Joshua Mohr - All This Life

The simple fact that he knows enough about sex to classify all these clips, ranking them on a spectrum from good to bad, convinces the boy he will be a good lover — or that he already is a good lover but hasn’t yet started using his skills. He thinks all his observances have taught him stamina, technique, positions, postponement, thrilling ways to pleasure someone.

His father had told him, on a rare day he felt like talking to his son on their commute into the city, about a theory that claims it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get good at anything, which was how the boy arrived at his own conversion.

Ten thousand hours of watching porn = 1 genuine sexual encounter.

Therefore, he’s no virgin.

“You can get good at anything from practice?” the boy had asked.

“Literally anything.”

And it isn’t only the constant lip-pursing that makes the therapist terrible, it’s his whole deal, his whole office, his whole face, his whole set of questions and phony way of instilling camaraderie that the boy had seen through immediately. He knew he couldn’t tell the doc the truth, not with his incessant badgering about the clip.

“Why did you post it?”

Lip purse.

“What made you want to share it?”

Lip purse.

“How do you feel about putting it online?”

I can live-tweet this betrayal , thought Jake. I can share our confidentiality with all my 281 followers.

It will need its own hashtag.

#ShrinkStink.

#MeetMyMentalIllness.

He tried to pull his phone out during the session to tweet, but the doctor wouldn’t allow that, threatened to take it away, and that’s the one thing that can’t happen.

But there’s no one in the waiting room to tell him what to do. He’s in charge. If he feels like live-tweeting, that’s what he’ll do.

The real travesty is that hanging meringue from the hand sanitizer dispenser. Looks like a tiny stalactite. Someone should wipe it off. Not the boy. Somebody has this job. They’re supposed to dab and clean the contraption but they might have called in sick, might have seen TheGreatJake’s clip, might have seen the brass band jump, too, and feel too confused to swab.

Virgins are clumsy lovers. Quick cummers. Make ridiculous faces. Keep their socks on. Only know two positions.

None of these describe Jake.

It is 9:51.

The therapist obviously doesn’t care about this woman, who he makes wait while he’s in the other room talking shit about Jake. Which makes him mad, and feelings are like Spotify, how each user gets to decide on a certain song that he needs to hear right this second! and he searches for it and finds it and clicks play and it’s right there — this thing that you needed — it’s immediately available, faster than sneezing.

That’s what Jake’s doing right now — he’s streaming anger.

Good thing there isn’t a baseball bat here , thinks Jake.

Then he immediately wants to share that thought, wants all his Twitter followers to grip his fury.

First live-tweet: I’d smash this whole place.

On the porn clip, they switch positions again, go reverse cowgirl. He is sure that this is the angle that feels the best, and it’s how Jake would like to start his sexual career.

Here’s the thing he didn’t tell the doctor or his dad or anyone, didn’t utter one syllable of this because he knows that no old person will understand: He didn’t do anything wrong. This is what people do. This is how the world works. This is why we’re smarter now: We share everything with everyone, have access to each sight and sound. We are informed and connected!

If they stop living in the past, they’d plug into this broadcasting consciousness, synapses firing all over the globe. The world is round like a brain, and we are all cells in it, firing all the time.

His dad doesn’t get it and thinks that Jake is behaving badly, but he’s totally missing the point, which is that good and bad don’t matter.

All that matters is content. New content. More content.

Those are the nutrients that keep the great brain going.

Content is Jake’s purpose.

It is everybody’s purpose.

And each single frame uploaded is a public service.

He’s doing what he’s supposed to do, what his generation understands as their responsibility. The time is 9:54, and the woman’s appointment is basically half over and Jake’s day is basically ruined and behind that closed office door are two men talking about nothing, agreeing with each other, so sure that they know what’s right and wrong and just and important, making decisions about Jake that he’s not even being consulted about, and under these circumstances he can’t stomach another second sitting here.

He puts his iPhone in his pocket and launches himself in the direction of the Purell dispenser and forms a fist and uses it as a tomahawk, bringing the edge of it down and breaking the whole dispenser from the wall and whoever thinks that hiring a cleaning lady who’s too lazy to wipe one bead of hanging meringue gets what’s coming to them.

An emoji of the boy’s face would be someone plugging a power cord into his ear and the cheeks going a crazed red and bringing his battery to a full charge.

The woman looks up from her tablet but doesn’t say a word. She’s wearing a quaint yellow dress that reminds Jake of old movies, and for a moment he’s bummed if he’s scared her. That’s not what this is about.

“Sorry for the disturbance,” Jake says to her.

He sprints out of the waiting room, down the hall, the stairs, exits the door.

He’s outside, still going full speed, composing his second live-tweet in his head, which he’ll post once he can safely stop running: I am on my own.

Noah911 stands before an empty suitcase, staring into its maw, scared of it like the thing is a pagan god, demanding worship, sacrifice, and in a way that’s exactly what it’s doing, telling Noah911 to go against every instinct of self-preservation he has and fill the suitcase with his belongings, board a plane, attend Tracey’s funeral back home. He’s not sure he can bear witness as his sister is eulogized, remembered, and ultimately put to rest.

Because one thing he damn well knows won’t be put down is every congregant’s judgment, holding Noah911 responsible for her too-early demise. They know it’s his fault, as he does, and the funeral would be a grueling torture chamber in which he’s slowly eviscerated.

He is in his room, the black suitcase splayed on the bed, totally empty; the clock reads 9 PM and his red-eye departs in a few hours. Noah911 knows what’s expected of him, after the belligerent phone call with his father.

It had been three days since Tracey’s death and Noah911 finally got the gumption this morning to tell their parents, now only his parents. Pronouns, he is realizing, are going to be tricky from now on.

He called them even though that was the last thing he wanted to do. Seems like a series of unwanted tasks blossom before him: the call, the trip home, the funeral, the indictments, the life transpiring without Tracey.

It didn’t take their father five seconds to turn his shock and sadness at the news into high-voltage rage, saying to Noah911, “What did you know about this band?”

Noah911 could hear his mom crying in the background.

“Not much, Dad.”

“Why are you only telling us now?”

“The band didn’t seem like anything.”

“What’s going on out there?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Your sister is dead!”

Like the phone call with the cop, Noah911 hung up then. He couldn’t cope with any more tar painted on his heart. And if he barely made it through that phone call, there was no way he could sit through the funeral. How could he pack for such an experience? How’s he supposed to pick out socks? How can he be expected to coordinate colors? There’s no way. To fill and zip this suitcase. To board a plane. To look his parents in the eyes. He’s never felt this style of guilt before but it’s like a hangover. Head aching. Clammy and sweaty. Nauseated. He can’t sleep and can’t go outside, even though he hates being in their apartment. It’s now like a tomb. Tracey is everywhere. Her smell. Her stuff. The uneaten grapefruit still sits by the couch, flies buzzing around it. The toast and teeth marks and hummus. The note: Make sure my sister eats this, okay?