Joshua Mohr - All This Life

None of it made any sense. The whole thing has been easy for Paul to dismiss. They’re kids. And kids are stupid. If these inane devices were around when Paul had a full head of hair, he’d probably have pecked his days away, too, mark his every thought with photos or emoticons. Which, if he’s being honest, is his least favorite thing about texting with his son. He’s accepted that he has to do it. A phone call is like a unicorn. So he texts like all parents clumsily do, but it would make it so much more digestible if his boy didn’t include an infantry of emoticons with every communication.

And what’s the deal with all the exclamation points? Why is that the preferred way to punctuate each prosaic phrase? From downstairs, he’s texted his son if he’d like a bagel for breakfast, and from upstairs, the boy texts back, “Sesame!”

It all makes Paul feel so old. So irrelevant. He’s sexually irrelevant and emotionally irrelevant and socially irrelevant, and if he keeps pretending that certain advancements in the workplace don’t exist he’ll soon be occupationally irrelevant, and in a few years Jake will go off to college and his wife’s already gone, so Paul will be left familially irrelevant, and that will be the end result of his life.

It’s not just kids, though. That really bugs him. Paul has to basically police his coworkers, or they’ll fiddle around on Facebook all day. He might not have his own account, but he gets the gist of how it works. What’s so satisfying about liking something? How could that ever fulfill you? Why scroll through posts and pictures and links? Why comment on other human beings’ updates when you’ve walked by twenty people on the street and didn’t take the time to talk to any of them?

If he tried to pinpoint his disdain, that would be the bull’s-eye — the isolation. He wants to tell his son, Don’t rush to spend time by yourself. Don’t hurry to alienation. It’s an inevitable destination. Time will eventually shroud you like velvet curtains, blacking out everything.

You’d think Paul would be a perfect candidate for social media, someone jettisoned from his family, his real-world community, somebody without any outlet, no way to express his feelings except one sour thought at a time, but this loneliness has the opposite effect. It’s made him irate at smartphones and computers, and he’s convinced that Jake wouldn’t be in this current mess if it weren’t for the Internet. If it weren’t so easy to share things online. Paul protests its existence by staying as offline as much as he can without getting fired. He pickets each technological advancement by pretending it doesn’t exist.

What does exist, and what is currently being digested by Paul, is a laxative. He and Jake stopped by the pharmacy on their way to Jake’s therapy. The boy waited in the car, and Paul ran in and asked for “the strongest laxative alive.”

The young lady working the register made a food-poisoning face, shook her head, then said, “Try aisle eight.”

He bought the one with the best copy on the box, and he tore into it in the parking lot.

With the laxative in his system, Paul climbed into the driver’s seat with renewed faith that things were about to get better — if not better, at least he’d drop this extra freight — and this assured feeling lasted until he realized that Jake was in the back seat now. He had been up front during the drive over. Paul had squawked about breaking that habit of sitting back there, get up front, act like an adult, etc., and Jake had caved and sat sullenly next to him, listening to music on his iPhone while they drove to the pharmacy.

“This is my reward,” Paul said aloud as they made their way.

Jake didn’t hear him, of course, kept bobbing his head to the beat of the song only he could hear, and Paul could only wish that laxative luck — things were bottled up and backing up further with each infuriating second.

So seeing him in the back seat, right behind the driver, he said to his son, “What does it accomplish, sitting back there?”

His ear buds weren’t in, so Paul expected an answer.

“Accomplish?” asked Jake.

“Yeah, what do you get from being behind me?”

“Nothing.”

“Am I that embarrassing?” said Paul.

That wasn’t what he wanted to say. Not to his son, at least. Yes, it hurt his feelings having his boy prefer the separation. It created a swollen paradox for Paul: He wanted so badly to help his son, and yet Jake made it so hard to want to help him. Always distant. Always antagonistic. Paul knew that as the adult he had to rise above these petty feelings — he accepted that intellectually — but it was so hard on an emotional level. Not ever getting anything positive from your kid.

Jake hadn’t said anything, so Paul said, “Am I embarrassing you?”

“I don’t know,” said Jake.

“You don’t know if I’m embarrassing?”

Again, he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to feel wounded or go on the offensive. He wanted to be the calmest, most supportive parent ever. He wanted to help his son come back.

“Don’t answer me,” Paul said. “Sorry. Forget it. Listen to your music.”

It was almost laughable, how immature, how childish Paul could be. He had to be the one to rise above any squawking. He had to be the one to take care of his son.

Jake stayed in the back seat, put the ear buds in; Paul drove them to the therapist’s office. They waited till Jake was ushered in by the doc, leaving Paul alone looking at the closed office door, yet another separation from his son.

He stayed like that for ten minutes. He stayed like that until right now, only staring at the closed door, wondering what it means.

The most important thing is that they’re trying to get Jake help. The goal is helping his son. Despite Paul’s stillborn dreams or feelings of futility or all the ways he can tally his irrelevancy in life, the only thing that matters is that they are in this office. They are — father and son — here.

Even in such a dull waiting room. A Formica table in the middle of it, decorated with a fan of magazines. A few IKEA chairs, which at these prices seem ludicrous. They should all be lounging in authentic Barcelona chairs.

Paul tries to beat down the worry about money. To allow himself to see only what matters, that closed office door. On the other side are a doctor and Jake. They are making headway. They have to be. They are erasing the damage done by the brass band and the divorce and all other collateral damage that haunts his son. They are in there doing the work and everything else is moot.

Well, he wants it to be moot. But Paul can’t help but blame himself for how little he knew about Jake’s online life. It never occurred to Paul that things he filmed on his iPhone were ending up on the Internet, and it certainly never crossed his mind that he’d publicize something as awful as a mass suicide. It felt odd to Paul, that mechanism to share pathos. Paul’s instinct was to hoard it. To keep it like a baby bird, feed it from a dropper. He figured that since his own sorrow was private, everyone felt the same way. And by everyone, he really means Jake.

Paul doesn’t know one thing about the boy’s virtual life, which begs the question: What else doesn’t he know? He’s operating under the assumption that posting the clip of the brass band is the worst thing his son has ever done, but maybe that’s untrue. Maybe it’s only another upload in a series of dubious, ignominious posts. Maybe his son has a whole cache of public pathos. Maybe his YouTube channel is a hive of sadness, and Paul makes himself a promise in his uncomfortable IKEA chair: He is going to get computer-savvy. He is going to unearth the side of his son that lives in the computer.