’s not right with Deshawn’s dad.