Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

On this particular evening we were enjoying the diplomatic calm after a fight.

Isabel said, I’ll never carry your child.

I said, I’ll never impregnate you because I don’t want to raise your crazy child.

Uninspired opening maneuvers. The fight bored us from the first words. We were out the door, on the way to Carl’s Creamery, before we even finished the argument, because it never captured our interest.

Eating our cones, pistachio for me and rosewater for her. It occurred to me to propose marriage. It might spice up our arguments. Isabel accepted, as she had my first suggestion to her, on a humid night several Aprils earlier, that we return to my room so I could show her my collection of moss agates.

At three p.m. the following Thursday, we were wed at the courthouse. The witnesses were Osvald and Isabel’s sister. We went for General Tso’s at Szechuan Dungeon, then to the Raven, where we got too comfortable at the east bar. After crying because she had decided not to wear a wedding dress, Isabel stood on the bar and kicked all of the glasses off, one at a time, with a bride’s delicacy and entitlement. Osvald apologized to the bartender and gave her fifty dollars.

Before the fight that led to our marriage, we saw Island Promises , at the Baxter, because Isabel thought the snack selection was superior to that of the Conspicuous and the Runaway Seven.

I said, A film is not a buffet.

She said, Fuck you.

The Baxter fit her cultural aspirations. Isabel favored the idea of the artistic process over engaging with it, like a dowager who will cut a check to a soup kitchen but won’t man a ladle. She watched films with her lips open, willing to believe. In my Gadarene pursuit of Isabel’s company to the movies, I overlooked her irritating tics of spectation, like her questions to clarify niggling plotlets, her groans at wooden dialogue, and her inability to sit in a theater without checking her Pinger. Twice a night she relinquished her sleep to check her Pinger, set it down, resumed her bad dream.

Promises follows two scientists doing research on the Tristan da Cunha volcanic islands. Amid the rockhopper penguins, Laura and Andy conduct a torrid emotional affair. Laura’s married. Andy has a sweetheart in Cape Town.

They practice tai chi, Andy the Yu style, Laura the Sun style. The obligatory scene with morning mist, the horizon, the pair in Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg, a segue into Hungry Panda Eating Bamboo, garish exercise pants, flute music. Both are from the South. Andy, of Africa. Laura, of Louisiana.

Trista da Cunha is so remote no light pollution blots out the Milky Way. Anyone could have made a film of interest with this location. That it is squandered on a romance is disheartening. They return to their spartan tents, hoping to hear the long yawn of the zipper descending. The next ship comes in four months.

An expediency saves them, and us, from learning lessons. A hurricane is inbound. They will be washed away. Evacuation is not a third-act possibility. Laura and Andy dither over whether they should do what they’ve wanted to do for three weeks. They made promises to people who will never see them. With the storm approaching, they have a romp in the fronds.

I was in high spirits leaving the Baxter. Though Isabel chose a dud, I did not gloat. She fished for lip balm.

I said, What would you do?

She said, What would I be doing on an island? I can’t stand the sun. With millipedes and whatnot. It was better when we dropped dead for no reason and worshipped stones. What is all this fuss about death? We have this turbulent interlude in the peace of nonexistence, we get torn from nothing, we get shoved back into nothing. We enjoy life by stripping it of its meaning and context. If we say, Here we are, having this nice walk outside the theater, then we are in bliss. If we widen the scope, bring our whole lives into consideration, then we become miserable. So I am against context, or rather for only narrow and situation-specific contexts. In this case, the context of their sex becomes death. What is a promise against death? Are promises contingent? Well, I don’t know. We’re back to context. What language can do without context is nothing. Promises are contextual, and have many unspoken conditionals, an infinite amount of conditionals, we might say. If I had to simplify, then I would say the breaker of the promise would say yes, and the person to whom the promise has been broken would say no. Of what use is this? I might fuck Andy. He had a pretty good accent even though he was boring. On the other hand, it would tarnish your grief, wouldn’t it? I would prefer that you authentically suffer forever after my untimely death. If a dead person can be said to benefit from the variables they have tried to control in life. So probably not. I can’t tell without the context of death how I would act. I might be better if I didn’t have to die. What would you do?

Stones’ Breath , in wide release, is a masterpiece of technocratic chest-beating, a glitchy simulation of mercy borrowing the popular outrage of failed democratic movements for award season prestige. Jonson and I were paid to see it, but I don’t know what your excuse is.

Getting our hair cut, Jonson’s treat.

I said, Jonson, what about that knave Millings?

Jonson said, Leave off Millings. Your argument ruined my party. You know my guests are not allowed convictions.

I said, I was thinking I would go around to his place, make peace.

Jonson said, He’s going to know when you’re insulting his intelligence.

I said, I’m insulting his taste. He can have his intelligence. What’s he up to these days?

Jonson said, He’s from the Millings Kiosk family. He gives money to the Jonson Foundation, and we are on the Shoreline Reclamation Board together. You know. Cocktail party friendships. Nothing of interest. I don’t know his dirt.

I said, He’s married?

Jonson said, Yes. His wife, Alice, runs the business. None of the blood Millingses could be bothered. He’s very fond of her.

I said, He has girlfriends, though.

My barber held a mirror to the back of my head. I nodded. For Dr. Lisa, for Altarpiece , I had been cleaning myself up.

Jonson said, I doubt it. That is a marriage you could build a church on. Millings is a nice guy. He has a couple glasses, gets mouthy. You don’t have to drink to run your mouth, so you shouldn’t judge.

I said, He threatened me at your dinner party.

Jonson said, You were insulting his taste, you kept pretending to mangle his name, and you dismissed his director rather than giving a diplomatic argument against his films.

I said, Well, yes. I am comfortable with those points.

We stood up. Jonson tipped our barbers.

He said, How’s that doctor?

I said, She’s great, Jonson. She has the healing touch.

He said, That’s good. I heard she was the best. I have to run to an appointment. Tomorrow night, let’s talk about Altarpiece . How will it resolve?

I said, It won’t.

Jonson said, Millings lives two stops east on the Tangerine Line. You might make it easier on yourself by stopping by the office, which is on the floor below his residence, and leaving him a message. It would appear to be good manners to say, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, how about that movie, et cetera.

I said, Jonson, where would I be without you?

He said, The theater or behind the theater. Now I’m going to get you some of that texturing foam, and I expect you to use it at least three days out of the week. Keep it clean and good things happen.

To get to the Tangerine Line I had to cross a Liberian neighborhood. Bantering university students with eco-remediation textbooks stood outside storefront ministries with banners denouncing Pan-Africanism, which professed no religion was true. Pizza parlors hung with portraits of assassinated politicians. Under every slice, a greasy pamphlet. Faded pop returning the women in the veterinarian’s lobby to nightclubs long bulldozed. Bootleg colas drunk in public defiance of Hub statutes. Though the African continent had surpassed ours in innovation, in design, in education, and in the democratic process, though the names of their cities would be given to future colonies in the solar system, there would never be a culture more entertaining than ours. The world needs a clown. Our legacy would be how well we diverted the world from what we had done in the world.