The demise of humanity seems to be closer than ever before. You don’t need to read the newspapers; you can just go get a goddamn burrito.
I’m in my truck yesterday, and this thing, this zombie, shuffles up to my car. It might have been a man once. Now it’s just bones and skin, a marionette with its strings cut, trying to pilot its own corpse from one side of the street to the other for a handout. He couldn’t have been any younger or older than me. And I just sat there, watching him, and I had this thought, this cold little worm that crawled into my brain: that could be you. That could be me. That could be any one of the poor bastards from my stories, one wrong turn, one bad hit, one final disappointment away from being that.
He’s there, sucked down the last of his pipe smoke, whatever cheap shit has got him hung up, and he’s just… given up. As a kid, you never saw anything like this, not unless you went deep into downtown L.A. Now, I just have to go to work at three in the morning, and there’s a zombie standing in my path, and I just watch as he waggles by. Another one, a little more coherent, comes up to me for money. I get myself into a stance, ready to put my hand flat on his face and shove. “Just walk away, sir,” I say, my voice all cold and authoritative, like a cop. That’s what this world does to you. It turns you into a prison guard in your own life.
But it’s not just the junkies on the street. It’s everywhere. It’s in the news, the way we talk about each other in the most disparaging ways. The way we allow riots in the streets six months after a presidential election, just because our guy didn’t win. You have certain rules in a society, right? If you have nothing good to say, don’t say it. You don’t know the person, you haven’t walked in their shoes. But all I hear now is how everyone is stupid. “Oh, that guy’s a billionaire? He’s stupid.” “Oh, that guy’s the president? He’s stupid.” If they’re all so stupid, what the hell does that make us? We can’t even achieve happiness on the lowest goddamn level.
And what does it say about a person who talks like that? We’re not good people anymore. America is like that now. It used to be just a few, but now it’s becoming normal.
I had a woman contact me the other day. Online dating. Everything so readily available now, you can just view the whole sad menu. She was aggressive, very forward. Looking at her pictures, she looked like a goddamn church lady. Forty-something. I gave her my number.
Later that afternoon, she tells me she’s dropping her kids off at church camp. Her husband will pick them up later, so she has the night to herself. I told her to go enjoy herself, do some self-love, make herself feel good. Then she asks if I can help.
Of course, I do a little research. You have to in this game.
I find her on the staff list of some local Catholic church website. A hardcore Catholic, it says. Got her PhD, the whole pedigree. And where does this pillar of the one true faith teach? A goddamn Baptist school. She tells me later that she doesn’t share much with the other teachers there. They’re “inferior,” she says, because they pray to the wrong version of the same ghost. But it’s a “great school,” she says. For the kid, of course. Always for the kid.
College-educated, married for over twenty-five years to a man who, I find out, is currently dying. A slow, ugly death from liver disease and kidney failure.
And the next thing I know, she’s in my house.
It’s just after three in the afternoon. She shows up with fresh, damp hair, wearing a light summer dress, trying to look like a breath of fresh air.
And she has that look in her eyes. That look of a woman who is both depressed and desperate. The smell of vodka is leaking out of her skin. She’s trying to keep it real, to be fun, but it’s a performance. She was in need of affection, real or fake, it didn’t matter. There was a little small talk, and then she brought out her church bag. And inside? A whole assortment of sex toys. She wanted to share them, but we never got to it. There was a sense of fear in her, an uncomfortable energy. But the desire was strong.
She liked to play the role of the submissive wife. “Let me please you,” she kept saying. “I just want to please you.” It was like participating in some sad, soft-core movie where you know you’re going to feel dirty and empty at the end. We finished our hour-long session. I got the stamp of approval, I guess. “Wow, who are you” she would ask.
Then, a quick disconnect. She put her clothes on. No cuddling for this one, no holding each other in the dark. She wanted a clean, non-emotional exchange. She’d done this before, I could tell. I asked her what this was all about. “It’s been a while,” she said, not looking at me. “And thank you. But normally, the kids are my whole life.” No, not the kids. She was taking care of her dying husband.
She was lonely, depressed, unloved, unappreciated. She said she’d filed for divorce, but the kids made her feel guilty. “How can you leave Dad now, at a time like this?” So she stayed. Trapped. Her rage and her circumstances pulling her down at the same time.
I listened to her sad story, the whole goddamn soap opera of a dying husband and a lonely life. When she was done, she gave me her assessment of me. The usual script. Handsome, nice house, fun, great in bed. All the things a woman says when she’s trying to convince herself she’s made a good choice.
“What’s your story, why are you single?” she finally asked, her eyes all wide and hopeful.
I told her the truth. “I’m moving to Argentina.”
A disconnected world for a disconnected man.
She started to lay it on thick then, talking about getting to know me better, about emotional connections, all that bullshit. I stopped her mid-sentence.
“You want a second round?” I asked, my voice flat. “Just fifteen minutes. One last time. We can do the kind of disparaging things to you that you’ll probably regret not doing later.”
She didn’t say no.
This time, it was different. It was rougher. I wanted to make a statement with my performance, to make it clear that the loving, emotional part of the show was over. This was just meat. I was rough, ungentle, a stranger using her body to make a point. There were no complaints from her. Just the feeling of her body being streached and marked now dripping in sweat and the whiping of tears in her eyes.
When it was done, she just stood there, more in shock than anything, still fully clothed. She looked like she was about to break down, to let it all out. But she didn’t. She just gave this slow, quiet nod, like she’d finally gotten the reality check she’d been asking for all along.
Then she turned and limped back to her car.
Maybe she’d go home and leave her husband. Maybe not. Maybe this was just another movie she was starring in, and when it was over, she’d just throw the chewing gum wrapper on the ground and contribute to the trash at the end.
This is what it’s all about. This is the madness. You see a woman like that, a pillar of her community, a good Catholic wife, and you realize it’s all a goddamn mask. The American Dream, the happy family, the religious faith—it’s all an illusion. And once you see that, once you see the lie, you start seeing it everywhere.
You see it in the politicians, in the corporate media, in the very idea of social security and a military that’s supposed to protect you but just sends boys to die for oil. You see it in your parents, in your relationships, in your own goddamn face in the mirror.
And once you see it, you have a choice. You can either pretend you didn’t, put the mask back on, and go back to sleep. Or you can start trying to find out who you really are underneath it all.
That’s the drive. That’s the why. It’s not about running from something. It’s about running towards yourself. It’s about understanding that we’re just animals, and that’s okay. It’s okay to want sex, to drink, to know that you’re going to die. It’s okay to not believe in monogamy, to have thoughts that aren’t “nice.” It’s okay because it’s real.
The people who think you’re crazy, who think you’re nuts for not wanting to play their game anymore? They’re the ones who are still asleep. When you start to feel like you’re going mad, that’s when you know you’re finally waking up. That’s when the curtains are finally rising on the whole phony spectacle.
So yeah, I’m leaving this country. Not because I hate it, but because I’m tired of the lie. I’m tired of the masks. I’m going somewhere else to see if I can find a place where I don’t have to wear one anymore.
