After the cameras went up en masse seemingly overnight, it was time to forge a new plan for how to walk around in Paris. Or, more specifically, how to walk around in Paris without my face being espied by every government institution with access to the proverbial database. The immediate inclination I had was to don a mask. But who knows for how long that might be deemed “legal”?

I’d already heard that the governor of New York was considering banning the wearing of face masks on the subway. Quite an about-face (pun intended), obviously, from the frenzy around mandating mask-wearing in 2020 and 2021. But laws change as whimsically as trends these days. And, supposedly, the governor was insisting that making face masks illegal would help prevent crimes, both petty and hate-related. I had my doubts about that being her real concern. Because, in truth, public transportation is a goldmine for capturing people’s faces on camera. And there has never been another time in history when it’s been so useful to governments and corporations (one and the same) to capture the countenances of commoners for their own nefarious purposes. “Bottling” them like products, as it were.

What nefarious purposes? you might ask (or maybe you wouldn’t because you’ve simply accepted/become immune to the idea that all purposes are nefarious at this point). Well, let me tell you: using your face, via AI, for whatever the fuck they want. Maybe one day, you’ll be sitting at home, and you’ll see “yourself” acting in some horrible movie or show on TV. Or you’ll be sitting at home, minding your own business, when, suddenly, the police break down your door and arrest you for a crime “you’ve” committed, documented on some surveillance camera where your face was manipulated onto someone else’s body. With your unsuspecting mug on their “digital Rolodex,” they can do whatever the fuck they want with you, just for shits and giggles. There is no freedom. Sure, some might say there hasn’t been for quite a while, that we’ve all been deluding ourselves into believing “this is fine.” But the sudden barrage of security cameras everywhere I turned absolutely gutted me. Put into sharp perspective just how much the notion of privacy (and, accordingly, liberty) had vanished into thin air in the twenty-first century.

They said the cameras were necessary to ensure the safety of “all” residents (read: rich, white ones) of Paris while the Olympics-related inundation of extra bodies into the city increased the potential for crime or other assorted “shenanigans.” Nobody seemed to mention that once the Olympics were over, it’s not like the cameras were going to go away. The Pandora’s box had been opened on this particular surveillance front, and it was never to be closed again. For now, though, the government insisted the cameras were essential solely because the Olympics presented, for some “unscrupulous” people, an “opportunity” that ordinarily wouldn’t have been available to them without this kind of crowd density. Wherein it becomes easier to disappear into the huddled masses, picking their pockets, stabbing them, whatever. There’s no shortage of anxiety- and fear-inducing scenarios the government can and will come up with to make you believe in the necessity of what they do. That it’s all “for your safety.” That being surveilled in increasingly precise and pervasive ways is certainly for the greater good. But whose version of “good” are we talking about? People who want to control and contain, manipulate and mold—that’s who.

Well, I have a new plan of attack. Since the government has yet to attempt banning face masks here (though I have no doubt it’s coming, once they realize there are many people who actually do feel quite uncomfortable being on camera all day when they’re not a paid actor), I will don one wherever I go. But it will be more intense than that. It will be a ski mask. Some might caution me, “You know, that’s only going to draw more attention to yourself, you’d be better off just sticking to surgi-style.” Well, fuck that. I don’t want any portion of my face perceived by the government. It is my right to keep my face to myself. To hold on to one last modicum of ownership over my body. They’ve already gained far too much access to it. More access than another entity should ever have to something you’re logically supposed to be “in control of.”

But the truth of the matter is, none of us have been in control of ourselves for so long. I couldn’t even pinpoint an exact moment anymore when the control was wrested so blatantly from the people. Maybe we haven’t been genuinely free since the all-too-brief era of the cavepeople (or the Paleolithic period, if you want to get more technical). Some would tell me to just try returning to that way of existence as best I could by “going off the grid” (though there’s really no such thing anymore) rather than trying to live in a camera-filled city with a ski mask on in ninety-plus-degree (I still speak in Fahrenheit, another American quirk that can’t be shaken) weather. But I will not. I refuse to be driven out of the city just because the government has seen fit to do everything in their power to drive anyone with half a brain out of it. I have to remain. I have to take a stand. And my classic black ski mask is the only way to do it. Try perceiving me this way, bitch! You can’t!

Of course, on my first day of trying it out at the end of July, I was entirely expecting to be stopped by one of the many authorities teeming the streets among the “common people.” To my surprise, however, I ended up passing out from heatstroke before anyone bothered to “apprehend” me for “daring” to cover my face so fully. To protect it from being scrutinized and studied, uploaded into the system that I had no desire to be a part of. I suppose it’s to be expected that many would call me “unhinged” for the lengths I was willing to go to keep my visage concealed from government “data collecting.” That I was, in the end, willing to die on that hill—literally. For the heatstroke hit me as I was climbing the Rue Foyatier steps toward Sacré-Cœur.

Naturally, there are those who would feel no sympathy over my death, because, really, who would be stupid enough to climb such a great many steps in the blazing hot temperature of ninety-five degrees (which feels more like one hundred and ten with the humidity factor) while wearing a suffocating ski mask? The fault was my own, they would say. But, at the very least, my face was still my own, too. So now, I could safely declare, to paraphrase Braveheart, “They could take my life, but they could never take my face for AI or tracking purposes.” Unless, for whatever reason, they snapped a photo of me for “posterity” while I was in the morgue. Something that was of no concern to me now, because I could no longer perceive them perceiving me.