My ex-wife, back when she was still just my girlfriend and I was still dumb enough to believe in that kind of bullshit, she told me this story. A little ghost story from her hometown. Santee, California. The beautiful, sun-baked, and completely honest armpit of San Diego County. The place “where all the white trailer trash got pushed up,” a quiet, respectable, and completely hopeless little containment zone where a man could have a horse, a rooster, and a goddamn meth lab, all in the same backyard.
And in this beautiful, hopeful, and completely fucked-up shithole, they had their gods. A local Ken and Barbie.
He was the football captain, a beautiful, dumb animal with a good arm, a square jaw, and probably not two goddamn thoughts to rub together. She was the hot, blonde, girl-next-door, with a body that had developed early and a smile that was a beautiful, efficient, and completely fraudulent piece of machinery.
And their love? Christ, it was “organic.” Yeah, organic like a goddamn PlayStation with plastic food, the kind you serve with a little plastic spatula. It wasn’t a relationship; it was a performance. A quiet, respectable, and completely fraudulent production for the rest of the poor, dumb bastards in the town. They held hands in the hallways. They shared lunches. They finished each other’s sentences. The whole goddamn town, even the teachers who were probably just as miserable and fucked-up as everyone else, they’d get a quiet, respectable, and completely bullshit tear in their eye. “Don’t they look perfect together?”
Perfect. A perfect, beautiful, and completely hollow lie.
Four years of this. A beautiful, slow-motion montage of Letterman jackets, promise rings, and quiet, fumbling, backseat fucks in his old man’s pickup truck. The parents, those other beautiful, hopeful, trailer-trash ghosts, they applauded the whole goddamn show. “Oh, go on, kids, go study behind closed doors.” Yeah. They were studying, alright. A little human anatomy. A little applied physics. The kind of education you don’t get from a goddamn book.
And then, the proposal. At the prom, probably. He gets down on one knee. She says yes. The auditorium, the whole goddamn gymnasium, it just… erupts. The principal probably cried. A beautiful, perfect, and completely predictable scene from a movie that was already a rerun.
They graduate. They walk the line, get their diplomas, and the whole town knows what’s next. The wedding. The pinnacle of the Santee dream.
But first… the ritual. The beautiful, ugly, and completely necessary night of debauchery. The bachelorette party.
The bride’s house is full of cheap champagne, penis-shaped ice cubes, and a gaggle of cackling, drunken hens. They’re playing dick games, they’re watching porn in the living room—the “fat, ugly one,” I’m told, couldn’t be peeled away from the goddamn screen with a crowbar, probably hadn’t seen a real one in a decade.
And then the male strippers come, a couple of oily, beautiful, and completely un-impressive specimens, rubbing their baby-oiled chests all over the bride. A little taste of cheap, manufactured sin.
And after the show is over, after the last piñata has been hit and the dick-shaped candy has been eaten, they’re all sitting around in the quiet, drunken, 3 a.m. aftermath. And the maid of honor, probably just as drunk and twice as ugly, she asks the question. “Is there anything you want to do? Your last night of freedom? Any fantasy?”
And our bride, our beautiful, blonde, all-American Barbie, she giggles. A quiet, drunken, and completely honest little sound. “Well,” she says, “I’ve always… I’ve always wanted to try a black man. The ‘dark meat’.”
A beautiful, quiet, and completely racist little fantasy. And her friends, those beautiful, loyal, and completely degenerate enablers, they don’t say, “Christ, woman, you’re getting married in twelve hours.” No. They say, “Honey, let’s get that resolved. Come on.”
And they pour her drunken, giggling ass into a car and drive down to the one meat market on the 8 freeway where the lines are a little blurry. And she finds him. Leroy. A beautiful, dark, and completely honest answer to her quiet, degenerate fantasy. It was an incredible night, she probably told them. The Santee white-trash “innocence,” long gone.
The next day? The wedding. Beautiful. Perfect. A goddamn military operation of seating charts and flower arrangements. The whole town is there, weeping in the pews. The golden boy and the golden girl, finally, beautifully, and completely united.
They go on the honeymoon. They come back. And… boom. The rabbit died. She’s pregnant.
The town goes fucking insane. The superchild! The heir to the Santee throne! The parents are proud, the friends are jealous, the whole goddamn, beautiful, stupid town is buzzing with excitement. They take the classes. How to breathe. How to change a diaper. He’s the perfect, doting husband, rubbing her feet, getting her ice chips, whispering in her ear how much he loves her, how proud he is.
The day comes. The hospital. He’s in there, in the trenches, in his little paper scrubs, holding her hand. Her parents, his parents, they’re all pacing the hallway, a beautiful, anxious, and completely clueless chorus line.
And then the final push. The blood, the screaming, the beautiful, ugly, and completely honest sound of a new life ripping its way into the world. The doctor, a goddamn hero, gives a nice, big “Holy Yes!” and pulls the baby up.
He cleans it off. Sucks the shit out of its nose. Wraps it in a blanket. And he hands it to the new mother.
And she looks down. And in one, quiet, cold, and completely devastating second, she knows.
She looks at the baby.
And then she looks at her husband.
And he’s never, ever seen that look in her eyes before. The look of pure, unadulterated, “I am so fucking busted” terror.
He’s on his knees, crying with joy, and he stands up. And he looks at her. And he looks at the beautiful, healthy, and completely, undeniably black baby in her arms.
And he doesn’t say a word.
He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t ask, “Who the fuck is Leroy?”
He just… looks at her. And in that one, quiet, beautiful, and completely honest moment, he sees it all. The “organic” love, the “perfect” couple, the Letterman jacket, the bachelorette party, the whole goddamn, beautiful, ugly, and completely fraudulent lie of the last four years. He sees the Matrix, the quiet, respectable, trailer-trash cage he’s been living in.
And he turns around. He opens the door. He walks right past the crying, happy, and completely clueless grandparents in the hallway, the ones waiting to see the “superchild.” He doesn’t say a word to any of them. He just keeps walking.
Out the hospital doors, into the hot, honest, and completely unforgiving Santee sun.
And he never, ever came back.
He was the only one who ever made it out of Santee. The only one who ever really escaped that beautiful, ugly, and completely soul-crushing town. I don’t know what happened to her, or the baby, or Leroy. But I’m pretty sure she’s still there, in that shithole, with her quiet, ugly lies, probably married to some other poor, dumb bastard, still performing.
But the husband, the golden boy, the hero of this sad, little, beautiful, fucked-up story?
He was the only one smart enough to see the truth, and the only one brave enough to walk away from it. In a world of beautiful, comfortable, and completely soul-crushing illusions, the only moral, the only goddamn victory, is to take the red pill, even if it tastes like shit.
