Raised in Captivity Read online

  Also by CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

  Fiction

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  The Visible Man

  Nonfiction

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  Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

  Eating the Dinosaur

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  PENGUIN PRESS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Charles Klosterman

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Klosterman, Chuck, 1972- author.

  Title: Raised in captivity : fictional nonfiction / Chuck Klosterman.

  Description: New York : Penguin Press, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018038237 (print) | LCCN 2018047295 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735217942 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735217928 (hardcover)

  Classification: LCC PS3611.L67 (ebook) | LCC PS3611.L67 A6 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038237

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also by Chuck Klosterman

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Raised in Captivity

  Execute Again

  Toxic Actuality

  How Can This Be the Place?

  The Truth About Food

  Every Day Just Comes and Goes

  Blizzard of Summer

  Of Course It Is

  Skin

  The Perfect Kind of Friend

  Cat Person

  Experience Music Project

  Pain Is a Concept by Which We Measure Our God

  What About the Children

  (An Excerpt from) A Life That Wasn’t Mine

  Not That Kind of Person

  Rhinoceros

  The Enemy Within

  The Secret

  Trial and Error

  Tricks Aren’t Illusions

  Fluke

  If Something Is Free the Product Is You

  Never Look at Your Phone

  Reality Apathy

  Reasonable Apprehension

  Just Asking Questions

  To Live in the Hearts of Those We Leave Behind Is Not to Die, Except That It Actually Is

  Tell Don’t Show

  Slang of Ages

  Slow Pop

  [ ]

  I Get It Now

  The Power of Other People

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Raised in Captivity

  It was better than anticipated, at least for the first twenty minutes. Not $1,200 better, because that’s impossible. But still: Hot towels for the jowls. Enough territory to extend your entire left leg into the aisle without fear of sanction or reprisal. A glass of orange juice while still at the gate, served in a glass made of glass. He thought to himself, “I could get used to this.” But that thought was a lie. He would never get used to this, even if it became the only way he traveled anywhere. The experience would never seem unremarkable. It would always feel gratuitous in the best possible way.

  Would he read a novel or watch a movie? Maybe neither. The chair was so supple, perhaps he’d just sit there and stare robotically ahead, fixated on the degree to which he wasn’t uncomfortable. There was Wi-Fi in the cabin. Maybe he’d send a group email to all his old high school chums, playfully bragging about the altitude from which the message had been sent. His friends didn’t understand his job, but they would understand that. He couldn’t tell them what his salary was, but he could show them how his company treated its employees. That might scan as pompous, of course. It might make him seem like a bit of a douche, and he didn’t aspire to become the kind of person he’d always been conditioned to hate. But he was proud of himself, maybe for the first time. His life had changed, and this was proof.

  He asked the attendant about the flight’s duration. She estimated just over three hours. He got up to use the lavatory, delighted by the absence of a line. He wondered if it would be different from the restrooms in coach—larger, perhaps, or cleaner. And it was. It was slightly larger and slightly cleaner. But he barely noticed those details, because it also included a puma.

  He immediately closed the door and returned to his seat.

  For a solid seventy seconds, he considered doing nothing at all. “Don’t panic. Don’t choke. There’s no way what you think you saw could possibly be the thing that it is.” He reached down into his leather satchel and felt around for his book. His father had once told him that the key to life was an ability to ignore other people’s imaginary problems. But he wasn’t sure to whom this particular problem belonged, or if it was real or imaginary, or if his father had ever considered what that advice actually implied.

  He again got up from his seat and walked to the lavatory. He cracked the door two inches ajar, enough for the automatic light to illuminate. He peered into the tiny room. There it was, sitting on the lid of the toilet, looking back with an empty intensity that matched his own.

  He closed the door and returned to his seat.

  Seeing the puma a second time did not prompt the internal reaction he’d anticipated. He was, for whatever reason, a bit ambivalent. On the one hand, he was trapped in a contained space with a two-hundred-pound cat. On the other hand, at least the puma was truly there. If the lavatory had been empty, it would have meant he was hallucinating. Better to be a noncrazy person in peril than a crazy person who was safe. He turned to the passenger sitting to his immediate right, an older man in a pinstriped suit who was drinking his second martini.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the gentleman in 2D. “This is going to sound bizarre, but . . . have you used the restroom on this flight?”

  “No,” said the man. “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know how to explain this,” he began, almost murmuring. “I don’t even know how this happened, or what this means, or what you’re supposed to do with the information I’m about to give you. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t even tell you this, although I don’t know why I would think that, since I’m sure this is something you’ll want to know. None of this makes sense. None of it. But I just got up and went to the lavatory, twice. And both times, when I opened the door, there was a puma in the bathroom.”

  “A puma?”

  “Yes. I realize how insane that must sound. I’m sorry.”

  “A puma? In the bathroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “A cougar.”

 
“Yes.”

  “A mountain lion.”

  “Yes. Sure. A mountain lion.”

  “A catamount.”

  “What? I don’t know. Maybe. Yes?”

  The older man in the pinstriped suit leaned across 2C, dipping his head into the aisle. His hair smelled like rubbing alcohol and coconut water. He studied the closed restroom door. It looked like a door. He resituated himself back in his chair, straightened his jacket by the lapels, and took a quick sip of his translucent beverage. His hands and feet were massive, too big for his frame.

  “Let me ask you something,” the older man said. “And don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not being judgmental. I’m drinking gin in the middle of the morning. I’m no priest. And you don’t seem like a kid on drugs. But tell me if you’re on drugs. We just left California. I get it.”

  “I’m not on drugs,” he replied.

  “Not even the prescription variety? Lexapro? Valium?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Any history of mental illness? Again, no offense intended.”

  “No, and I’m not offended.”

  The two men looked into each other’s eyes, hunching their shoulders and leaning closer. The interaction adopted a conspiratorial tone. They spoke in stage whispers. The other passengers barely noticed and didn’t care.

  “Tell me this,” said the older man. “What are your theories?”

  “My theories?”

  “In terms of how this could have happened.”

  “I have no idea,” the younger man said. “I have no theories.”

  “Try,” said the older man. “We’re just brainstorming. There are no wrong answers.”

  This was not what the younger man had expected to hear. But he had no expectations at all, so it wasn’t awkward or off-putting. He did what he was told.

  “I suppose it’s possible that some millionaire might own a puma as an exotic pet, and he was hauling it across the country, and it escaped from its cage in the cargo hold and crawled through the air-conditioning vents, and it somehow ended up in the bathroom.”

  “Excellent,” said the older man. “Let’s have another.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it prowled down from the Hollywood Hills and ended up at LAX, and it was drawn into the airplane hangar by the warmth of the cooling jet engines, but it got scared when the engines were restarted and scampered into the only cavelike crevice it could find, which was the restroom inside the aircraft.”

  “Less plausible,” said the older man. “But still possible. Keep going.”

  “Maybe this is a psychological experiment, and the puma is a trained puma, and I’m being watched. Maybe this is some kind of radical research project. And maybe you’re the scientist who came up with the experiment, which is why you’re seated next to me and asking these questions.”

  “That’s compelling,” said the older man. “But let me assure you—if this is a research project, I’m not part of it.”

  “Maybe this is advertising. Maybe this is some kind of guerrilla marketing for Puma basketball shoes.”

  “Too high-concept. Try again.”

  “Maybe this is a symptom of some deeper problem,” the younger person continued, oddly delighted by the older person’s interest in his improvisational hypotheses. “Maybe mankind has encroached upon nature too much, to the point of no return. Maybe animals and humans will start coming into conflict all the time, and this is the beginning of that looming crisis. Maybe in five or ten years, it will not be uncommon to encounter a puma on an airplane.”

  “Intriguing,” said the older man. “But let’s not lose focus on the moment. Keep yourself grounded.”

  “The puma could be rabid,” the younger man speculated. “Rabid animals lose their instinctual fear of humans. It might have just slinked onto the plane in a state of confusion, camouflaged by the carpet. I mean, look at the carpet. The carpet is taupe. Taupe is pure puma. Or maybe he’s some type of hypermodern service animal. Maybe instead of getting a seeing-eye dog, you can now get a seeing-eye puma. It’s also possible the TSA has started using pumas to sniff for narcotics, or maybe for bombs. Who knows? Maybe pumas are better at bomb detection than beagles.”

  “Pumas have a relatively weak sense of smell,” said the older man. “But these are viable theories.”

  “I suppose a deranged person could have done this intentionally,” the younger man said, abruptly alarmed by the prospect that he’d stumbled upon the true explanation. “A terrorist. If the intention of a terrorist is to incite terror, what would be more terrifying than being attacked by a puma on an airplane? It would change air travel forever. Who would bring an infant on a flight if there were any possibility of a puma encounter? Who would let their elderly mother travel alone? There are so many ways this could be done. It wouldn’t be difficult. You heavily sedate the puma and place it in a canvas bag. You place the bag on the outskirts of the airport and you bribe a baggage handler. The handler hauls the bag planeside and a passenger with a fake passport casually picks it up, claiming it’s hockey equipment or medical supplies or the fossilized remains of a saber-toothed cat. The passenger gets the bag on board and dumps it in the restroom, unzipped. The puma rouses itself. I realize pumas aren’t normally aggressive, but this puma is hungry, and bewildered, and trapped in a small space. He’s weaponized. Some entitled businessman with a bloated bladder opens the bathroom door. The puma pounces.”

  Their noses were now six inches apart. The old man raised his eyebrows. The younger man tried to construct an expression of concern, but he felt himself smirking. His puma theories were above average.

  “Will you be having lunch?” a female voice intoned from behind the younger man’s skull. “We have a cheese lasagna with a side salad and we have sliced chicken breast with wild ramps.” The men broke eye contact and bolted up in their seats. The younger man ordered the lasagna. The older man said he only wanted another martini. They both relaxed as the stewardess moved on to the third row and repeated the same information to the woman in 3A. She ordered the lasagna as well. The man in 3B went with the chicken. When the orders were complete, they could hear the woman in 3A ask the man in 3B if he could let her pass, as she needed to use the restroom.

  “Here we go,” said the old man in the pinstriped suit. He turned away, toward the window.

  “Shouldn’t I tell her about the puma?” asked the younger man.

  “That’s not my problem. Or yours,” said the older man, still looking away. “We’re all in this together.”

  Execute Again

  This is the tenth interview I’ve granted since the election. At this point, I feel like the backstory has been more than sufficiently covered. I thought the gal from The New York Times Magazine did an especially comprehensive job, despite getting a few key details incorrect. All of this has been addressed elsewhere, arguably to the point of overkill. That said, I do understand why certain people are enamored with my story. They think it explains so much. They think it reflects something that can’t be otherwise seen. Is that true? I suppose if people think that it does, it does. And I certainly don’t mind talking about my life, since my life is my life.

  I’m not going to rehash the biographical details. Those are easy enough to find on the Internet. I also won’t respond to statements made by any of my peers. They have the right to think or believe whatever they want. I’ll only tell you what I remember firsthand: He showed up in August, just before my junior year. There was no fanfare. It wasn’t like anybody announced, “Here’s Jasper Lovelace, the wonderful new football coach. He’s going to change everything about reality.” Remember, this was a town so small that it wasn’t even included on most Oklahoma road maps. There wasn’t a single stoplight. There was no newspaper. There was no news. We all just show up for the first day of football practice, and Lovelace is the man waiting in the equipment room. Mirrored sunglasses. Massive beard,
massive gut. Clothes from Target or Kmart. Some kids thought he seemed gay, but I’d have never made that inference on my own.

  None of this was a big deal to anyone. Nobody cared about football at my school. I didn’t care and I was on the damn team. The coach was just the coach. But I must say—this guy, this person, was immediately goofy. Immediately. For the first four days, we never touch a football. We don’t even go outside. Lovelace sits us in the school cafeteria and meticulously lectures about subjects that appear to have no application to anything related to sports. Clocks. He spends the first two hours explaining how clocks work, from a mechanical standpoint. He talks about how the ocean is 95 percent unexplored. He talks about math without using numbers. The Civil War. The Crucifixion. Chopping wood. Kierkegaard’s “philosophy of repetition,” which I’d totally forgotten about until I saw it mentioned in his obituary. There are some parables and some fairy tales and a few extremely long jokes without punch lines. It’s disjointed. It’s granular. But the big takeaway from these four interminable days is that our football team is only going to run one play, for the entire season. He mentions this, almost in passing, six or seven times. We do not take these words at face value. Why would we? What does that even mean, you know?

  On the fifth day, a Friday, we finally go outside. It’s raining like crazy. Lots of lightning, scary thunder. For a few minutes it hails, and we all wonder if maybe the firehouse will blow the tornado siren. But we stay out there. For the first hour, all we do is conditioning drills. These are like the conditioning drills Rocky Balboa did in that movie where he fights the Russian: We have to throw straw bales and run through the local swamp and shovel grain. It’s more or less unpaid farmwork, and everybody wants to quit. Farmwork was what most of us had joined the team to avoid. But there’s just something hypnotic about this fat guy with the dumb name and the dumb beard. He’s so composed. So calm, so above it all. It’s the first time any of us have ever encountered a coach who doesn’t yell and never swears. He makes all his instructions seem self-evident. We eventually walk over to the practice field and start learning this one specific play—the play he halfway explained during his little speech about Kierkegaard. It’s the most convoluted educational experience I’ve ever had, still to this day. An old classmate of mine is now a neurosurgeon, and he claims it was trickier than anything he experienced in med school. It took us a long time just to figure out how to line up in the correct formation. All eleven players—even the linemen—had to memorize all this intricate footwork, which I can only compare to learning how to foxtrot and moonwalk at the same time. Every blocker was pulling and crossing, and if any one person’s timing was microscopically imperfect we’d all collide. How can I possibly explain this? It was like one of those Rube Goldberg machines: The quarterback takes the snap and hands it to a halfback breaking to his right. That halfback immediately hands the ball to the fullback going left, and then the fullback delivers it to a wingback curling toward the middle. These three handoffs all happen within a two-second window. When it works, it all happens so fast that it almost looks like nothing happened at all. From a helicopter, the motion of the play was supposed to resemble water spiraling down a drain. It seemed impossible to get this correct. I have no idea how many attempts it took before we got it even halfway right. Way more than a hundred. Maybe closer to a thousand. A handful of guys stopped coming to practice the following Monday. Lovelace didn’t care at all. He compared them to people who believe the moon landing was faked.