i think you can understand me

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they sent me to check something in the hot, cramped server closet that’s gone unchecked for several years and i felt a rack of devices breathing their hot air on me while I just stared at miles and miles of cabling, some just sliced through and hanging like some sort of arterial severance. every port is occupied in every switch and server and patch panel, it’s a fucked up virtual overstimulation, a data bukake. and youre just as sick as i am.

it mustve started early, pressing my head against a crt monitor and feeling static tickle my face. flesh to glass, wanting to be closer and closer. i was probably watching Nico Nico Douga reuploads, or roleplaying on browser pet simulators, talking with Cleverbot, reading Ao3 or JTHM, skipping penises on Omegle, dodging shock sites on random forums long gone now, sweating as my eyes dart towards the door begging, silently, for no one to come in . i don't even think i really cared what was on the screen, just the feeling of a machine living, huffing, and churning its guts.

i learned html first on Neopets. i would write websites onto USB sticks and share them with my friends, with crudely drawn MS Paint assets and dead links in my menus. then i learned python for a biology project in highschool, then java. i learned linux in college and it felt like i was inside the machine and talking to it directly. no skeumorphic visage to block conversation, but not assembly code i would take too long to learn. a bridge between my body and the computers.

when i started my first IT job, i was tasked with upgrading micro dell pcs. i would pull a computer off the production floor, unscrew the shell, blow out any debris inside. i stared down at the motherboard. i was sucked into the patterns i had been drawing since i was a kid. traces careened back and forth, connecting each delicate component. it was like staring down at an anatomical diagram. i quickly took the ram out and replaced it with a faster card.

and now i sit at my desk in an excited shame. my childhood nintendo DS' hinges creak wide, my personal laptop splayed open shows it all. i write fiction about cyborg men with custodians that plunge clumsy hands into their internals, fixing and tuning to an ambiguious need. i stay up and wonder what it must feel like to sense that fuzzy soft electricity from a human on my delicate circutry. i follow the veins in my arms like cabling through a building, snaking around the corridors of my own body a machine, a fleshy mechanical thing. i wonder if its a comfort to have a programmed purpose or if it's a cage. i feel heat build up in me that steams out of my mouth. i hear the squealing alarm and i see the hexadecimal rain play behind my closed eyes.