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’ Connor over to me.
    “ Hey there, McGovern, ” the Dubliner said . “ Been a while since I ’ ve seen you. Working hard or hardly working? ” As he spoke he gave his head a slight shake, an obvious testament to the uncomfortable effects of the sound that was somewhere in the air.
    “ Pat, ” I said, glancing around the pub, “ do you hear that noise? ”
    “ Does the pope shit in the woods? Yeah, been hearing it for a couple of days now. Damndest thing. Any ideas? ”
    “ Not a clue. But I ’ m glad I ’ m not going crazy. ”
    “ I think it ’ s the power lines, ” he suggested. “ Or that new complex down the street . . . they got that free internet set-up. Uses all them cables and whatnot. That ’ s probably what it is. Damn annoying. I ’ m gonna call the electric company if it don ’ t stop soon, give them a piece of my mind. ”
    “ Yeah, ” I replied, knowing full well that such connections did not create irr itable resonances.
    A pair of twenty-somethings walked in, wearing jeans three sizes too big and t-shirts with marijuana leaves on them. They sat next to me at the bar and one of t hem waved for Pat ’ s attention.
    “ Muthafucka! ” the bleached-blond one said, “ Yo, Pat, you got the windows o pen or sumptin. You gotta shut ’ em. My ears are killing me, yo. ”
    Pat told the kid that the windows were all closed. 
    The kid ’ s friend, an angry-looking man with a shaved head and sideburns that met under his nose, sl ammed his fist on the bar. “ Fuck , man, this shizzle is givin ’ me a straight-up headache. I can ’ t hear myself think or nuthin ’ . ”
    Blondy pretended to swat a fly for emphasis. “ For rizzle, my nizzle. ”
    My ears, hurting though they already were, seemed to throb a bit more at such poor English. I was unaware that I was staring at them until the blond addressed me.
    “ What up, Pop? I look funny to you or something? ” He turned to his bald friend, said, “ Yo, dog, check this muthafucka out. Like he ’ s mesmerized by my beauty an ’ shit. ”
    “ Straight up, Bee. Pops thinks you a shorty or sumptin. ”
    I felt like I was back in my classroom just last week, listening to the devolution of language by the same primates who would someday be wiping my ass in an old folks home. As an author and teacher who had devoted his life to the written word it disgusted me to hear such ignorant speech. Don ’ t get me wrong, I ’ m all about colloquialisms and fun s lang. I remember saying Far Out and Groovy and confusing my father unti l he just shook his head at me. The last ten years teaching high school English gave me the ability to interpret teenage nonsense, but the way these idiots talked sounded like someone had injected a vi rus into the nature of coherent communication . As I listened to these two youths, who probably spelled “ ask ” by rearranging the last two letters, I couldn ’ t help but fear for the art I loved so dearly. It was bad enough all these horror and sci fi authors were making the bestseller lists, with their penchants for gore and sex and robots—-such drivel—but to think one day there might be nov els published in such incoherent nonsense made me want to leap off the nearest cliff.
    “ Sorry, ” I said, and ordered a whiskey from Pat. I drank it down and left.
     
     
    III
     
    The weekend passed, a meaningless couple of days to a newly jobless man such as myself. The high-pitched sound rose steadily and I now found myself getting a headache, eating Tylenol as if they were Tic Tacs and stuffing cotton balls in my ears. I finally called the electric company and tried to get some answers. They had a prerecorded message saying they were aware of the problem and were trying to solve it.
    I sat in front of my computer, desperately trying to ignore the noise and complete chapters to a novel I ’ d started years ago. Again, though, my writer ’ s block kept me from turning out anything meaningful, so I turned the computer