Bad Faith

Freedom (P -15 Years)

Half his life ago, at an age when decisions had limited consequence and nostalgia was a mere dry seed, Saul discovered that he was condemned to freedom.

For reasons he could only now speculate about, his tenth-grade English teacher had given him and his best friend, Malcolm, xeroxed copies of an essay called Freedom and Responsibility. The essay was short, only six pages. He folded it in half and tucked it into his binder’s front pocket. The following morning when he got on the bus, he smoothed out the creased pages and began to read. The tortuous sentences contained words like the for-itself and facticity. And even when he recognized the words, he seemed to be missing something. Confusion worried him. People, including his teacher, considered him smart. He read the six pages again. This time, halfway down the second page, a couple of sentences stood out as intelligible, and the whirl of jargon crystallized into a revelation of coherent and impeccable logic: he alone was responsible for his choices, and nothing but these choices would reveal his ultimate self. He, Saul Rosen, was author of his own fate.

When he walked into Spanish later that morning, instead of heading to his assigned seat, he sat down next to Malcolm and said, ‘There are no accidents in life. We are condemned to freedom.’

Word, Malcolm said.

Word, Saul said.

Malcolm then stood up, threw over his desk, and, without condescending to explain himself to the stunned teacher, swaggered out of the class with the limp he’d had since fourth grade.

Encouraged by their new liberated perspective, the two fifteen-year-olds began to read philosophy. They’d highlight passages confirming their certainty that life’s cogs interlocked and spun at a depth few others could reach. At school they founded The Existentialists Association (TEA), which composed and distributed a manifesto on the necessity of not being sheep, as Saul had learned to think of it. Several classmates joined them Wednesdays at lunch to argue opinions and draft pamphlets promoting the ideas they’d culled from Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Senior year they enrolled in a Modern Philosophy class at Cal State Long Beach. For three weeks Saul proudly toted his Nietzsche reader, laying it face up at every opportunity. They joked about going to college and using the pickup line, So … I see you read Nietzsche.

His passion for wisdom continued to increase, and by end of high school his fate seemed to cement without flaw or crack. Stanford had offered him a small scholarship. Malcolm would be nearby at Berkeley. His then-girlfriend was bound for an East Coast school, and he hungrily anticipated being condemned to freedom among a glut of new women. Feeling as though he were soaring through a lucid dream in which desires were fulfilled by mere say-so, Saul imagined his future as a philosopher, a transcriber of truths, teaching at universities and traversing the earth. He didn’t need to be famous—or even rich—he needed only to realize in the physical realm this vision he’d sketched in the mental.

Part I: Melody, Malcolm, Jamie

Melody Goes on a Date (P -4 Months)

It was 2007 and hope was in the airwaves. In the last year or so, several of Melody’s friends on campus, and many of the gentlemen she’d met at work, had created online dating accounts and begun the process of finding a mate (or just someone to mate with) in the brave new world of the Internet. After listening to their experiences, which ran the gamut from awkward to frustrating to miraculous, Melody clicked around a bit and decided that no one had done scholarly justice to this infant and stigmatized yet fascinating courting structure. A good paper on it would spare her having to idle in a lab or survey a bunch of other college students in an effort to extrapolate some seriously minor phenomenon.

After more than a couple of tedious conversations with her honors thesis advisor, who raised concerns about her methodology, Melody set out to prove the value of her idea, with or without faculty help. Worst case, she’d write it up for the school paper.

She created multiple profiles on three of the top sites. Each profile had a distinct theme: young academic with stylish thick rimmed glasses, obedient Vietnamese daughter, stripper with no direct face shots, and punk girl with spiked bracelets and dog collar. The descriptions of her habits and interests were identical.

i love to dance and stay healthy. you could say i’m an optimist who adores the sunshine and my work (preferably both at once!). i’ve never been skydiving but want to know what free fall feels like. my favorite stories are almost anything by jane austen (especially emma, who I relate to more than I’d like to admit), amy tan, or dorris lessing, and I have a special place in my heart for the giving tree, the little prince, and simone de beauvoir. recently, i’ve really enjoyed antonio damasio and daniel gilbert (brownie points if you’ve read them!). i might be the last person on earth to have not read harry potter. but this late in the game, it’s become a point of pride. can’t help my addiction to prime-time soaps like nip/tuck and grey’s anatomy (don’t judge!). we’ll probably get along if you liked shrek (both the first and the second), have a job or at least something you’re trying to accomplish, or if you’re a genius. i don’t discriminate by race or height or weight, only by the thoughtfulness of your message, which you should start with an asterisk to show you’ve read my whole profile (and that you know what an asterisk is!)

Nowhere did she mention her ethnicity or anything sexual. Nevertheless, for both the stripper and the punk profiles, but not for the academic or obedient daughter types, men seemed to prefer sending lewd, borderline illiterate messages about her body or race, or elaborate descriptions of sexual fantasies, many of which involved domination and pretty much all of which she was certain they couldn’t execute if she’d called them on it. Several men led with some line about how they basically fetishize Asian women or have always wanted to be with one, as though vaginas from another continent were a thing to sample, like ice cream flavors or peaches at the farmers market.

Anyway, guys—and women, too, she had to admit (she wasn’t judging!)—could be lamely superficial. No surprise there. Men had been objectifying her as a woman, and particularly as an Asian woman, since her tween years. Messages like, hey babe! u got AZZ 4 an azn chick! lets hang. u in2 420? didn’t faze her. More curious were the subs. A rather sharp looking white lawyer type announced his desire that her punk persona strap on a large black dildo and peg him. Another guy she thought she actually recognized from campus wanted her academic persona to tuck him into bed, call him my little moo moo, and pretend to nurse him with her right udder. He was very specific about that. The right one.

Not all were awful misogynists, of course. Some were cute and maybe even intelligent. One message in particular caught her attention.

*The interesting thing about free fall is that right after you’ve been dropped, you cease to feel like you’re falling. And, in most cases of extended free fall, you’re dropped from such a height that you can’t judge how far off you are from the ground, which, eventually, you’ll have to make contact with, gracefully or otherwise.

Do you study psych or neuroscience?

What a refreshing change from the norm. A tall Chinese guy in his late twenties, who liked both Tupac and La Bohème, claimed to appreciate both Woody Allen and Nora Ephron, listed contemporary literary titles as books he’s enjoyed recently (as opposed to the obvious non-reader’s brief selection of high school favorites), wore nicely tailored slacks and shirts with French cuffs, and didn’t use LOL or play video games or show other signs of boringness. He did say that he unironically enjoyed walks on the beach, but, then, she liked them too.

mr. anonymous,

your message drinks like spring water after a lot of slurping through a hopscotch of muddy puddles. thank you for that.

sounds like you’ve been skydiving. it’s definitely an adventure i’d like to tick off my bucket list.

good guess on my studies. i’m in my last year of a psych major. you seem to know something about it?

what’s your name, mr. dating site poet?

melody

Melody,

I don’t know much about it, but I have read Gilbert. I like the idea that we’re poor predictors of our happiness. Do you agree that we don’t know ourselves as well as we imagine? Looking at the people around me, it seems to make a lot of sense. Maybe you’d like to meet up for a coffee and help me understand from the perspective of someone who officially studies the stuff?

Malcolm

malcolm,

what are you doing tomorrow at 1pm?

m

Melody,

Meeting you wherever is most convenient, I suppose.

M

Melody arrived at Viento y Agua almost fifteen minutes early, ordered a maté latte, and scanned the room for an ideal spot to interview her date. In the corner by the front window was a stage elevated about six or eight inches above the rest of the cafe, and, on it, a table for two. She sat down facing the door, and slid her red notebook out of her red purse. Through the window-wall, the sun melted over the left side of her body. Her cats spent much of the day steeping in sunbaths, legs invisible under a sleepy wave of fur. She understood them. She, too, was a creature of the sun and could sit here pleasurably for hours. But that would be bad. At some point she should probably switch sides to keep her coloring even.

She sipped the maté latte. On the mug’s rim an oval kiss of cardinal, her favorite color, matched her notebook. It also matched her hair clip, her shorts, and her purse. Four years ago, when she’d applied to colleges, she’d chosen schools whose colors included cardinal: Stanford, USC, University of Arizona, Chico State, Wesleyan, University of Wisconsin (the last two, in retrospect, a mistake—way too cold). Her methodology didn’t seem any more arbitrary than many of her peers and included a prudent spread of reaches, targets, and safeties. She got into all but Stanford and enrolled at USC, which offered her decent financial aid and had a well-known psych program. Plus she could save money by living at home. At least that’s the way she’d reasoned it after her parents freaked about her moving out of her childhood bedroom. The mere mention of it set Ba (small, shrill and militant) to shrieking as though she’d threatened to down a bottle of Nembutal or slit her arteries from elbow to wrist. Má, too, shrieked and cried, smearing purple mascara under her eyes. They worried she’d be murdered by some crazy person, threatened to disown her, said they couldn’t afford it, claimed no self-respecting daughter would venture off on her own like that, insisted people would assume she’s a whore.

What if I were a boy? she asked.

Boys are different, Ba said, crinkling and tearing some junk mail in his fist.

Right. Boys can’t be whores.

What if I’d gotten into Harvard?

Harvard is Harvard. But you didn’t even apply!

Crimson, not cardinal.

So she still lived at home, was still expected to wait till she was out of college to date (yeah right!), wait till marriage to lose her virginity (too late!), wait till after med school to get married. Theoretically, she could still apply to med school with her psych degree, but she wanted to fix minds, not bodies. To appease her parents she played along. If she wanted to leave the house, she almost always said she was going to study at the library, or, if the library was closed, at a friend’s house. Her parents never refused this appeal to her responsibility as a studious Vietnamese daughter. Go study! was Ba’s mantra. "Học đi! Ba said to her after she finished dinner. Học đi!" he mumbled into his morning coffee while reading that day’s Người Việt. If she were in her room, he’d rap on her door, "Học đi! When she was on the landline, he’d pick up and shout, Học đi! Học đi! This last summer, he’d discovered texting. Now, at the library or elsewhere, her flip phone chimed with the message, STUDY HARD!"

At the top of a blank page, she wrote the date and location and, on the first line, began to jot notes about the setting and her mood. It seemed somehow relevant that the café was across the street from an elementary school, that the day was sunny, as usual, and that three bougie white ladies with pony tails had jogged past the window in the couple minutes since she’d sat down. More importantly, she made sure to note the setting of her mental and emotional space. Back in elementary school, she’d begun scrutinizing her motives. Since then, the voyage of self-examination had navigated under skies both clear and opaque, soared from zeniths of analytic triumph to nadirs of depressing ambiguity. Despite the vacillations, one thing had become obvious: articulating any but the most fundamental, biological motives meant reducing complicated, conflicting desires to crude rationalizations—and though rationalizing might be inevitable, it was vital to recognize any particular version of it as only partially true at best. Right now, for example, she was out on a date for the first time in a while, and though she could rationalize the date as an academic experiment, chalking it up to mere anthropology would be naïve. The objective curiosity existed, of course (it wasn’t mere pretense!), but could she ignore the fact that she hadn’t been touched for … a year?

Had it really been that long since she’d dumped clingy, aimless, Caleb, who’d forced her to end it when she caught him lying about his enrollment status? Caleb, the last in a series of middle class white boys she hoped to fix. Boys with tribal tattoos ringing their biceps, wedding them to their adolescence. Boys who smoked, flicking cigarette butts onto the sidewalk. Boys who criticized her for her low cut shirts and high cut shorts and flirtatious conversation and all the stuff that had attracted them in the first place. After breaking up with Caleb for being a big lying coward—lying was a deal breaker, the deal breaker, for her—she analyzed her attraction to these boys who put such colossal effort into parading how few fucks they gave. In order not to fall into another mistake and work on improving herself rather than a loser boy, she’d undertaken a relationship with herself. She had her studies, friends, and worked three times a week in the afternoons. Sufficient distractions for probably nine or ten months.

But a year was too long not to be touched, held, desired. For the last year, the only amorous looks had come from the males clustered on frat stoops or leaning against storefronts, whose whistles and whoops and gross visual pawing was too cheaply won; from the males at bars, who broke away from their bachelor herd to impress her with beer breath and trite fictions; from the males at her workplace, who paid her to appetize their lust. And from an occasional bold lesbian, whose gaze she’d force herself to hold, boldly, excitedly, as her lungs sought oxygen. Otherwise, very little of it satisfied her. There was something small and frightened about the macho way guys inflated themselves for viewing. Like the cute little bower-bird that spent so much energy building a super fancy nest and, once the female arrived to inspect it, performing a fancy, intricate dance. Funny what male animals believed made them sexually interesting to the female of the species. When men performed their fancy dance for her, she usually felt like patting them on the head and saying, I know, I know. The patriarchy is hard on you too. But if a guy surprised her with authenticity or wit, that same desirous look changed meaning. Suddenly, instead of being boring or gross or menacing, his lust made her feel seen, gave her value. In any case, she’d decided that the next guy she dated would have to wait for sex, at least a couple of months. They’d have to learn each other first. She was too old to be rushing into tragedy just because her hormones or whatever were shouting, Yes, please!

Not only would the man have to wait. He’d also have to be progressive in his conception of relationships. She was done with jealous boys. Towards the end of Caleb, she’d come across some reading on non-monogamy. It made a lot of sense to her. Why should she be restricted to one guy? And why did one guy have to be restricted just to her? Wouldn’t both parties would be happier if interest in other people weren’t considered cheating? Especially if she found someone, who, like her, wasn’t tortured by the petty jealousy that society, from friends to the media, expected everyone to impose on their partner in the form of unequivocal monogamy. Sure, it made sense back when women were considered property and instruments to produce an heir. But, hello, this was 2007. She wasn’t any man’s property, and no man was hers either. The more she thought about it, the more she refused to be the kind of person who limited her boyfriend’s experience because of her own insecurities. She vowed to herself that her next relationship would not be based on possession but on mutual respect for each other’s autonomy.

Hi, said a voice directly to her right. A short black guy, geeky in hiking shoes, khaki Dockers, and a plaid sweater vest, smiled at her as though he’d just passed gas.

Hello? she said.

He continued smiling uncomfortably. May I sit down?

She grimaced an apology. I’m actually waiting for someone who’ll be here any minute.

You’re Melody, right?

Hold on. Her grimace deepened—this time as confusion. You’re not Malcolm, are you?

The chair screeched and he suddenly was sitting. No. I’m Jamie. Sorry, I figured this would be, um, perplexing.

She hesitated a breath, but collected herself. They were in a public place. He felt somehow harmless. It seemed all right to entertain this oddity. And why would it be perplexing exactly?

Jamie nodded. I know this isn’t the normal approach, but I thought you might understand. Through his lenses, his rather long lashes flashed together then apart like a flap of moth wings.

Melody found the man awkward looking. Plaid sweater aside, mouth breathing gave his face an insipid blankness, beneath which her female intuition sensed something melancholy, half-resigned, and faintly desperate.

Understand what? Deception? she said. What in my profile gave you that idea?

It was your four profiles. His glasses had slid down his nose. He wedged them back with his index finger. She suppressed an impulse to flick his ear.

So you thought my having four profiles gave you permission to falsely advertise yourself? She’d meant this to sound matter-of-fact, but it came out defensive.

It’s true I wasn’t being completely straightforward, but I thought that you might understand there are sometimes good reasons for roundabout ways since you seemed to take one yourself. His tone lacked the accusation that his words may have otherwise implied.

Well, to be honest, I’m kind of doing this as research.

If this information affected Jaime, he didn’t show it. Okay. But are you single?

That isn’t particularly relevant here.

Jaime looked puzzled. How can it not be relevant? Isn’t this a date, even if it’s a research date?

Well …

I’m not asking for myself. The creases around his mouth flattened, as though his face were deflating. I’m mostly doing this for Malcolm, the guy in the photos. It’s his profile. I’m just his liaison. I mean, he doesn’t actually know about us meeting. But I do have blanket permission.

To pick up women for him? How nice. Melody opened her red notebook. I hope you don’t mind if I take notes.

I’ve had worse, Jamie said. His lips stayed parted as though he might say more.

She waited. No, he was finished.

How many dates have you been on for Malcolm? Did she believe in ‘Malcolm’? Should she call him on this outright?

Three, including this one. The other two didn’t go so well. They practically ran away as soon as I approached them and tried to explain. It’s okay, though. They weren’t his type anyway. His type isn’t skittish.

Not a great advertisement there.

The right woman will get it.

Or a crazy person?

Yeah, sure, he admitted. Those may be the same thing.

You’re really making him sound great.

"Malcolm is a great guy. He’s unique. In a good way. We’ve been friends since high school. I’m not doing this to find Malcolm just any old person to be with. He told me he didn’t need to go online to find a girlfriend. He doesn’t have problems finding them in the wild, he said. But I think he goes for the wrong types, which is why I hoped that online dating might be a good solution. There are thousands of people you wouldn’t meet otherwise and so much information to vet with."

What do you vet for? she asked, pen at the ready.

For Mal? Political views, whether you’re religious, whether you admit to masturbating.

brought up masturbation almost immediately, she wrote in her notebook.

Masturbation, huh? Quite smooth to introduce it in the first five minutes.

Mal wouldn’t want anyone who’s sexually repressed. According to your questions, you’re not. You’re also not religious, have left leaning views, have tried hallucinogens, like hip hop, and are college educated.

masturbation and drugs—and, to be fair, other indications of my liberal nature

Odd, bewildering almost, what the stranger across from her knew before even meeting her. Maybe the masturbation reference was less rude than she’d taken if for, considering she’d answered a question revealing that she likes/is open to receiving anal sex. It occurred to her that men who’d viewed her profile, men whom she might sit in class with, would know she likes/is open to butt sex—and without her even being aware of their existence. This guy across the table had surely already made assumptions about it.

maybe manipulate sex questions to see if it changes type of guys messaging

He agreed to it as long as I do the work. I pretty much got him to write the profile, answer the questions, and choose some photos. I’ve had to do the messaging and meeting.

So this dork in the plaid sweater, not Malcolm, had written that eloquent message. She felt the massive anchor of reality drowning the hope it was chained to. You wrote that message about free fall?

Jamie sucked his lips and stared in some sort of awkward hesitation. I emailed your profile to Mal, and pointed out that you want to go skydiving. So, actually, he wrote it. He’s a better writer than I am, and I didn’t want to screw it up.

A delicate ping registered off the submerged hope. What does Malcolm do?

He studied philosophy at Berkeley and a year of law at UCLA. Mostly because he didn’t know what else to do with his philosophy degree. But right now he’s independently wealthy, so, well, that’s kind of the issue. He’s not ‘doing’ in the sense you mean it.

Smart, handsome, wealthy. But the problem is direction?

Jamie pushed his glasses back onto his nose. Yeah. Kind of a detour?

I see. Time to get back to her interview. Are you looking for someone for yourself as well? she asked. Am I your type?

It’s more complicated for me.

But am I your type?

To her surprise, Jamie explained that, in fact, she wasn’t.

says i’m not his type

Why not?

He took several breaths before answering. Complicated.

complicated=gay?

I don’t mind the long version. She moved to pat him on the head, but quickly thought better of it and landed a reassuring hand on his. She didn’t want to admit it, but she empathized. Some of us are more complicated.

Drowning (P -6 Days)

The room smelled grapey. Malcolm dug around his brain for last night’s happenings. Okay, one step at a time. Did he drive home from the bar? He couldn’t remember exactly, but he was almost sure he hadn’t taken a cab. Some day he was going to be hovering above his smashed up Lamborghini, wondering what all that gooey red shit was in his hair. Which was fine as long as no one else was hovering beside him wondering the same thing. Tracking the grape odor, he peered into the trash next to his bed. Right—the grape flavored condom, its wrapper tossed onto the nearby floor. The rawness in his throat reminded him he'd snorted through an eight ball with that nineteen-year-old airhead from the car wash. A Korean girl. His mom had always looked down on other Asians and had endlessly bitched at him about Milan, the black girl he was with for most of his sophomore year at Berkeley. She’d wanted him to be with a Chinese girl, of course. It didn’t seem to matter to her that all the Chinese girls he’d known were nothing like him. They were some combination of too studious, too plain in their tastes, too narrow in their judgments, too much like his mom. He knew she would have disapproved of Melody, too.

He and the girl from the car wash had sat on the couch in the living room, hips touching, chasing shots of Vodka with gulps of Red Bull. To get things flowing, he’d put on Robin Thicke’s Cocaine. When Thicke, in falsetto, sang, Baby/Beverly Hills Hotel four am/it’s my birthday, the girl giggled and asked if they could do coke on her birthday at the Beverly Hills hotel.

Girlfriend, Malcolm said, setting his drink on the table and reaching into his blazer pocket, You’re with Mal-Icious tonight. We don’t have to wait till your birthday to party.

A mirror, smudged dirty white, lay ready on the table. Because she was young and dumb enough to be impressed, he cut the rock with his American Express Black and rolled a hundred-dollar bill for her to snort through. He passed it to her, hoping she wouldn’t talk. He thought about how occasionally when he’d gotten depressed he’d cruised to the BHH in his Lamborghini, felt golden for a minute while he watched the valet park it ten feet away, then had strut inside to the bar to get even more depressed by running up two hundred dollar tabs while wondering why hot women preferred to date tools and douche bags.

When she handed back the mirror and the rolled hundred, he placed them on the table and told her to lie down on her stomach. She obeyed, folding her arms into a pillow shape and closing her eyes as though expecting a massage. He slid his thumbs under the factory-frayed denim mini-skirt and smoothed the creased border where ass met leg. She was hot enough if he didn't look too closely. He ignored the impulse to say something critical. Instead, he looked at her ear. Ears, particularly if they were small and delicate, seemed innocent. Melody’s ears were small and delicate. But now wasn’t the time to long for Melody. He’d lose his mojo. Gently, he lowered his mouth to the car wash girl, and bit down on the fleshy lobe, tasting the metal of her earring. He felt a desire to pleasure her through pain—or to apply some kind of pressure to her body, but not so that she’d be hurt really, more to satisfy some tension in him. He kissed her shoulder and bit down harder than before. She shivered as he pulled away slowly, dragging her skin through his teeth. He scrunched the frayed skirt up to her waist. Her flat ass provided disappointingly little resistance. Its sallow cheeks, the skin tautening into goose bumps, glowed in the room’s soft, drug appropriate lighting. She giggled nervously and asked what he was doing. She was probably new to this game and playing along to conceal her inexperience. Or maybe not. Maybe she was just insecure about her flat ass.

Your ass is sexy, he lied for their mutual benefit, and sprinkled a line over one cheek. Her hips were too narrow, boyish. Melody's hips flared more, and her ass curved more apple-like, even if less so than Milan’s had. As usual, Melody was home tonight with her parents, so he'd called this airhead who'd thought his car was oh my god, so cool. The girl propped herself on her elbows and rotated her head to watch him lower his nose to her. Finished, he licked the dust from his fingers. She whimpered in a way she must have imagined sounded cute to guys. Shh, he assured as he repositioned her thong, wiggled two fingers into her and used her wetness to capture the rest of the powder. He nudged the concoction between her lips for her to suck off his fingertips. The last traces he wiped onto her gums. Want more? he asked, leaning over to the blurry mirror and cutting her a couple lines.

He smiled to himself remembering how, minutes later, he threw her against the wall and kissed her hard on those same numbed lips. She hadn’t expected it, but neither had he. The spontaneity of thudding against a wall while drunk and coked out had turned her on. More predictable—for him, anyway—was his calling a taxi as soon as he’d pulled the grape condom off. He told her he needed sleep. Business in the morning. Truth was, of course, that without lust there was no motivation to tolerate her clingy affection or the noise she thought was conversation, and had she hung around, he would have said something unsavory. So he was saving them mutual regret when minutes after his orgasm he ushered her dumbfounded face into the taxi, curled her hand around two twenty-dollar bills and struggled to smile apologetically as he slammed the door.

He turned to the window to see how much of the day he’d slept away. The light angled into his eyes through the crack. He still hadn’t gotten around to fixing it in the three years since the house had abruptly become his. His parents had lived with the crack for at least five years before that. It hadn’t mattered to them since they usually woke before dawn to send off a few emails before driving to the lab. Research