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If you believe in God, this post may not be for you.
If, after dragging your tired, wretched body out of bed every morning, brushing your coffee-stained teeth while you stare at your phone like a zombie, and failing to defecate after sitting on the toilet for ten minutes, the misery of your morning ritual is mitigated by an unshakeable belief in the divine, this post may not be for you.
If you are so weak that you have embraced the biggest, most heinous lie humanity has ever unleashed on itself, this post may not be for you. If you are a mindless, spineless creature who needs to believe there’s something bigger out there, this post may not be for you. If you are a sheep, this post may not be for you.
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I am an atheist. Clearly, there is no god. This vapid, vacuous, vicious existence is all we got. It’s dirt and stars and fascism and Michael Jackson and orcas, and that’s it. Each of us is here for a little while to drink a few Modelos, watch KPop Demon Hunters, do some rhymes with shmunnilingus, and die.
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The year was 2005 and I was sitting with an old friend and his great penis in a sauna in Minneapolis when it hit me: Life has no purpose, and time is running out. So I did what most desperate, lonely, and practical people do: got married and had kids. I’m like “the basket case” (Ally Sheedy) in Breakfast Club who comes to Saturday detention not because she got in trouble but instead because she “didn’t have anything better to do.” I couldn’t make it in the NBA, I wasn’t gonna chase tail for the rest of my life, and I’d already been to a Cambodian bath house, so I went out and got myself a ball and chain because I figured raising a batch of incompetent, ungrateful, and unclean children would fill the void, or at least keep me busy.
Of course there’s deep irony in deliberately, intentionally abandoning a life of Hoop Dreams, tail-chasing, and Southeast Asian bath houses but it turned out that changing poop-ravaged diapers, singing “Five Little Ducks” in the bath with screaming toddlers, and bringing oranges to poorly played soccer games filled the void. I mean, the void is the void and it’s never actually full but the diapers and the baths and the oranges made me feel like it was full. They fooled me. They distracted me. They put a lid on the void so I didn’t have to stare into it every day, didn’t have to look directly at the utter emptiness of life, didn't have to face the truth.
That’s what we all do every day, isn’t it? Go to our banal commercial real estate jobs, attend our monthly book club meetings without having read the whole book, scroll through Apple News until we doze off on the couch, go to our high-intensity muscle-sculpting class to get shamed by and/or ogle the instructor, try to convince our friends that Israel is or isn’t committing a genocide, and, of course, floss, all just to kill time, all just to fill the void minute by interminable minute in an effort to stave off misery and despair. That’s life. Doing things that make us “happy” because/even though we know we’re gonna die. Trying to make the world a bit of a better place because/even though climate change is coming for us. Doing one more rhymes with shmunnilingus because/even though the sun will eventually explode.
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For the past 18 years or so, my kids filled the void. But then over the last year or so, something changed. They grew up. They stopped needing me. They learned how to tie their shoes, brush their hair, and wipe their butts. And the second that happened, I lost my way. I lost my purpose. The void was back.
Theoretically, I’m supposed to be happy that instead of whimpering in her bed every night until mommy and daddy come give her a kiss, Boni can now cry herself to sleep like a big girl. Theoretically, I’m supposed to be happy that instead of morosely asking me to cut his chicken, Broosevelt has finally gained the dexterity and determination to do it himself. Theoretically, I’m supposed to be happy that instead of asking me for weed, OG can buy it herself on the Red Line. Theoretically, I’m supposed to be happy that Panini, ummm, she actually still needs my help with everything.
So yeah, theoretically, I’m overjoyed by my kids maturing and becoming more independent. But in reality, the older they get, the more they do things for themselves. The more they do things for themselves, the less I do for them. The less I do for them, the more useless I feel. The more useless I feel, the more life sucks. In sum: If you give a mouse a cookie, I might as well rhymes with shmill myself.
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I watch in awe as Boni glides through the water at swim practice and I’m excited for her to get out and tell me about her day. She runs to me in her big black swim jacket with wet hair and crooked glasses. We hug. She smells like chlorine. We hold hands as we walk to the car and it feels like we’re together and maybe I’m not dying. She tells me about a new friend she made at practice and wonders out loud why there are so many Asian kids on the team. We laugh because she’s racist and maybe I’m not dying alone. We get in the car and we’re about to do our routine when she tells me three things about her day but before I can even ask, she says, “Can we listen to music?” So I turn on the radio and cry on the inside.
I sit with Broosevelt while he dutifully practices piano but he plays because he has to and because he’s a good boy who follows the rules and would’ve been the first on the trains, not because he enjoys making music, being with his dad, or making music with his dad. Before he hits the last few notes, he’s already halfway across the room, floating back to the TV or his phone or his homework while I, alone on the couch, like a geriatric with nothing to do and no one to talk to, fall into a deep sleep for 13 minutes until one of my children shames me for drooling.
I haven’t seen OG all day and I’m excited to pick her up from gymnastics. She starts to tell me about her back handspring on the beam and half twist on the vault but I lose focus because it’s 9pm, I’m tired, and, as hard as I try, I really don’t know anything about gymnastics. I know she knows I don’t know. She shows me a video on her phone of one of her routines, and I’m like, “Holy shit, that’s amazing!” Then she gets a text from her friend and starts to reply and I’m like, “No phones in the car.” She says, “Ok, one sec,” and I think to myself, One second is forever. You’re already gone.
Unfortunately for Panini, she and I both play tennis. Unfortunately for Panini, she and I have the same sense of humor. Unfortunately for Panini, she and I are besties. So what do I do with the one child who wants to be close? I push her away. I tell her yes when she asks if she looks fat, I tell her no when she asks if she looks pretty, and I tell her maybe when she asks if I’ll always be her daddy. And then to make things worse, when she dresses up like a you-know-what to go out with her you-know-what friends, I shame her for going and beg her to stay home. She’s leaving for college in less than a year, which is basically tomorrow, which means she’s already gone, which means I’m all alone, dying.
I’m like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, blowing around Saturday morning newspaper cartoons to get people’s attention. I’m like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, watching my family disappear from the picture as they do their Science homework at the kitchen counter. I’m like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense except he didn’t know he was dead.
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But Saul, what about your work? Well, let’s see. Would you enjoy spending eight hours a day with a horde of politically indifferent, socially incompetent, discourse-avoidant, anxiety-ridden, acne-infested, tail-donning, headphone-wearing, Tik Tok-addicted, status-obsessed, grade-grubbing dorks who, at the first sign of disappointment, scrawl DIE SAUL! in pink sharpie on the bathroom mirror? Yeah, me neither.
But Saul, what about your friends? Well, let’s see. My texts go unanswered, my phone calls are disregarded, and my emails are immediately labeled as junk. I used to have fun parties where people had sex and did rhymes with shmugs and my friend from the sauna put his rhymes with shmick in a box. Now my only social interactions are on a group chat where everyone hates me and at bars I go to by myself because strangers like me more than people who know me.
But Saul, what about your hobbies? Well, let’s see. I take 45-minute showers at night and plan out ingenious blog posts I’ll never write. I publish an occasional post no one will ever read. I run three tennis leagues no one wants to play in. I coach Panini’s tennis team because I enjoy working with disabled kids. I myself don’t actually play sports anymore because my knee, like my soul, has called it quits, so I spend most of my time lying on my back, stretching my hamstring with a white flag, I mean towel.
But Saul, what about your wife? Well, let’s see. She used to rest her head on the soft brown fur on my chest but now she claims that that luxurious pillow top has turned grey, brittle, and prickly. We do still have magical sex every day and she replaces the toilet paper roll on demand, but she and I can’t talk about Nikola Jokic’s passing, we fight incessantly over whether or not to use subtitles when we watch TV, and I swear to a god that doesn’t exist that if she leaves the cabinets open one more time, our children will no longer have a mother who’s alive and Boni will finally have something to cry about in bed. Speaking of children, let’s be honest: The only reason I put a ring on it in the first place was so she could bear the fruit of my loins. Mission accomplished. Been there, done that. Now what?
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Nothing is what. It’s over. I’m dying. Alone. The kids are grown, the Boss is in bed by 9pm most nights, and I have no purpose. The rational response to this crisis would, of course, be to rhmyes with shmill myself but I’m not brave enough to do that. So instead, I’ve come up with new, even more ridiculous ways to fill the void: I feel satisfied when I get my Yahoo! email inbox to zero. I feel accomplished when I finish a National Geographic from 2018 about frogs. I feel like I’m a good son when I talk to my 80-year-old mom on the phone even though she can barely hear me while I ruthlessly attack her for not doing more physical therapy for her fractured pelvis.
I barely drink. I barely smoke. I put spinach and berries into my smoothies every morning. To what end? So I can extend my time alone until I die? It’s like Sisyphus doing jumping jacks before he decides to push the boulder up the mountain again. Moron.
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Yom Kippur this past Thursday in Chicago was beautiful: blue skies, 74 degrees, and a gentle breeze. The Boss and I decided to go for a walk through nearby Graceland Cemetery, filled with lush greenery, quiet ponds, and death. We held hands, talked, and laughed about how much I hate her when she leaves the cabinets open. Suddenly, like the old man on the Black Death cart in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I realized, I’m not dead yet!
And so now I ask myself, “What would Jesus do?” Just kidding. F Jesus. I ask myself, “What would Sisyphus do?” All alone. Big rock. Big hill. No future. No purpose. No rhymes with shmunnilingus. But still alive.
I think he would man up, dig his heels in the dirt, place his hands firmly on the rock, engage his core, and start pushing. So I guess that’s what I’ll do, though I sure miss my kids.
And rhymes with shmunnilingus.
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