Noah Cicero - Best Behavior

The girls tried to convince me to call off work and go home with Sonia who was traveling down I-80 the next day. I called people at work, pretending I wanted to stay another day. I wanted to stay another day to have sex again. I realized that and felt stupid. Petra and Sonia kept yelling at me to stay another day. They told me not to show up for work, they would forgive me. It was just a steak house, who cares. That infuriated me, but I didn't tell them that. They considered my job, what I did to feed myself and pay bills a joke. If I stayed there I would just be this nice little blue collar boy to play with. I really felt demoralized being there. I didn't mention it though: it didn't seem like their business. They had their own version of reality, their own version of how life should be lived, and I wasn't going to change that. I was surrounded by Petra, Sonia and Lyndi Wood was down the hall, three women that were completely accustomed to getting what they wanted. I was from a world where one did not get what they wanted, and was happy if they got anything at all. There was a huge discrepancy in our world views.

Petra took a shower. Sonia and I were left alone in the kitchen drinking coffee. Sonia was eating seaweed and rice. She looked happy chewing on the seaweed. There were no pictures anymore. Just two people standing there waiting for time to pass. So I said, “You gonna be a lawyer?”

“Yeah,” Sonia said.

“What you think of the election?”

“I voted for Obama, but I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed when he doesn't deliver all the things he promised.”

The answer was a cliché and I could tell she had said it a thousand times.

“Do you think people will really care if he delivers or not?”

She looked at me funny and said, “I don't know.”

I sat there thinking, while she ate seaweed, writers are all terrible Hobbesians. You can do Lockean things with people, give them money, incentives, benefits, trophies, but that isn't anything but putting cheese in front of mice. Their real nature was Hobbesian. They all want to be told what to do, they all need outside motivation (cheese), they don't care about political issues, all they care about is blow jobs, pot smoking, and stupid trivial shit. Most of them don't even know where roads and electricity come from. As soon as chaos breaks loose they start killing each other. As long as Obama maintains the roads and keeps everything in line they'll vote for him again. If he does great things then that's an added bonus. People voted for Bush again even though Bush did nothing his first four years but fuck things up. Writers believe in Plato's guardians , Dostoevsky's keepers of the mystery because normal everyday people have no clue what is going on, and will never know. As long as they are well fed and have shelter they don't care if something bad is happening or if something good is happening. If things get bad enough, but what is bad enough? Reagan and Clinton were voted back in, both of the administrations were nothing but decadence overload. King Louis the 14th built Versailles, led a great empire, two generations later his grandkid is getting his head cut off by the peasants. Houellebecq said in a book that we need to invent new humans; if we had better improved humans then things would turn out better. Better than what? Humans do not want to be better. A person may want to swim better or have a better smile. But they don't want humanity to swim better or have a better smile. It isn't even a question of “want,” they don't care. I don't care. Nobody really cares about people in Uganda or wherever people are blowing each other's brains out. People aren't designed to care about shit that happens thousands of miles away or to people not in their tribe. Humans lived in tribes and small villages for 100,000 years before they ever built the first cities. In those early cities each person was assigned a little task to do, like stone mason, farmer, or carpenter and lived out those tasks until they died at thirty. As Plato said they were supposed to mind their own business while doing it. I think the problem industrialization has caused is that it requires a very awesome species. A species that can care about shit on a large scale. Not a species that concerns itself with the whitening of their teeth and what kind of cell phone they have. Most humans consider senior prom the apex of their life on this planet anyway.

Night came early. The solstice was two weeks away. Petra, Lyndi Wood and Sonia and I were walking down the streets of Dumbo looking for the Melville House Christmas Party. Everybody was supposed to be there; Hu Chin, John Walters, and Tom White were going to meet us there. Then after, Tom was going to escort me to the bus station.

Dumbo was a strange place. All the buildings were big and wide, but not high. There was a lot of girth in the district. As we walked down the street the women kept talking. I didn't know what they talking about. It didn't excite me at all.

We found the building. We went in. It was magical. It was like being in City Lights or Shakespeare and Company. Oh, not really. But it was close. I pretended. I used my imagination. Dennis Loy Johnson walked up to me and shook my hand. I said, “I'm Benny Baradat.”

He said, “I'm Dennis Johnson.”

He forgot the “Loy,” but I forgave him.

We talked for a moment about trivial shit. He seemed really nice. I mentioned that I listened to his podcast several times and enjoyed it. He said he read a couple things I wrote and enjoyed them. We kissed each other's ass, it was good. It was going to be a good party of people being nice to each other. It was Christmas and baby Jesus may even love writers and publishers.

I didn't mention to Dennis Johnson that he had rejected a crappy short book I wrote. It was not a good book. I had admitted to myself on several occasions. I was okay with him not publishing it. So I didn't bring it up.

There was beer and wine and chips. There was no bathroom. I walked everywhere and could not find a place to shit. I could feel pressure on my rectum. There was a nice white collar woman who gave me a key and told me directions to get to the bathroom, which was outside. I went outside and walked down the sidewalk. It was cold and dark outside. I was alone. Felt like I was in a horror movie trying to find a door to get away from a space alien. Found the door and went in. It led to another door and then to another door. Finally found a place to shit. It was cold in the bathroom. Everything was blue, gray and sad. It was the first time in a while I was alone in several days. I shit slowly not trying to rush anything because it felt so good to be alone again.

When I got back to the party, Hu Chin was there. He had a strange young man with him wearing what looked like train conductor overalls and a nice white shirt under them. His hair was brown and soft looking, well combed and conditioned and his eyes stared nowhere in particular. I looked at Hu and said, “Who's this guy?”

“That's Ronald.”

Ronald came over and shook my hand and said, “I'm an artist.”

I replied, “That's good.”

Ronald sat down and drew a picture of a hamster being eaten by a single Nike shoe.

Tom White showed up. I was very excited to see him. He was my anchor in New York. He was the only person I knew there that had a sense of rationality and responsibility. I went over to Tom White, I said, “This place is full of sin.”

He said, “Do you want me to bring you to the local Catholic Church to get the Eucharist?”

“No, not like that. Not religious. Maybe religious. I don't know. It isn't spiritual. Everyone is just drinking, having a good time.”

“Isn't that what's life about? You're supposed to have a good time.”