Falling in Love is Easy, Being in Love is Hard
First Chapter - My Name on a Car
Out the window he (His name is
Emile, he is 28 years old, and, last year, his second novel was written up by
the New York Times as the “New Great American Novel.” He suffers from anxiety
and depression, which becomes particularly crippling during periods of extended
social interaction, in large group scenarios, and when speaking to red heads
with dimples. His sole sexual experience occurred his senior year of college,
with the ensuing panic attack leading to him dropping out of university. He has
since developed an exhaustive interest in pornography, which has persuaded him
to leave sex well enough alone, for sanity’s sake) sees a single star, this
great lost soul, found himself out here for the stars and yet they now are
enshrouden perpetually by clouds. In the perfect darkness of rural living, all
appears as black, the night lit instead by computer screen alone, pulsing
against cornea.
The complex processes of love,
distilled a simplest gesture, they call it online dating, but isn’t it really
just socially approved judgment of one’s peers? A like or a pass, a yes or a no
(a binary choice?), a hundred million women all possessed of beauties, great
and small, slight and magnificent, legion and lonesome, all but none,
suggestions of what he could have, can this really be the way to love, a yes or
no to a blank-faced screen? Or is this but a crutch, for those too unable to
approach the processes in person, content instead to leave out the middleman
(shitty parties, late night bars?), but the process made all the more vapid in
their simplification. He asks and answers at once, yet still onwards he
presses.
She of red hair, likes hiking and
camping, staring at the stars, and from them what meaning does she derive? God,
perhaps? The idea of her hints at something that he wishes, at heart, to be an
inevitability, and even if the profile hides the reasons why she is as
impossible as all the pretty faces yet passed by, some step forwards will end
always in a step back, tripping table topped, she just doesn’t respond or for
some reason or none it just doesn’t work out, this time and the next time and
last time.
And he asks himself why he’s here,
and how? And he doesn’t have an answer, though he lusts for one, an answer, and
much else. He reminds himself he’s happy (enough). That, when he plays the
game, he’s not, so he should just give up, let himself succumb to his own
contentment.
He remembers a birthday party he
went to once. An important one. A post-university graduation, pre-real life
birthday. Not his, no. Five people were there. One not by choice, one the
celebration’s centre. It cut him deep, this birthday, a friend left with
nothing in the end - not the end of all things, not yet, but the end of much
which once mattered, that which once flowed against the end of all things.
Where will he stand at all his endings yet to come, where was he at those that
have passed him by already? Will he have to stand alone, left only with his
skies and his car, this desert, so chosen for its artifices of meaning, love
not had, or may yet one appear before him to grant him someone to stand beside?
And then his inbox pings and he gets
a shot of dopamine, a rat in some cheap college experiment (what makes us
happy, and why is it MDMA?), the simple suggestion in amongst the void
self-created of someone out there thinking of him.
“Hey man,
Saw this and thought of you. LOL.
- Marco”
Then a link, apostates.com, a miniscule twitch of muscle, subconscious,
then a click, unnoticed for the familiarity, not so dissimilar to waking
mid-winter, frost on the window, bed warmed by another, or, alternatively, high
summer, the bed comfortably cool, for its loneliness. An expansion of color,
not bright or overwhelming, chosen instead for its simple eye catching
boldness, and a header proclaiming “The online anti-dating service for those
trying to just get the family off their back.”
And he wonders again how he found himself here. He is reminded (quietly)
of why.
A family, man and woman older, 60s, early 70s, and four their juniors,
one early twenties, the other three late (one hand held under the table with
the other, their eyes hinting most slightly at something a fool might term
Love), set across from one another at a long table, visions of their cross-wise
partner obfuscated by decadent candelabras, place settings of silver and silk,
money and time long past, contrasted colours, white table cloths, china, each
the five wear deep colours tuned for a dance, and walls set similar shade
behind the rippling afterbirth at candle-light edge except where interrupted by
windows, gothic, (American?), looking out on a snow ensnared woodscape,
Fairytale without a happy ending, the snow yet coming down, hard and fast,
steep angle, and yet behind them, a Christmas tree, lit up a dozen colors, and
this should break the mood, but, somehow, it just reinforces the general
atmosphere of a place escaped from a time long gone.
She (her name is Emily, she is 28 years old, the company she founded one
of the most valuable in the world, and she has had sex twice, the first time
with a high school sweetheart who she promptly dumped, never to speak to again,
the second drunk with a freshman, she just on the cusp of graduation, no, it’s
not that she doesn’t enjoy sex, and no, she’s not a fucking lesbian, stop
asking, it’s just that, well she’s 28 years old, is the wealthiest woman in the
world, is not in the technology business, but the East India Company for the
modern age, empire building business, and, really, she can masturbate can’t
she? She has things on her mind more important than sex.)
“So Emily, how are things with Jeremy?”
“Jeremy?”
“Yes dear, the boy you were seeing
last... last uh...” the next words tumble forth slightly choked from her
mother’s slight lips “last Christmas.”
“Oh, yeah, Jeremy... sweet
Jeremy...”
“You broke up didn’t you?” Her dad
never much bothered with subtlety.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, honey, he seemed so nice...”
“You never met him.”
“No, but...” Emily primes her tongue
to move and her lips to separate, but her father, he cuts a glance across the
table and it stabs straight into her heart and her tongue, and the truth is bit
back.
Silence hangs quite foreboding, as a dead man, over the table, and none
the five dare utter a syllable. Outwith the home, steel and glass and concrete
(a suggestion at something?), wind whips hard, nature trying to reclaim the
human soul, maybe, or simply a vaguest of hints that judgement is coming, given
time.
“Well dear, you must remember, you are getting older, and there are
things more important in life than, well, your career.”
“Yeah, like what mom?”
“Not to be too on the nose about this, but, really I think what I’m
getting at here is love. No need to rename the wheel, as they say.”
“They don’t though.”
“Don’t be a pedant. You understand my point. You won’t always be so
young and pretty.”
“Really?”
“Really what, dear?” Her siblings, they trade glances, nervous like,
they already found some sort of love, even passing thought it may be, this but
an eternal precondition, an expectation signed on the dotted line along with
all the other terms and conditions, and this temporary love, well it keeps
their parents at bay, even as it keeps their parents together, and her brother,
he thinks maybe what he could do if he was not so bound, a motorcycle against
an empty, endless horizon. That, or a bottle of JD every night, as before she
saved him, or so he must keep repeating over and over and over against the dark
night shone in, this particular night illuminated piss yellow.
He remembers back, as he looks over
the web page, to an evening past, steering his car through desert night, back
tires slipping occasionally on sand as he takes turns well past 70, it built
from mere scrap with his own hands, grease and oil spilled across them, the act
of building something, My Name on a Car, should be a song title (probably is),
we own only that which we understand down on some deeper level, past intuition,
beyond vestiges of love or devotion or carnal knowledge, down to the
fundamentals of creation. But shouldn’t, then, all parents, understand perfect
their children? He knows at heart this is not true and can never be true and
will never be true (So honey, are you seeing anybody? No, I’m fucking not, now
will you just leave me the fuck alone and never talk to me again? But of course
he can’t say that...). He lacks children of blood and guts, so he loves and
understands onto his car what most fail to understand onto their spawn. The
love, though? The love is always the question, and doesn’t he love enough? And
not the car, no, but he has his people, eccentric though they may be, a Jazz
drummer in Tokyo afraid of the quiet, playing long into the night, faster and
louder ever on, so that may never have that perfect loneliness that comes in
the silence, the motorcycle racer from Rome loved seemingly by every woman he
sets his sights on, but each night holds a revolver to her own head, daring his
deepest self to just pull the damn trigger, even the alcoholic old junkyard
man, famed by all his fellow drunkards and wastrels for his intelligence so
immense as to lay low the basic desperation of his own existence, he knows them
and he loves them, and is this love not enough? This great carnival of
freakery, and he their oft-disappeared ring leader.
In front of him, an about page,
usually unnecessary on these online dating sites, it doesn’t take any time
getting to the truth - “Apostates.com is a different kind of online ‘dating
service,’ designed for those of us tired of the constant notion that a romantic
relationship is the be all and end all of existence. It is, instead, a service
to find individuals with similar views on relationships, and make arrangements
by which to convince particularly over involved family members that you are,
indeed, in a healthy relationship. Apostates.com is not a dating site. Instead,
think of your fellow site users as partners in the grand battle against our
social conditioning which suggests that romantic love is an absolute.”
Then, the requisite “Try free for 30
days.” Damn. Tinder and Okcupid get on fine on advertising revenue and premium
subscriptions, why can’t this... but, he supposes, their service is more
particular, more niche, like his junkyard philosopher preaching to those well
and truly committed to the one-two punch of solipsism and nihilism, not just as
an idea, but a lifestyle, a prison break for the self-imprisoned.
He begins entering his personal
information, and, with his free hand he taps out a bass beat playing wildly
through his head, slamming its way across an old jazz record. His hi-fi system
lays silent, but the mind creates what the mind creates and for him, that is
often enough, and, more often still, far too much.
They set around a room far too empty
(clean lines, Mom once said), the TV buzzing away contentedly pride of place on
the mantlepiece, as all the rest sit far too quiet, glancing furtively to one
another, as if something is about to go fast wrong, but what they don’t know.
It can’t though, this is Home and Home is safe and comfortable, right?
Especially now, Christmas tree lighting up faces un-cherubic in tones of mirth
but the fake needles they are white, because, again Mom said, it is cleaner,
and outside the wind is whipping harder, and Emily glances out but the view
lies cloaked entirely now. She wonders what she could see out there, whether
any dare venture out, to seek the utter isolation of a world past our own
pre-conditions for existence.
The TV crackles none the louder, but
the following she hears, above the usual babble -
“In China, the new Simian Flu virus
continues to spread, confounding all efforts by the government to contain this
deadly new disease. The official death toll stands at 2.3 million in just six
short months, although independent observers estimate the actual number at as
high as eight million. As the death toll continues to rise, the control of the
Communist party continues to crumble, prompting rumors of an imminent coupe.
Elsewhere, economists have estimated
that, this year, the value of the Euro fell a full 22%, leading to a
mass-devaluing of the government debt of much of western Europe, not to mention
an almost unheard of rise in unemployment.
While the United States has thus far
avoided the most direct effects of what many are terming the “year from hell,”
the decline of our European and Chinese economic allies pose serious risks for
the future of the American econo...” The face flashes out and Emily’s quickly
cuts over to a remote stood extended out from body, straight, aimed like gun to
head, her mother’s face behind it, normally sharp eyes dulled slightly by a few
extra glasses of wine at dinner.
“Enough of that.” Her mother’s voice
is curt.
“I was watching.”
“We’re spending time together as a
family. We don’t need the TV on for that.”
“No one’s talking.” Her mother
mumbles something, but she doesn’t catch it. The silence freezes over once more
and none can move but for the thick layer of ice that has crept under the
window sill, across the floor, up the legs of the furniture, and across their
bodies.
Though many they wear smiles, slight
though they may be, inwards they grimace, they cry, they demand of God himself
for a way out, an escape from this great, immortal cage. Her little brother,
well he asks to be set free, for his car’s tires to give out on a patch of
black ice, the flecks of snow hurtling in perpendicular against his vision,
headlights crossing out trees and an occasional flicker of what may be asphalt
or just maybe death bringer, it now legion, and in this moment he wonders what
he will truly see, in the place into which now he cries. He wonders if she
would have loved him if he’d just tried that one bit harder, if he’d been
richer, dressed better, another layer of muscles, another wry smile, another
well timed joke, but he knows she didn’t and that’s what matters. He can hope
all he wants for another shot, and this is what he sees in the place on which
he smiles, but inwards all he can see is the sliding asphalt, and a tomorrow of
darkness.
He will live another fifteen years.
The road won’t take him, not quite, but the pills that will take first his soul
will claim his body once that clock runs down.
Her dad, well, he’s already had his
great tragedy, and now he ages with dignity, for dignity is all he has left. He
was still just a kid when he got in that car (death and automobiles - a great
American theme?) and he was still just a kid when his best friend’s brains were
sprayed all over his leather jacket, and then he was never a kid again. When he
got out of the hospital a few months later, he married his childhood
sweetheart, and he always said that was the best day of his life, but that was
an outright lie. It was someone’s best day, and someone’s worst, someone's long
forgotten hurts. For him, it was just another day passed behind a shroud, a
certain part of him, a part that could still feel bests lost back in the
passenger seat of a Buick. But he’s here now, and he knows that Buick has long
been reclaimed by a junkyard on some forgotten patch of earth, tucked maybe in
between pine trees in some little town, run by the great unknown philosopher of
our age. And that rusted out hull of the old car, maybe someday a forgotten
artist who lies long under the stars, his own escape from the cage, will find
it and build something that can roar out once more. And maybe those dreams of
being a kid will be not so forgotten as he rips long through the desert. Maybe
the ideal will come out once more, and the wind will whip once more through the
cabin, the strains of some sad Springsteen song blasting out of the radio. Or
maybe the hulk will rest forever there, settling deeper and deeper into the
sands until it is forgotten forever to time.
“Look honey, we just don’t want you
to look back on this time in your life and, well, wish you’d found someone.”
“Why don’t my brothers get this
speech? They aren’t married.” Her mother smiles wryly.
“It’s not about marriage.”
“What’s it about then?”
“Trying.”
The tactility of memory is a
unremarked upon condition, but do you not occasionally have one of those
memories best described with that simple word, and does the simple
re-experiencing of it not destroy the present a little further? The sort of
memory that makes the imagined past more of a place than the present, like you
could pull open its walls and step straight through, into a different existence
where, it seems, through the strange drug of misplaced recollection, everything
is okay, and if you could just step so far back, you could make everything okay
forever more. The memories, once you begin to consider them come at you
scattershot, laying in your bedroom with friends just feeling the texture of
carpet after taking Ecstasy, hanging out in a back room in high school
reminiscing about the future you just know you’ll have, driving fast across
back roads, loud music blowing out your eardrums (there you go, the road
again), considering your infinite freedom, considering how easy it would be to
turn for Mexico and just go, forever on, south until the Americas run
themselves out, an only alternative to the inevitable path, down a hill sloping
just a little more each day downwards. You also remember being small and
walking with your parents through your woods somewhere. It is near dead silent,
and you are at peace. This last memory though crumbles at the seams and dark
smoke begins to crowd inwards, and you consider whether maybe you dreamed it.
