Brief Interviews With Hideous Moons

July 20, 2019 is National Moon Day! And while we all love and cherish our beautiful moon in the night’s sky, what about other, less attractive moons that revolve around the planets in our solar system? What if we could talk to them? And what if, if we did, they responded in a way not unlike David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men?

B.I. #4 10-84

Sweetie, we need to talk. We’ve needed to talk for awhile now. Well, I have, anyway. Can you sit?

Q.

Well, I’d rather almost anything, but I care about you, I do. I don’t want to see you getting hurt.

Q.

Because I care. Honest, I do. Like you wouldn’t believe.

Q.

Because, to be honest, my orbit is not good. It’s irregular, oblong, crazy. Whatever you want to call it. I’ve tried, I’ve tried to revolve around this planet in a perfect circle. I’ve tried. I’m being honest with you because I care about you and you deserve it. Sweetie, anyone looking at my orbit would see that it indicates a moon that’s bad news. And I don’t want to hurt you like the way I seem to hurt others—

Q.

I have a history, a pattern so to speak, of, for instance, of not behaving in predictable fashion around the planet. I won’t be where you expect me to be. I know it’s insecure. I know I should be better, sweetie, I know. But I can’t do a perfect circle like all the other moons, and if that’s what you’re looking for you should know you’re not going to find it with me.

B.I. #46 08-73

My planet is blue, okay? That’s his thing. Blue. And I look it at, it’s revolving around these giants, these literal giants. I know he’s really revolving around the sun, that’s who’s gravity he’s trapped in. I know that.

Q.

But how can you look at the solar system and not think he revolves around them? These…giants. These gas giants, with all their colors, so many colors! And rings! ‘I have rings,’ he’ll say. ‘Have rings.’ He’ll show them to you, but they’re pathetic. Just pathetic. Mild rings for a mild planet. Nothing like Saturn, no of course not! How could they be like Saturn? Saturn’s a giant. And my planet, my planet just is. Just a meek follower of bigger, brighter, more important world. Just blue, in the back.

I’ll never be blue, I can tell you right now. Not me.

B.I. #28 02-97 [SIMULTANIOUS]

C——: What does today’s comet want? That’s the big one.

P——: I agree. It’s the big one all right. It’s the what-do-you call…

C——: Or to put another way, what do today’s comets think they want versus what they really deep down want.

P——: Or what do they think they’re supposed to want.

Q.

C——: From a moon.

P——: Or a planetoid. But, basically, yeah. From a moon.

C——: The whole question has become a mess.

P——: You can say that again.

C——: Because now, the modern comet has an unprecedented amount of contradictory stuff laid on it. About how its supposed to act, and what it’s supposed to want.

P——: It’s just a mess. A mess of contradictions.

C——: It’s not like that for us. See, moons, for example…

P——: Just for example.

C——: Moons know what they want.

P——: No doubt.

C——: Moons want a comet to crash into them.

P——: Wait, what?

Q.

C——: Every moon thinks this.

P——: I don’t. I just want a comet to fly by. Maybe get a tail flick.

C——: I’m more honest than P—— is.

P——: I don’t think that’s true.

C——: In any case, moons…

P——: Not all moons.

C——: Most moons, in any case, most moons they know what they want. They want a comet to crash into them.

P——: I don’t think that true.

C——: But comets, who knows what comets want?