call me ishmael

Without much evidence, I’m a believer in the God or cosmic energies that steer us toward the right books at the right times that we need them. Getting halfway through a long book at 19 years old hoping to be able to say you finished is objectively less satisfying than finishing it with a decade’s worth of extra life experience that allows one to have felt the loneliness the author writes about; to have felt the subconscious drive toward self-destruction despite oneself or the fear of finding meaninglessness at the end of a barefoot pilgrimage toward an idea of success. I do my best not to cater only to my moods when deciding what to read next, as I’ve found doing so is an effective way not to grow as a reader. Somehow, though, books like these regularly find me at my most sentimental and end up as lifelong favorites.

This could be romanticism getting in the way of the near-one-hundred-percent likely explanation that we look for the themes closest to us in the books we read, however, like in all things, I prefer the romantic. With that said, and 14 chapters of Moby Dick logged, another book has found me at the moment I need it. This time as I’m drawn toward questions regarding identity, authenticity, and what leads us to be people we are desperately not. See also a fixation on what may have drilled the psychic hole that men regularly seek to fill with power (and the cruelty often used as a tool to obtain and maintain that power); what real brotherhood entails and, on the other hand, how brotherhood, when based on superficial bonds, can end up looking a lot like mass hysteria; and a curiosity about the history of the American novel and its relationship with the masculine. This series of essays is meant to track my progress as a reader and a student as I go. If it's not for you, then it’s just as well for me. I’ll have a record of the time I spent looking for answers in a novel that’s already become a favorite of mine as well as a record of a hunt for a white whale of my own, which may become clearer to you as time goes on. Feel free to read along and freer to let me know when I’m wrong, confused, way off the mark, or when I take the easy way out, for example, in cases such as using exhausted metaphors about hunting for white whales.

The Beginning 

When Ishmael introduces himself, it’s with the put-on nonchalance of a kid who smokes his first cigarette after telling his friends how he totally smokes all the time, despite his hacking and retching with each puff. Ishmael wants us assured he can hold his own as a hardened sailor, that he doesn’t want the status of higher-ranking crew, nor that he’s one of the poseurs who go to sea as tourists. He passes the luxurious New Bedford inns because the cheap ones are better anyway. Eschewing comfort is a point of pride because all he really cares about is the excitement of “forbidden seas.” He makes all this clear in his gentrified language the way a Wisconsinite living in Echo Park might make it clear that they’re above drinking anywhere that’s not an authentically grimy dive. When he finally reaches The Crossed Harpoons, though, his enthusiasm wanes when faced with the reality of slumming it compared to the romantic idea of doing so.

Compare this now to the modern person and their tendency to posture as salted experts in any given field while essentially living as tourists. It’s not difficult to fool others (and especially ourselves) when we have information on demand, even if most of the information gleaned is the thinnest layer off the surface of the surface. Even though Ishmael’s façade drops––evident in his dramatization of the decrepit state of the inn and its tenants or when he details his neuroses about sharing a bed with the still unknown harpooner––he at least has the experience of his merchant voyages. The modern poseur, however, doesn’t need skills or expertise to back up their performed identity. A few hours’ worth of Googling provides one with everything they need to know to impress a date who might have a thing for screenwriters, surfers, or sommeliers. Even if the intention isn’t to impress, there is still the drive to be labeled, to be perceived as something, and that drive is especially visible today with all the means that exist to portray ourselves as things we’re not.

This isn’t to diagnose an epidemic of inauthenticity because it’s apparently always been a human quirk to overcompensate for our less socially desirable traits by going all in on something else; most often, something conventionally deemed cool, as coincidence would have it. To Ishmael, the life of a sailor seems more intriguing on paper than that of a schoolteacher, the same way we’re led to believe the life of a psychedelically enlightened nomad is more interesting than that of a middle manager with a trust fund. The difference here is that, in the latter case, the traveler has a handful of tourist destinations bookmarked on Instagram defeating the need for exploration. The flight from LAX to Lisbon will be smooth besides some turbulence, the fear of which is simply cushioned by prescription meds and a neck pillow. Upon landing, most of the locals speak English, but if not, there are always Google Translate and data roaming. For the modern poseur, the inclination is to perform for an audience, whereas if Ishmael is lying to anyone, it’s to himself. The danger and discomfort involved in his travels tell us there’s at least some truth in his act. The traveler is nonetheless liable to posture as he does, singing the merits of adventure for weeks to come until the novelty wears off and it’s back to doomscrolling and bottomless brunch.

I’ve been the modern man, and if I have to, sure, I’ll attest to champagne tasting better sitting next to the Seine, particularly as the sunset’s reflection spills out from under Le Pont-Neuf rendering grass greener and smiles contagious. I, however, have the self-awareness not to let moments like these form the structural integrity of my personality… but it would be so easy. Just as easy as it is for a writer to ensure he’s seen scribbling pensively in a leather journal at a coffee shop with a copy of Moby Dick set to the side. Of course, the writer wouldn’t admit to posturing unless accused or given time to reflect on why he’d like to be perceived this way. He might ask himself what he’s compensating for and what part of himself he’s escaping from. Is there a tribe to which he’d like to belong that welcomes the thoughtful (or those who at least appear to be)? Is every hammed-up expression of identity a cover-up for the subconscious desire to sit with the cool kids? Is this desire largely what makes up militaries? Police forces? Corporations? A world could be built by self-serving intentions, don’t you think?

It's safe to doubt Melville’s purpose here is to campaign against the phonies of the world––however, I don’t mind being wrong this time and running with it, even if I’m only motivated by a grudge against tensions caused by a collective desperation for belonging. This is to point out that most of us don’t realize where we’d even like to belong in the first place. We throw slices of mystery meat at the wall and build outward lives based on whatever sticks. We retreat further into ourselves, progressively relying on appearances provided by the niches we’re sold by algorithms that are oblivious to the ways they make us lonely. It will only get easier to purchase a sense of self than it is to reflect on who we actually are, which is usually a lot messier and harder to get along with than the neatly packaged, pre-made ideas we’ve made ourselves accustomed to.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a solution that doesn’t require geriatric tones of pretension or self-righteousness. My only suggestion would be to develop an overwhelming self-consciousness about everything you do to ensure you’re doing them for the right reasons, especially those that aren’t motivated by an image of an advertisement of an idea of who you’d like to be. Fall in love with the act of doing rather than the appearance of someone who does. Reading this book is a lot more fun than being seen with it, but I should remind you that I’m here writing about it with the hope to be read, to hopefully be seen as someone who knows what they’re talking about.

san narciso

Two dachshunds, a stray cat, and a kind Korean Uber driver all make for a pleasant Monday morning. This is my first day testing a regimented calendar which accounts for SAT prep, volunteer work, homework, and, in more grown-up fashion, a career plus family, friend, and J obligations. Heart pains and palpitations coming and going at increasingly rapid intervals are easily ignored when I consider what’s at stake if I slow down. There is swallowed pride and self-reflection and a film crew scuttling around the Village like sand crabs under a rock that’s been lifted and goddammit they’re even in the library. Where am I going to get any work done? Whatever. I still have my turkey and cheese croissant so I’ll sit on this bench and read a book even though it’s against my new rules and doing so will throw off every other time slot in today’s schedule––another dachshund passes: an omen. In fact, this was supposed to be written by 9am and it’s already almost noon. I’m self-aware regarding the image of me reading Flaubert with the croissant and reassure myself I do these things because I like them and not because of the way they make me look. That gives me hope for today regardless of the strong possibility that it’s false hope.

My fingers are slick with croissant grease by the time I decide to get back to work. I avoid working in coffee shops because I get the sense I look like the type of person who gets off on being seen reading French literature while eating a pastry; or, for that matter, writing in trendy little spots like the one I’m sitting in now, typing with still greasy fingers after having spent $13 on a glorified sausage McMuffin because I needed somewhere to sit. It’s actually chorizo, not sausage, and truthfully, I’m enjoying it enough that I’m willing to pressure wash my keyboard later and make myself sick by eating the whole thing in addition to the croissant I just finished. Throwing away roughly the last two bites at least spares me some of the shame I would have felt eating the whole thing––a clue toward a mild eating disorder, but that won’t stop me from self-imposing grueling circuits of cardio until 730 calories have been burned, so I add an hour of exercise to the calendar. Where was I?

Now we’re really behind, but the same self-control that enabled me to throw away $4 worth of salty instant dopamine will help me make up for lost time. I leave the coffee shop partly because the music is too loud but more because a kid in a FedEx uniform has been tapping his foot against the bar’s footrail sending vibrations my way for the past 30 minutes. I consider saying something, but he's watching TikToks with mouthfuls of mini donut that make him look like a pelican gagging down sardines when he tilts his head back to laugh. There are visible remnants of spewed donut on the counter in front of him. It’s all too much and I realize there are only so many things you can politely ask of someone before you’re the problem. I’ve learned the number is one at maximum but more often zero.

I collect my things to leave. A girl comes in and goes to kiss him. He sets a donut down, and he kisses her, still chewing, wiping powdered sugar on his shorts with the grace of someone very comfortable in their skin. Someone totally unparanoid about bothering or offending the people around them. I leave intending to be more like him. I cut through the Village’s pristine brick-walled alleys to the next street and realize I’ve been seeing the same rotation of faces walking the same sidewalks at the same times while I hold the same bag; realize that knowing which alleys to cut through to get to which streets has inadvertently become instinct. It’s not like this is a big city, but this is to emphasize the point that I’ve always hated sameness and routine, or I thought I did.

The film crew look purposeful carrying set pieces and sound gear. A PA tweaks a sidewalk sign just right. The sign reads “Austin’s Best Bar” with the words “karaoke,” “beer,” “wine,” and “cocktails” underneath. The offensively nondescript sign makes it obvious we aren’t in Austin and that the dry-cleaning shop it’s designated a bar is not actually a bar. This little downtown’s already utopian soundstage appearance further amplifies the Truman Show effect; the hamster wheel squeak of routine life’s melodramatically high stakes held up against the town square that’s quiet and never changes; where someone tapping their foot is the most aggrieving part of your day, and it’s easy to let this go and even improve your human perspective because the environment acts as a natural sedative. I’m sitting on a bench now in the shade of one of the many tall, full elms uncommon to the Southern California I’m used to. Here, passing cars sound like an ocean’s tide compared to the death rattle of the 60 Freeway. I find that I love routine if the routine is anything like this. When Groundhog Day presents as endlessly hard work against the backdrop of a beautiful place (or as work so beautiful it doesn’t feel like work despite a hideous place), Nirvana is achieved. Even if the work you’re doing and the place you’re in are hideous, but you know Nirvana is around the corner judging by the passing of yet another grinning weenie dog who this time wears shoes and a bandana, you might as well be there already. This is a good day, but I know the feeling won’t last. I’ll now be getting back to work I’m not good at and routines I’m not fond of. Nirvana isn’t far though and that’ll get me by.

long warm spanish nights

David never planned to grow out of Hemingway dreams. Short sentences and a young man’s idea of the future as a long warm Spanish night. So it didn’t matter that he wasn’t noticed in that moment or that he may have been the melodramatic nightmare he suspected his parents believed him to be. He sat alone with an empty notebook at the lunch table. It was loud all around him and he hated them for how much noise they made, but he still wished somebody would come. It was the wishing that distracted him more than the noise. He thought of Rebecca who said she liked that he was shy. He ruminated on that for weeks, mistakenly trying to expound on the quality by withdrawing further and smiling even less. At lunch, he would look up and most often she wouldn’t be there. He imagined that when she finally would be, it might impress her if she saw him writing. There was also the superstition that she might appear if he stopped paying attention. After half a page of filler and scribble, he wrote:

“I couldn’t have been made for anything but this even if just the sensation of pencil in hand is like a pacifier for my baby soft soul. It’s how I fall in love with a perfect stranger whose every blank I fill in with the fairy dust and hot glue of my imagination. The rest of the work is done by the mole at the top of her left cheek and the tickle of her hair brushing up on my shoulder and her breath on my neck when she leans over to whisper a question.

I take this feeling home and think of all the words that make it mean something as I fall deeper and feel sicker for it and feel good for loving something so much it makes me feel sick because I don’t know anyone else who can say the same for themselves. It then occurs to me that maybe it’s not writing, reading, or love, but feeling, and these are all just different means to that one end, but what better means could someone ask for? I don’t think I’d hear her voice the same way if it were football or calculus.”

He’d forgotten to look up by then. It seemed to have quieted around him. There was a dent in the callus on his middle finger he’d had since he was 5 and first learned to hold a pencil. He thought of Hemingway having the same callus and the same bone deep primordial need to feel and to share the feeling. This and the breeze on his neck made the idea of warm Spanish nights and all the other places he hadn’t been, all the people he hadn’t met and things he hadn’t written, seem much more real. Like an animal walking from the womb, he turned the page and kept writing.

black and blue

The old man wakes up and once again refuses to come to terms with the reality of his battered knees and gnarled fingers and perpetual bloat. Yesterday he was young. Yesterday he smelled vanilla cupcake body spray on the hoodie of a girl at the movie theater who didn’t kiss him but gave him the first feeling of wanting to kiss someone. He smelled cheap beer and blueberry swishers and then later Givenchy and Chanel and cigarettes in New York. Orange creamsicle skies howling with creosote and desert clay air. Now it’s the smell of young fighters’ sweat and the pah pah pat of gloves on the bag.

The timer beeps and he shuffles throughout the ring in his slippers throwing up mitts with a speed that betrays the pace of his shuffle. The young men respect him and his made-up-but-only-known-to-him theory for fighting. He would say things like ‘love boxing like you hate yourself’ or ‘don’t eat dinner tonight but do get yer dick sucked.’ The boys eat it up with only semi skepticism. The girls don’t mind him calling them tough bitches, but they do throw extra weight into the mitts, pushing him back a step, and on occasion miss the mitts and clip his chin and he laughs and tells them to give him another as he crosses his arms behind his back and takes a heavy slug and then another when he asks for it.

He wakes up in an empty bed and walks into the kitchen to find an old woman reading the news. Her hair is more white than black now, but there’s still some there. Her eyes have stayed bright and she sits up straight and drinks her coffee with an elegance he’ll never stop loving. Still though, he aches and remembers the senses of his youth and hers, the physical ugly gorgeous passion and spontaneity of it; the luxury of being alone, the thing that makes two people their own that disappears with each passing year of togetherness that leads to a bond that doesn’t require niceties and compliments to the point that those things feel like luxuries when they do occur. Togetherness that makes them one, that is beyond the senses.

He kisses her and makes a coffee and takes it down to the complex pool. He eases in to the jacuzzi and thinks of his late dad. The slow grace in the way a father moves. Ways that seemed innate in his dad when he was younger, that he began to notice in himself a long time ago. Laying out in the jacuzzi splayed strategically so that his belly doesn’t fold but the morning sun falls on him still and his aching knees are soothed; the duck waddle flap of feet on wet concrete as he walks back to the condo sounding like summers long past.

A fighter new to the gym earns some time in the ring. He taps his gloves against each other and bares his mouthguard at his skeletal counterpart in the opposite corner. The old man stands at the ropes’ edge. The skeleton breathes slow and loosens his shoulders and throws his head around like he has water stuck in his ear canals. The bell sounds and the new guy smacks his gloves once more, this time causing a ripple in the muscles of his chest and arms. He flexes his biceps before they both touch gloves and the new guy swings a wide left hook and the skeleton ducks. The skeleton steps back and dances around the new guy as he swings and misses, swings and misses. Finally, the skeleton throws a jab that causes the new guy to look like he has to sneeze before he shakes it off and throws hook after uppercut after hook. The round ends.

The old man tells the new guy to relax. He tells him he’s flat-footed as a fucking platypus and tells the skeleton how beautiful his footwork is but to not hold back with his right hand—he’s depending on his jab more than he should, he has a beautiful right hand. The bell chimes again and the new guy grunts. The skeleton hits him with another jab, slips another hook, then counters with his own, knocking the new guy back. The new guy leans into him and walks him, practically lifts him, to the corner and makes it near impossible for him to move. The skeleton tries to get out, but the new guy is throwing hard clenched strikes to his kidneys until he takes a half-step back and puts the skeleton to his knees with a short vicious hook just below his ear. The old man says it’s a spar, goddammit! He tends to the skeleton with a splash of water and a loving slap to the face and takes his gloves off before sliding him out of the ring. He puts the gloves on himself and steps toward the new guy. The new guy smiles thinking the old man is joking until he eats a straight right that opens his upper lip. He touches at it then takes another and another.

They watch TV together before falling asleep holding hands. It’s been this way for 15 years. Every moment the same and different all at once. Wine and homecooked meals and childless sex. They kiss goodnight I love you and fall asleep. They wake up and she says I love you again. And again he loves her. And again he thinks of what could have been and wonders why he could never shake the habit of thinking it as he lies in bed dreading having to use his pained hands to brush his teeth. Still, he does it to the tune of pop songs from twenty years ago she plays from the other room.

The new guy pushes the old man away and puts a hand out as if to say stop. The old man comes forward and, as he cocks another punch, is stopped with a solid right that puts him on the mat. Other fighters who’d been watching ringside step in and help him up, others coming for the new guy. He leaves the ring as they lunge at him and snatches up his bag before leaving altogether. The old man stands up and limps to the restroom. He splashes water on his face and looks in the mirror at his swelling eye. He forces a smile and goes to his car without saying anything. The old woman asks him what he’s doing home early and then, oh my god what happened to you. He tells her that he keeps getting older, but they stay the same age. She gives him a kiss over his eyelid and asks him if he wants to walk the dog with her. He says: gladly.

on creativity

There’s a pleasant feeling that comes from the back of your neck that makes its way into your head and you feel it in your chest a little bit too. It’s like a smile from the inside. It makes you want to make something. You want to bottle it and have some ready for all the time but unfortunately you can’t and you only feel it some of the time on its own terms. Sometimes you go a long time without it and you worry it’ll never come back.  

It comes out more in the winter when its grey outside. In a rural town that smells like rotting wood or a liquor store in the suburbs at two in the morning. When you see yourself buzzed in the bathroom mirror and like the way you look and walk out with more attitude than when you walked in.

Drinking alone gives some semblance of it. Love or a semblance of love does too. If you can ignore that it’s a costume version of the feeling, then you might be able to make something out of it. But it doesn’t compare to times like now, watching a Western on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and nothing else to do.

pink skies

We landed on Saturday and left the airport into biting November wind. We ate pizza on the sidewalk and shared cigarettes. We ran a shower and ended up on the couch wearing towels while we waited for it to get hot. I grabbed her hand and pulled her to my lap and we kissed. Warm hands in the cold room gracing skin feeling like hours. Not wanting to get in the shower now because that would mean one thing is ending for the next. Getting in the shower because the next thing can only be better than the last. We laid in bed drunk and fell asleep watching one of her bedtime movies—one of the ones she’s seen so many times it helps her fall asleep. 

***

We rented a car for a drive into the mountains. I wouldn’t shut up about how beautiful Colorado is compared to California while she tried to sleep away another hangover. Everything wider, cleaner, greener, fresher. Holding hands as we drove deeper into the snow making note of backwoods diners and a Bigfoot museum we should stop by on the way down.

She brightened up when we got to the trailhead. Aspens reached high with yellow leaves shimmering like wind chimes. Silent except for the frozen creek trickling by. A blue bird flew over us and landed in one of the trees. She followed it to take a picture. Each step she took closer, the bird hopped a branch higher seeming to taunt her. I watched, taking it in, laughing at her and the bird, and nothing was bad and nothing could be perfect but it felt like it was.

I felt it walking through the forest seeing fresh paw prints in the snow that must have been a mountain lion’s. Thinking about how I’d undoubtedly snap a mountain lion’s neck if she needed me to. Feeling foolishly confident I wouldn’t hesitate. No mountain lions though. We made out in the woods like teenagers before we made a snowwoman, hiked back to the car, and went for a drive.

I surprised her with a detour through Red Rocks as the sun went down. The park was closed but we saw the oranges, the purples, the pinks, the bursts of light over the suntanned stone before it got dark. Another bar in the town adjacent, warmed up sitting next to a fire. I told her the next stop would be coffee and dessert. She said, “You have really good ideas.”

Coffee and dessert and laughing, smiling, joking. Wanting her only to associate me with good things. We watched a Christmas movie back at the room and drank Colorado whiskey. We fell asleep with the blinds up and the city lights coming through the window.

***

Last day. We slept in and ordered room service before checking out. I looked at the room one more time in case this trip was in vain and maybe we’d get back home and I’d never hear from her again. 

We left the hotel looking for a tattoo shop. She wasn’t sure what she wanted or where she’d put it. She decided at the last minute to get a horseshoe on her ankle against her best judgement. I got “Don’t Try” on my leg. She said it felt like it was meant to be.

When we landed in California she didn’t want to go home. We had dinner by the airport and spent the next day together. Everything still felt right. Like I did something right. I just hope writing this hasn’t jinxed it.