Our first date is at an Italian restaurant in the Upper East Side with fake brick walls. The waiter sits us down and says, “Welcome to the old country.” The fake walls are peeling away from their glue. They’re warping. They’re old.
During dinner, my date says, “I don’t get why men call me Daddy in bed,” and I say, “It’s an easy word for the mouth to make.” Fred stares at my lips, charmed. I haven’t been charming in years. I refill our wine.
Fred is a pediatrician. He has sharp, boxy features that would’ve been handsome in the ‘80s and are more or less handsome now. He’s worried about a patient who’s gotten strep twice this year. “Those tonsils are coming out,” he says. “So old fashioned,” I say. My mouth is effortless tonight.
I’m enjoying the date. Fred is a comfortable companion. He’s a hiker. He talks about Mount Everest as if it’s still an unconquerable killer. He draws the safest route on the table with his pinkie. I work at a framing store. We discuss Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon. “Timeless,” he says. “Timeless,” I say. Somehow Greg Louganis comes up, and what our mothers made us for dinner as kids. And now it’s clear we’re having an old, rote conversation. I’m concerned for my brain. It’s out of style. I try to be charming again. “I’ve never once sliced a tomato,” I say. But I’ve used that line for years.
For two periods in my life, I fit with the top of the world: from third grade to sixth and again when I was 22. During that first period, I was taller than my classmates and got called on the most for answers. I knew the answers. Most of my friends did too, but a second or so after me. In fifth grade, I taught 300 kids a hoppy, aerobic dance to Since U Been Gone for field day. “A leader,” Mrs. Stevens called me. Then in middle school my brain averaged out to everyone else’s. I wasn’t called on as much. I felt unremarkable, unimportant. I might’ve been. In 2015, the second period came. In college, I studied studio art. 3-D printing was a young technology. I was a 22-year-old who knew how to use it. An architecture firm hired me to help make their models. I was glad to be in demand. My hands were in charge of the buttons. Then a year later, the firm brought on an architect who could 3-D print. They fired me.
Fred and I leave the restaurant. He walks me down Third Avenue to his apartment. I say, “Wait, people still use ‘Daddy’ in bed?” We pass an actor who was famous eight years ago. She looks soft-skinned, knowing, bright. She looks like she’ll be famous again. If I could be famous…
At Fred’s apartment, he shows me the bloated parka he’ll wear when he’s got enough money to climb Mount Everest. “At least the trip is cheaper now,” he says, “than at the height of its popularity.” I say, “Will you go to be closer to the top of the world?” He doesn’t know what I mean. Then we’re kissing on his bed, dated by its carved headboard, swoopy and wooden like my Mom’s. He kisses me with tight, awkward lips, like we’re middle schoolers who can’t handle passion or spit. We should be in an apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows so the world can look in on our bodies. Our bodies are ones to applaud. They’re sleek but hairy, angular, firm. I stand Fred up from the bed. We’re in nothing but tight underwear. Do the people-to-watch still wear underwear? I walk backward with my arms around his waist, pulling him forward, kissing him like an adult. He crushes my foot but I keep us moving. I lead him out of the front door into the hallway. We belong in a place where movement happens. “What are we doing?” he asks. I press my hips into his. I spread my chest for the building. But he leads me inside a minute later. No one has a chance to admire us.
I am a man who feels ignored. Fred is a man who wouldn’t notice whether or not he’s ignored.
Before leaving Fred’s apartment, he sits at his desk and answers an email from a distressed parent. I stand behind him like a bucket forgotten in the back of a closet. Do children still play with buckets? No, they must play with wires now, not sand, software now, not food. Fred offers a calm, diffusing diagnosis to the parent, who replies: Lifesaver!!!!! I’ll never see Fred again.
***
I’m sure I’ll realign with the world. I’ll have the right idea for 2035, the right face for 2036. Or I’ll have the right voice for 2040. My voice is too deep for 2025. No one hears when I speak.
At work, I frame a reproduction of a Rembrandt sketch. Rembrandt will be in style forever. I want to accelerate my calibration with the world. There must exist a scenario where I’m favored every couple years instead of every 15 or 20. I tried once to speed up this harmonization. At 26, I made the effort to visit five new exhibition openings each week. I talked to as many people as I could. I showed several of them my undergraduate metallic robot paintings. They weren’t impressed by my hand.
For 31 years, Labrador Retrievers were the most popular dog to adopt in America. But in 2022, French Bulldogs became top pet. I prefer chihuahuas.
In bed, it’s easy to feel hidden and small. So I think about 3-D printing and how important it has become. The machines shine in the world. There are printed homes now and printed robot parts and printed ears made out of human tissue. If the technology existed when I was in grade school, I could’ve printed luxurious, advanced forms, forms that would’ve led me into a life as a famous sculptor or a renowned architect or at least a handy designer of cars. As I’m dozing, I imagine myself in a kindergarten classroom. I’m a teacher, I’m modern and green-haired, with my laser pointer waving at a 3-D printer, with a flock of wonderstruck children watching plastic jetting out of the nozzle. I imagine us in The New York Times; the children hold collars they printed for dogs; I hold up the petite printer; I drape its cord over my shoulder.
Every day now, I walk to work ready to be tall in the world again. When I was at the architecture firm, I found a nimble strut. Back then, I was ushered into each new hour a minute ahead of the clock. But lately my eyes fall shut when I walk down the street, closing for two seconds or more. There’s nothing important to see, they think. There is, I think. But I let them be. They’re resting as much as they can. It’s a good time to rest. Stay closed until the excitement.
An old teacher of mine connects me with the principal of an elementary school in Brooklyn. Inside her rose-scented office, we discuss my idea for a 3-D printing club. She likes the thought of her students manipulating plastics for good. “And the math skills,” I say. The principal says if the school okays my concept I’d be competing for students against basketball and chess team and parkour club. I say, “Parkour is losing its cultural allure.” Before I go, I show her an image on my phone of a 3-D model I printed years ago for the architecture firm. She zooms in and the picture turns grainy, as if it’s running away from our eyes, searching back in time for the date it was taken.
Last year, I thought the world was pushing me back to the top. I’m usually not someone who people place their bodies near in public, but in yoga classes, students started putting their mats behind mine. They crowded me. So I felt a responsibility to hold a beautiful pose. I stretched my spine to its limit. I felt like a remarkable form. But I wasn’t sure what accounted for this change in attention. There were the same number of people in class. I was as sweaty as before, as tall. Did I look gentler? Was my hair a pleasing length? Then after a month, I turned to a woman before the start of class and asked why she chose that spot, behind my thick legs, for her mat. She got up. She moved to a different area.
3-D printing club gets approved. A teacher phones to ask what printer model should be bought for the club. “The way of the future,” she says. She drops her r, tied to her Southern past. I know nothing about current printer models. I say, “I’ll send links to the best ones for kids.” When I hang up, I’m dizzy. A heaviness swings behind my eyes. I hope it’s stirring my brain for the world.
The 3-D printers online aren’t familiar to me. The model I used at the firm has escaped from the internet. The new ones look designed for robotic hands. At 30, my hands are cranky. Yoga puts too much pressure on my wrists. My nails feel nutrient poor.
I call my mother and a friend from art school and a friend from ABC7 New York to tell them about my club. I feel I’m speaking about a future world, a world I’m making real. But then I phone my sister, who says, “Your big idea is a printing club?” I say, “Yes, 3-D. Helping children. Teaching them skills. Making pretty things. 3-D.” She says, “It’s an idea.”
***
On the first day of the club, my boss lets me leave the framing shop two hours early. I take the subway. I’m packed in. My head is too level with everyone else’s. There’s a man falling into my back. My shoulder is forced far forward.
Mrs. Henry, the teacher with the subtle Southern accent, leads me to room 306. “I’ll be supervising the club,” she says. The room looks identical to those from my elementary school days–a bulky clock on the wall, a fat teacher’s desk. But on a long, dusted counter sit four sleek 3-D printers. They’re the size of my torso. They look as essential as the torso. And there are 15 laptops piled in bags. All for me. The students skip in, none older than 10. Four of the boys have strange hairstyles like doorknobs on their heads. That must be the fashion. I introduce myself and the printers in the same breath. Then I line up the kids in front of the machines. I do a deep, silly bow to the technology. I win their attention. The smallest boy giggles and bows like I did. The kids focus on my face. I feel so tall, like I’m growing. I have a strong, noteworthy chin. I have a chin the world could hang from.
Meena, a second grader, has used 3-D printers before. “You haven’t,” I say. “At camp,” she says. I worry the club is jumping out of my hands. My hands have never been good at sticking to what’s mine. Then she says, “We made keychains.” I say, “Oh, we’ll do better than keychains.”
The kids and I set up the printers together. They’re simpler than the one I used at the firm. The instruction guide says, Anyone can do it. But I don’t tell that to the students. When interacting with the printers, they should feel like they’re diving into the future, not like the future is humbling itself for them, or thinning itself out, or reaching backward to greet them in the present.
We haven’t printed anything yet but I go home and email details about the club to 15 reporters at The New York Times: five focused on education, five on technology, two on culture, two on art, and one with a column about offbeat, inspiring human interest stories. If I could write, I am a human of interest, and have her believe me, then…then… The heaviness behind my eyes returns. It’s swirling, accumulating weight, sticking to the back of my face. My head falls forward. Is it out of fashion to have a throbbing skull? I kneel on the floor and press my ear into the cold wood. More weight attaches to the back of my eyes: hot weight, prickly weight. The light in the room dims. Breathing as measuredly as I can does help. But my mind is immobilized. The hour moves faster than I do.
At the club, we use the simplest computer software on the market. It allows the kids to drag and stack and manipulate preset shapes to make whatever they want. Most balance a cylinder on top of a cube or a cube on top of a cube. Mrs. Henry tries to put a pyramid on top of a pyramid. But Meena is familiar with the process of 3-D thinking. She moves spheres beside spheres on top of cubes, and carves or narrows them. She looks as competent as I felt at the firm. She’s high up in the world, I think. That’s sometimes a hard thing to tell. But she must be high up. Her hands fit perfectly with the computer. She knows how to climb higher, higher. When she asks me questions–“Will this confuse the printer?” “How big can the printer print?”–I’m certain she’ll make use of the answers. I want to keep her moving upward, nudging her feet higher, higher. We both can get higher. We both can stay higher. Meena finishes her design: a blobby man swimming in a round, splashy pool. I clap.
It will take three hours to print Meena’s pool. I start the machine and tell her she can pick up the masterpiece tomorrow from Mrs. Henry. The whole class watches the printer. The students have never seen magic before. Two boys kneel down to get a better look at the tireless, golden nozzle. One day soon, we’ll make ourselves shiny hats like Devo wore. Futurists, they’ll read. Parents come for their kids. I say, “Look what Meena did!” The parents stare too. The printer is big in their eyes.
No, our hats won’t be reflective like Devo’s. They’ll be matte. The world might want matte.
I buy black sheets for my bed. They look powerful, distinguished. I tuck myself into them and pick up a book. It’s about a future with 100 billion people, a future where the collection of bodies is so dense that it seems to me we all would get squished into one bloody, broken mass. I’m reading about competition in such a world when I get an email from one of the education writers at The New York Times. He says, My editor approved a story on the club. Looking forward to meeting the kids. Glad they’re learning the technology. I reread his email twice. Then I charge out of bed and howl. I feel taller now. There’s a risk I’ll bump my head on the ceiling.
Maybe a story in Dazed would’ve been better, or i-D, or AnOther. They’re younger publications. No one would call them stuffy.
When I tell the students about our breakthrough with The New York Times–“Our faces will be in the paper!”–they hold their cheeks and cheer. I’m relieved they know The Times. A boy pulls at the puffy ball of hair on his head and says, “Gotta perfect my look.” Mrs. Henry emails the parents for consent. I tell the kids to start on the designs they’ll hold up for the photo. Meena is creating a mermaid mid-breaststroke. But most of the students can only deflate and deflate a shape until there’s nothing on the screen that’s printable, leaving them confused and closing the laptop. So I whisper into an ear, “Just make a cone.” Into another, I say, “A pyramid.” I save them from their sloppy hands. But to the smallest boy, I say sphere and he says no. I drag a sphere onto his screen and he taps until it’s gone. “I want to make my dog,” he yells, his French Bulldog. “You can only do a sphere,” I say. Then he’s slapping the desk. I say, “Sphere. Sphere.” He screams at me. I make a smooth, timeless sphere appear on his screen. He tries to bite my arm. Mrs. Henry points me out of the room.
There’s a week until the photoshoot. Mrs. Henry phones and tells me two students are dropping out of the club. “Meena?” I ask. I hold my nervous chest. “Not Meena,” she says. I relax. At the school, to Meena and to the others who remain, I say, “Remember, we can all make ourselves special. Just try. Just try. There’s no need to wait for the world.”
I scroll through my phone and see a picture Fred posted online of his proud face beside a pediatrics prize awarded to him by the city. In the photo, his head looks light, like it’s rising, like it’s full of gentle, sweet-smelling air. I call him with a congratulations. He thanks me. The prize came with some money, he says. He’s putting it aside for Mount Everest.And now my neck feels strained, as if to speak to Fred–even though I’ve more or less forgotten his body–I have to tilt up my face to him and offer my voice to the clouds.
I take a taxi to the school for The New York Times photoshoot. My hair is green now and pointing to the roof. But on the ride, children feel out of style to me. Green hair does too.
The photographer is running late. I lead the journalist into the classroom. He’s got a name that sticks in the head: Oliver Wolfe. He greets my students with animated charm. Charm is still in fashion. There’s a trim, elegant bracelet on Oliver’s wrist. I say, “Meena can make you a replica.”
Meena sits in front of her laptop and designs a bracelet that’s thin and divoted like Oliver’s. I say, “Here we help the students develop relevant minds.” Oliver writes down the quote. I’m glowing. Then the photographer arrives. He takes pictures over Meena’s shoulder. She shows off her advanced hands. I get my leg in the shots.
It’s time for the group photo. I pass out the cubes and cones and cylinders and pyramids. Then Meena takes her refined, flapping mermaid and holds it to her chest. I pose with the kids in front of the camera. But I feel plain, stuck to the floor. So I unplug one of the printers and stand behind the students with the machine thrust over my head. It’s not too heavy for my mighty, pressworthy arms. I’m a wonder.
I have tried, I have, to make my peace with the world’s fluctuations. I sought to keep my eyes looking down at my feet. But I’m a man who likes movement. If there’s a place to go, my legs will work to bring me there.
The photographer takes our photo and I feel useful to the world. He takes another and my eyes are as open as ever. “You can put down the printer,” he says. I ignore him. I shout, “You’re all doing great.” I’m smiling as if the article is already out, as if I have thousands of eyes on my happy, current face. When the camera goes off, I’m lifted higher, higher. I’m floating. Soon I’ll reflect the sun. But now my headache comes back. I’m dizzy, nauseous. Did I move up too fast? I’m nauseous, nauseous, sick from the altitude. My lips hunt for air. Did I move up before my turn? The camera goes off again: higher, higher. My nose is cold. But I refuse to drop my smile. The camera goes off again. The camera goes off again. I fall to the floor. The printer lands on my chest, undamaged.
Max Kruger-Dull holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Story Magazine, West Branch, The Greensboro Review, the minnesota review, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He lives in New York with his two dogs. For more, please visit maxkrugerdull.com.