A Naked Singularity: A Novel

by Sergio De La Pava

  When he was twenty-five, Nietzsche watched a cavalry troop pass through Frankfort. During the war with France this happened. It was then he had a vision that shaped his entire philosophy for in this collection of armed soldiers he saw a Will to Power.

  When, in 1876, the Wagner festival in Bayreuth became a reality, Nietzsche disapproved greatly. Here was the frivolous in-crowd elbowing aside the true devotees and, what was worse, Wagner hamming it up for them. Disgusted by what he called the feminism and dishonest idealism that had infected his friend and his friend’s music, he split abruptly. When they ran into each other again in Sorrento, Nietzsche turned to Wagner and said:

  “Remember me?”

  No, wait. That can’t be right. What he actually said was:

  “Yo, remember me?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Remember me? It’s me DeLeon! You beat my case remember?”

  “Yeah, Ramon. Hi.”

  “I was just telling everybody what a great lawyer you are man. Look man you have to take over my case from this Leaves guy! You know how to handle a case of mine! I can pay you, he said he would talk to you.”

  “Hold it, stop. You can end your pitch right there. I already took the case from this Darren—”

  “Derrin.”

  “—character. So what happened?”

  “Oh man thank you!”

  “What happened?”

  “I got caught man.”

  “Caught doing what?”

  “Selling.”

  “Selling what?”

  “Coke, man.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you’re guilty.”

  “Yeah I’m guilty.”

  “And you were guilty in my case too right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The case where we went to trial and won? Remember that case?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sold in that case too right.”

  “All right man I’m going to be straight with you. I did sell.”

  “And you sold here. You want to go to trial again, is that it?”

  “No man. I ain’t taking it to trial.”

  “So what do you need me for? If all you need is a plea, this Leaf guy is perfectly capable of talking to the DA and getting you a deal.”

  “Nah man, this time I’m selling everybody out is what it is. I already talked to them cops.”

  “Selling who out? And keep your voice down.”

  “The guys I work with and shit.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m giving them up man. I’ll tell them cops whatever I have to tell them to get up out from under this. I’ll be a CO and whatnot.”

  “A CI?”

  “Yeah, a CI. That’s what I meant.”

  “And you talked to the cops who arrested you about that?”

  “Yeah at the precinct. And the DA too.”

  “And?”

  “And they know I have good shit to tell them man. They want to work with me.”

  “Good for you. That means you need me even less and you can keep the attorney you have now.”

  “No way, this is too big. I don’t trust him, I need you.”

  “Did you tell him about all this.”

  “No, that’s what I mean. I don’t trust him”

  “What trust? All he has to do is stand there while you tell the cops what you know. A properly-trained monkey could do it.”

  “Nah man, I don’t want that guy.”

  “Fine. You know you’re going to be indicted today.”

  “I know all that. They said I would be going to supreme court and that I should talk to you, to my attorney, to tell you to call the DA about setting up a meeting.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Thank you man. I won’t forget this. Listen if I give them really great information, you think they could get me up out of here?”

  “I don’t know. They don’t really promise anything until they hear what you have to say but it’s a possibility I guess.”

  “Great. Will you be out there when I see the judge?”

  “See you then.”

  “Okay.”

  I wasn’t surprised when I saw Dane as I left court that day. Somehow it had the feel of a planned meeting. And when he started right in as if continuing following a brief interruption I was similarly unfazed. But it was late and I had to meet someone.

  “Where you headed?”

  I had told him yesterday. My sister had set me up with some doctor. Well I had done the actual calling and arranging and such but it was only at her urging and she was my brother-in-law’s cousin’s sister’s hairdresser’s best friend or something and if I didn’t get a cab in like forty seconds I would surely be late and there was the matter of a potential wrong foot to be considered.

  “Why are you so intent on making a good first impression? She hot? What does she look like?”

  The distinction then discussed was the one between trying to make a good first impression, for example during a job interview, and simply following the mandates of common courtesy of the sort involved in returning a basketball to a successful shooter. And where exactly lay the relevance of her appearance of which I had no clue?

  “Funny you should mention a job interview. You’re nervous aren’t you? Like audition-type nerves right?”

  Not in the slightest.

  “Naturally, who wouldn’t be?”

  I wouldn’t. And wasn’t.

  “And they’re an ugly kind of nerves too, ones that cut to the quick. I realize that society has long since placed its imprimatur on the activity but you must admit that a date is a deliciously odd thing if you break it down,”

  Meaning we shouldn’t.

  “Remember that a person is nothing more than the sum of how he is perceived by others, a truth a date probably reveals better than anything. You might dispute this, you might point to people, maybe yourself included, who seem to not give a rat’s ass what others think of them. You might also point out that, at any given moment during a day, the average person does not seem overly or manifestly preoccupied with what others think of them. However, as a thought experiment, imagine a seemingly secure woman being informed that she is about to be told definitively how every single person she knows truly perceives her. Their incontrovertible, and completely devoid of artifice, opinion of her. Such a person would lose it. She would start to sweat. Mentally, she would try to convince herself that she didn’t care what these people thought. But the way she would do this is interesting. She would most likely tell herself something like she doesn’t care what those idiots think. This need to downgrade the opposition is supremely relevant and gives you an idea of the hostility engendered by the tension of the situation. No matter, because ultimately she will not be able to convince herself that she doesn’t care. She will know that she stands on a precipice with a very real danger of an emotional landslide. What she would realize, and what anyone else in her situation would realize, is that the wrong answer can be devastating. And mostly devastating in its ability to create reality. If everybody thinks you’re an asshole and you think yourself a gem guess what? You’re an asshole! And if you confront one of these asshole people and say to them hey everybody thinks you’re an asshole, what’s your response to that? I bet you he doesn’t say that’s okay I know I’m not an asshole. Instead he’ll probably say something like the people who know me best know I’m not an asshole. Either that or he’ll try to convince you that despite appearances he is not, in reality, an asshole. In other words, he instinctively recognizes that you cannot combat an unfavorable perception others have of you with your own self-perception you can only either try to change that perception or combat it with the more favorable perception of others who you will argue are better informed. In short, all that matters is what others think. This is why women stick their fingers down their throat, men lick some fat guy’s ass to make more money, and certain eight-year-olds feel genuine terror
at the thought of getting on the school bus.”

  Interrogative expression because what was the relevance of all that to someone who had to get in a cab like that instant?

  “The relevance is that the reason you’re so nervous is that a date, especially of the blind variety, crystallizes this normally diffused anxiety into a fixed space-time point. The pressure builds to enormous proportions as you realize your place on the display shelf. On the bright side, unlike a job interview, this audition is a mutual one. Meaning you have two people wanting to be liked, well liked is probably not the right terminology. What you have is two people who want the other person to be impressed by them. But there’s a self-defense element as well so one of the things they want the other person to be impressed by is how little they need that person’s validation. Look at me, they say nonverbally, I am one impressive, self-contained motherfucker who doesn’t really need your approval but please agree with this self-assessment or else I might start to doubt this perception of mine which deep down I don’t really believe. And therein lies the beautiful irony of it all. The beauty is that while these two people are expending tremendous effort, and considerable subterfuge, to create an impressive veneer they are actually subverting their chances of making a connection, the purported goal of the date.”

  I really had to go, could he please stop talking so I wouldn’t feel rude?

  “You see what I’m saying? The more you impress this doctor, which of course you do in part by feigning disinterest, the less likely it is that she’ll think you are in turn impressed by her, which of course is her paramount concern, whereas your impressiveness is like tenth on the list of things that matter to her. Notice I say tenth on the list. I don’t discount it entirely. The reason for this is that if she thinks you are a completely unimpressive individual then the fact that you are impressed by her is of limited value to her and therefore unlikely to ever sufficiently satisfy her psychic needs to the point that you two will connect. So that’s the very predictable equation at work here, one where, by avoiding the extremes, the less impressive you are to her the more impressed by her you better be and vice versa. Of course, remember that deep down she probably doesn’t think she’s all that impressive so if you mess up the equation and are disproportionately impressed by her then she’ll in turn view you as less impressive with all attendant consequences. Got that? We can state the equation and its impetus another way. What matters to the average person, vis-à-vis dating relationships and such, is not any particular quality the contender may or may not possess. What matters is how they feel when they’re around that person and whether they get sufficient stroking to offset, for those moments anyway, their insecurities. So you’ll hear a woman talk about her boyfriend and it becomes apparent that what most recommends him is his obsequiousness. He buys her flowers every day, tells her how beautiful she is. So even though yeah he’s a bit of a schlump, he’s just so good to her. And they, meaning she, have a lot of fun when they’re together. He’s romantic, that’s the quality he has if pressed. I know what you’re about to say about people seemingly attracted to those who treat them poorly but recall that the equation . . .”

  A raised hand near a cab before an apology during an exit and how do you forget to ask someone whether it’s true they’re dying?

  I liked about cabs mainly the abdication of responsibility so I always left it up to the driver to decide how to get somewhere. I suspended all judgment and opinion. That’s what I paid the big bucks for, to close my eyes.

  If I thought about anything, it was how little I was thinking about things. Well that and how I had wanted to go home to shower and change but now it was too late. The shower I mostly craved, a shower almost always being welcome but especially under these circumstances.

  Changing clothes would have been nice too. Instead I would be wearing a suit, which would make me look like the kind of person who has to wear a suit, which of course was exactly the kind of person I was. Still.

  I wondered if she would be wearing those cool, light blue almost paper-like pajamas. Scrubs. Then the driver was looking at me like you planning on getting out buddy? Because we can’t get any more here than this.

  And even though I was late I was early because she wasn’t there yet. Her greater sin wiped out mine and made it as if I’d been on time. But what if she wasn’t merely late, this stranger? What if she wasn’t coming at all? In that case it would certainly have been a mistake to sit at a table the portrait of expectation; said table being located in the precise 0,0 center of the square dining room with me half expecting a spotlight and a corny announcer. And I hadn’t wanted to sit at the table because I was perfectly content in the little waiting area they had, where I could pretend my fabulous companion was merely using the nearby restroom and where there seemed to be a sufficient turnover of customer personnel to keep this charade up for hours if need be. But, inexplicably, the bowtied guy with the burgundy leather portfolio seemed intent on getting me to abdicate this area and, with me all guilt-ridden about my late arrival in relation to the optimistic reservation time, I agreed.

  I squirmed in my seat.

  And the worst part was the way I now felt. Whereas I most certainly was not nervous when Dane asked me before, and in fact could not even truthfully envision being nervous in the near future, I now found that trying not to be nervous, in light of his confident proclamation, was akin to trying to follow someone’s directive to avoid thinking of a pink elephant. And like a fulfilled scriptural prophecy I found myself increasingly concerned with the kind of figure I would cut, where before I merely worried about her visage. After all, Marcela had raved about this woman’s beauty and Marcela herself looked ultrasharp making it unlikely she was easily impressed. And she was a doctor which at the very least seemed to ensure she would not be a blithering idiot.

  What would she think of me? I cursed Dane for the fact I even cared. I started to feel actual dread at the thought of her appearing. But maybe this was misplaced. Was I an impressive individual? The first key would be the way I looked. But I truthfully couldn’t remember what I looked like being that my facial recognition weakness applied even to my own face. I could get up and look in the bathroom mirror but I was afraid that if the table was abdicated for even a second it would be immediately cleared by a member of what from all indications looked like an overly eager bus staff. Then I would have to call even greater attention to my plight in trying to retrieve the table from one of the current wait-listers. I pictured a microphone being used to announce that the table was already being used. By a single nervous-looking guy. Who had needed to use the bathroom!

  Well I felt reasonably corporeally confident so I resolved to get a look at my face without exposing the table. What I did was take the knife I had been entrusted with, hold it up about eye level, and begin to spy the reflection. This was a bad idea as approximately three to five busboys immediately bum rushed me to replace what they assumed was a soiled utensil. Each seemed determined to be the first and within seconds three to five knives had formed a semicircle around my perfectly still face.

  “A mirror sir? I don’t understand,” one said all confused as I took all the knives in the interest of a speedy resolution. I decided to avoid future sudden movements.

  In college you waited a certain period of time and if the professor didn’t show you were free to split. The only problem was I couldn’t remember what this period of time was. But why was this a problem? Even if I could remember, who’s to say that would bear any relevance to my current predicament? Who was entitled to more time?

  One of my professors, who often skirted the shit out of this grace period, whatever it was, once said that if she could have dinner with anyone she would pick Goethe because he was the last person on Earth to know everything.

  Or was that something someone else said about one of their professors?

  Tell you one thing, I wouldn’t have picked some tardy quack who makes you feel all insecure.

  I would maybe pick CalTe
ch physics professor John Schwarz though. For one, the dude knows his Superstring Theory cold, being perhaps the person most responsible for its development, and it seems likely that said theory may in turn ultimately prove to be the key to the Grand Unified Theory or GUT that physicists since Einstein have been searching for to reconcile Quantum Physics with the Theory of Relativity. Also I’m sure Schwarz, like all these guys, knows his physics history. Given that, at some point during dinner I would turn to him and say: so John what about this deal whereby God, or Nature, or Fate, or whatever you want to call it seems to replace one ginormous theoretical physicist with another? He would probably look at me all quizzical then I would remind him that Galileo Galilei died in 1642 only to be replaced by Sir Isaac Newton who was born in 1642, at least according to the Julian calendar used in England at the time. Later, James Clerk Maxwell died in 1879 only to be replaced by Albert Einstein born in 1879. My nephew Timmy would wonder if maybe there wasn’t enough room on Earth so that the predecessors died to make room for their successors. Mary might wonder the same thing but would likely remain silent.

  Or I could be about to have dinner with Joe Satriani. Satch. We could talk about the palm-muted rhythm section of Always With Me, Always With You or we could talk about his former student in San Francisco, Kirk Hammett, and how Hammett gives him partial credit for that vicious interludy chord progression in Creeping Death.

  Or what about the guy who trained Joe Louis for the second Schmeling fight?

  Almost certainly dead I thought.

  But why limit myself? Forget those puny living types. I could have dinner with fucking Beethoven! Ludwig van Beethoven my friends. I would ask him about Antonie Brentano, what went down there. Then I would say, between the appetizers and the main course, something like my sister Alana contends you didn’t really create music. Particularly with the late string quartets, she says, there’s no way any mere human could have created that stuff. Instead what you did was more like discover notes that had already been celestially arranged to optimal psycherattling effect. In other words, your function was not unlike that of a receiver picking up radio waves that could never be heard with the naked ear. Which theory, I would say, would seem to be belied by the apparent painstaking manner of your compositional process. What say you Lud?