Part 7 (1/2)

So even though Jeff likes to sign off as Jeff ”The Bug” Vilencia, his aspiration is really quite modest: he just wants what a bug's got-worthlessness, repulsiveness, vulnerability, squis.h.i.+ness. It's not a huge transformation. He already has most of this. And he's managed to find a positive value in it, discovered that, for him, humiliation is the fulfillment of desire. He can pay women to walk on him. But he needs more. He needs his bug-like nature to be made visible, and he needs to be forced to suffer the consequences-again and again and again.

And that's why I'm guessing he's not really a guy-bug/bug-guy, because, by necessity, none of this suffering and humiliation produces empathy or sympathy for the insect. How could it? Because suffering is pleasure and because the insect is just a container for all that dark pleasure, nothing more. The insect is the dark place that sucks up society's disgust. It is the anonymous dark place that enables relentless repet.i.tion. Squish, squish, squish. Like a baby throwing its bottle to the ground again and again, every time it's picked up, again and again, trying to figure out something that's all at once obscure and vacant. Again and again. Nothing more.

Are you feeling it? That's what counts here. Don't worry about why they're doing this, even though crush freaks themselves-cursed with the explanatory burden of a ”minority s.e.xuality”-have little choice but to fret about that all the time. b.a.s.t.a.r.d child of foot fetis.h.i.+sm, reject infant of giantessism, downcast cousin of trampling, alienated half sibling of zoophilia, evil twin of the messy thing.10 Everyone traces it to childhood, to an unantic.i.p.ated glimpse of an unfortunate episode: mother, insect, foot. In that blink of a wide-open eye, something gets made forever, something gets lost forever. Everyone traces it to childhood, to an unantic.i.p.ated glimpse of an unfortunate episode: mother, insect, foot. In that blink of a wide-open eye, something gets made forever, something gets lost forever.

To Freud, fetis.h.i.+sm is a disavowal, ”an oscillation between two logically incompatible beliefs.”11 The impossibility of resolution produces the constant return-to the foot, to the insect, to the explosive death, to the moment long ago before that bad thing happened. To the absent female phallus. Or maybe not. It doesn't seem wholly serious when you write it down like that. The impossibility of resolution produces the constant return-to the foot, to the insect, to the explosive death, to the moment long ago before that bad thing happened. To the absent female phallus. Or maybe not. It doesn't seem wholly serious when you write it down like that.

Still, it's not just crush freaks who need to know. As we'll soon see, everyone wants an origin story, everyone from Fox TV to the D.A.'s office to the Humane Society to the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Why this need to unravel causation? To make sure it doesn't happen again? To develop a cure? To nullify, justify, pathologize, normalize, criminalize? There's agreement on all sides that this stomping is a symptom of something gone wrong. The only symptoms no one feels compelled to explain are the ones revealed in these inescapable demands for explanation.

Like most of us, Jeff is thoroughly inconsistent. Unlike most of us, he is highly quotable. ”At this point in my life,” he wrote in the Journal Journal, ”I am more interested in the thing itself rather than its origin.”12 The bug gets squished. The man gets off. That's what counts. Maybe you're not feeling it. Jeff is feeling it. The bug gets squished. The man gets off. That's what counts. Maybe you're not feeling it. Jeff is feeling it.

Georges Bataille begins his inspiringly unapologetic picture book, The Tears of Eros The Tears of Eros, in the voice of the utopian manifesto. ”We are finally,” he announces, ”beginning to see the absurdity of any connection between eroticism and morality.” Morality, he tells us later, ”makes the value of an act depend on its consequences.”13 With the arrival of People v. Thomason People v. Thomason in the summer of 1999, Jeff Vilencia, America's only telegenic crush freak, found himself back in the media spotlight. But this time, everything was different. It wasn't only hapless Gary Thomason who was making headlines. Crush freaks were also keeping cops busy in Islip Terrace, a suburb of Long Island. Acting on a tip from Thomas Capriola's ex-girlfriend, the police raided the twenty-seven-year-old's bedroom and found a half dozen semiautomatic firearms, a poster of a n.a.z.i storm trooper, a fish tank full of mice, a pair of high heels coated in dried blood, and-the items that disturbed them most of all-seventy-one crush videos, which, Suffolk County prosecutors claimed, Capriola was selling through his Crush G.o.ddess website and ads in p.o.r.n magazines. in the summer of 1999, Jeff Vilencia, America's only telegenic crush freak, found himself back in the media spotlight. But this time, everything was different. It wasn't only hapless Gary Thomason who was making headlines. Crush freaks were also keeping cops busy in Islip Terrace, a suburb of Long Island. Acting on a tip from Thomas Capriola's ex-girlfriend, the police raided the twenty-seven-year-old's bedroom and found a half dozen semiautomatic firearms, a poster of a n.a.z.i storm trooper, a fish tank full of mice, a pair of high heels coated in dried blood, and-the items that disturbed them most of all-seventy-one crush videos, which, Suffolk County prosecutors claimed, Capriola was selling through his Crush G.o.ddess website and ads in p.o.r.n magazines.14 Suddenly, America was in a pincer grip. Seeping across the map like the red tide in a cold war animation, crush freaks were advancing on the heartland from both coasts. Someone had to stand and fight. Michael Bradbury, the Ventura County district attorney, held a press conference along with representatives of the Doris Day Animal League. On a sunny day in Simi Valley, in front of large-format images of insects, kittens, guinea pigs, and mice being squashed under women's feet, they launched the campaign to fast-track House Resolution 1887, a federal bill designed to criminalize the production and distribution of crush videos.15 The sponsor of the bill was Representative Elton Gallegly, a seven-term California Republican known for his energetic support of the citrus and wine industries' campaign to eradicate the gla.s.sy-winged sharpshooter leafhopper (as well as a record on immigration so hawkish that it led to his induction into the U.S. Border Patrol Hall of Fame). The sponsor of the bill was Representative Elton Gallegly, a seven-term California Republican known for his energetic support of the citrus and wine industries' campaign to eradicate the gla.s.sy-winged sharpshooter leafhopper (as well as a record on immigration so hawkish that it led to his induction into the U.S. Border Patrol Hall of Fame).16 Gallegly described the fetish as ”one of the sickest and most demented forms of animal cruelty that I've ever been exposed to.” Gallegly described the fetish as ”one of the sickest and most demented forms of animal cruelty that I've ever been exposed to.”

The campaign presented crush as a ”gateway fetish.” Just as cannabis leads inexorably to crack, its spokespeople argued, fetis.h.i.+sts might begin innocuously enough with grapes and worms, but-step by step-they will be drawn up the ladder of Creation, until, in Bradbury's lurid scenario, it won't be long before someone ”pay[s] $1 million to have a kid crushed.”17 To underline the point, one of his deputies testified to having seen a video in which a baby doll was trampled underfoot. Seventy-eight-year-old former child star Mickey Rooney piped up. ”Put a stop, won't you, to crush videos,” he begged. ”What are we gonna hand our children? This is what we're going to hand down, these videos, crush videos? G.o.d forbid.” To underline the point, one of his deputies testified to having seen a video in which a baby doll was trampled underfoot. Seventy-eight-year-old former child star Mickey Rooney piped up. ”Put a stop, won't you, to crush videos,” he begged. ”What are we gonna hand our children? This is what we're going to hand down, these videos, crush videos? G.o.d forbid.”18 As the bill headed to Congress, Jeff became the go-to guy for the entire media. For a few intense weeks, he was inundated with requests from radio stations, magazines, and newspapers. Perhaps seduced by that peculiarly American brew of idealism, exhibitionism, and celebrity seeking, he ignored the advice of a lawyer friend. Perhaps naively, he made himself available to all requests. (”I thought, Well, that's not fair because, first of all, we didn't do anything wrong....”) Still, for a while at least, he was able to give himself some cover. In interviews, he declared that he had ceased production of videos until all legal questions were resolved, and he drew a sharp line between the ”vermin” featured in his own movies-specifically insects-and the mammals with which Bradbury, Gallegly, and Rooney were especially preoccupied. He didn't believe crush videos of domestic mammals actually existed, he said, but if they did, he certainly had no interest in them. I at first a.s.sumed this demarcation was a legalistic maneuver Jeff was using to protect himself in the midst of a dangerous moral panic. But then I realized it was a distinction fundamental to his fetish. Of course, he maintained, he had no interest in stomping on domestic pets. Even rodents, he told the a.s.sociated Press, are ”too furry, too animal-looking.”19 Jeff's argument was the same now as it had been on the talk show circuit in 1993. He took aim at those like Tom Connors, the Ventura County deputy D.A., who claimed it was the method, not the fact, of killing animals that was at issue. In Jeff's view, it was the very fact of killing animals that was wrong. The method was irrelevant. His critique was systemic. (”Look,” he told me, ”America's seventy-five percent grossly obese-you don't think they got there eating f.u.c.kin' vegetables?”) Killing animals was endemic to capitalist society. What was at stake in the fight over crush videos, he argued, was the hypocrisy of a society that turned a blind eye to the daily ma.s.s slaughter of all kinds of animals but threw up its arms in horror when a tiny number of people killed for s.e.xual pleasure. Jeff, it turned out, was a vegan and an animal rights activist.

”What about the fur industry, what about fishermen, what about the cattle industry?” he asked the BBC. ”You can kill anything you want, basically, in any manner you want if it's for food or for sport or for fas.h.i.+on, but you cross the line when you do it for s.e.xual gratification.”20 And anyway, he added, if we're honest, don't we all know that the excitement of the bullfighter and the thrill of the hunter is a s.e.xual thrill, a s.e.xual excitement. They're getting off on killing. The problem here is that crush freaks don't pretend otherwise. ”I thought,” Jeff told me, ”I'm going to tell the world it might be reprehensible and gross, but it's not anything worse than what everybody does on a day-to-day basis.” Or as he put it in a live encounter with Elton Gallegly on Court TV: ”Our fine Congressman says there's a humane way to kill vermin. That's a colloquialism. Killing is killing. You kill them fast, you kill them slow. I wonder if the Congressman has ever seen a sticky trap or a snap trap. There's nothing humane about them.” And anyway, he added, if we're honest, don't we all know that the excitement of the bullfighter and the thrill of the hunter is a s.e.xual thrill, a s.e.xual excitement. They're getting off on killing. The problem here is that crush freaks don't pretend otherwise. ”I thought,” Jeff told me, ”I'm going to tell the world it might be reprehensible and gross, but it's not anything worse than what everybody does on a day-to-day basis.” Or as he put it in a live encounter with Elton Gallegly on Court TV: ”Our fine Congressman says there's a humane way to kill vermin. That's a colloquialism. Killing is killing. You kill them fast, you kill them slow. I wonder if the Congressman has ever seen a sticky trap or a snap trap. There's nothing humane about them.”21 Gallegly's bill sailed through Congress by a vote of 37242 in the House and unanimous acclaim in the Senate. Nonetheless, there was significant unease about the law's First Amendment implications. This was a bill written to criminalize content-”the depiction of animal cruelty”-and before it reached the floor of the House, it was substantially revised in the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime to allow exceptions ”if the material in question has serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historic, or artistic value.”22 Despite that, a number of representatives, most notably Robert Scott (D-Va.), argued strongly that the bill was still too broad (”Films of animals being crushed are communications about the acts depicted, not doing the acts”) and failed to demonstrate compelling government interest (a test established by the Supreme Court in 1988 for First Amendment cases).23 On this point, it was clear from the Supreme Court's upholding of the rights of the Santeria church of Luk.u.mi Babalu Aye in 1993 against a Hialeah, Florida, city ordinance banning animal sacrifice that, despite the arguments of animal rights activists, the welfare of animals was not recognized in law as sufficient grounds to restrict First Amendment speech. On this point, it was clear from the Supreme Court's upholding of the rights of the Santeria church of Luk.u.mi Babalu Aye in 1993 against a Hialeah, Florida, city ordinance banning animal sacrifice that, despite the arguments of animal rights activists, the welfare of animals was not recognized in law as sufficient grounds to restrict First Amendment speech.24 So what might const.i.tute the compelling state interest in crush videos? Representative after representative rose in support of Gallegly's bill to secure the link between violence toward animals and violence toward people. They invoked spousal abuse, elder abuse, child abuse, and even school shootings. Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) summarized the logic of this animal protection legislation most succinctly of all: ”This is about children,” he informed the Speaker of the House, ”not about beetles.”25 Still, the real headline grabbers were the celebrity serial killers. What did Ted Bundy, Ted ”the Unabomber” Kaczynski, and David ”Son of Sam” Berkowitz have in common? Gallegly had the answer: ”They all tortured or killed animals before they started killing people.”26 It made good copy, but I doubt even the politicians believed this link between crush videos and ma.s.s murder. After all, many of them had already listened to Susan ”Minnie” Creede, the D.A.'s undercover investigator, as she testified before the Subcommittee on Crime about the psychology of the crush fetis.h.i.+st. After almost a year in the Crushcentral chat room, Creede was an expert witness.

”They spoke about their fetishes and how they developed,” she told the committee.

For many of them the fetish developed as a result of something they saw at a very early age, and it usually occurred before the age of five. Most of these men saw a woman step on something. She was usually someone who was significantly in their lives. They were excited by the experience and somehow attached their s.e.xuality to it.As these men grew older, the woman's foot became a part of their s.e.xuality. The power and dominance of the woman using her foot was significant to them. They began to fantasize about the thought of being the subject under the woman's foot. They fantasized about the power of the woman, and how she would be able to crush the life out of them if she chose to do so. Many of these men love to be trampled by women. Some like to be trampled by a woman wearing shoes or high heels. Others like to be trampled by women who are barefoot. They prefer to be hurt and the more indifferent the woman is to their pain, the more exciting it is for them.I have learned that the extreme fantasy for these men is to be trampled or crushed to death under the foot of a powerful woman. Because they would only be able to experience this one time, these men have found a way to transfer their fantasy and excitement. They have learned that if they watch a woman crush an animal or live creature to his death, they can fantasize that they are that animal experiencing death at the foot of this woman.27 Congressman Gallegly also heard much the same thing from Jeff Vilencia during their encounter on Court TV. ”The viewer identifies with the victim,” Jeff stated flatly in an attempt to counter Gallegly's alarming claim that crush freaks were dangerous s.a.d.i.s.ts. The fetish ”starts in childhood, when the child observes an adult person, usually a woman, stepping on an insect,” he continued, echoing Creede, his legal nemesis. ”He becomes s.e.xually aroused, sort of by happenstance, and as he becomes an adolescent, he eroticizes his behavior in his s.e.xuality, and it becomes a part of his love map-” (”His love map love map?” interrupted the host incredulously.) Without an origin story, how else can Jeff refute Gallegly's fantasies of the crush freak as the protoserial killer and the insect as the proto-baby? There's no s.p.a.ce for refusal. At the center of a frighteningly unstable public debate (TV host: ”Jeff Vilencia, are you a tiny bit afraid you're going to be prosecuted? You're the one producing these films”), explanation is Jeff's only option. He has to explain that his fetish has a specific history that ties it to specific objects, that it is m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic, and that masochism-as the philospher Gilles Deleuze argues in his famous discussion of Sacher-Masoch-is not a complementary form of sadism but part of an entirely distinct formation. A ”s.a.d.i.s.t could never tolerate a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic victim,” writes Deleuze, and ”neither would the m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t tolerate a truly s.a.d.i.s.tic torturer.” The distinctions abound: the m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t demands a ritualized fantasy, he creates an anxiety-filled suspense, he exhibits his humiliation, he demands punishment to resolve his anxiety and heighten his forbidden pleasure, and-quite unlike the s.a.d.i.s.t and with Sacher-Masoch as the locus cla.s.sicus-he needs a binding contract with his torturess, who, through the contract (which, in truth, is no more than the m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t's word), becomes the embodiment of law.28 But if only it really were that straightforward. When, in a reflective moment, Jeff tells me that the one thing he learned from all of this was that ”women are really cruel, just really evil, man,” and he says it bleakly, with not a hint of teasing, I see that I haven't quite got the hang of this, and I'm not sure that Deleuze has either. Isn't the point that cruelty is part of a compact, that there is agreement, tacit or explicit, about boundaries and needs? Isn't that what all Jeff's banter with Elizabeth and Mich.e.l.le is probing? Admittedly, at the end of Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs Venus in Furs, Wanda lets loose her Greek lover on Severin with the full force of his hunting whips. It's horrible, and unexpected too. But it's also a momentous effort on her part to finally break his dependency, to enforce that break by unambiguously stepping outside the contract. Wanda strains for the gesture that will free them both without the death of either. Under this a.s.sault, writes Sacher-Masoch, Severin ”curled up like a worm being crushed.” All the poetry is whipped out of him. When it is finally over, he is a changed man. ”There is only one alternative,” he tells the narrator, ”to be the hammer or the anvil.” Henceforth, he'll be the one doing the whipping.29 But could this be what happened to Jeff too? Only differently? Did the furies of Fox News strip him of his pleasures? Was that tense but playful self somehow swept away in the storm of disgust that poured down on him? The wrong kind of suffering. Game over, lights on. Cruelty is suddenly just cruelty, Mich.e.l.le is just Mich.e.l.le, stomping on animals and maybe actually enjoying it. No longer a G.o.ddess, no longer exciting. Just mean.

Such a long road to get here. A road paved with explanation. Explanation was straightforward for investigator Susan Creede. Her task before the House subcommittee was to manufacture an object that could be acted upon by the law. Think of her as the forensic expert narrating the corpse. But it's so much more complicated for Jeff Vilencia. It's not simply the demands of the moment that force him to speak Creede's language. Among the DVDs, videos, books, audiotapes, unpublished writings, and press clippings he sent me when we first talked was an unexpected item: a three-page article he'd written called ”Fetishes/ Paraphilia/Perversions.” The essay begins programmatically: ”Perversions are unusual or important modifications of the expected pattern of s.e.xual arousal. One form is fetis.h.i.+sm, of which crush fetis.h.i.+sm is an example.” It goes on to describe seven theories of fetish formation (”oxytocin theory,” ”faulty s.e.xualization theory,” ”lack of available female contact theory,” and so on) and includes as an appendix a discussion of the seventeen ”possible stages of fetish development basic to the modified conditioning theory” which both Jeff and Susan Creede used to explain the birth of the crush freak to Congressman Gallegly.

At the time I didn't understand why Jeff wanted me to have this essay. Nor did I understand why he had dedicated Smush Smush to Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the pioneering nineteenth-century Viennese s.e.xologist whose to Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the pioneering nineteenth-century Viennese s.e.xologist whose Psychopathia s.e.xualis Psychopathia s.e.xualis doc.u.mented ”aberrant” s.e.xual practices as medical phenomena. But then I got to the second volume of doc.u.mented ”aberrant” s.e.xual practices as medical phenomena. But then I got to the second volume of The American Journal of the Crush-Freaks The American Journal of the Crush-Freaks, published in 1996, which is subt.i.tled: ”Just where do we fit in, in all of this?” In the introduction, Jeff writes: Imagine all of the shame you would feel having no one to talk to about your desires. It is as alone as one could feel. You might as well be stranded on an island someplace.Well those dark days are behind us now. As we move towards the 21st century, and as various s.e.xual groups have come out over the years, I cannot see any reason that people should feel shame any more....There are more choices today than there ever were. When I was a kid, I was a crush-freak, only I didn't know what to call myself. Today, I know who I am, and more important, I know why why I am. I am.

It was that why why that mattered: ”As a child I had a knack for getting in trouble. As an adult I look forward to telling the world my s.e.xuality. I am willing to take all my critics on. I have appeared on television and radio, major newspapers, and adult fetish magazines. I have spoken at four different universities in Southern California. I also produce videotapes that I sell to my fellow crush-freaks for masturbation purposes. Trouble comes to town and his name is Jeff Vilencia!” that mattered: ”As a child I had a knack for getting in trouble. As an adult I look forward to telling the world my s.e.xuality. I am willing to take all my critics on. I have appeared on television and radio, major newspapers, and adult fetish magazines. I have spoken at four different universities in Southern California. I also produce videotapes that I sell to my fellow crush-freaks for masturbation purposes. Trouble comes to town and his name is Jeff Vilencia!”30

When Bill Clinton signed H.R. 1887 into law on December 9, 1999, he issued a statement instructing the Justice Department to construe the act narrowly, as applicable only to ”wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in s.e.x.”31 In the years since, perhaps wary of the legislation's frailty, prosecutors have used it only three times. On each occasion-and contrary to Clinton's directive-they wielded it against distributors of dog-fighting videos. In July 2008, a federal appeals court struck down the law, agreeing with Robert Scott that the First Amendment does not allow the government to ban depictions of illegal conduct (as opposed to that conduct itself). In October 2009, the Supreme Court heard an appeal from the government backed by animal rights groups. In the years since, perhaps wary of the legislation's frailty, prosecutors have used it only three times. On each occasion-and contrary to Clinton's directive-they wielded it against distributors of dog-fighting videos. In July 2008, a federal appeals court struck down the law, agreeing with Robert Scott that the First Amendment does not allow the government to ban depictions of illegal conduct (as opposed to that conduct itself). In October 2009, the Supreme Court heard an appeal from the government backed by animal rights groups.32 No matter the fate of H.R. 1887, for Jeff Vilencia there is no going back from those few hot weeks in the fall of 1999. Jeff tells me how his radio and TV interviews were edited to make him monstrous, how he tried to play the unedited tapes for his family but they believed only the broadcast versions. He tells me how his niece-in the name of her new baby-led his mother on a tour of websites that featured crush videos or specifically targeted him. ”I lost friends, my brothers and sisters ... I mean, it was just a horrible ordeal. I was almost isolated. I mean, I had no friends, no one wanted to talk to me, you know, and I just thought ... you know ...” He trailed off. He tells me how he quit video making entirely. ”I just got to the point of giving up on life.” He tells me how it's since been impossible to find a job because these days employers automatically Google their applicants.

So here we are on the featureless patio outside that suburban Starbucks, and he's telling me that he learned two things from all this: that women are ”really cruel b.i.t.c.hes” and that ”perversions are best left in the closet, buried in the dark.” He's telling me about the men who were inspired by his example to come out to their girlfriends and wives and how in all cases their lives fell to pieces. And he's telling me that he needs love too and that now he has someone who gives it to him but doesn't want him talking about all this anymore. And he checks my watch nervously, leans back in his chair, looks out across the parking lot, sighs, and says softly: ”Seems like a dream, man ...”

Go to YouTube, search for ”crush videos,” and see what you get. There's a lot up there. Short, poor-quality home videos of women stepping on crickets, worms, snails, lots of squishy soft fruit. Some of the clips have had tens of thousands of views, most have a few thousand, one has a couple of hundred thousand. It's a long way from the underground trade of expensive Super 8 film in the 1950s and '60s and even from the back-of-the-p.o.r.n-mags sales in the '80s and '90s. If YouTube doesn't meet your need, it's easy to find longer and more professional product on the many specialist websites that are trading entirely openly despite Gallegly's legislation.

Gallegly himself allowed for this future. At one point in the debate on H.R. 1887, he took the floor to clarify a crucial point. ”This has nothing to do with bugs and insects and c.o.c.kroaches, things things like that,” he told his colleagues. ”This has to do with like that,” he told his colleagues. ”This has to do with living animals living animals like kittens, monkeys, hamsters, and so on and so forth.” like kittens, monkeys, hamsters, and so on and so forth.”33 For a moment, there's something on which everyone can agree. There are animals that matter, and there are things that don't. And then Gallegly draws breath, and before you know it, he's off again about Ted Bundy, the Unabomber, and the safety of our children. For a moment, there's something on which everyone can agree. There are animals that matter, and there are things that don't. And then Gallegly draws breath, and before you know it, he's off again about Ted Bundy, the Unabomber, and the safety of our children.

Temptation

It was August 1877, and Baron Carl Robert Osten-Sacken, a Russian aristocrat recently retired as the czar's consul general in New York, had stopped for a few days at Gurnigel, ”the well-known watering-place near Bern.”1 The baron was forty-nine years old and at a turning point in his life. He would spend a year traveling in Europe before arriving in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, where, once more in the New World but freed from imperial service, he would settle at Harvard's famous Museum of Comparative Zoology, and spend the rest of his days pursuing his pa.s.sion for flies. Some thirty years later, his obituarist would describe him as ”the beau ideal beau ideal of a scientific entomologist,” citing his mastery of relevant languages, his independence of means, his elevated social rank, his prodigious memory, exceptional observation skills, ”almost perfect” library of works on the Diptera, and naturally, his impeccable manners. of a scientific entomologist,” citing his mastery of relevant languages, his independence of means, his elevated social rank, his prodigious memory, exceptional observation skills, ”almost perfect” library of works on the Diptera, and naturally, his impeccable manners.2 Strolling one morning in the Alpine woods behind his hotel, the baron's eye was caught by something quite new to him, something he suspected was ”unique in entomology.” It was not yet ten o'clock, but the sun was already high in the sky. Above his head, zigzagging among the shafts of light slicing through the shadows of the fir trees, were swarms of tiny flies. ”What attracted my attention,” he wrote that October in an enthusiastic note from Frankfurt, was ”the uncommonly brilliant white or silvery reflection which they gave in crossing the sunbeam.”

The baron gave chase with his net, caught one with his forceps, and was ”astonished to find a much smaller fly than I had expected, and without anything silvery about it.” The insect he held was dull gray and thoroughly unremarkable looking.

Tiny things can be slow to reveal their secrets. But Baron Osten-Sacken's exceptional observation skills yielded a clue: ”I perceived on the gauze of my forceps, not far from the fly, a flake of opaque, white film-like substance, oval, about 2 mm. long, and so light, that the faintest breath of air could lift it.” He thinks of the fine silk spun by ballooning spiders preparing for takeoff. ”But for its much lesser weight, it might also be compared to the petal of a small white flower.” He catches another, then another, and each time pulls from his net a male fly clutching under its body the same diaphanous structure. He concludes that ”these bits of white tissue, which they waved like flags behind them,” are the source of the brilliant reflection. But he has no idea what they are or why the flies carry them.

The baron was the first entomologist to encounter balloon flies, as these insects came to be known. But he was by no means the last. In the decades following his discovery, more and more of these animals were described. All turned out to be male. All carried an object of some kind. And all of them belonged to the Empididae, the so-called dance flies, famous for their huge flittering swarms.

In 1955, Edward Kessel, a.s.sociate curator of insects at the California Academy of Sciences, wrote a definitive paper on the balloon empidids in which he suggested that the baron and his successors had been unlucky enough to have stumbled upon a limit case.3 It was as if, knowing only European painting of the late nineteenth century, these gentlemen entomologists had wandered into the art museum and met a wall of Mark Rothkos. They had come upon an abstraction, an inscrutable object that betrayed no trace of the original from which it was distilled. Really, encountered like this, these flakes of white tissue could have been anything, anything at all, even the ”aeronautical surfboards” proposed by Josef Mik in 1888. It was as if, knowing only European painting of the late nineteenth century, these gentlemen entomologists had wandered into the art museum and met a wall of Mark Rothkos. They had come upon an abstraction, an inscrutable object that betrayed no trace of the original from which it was distilled. Really, encountered like this, these flakes of white tissue could have been anything, anything at all, even the ”aeronautical surfboards” proposed by Josef Mik in 1888.

But over time, Kessel wrote, observers noticed that the male balloon fly always presented his substance to a female fly and, soon after, the two of them had s.e.x. Rather coyly, entomologists called these objects ”nuptial gifts,” a euphemism still widely used today. Some of the gifts consisted simply of an unadorned dead insect, in others the corpse was bound in frothy or silky tissue (sometimes casually, sometimes carefully), and in some there was no body at all, the elaborate wrapping itself being the offering.

Kessel created an evolutionary history of the empidid gift. He described a hierarchy of species defined by their gift-giving habits, from the primitive to the urbane, the crude to the refined. It was an eight-stage history in which the object in question evolved from something obvious in the most material way (food) to something subtle, recondite, and arguably immaterial (a symbol).4 Empidids are predatory carnivores, and much as it is for praying mantises and many spiders, their s.e.x life is a fraught affair. The way Kessel tells it, the males have become calculating cynics, the females capricious and, as luck would have it, easily distracted. His males-no surprise here-do just about anything for s.e.x; his females, material girls all the way, do whatever it takes to get the bauble. It's very mid-1950s, very Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, very film noir too, except that instead of taking place in a nightclub, this is all happening in what biologists call a lek, an arena where the males perform for attention and the females get to pick from the a.s.sembled ”eligible bachelors.”

The stakes are high. Kessel's males are c.o.c.ky and cunning, but edgy and anxious too. They're calibrating for optimum mileage, making sure their temptations cost as little as possible but still do the job. They're really good dancers. They're constantly watching their backs. Kessel was right that Osten-Sacken could never have figured this out.

Kessel found species of empidids for each of his eight evolutionary stages. From the most primitive, in which ”the male does not bear a wedding gift for his bride,” to a second stage, in which he carries ”a wedding present in the form of a juicy insect,” to a third, in which ”the prey has become the stimulus for mating,” to a fourth, in which ”the prey is more or less entangled in silky threads.”

Kessel and his wife, Berta, found the fifth stage in Marin County, north of San Francisco, and named it Empis bullifera Empis bullifera for the sticky bubbles it uses to make its container. They spent the summer of 1949 observing mating pairs ”drifting in lazy flight, first in one direction and then in another, back and forth within the clearing under the trees, their glistening white balloons producing flashes whenever they penetrate a sunbeam.” They watched the animals meet in the air, watched them embrace, and watched the males present the females with balloons containing a midge, a spider, or a tiny psocid. Then they wrote an article together announcing the new species, which they published in 1951 in the for the sticky bubbles it uses to make its container. They spent the summer of 1949 observing mating pairs ”drifting in lazy flight, first in one direction and then in another, back and forth within the clearing under the trees, their glistening white balloons producing flashes whenever they penetrate a sunbeam.” They watched the animals meet in the air, watched them embrace, and watched the males present the females with balloons containing a midge, a spider, or a tiny psocid. Then they wrote an article together announcing the new species, which they published in 1951 in the Wasmann Journal of Biology. Wasmann Journal of Biology.

In the sixth and seventh stages, the male has sucked the prey dry before giving it to his partner. All she receives is an inedible husk. Nonetheless, the familiar sequence unfolds: the flies embrace, the balloon changes hands (well, legs actually), and s.e.x ensues. The eighth, and final, stage was the one witnessed by the baron. Among Hilara sartor Hilara sartor and a few other species, the enigmatic gift contains no prey at all, not even the withered sh.e.l.l. and a few other species, the enigmatic gift contains no prey at all, not even the withered sh.e.l.l.

Kessel emphasized distinctions among species. So do contemporary biologists, but they also recognize a good deal of within-species variation. They describe dance fly species in which males offer both large and small presents and others in which they offer both edible and inedible ones. They also describe males whose prey gifts are hunted from their own species and others who eschew insect prey altogether to gather entirely different gifts-flower petals, for example. Despite this variety of behavior, the small number of researchers who study these little flies still closely follow Kessel's account of an evolutionary Diptera economicus Diptera economicus, in which males do everything they can to minimize their energy output and maximize their reproductive return, relentlessly downgrading their gifts in the effort to get cheaper and cheaper s.e.x.

This subst.i.tution of ”empty gifts” for nutritious ones has become a famous case of ”male cheating,” an idea that doesn't require just the males' shrewd duplicity but also relies on the females' slowness.5 Even when the gifts are ”worthless,” even when they're just the cheapest gimcracks-plain cotton b.a.l.l.s provided by biologists, for example-the researchers describe the foolish female fly giving the fake-gift giver what he wants, or at least the researchers see the female taking so long to catch on to the phoniness of her reward that she's given her partner what he wants before she realizes she's had nothing in return. Tricked. Deceived. f.u.c.ked. Over and over and over. Even when the gifts are ”worthless,” even when they're just the cheapest gimcracks-plain cotton b.a.l.l.s provided by biologists, for example-the researchers describe the foolish female fly giving the fake-gift giver what he wants, or at least the researchers see the female taking so long to catch on to the phoniness of her reward that she's given her partner what he wants before she realizes she's had nothing in return. Tricked. Deceived. f.u.c.ked. Over and over and over.

Or so the story goes.

Writing about Ellis Island, the French novelist Georges Perec found himself haunted by what might have been, by what he called ”potential memory.”

”It concerns me, it fascinates me,” he wrote, ”it involves me, it questions me.” Broken by the deportation of his mother from Paris to Auschwitz when he was six years old, Perec kept running into histories that could have been his own, a boy who veers down a monochrome side street half a block ahead, ”a life-story that might have been mine,” ”a probable autobiobiography,” ”a memory that might have belonged to me,” books full of absences, a novel without the letter e e, a novella that lacks the other vowels: a, i, o a, i, o, and u. u.6 These fictive histories aren't just imaginative games. They're hard facts of existence that weigh down the present with paths not taken. We all have them: the discarded negatives of decisions whose weight only later becomes clear, the psychic resonances that complete the life we do have, the life that does get made. When Sharon s.h.i.+vers without warning, she says, ”Someone just walked over my grave.”

Kessel saw that Osten-Sacken's flies flittered not only in the open forest but also in a narrative vacuum. How could the baron and those who followed him take these inscrutable flakes-like petals but so much less substantial-and build a story when there was no history? What could they do when none of the signs signified, when all they had was gossamer? The beauty touched them. But that just made it worse. Without even potential histories, how could they understand what might be, what might have been, and what now was?