Chapter 21

After receiving a $564 phone bill, I told my girlfriend I wasn’t going to pay it. She said if I didn’t, she was going to leave. I started helping.

I suggested places she could go to, we discussed what was hers, what was mine. I got to keep two of the cats. She kept the two she came with. And after two hours of such discussions, she said maybe we just needed some time away from each other. Maybe. I don’t think so, but maybe. I don’t know how I could spend any more time away from her than I do now. She stays up when I sleep, I work and go to school full time, and in the three hours between when I get off work and go to bed, she stays on the computer, talking in chat rooms. She's in class when I'm not, and often she's hanging out with Maddy. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think we could spend more time apart. If she left, I wouldn’t miss her, I’d miss the car.

I find this very disturbing. Somehow, our relationship has in many ways become like that of Michel and Jackie’s, only with far less sex. Also, neither of us are trying to sleep with other people. I feel like I’m just someone to fuck once a week (if I’m lucky) and support her. Why should I want to live like that? I want to go somewhere else for my Ph.D., but if I can’t save enough money to leave, I’m going to be stuck here in Richardson.

I don’t know how many other Americans feel like they are stuck where they are, but I’m sure it’s a common phenomenon. Why else would Americans move so often, more than any other people? I at least have the excuse of school. Not that being on the move is necessarily a problem. Who wants to be stagnant? Far too many, I’m afraid. But a nation needs those people too, people who can stay in one place and provide stability, a constant work force. That’s why socialist nations always restricted the movements of their people. With movement comes instability, and socialism is supposed to make society work like a machine. But we have since learned that society, like people and the universe, is not a machine. It is an organic being that cannot be contained like a machine. It must be given space to grow and expand. That, perhaps, is why so many Americans feel stuck. We often feel like we don’t have the room to grown and expand. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say all the characters in this novel feel this way. They feel like they are stuck (though none in truth are -- they only have to give themselves time to gain the ability to move. They only have to wait for the great mover, money).

Probably the one who comes closest to being stuck is Pat. She grew up in the same town she was living in when Michel moved next door to her. She never had any prospects of going anywhere, and did not have the money. She could not find happiness by leaving the community, so she tried to find happiness within it, with as many people as possible. She thought she could sleep her way to happiness. So strong was this belief, she even transferred it to her daughter. If happiness could be found through sex, what was wrong with her daughter having sex? Didn’t she want her daughter to be happy? With no other prospects open to her, she was left with this one perverse thought.

Michel, Sarah, and Jackie were far less desperate. They all felt stuck now, but they also knew they would be able to move on in the future, sometime after graduation. They saw their educations as tickets out of the city, out of the state, away from their families. The future gave them hope, the hope of movement, of life, even though Michel came to be trapped in Pat’s web of despair. She made it psychologically difficult for him to move, though he still had the material means to do so. Sarah and Jackie held onto their freedom, though, and never let it go.

And what of Michel’s characters, Bernard and Marcus? What was their relationship to movement and freedom? How did they join the chaotic dance? Marcus was the strange attractor around which Bernard moved. Stationary, Marcus was happy, playing on his computer, staying with Bernard, never going anywhere or wanting to do anything. But Bernard was not a stationary man, despite the stationary nature of his chosen profession. When he wasn’t writing, Bernard was moving, going places, visiting friends, traveling. He gave up asking Marcus to join him on his trips, and learned to enjoy himself without Marcus. The only time Bernard was unfaithful to Marcus was on his trips. He did not want to hurt Marcus, but the temptation when he traveled was often too great, and he rarely chose to resist it. Marcus never traveled, and he was afraid word would get back to Bernard if he was unfaithful to him in town, so he became unfaithful to Bernard in the chat rooms. No one there knew he had a boyfriend. His spirit was less faithful to Bernard than Bernard was to Marcus in reality. Some would argue that what Bernard did was worse, but at least Bernard always came back. Marcus, on the other hand, was always leaving.

All of this about Bernard and Marcus will eventually come out in Michel’s story, but I don’t want to keep including chapter after chapter of Michel’s novel, interspersed throughout this one. Some simply must be summarized, though I promise not to leave you hanging with their story. I’ll try to include at least occasional excerpts as Michel finishes them.