My experiment blew up but no one was harmed. It proved just one thing, it turns out, that I didn’t know what I was doing. Or did I?
All of these years of not knowing what I was doing, all these years of “science”; now I had to pretend I was surprised when the experiment I’d labored so long over — that is, which I’d pretended to labor so long over — blew up or, actually, just fizzled out.
“Oh my goodness, how shocking! I’ve labored so very long, what possibly could have happened?” etc. etc. I do recoil from that kind of deceit. I want to look my colleagues in the eyes and say you know it and I know it…! but my colleagues are so much better than me; for, you see, they are not pretending to do their jobs. And when I try to look them in the eyes I see they clearly do not “know it,” nor could they ever comprehend it. I see that they are too good to ever comprehend the elaborately performative nature of what I do. And they will stumble over this question most of all: if he works so hard to pretend to work, why doesn’t he just simply work? And so I will not utter the slightest complaint about my latest failure, which will seem to them a stoic and noble resignation, which of course only further perpetuates my tragic ruse.
You would think this might be a good time to take off my lab coat and trample it underfoot and move onto whatever that thing is I do actually, assuming there is such a thing? (I’ve read that what comes easily to you but with difficulty to others is where your true talent lies — and was there anything like that for me besides pretending?) But it is as if, like that haunted automobile Christine, this white coat has a mind of its own; it can’t be hung up, it won’t be trampled underfoot, that time I immersed it in acid did nothing to it, it never even gets a spot on it, and it moves my arms and torso without me trying to, without me wanting to. Before I know it, it’s taking me back to the beakers and computers; I’m making my notes, I’m “solving” my problem sets, I’m looking with what seems, but merely seems, manic intensity down the double barrels of microscopes, knowing all of it will fizzle, knowing none of it can work.
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