How Should a Person Be?

by Sheila Heti

  SHEILA

  It’s a good pen!

  YOUNG MAN

  How much is it?

  SOLOMON

  How much do you want to pay?

  YOUNG MAN

  A dollar.

  SOLOMON

  Two dollars. It sells for two-­fifty.

  YOUNG MAN

  Okay, I’ll take one.

  SOLOMON

  What a deal. (yelling to his wife in the back) Enid, we make two dollars! So what do you want to do when you grow up?

  YOUNG MAN

  I was hoping I was almost grown up.

  SOLOMON

  You know we never grow up. I hope you realize that. What do you study?

  YOUNG MAN

  Uh . . . computer stuff.

  SOLOMON

  We are in the beginning of the revolution—­the computer revolution! Or evolution. I think they’re eventually going to make people who are computers in China . . .

  The young man exits the shop.

  Now, there’s a lot of things that don’t connect. I’ll give you an example. I was in Tel Aviv at the university and I met this guy, he’s writing a book about those missing thousand years. You know what my favorite subject is?

  SHEILA

  Israel.

  SOLOMON

  What is an Israeli? It’s my nationality. I actually wrote a preamble to the Israeli constitution. I’ll give it to you to read. Takes five minutes. You’ll figure it out. As an intelligent woman, you’ll figure it out in three minutes. Now I’ll tell you why Martin Buber is an idiot.

  SHEILA

  I’ve got one more thing to say!

  SOLOMON

  No! No! No!

  SHEILA

  I’ve got one more thing to say! Have you heard of Margaret Mead?

  SOLOMON

  Absolutely, I love her. ­We’re going to do some anthropology in a minute. ­We’re going into it.

  SHEILA

  Listen to what Margaret Mead said: “The major task of every civilization is to get the fathers involved in the child-­rearing pro­cess.”

  Pause.

  SOLOMON

  (calling) Enid! Enid! Enid!

  ENID

  (calling, bored) What?

  SOLOMON

  Did you hear what she said about Margaret Mead? You know, tell her that I failed Lamaze!

  ENID

  (calling) He was the only one.

  SHEILA

  He’s the only one to have failed Lamaze? How do you fail Lamaze?

  ENID

  (calling) Chickening out!

  SHEILA

  Chickening out?

  SOLOMON

  By the way—­Margaret Mead on that issue is a complete failure.

  SHEILA

  Why?

  SOLOMON

  Because she’s a complete failure! Because I’ll tell you—­listen. The issue is like this. So with the waves that come from near China, Mongolia—­you know what comes? Shamanism. Do you know what a shaman is?

  SHEILA

  A spiritual—

  SOLOMON

  A man who connects between you and God, and also a healer. Do you know that I’m a shaman?

  SHEILA

  Okay.

  SOLOMON

  Did you know that? I’m a healer. I’m actually officially a healer.

  SHEILA

  What does it mean to fail Lamaze?

  SOLOMON

  Leave it. It’s childbirth. We studied it when Enid was pregnant. We went to the hospital to study this thing. It’s just—­I ­couldn’t take it.

  He takes a deep breath.

  Anyway. It’s complete nonsense. She gave birth without me there. Ehm, anyway. The issue is not that thing. The issue is something different.

  I left the copy shop frustrated and upset. He was just another man who wanted to teach me something.

  • chapter 15 •

  WHAT IS EMPATHY?

  Flustered and feeling like I was running out of time, I hurried down to a restaurant near the river—­to a patio that was high-­end and touristy and packed with people. The tables ­were wrought iron, and the cloth napkins ­were black. Families ­were there, and young couples, and when I arrived everyone was sipping cold drinks and eating large salads.

  A waitress met me at the entrance and seated me near the middle of the restaurant, and I ordered a Campari and soda, then brushed some grains of sand from the table. I looked around to see who was near, to determine the best way to arrange myself. At a short distance, maybe ten feet away, I noticed an older man. He was dignified and wore a navy blue suit and hat. His shirt was heavily starched, and his white cuffs peeked out from beneath his heavy suit. Where a gap opened between his pant cuffs and socks, I could see the hair on his legs. He had a newspaper folded in front of him and a coffee by his side, and I thought about Israel’s email: pick someone on the patio that you feel deserves to see your cunt, like an old man. Why not this man, of all men?

  I took a gulp of my drink and rummaged in my bag for the paper and pen I had bought. My face began to flush with excitement as I spread apart my legs and looked down at the blank page before me, trying to behave as though this was the most natural thing in the world. I knew I was supposed to be very nonchalant about the ­whole thing. I put my pen in my mouth, then took it out and began to write.

  I tried to compose something that would show how perfect and willing I was—­still was, even though I had left—­and how accommodating and devoted I could be. I really tried to write it in such a way that it would turn Israel on even more than a letter from a real teenage camper would.

  I was about three pages into a detailed explanation of how his cock had changed my life, when an odd sensation began creeping through me, an awareness of how sick it was that all this time I had been having so much trouble writing my play, yet instead of laboring away at it, ­here I was writing this fucking letter—­this cock-­sucking letter of flattery for Israel!

  I glanced up and saw that the man across from me had gone, and in his place sat a chubby young boy—­and he laughed up at me openly to see my ­whole cunt. My throat caught and my eyes leapt to his parents, and, flushing red, I fumbled out some bills and threw them on the table and shoved my glass on top of them and hurried away.

  I pushed past people as I made my way quickly from there, my head bent low, heart thumping, looking only at the street. Tears blurred my eyes, and trees crashed into cars. My mind swirled far and fast, and a painting of Eli Langer’s came with great force into my head—­a painting from that fateful show: a naked little girl with a round little tummy sits astride the neck of an older man, who lies there naked on his back, on a bed. Her legs hug either side of his neck, and her pussy is front and center, right below his chin. She should not be sitting there like that!

  As the painting filled me, I began to see that the worst thing about child abuse would be the empathy you would have for the grown-­up, who feels compelled to do these things. Worse would be the tenderness you would feel for the adult because you love them—­because you believe they are being forced by something inside of them to do these terrible things. You would want to help them—­to make them feel better—­and you would help them feel ­better by complying, and complying without judgment. To do otherwise would leave you guilty for making them feel so bad. But the next thing that would happen is you would confuse their desire with yours—­but your desire would be to love, not for the act itself. Forever after, though, it would be really hard to untangle how you imagined other people wanted you to behave from how you wanted to behave. How would you even know what you wanted, when at such a young age, desire had been all mixed up with empathy and guilt?

  How could I castrate my mind—­neuter it!—­and build up a re­sis­
tance to know what was mine from what was everyone ­else’s, and finally be in the world in my own way? That endless capacity for empathy—­which you have to really kill in order to act freely, to know your own desires!

  Did I want to write this letter to Israel because I wanted to? Did I want to lead the people out of bondage because it was a desire I had absorbed from the world, or my own religious history? Is that why I wanted to finish the play? Why had I even taken it on? Why had I come to New York? Had my every act, all along, just been guilt-­drenched empathy for the perversions of the world?

  Turning onto Jen’s street, I grew suddenly dizzy and stopped to rest my hand against a pole. I could have vomited. I saw it all so clearly: I had come to New York as a student, like it was my teacher. And hadn’t I always gone into the world making everyone and everything a lesson in how I should be? Somehow I had turned myself into the worst thing in the world: I was just another man who wanted to teach me something!

  • chapter 16 •

  WHAT IS LOVE?

  I had no idea how it had come to this, or what I needed to do to fix what was inside me. I saw how upside down my life had become—­that I had become the thing I hated. But what could make it better?

  I could not stay at Jen’s any longer. I took my bags and left a farewell note and went to the bus station. I bought a ticket heading to Atlantic City. I wanted to be near the sea.

  That night, I walked along the boardwalk, then stepped off the boardwalk and walked shoeless through the sand. I tried my best to remain silent and not ask myself any questions, nor look around for someone to answer questions for me. I sat down in the sand and looked out at the waves. It was so terrible to be alone. I felt how heavy my brain was in my head with all the questions that had been repeating for years.

  Above me, the seagulls ­were lifted across a sky that was dark with night and clouds. In the distance, it was brighter blue where the clouds broke. Before me, the ocean was the color of steel. The waves ­were coming up onto the shore and pulling themselves back from the shore. I felt exhausted with how long the sea had been doing that for—­always, without end. It didn’t make sense that they had been washing up and away ever since the world first began. How could the waves do it, through each and every moment, and so naturally, as if it was for the first time, as if it was for the last time, as if it was for the middle time, as if it would go on forever, and as if it would one day end. The sea moved forward and back with all these possibilities, and all of them ­were true. Yet it didn’t grow tired of itself the way I did. Why not?

  Who cares? There would be no answers for me ever. I wanted to lose everything I ever had, or win back everything I had ever lost. I began to make my way to the casinos.

  I was no man on a mountaintop like in a Caspar David Friedrich painting, made sublime by the sublimity around me—by the awesomeness of the ocean I was leaving behind. It was the opposite and would always be the opposite. I walked up the boardwalk and stopped where all the casinos stood.

  I sat down at the slots and lost. I went to the roulette table and lost. I put fifty on red, and I lost.

  I was not in the mood to speak to anyone. The last thing I wanted was to be with a man, but it could not be avoided for long, sitting at a bar as I was. Soon I was approached by a middle-­aged fellow, with an East Indian accent and a nice, kind face—­though I was not in the mood for even the kindest face. He sat down beside me and smiled, held out his hand, and said his name was Ron. I said, “Do you think everyone goes to heaven, or do some people go to hell?”

  RON

  I don’t believe a loving father who created you is judgmental.

  SHEILA

  No?

  RON

  God is a care-­loving father, like your own care-­loving father. Why would he put you in hell when you make a mistake? As the Bible says, in Psalms 91: I will hear them before they call me. That means if you believe in God, he’s already taken care of you. You might not understand it at that moment, but as the course of time passes, you will realize, Oh, what happened was the best for me. I am always feeling guidance. And if something goes wrong—­I tell God, You know more than me, you’re in charge of the situation. I just leave it to you. That’s the best feeling. And you move on. Something will come up right on time. When I talk to God, God listens to me. When I was lost up north in the Michigan jungles—

  SHEILA

  In the jungles of—?

  RON

  Up north there was a wooded place. I got lost and I said, “Lord, help me.” It was a snowy area. I didn’t know how to get out. I said, “Lord, I need help.” Suddenly I see a man hunting. That man said, “Oh, it’s right ­here. Just go like that.”

  Pause.

  All moments are like that in different ways.

  Sheila notices his wedding band.

  SHEILA

  Is your wife your soul mate?

  RON

  (hesitates) No. She’s not. I have a very, very humorous, very loving friendship with my son. I think this is the reason I am with her.

  SHEILA

  That’s the reason you think you are with your wife—­for your son?

  RON

  I think so. I think so.

  SHEILA

  Can a son be a soul mate? Could your soul mate be your son?

  RON

  (brightening) You know what? Maybe. Maybe! (pause, frowns) But with a woman you have sex. I think sex is very important in life. In other words, intimacy, loving, hugging, kissing. But—­what are you drinking?

  SHEILA

  Scotch.

  He orders her a scotch.

  RON

  Loving, hugging, and kissing. But that’s not all. Walking, talking, fighting, loving each other. Fun in life. And to be with—­you know—­you’re my wife—­you’re not at home—­I keep calling, “Hey! Where you at?” I come home. “Where are you?” An element of missing something. Where’d she go?

  SHEILA

  You feel the missing of the person?

  RON

  Yes.

  SHEILA

  Does your wife miss you when you are gone?

  RON

  She never said that. Her way of thinking is different from how I think.

  SHEILA

  What’s her way of thinking?

  RON

  I never understood. That’s why I’m sad. This is why I drink. Maybe.

  SHEILA

  Uh, so if your wife is not your soul mate, do you think there’s someone who is?

  RON

  I think I have met my soul mate, but I am not with her.

  SHEILA

  Oh.

  RON

  I don’t know it, but I’m just telling you—­deep in my heart. (drinks) If you meet a soul mate, it’s one of the most beautiful, pleas­ur­able things in life. I have seen soul mates. They never get away from each other. But with not a soul mate—­they never get along.

  SHEILA

  (puffs) This is the worst eight-­dollar cigar that’s ever been sold to me.

  RON

  Do you live ­here?

  SHEILA

  No.

  RON

  Why don’t you stay to­night?

  SHEILA

  I ­can’t.

  RON

  Or tomorrow night.

  SHEILA

  I ­can’t. (puffs) Why did you come to Atlantic City?

  RON

  Meeting women.

  SHEILA

  Meeting women?

  RON

  Nah, not necessarily. Enjoying nature. Meeting women and men. Very interesting people. Meeting human beings. Looking at the animals. And enjoying God’s nature—­very important. Get deep breathing exercises and think about God. Meditations.

  Long pause as he dr
inks. Ron puts down his drink.

  She is not my soul mate. My soul mate I met two years ago. God forgives me for it, I think. God understands. I do not think my wife thinks that I am her soul mate. She has never said anything about it. Do you think it is right . . . six years? For a woman not to sleep with a man? She is not my soul mate. Your soul mate is the one that misses you.

  Sheila stops puffing on her cigar.

  Alone that night in my tiny hotel room, under the scratchy duvet, my window facing the parking lot with the rusty cars and a blue light shining in, I slept deeply and I had a dream. I dreamed I was sailing on a boat in water, and coming to land, I got off and climbed a grassy mountain, at the top of which lay a massive graveyard. I looked about me for my task. Then I saw it—­an ivory box. I held it in my hands and spent a very long time looking at it—­its geometric pattern, interlaced with different shapes, perfectly symmetrical around all four sides. The box had a funny weight to it, at once light and heavy. I took it with me to the cliff ’s edge.

  I knelt down and started digging at the ground with my nails—­but then I paused and stopped. I went to another site and started digging there. But again I felt I might be digging in the entirely wrong place, so I got up and began digging elsewhere, ­here and there, until the sun started setting over the hill. I knew I was running out of time and that I could not delay anymore, so I dug a small hole and reached behind me for the box. Then I opened it. Glancing up at me was Margaux’s head, severed from her body, her eyes open and darting around, scared.

  I felt a horror so deep. Taking her head from the box, I threw it hard in the hole, then filled it up with dirt as her eyes kept blinking. I didn’t want to see it. I knew I was a terrible person. I had not the will or courage to bury her ­whole body. I had desecrated her. Everyone knew I had only enough strength to bury her head.

  When I woke in the morning, I knew only one thing—­my one real duty in the world. I told myself, without hesitation, Go home.

  • chapter 17 •

  EXODUS

  I ­haven’t found my suitcase yet. I don’t know where I put it. I suppose I will find it, then I’ll set off. God didn’t send Moses into the desert by himself. He sent Moses with all of his people. So I’ll go, be among them, smile widely so no one can see how hard it is for me.