In case you haven’t read Part I
“Man alone resists the direction of gravitation: he constantly wants to fall – upwards.” - Nietzsche
Michael had an erection. It was all so exciting. Though he was somewhat horrified at his courage, (or maybe it was merely bravery, which is the cheap version of courage), the fact that he had finally ended his relationship with Lisa aroused in him both a weightlessness and a clear forward motion. This was a winning combination of Pleasure. Any ounce of guilt he may have felt did not stand a chance against this Pleasure.
I don’t feel guilty, he texted his friend Hannah.
Are you sure? Hannah texted back.
Yes, he was sure, but he didn’t have time to explain this to Hannah. He didn’t have the patience to explain to her the concept of the Right Thing. When something is the Right Thing it doesn’t matter if it hurts, or causes one or more parties pain, because it’s what ought to be done.
He didn’t know if he believed in God but he was reminded of stories in the Bible wherein God had asked people to do things way worse than break up with their pregnant girlfriend. And was he likening himself to a prophet of sorts? Yes, maybe he was.
And the fact that this action was impactful, that it was meaningful, that it was Real, excited Michael. It woke him up! Good morning everybody.
***
Lisa did not cry. Lisa did not scream. When Lisa initially brought up the idea of moving in together, Michael said yes, out of guilt. He felt bad saying no, and she knew it, she saw it right away and ignored it. When she told him she was pregnant, he started snorting ketamine every day, he started acting weird, but she knew that she could harness his guilt to her advantage. Michael had an overdeveloped sense of guilt. All his actions, even those pertaining to love and care sprang from guilt. Somewhere in the past, or somewhere before the past, he confused love with guilt. It had to do with an overwhelming fear of letting his parents down, and his grandfather, and various women in his life. He thought it came from the time when his parents were so disappointed in him they sent him to boarding school in Connecticut, Lisa knew that it actually came from a particular kind of self-centeredness.
Lisa knew all this and subtly used it to get whatever she wanted from Michael. Her mother had told her, since she was young, that all men’s flaws, of which there were many, should be subtly used against them, alchemically transformed into something productive to the advantage of the woman. She had told Lisa that men secretly knew this and liked it and that this was an important aspect of heterosexual relationships. Women were tasked with the wielding of subconscious material, while men were bound to the conscious, the physical, etc. But Lisa had lost the game. Who was wielding Michael’s subconscious now? Surely not him. Another woman? Probably. Who Fucking Cares!
How did her pregnancy play into all this? Earlier that Spring, Lisa was reading Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation and there was a line in there that stuck with her even before all this,“The baby can seem like something her husband has given her as a substitute for himself, a kind of transitional object, like a doll, for her to hold so that he can return to the world.” Maybe in the act of getting her pregnant, Michael had broken free from the power she held over him. Honestly, fuck Michael.
***
All this negativity stemming from Lisa could not be good for the baby, Michael thought, standing on the deck of his house. He tried to imagine the baby, he tried to imagine the vibes in the womb, usually settled and calm but right now full of nervousness and distress. But maybe not. All of Lisa’s gestures, as he observed them from the deck, seemed fake. Like she was an actress and had studied, for months, the emotions of a woman going through a devastating experience. All women are actresses.
He knew that what she was actually angry about was not the loss of love and partnership or the loss of Michael, the man, the boyfriend— no, what she was angry about was that in one decision he threw it all away. That he had a power to do things, to make things happen without her, to make things Real.
There were so many things in his life that weren’t Real. People are often swept along a life that begins and ends in the UnReal.
Michael, himself, was real, but even he wasn’t born that way, he had to will this realness, he had to will this “becoming real” through constant moments of humbling. And to be humbled, he thought, was to experience the weight of gravity. All the people down there, he observed from the deck, driving on the 5 Freeway, they were subject to gravity. Some of them fought against it, some of them accepted it, and others, rarely, defied it for a moment or two through miracles or luck or grace or resources.
There was, of course, a natural connection between gravity and conditions.
He checked his phone and saw an email notification from his mother (parents), subject line: “worried”. In the body of the email, his mother said that they strongly urged him to reconsider his position of leaving Lisa. That to leave a woman while pregnant was generally a bad thing, although they were reluctant to use moral judgements like “good” and “bad”, they urged him to remember that leaving your pregnant woman was frowned upon in polite society.
What did they know though? This was partially their fault. They were godless liberals, emphasis both on Godless and on Liberals.
Michael felt bad immediately after having this thought.
He thought about Anahida. “Your parents did the best they could,” she used to say. Anahida was the one who had taught him about gravity.
Anahida was a woman he had a brief relationship with when he was in his early 30s. She was a Persian-American Princess from Beverly Hills, and Michael, a struggling music producer at the time, was madly in love with her. She came from wealth, and at the time Michael was romanticizing the idea of growing up rich in L.A and therefore romanticizing Anahida. He was making friends with kids who grew up Hollywood-adjacent and had parents who casually displayed Emmys or Grammys in their living rooms. I’d never display my Grammy in the living room, I’d never display it anywhere it’s so crass, he used to think. Now he was beginning to change his mind. Maybe he will display the Grammy. Will I win one? It’s crazy to even think about that. He would often imagine a Grammy, displayed in a tasteful place like maybe his office or maybe nowhere, who cares!
His brother Nick called him telling him to reconsider, that Lisa was loved by everyone, that she was part of the family and to destroy his life would be foolish.
“Life doesn’t ever feel complete. You look around and what? You think other people are living better lives than you? It’s not true,” he said, manically.
But Michael didn’t tell him about his ideas — the ones about uncondition. Nick wouldn’t understand, Nick was okay with conditions.
He thought about Anahida again. He thought about how insecure he was in their relationship because he was a struggling artist and how this insecurity, this feeling of lack, ultimately led to the end of their relationship. Now he wasn’t insecure anymore, at least not about the same things, and he wanted to show her that. He knew, from social media, that she was married with kids, but he couldn’t help himself and sent her a text: hey lol.
END OF PART II