Welcome to the Binarycene

We have entered the Binarycene, an epoch with only two ways to con­sid­er any top­ic. Things are either good or bad, left or right, pro­fi­cient or incom­pe­tent, fraud­u­lent or forth­right. I am thank­ful we have a chain­saw-wield­ing ora­cle to divine whether we embrace zero or one.

I have ordered a red, white, and blue sequin acces­so­ry kit for my chain­saw. I wish to repent for an arti­cle I wrote in this space last year when I insist­ed, with aca­d­e­m­ic back­ing, that there are four kinds of peo­ple. I know now that to inves­ti­gate nuance is bad juju.

To rec­ti­fy my wrong­ness, I offer a more polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect take on the types of peo­ple who sur­round us. I now assert that there are just two kinds of peo­ple. I have exten­sive field expe­ri­ence and have dis­cussed my find­ings with a 20-year-old I met in line at the vape shop. He loved my con­ver­sion sto­ry and agreed that the less diver­si­ty in my think­ing, the better.

The most obvi­ous bina­ry is tak­ers and givers. Several years ago, I attend­ed a talk by William Sieghart, author of “The Poetry Pharmacy,” at Daunt Books in London. After the event, I lined up at a cash reg­is­ter offer­ing books that Siegart had signed. A woman who did not get in line watched the dwin­dling pile of auto­graphed books ner­vous­ly, then jumped in front of me when just one was left. The cashier looked the woman in the eyes and said, “Madame, this man was next,” nod­ding at me. There, on the precipice of pro­pri­ety, an abyss flew open. The woman was sucked into a dark chasm of shame. I tucked my signed book into my bag and leered. It felt so good. Little did I know then that the sat­is­fac­tion of sham­ing oth­ers would be so handy in the Binarycene. 

I observe Sitters and Launchers. The phe­nom­e­non is most evi­dent in ganged seat­ing arrange­ments — doc­tors’ offices, movie the­aters, the Department of Motor Vehicles, etc. You have just plant­ed your pos­te­ri­or gen­tly on the Naugahyde when an offend­ing neigh­bor lands bed­side you as if launched from a heli­copter res­cue bas­ket into the bay of a Black Hawk. I posit that Launchers inhab­it a par­al­lel uni­verse and are deployed by Lizard People to antag­o­nize Gentle Sitters among us. The same astro-vor­tex no doubt deploys Hotel Room Door Slammers. They typ­i­cal­ly oper­ate between the hours of 10 pm and 10 am, when Gentle Door Closers attempt sleep.

What is it with Right Passers? Most of us live our lives in the mid­dle lane. We tool along at nine miles over the post­ed speed lim­it until our pas­sen­ger doors are blown off by phan­toms that nev­er exist in our blind spots. Left Passers are so pre­dictable and love­able. Why can’t every­body be like them?

The Binarycene is full of so many famil­iar pairs. Hatters and No Hatters. Puzzlers and No Puzzlers. Breakfast Coffees or Juicers. Baggy Pants or Skinny Pants. Shouters or Whisperers.

My favorite Shouters are Business Shouters. They are peo­ple, usu­al­ly White men, who walk around in pub­lic talk­ing tele­phon­i­cal­ly to Helene at the home office about how many units need to move this week. They over-enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly tell Helene and every liv­ing being with­in 100 hun­dred yards that it will be hell to pay if she can’t find some­body to move those units. Crickets and birds stop chirp­ing to hear Helene weep.

A new­ly mint­ed Binarycene pair are Workers and Non-Workers, a nec­es­sary evo­lu­tion­ary step in our era of mass effi­cien­cy. Luckily, thanks to the genius of the Governor of Virginia, there has emerged a mys­ti­cal blend­ing of this dichoto­my, where­by Workers who don’t appre­ci­ate the lux­u­ry of becom­ing Non-Workers can take advan­tage of Governor Youngkin’s inge­nu­ity. For exam­ple, oper­at­ing room nurs­es can upskill in our new less-fraud­u­lent soci­ety. They can use their sure-pass ster­ile instru­ment tech­nique to hand off bags of burg­ers and fries at dri­ve-thru windows.