Desireless

"I mean, before you’re born, right, it's like they've got everything mapped out for you. They want you to go to this kind of school and have this kind of job and have everything better than they did. It's hard to live with that kind of pressure, man."

I tune out. I had heard Tom go through this kind of rant before. It’s a little hard to take the rantings of the son of some Fortune 500 company president seriously. He’s a sociology major. It’s also hard to take his rantings about the plight of the underprivileged seriously as well. Once he gets his Bachelor's, he'll be off working in the family business making six figures. It doesn’t matter what he thinks about what his parents planned for him or what he thinks about the poor. He'll do it anyhow. He’s predictable. He does have good weed, though.

I pass the joint back to him and let my head rest on the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling. On the weekends, I work as a clown. Birthday parties, magic tricks, phallic balloons; things like that. The pot is the only way I could actually put a smile on my face like the one painted on for events. The joint comes back my way and I wave it away with my hand. I’ve had enough.

"Alright," I say, standing up. "I'm out."

"What? Already?"

"Yeah. I got this thing."

"Oh."

Oh, yeah. He's gay. He doesn't know I'm not. It seems like I'm playing coy. Another week of this, I'll have to 'dump' him and go back to the paranoia of my regs. The weed is really good.

On the bus, heading home, a gangbanger asks me what "the f**k" I'm smiling about before he gets it. He holds an imaginary joint to his mouth and laughs. I smile back at him. It's like a club.

***

I get home. I’m unlocking the door, and Brandi walks by. On her hip is her daughter Emily. Emily says hi. I say hi back. Brandi doesn't say anything. She likes me to be "emotionally unavailable", and it's easy for me to do, so I comply. All of us go inside. End of transaction.

I slept with her once after one of her friend's weddings. I had gone with her as a favor and the champagne and dancing had done a number on my logic. Sometimes I wondered if Emily's babysitter had heard us going at it next door in my apartment. I wondered if she had smiled at Brandi knowingly when she returned with her hair disheveled and that post-f**k glow.

Brandi was a good person. She deserved better. If I let that part of me that hates women take over, I can be honest and say she asks for it. Like I said, she likes me to be unavailable. If I had come over more and tried to be a replacement father for her daughter and be that guy that she really needs, I'd have been pushed away for someone else.

Inside, the light on my answering machine was blinking.

"Tucker, this is your mom. I guess you're out--" A button pushed. It's that easy to avoid a guilt trip these days.

"Hey, Tucker, it's Mom." Apparently, not that easy. Another push of the button.

My dad died a couple months ago. I didn't go to the funeral. Didn't cry. I went to the bar and dropped a double of Irish whiskey in his honor. That's how I remembered him. I guess I could have fucked a stripper if I wanted to take it further, but enough's enough. His death marked the moment my mother realized she had kids. My sister loved it. I couldn't be bothered.

Sitting down on the couch, I pick up the remote for the TV. I put it down again. I don't have to channel surf to know there's nothing on. I pick up the remote for the stereo and turn on a CD. Roy Orbison's voice pours out of the speakers as I lay my head down on the armrest of the couch. The world is a dizzy mess, the center coming undone, but I manage to find sleep.

***

I wake up tired. Sober. On the coffee table in front of me is a pack of cigarettes. I open it, but it’s empty. There’s only one drug that keeps you going past dawn. But I don’t drink. Every other high has a shelf-life of dawn. “Keep the party going.” “No, we will not keep the party going.”

I open the door and grab the paper, thankful that I’m up early enough to grab it before someone else does. A tenement building caught on fire, 17 trapped inside. It was in a blaze so fast the fire department couldn’t even get inside. When superheroes have a crisis of faith, it can be marked in corpses. Somewhere in West Virginia, a city worker found the carcasses of four hundred dogs in a ravine. Some with IV needles still inside. The FBI was called in. In Wisconsin, they made it legal to shoot feral cats. Someone, for the first time, had successfully used the “listen, I thought he was a cat” defense to shake off a murder rap. That could start a trend.

Coffee made, coffee drank. Wig, make-up, shoes. Plaid suitcase, check. Gas, tire pressure, oil pressure? Check, check, check. Second in popularity to a petting zoo? Check.

I find myself wishing that a kid will fall in the pool. He does. A woman screams. I dive in and can see my face paint, which is not waterproof, bleeding out around me. I find the boy and bring him to the surface. Chest pumps, kiss, chest pumps, kiss. He chokes and I soar to the head of the class. Take that, billy goat. I ask some random soccer mom if she has a cigarette. She does. The illusion, destroyed.

***

I have had a dull headache all week. Occasionally, it peaks and I find it hard to focus on anything around me. It’s almost like cheating.

“I can’t. I have a headache.”

“Oh, okay. I guess I’ll see you in a couple of days, then?”

I’m a now-dry, once-wet mess, cell phone pressed to my ear.

“Listen, now’s not a good time for this. I’m at a birthday party.”

“How come I haven’t met any of your friends?”

“Because I don’t really have any, Tom. It’s not that kind of birthday party.” I exhale sharply. “This. isn’t. a. good. time.”

“Okay. Fine. Bye.”

It’s so adorable when he mimics me.

I eventually leave the party with a hundred dollar tip for only half an hour of real work. Something about saving a life makes it okay that I didn’t do any magic tricks. Not any that anyone could notice as having been done by me. I drive home and take a shower, the water washing out pink as the rest of my face paint circles down the drain. Cleaning for the costume is a b***h and I wish now that the kid hadn’t fallen in the pool. But I can’t change the past. Who can?

***

Out of the shower, with Blue Oyster Cult’s Agents of Fortune playing, I cook myself dinner. I am an exceptional cook. That’s not ego, it’s just hard work. Tonight is Cornish hen in a rosemary basil glaze and garlic new potatoes. I get settled at my little coffee table when my cell phone beeps. There’s a text message. I turn off the turntable. The message is three little words. I focus on them, concentrating while I eat. The three words roll around in my head. Half an hour should do the trick.

When I finish eating, I clean up the kitchen. Then I head upstairs to the bed and crawl in where I drift away like Dobie Gray.

***

When you think about it, it’s easy to subvert your desires. People do it everyday, often without knowing they’re doing it. Sure, if they focus on it, they realize they’re not really all that happy in life, but who likes to think about such things? Zen teachers and practitioners like to think they have a monopoly on the desirelessness angle. But they don’t.

And we all have those friends who like to think they don’t do this. “No regrets, man. You gotta live life to the fullest.”

F**k them.

They subvert their desires more than other people. They have a plethora of drinks they didn’t send, people they didn’t say ‘hi’ to, and STD’s they wish they didn’t have. All of these things add up.

The trick, the very hardest part, is to create a place in your mind where you don’t even think about wanting these things. But if you can do that, no matter how many people call you ‘uncaring’ and ‘unfeeling’, then you reach the true limits of desirelessness. After years and years of practice, it gets to the point where you have to focus and concentrate just to want something. This is the only way you can truly live with no regrets. If you never want anything, you never have the idea of not getting anything plaguing you for the rest of your life.

***

I check the paper when I wake up. The Prime Minister of some Middle Eastern country has been hospitalized in the night. Causes unknown. I smile weakly. A Pastor’s wife in Tennessee confessed to murdering her husband. The same technology used to create Yoda in the Star Wars prequels was used to map out the architecture of Cathedrals. A two-hundred fifty year old tortoise in India died.

As the coffee brews, I call the service and tell them I can’t work today, that my costume needs to be cleaned. They got a call from the family the day before and are very understanding. It reflects well on them that one of their clowns saved a life.

“Glad I could help.”

Over coffee and a cigarette, a new text message comes through. Good job. Money deposited. Great. Maybe I’ll buy a new pair of shoes. The night before there were two missed calls. Both Tom. I sigh and silently wish I had his connections so that I wouldn’t have to hang out with him anymore. I call him back, but there’s no answer.

Minutes roll into hours. I light more cigarettes. I drink more coffee. I am thoughtless. Hours roll into the days. Days into a week.

***

At Tom’s funeral, I find myself standing between a man in a very nice suit and Tom’s sister. Car wreck, closed casket. After chatting a bit, the man in the nice suit hands me a business card with a too small ziploc bag stapled to it. On the way back to the bus stop, I curse my luck.

Back home, I roll the pot carefully into a paper and light it. It’s not as clean as the stuff I smoked with Tom, but I know he’s the guy with the good stuff. I put out the joint and pick up my phone as I pull the card from my pocket.

Sometimes, Emily’s father comes home. It’s never good for anybody. I’m about to hit the send button when there’s banging on other side of my kitchen wall. Faster than I can pull my thoughts back in, it stops.

I hear a muffled voice. A door opening. Footsteps in the hall. A knock at my door. I sit quietly. The knocking returns, more frantic. I answer the door. It’s Brandi.

“Can I use your phone? It’s an emergency.”

It’s happening again.

***

Two days later, I’m sitting on my couch with my head resting on the wall behind it. I can’t stop grinning. I hear a key turning in the lock on my door, but I don’t look at it. The door opens in my peripheral hearing and I know someone is there. I can feel them standing over me.

“Tucker.”

I continue not to look. It’s twice as easy as you think.

“Tucker, we’ve got to bring you in.”

I finally look at him. Dead in the eye.

“Forget about me.”

It takes a second for me to drive it home.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“This is rather embarrassing, but could you tell me what I’m doing here?”

“Yes. You came here to drop off a file. You’ve done that.” I look him in eye again. “You should leave now.”

“Yes, of course.”

He does as he’s told.

Sometimes, I wish I’d never been born. But nobody can change the past.

***

As I leave the apartment, I tape an envelope to Brandi’s door. No name, no identifying marks. Just a dozen travelers checks. I can’t fix things that happened, but I do what I can for things to later happen.

I toss a duffel bag into the trunk of my car. As the car starts up, my cell phone beeps. A text message. Three little words. I concentrate on them, focus on the letters and the meaning, and back out of my parking space. Anything to distract me from traffic.

I am desireless.

Reviews

[Angel Marie Antoinette]

Very interesting.. I like the guy, even though he sounds a bit depressing. I love the writing itself, and the clown, the gay guy, even the weed seem so interesting when the main character doesn't seem to be interested. I liked the ending too. It leaves you with a little hope that maybe Brandi might have better days, and he's just closing on another chapter of his life.