Hope Idiotic | Part 44
And there’s the biggest difference between us, Michelle. There’s the difference that should have kept us from maybe ever even becoming friends to begin with. Hope doesn’t mean anything. Hope is what people have or do when they can’t have or do anything else. Hope is inaction. It’s sitting back and just waiting for what you want to come. It’s hoping for everything to work out. It’s what we have when we feel we have nothing else. I don’t ever want to hope. I want to have. I want to try. And I’m okay if I fail. Hope won’t get anyone a goddamn thing. It never has, and it never will.”
Hope Idiotic | Part 43
A year had passed since Chuck died. I had quit Tigris and put my dusty PhD to good use as an adjunct professor at Nevada State University where I taught uninterested twenty-somethings the finer points of Beowulf and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The schedule allowed me to work on my novel, and the pay was enough that any freelancing I did was out of choice, rather than need. My nights were void of death-metal concerts, replaced by bath time with my boys.
Hope Idiotic | Part 42
We spend our lives surrounding ourselves with the right people and the right job and right amount of shit to call our own. Life is a puzzle. We gather the pieces and put each one in place, and when we can finally make out the picture, we’re complete. But then a piece is taken away or lost. People die. Friends become strangers, lovers lie. At best, we can still make out the picture, but it’s clear something is missing. And those pieces can never be replaced.
Hope Idiotic | Part 41
Mark decided to move to New York, which meant Lou was down his best friend in Chicago and had to find his own apartment. Mark came with him on the final walk-through. It was a two-bedroom just a few blocks away from where they had been living. Lou liked the neighborhood, and the rent was right where he needed it to be. It wasn’t the flashiest apartment—the walls bulged out in certain spots, the kitchen floor sloped ever so slightly, the rooms were small, and although Michelle would have thought it was a total shithole, it was just what Lou needed.
Hope Idiotic | Part 40
It wasn’t that Lou was hung up on Michelle, it was that the past three years of his life had been so focused around her. She was central to everything, and it was all he had to talk about. Talking about anything before The Age of Michelle seemed entirely out of context. That’s the hardest part about breakups: finding a new definition of yourself. Since the breakup, Lou had continued sinking in a sea of whiskey and cigarette smoke while searching for that new definition among the fragments of the past three years. He didn’t talk about Michelle because he missed her; he talked about her because he didn’t know how not to.
Hope Idiotic | Part 39
Brother, do not blame yourself for Chuck’s death. He was on a course to destruction. If it hadn’t been your house, it would have been someone else’s or the highway or by a policeman’s bullet.
If anything, it’s my fault.
Hope Idiotic | Part 38
“When he was done, I stood up and said, ‘Hey! What the fuck are you doing?’ Then I punched him in the face. I almost knocked his ass out and right into the pool.”
“Hang on a minute. You said, ‘When he was done.’ Do you mean that you woke up and even after you saw Cal Keller was giving you a blowjob, you kept letting him? So, you actually finished.”
R.J. stopped pacing. “Well, yeah. I mean, I was drunk. I didn’t know what was going on at first. Not until I blew my wad.”
“Oh, my God, R.J. Okay, so then what happened?”
“I made him take me to the ATM and made him give me all of his money in his account or I’d beat him to death.”
“You mugged the guy after he sucked you off? And how much money did you get?”
Hope Idiotic | Part 37
Lou and Mark shuffled their way around a line of people, and Lou pulled open the door. A large bouncer pushed it shut in their faces.
“Line forms out there,” the bouncer said.
They turned and looked. “There’s a line? For what?” Mark asked.
“To get in,” the bouncer said.
Mark looked through the window next to the door. “But there’s plenty of space in there. There are even empty seats at the bar. What gives?”
“Line forms back there,” the bouncer said again with even more authority.
Hope Idiotic | Part 36
Lou picked Michelle up from work on his way back into the city. It was Friday and they were going to try a few a of the neighborhood bars. When they arrived at the condo, they headed straight to the bedroom to change out of their work clothes. Lou could have worn hole-filled sweatpants to the shop; no one would have cared—it’s not like he met with clients on a regular basis. Most days he was the only one in the office with a handful of union workers out in the shop doing whatever union workers get paid to do when not on a job site. But wearing a nice pair of slacks and a tie made him feel a little more professional. His mother taught him long ago that what a person wears directly affects one’s attitude. It helped motivate him to look for other jobs if he was wearing a tie. It also made him feel like less of a degenerate drunk when he would have two scotches for lunch.
Hope Idiotic | Part 35
Back in Chicago, people offered Lou their sympathies. The typical, “I’m sorry,” and “Let me know if you need anything.” He heard a lot of “Are you okay?” Most of those people never knew Chuck, but when you hear that someone dies, the polite thing to do is express condolences and make empty offerings of assistance. Not that you shouldn’t be graciously appreciative of their efforts.
Hope Idiotic | Part 34
Sadness doesn’t come immediately after the sudden death of a loved one. Shock comes first. You feel nothing. Your mind and body switch to autopilot. If you’re one of the first to hear the news, you get busy making phone calls to other loved ones of the departed. You involuntarily go through all of the other motions that come with surviving someone. You try to maintain the status quo. You eat breakfast. You feed your kid. If you’re Lou, you go couch shopping.
Hope Idiotic | Part 33
For years, Lou thought Michelle was his friend. But right there, on that street in Chicago, on that perfect midwestern October night, it was clear to him that Michelle was anything but. She hadn’t been a friend for a long time. A drinking buddy and a sex partner, maybe, but not a friend. At the beginning of their romance, Michelle made a helluva case that she was okay with Lou; that she liked him and accepted all his faults and would support him throughout his career. She painted a beautiful picture of their future in which they would fight together through life’s difficult times and rejoice together during its triumphs. They were sure they were going to be good together as partners. But that never happened. She sold him a bill of goods, and he bought them all. Buyer beware. Because Michelle was not a partner. She was a hindrance.
Hope Idiotic | Part 32
Wine was served. Chuck had a glass. Then he had another. Then another. By the end of the evening, all the young alumni were pleasantly soused.
Hope Idiotic | Part 31
To celebrate his birthday, he, Lexi and Darryl went to Bella’s. There was a moment between his second and third beer when Chuck felt entirely at peace. He and Lexi were going to make a go of it—for better or worse, his brother was rescued from the black hole of the Keller broken home, and it seemed that the tempestuous days were behind him. In that moment, at that dinner table, all that was before him was his beautiful girlfriend, his sweet and simple brother and the vast desert landscape spreading off into the distance.
Hope Idiotic | Part 30
With the sadness of Pop dying, the excitement of the play and Michelle preparing to buy a condo, Lou had plenty of reasons to drink. And so he did. A subdued aggravation grew in that small apartment with the incredible view that Lou and Michelle called home. He wanted to talk about the play; she didn’t. She wanted to talk about the new condo; he didn’t. These were the two biggest things in their lives at that time and both knew that discussing them could result in a disastrous fight. But what were they going to do; not talk at all? There was no choice, yet somehow, they managed to be civil during these wretched conversations.
Hope Idiotic | Part 29
A week later, Pop was in the hospital. Benjamin called Lou that morning and told him. Lou drove out that afternoon. Benjamin, Grams and Aunt Elise were sitting around Pop, who was lying in the bed. The room was full of forced casual conversation. Dr. Caplan, Pop’s doctor, came in. He was the son of a close childhood friend of Pop’s who was also a doctor, but had retired from practicing medicine a few years ago. The younger Caplan inherited many of his dad’s patients, including Abraham Bergman, who used to give him rides to school.
“Here’s the deal, Abe,” Dr. Caplan said as he tossed Pop’s chart on the foot of the bed. “There’s cancer in your leg. A lot of cancer. It’s bad.”
Hope Idiotic | Part 28
Each week they walked a few blocks to the therapist’s office. His name was Adam, and he specialized in couples. Adam was part of a practice of three other couples’ therapists who saw patients out of that location, and the waiting room was a revolving door of jilted lovers. The awkward efforts of the couples to not make eye contact with each other were exhausting ocular acrobatics. Lou missed the intimacy of Dr. Milner. The sessions were hour-long free-for-alls during which Michelle purged her frustrations with Lou’s faults. Among the faults: “Sometimes he’s too driven toward things that I just don’t understand.”
Hope Idiotic | Part 27
It was hard explaining to Lexi why he hated going to Indiana so much. To her, Indiana was where her heart was. But she had a lovely family; one that got along and didn’t live in filth or rely on a broke, recovering alcoholic to support it. Chuck and Lexi were from the exact same place—grew up just two blocks away from one another—but they were from completely different worlds. She would never see Cayuga from his point of view, and he would never see it from hers, even if he wanted to.
Hope Idiotic | Part 26
Chuck’s mother was sick again. A massive heart attack. She was in the I.C.U. for three days. Chuck arrived three days later. Neither his father, nor his brother thought to call him with the news that his mother was on the brink of death.
“She got home all right,” Darryl told Chuck over the phone.
“You people are unbelievable,” Chuck said. “I’m coming home.”
Hope Idiotic | Part 25
Lou shot straight up in bed. What did she just say? Am I drunk? Dreaming? Am I being punked? he thought. Lou could only recall one instance in their entire relationship—including their friendship before they dated—in which Michelle apologized outright like that. It was back in college, and it was for hardly anything worth apologizing. She got really drunk at a boyfriend’s frat house, fell in the pool, got into a fight with the boyfriend and called Lou for a rescue. They spent the night in his bed like a brother sharing space with his sister. The following morning she apologized with shame in her voice. This apology on the phone was something else entirely. And he needed to know more.
Anxiety is the thing that’s ripped our country apart. It has divided us, caused us to fear and hate those who think and live differently than us, and even caused us to hate those who only slightly disagree with us. It has led to panic and overreaction. And I worry that American Anxiety is only going to exacerbate the social and political divide in this country to the point that there is no coming back.