Noah Cicero - The Collected Works of Noah Cicero Vol. II

“Are you going to respond?” Jessica says.

“I realized that you wanted me to attack you. It fed your sense of masochism. The purpose of combat is to crush your opponent. To make them bend to your will. To make them fall to the floor, to give up, to show that they are weaker than you. I wanted to win the arguments, by attacking you; I was playing your game. The harder the blows I threw, the harder yours were. It allowed for too much chance. And also you wanted the fight, you wanted to yell. And if you wanted it, and you weren’t getting paid for it, that means you somewhat enjoy it. So therefore even if you lost, there was a part of you that enjoyed losing. So my only chance was to reject the fight. To sit and stare, which made you frustrated and self-loathing. Which means I won the fight, I made you bend to my will. I could control my emotions, and by controlling my emotions I made you feel false, which killed you.”

“I could no longer hurt your feelings.”

“No. I suppose that meant I did not love you anymore.”

“Can anyone hurt your feelings anymore?”

“Yeah, but after they do once, I’m done with them. They can go to hell for all I care.”

“That sounds like a terrible way to live, not having any feelings.”

“You mistake drama for feelings. Most of the feelings we have in this country are fabricated and mass-produced. Ninety-nine percent of them are false.”

“You probably think the feeling I have for my daughter is false. You would probably assume revenge.”

“You called it revenge, not me.”

Jessica looks at me and says, “People need feelings. We need to tell ourselves things. What are we supposed to do? I’ve never had power, I’ve never done anything great, I don’t even know how a person would go about doing something great. I’m an ordinary person and I have feelings, I like feelings, I like drama, it gives color to life. It makes it not so dense.”

“Did I say anything against people having feelings? Did I sit here and crucify you for wanting drama. I came here, didn’t I? That must mean I want drama. I want color in my life; I want life to have some meaning.”

“But you reject so much of it. You fight yourself from having feeling. From letting yourself go. When we went to bars you just sat there and drank your beer quietly. You never went to parties, you never got drunk and started punching people like normal men do, you never went up on the stage at a karaoke and sang, you’ve never danced at a bar. When we went to punk concerts you wouldn’t mosh. It is like you refuse to fully enjoy life, to just relax and flow with humanity.”

“I can’t.”

“You know why? Don’t be an asshole!”

I get the urge to grab her face and squeeze it but I don’t and say, “I’m afraid.”

“Well, why are you afraid?”

“People hurt each other. If I dance somebody will go, ‘you dance badly.’ If I sing someone will say, ‘you sing badly.’ If I get drunk and fight I’m sure I will lose, even if the person is smaller than me. I don’t want to risk it. What it comes down to is that I only want to be in situations where I am convinced the outcome will be in my favor. I want to know the outcome; I want to have the situation firmly placed in my hand. Life must be under control. I must know that the situation will not get out of control, because when things get out of control people get hurt.”

“You might get hurt?”

“Yes, I might get hurt.”

“So you have no excuse. There is no philosophy determining your actions. All the books you’ve ever read have not led you to this state of despair and fear. It is just that you’re a control freak?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you have this situation under control?”

“Yes.”

“You are really and truly a fucked-up person. That someone so observant, so analytical, so calculating could end up such a dismal creature…but perhaps that is the fate of those creatures. They end up alone, consumed by their own analysis.”

“Now you sound like me.”

“Well, even though you’ve driven yourself into madness, you do still have a cute face, if that makes up for anything.”

I laugh and say, “Thanks.”

We talk more but it goes nowhere. It is not dramatic. It is like a person that knew me who has left and gotten a third person perspective on my life, then returned like a ghost to show me how I am at fault for what I’ve done.

Another thing that mildly disturbs me is that we will always be linked. Spending seven years with someone links you to them. If they do something great and die, you will be mentioned in their biography. Or to say it a different way, you go to college for four years and for the rest of your life you are a graduate of blank university. When you are with someone for a long time I suppose it is like that. You are an alumni to that person. It is like your family, how you have spent so much time with them, learned all their quirks, seen them cry, seen their happiest and shittiest moments, seen them vulnerable and heard them fart and smelled their shit. Everyone has public identities, the persona they give to the world. But everyone also has that in-the-house persona, that what-they-do-when-no-one-is-looking persona. And if you spend a lot of time with someone, that public persona wears away. And the when-no-one-is-looking persona appears, which is always vulnerable and often silly. People always remember who they have let in to that persona, to that piece of them they don’t show, that is a fictionalized character fabricated to deal with the insanity of the world, so they can stay strong and determined to deal with everyday life. Which is probably the origin of the phrase people love to say concerning their lovers: ‘You don’t know him or her like I do.’ Which is true, we don’t. I don’t know if it is special or unique, or whatever Hallmark shit some people throw at it. But I know that those people you get to know closely live in your mind. They don’t leave you. They are always there, and you hope in some strange way that nothing bad happens to them.

On the way back to Youngstown we pass the cemetery where my sister is buried. My sister Lizaveta killed herself three years ago when she was thirty-three. She slit her wrists in a bathtub and let herself bleed to death while listening to Metallica’s “Fade to Black” on repeat. We weren’t really that close. I remember when I was little, around seven or eight: I was bouncing a tennis ball off the side of the garage on a normal summer day and Lizaveta ran up from behind and grabbed the tennis ball before I caught it. She held the tennis ball in one hand above my head and yelled while laughing in Russian, “Get the ball, Vasily! Get the ball, Vasily! Get the ball, Vasily!” I kept jumping and jumping, but she wouldn’t give me the ball. Then she started hitting my head with the ball while laughing. Another time I was alone in the living room watching

Transformers

, my favorite cartoon, and Lizaveta came in and took the remote controller from me and switched the station. I yelled, “Put that back on!” She yelled back in Russian, “What are you going to do about it!” So I got up and tackled her but she was eighteen and I was eight so she won. Then to top it off she gave me a wedgie and laughed hysterically as I walked around the house tucking my underwear back in my pants while crying. Lizaveta and I had a lot of good times together.

“Turn into that cemetery,” I say.

“Why?” Chang says.

“I want to visit my sister.”

“Oh.”

Chang turns into the cemetery. I tell him where to go. He drives slowly amongst the gravestones. The ground is covered in snow and it is two degrees outside. The wind is blowing hard and it feels like twenty below.