by Choire Sicha
Nearly everyone there also lived in the City. And yet John recognized nobody. He felt anonymous, like they were all in a place none of them would ever come to again, and none of them would ever see each other again.
There was some other dark hidden room in the bar. From its entrance, people would emerge looking all insane and disordered. He went to look. It was dark. There were like two or three dozen people in there. And so John went in and then someone was touching him, but John couldn’t really tell who it was. And then, after a while, John said to this fellow, do you want to go out for a cigarette? The guy was a flight attendant who lived in a trashy city down in the south of the country. That reminded John of a famous character from when he was young who was called Patient Zero. Just as a woman popularly called Typhoid Mary once was said to have spread typhus while being healthy herself, there was also a man named Gaëtan Dugas some eighty years later. He was a flight attendant who, some said, spread the most recent contagion between men in different cities on his travels, and so he was called Patient Zero: He was, supposedly, mythically, the patient before all the other patients.
Anyway, this flight attendant was not attractive to him at all, out in the mild light of the balconies on the edge of the bar, so John decided to shake him off. This was a party where the cutest ones were at the fringes, laughing with their friends.
But then, peeking into the back room, he saw this one cute guy who was getting a blow job. He and John made eye contact.
The guy ditched who he was with and came over to John.
After their brief and rote exchange, the guy popped up and said, I’m Taylor. Do you want to go to the bathroom and wash up?
And John said, so you’re Taylor?
And Taylor was like, yeah, like Taylor Swift—which was the name of a singer.
And John was like, so I would totally take down your number but obviously I don’t have my phone on me, since it’s an underwear party.
Wait, you’re leaving? Taylor said.
And John said, uh, well yeah, what else is there to do?
So you came, you saw and you conquered and now you just take off, Taylor said.
Well, I feel like my work here is done, John said.
Whatever, Taylor said.
Well, I would take down your number, you’re cute and all, John said.
That’s cool, Taylor said. I’ll see you on the beach.
What an idiot, John thought.
The next morning, Sally arrived in town, in time for brunch. Some muscly guys came over too. John found one annoying, the other less annoying. Also he was overtired and hungover, and he thought he was going to throw up the whole time.
They went to the beach. David made John take a walk with him toward the rich town. There they were all arrayed in Speedos. John was wearing a tiny black swimsuit and felt uncomfortable. Not that he would swim, because he didn’t know how. There was a nude guy on the beach. “David, don’t look,” John said. It was Taylor.
“There’s no way he saw us,” John said.
“Yes, he did,” David said. “And tonight he’s going to yell at you and call you a bitch for not waving.”
They went home. They took naps. It was so calm.
The only problem, John thought, was that the taste for adventure, or chaos, or something worse was in his mouth now.
That night they all went to the rich town again. John was trying to focus on the path, to learn it. But he was more lost than ever and felt so blind.
The dance club was having an electrical fire, so they went next door to the little club where ordinarily no one would be. John went to get a drink—he went to get everyone a drink—and there was a good-looking guy on the way to the bar, one that he’d seen the night before. “Yo, what’s up,” the hot guy said.
“Nothing, what’s going on?” John said.
“You’re hot,” the guy said. They chatted for a minute and then they started kissing at the bar for like five minutes. So John came back without drinks.
“You will notice in the next twenty minutes or so that this place will empty out,” David said. Whatever, John thought. In twenty minutes the whole place was empty.
And then: “Everyone goes to dinner at this time,” David said. It was ten p.m. on the dot.
They went for a long creepy walk in the dark, through the black-and-green maze of the town, the trees shuddering in the wind off the ocean. All you could hear was silverware clanging in the dark, dishes being put down, people laughing over dinner. You could see little glimpses of warm lit windows and, inside, happy faces.
Finally they got home and had a late dinner of steak—they were all starving.
Everyone was reading and relaxing, but John was pounding beers. He’d resolved that he’d try the nearest bar again, especially so he wouldn’t have to walk so far.
But the bar, when he got there, seemed terrible. So he set out on the beach, sensibly, aiming for the other town. Finally he found the path: He came across three guys at the edge of town buckling up their pants. He walked and walked and walked and couldn’t find anything, no houses, just sand and trees, but then he saw an enormous flag attached to a house and figured out where he was. So he marched up the beach and was knocked straight back. A small part of the beach was roped off for the nesting of an endangered bird species. The piping plovers! They weren’t very interesting birds at all: Tiny, they’d run along the ocean in the day, and at night, who knows. There were lots of animals like this that wouldn’t exist for much longer.
At the top of the wooden stairs leading up from the beach, he could hear the music carried on the wind from downtown. He followed it. The bars were packed.
He circulated; he smoked a few cigarettes. Some guy started talking to him—from his neighborhood too, where John knew him from the bars. John told him it was his first time here.
“Oh, honey,” the guy said. “So who did you sleep with last night?”
“Oh, I dunno, some guy named Taylor,” John said.
“Of course,” the guy said, “he’s a slut.”
“Is he?” John said.
“He’s a really friendly slut though,” the guy said.
Then across the room, John saw this other guy who had been his mortal enemy in school. It totally ruined his spirit. The guy was with a big group. The evening began to be about weaving through the crowd, trying to avoid the guy from high school. Eventually John went running outside and ran right into Taylor.
“You’re a bitch,” Taylor said.
“What!” John said.
“You didn’t wave to me on the beach,” Taylor said.
“How did you even see me?” John said.
“Anyway, this is my friend Dennis,” Taylor said.
Dennis looked like a cartoon character. He was cute. And then they had some guy who John thought was really gross-looking with them. So John hung out with them and Dennis kept shooting him meaningful looks. Like crazy. And then Taylor left for a minute and John and Dennis started kissing. And Taylor came back, and John wondered if he’d be mad. But then Taylor and John started making out.
“Let’s go back to your house and go in the tub,” Dennis said.
“Okay, bitch, let me buy one more drink,” Taylor said.
“Why would you buy one more drink when we’re about to leave?” John said.
“Obviously because, like, we’ll take it with us,” Taylor said.
So they went stumbling down the creaky boardwalks in the wind to their house, and they banged through the house and went out into the backyard to the hot tub. The tub wasn’t really working; it kept overflowing and shutting off. John looked around. The house was kind of shitty; it was one-story, but it had been just cavernous until random little walls had been put up to create seedy little rooms.
“Fuck, why isn’t this thing worki
ng!” Taylor said.
Finally it did, and then John and Taylor and Dennis were going at it in the tub.
But their friend that John didn’t like was there too. And he kept touching John, and John kept shaking him off. Then the tub stopped working again.
“Fuck it, I’m going home,” Dennis said.
It was maybe three or four in the morning. The owner of the house showed up. He kept talking about how much he loved political conservatives. He got in the tub. Everyone kind of sat there and then the night was ending and the owner started giving directions.
“First of all, John, you’re beautiful and wonderful, so you’ll be with us tomorrow,” he said. “What’s going to happen here is, you will sleep with Taylor tonight for the second night in a row. You guys will sleep on the couch out on the living room. Tomorrow we’re going to a party at eleven a.m., and I’ll have a lot of coke for us. Then we have another party at four thirty. I’m so sorry, John, I can’t offer you any blow tonight.”
The orders went on. Taylor seemed anxious. Clearly he wanted to be accommodating and polite to the owner, since after all he stayed there at his discretion, solely because he was good-looking.
They got away, eventually. The night turned blue. John said, “Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where do you want to go?” Taylor said. “Everything’s closed.”
“Can’t we just go to the Meat Rack or something?” John said.
“It’s not really good at this time,” Taylor said.
“Alright, I mean, well, you’re the expert,” John said.
“Can we just have sex?” Taylor said.
Then they had sex on the couch. They made a lot of noise. The whole house probably heard.
“Okay, I’m going,” John said. It wasn’t night anymore.
“Why aren’t you staying?” Taylor said.
“Good seeing you,” John said.
John was feeling guilty at this point. He took Taylor’s phone number. He’d stayed up all night, away from his hosts, ending up at some coke party. And they’d never used a condom during sex, the whole time. He felt disgusting and panicked.
And earlier John had asked Taylor, as a joke, “Who have you done today?” And Taylor was like, “Oh, some guy I just picked up off the street.” And John had asked, how was the rest of last night, after I left you? And Taylor was like, “Oh my God, it got so crazy!” John was trashed. He’d been trashed for days now. What he thought was the worst was that he realized this was the kind of fun he’d set out looking for: boys, drugs, excitement, booze. The hunt and its success. He was out of the town by then and walking through the woods and the birds were chirping, it was disgusting out, and suddenly again there was the guy from his neighborhood. “Oh hi!” John said. And the guy could barely get it together to speak either.
It was a common nightmare in which you did something you never wanted to do, but then you woke up, and you hadn’t actually done it, and you were relieved. But when it wasn’t a nightmare, there was no relief.
The night was getting lemony and pale; it was almost-day night. Like there was the light of two moons or something. There were guys stumbling out of bushes. It really was a maze. Finally John stopped a man and asked how to get home, and the man said, “Just follow me.”
They walked and walked. “My sister just died,” the stranger said.
He got home at seven thirty a.m. He sneaked in the house, all burned out inside. No one heard him.
He woke up at almost one in the afternoon. He came downstairs.
“Are we going to the beach?” John said.
“No, we’ve all been to the beach. We’re going back to the City in forty-five minutes,” one of his hosts said.
Instead of showering, he went out in the backyard and got in the little long black-lined pool. He felt depleted. Sally was holding him up so that he wouldn’t drown. Disaster. He was idly kicking, too tense to drift, too anxious to listen, sad as he could be.
II.
In a very old and still popular history book, there was a story about a man who said he talked to God. When he was no longer a boy, he confided in his family that he heard voices. So obviously he became employed as a prophet and as a military general. And when he was old and famous, the people said to him, “This system we have just isn’t working out. We’re ready for something new, and we would like you to tell us who should be our king.”
But their prophet said, “That’s a terrible idea. If you have a king, he’ll conscript your children. He’ll make you do his fieldwork. He’ll have your daughters make his bread. He’ll take the best things you grow for his people. And then he’ll take ten percent of your vegetables and grains and the wine that you make—and that’s just for his servants! He’ll take ten percent of your sheep. Basically, you’ll all be his slaves. Eventually, you’ll be sorry, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves.”
But from time immemorial—and this was indeed a very long time ago—people have wanted someone in charge. They knew that the person in charge would be terrible, because only a hardheaded and rash and possibly psychopathic person was good at defending a country. Countries wanted to expand, always, and fortify their borders; their leaders personified that need to ooze over maps, over dusty hills, creeping along rivers, seizing and insulating.
So this prophet consulted with the voices he heard, and the voices said, go on, go ahead! Give them a king then, if they want one so bad.
For thousands of years after, the people were always plagued by kings. The kings came in all varieties and titles, but they all shared the love of territory and capital, the love of oozing and taking and fortification and celebrity.
The kings changed their methods over time. Later, the kings were only sometimes military or countrywide kings. All over the world, there were kings that had mere hundreds or maybe thousands or tens of thousands of subjects, but most often they were corporate kings. They let people farm the land for them and keep some profit. Or they bought up all the jobs in a town, as giant merchants, and then owned many of the workers in town for their kingdom. Or they owned all the land and so everyone paid them rent.
You were a king if no one could compete with you, and if no subject could easily leave your kingdom—the less porous your kingdom, the greater your kingship.
While many countries were subject to kings, the City itself was so compressed, so vertical, so tall with kings, that in fact the citizens had more freedom from local kings. There were so many opportunities to become a king, and some were immensely successful and some were less so. Mostly the kings were too busy with each other, oozing and creeping their kingdoms in perpetual alliances and skirmishes. So the people could, usually, hop from kingdom to kingdom.
What had changed over those thousands of years were a few things. Many things did not change; always, there was land and royal matchmaking and trade. Of course there were always more people who wanted to and had to pay for things. And then, in concert with the growing number of people, they invented new kinds of things that people had to pay for. For instance, once you “paid” for water by getting together with others and digging a well; then you all owned it. Now people who lived in cities did not have that equity from their labor; instead they paid for water to be delivered continuously to their homes. It was always on.
There were other things—games and fashions and trinkets and entertainments—that were merely advanced evolutions of age-old markets, from the necessary to the enjoyable to the frivolous. There was, for instance, medical treatment, which at this time hovered confusingly between being a right and being an u
nobtainable luxury.
THE CITY WAS all soft and steamy and delirious. Tree roots pushed up against slab, patient, growing every day. Down in the old former swamps of the City, where the hard schist broke up or dove down, the roots roamed wet and free, and pushed up because they could, and pushed down through garbage and broken rock and landfill. The old buildings sagged. In the bathrooms a tile would crack, and then another. One day a window wouldn’t quite close square. The old hills from the west side pushed down what was once an old former soggy cove. The rocks and burned buildings and gravel that filled in the swamps and unevenness of the east side, that mass was all compressed and thick now from decades of pressure, held together by webs of pipes and wires and roots and time. Little dirty streams appeared in the subway tunnels. Hundreds of pumps moved millions of gallons of water from the boreholes into tunnels built for wastewater, and then pumped it back into the sea. The sea shoved the water back. The more of the City there was, the heavier it got. All things settled, but not without constant tension, and often, unnoticed, a thing would quietly break. The great heap of structures made allowances one after another after the next for as long as it could.
JOHN BOUGHT A loaf of bread for dinner and was asleep by the stroke of nine.
He’d been texting Taylor back and forth, like dozens of times.
“I have nothing to hide,” Taylor had texted.
“You have my number,” Taylor had texted.
John awoke to the humming of his phone, another text from Taylor. “Don’t worry,” Taylor texted.
Then it was three a.m. and he couldn’t go back to sleep in the dark and hot and quiet, and he stayed up and watched some terrible movie on the TV.
