Nobodies Read online

  JOAQUIN PHOENIX

  Called me at 5AM, weeping into the phone. Called again at 7AM to confirm our date.

  Picked me up at noon. Didn’t recognize him without the beard and glasses. Brought flowers with a card. (“Get Well Soon, Auntie Martha.”) Didn’t ask where he got them.

  Went drinking. Went driving. Almost hit a few kids but no one saw. (Totally their fault for being on the sidewalk.)

  Dropped acid at Burger King. Drove around the parking lot, searching for God. Found Him under a Volvo, playing chess with a squirrel.

  Made out in J’s car. Asked him to rap. He rapped. Asked him to stop. He stopped. Stuck his gum on my shoe.

  Drove home. A lovely, police-free afternoon. No breathalysers. No handcuffs. At least till we got back to my place ;) lolz

  TO-DO LIST

  Miley

  Beebs

  The Guy From the Dos Equis Commercials

  THE PROBLEM OF OTHER MINDS

  As John counted his pamphlets, he noticed the blackbird slice its way through the smog, aim for the unlucky office on the seventh floor, collide, rebound, twirl, and land on the gum-spattered sidewalk no more than two feet from his mentor, Jonathan Swift. No one else seemed to notice the bird’s death, so John finished counting and began reaching out, one pamphlet at a time, to whoever seemed open to new ideas. But the question of whether the accident was in fact accidental—and, if not, why a bird would choose to end its life—lingered in the back of his mind.

  Without looking up from his newspaper, Swift brushed two finger-length feathers off his coat, felt his wig for other unwelcomed objects, and mumbled something that sounded like “Pity.” John half-expected him to complain that he had just bought the coat, that this was the only wig he had, but Swift had once declared that understatement was a more dignified form of irony than sarcasm.

  Car horns muffled the brushing of suits, the hailing of cabs, the clatter of high heels on the pavement, but John could still hear vacant sighs mourning their lost dreams and panicked phone monologues clutching those about to slip away. When he offered pamphlets to his people, his arm felt like a streetlamp shining a firm, proud light into the darkness of modern life. Swift said it would only make the darkness darker and cast a shadow on anything in its path. As usual, John couldn’t tell whether Swift was being ironic. He could detect neither sarcasm nor understatement in his mentor’s prophecy.

  The outstretched pamphlet swayed in the breeze of human traffic, searching for a new owner, while the banner, taped to the marble wall behind him, fluttered and rippled, distorting its message: SUICIDE: A MODEST PROPOSAL.

  “This will change your life,” John said, “I promise.” His targets were unconvinced. He’d lost count of his rejections, his lives unsaved.

  Swift shook his head, eyes fixed on his paper. “Did you know that only one in fifty people admit to reading philosophy or ‘philosophy-related’ books these days?”

  “You don’t need to suffer . . .”

  Swift turned the page. “It’s criminal.”

  “Change your . . .”

  A well-dressed brunette made an impolite gesture as she passed. John’s streetlamp went limp.

  “And this,” Swift continued, “‘The number of drug-related deaths and probable suicides has doubled in the past year and a half.’”

  A model-thin businesswoman approached. John’s streetlamp rose. “Make the right decision,” he said.

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Half of the country is on antidepressants,” Swift grumbled. “The other half is on meth.”

  John couldn’t ignore this latest statistic.

  “Oh, I wasn’t quoting,” Swift clarified. “That was just my two cents.”

  John wondered, given the choice, which half of the country he would prefer to join. “This can solve your problems . . .”

  “Like they haven’t heard that before.”

  John turned to chide his mentor, but something soft brushed his hand and took the pamphlet.

  “Thanks,” the girl said, tossing him a greeting card smile as she walked away. No older than twenty, she moved as though she had owned life from the moment she joined it.

  At least one person would be saved today.

  John watched her sunny blonde hair blend into the sea of black and white until its rays were completely obscured by suits.

  Then he returned to his mission.

  “Change your life,” he sighed. “End the pain . . .”

  Swift’s newspaper crackled as he turned the page. “You look ridiculous,” he stated, without looking up. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’m open to suggestions, Dr. Swift.”

  “Give the people what they want.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Better than drugs.” John had deciphered these puzzles before.

  “Who are you talking to?” a strange voice asked.

  John spun around to find an ancient, bearded blob of a man sitting on the ground with a baseball cap between his legs.

  “How long have you been there?” John asked, looking to Swift for guidance.

  “Long enough to know you’re crazy,” the man replied. “Who’s Dr. Swift?”

  John pointed to his mentor, but the man seemed to look right past him.

  Swift extended his pale hand. “Jonathan Swift, at your service. How do you do, sir?”

  The man did not move. His skeptical gaze remained fixed on John, who glared at the man in disbelief.

  “Well?” John said. “Shake his hand. Don’t be rude.”

  The man’s eyes widened, then narrowed, like he had answered his own internal question. He stood slowly, picked up his hat, and walked away. He looked back every few seconds, then turned the corner and disappeared.

  “Lunatic,” John muttered.

  “You never answered my question,” Swift said, reopening his newspaper. “What do people want more than drugs?”

  “Happiness. Love.”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  John raised his arms and shouted, “Free money!”The syllables echoed through the crowd, turning heads in an instant.

  “That works, I suppose.”

  John could not reload fast enough. “Free money . . .” He did not even need to raise his voice; the news travelled in desperate murmurs.

  The frenzy even drew the attention of his mentor. “Any prophet will tell you: Providence arrives in numbers.”

  “Let’s just hope they read them.”

  “Let’s hope they understand them.”

  John’s smile vanished. He looked to Swift for reassurance, but he had already returned his attention to the day’s headlines. Swift never had much faith in people, but John was an optimist. He turned back to his people and propped up his smile.

  “I’m sure they will.”

  * * *

  It was not the apartment of a philosopher. Since he moved in three years ago—after his parents kicked him out and his last and only girlfriend left him—John had accumulated a coffee table with uneven legs, a couch with a missing cushion, and two wooden chairs, each more than twice the age of its owner. He had borrowed from his parents (without any intention of returning) a temperamental TV, an equally troublesome shotgun, and a variety of prescription drugs that he never took but kept nearby for peace of mind. John had crafted a shrine in the corner of his bedroom for Swift, who never failed to remind his protégé that one side of his mattress had become two inches higher than the other and that it smelled of false hope and wasted potential. Swift sometimes occupied the higher half of the bed—fully clothed and wide awake, lying stiff as a corpse—in an effort to increase its aesthetic appeal and remind John that a 300-year-old man with a wig was the closest thing to a woman the mattress had seen in nearly a year. Whenever Swift lifted himself off, however, the two-inch di
screpancy remained, as if he had never been there at all.

  The key turned in the rusty lock, the handle jiggled, and when the door felt just the right amount of weight, it flew open, enlarging the dent in the wall behind it. John entered his home— for the first time in months—with pride, while his mentor followed with only a smirk and a fresh cup of tea.

  John threw himself onto the couch and sighed, breathing in the mouldy smell of success. Swift remained standing, arms folded, leaning against the room’s only pillar, which divided the kitchen from the living room, the living room from the foyer, and the foyer from the kitchen. John assumed it was merely decorative. Such a narrow support couldn’t possibly hold up an entire apartment, even one as puny as his own. A crack had recently formed down the middle of the pillar, and John half-expected the slightest tap to bring it down.

  “Congratulations,” Swift declared, watching John move to the kitchen. “I think you finally proved your parents wrong. Philosophers are not just lazy lunatics.”

  “We’re life-changers.”

  “Whether the lives need changing or not.”

  John emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of beer.

  “How many pamphlets did you hand out today?”

  “I lost count. Over a hundred, probably.”

  “A hundred lives: permanently, irreversibly, irrevocably changed.” Swift raised his cup. “Well done, sir.”

  John turned on the TV, only to find a news screen littered with familiar faces.

  “Tomorrow,” Swift added proudly, “we’ll get even more.”

  John’s curiosity morphed into shock as he recognized the greeting card smile and its glossy blonde frame.

  “Wasn’t she . . .” John mumbled, pointing at the screen. He turned up the volume. The anchorwoman announced that Susie Fields, aged nineteen, was one of numerous confirmed suicide victims, that the cause of the sudden increase in suicides remained unknown, but police suspected that the final toll might be over thirty.

  John stood slowly, covering his mouth, then backed away from the TV, nearly tripping over a pile of books. Without spilling his tea, Swift emptied a bag full of old Chinese food onto the coffee table and handed it to John, who leaned on the couch for support. The bag ballooned in and out as he gasped for breath.

  “Do you mind?” Swift snapped. “I’m trying to hear how many people you’ve killed.”

  John started moaning.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure they just misinterpreted your message.”

  John tossed the bag on the table and reached into his knapsack. He pulled out the remaining pamphlets and opened the one on top.

  “‘Life is bullshit. Kill yourself immediately.’ That’s the first fucking line!”

  John threw the pamphlet at the wall and began pacing.

  “And if they kept reading,” Swift replied calmly, “they would have read the life-affirming conclusion. They would understand the irony—”

  “Clearly they didn’t!”

  “Well, if they’re too lazy to read a five-page pamphlet . . .”

  John stopped pacing. “I’m a mass-murderer,” he mumbled in disbelief. “I killed thirty people today.”

  “Well, according to the TV, it might be more than . . .”

  John picked up the bag and held it to his mouth.

  “Relax, you didn’t kill anyone.”

  John lowered the bag, glaring at Swift.

  “You just put the gun in their hand. You didn’t pull the trigger.”

  John raised the bag and started breathing.

  “Where all those people found access to guns, I’ll never know . . .”

  “You’re not helping,” John groaned.

  “You’re right. They probably used knives or rope or something. Electrocution, asphyxiation, poisoning, bleeding—there are lots of ways to kill yourself.”

  John leaned against the pillar for support. Swift began counting the methods on his fingers: “Jumping off a building, drug overdose, hair drier in the bathtub, cutting your wrists in the bathtub, drowning in the bathtub . . .” He turned to John with a smile. “Suddenly, taking a bath sounds like a dangerous proposition.” He turned back to the TV. “I wonder what method little Susie used . . .”

  John rushed into his tiny kitchen, opened the cabinet beneath the sink, and removed his father’s shotgun. He then returned to the living room, sat in one of his antique wooden chairs, and put the barrel in his mouth. His finger hovered above the trigger. “Is this how you’re supposed to do it? Like this?”

  “This is one area where my expertise is limited.”

  “I should just copy the guy from that movie.”

  “Don’t forget the pamphlets.”

  “Huh?”

  “What happens when the police come? They find you, they find the pamphlets, they read the pamphlets . . .”

  “Jesus.”

  John put down the shotgun, marched to the table, and grabbed the stack of pamphlets. Swift couldn’t help but smile, watching John scramble through every drawer and cupboard, dig through discarded wrappers, dry pens, and rusted silverware, in search of a lighter. Swift cleared his throat and pointed to the fire extinguisher by the stove. John reached behind the dusty appliance to find an equally dusty pack of matches.

  He dumped the pamphlets in his tiny bathtub and set them on fire. They burned faster than he expected. Head against the sink, he looked down at his life’s work as though he blamed his people for the pamphlets’ fate.

  “You won’t do much good to anyone dead, you know.” Swift was now sitting cross-legged on the toilet, blowing on a fresh cup of tea.

  “At least I won’t do any harm.”

  The last embers of the pamphlets curled and cracked, spitting out a few last sparks of wisdom.

  “If you deprive people of good, you’re doing them harm.”

  John ignored his mentor’s comment and slouched his way to the chair. He picked up the shotgun and resumed his original position.

  “You missed one.” Swift pointed to the pamphlet on the floor.

  John picked it up and gazed at it like a father seeing, for the first and last time, his stillborn child. He recognized his turns of phrase, his cheeky wisdom, his all-too-elaborate sentence structures, but he could tell by its creases and faded ink—by the way it fell back over his hand like a rag doll—that this was a child beyond saving.

  “Read the last line,” Swift ordered.

  John opened the pamphlet to the last page and cleared his throat. “The only answer to the question ‘Why bother living?’ is this: ‘I have nothing better to do.’”

  John lowered the pamphlet.

  “Exactly. You have nothing better to do.”

  John raised the gun.

  “The world needs you, John. They need to hear the truth. They need to be saved—”

  “From what?”

  Swift grinned.

  “That’s what I thought.” John’s mouth opened and the barrel slid in.

  “If you give up now—you said it yourself—you’re a mass-murderer. Not to mention, a coward. Don’t forget your own message: suicide is never the solution.”

  “There are exceptions to every rule.”

  “If you continue your project . . .”

  John’s finger twitched on the trigger. Pools of guilt collected at the edges of his eyes. “They . . .” His voice trembled and cracked. Swift offered his handkerchief, but John shook his head. “They didn’t understand me.”

  “They will understand you.” Swift leaned forward and placed a hand on John’s knee. “New ideas take time. All movements have growing pains. Think of Susie. Poor 19-year-old Susie Fields will have died in vain if—”

  “Susie would want me dead. Susie’s friends . . .”

  “Susie would want you to do the right thing. Susie would want y
ou to change the world. To make a difference in people’s lives—”

  “I already have made a difference.”

  Swift regained his upright posture, his unsparing tone. “When you look back, years from now, and you’re famous, and worshipped, and everyone comes to you for guidance, what will you think?”

  “When I’m famous . . .”

  “You’ll think Susie was a hero, just like all the others on that screen.” He pointed at the muted TV, flashing pictures of the victims. “She’s a martyr. Somewhere up there, wherever she is, she’s happy. Because she knows she died for a worthy cause, and soon her parents and friends will know it too. Susie’s just the beginning.”

  “If I take out the irony,” John sniffled. “Make it easier to understand . . .”

  “That’s one approach, certainly.”

  “I’ll rewrite it completely.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tailor it to the average reader.”

  “But the average reader . . .”

  “What?”

  Swift met his protégé’s gaze with a gentle smile. “Are they really worth saving?” John’s brow furrowed. “Don’t get me wrong, they’re nice people and all, but think about it: they don’t care about questions of life and death. All they would do—assuming they even read it—is misinterpret the meaning, abuse their newfound wisdom, or disregard it completely.” He pointed to the silent TV. “You saw what the ‘average reader’ looks like. These people are part of the problem, not the solution. Half won’t even read your work, the other half won’t understand it, and half of them will most likely use it for evil!”

  John did the math. “So that leaves a quarter?”

  “A quarter of the human race, able and willing to embrace your message.” His humane smile resurfaced. “Do we really need the other three?”

  “We do have a population crisis . . .”

  “Raise the irony. Increase the difficulty. Make it as inaccessible as possible, and let natural selection do its job. The best and brightest will rise to the occasion, and the rest . . . will be the rest.”