Oh modern reader, what can I say to you? What can I say to you that will shock you and disturb you?

How can I shock you when scenes of war are presented to you as entertainment, when “I can’t breathe” has become the anthem of an entire generation of activists?

How can I disturb you when you can describe exactly the motion a person’s body makes when they fall to the ground dead, having seen it a dozen times online?

Does the fratricide of Hamlet shock and disturb you? Such is now the fare of children’s films. Do the acts of Oedipus shock and disturb you? These days gang rape and incest are porn genres.

These are the times when psychopaths get the treatment of protagonists, their “authentic” lives worthier of a close examination than those of heroes, whose flaws are subjected to the most minute scrutiny and unto whose motivations we cast stones.

Do not think I am criticizing you, oh modern reader, nor judging you, for to do so would be to judge and criticize myself. This is not a lamentation of the times, only a lamentation of the difficulty of the task I have set for myself.

“But sir!” one might ask, “why set such a goal for yourself at all? Surely setting such an agenda would degrade the authentic experience of the writer, tainting your voice with contrivance!”

“We want to hear the words of the author bubbling forth from their soul naked and unadulterated by consideration for the audience. Concern for the audience, why it is capitalistic in its very nature! That would be pornography, made for the gratification of others, degrading to the creator!”

The naked soul filling a page is always a step removed from those words filling a mind, a step contrived. Even telling the truth may be a contrivance; does your mind’s voice always speak the truth?

Our mind’s voice is as prone to lying to ourselves as our physical voice is to lying to others. This makes speaking the truth the result of a deliberate state of mind, a deliberate state of mind you must contrive to be in.

And authenticity? They have capitalized handsomely off of the authenticity of our ignorance. Its market cap is limitless, and in every boardroom, they spend their working hours trying to figure out how to bottle it up and sell it to us in dribs and drabs.

And so I do not apologize for my goal of shocking and disturbing you. This leads me back to square one: how do I do this in this modern age for you, oh modern reader? Believe it or not, I can do it quite easily, and I can do it by telling you the truth.

I love you.

Oh modern reader, I love you! I cannot think of a thing that can shock and disturb you more than that, and it is the truth! I feel you recoil in horror; a writer writing a love letter to a stranger? Loving a stranger? It is grotesque! Disturbing! Unallowably nasty!

And speaking of authenticity… Love? The first of our values to be sold wholesale? It is an easy thing to say. And does not the jingoist love their state, the zealot their religion?

My task is made harder because the only way to shock and disturb you is for you to believe that I love you; telling you is not enough. This tale I tell must then serve as proof.

One obstacle between my love for you and you believing me can be addressed now. Judgment.

Do you want to not be judged? This may be the biggest lie the mind’s voice speaks. The lie is that we don’t seek positive judgment, only not being judged at all.

To want to not be judged at all is to seek only the company of the ignorant. Love is positive judgment, not judgment’s absence.

Fear of judgment. To be known and to be found wanting. It makes sense, this fear. It makes sense in these times.

If every act of decency is a disguise, every act of charity a potential scam, and all projects of goodwill and statements of kindness ulteriorly motivated, if all this is true and we then believe we are ourselves decent, how could anyone else believe it? Of course we fear judgment.

Society slowly chokes while drinking from a poisoned chalice of misplaced cynicism. It is an open question whether we can survive modernity’s absurd love of hatred and hatred of love. Fear of judgment stands over the entire sordid affair.

So I do not claim to not judge you. I claim to judge you and judge you positively, for I love you, and what is love but that? But still, I must work to prove it, for such words are easy to say, harder to prove. Do not forget the Spanish Inquisitors’ “love” for those he put to the rack. Skepticism is warranted.

And so it’s time to tell the tale that seeks to prove this love. It’s time to meet Mr. Miller.

Mr. Miller lives in an apartment building with a coffee shop on the ground floor. It is the sort of coffee shop where the baristas take great care to carefully ensure each drink is perfectly made; on every latte is a beautiful piece of latte art.

It is also the sort of coffee shop whose patrons are no longer impressed by this display of skill and effort and are far more likely to notice and complain about the absence of a beautiful piece of latte art on their morning coffee than notice and enjoy its presence.

Mr. Miller liked to stop at this coffee shop on his morning walk to work. He enjoyed drinking his coffee while he walked; he had long found that the combination of brisk morning air and caffeine did wonders to prepare him for the day.

That morning at the shop, after Mr. Miller ordered his usual, he found somewhere to wait in the small crowd gathered around where the completed orders were called. Standing next to him was a man dressed in the most peculiar manner.

He was wearing plaid trousers, a very loud yellow and brown plaid that clashed horribly with his pink pullover hoodie, which said “Hoe Please” on the front in white blocky lettering.

The man’s plaid trousers were tucked into black combat boots. His blonde hair was long and scraggly, and it was impossible to tell if he had spent an hour that morning carefully cultivating its disheveled appearance of unwashed messiness or if the man had actually not washed it in three months as it looked.

The man had a mid-length beard as scraggly as his hair, smelled distinctly of marijuana (the cologne of 21st-century American urban living), and was staring directly at Mr. Miller with a look of pure loathing.

The look of loathing took Mr. Miller aback more than anything else. He looked back at the man just long enough to determine that a) the man was staring directly at him without looking away and b) he had never seen this man before in his life.

When Mr. Miller looked away, his eyes seeking the safety of the countertop while hoping this was some kind of bizarre coincidence, the man made a loud scoffing sound.

Mr. Miller nearly flinched when he heard it. Carefully, he turned to look back at the man who had scoffed at him. Upon seeing that he was still being stared at and that the man had scoffed directly at him, Mr. Miller quickly turned away. He was feeling rather nervous, and then the man scoffed loudly at him a second time.

Now was a critical moment for Mr. Miller. He could walk away, pretending to not have noticed, or he could confront the man and try to figure out why he was scoffing at him.

For most of Mr. Miller’s life, the second option would only have occurred to him long minutes after he had instinctively chosen the first option. However, very recently, Mr. Miller had resolved to be a different sort of person, one who would ask the man why he was scoffing at him.

And so Mr. Miller turned to the man and said, “Excuse me, is there a problem?”

“Yes, yes, there is,” the man replied.

“Well, spit it out; what’s the problem?” Mr. Miller responded, hoping the sound of impatience masked his nervousness.

The man stared hard at Mr. Miller for long seconds before he made his reply, his face a picture of loathing, when he finally said, “I hate you. I hate your face, but it’s not just that. I hate your being. I hate sharing the air of this space with you.”

“I hate how you’re dressed, from your badly fitted dress shirt tucked shittily into your badly fitted chinos to your fake leather dress shoes. I hate the nastiness of your cheap business casual bullshit look, but I also hate how you walk. Even the sound of your voice has confirmed that I was right, that all my hatred was correct, that you are worthy of the contempt I have had for you since first seeing you not five minutes ago.”

Mr. Miller was shocked by what the man had just said, too shocked to get angry. He had no idea how to reply to this extraordinary pronouncement, confused as he was by everything the man had just said to him.

“But..” Mr. Miller sputtered, “but I don’t hate you!” he finished lamely. His mouth has said it on autopilot, and Mr. Miller regretted saying it, hating himself the moment the words left his mouth.

The man’s expression somehow managed to take on even more loathing, and he looked positively outraged now. “I find your lack of hatred towards me disrespectful, quite frankly, and I now hate you even more completely than I had just a moment ago. How dare you disrespect me with your lack of hatred; how dare you show me such indifference.”

Mr. Miller kept his mouth shut, his brain furiously working to find some kind of reply, something to say, anything, when suddenly, at the sound of a name being called, the man walked away from Mr. Miller towards the counter, grabbed a coffee, and walked out of the shop without a single backward glance.

Mr. Miller’s eyes continued to follow the man outside, where he watched him hop onto an old, very rusty beach cruiser-style bicycle and ride away, one hand controlling the bike, the other his coffee.

Mr. Miller kept staring out the window, and it took three calls of his name by the barista before he realized where he was.

He made it out the door with his coffee and walked two blocks when the shock wore off enough for him to notice his phone vibrating. He hurriedly yanked it out of his pocket to see it was his girlfriend Katherine calling him.

“Hey,” he answered, “You will not believe what just happened.”

“Hey, we need to talk. Is it okay if I come by your place after work today?” Katherine asked.

Mr. Miller internally flinched.

“Yeah, sure,” he answered.

“Cool, see you later then,” Katherine replied, hanging up.

When it rains, it pours, Mr. Miller thought, standing frozen on the sidewalk.

You would think Mr. Miller would be dispirited by the new knowledge of the impending end of his relationship. While that is somewhat true, it was a feeling he was reserving for his future self to feel.

Instead, there was a small feeling of relief. You see, Mr. Miller had been, at that point, trying to think of the best way to introduce the L-word into his relationship with Katherine.

They had been dating for five months, a long time to avoid the matter, and while he wasn’t absolutely certain about his feelings, he was absolutely certain that he was never going to become more certain about them.

And so instead of dread, or instead of only dread, Mr. Miller was feeling a little relieved. He hadn’t humiliated himself by confessing his love right before the breakup. Sadness would come later, probably after the “talk.”

Mr. Miller walked into the office that morning far more preoccupied than usual.