Chapter 4

I had another date with Maria. There is a strange sense in which the feminine creature defines herself extrinsically, in which they feel that their beauty is not a constant that shifts gradually with age and experience and personality, but rather that it is a mutable phenomenon that is inseparable from clothing and makeup. A woman without makeup and wearing sweats and an oversized tee shirt will not think that she is beautiful while a woman intricately coifed and wrapped in an expensive dress will think that she is beautiful. Perhaps this tendency can be explained as the ability to blame their looks on something over which they have some measure of control, as if an ugly girl is created by the lack of proper haircut and makeup and evening dress.
This of course ignores the fact that an ugly girl dressed up is still an ugly girl and a supermodel wearing sweat pants is still attractive. And all that a man sees is a woman who is comfortable or who wants to look classy for her circumstances or something of that nature. Men decide how attractive a girl is by imagining her without any clothes on at all.
To play on this female tendency, I took Maria to a fancy restaurant, where we basked in brass and marble and obsequious waiters in black trousers and pristine white shirts with black ties and red satin vests.
She behaved as though the situation was not real, as though it were some elaborate dream hazy with impossibility and when she spoke, an expression would creep over her face as if she worried that she would wake to find that it had never happened, lacking even Cinderella’s satisfaction in the knowledge that the aberrant evening had been an actual event onto which she could cling while continuing her indentured servitude. I think that women have difficulty believing that romantic man has not gone extinct, or really that he ever existed, because so many women choose so poorly and so many men are such poor choices, so that when a woman is confronted by someone who listens to their problems or makes the effort to make them feel special and beautiful for no reason at all, they become dumbfounded by the novelty, and treat such a man as though he is a spectacle who mustn’t be touched for fear that he, like a soap bubble, will disappear with a faint popping sound. After the initial shock wears off, they inevitably decide that this kind treatment is the product of too great an attachment or some lack of masculinity, and things end.
So although I took Maria on many more dates, I limited any romantic impulses that I might have had to infrequent occasions. She seemed like she had a good time, though.
We walked into the restaurant arm in arm and dressed for a low-budget red carpet, Maria wearing some little black thing with drapery that oozed sex, and I choosing a suit and tie from the narrower varieties of masculine finery.
Humans are like peacocks with reversed gender roles.
We walked through paired double doors like anemic airlocks, paired to prevent the restaurant from heating or cooling the world. There was a quarto façade of wood painted dark green, paneling and window casements and hand carved doors with detail decimated by the thick paint. Many of the planes facing us were panes of glass.
From the outside, the place looked like some British gentleman’s club, in which the membership is so exclusive that even feminism is condemned as nouveau riche and prohibited, in which stout men with jowls like bulldogs sit in their sport coats and smoke pipes or cigars and drink brandy and fine scotch, and they speak bigotry in the manicured tones of wealth and power and secretly long for the return of an empire upon which the sun could not set. They long for the influx of plunder taken from the mouths of starving mahogany, roan, russet, sorrel, ebony, copper, chestnut, and auburn peoples, who sweat and starve and sleep with their multitudinous family in dingy hovels, while these Anglican patricians build subordinate economic empires.
These men with all their wealth and all their indigence are of course the standard by which we judge class, because what other word could be used to describe plunderers on the largest scale who nevertheless write biographies that read like hagiographies and furrow their hoary brows to frown at the vulgar masses pawing at the door for admittance to their ranks?
Exclusiveness seems to create merits for itself.
Through the doors and into the foyer, mahogany walls that seemed to be one giant molding, hung with black and white photographs of the staring indigents photographed by a camera, the cost of which represents months or years of nutrition for themselves and their families, and whose faces represent fine art. Through the foyer to the brass-limned podium attended by a olive-complected woman with dark eyes and a greedy mouth and a black dress like an anacrusis.
The floor was checkerboard black and white marble and popped resoundingly with the sound of heels, which floated up against the high ceilings and hesitated before fading away, surrounded by whispering violins and cellos.
“Hi, I have a reservation for two.”
“Certainly, sir. May I have your name, please?”
“It should be under Sidney.”
“Here it is, sir. Let me just show you to your table.” We followed the sound of her heels tapping on marble, insistent in their percussion, followed past tables with men in dark suits coupled to blond women in red or black or navy dresses, holding flutes of champagne that glowed like phosphorescent bacteria, as if champagne by its nature demanded of the world an illuminated place on the top of a hill. This glow may simply have been a trick of the light. Some men with larger suits and stouter guts, heavy mustaches and fat cigars beneath the lacinate upper lips, speaking so that smoke and pabulum emerged indistinguishable from their mouths, the conversation directed to the scarcely pubescent sacrificial virgins of dubious purity who sat to their left and their right.
We walked past parties of young men and women with dark-framed glasses and dark hair and long-lashed dark eyes wearing dark clothes who gently tossed labrish among themselves, drinking red wine and smoking cigarettes.
Then we arrived at our table with its glittering silver and crystal and porcelain and all the finery that is really too inconvenient to own, the things whose quality manifests itself as a fear for their destruction.
We paused a moment to admire the array before we dismantled it for its utility, and then we sat.
“This place is really nice,” said Maria. She held herself bashfully, and her eyes wandered as if they feared to observe me observing her in the place, as if she when held against the finery would seem a petty creature with the tendency to grub through mire from whose mouth came only dull grunts and who clutched with palsied hands at things requiring delicate manipulation. And then she looked at me and hunched her shoulders up to her earlobes while she smiled at me with her mouth and her eyes, and the sense was that she had taken all of the surrounding within her and in some metaphysical digestion absorbed all that was good about the situation, leaving only the dross behind.
Women are strange, mercurial creatures.
“Yeah. I don’t usually come here, but I thought I would aim for both ends of the romantic spectrum with dates, and see if I couldn’t rig it so the overall average would just be so-so as far as you being swept off your feet went. Besides, they have the most delicious pork chop I’ve ever eaten. I didn’t even know that pork chops could taste that good until I ate here.”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s not a Smoking Lunch Ladies’ concert, but I guess I’ll have to make do.”
“Your fortitude amazes me. So how’s life been? Is class and everything going well?”
“Yeah, things are okay, I guess. I’ve been doing a lot of research for my thesis, which basically just makes me feel really overwhelmed. It’s one of those things where the project just seems impossible because there’s so much left to do, but I know that it’ll be over before I know it.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes I feel like my entire life is that sort of thing.”

Today was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, and the play of light on water vapor and gaseous molecules rendered the sky vibrantly cerulean, a blue that fortified itself as it rose out of the grasp of tangible objects upon which comparison may have been made, its depth gaining its potency from its separateness from the mundane, its infinity painted in increasingly vibrant hues as it distanced itself from our petty finitude.
I went outside to smoke a cigarette and gaze at infinity, at the rare cloud that only served to highlight the boundlessness of the sky as contrasted against the spatial limitations of the wisp of vapor. I looked up at the sky, which is incomprehensibly vast, and it made me wonder how we take things as seriously as we do. How have we let ourselves focus on minutia? Why do we spend so much time talking about nothing? Why do we invest such energy into pinning our hopes and dreams on stakes that are so very low? Really, compared to a tree or the sky or the ocean, compared to literature and philosophy and science, a traffic ticket is a pretty ridiculous thing to get worked up about, as is the latest activities of some actor or the sexual habits of our politicians. All that we have to do is look up at the sky to gain infinity, by which we may measure or furtive scuttling to and fro.
To measure ourselves using ourselves as a yardstick is to embrace woefully low standards: the majority of human activity is violence, stupidity, ignorance, and frivolity. Our concepts of great deeds and well-spent lives prove to be, when viewed from a broader perspective, the trembling of some petty gelatinous mass or the grunting of apes as they fight for a scrap of food.
Why the overwhelming preoccupation with the libidinous acts of strangers who have become some shared cultural icon through wealth and beauty and little else?
How is it that we have reduced the most mysterious and complex of phenomena, the human being in his or her entirety, into narrow categories, into socio-economics as manifested by wardrobe or morality as manifested through the adherence to or deviation from some arbitrary set of proscriptions?
How have we taken human beings, precious and unique webs of thought and feeling, these constant dynamic processes of interaction with themselves and that and those around them, and reduced them to paltry objectifications?
How does anyone say that they don’t have anything to wear while looking through the clothes in their closet when people starve to death out of sight and out of mind?
How have we taken that which is fundamentally an individual and turned it into a category, and how do we voluntarily destroy that which is admirable about ourselves and reshape it as a desire for the petty dictates of the vulgar mob, for the ideas so poor that the ignorant masses, that throbbing tangle of stupidity known as the common human being, finds them palatable and intelligible?
Why are we neither hot nor cold but rather lukewarm, a society preoccupied with the tepid outflow of countless stale wits?
I do not know.
I suspect that the reason is that it is a bit depressing to honestly evaluate the significance of our lives and hobbies, but it is only through interaction with the utterly vast that any sort of satisfying accommodation can be made with the uselessness of our lives. I may spend the rest of my life in a cubical performing silly tasks that not even those dearest to my heart care about, and when I die, the record of my life will probably be annihilated within two generations, and even if it is preserved, it will be a petrified idol of what was once a vibrant human being, but even the negation of everything that I have held dear in my life is worthwhile because everything that I cared for was paltry and insignificant.
Actually, I suppose that really isn’t a very satisfying accommodation with the uselessness of our lives, but the fact of the matter is that it puts things in perspective. It’s pretty hard to get that upset about a bad day at work when you have a full appreciation of how useless your job is on the grand scale of things. Or if you think about war and genocide and starvation and incurable disease or infanticide or fratricide or matricide or patricide or repression or exploitation or sweatshop labor or the lost limbs of fifteen year-olds working in mines for a pittance or female circumcision or politicians pandering to special interests et cetera ad infinitum.
Not that we tend to think about those things.
The rain falls on good and evil alike, I suppose.
Our yard was well-kempt through no fault of our own, unless you are willing to credit the minimal effort required to hire a gardener as an actual endeavor: its beauty was a result of our wealth rather than our diligence. There is a particular nook that is my favorite, in which the vegetation forms a wall that spills forward, that rustles restlessly in the breeze, that wells up toward the sun and forms the sort of thicket into which you suspect that you may be able to disappear, push aside the branches and find within a mythical world populated by fairy tales and fantasy, the sort of utopia populated by mythological zoology for which you search so often in your youth, only to decide that such a place does not exist, and you‘re more or less stuck with what you‘ve got.
Of the wild organic heterogeny, the only plants that I can name are a pair of large rhododendrons, a fact that suits me just fine, inasmuch as rose without a name smells just as sweet, and rhododendrons are among my favorite plants. I stood in front of the rhododendrons, nearly touching the lush, meaty foliage, the glossy leaves that part every so slightly to reveal gnarled trunks, little crevices that are only visible through the interstices of the foliage, and also the intricate, waxy flowers, the heavy blooms that unfold in triumphant splendor, filling the air with a delightful fragrance before they wilt and die.
Perhaps it is the juxtaposition between the beauty and decay that I find so attractive: where other flowers disappear petal by petal, shunning the ignominy of their disrepair and allowing you to remember the flower only in the bloom of youth, untarnished by decomposition, the rhododendron retains the corpse of its bloom in its entirety, making flagrant the indignities to which time subjects us. It does not shuffle its flowers off into some nursing home, but rather keeps them close at hand, cherishing their mutability, constantly reminding itself of its mortality.
I have always found it interesting that flowers are icons of romance, as on the one hand, they make mortality and decay uncomfortably obvious, while on the other, they are just the sexual organs of some plant.
To give a girl flowers is to simultaneously point out death and sex, although they never seem to take it that way.
When I had sat in the yard for a while, enjoying the scenery and the gentle caress of the warm breeze, Johnny came out and began to heat up the barbecue, an act that consisted primarily of the outpouring of excessive quantities of lighter fluid onto the lit charcoal, accompanied by shouts of glee over the resulting momentary infernos. I have noticed that there a two types of people when it comes to barbecuing: the first makes sure that the coals are lit and then waits patiently for them to arrive at the appropriate temperature, while the second impatiently urges them on to higher temperatures in a gleeful orgy of combustion. It is doubtful that this observation has any larger significance, but nevertheless, it is interesting to note.
To Johnny, I said, “Hey man, what’re you cooking?”
He looked up, so intent on the flames that he had not noticed my presence, and then replied, “I’ve been marinating this giant fucking pork loin for like three days. Figured it was time to go out and cook the fucker. You want some, Sid?”
“Sure. I’m going to go get a beer.”
“Bring me one, why don’t you?”
“All right.”
When I had returned with the libations, he looked at me and said, “So what’s the deal with this new girl of yours, fucking what’s her name?”
“Maria? I don’t know, man, we just started dating. Maybe it’ll turn into something serious; she’s pretty fucking cool.”
“I don’t know how you do that shit, man. Don’t you get tired of fucking the same girl every night?”
“This from the man who gets bored if he fucks the same girl twice? First of all, I get laid almost as often as you do, and second of all, relationships really aren’t that bad. You should try it some time.”
“Naw, I figure I’m young, ought to enjoy the fucking freedom while I can, before some woman ropes me into a marriage. Besides, that wasn’t really what I mean. Clearly my loose morals are a matter of personal preference. What I’m really curious about is what you’re looking for in that sort of thing. Like, do you want to get married, or what?”
“Yeah, I guess that I’d like to get married one of these days.”
“See, that’s the shit that I don’t understand. Have you not been paying attention, man? You’re not going to be the same person in ten years, much less fifty, and she won’t either. How do you expect to make that shit last?”
“I guess that I tend to look for the way that a girl reacts to things rather than what she likes and dislikes now. I mean, a few years into our marriage, we’re going to stop that stupid shit where we spend all of our time together, which is for the best, you know, because no two people have identical interests, and if you’re around anyone too long they start to get on your nerves. So you should be doing things by yourself, you should have different interests, if only for your sanity.
“No, what’s really important is shit like, how does she deal with a stressful situation, where she’s a little over her head? ‘Cause I definitely just keeping pushing forward, trying to figure it out as I go, and if she’s the sort of person who has to take a step back and evaluate things, she’s going to have to be able to deal with the fact that I work the opposite way. One of my ex-girlfriend’s was that way, and that was definitely a big reason that we ended up breaking up, just because she couldn’t handle me trying to push things forward and I completely didn’t get that she needed me to just take a step back and calm the fuck down. Or, like, how does she deal with the fact that in a lot of ways, I’m really different than her? Because in any relationship, that comes up, and if you’re both unwilling to think about that shit and try and comes to term with it, the relationship fails. That was what went wrong with my parent’s marriage: they just weren’t willing to try and come to terms with each other’s little foibles, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess I see what you’re saying, but I just don’t see it actually working out.”
“You gotta have faith, man. I guess that I feel like it’s kind of a pussy choice to look at that situation and say, ‘Fuck, that’s too fucking hard, I’m not even going to try.’”
“Yeah, well, if that shit doesn’t work out, I know some real pretty girls that I could introduce you to. Flexible and open to suggestions, too.”
After uttering this gem, Johnny bent to light his cigarette off of the flaming charcoal. He muttered a sharp curse when an enterprising flame leaped up to lap at his face.
“Man, the girls that you date are only good for fucking.”
“My, my, aren’t we just a raging feminist.”
“Fuck off, man. I want a girl who doesn’t make me want to kill myself when she talks the next morning, and I’m not drunk enough to make the things she says seem interesting. I’d rather just jerk off.”
“Of course. Come on, man. Everybody wants to fuck models. That’s why they get paid: because they’re so good looking. As far as the talking thing goes, just threaten to feed them bacon and they’ll usually run away. Can you imagine the temptation that bacon must be for someone who’s been living on five hundred calories a day for the last five years. Fucking ridiculous.”
“And I do love bacon.”
“Which explains why you fuck fat girls.”
“How does that explain why I fuck fat girls?”
“So you admit that you do?”
“Apparently I do. But really, fat girls need lovin’ too. And they know how to cook. How do you think they got fat in the first place?”
“Ah, Sidney, so concerned for the emotional welfare of all feminine creatures that he preys on the weakest members of the herd and forces them to cook for him. Seriously, I want to throw you to a pack of feminists and laugh while they tear you apart.”
“Right, because it’s me that they would tear apart if you were standing right there. Besides, fat girls need the attention more than some fucking model. And have personalities and shit.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that it’s your nobility of spirit that causes you to go fat and go early, not desperation.”
“Hey man, nobody’s perfect. Blow me.” It was at this point in the conversation that Andrew entered.
“You shouldn’t be so homophobic. That smells great, Johnny.”
“Fuck off, Andrew. I don’t want to hear you fucking crying about how we make fun of you for smoking pole.”
“You’re really uncouth, Johnny. It amazes me that women sleep with you.” It’s something of mystery to me why Andrew is friends with the rest of us.
Really, most things are a mystery to me. Show me a man who has things figured out and I’ll show you a man who’s full of shit.
It is hard to see what it is that Andrew likes about us, as we mostly mock him, share very few interests, usually refuse to humor the unsubstantiated diatribes that he delivers in pontific, erudite tones with a countenance straining for an impossible dignity, and generally find his efforts to be at the cutting edge of political correctness and social consciousness to be a little silly. I think Andrew might be hoping that Carl will rub off on the rest of us and turn us into polite little automatons, or that if he is around us often enough, he will be able to perfectly mimic Carl and slip into a higher class of person.
This probably won’t happen, partly because Carl is too busy to rub off on anything other than the air molecules through which he flies at tremendous speeds, partly because myself, Johnny, and James are fairly indifferent to social grace beyond the bare minimum required for common courtesy, and partially because no matter how much practices, Andrew still seems as though he is making an effort for grace, when true grace looks as though it is an accidental and organic component of an action. I let Andrew have his little fantasies, though, because I can‘t really make him stop . Besides, it’s fun to watch him argue with Johnny, particularly because Johnny usually is just arguing against Andrew, rather than for any particular point. Johnny has a keenly honed sense of antagonism from which he takes a great deal of joy.
“It amazes me that men sleep with you. I hear you have a tiny dick.”
“It’s nice to see that you can always resort to verbally effeminizing me. Your originality is stunning.”
“I don’t actually have to do very much to make you seem effeminate. Really, it’s just have a dick and fuck a girl.”
“Whatever. So what were you guys talking about?”
“I was trying to talk Sid here out of throwing his life away on some girl, when he could be enjoying a plethora of new and exciting vaginas on a regular basis for the rest of his life.”
“Vaginas aren’t that different,” I interjected. “You fuck one; you’ve pretty much fucked them all. It‘s just friction.”
“He makes a good point. This is what I’ve never understood about your constant womanizing. I mean, a relationship is so much more fulfilling.”
“What exactly is more fulfilling about a relationship? The same sex every night? No, it’s just not for me.”
“Probably because you’ve never actually been in one. There’s no point in me trying to explain something that you’ve never experienced.”
“Well, that’s a pretty fatalistic approach to the failings of language. Why do you even bother talking? Would you hesitate to tell me about a bar that I’ve never experienced, or a person that I’ve never met?”
“Yeah, yeah, bring any point to its extremes and it’ll fall apart.”
“Not the really good ones.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m actually going to side with Johnny on this one, buddy. I’ll give you partial credit for that whole ‘bring any point to its extreme’ bit, but only because words are fundamentally incapable of fully describing an experience.”
“How is that different than what I said?”
“Well, what you said basically means that words are meaningless, because no matter what you say you’re wrong. What I said means that words still have meaning, although they have their limitations. Thus, you can describe a strange bar to someone, and also an unfamiliar experience, like the love you experience in a relationship.”
“Well, how would you explain love, then?”
“I guess I would describe love as sort of a process. You start off just in a relationship, and you like the person, the way that I like you and Johnny, but with more sex, and at a certain point you realize that you have fallen in love.”
“And what exactly is love, asshole? I thought you loved me?”
“I do man, but I’m not a fag. I like living with you and all, but thirty years from now, you should probably live next door. And soundproof your fucking house. I don’t want my hypothetical children to have to listen to you fucking the brains out of models for their entire childhood.”
“But if you love me, how is that different from loving some girl?”
“Maybe you should shut the fuck up, Johnny, and let me finish making my point. How does that sound?”
“Fine. I guess I’m always wrong.”
“Maybe if you were a little smarter, you‘d win one or two. I guess I would say that the first stage of love is more or less characterized by utter irrationality. Whoever it is that you’re in love with is a perfect goddess who can do no wrong, and all that shit. This is the part that more or less defines the difference between romantic love and brotherly love, I would say. I’ve definitely never thought that you or Andrew are perfect goddesses. Your flaws are abundantly clear to me.”
“Fuck off. You know I’m perfect.”
“Of course you are, precious. Anyway, after a while, you stop being crazy and start making thoughtful and legitimate accommodations with each other, and kind of sort out whether you ought to break up or continue dating or get married or whatever.”
“I guess that’s a good explanation, but that really doesn’t explain why a relationship is a good idea. Basically what you’ve described is our friendship, but with some sex and insanity thrown into the mix. It seems like a better idea to just have friends, fuck casually, and avoid the crazy. Besides, I’m way less of a pain in the ass than a girl.”
“But not as pretty, or as cuddly. Really, I’d say that the difference is that in an actual romantic relationship, you can have children. Also, girls provide a nice emotional counterpart. They want to hear about all your emotional problems and insecurities and whatever. They’re kind of an emotional pressure release valve. I mean, I guess I could forgo a relationship, but do you want to hear about whatever my insecurities are?
“No.”
“And I don’t want to tell you, because you’d be an asshole and make fun of me about that shit for the rest of my fucking life.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“That’s a horrible description. Johnny, don’t buy into Sid’s pragmatic, callous, unromantic bullshit. Sorry Sid, but you just defined love as a friendship devoid of rationality and with some sex thrown in. The best part about love is that you sort of unify your souls, and there’s an unconditional acceptance.”
“Wow. You’re a faggot.”
“I hate the way that you always make fun of things that you don’t understand.”
“No, I make fun of most things. But really, unconditional acceptance? You think that shit actually happens?”
“Yes, I do.”
“What if your girlfriend cheated on you, but you really loved her? Would you just accept it?”
“Well, if I really loved her, I guess I would. We would have to work things out, because cheating is always an indication of some bigger problem in the relationship, but yeah, I would accept it.”
“Sid? What do you think?”
“I’d dump the bitch and kill the Jody. Somebody who cheats on you once will cheat again, and you’ll eventually end up being her bitch, and fucking miserable. Really, even Andrew’s answer isn’t unconditionally accepting, because he’d change the course of the relationship to prevent an action that he doesn’t want to ever happen again, which seems like a pretty good indication that he doesn’t accept her behavior, even if he does want to keep her around. Acceptance is all well and good, but what Andrew’s point actually boils down to is a couple things. The first is that you shouldn’t be an asshole. The second is that a relationship is a perpetual effort to accommodate yourself to someone who is different from you.”
“That sounds like a lot of fucking work, man.”
“So go cry about it on the shoulder of some model you just met.”

I got drunk with James on a Wednesday afternoon. I guess that if I were pressed on the subject, I would have to admit that we really started drinking in the late morning, but the real peak of the drunkenness occurred in the afternoon. It was the sort of drunkenness that occurs more or less accidentally. I was cooking an early lunch or a late brunch, nothing special, really, and offered some of my food to James, who accepted and repaid the generosity with beer. And then he offered to get me another beer, and then another, and before I knew it, we had taken several shots of whiskey and finished eighteen beers between the pair of us, and we were drunk. I hadn’t really held a conversation with James in a while, and I decided that this was the perfect occasion.
“So what are your plans for all that lottery money, man?”
“I don’t really know. There’s so much of it that I don’t really have to worry about it for a while, I guess. Right now, just getting drunk until my money runs out sounds pretty fucking appealing.”
“Really? There isn’t something that you want to do with your life? I mean, God basically came down and said, ‘Here you go, get after whatever dreams you may have secretly been harboring,’ and you’re just going to drink it away?”
“There’s a good chance, yeah. I don’t know, I mean, I don’t want to be a rock star or an actor or really do anything. I just know that I don’t want to work anymore, and that I like to drink. Those are pretty much the two constants in my life.”
“I guess that I don’t want to work and I like to drink, but if I don’t find something to do besides drink, I feel like I’m wasting my fucking life, you know?”
“Really? I don’t think that I’ve ever seen you doing anything really productive. You just sit around and read, most of the time.”
“That’s more productive than drinking, I think. I feel like I’m at least learning something, and thinking about larger issues, you know?”
“See, to me, that just sounds depressing. I don’t want to think about larger issues. I have enough problems in my own life without adopting all the problems of the world. I think that’s what I like about drinking. It doesn’t fix anything, but it makes your problems go away as long as you’re drunk, and if you just stay drunk forever, you’ll never have to think about your problems. It doesn‘t fix anything, but it makes you think it‘s fixed.”
“Wow. That’s pretty sad, dude.”
“Probably a little bit, yeah. It’s been working all right for me so far, though.”
“I guess that’s what’s important. So do you remember a while ago, when Smitty and that Angie girl were over, and you had all that coke?”
“Sort of.”
“Do you by any chance remember asking me what I thought that love is?”
“Not at all. Did I really ask that?”
“Yeah, man. I asked you if you wanted to go get coffee or something like that, and you said, ‘No,’ and then you asked me what I thought love is.”
“Fucking weird, man. I did way too much coke that night, and drank myself fucking retarded. Fuck. Maybe I was thinking about my ex-girlfriend or something. Sometimes I do that when I’ve been drinking.”
“Really? I think that I’ve only heard about her a couple of times.”
“Yeah, I don’t talk about her that much. I don’t know though, it’s funny how your mind works. I mean, in hindsight the relationship was just an obvious train wreck, just because we were pretty young and selfish, and we would argue about the stupidest shit, and we really didn’t share very many common interests, but at the time, man, I was so fucking in love. It was ridiculous. And now, I look back on the whole thing and any given moment that I think about is a cherished memory of our happiness and incredibly painful because of the loss involved, and also full of little signs that the thing was coming to an end. Every single moment of the relationship is like that, where I feel the same way that I did at the time and when I would think about it right after we broke up and the way I feel about the relationship now. Fucking weird.”
“Why did you guys break up, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Honestly, I couldn’t really tell you. I used to think that I knew, and that it was because she was incredibly uncomfortable with making herself vulnerable in any way and I was pouring my heart out like a fucking retard, and the combination of a bunch of little habits that didn’t line up quite right and about a thousand other things, and I used to think that the more that I thought about it, the better I understood what was going on in her fucking head. But eventually I realized that I was just making shit up in my head that may or may not have been true and there was no way to prove it, so I just accepted the fact that I don’t really know why we broke up, and I guess that I can say that I loved her and I think that she loved me.”
“Huh. I had no idea. I’ve never seen you try to do anything with a girl except fuck.”
“Yeah. It turns out that there’s a lot that you don’t know about me. I haven’t really tried to have another relationship in a while just because I haven’t met anybody that seemed like they were worth the risk. Love falling apart is pretty much the most painful thing that you’ll ever experience. I don’t really want to go through that again.”
“I guess that makes sense. I feel like I should say something about getting back up on the horse that threw you, though.”
“Sometimes the lesson to be learned from getting thrown is that you shouldn’t have been riding a fucking horse in the first place.”
“Fair enough.” Our drunken private time was interrupted by the boisterous arrival of Johnny and the more subdued arrivals of Andrew and Maria.
“Seriously?” said Johnny, as if he were trying to shout over traffic or something.
“Seriously.”
“They paid you that much for a fucking painting?”
“Yeah. I’m coming up in the world, man.”
“Congratulations, Andrew,” said Maria, and then she turned to me. “Hey, how are you?”
“I’m good. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to surprise you. I hope it’s okay.”
“No, it’s fucking fantastic. I was just thinking about calling you.”
“Are you drunk?” asked Johnny. “You are drunk! It’s like, what, five in the afternoon, and the pair of you are fucking hammered.”
“Maybe so, but I think the question that you should be asking yourself is why you’re sober.”
“That is a good question. Hand me the whiskey.” He uncapped the bottle and took a long pull, his Adam’s apple disappearing thrice and reappearing before he wiped his grimacing mouth. “Fuck, that’s good. I think that I’ve figured out how I’m spending the evening. Andrew, you want some?”
“No thank you. I actually have a bottle of wine that I’ve been saving for a special occasion. I think that this might be the night to open it.”
“You are so fucking gay. What about you, Maria?”
“Sure, why not?” He handed her the bottle, and she was uncomfortable and eager, eager not so much to drink but to get along with us, and uncomfortable because she had not yet gotten comfortable with the trappings surrounding me. “Does anyone want to take a shot with me?” James, Johnny, and I agreed that we would, and four shots were poured and held aloft.
“May the gods keep the women in our beds and the wolves in the hills,” said James. We clinked glasses delicately for fear of spilling the whiskey and then swallowed the shots. I grimaced slightly and sighed. James sniffled a little. Johnny smacked his mouth and licked his lips, and then smacked his mouth again. Maria asked for a chaser, and I handed her my open beer, which had gone a little flat.
“Does anyone want a glass of wine?” asked Andrew, pulling the cork from a bottle, and then opening a cabinet to look for wine glasses.
“I’ll take one, if you don’t mind,” said Maria, and with an apologetic look toward the rest of us, she added, “Whiskey is a little rough on me the next morning.”
“At least you took a shot, unlike some faggots that I could mention,” said Johnny.
“Why do you always have to resort to homophobic comments, Johnny?” asked Andrew.
“They aren’t homophobic, man. I’m not afraid of homosexuals. Honestly, I don’t mind homosexuals at all. What I do mind are queers masquerading as straight guys and refusing to drink whiskey.”
“You have to admit that it does come across as being a little bit bigoted,” said Maria. Johnny shrugged.
“So it is. To be completely honest, I don’t care at all.”
“That’s a little callous. It’s not like homosexuals don’t get enough ridicule from the religious right. There’s no need for you to contribute to it.”
“That’s probably true. To be honest, I could care less about what homosexuals are up to, but I have a pretty definite concept of masculinity, and it annoys me when I come across a guy who doesn’t live up to that concept. It’s not really that narrow, either. I know plenty of potheads and jocks and nerds and whatever that rise to challenges and admit that they take shits and jerk off and like women, and don’t pussyfoot around anything controversial like it has the plague and don’t pretend to be too sophisticated to enjoy simple masculine pleasures like whiskey and tits. And where I grew up, if somebody was acting limp-wristed and effeminate, the names that you called them were all things that like to have cocks inside them, like bitches and pussies and queers.”
“Wow. I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“Don’t worry about it, honey. He talks real mean, but deep down inside, he’s a pretty princess like the rest of us.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I will, thank you. Bigotry aside, what exactly is your concept of masculinity? I mean, are you saying that to be manly you have to be a drinking, cussing, whoring son of a bitch who watches football on Sunday, goddammit, and loves a pair of titties in his face?”
“Well, it’s pretty fucking hard to argue with that definition. But not everybody is a fireman or a Marine or whatever. I think that what I have in mind is the willingness to overcome physical discomfort as a matter of personal pride, a sense of confidence in himself that makes him kind of indifferent to what other people think about him, and somebody who doesn’t hide behind pretension or political correctness, but admits his likes and dislikes because who fucking cares what other people thinks, that’s what he fucking likes and how he feels.”
“So why did you call me a faggot when I refused to drink whiskey?”
I looked at Andrew.
“Is that a serious question, dude? Because we all remember you drinking whiskey and liking it when we first moved in together. Fuck, you used to call us fags, too. You just keeping stepping up the political correctness the more successful you become, and you’ve sort of adopted the sensibilities of your customers. It seems like you get prissier every day.”
“Fuck you. I have not. As far as my language has gone, I realized a while ago exactly how hurtful that word was, and the more gay men that I’ve known, the less I use it, just because I don’t want to insult them, because they’re really nice guys. And I quit drinking whiskey because it gives me the meanest hangovers that I’ve ever had. I’m getting too old for that shit.”
“Pussy,” said Johnny, “that’s exactly what I meant about the willingness to overcome physical discomfort.”
“I don’t know if I like your definition,” said James, who was slouched in his chair, sweating whiskey, and who seemed likely to fall out of his chair and sleep on the floor at any moment. “I think that by your definition, I’m masculine, and I don’t think that I would call myself a man, the way that my father was a man, anyway. I think that there’s a sense of morality or responsibility that’s missing. I can’t really put my finger on it.”
Maria looked at James, impressed. To be honest, I was a little impressed myself. James had made a good point.
“What about it, Johnny? Where does morality and responsibility fit into your definition?”
“Fuck if I know. I hadn’t even thought about it.”
“I think the trick there is figuring out morality. I mean, how do you define that?”
“I know some churches that’ll tell you.”
“Yeah, so do I. I think that the real problem with morality is that it implies knowledge of truth, but if you don’t believe that there’s a divinely revealed truth, then what the fuck do you do, you know? I mean, I kind of feel like any truth that we can wrangle out of life is always incomplete and indefinite, so it turns morality into a whole lot of guesswork.”
“I don’t know if that’s the case. I think that there are some things that we implicitly know.”
“Like what?”
“I think that we know that we shouldn’t hurt people.”
“I think that we know that we shouldn’t hurt people that we want help from. I think that self-interest plays an incredible role in the development of an ethical code. I mean, the real reason that murder is illegal is because no one wants to be murdered, and we figured out that unless there were negative consequences to the action, people would just go ahead and murder each other. Thanks, Draco, for that particular insight.”
“That’s pretty cynical. If you don’t think that we have an innate morality, where does it come from, then?”
“I think that morality is just an explicated form of self-interest that arises from the fact that our self-interest has to accommodate the self-interest of others, and so we praise charity and kindness and that sort of thing because those are the sort of things that we want to happen to us. There’s a certain sense in which you can say that we created god because he’s the greatest wish-fulfillment that our self-interest could possibly imagine. An omniscient, omnipotent being that loves us and cares deeply about what happens in our lives, and only asks for a little faith in return. And what does this perfect wish-fulfillment demand of us? Our love, and our obedience to commands that protect our self-interest, up until the book of Leviticus or so, at which point it started to reflect a legalist‘s self-interest, to let Pharisees congratulate themselves. At which point Jesus comes into the scene, and returns us to the morality of a more general self-interest.”
“But how do you apply morality to masculinity if it’s a selfish morality? And really, how does a selfish morality work, exactly?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know if I would ever call it a selfish morality, for one thing. I think that it’s pretty far removed from selfishness, just because it operates on a larger and more abstract scale than our momentary wants and needs.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think that the difference between selfishness and a fundamentally self-interested morality lies in the relationship between benefit and time. I think that selfishness is a lot more short-sighted when it comes to gain. Like, you do something selfish because it has immediate benefits, and there isn’t a lot of foresight involved. Whereas with something like self-interested morality, everything is considered, and not necessarily consciously considered, on a longer timeline. It involves a lot more delayed gratification, and a lot more subtlety as far as defining self-interest. I mean, a moral interaction with someone that you love has to be unselfish to be moral, because I think that love is in many ways an agreement to respect the needs of that other person as equal or superior to your own. But that doesn’t mean that the unselfishness isn’t fundamentally self-interested. You get a lot love and support and stability and all that shit from a loving relationship, which is definitely in your benefit in the long term. It becomes in your self-interest to be unselfish.”
“All right, but what about responsibility, then?”
“I guess that I’d have to say that morality and responsibility are sort of inseparable. You make self-interested choices hoping that they’ll be good for you in the long run, even though you don’t know what will actually happen in the future and what the unintended consequences are, and I think that morality is in a lot of ways accepting responsibility for the choices that you have made, and then adjusting your future decisions to accommodate your self-interest if the consequences turn out less than favorable. If that’s the case, then it sort of lines up nicely with what Johnny was saying about just presenting your likes and dislikes honestly, and not trying to live up to some standard set by other people, just because that’s an abandonment of responsibility for your actions. I mean, if you look at the concept of self as shaped strongly by your choices, then masculinity is really just a male who has a finely developed sense of himself, and can live with his choices and the shape of his character and accepts responsibility for them.”
“I don’t know if that really improves on Johnny’s definition, except it’s a little more eloquent.”
“Yeah, I don’t know either. I don‘t even know if it‘s more eloquent or just less concise.”

I was lying in bed with Maria, and it was a perfect afternoon. Maybe it’s just that Maria brings out the perfection in the world. It seems like the world might have beautified itself in an attempt to keep up with her.
My bedroom catches the afternoon sunlight, and because it is a corner room, two of its walls are floor-to-ceiling windows. My bed lies in the corner of these two walls. The sun filtered through the curtains, gentling it, forming a thick amber matrix, panes and polygons and tetrahedrons of sunlight pirouetting, forming mutating fractal patterns, revolving, orbiting. The light danced an elaborate dance made all the more graceful through the lethargy of its movement, creating a beautiful indolent waltz. Delicate spills of dust motes hung suspended in the air, constellations that would be invisible unless highlighted by rays of sunlight, pillars that stood at oblique angles like vehicles of divine revelation, crouched and waiting to blind some traveler.
We lay together, nestled in mutual languor, sweaty and content. Maria’s head rested on my shoulder with her eyes closed. The light reduced her face to gentle shade with gently curved highlights on the periphery of the form, so that it appeared to be an exquisite collection of glowing oblongs bordered by smooth porcelain shade, a minimalist portrait. Her face was composed into that beauty that only comes from utter contentment, from the peace that we know as we drift at the margins of sleep.
It was the sort of moment that made you indifferent to the existence of God, because no heaven provided by divine salvation could possibly improve upon it. She stirred, snuggling a little more closely to me, and her eyelashes raised the slightest fraction, her lips moved ever so slightly, and she spoke.
“Tell me something about yourself.” I kissed her forehead.
“What do you want to know?”
“Something meaningful. Something profound. Something no one else knows.”
“That’s quite a demand. Do you want to narrow it down a little bit?” She rolled over to lie almost entirely on top of me, and her face broke into a delicious smile full of mirth, as though she were tasting the air to savor the moment.
“Nope. You’re just going to have to be a big boy and figure it out yourself.”
“That just sounds like so much work. I don’t know if I’ll be up to it.”
“Oh, poor baby. Now give me details.” She started kissing my neck, which was pleasant but distracting.
“All right. Once, in high school, I shit my pants.”
“Oh, that’s disgusting. And your mother knows about it, I’m sure.”
“Probably so. It is a funny story, though.”
“I’m sure it is. It wasn’t quite what I was thinking, though.”
“I’m going to tell you anyway. I was on crutches with a broken leg, and I got food poisoning. It turns out that it’s really hard to run quickly on crutches.”
“I was actually thinking about something a little more tender, a little less like something you would tell your friends when you’re really drunk.”
“I suppose that I have something like that in my bag of tricks. Let me see, let me see…how would you like to know my favorite book?”
“I would love to.”
“Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein. It actually was a fairly significant reason that I joined the Marines.”
“Really? I haven’t read it. Tell me something else.”
“That’s not enough?”
“No. I’m really looking for something really intimate. I just want to have something that I know that no one else knows.”
“So you can stake your claim to me? Would you also like to tattoo ‘Property of Maria’ on my forehead? Maybe put a leash on me?”
“Be serious. I don’t want to put a leash on you. I just want you to tell me a secret, a meaningful secret. I want to feel special.”
Never in my life would I request to know someone’s intimate secret as a way to feel special. Honestly, the entire idea of demanding intimate details from someone never occurred to me. I always assumed that they just sort of slipped out over time, unfolding like a flower in the spring time or something similarly relaxed and romantic.
“Because just demanding to know intimate emotional details is in no way an attempt to stake a claim to me.”
“What’s wrong with wanting to stake a claim to you? We’ve been dating for a while, and I feel like I hardly know you. You never talk about anything really personal, you just talk about things that you’ve read or whatever your friends are doing. It’s all really superficial.”
“I’m sorry, darling.’ You might have to be a little patient. I’m sort of in the habit of keeping that sort of thing close to my chest. Really, it’s probably your best bet to just wait for me to talk about them: the way you approached it makes me feel like I’m being extorted. It really puts my back up.”
“I wish you would quit saying that I’m trying to extort your feelings out of you. You should want to share them with me.”
“And I do. It’s just not the sort of thing that I usually talk about. I don’t really think that you’re trying to beat it out of me or anything, but that’s kind of my instinctive reaction to the thing. I’m just saying that sometimes you might have to settle for a little less than you were hoping for. Fuck, it honestly took me until now to even think of something good.”
She didn’t seem to be particularly mollified by this argument.
“And what I’m saying is, that for this to be a functional relationship, you’re going to have to do a better job of communicating those things to me. I feel like I deserve to know a little more about you than what Johnny’s latest conquest looked like.”
“Of course. You’re absolutely right. Just try and be patient with me. It really doesn’t come naturally to me at all to talk about my feelings.” We had reached the inevitable conclusion of any argument with a woman, in which I was defeated. I think that the secret to the perpetual success of women in arguments lies in the fact that they refuse to accept defeat, but rather will contort their argument into any shape so long as they retain their dominance. They create their own high ground and use it to place us within stubby little box canyons. Their victory might also lie in the relative indifference of the man to whatever is being argued about. I didn’t particularly mind telling Maria some intimate detail of my emotional landscape, but I possess an innate recalcitrance to confiding generally speaking, and it is my opinion that emotions are not the sort of thing that are meant to be thrown carelessly around. They project out from the most intimate and fragile part of a human being, and to jostle them too fiercely is to cause permanent damage. “Do you want to hear the super-special secret emotional detail that I thought of.”
“If you really want to tell me.”
“Of course I really want to tell you. Here it goes. When I got out of the Marines, I lived in an apartment by myself for about a year, and I got so lonely living by myself that I cried myself to sleep every night for a month. That’s part of the reason that I live with all these guys now.”
This detail was actually somewhat fictitious. The only time I cried out of loneliness was while I was cutting onions, and I blame the onions. But I was really lonely, and she needed some detail indicating vulnerability and sensitivity, and most importantly of all, the exclusive rights she had to my more delicate emotions and trust.
This is what I like to call a strategically employed fib. There are some who will say that conversations are not battles. They are wrong. And in a conversational battle with a woman, a man never wins, even if he does win the argument. Ask any married man. He knows. I, however, had won a strategic victory despite the lost battle through chicanery and benign dishonesty. There are also some people who will tell you that honesty is the best policy, and they are grievously incorrect. It is our lies that make us palatable to each other and our selves. The trick is to distinguish between the lie that greases social interaction and the lie that is indicative of cowardice, malice, or dishonesty for its own sake.
Maria snuggled tightly against me, and said, “Aw, honey…” And then she kissed me. Things were all right with the world, as far as I could tell.

I was sitting in the living room by myself, reading The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, which is, in my opinion, the greatest novel of the modern age, regardless of what the experts say about James Joyce. While I will grant that Joyce is perhaps the greatest technician the novel has ever known, I feel that his Achilles’ heel lies in the fact that he lets technique impair his ability to tell a story to which readers can relate.
I have my own private theory regarding the means by which an artwork is judged, and I don’t know if any professionals in the field are particularly inclined to agree with me, but then again, I don’t particularly care. The way I look at it goes something like this: Obviously whoever paints the painting or writes the novel or whatever intends for it to mean a particular thing, to impact whoever sees or hears or reads it in a particular way. There exists a tie between the artist and the artist’s product, and the nature of the product is to a significant extent shaped by the artist’s intent.
Then spectators become involved, and whatever the artist intends kind of flies out the window. The interpretation of the work of art becomes a subjective relationship in which all of the power lies in the hand of the viewer, and because the work of art cannot help but be a static object, the artist is to a certain extent excluded from this interpretive relationship. Because a person cannot help but view an object except in light of his or her experiences, there is a distinct tendency for the potency of a work of art to be negated to a certain extent, as the viewer tends to bend the work into whatever shape best fits his or her worldview. This is why there are liberation theologians and spectacularly conservative Baptist theologians who both support their ideology using the Bible.
Obviously the artist has created a work of art for some purpose, something that the artist would like to communicate through whatever medium he or she happens to use, and thus the relationship between artist’s intent and viewer’s bias is locked into an eternal struggle. The artist must do his absolute best to convey his intent in a manner that rebuffs the viewer’s attempt to distort it, and in the case of the novelist, the most effective tool is to tell an emotionally resonant narrative. There is a certain sense in which emotional resonance doesn’t convey the minutia of a point very well, but what it does convey is infinitely more memorable, for the simple reason that a feeling has more impact than an objective critical analysis or even a simple thought. In order get across his point, the novelist must make the reader, laugh, cry, stoke the reader’s ire, force the reader to empathize with the characters. And in order to accomplish this feat, the novelist needs to write a narrative that is more or less cogent and of a fairly traditional sort.
Graham Greene excels at this, because his novels convey a sense of the forlorn and the moral tumult that are inherent to the human condition very clearly. James Joyce lets his narrative get hung up on gimmicky technical barbed wire. He uses technique to write characters that are so precisely accurate that there is no joy in reading his work. Everything that he does requires such a significant amount of critical analysis that it negates the entire concept of the novel as a means of improving the human condition.
If I had to guess, I would say that this is why Joyce is so beloved by experts in the field of literature: because it takes so much effort and specialized knowledge to make sense of him, and because his work is substantial enough to provide them endless debate, he allows them to feel justified in their chosen profession, despite the fact that their chosen profession exists solely to train its practitioners’ successors. They spend incredible amounts of time and money to be qualified to argue trivia amongst themselves, and to vivisect works of art so that they are unrecognizable, a practice that destroys whatever merits the artwork originally possessed.
Specialists in the field have a tendency to forget that the point of art is to try and improve the human condition by broadening our sense of empathy and bringing to our attention the circumstances in which others live. And while what James Joyce does is very impressive in its own sort of way, it doesn’t really translate very well to the average person. The real goal of the artist should be to improve the human condition, and the numerically superior have the greatest ability to implement changes. This quest is quixotic enough given the surly, misanthropic, myopic nature of the human temperament. There’s no need to tear apart the all-too-frail means of human improvement by showing off and turning your novel into something that no one can relate to.
As I neared the end of the novel, my phone rang. It was Smitty.
“How the fuck are you, Smitty?” I answered.
“I’m doing just outstanding, sir. What’s shakin’ in your neighborhood?”
“Same old, same old. Hey, what the fuck happened to you the last time you were here? You just fucking run off with some bitch and don’t even come back to say goodbye? Dick.”
“Fuck off, man. I got distracted by Angie, man. She’s fucking awesome.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of bros before hos? I mean, seriously, why don’t you just abandon your friends for a piece of pussy? Go ahead. Do it.”
“Dude, shut the fuck up. You and I both know that the gender that keeps same-sex solidarity in the face of a night of fucking isn’t the gender that we belong to.”
“You make a fair point, my friend. So what’s up? Or did you just call because you missed the sound of my voice.”
“I’m calling to invite you to my wedding.”
“Your fucking what, asshole?”
“My wedding, dick cheese. Fuck, I can’t believe that I just said dick cheese.”
“I can’t either. It’s like you’re in fucking fourth grade. Why the fuck would you go and do a fucking stupid thing like getting married?”
“I told you, man, that Angie girl is the shit.”
“Your eloquence is staggering. I can tell you really love her.”
“Yeah, yeah. Mock me. See if I want you to be my best man anymore.”
“Blow me. Who else is dumb enough to put up with your mangy ass? I know you don’t have any other friends, motherfucker.”
“Shit, you’re right. But seriously, you‘re not my best man. My brother was raising a big stink about that shit yesterday, so I‘m going to give baby his bottle so I won‘t have to listen to him bitch for the rest of our fucking lives.”
“That’s all right. I got myself a girlfriend, and if we’re still dating, I’ll probably just want to spend time with her instead of dealing with all of the logistical shit that accompanies a wedding.”
“Fair enough. I want to spend the weekend fucking, too. I’ll make you general population, and get my shitty relatives or somebody to do that unpleasant shit.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Don’t worry about it. This is more Angie’s fucking thing anyway. As long as I have a groomsman to go with every bridesmaid, she won’t fucking care. And God knows that I’d rather sit on my ass in the audience than stand for however long the fucking thing takes.
“Fair enough. Well, congratulations, man. At least she’s hot. Do you remember that fucking whale that Stephens married?”
“Oh, God, she was huge. I was always afraid that she would implode and become a black hole, she was so fucking big.”
“Yeah…”
“Hey man, I’ve got to go. I still haven’t told my fucking parents that I’m getting married.”
“Well, shit. Give me the when and where and I’ll be there.”
So he did. It seemed that my friends were starting to grow up.
Well, maybe not Johnny. This is probably for the best. I’d start to feel like the fabric of the universe was tearing apart if he transformed into some sensitive, sensible, mature human being. Our house has what amounts to three living rooms: there is one in the basement, one on the first floor, and one on the second floor. I guess you could count the attic as a fourth living room, if it weren’t for the fact that James had decided that he wanted to use the attic as his bedroom, which makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose. It is fully finished, so it looks like a real room, and it does have its own bathroom. Never mind the two empty bedrooms that we have on the second floor. Our house is, quite simply, very large. I couldn’t imagine living in it without roommates. I’d have to be Mormon or Catholic or something, with a wife and fifteen kids, to really use the space.
Although it seems likely that the three living rooms are not all actually called living rooms, we quite pragmatically decided that since we didn’t know what distinguishes a living room from a den or a study or whatever, we would call them all living rooms. I walked up the stairs to the third living room, and heard Johnny talking to Carl.
“What about nigglet? Does that offend you?” Carl was peering very patiently over the top of a book.
“No. To be quite honest, I’m really not offended by racial slurs at all. I understand them for what they are: an expression of misplaced hatred on an illegitimate basis. I can understand why a lot of white people don’t like black people. There are a lot of black people who, quite frankly, I think are an imposition upon tastefulness and civilization. The racist’s problem, however, lies in attributing their lamentable lifestyles to race rather than blaming the actual source of the problem, whatever it may be. Usually the problem stems from poverty, incredibly terrible educational systems, and a culture that doesn’t emphasize education and accomplishment. These problems in turn lead to violence and drug use, as well as the use of a vernacular that indicates ignorance. It’s easy for me to understand why people hate the symptoms of the underlying social problems, and similarly easy for me to understand why they mistakenly attribute the symptoms of a rotting society with a racial tendency.”
“That’s way too fucking reasonable. What about that whole, ‘the nigger word represents centuries of oppression and the violation of human rights’ argument?”
“Honestly, I feel like being reactionary doesn’t particularly help the problem, and I simply choose not to let that word have power over me. I would hate to think that a word that is commonly used with such hateful implications is sacrosanct. Obviously a lot of black people disagree with me, but then again, a lot of black people think that I’ve abandoned my African-American heritage to be a goody-two-shoes Uncle Tom.
“I, on the other hand, am inclined to believe that because I am a well-spoken, tastefully-dressed, educated, and successful black man, my very existence is working to erode racial stereotypes and the efficacy of the word ‘nigger.’
“I feel that in the final analysis, actions do speak louder than words, and certainly more loudly than someone complaining about the residue of a lamentable but defunct system of oppression. I also feel like it is unreasonable to expect an entire cultural institution to just change its course in one generation. So, lamentable though the current incarnation of racism may be, I have resigned myself to accept it.”
It seems likely that Carl is the only person in the country to feel this way. He really is a little odd.
“That’s really fucking weird man. It’s a good thing you haven’t joined the Nation of Islam. Motherfuckers would have no choice to excommunicate you.”
I interjected, “Do they do that?”
“Does who do what?”
“Does the Nation of Islam excommunicate?”
“Do I look like a charter fucking member?”
“Not really. You look like you leave your sister laying in a puddle of your semen in your trailer while you go riding around in bed sheets, looking for someone to lynch.”
“Fuck you. I’ve never fucked my sister.”
“Sure. And you never play banjo while you’re sitting on our porch wearing overalls and no shirt, either.”
“You have no idea how much I wish I knew how to play the banjo.”
“So learn, dumb fuck. Jesus. But seriously, do you guys remember that girl that Smitty fucked last time he was here?”
“Yeah, what’s-her-name. What about it?”
“He’s getting fucking married in like four months.”
“Bullshit. That dumb cunt. He might as well put a fucking gun in his mouth and pull the fucking trigger.”
“You’re such a romantic, Johnny,” said Carl, “Not everyone is suited to a life of promiscuity, leaving little bastard racist children to be raised by their beautiful but unintelligent mothers.”
“Fuck you, Carl. I always wrap it.”
“A foolproof plan, no doubt. Carry on sowing your wild oats. The world would be a terrible place without someone to carry on your genetic legacy.”
“No kidding,” I said, and then posed the question, “Who would build our houses and do our yardwork?”
“You’re a dick.”
“And you’re a pussy. Just take the verbal abuse like a man, sweetheart. It’ll all be over soon, and we’ll be gentle, so you won’t have to get too many stitches in your asshole.”
“I always knew you were gay.”

I was alone in my bed, trying to fall asleep. I was thinking about Maria, and also about the nature of love. What exactly is it that makes love what it is? I love my friends, but the majority of the time that we spend together is chaff and dross and unremarkable: it is the few moments of familiarity and fidelity that sustain the love, the moments in which I am in need and in which they rise to the occasion. But romantic love is a different beast, with vague hallmarks and subtle ways. I had this sentiment that I felt for Maria, not an all-consuming passion that inspires ill-auspiced nocturnal roaming and an early death, not something to defy feuding noble families, nor the intoxicating elation that is felt for someone who seems to recognize you for who you are in all of your aspects, but rather a nuanced thing with spires and parapets barely articulated, susurrations mumbled through the mire.
It was a thing of many countenances, and a decapitation of one of its facets seemed as though it would spawn many reiterations, each denoting the etching upon my soul in finer detail.
It was lofty and it was pragmatic.
I saw in Maria someone with whom I could spend time comfortably, someone with whom I could discuss erudite vagaries and also vulgar trivia. I saw in her the fountain of my own lust, and my lust had tied itself solely to her. I was fond of her, a sentiment that ran like a dark and mossy crevice through my core, a deep and abiding thing. I did not care to imagine a life without her.
But was this love?
I mulled the question over in my head, a long repetition of the question and the facts over and over ad infinitum, but there was no surety. After a long while, I decided that it was.
Love is an act of faith, I think, a covenant with ourselves that our judgment is good, and the hope that this other person, whom we can never truly know, reciprocates the sentiment, and that their sentiment of unknown quality can be synthesized into our own sentiment, into a mutual sentiment. Love is the unjustified trust that the future is not foreboding, that though it may not be benevolent, it is at least benign.
Most of all, love is the hope that we can, through an act of the will, take one moment and all that it contains within it, and carry it with us in our hearts, so that whatever the vagaries of time may be, this one precious thing will stay the same, and we can use it to cast light upon our circumstances like a city upon a hill, so that we are able to recast circumstances in the image of the moment that we have saved, so that we can, with the help of another, make the future one long cherished moment.
Love is the means by which we take possession of an ambivalent world.
If James had asked me then what the nature of love is, that is how I would have answered.