Hits and Misses

by Simon Rich

  Zoe’s skin burned with guilt. “Okay, how about this?” she said. “I’ll self-release one EP, see what Pitchfork says, and then I’ll quit.”

  “Honey, we’re past the point of bargaining,” Tom said. “If you don’t take the help being offered today, it’s over.”

  Zoe’s face turned pale. She felt like she was going to throw up.

  “Look,” Dr. Jenson said. “I know what you’re going through.”

  “How could you possibly know?” Zoe said.

  “Because I spent ten years writing poetry.”

  Zoe raised her eyebrows. Poetry was the nastiest addiction of them all. She couldn’t help but be a little impressed.

  “I got an MFA and everything,” he continued. “I was ninety-five thousand dollars in debt. I was mailing submissions to Ploughshares once a month.” He shuddered slightly at the memory. “By the end, it got so bad, I was doing open mics. And sometimes the guy before me would be a stand-up comedian. So when I came out and read my poems, people would laugh, thinking I was making some kind of weird joke. And I’d have to be like, ‘No. Stop laughing. This is a poem I wrote. It’s supposed to be serious.’”

  “Holy shit,” said Zoe.

  “I thought I was going to die,” said Dr. Jenson. “But then, one day, I made the decision to change. I threw out all my journals, unsubscribed to Granta. And now, ten years later, I’ve got it all. A house in Silver Lake…” He thought for a beat. “A house in Silver Lake,” he repeated.

  “Don’t you miss it?” Zoe asked. “Writing poems?”

  Dr. Jenson smiled. “Every day,” he said. “But there’re things you can do to dull the urges. For example, I do drugs. Every day, I take, like, a ton of painkillers.” He took a white pill out of his pocket and ate it. “That was a painkiller,” he told the group. “A big one.”

  Tom took his wife’s hand. “Think about how nice it’ll be,” he said. “To not have to always be jonesing for hits and applause. To give up that search and just…be.”

  Zoe felt her mouth go dry.

  She loved the highs of making music, but could she still handle the lows?

  What if she made a record and it flopped as badly as her last two? She imagined herself in a silent bar in Phoenix, manning a merch table heaped with ugly posters of her face. She pictured herself in New York City, peeking through a crack in the curtains, trying to work up the courage to play to a giant empty room. She’d crashed before and lived to tell the tale. But that was years ago. At this age, she might not survive it.

  Zoe flipped through the brochure again. She noticed this time that the place had a pool.

  “How would it work?” she asked softly. “Would I have to quit all at once?”

  “No,” Tom said. “They’ll taper you off. The first week, they’ll let you play covers, as long as you don’t do anything creative, like add a solo or whatever.”

  “It does look kinda nice,” Zoe admitted.

  “Is that a yes?” asked Dr. Jenson.

  “Yes,” Zoe murmured.

  “You know what that means!” Dr. Jenson told the group. “Time for hugs!”

  Tom and Alice shared a quick victorious look, then ran up to Zoe and tightly wrapped their arms around her neck.

  Tom and Alice visited Tampa sixty days in and were amazed by Zoe’s progress. She was significantly calmer and way less inclined to have creative thoughts. She’d also undergone a dramatic physical transformation. The doctors had prescribed her rosé, and the sugary wine had helped her to gain fifteen pounds of fat. The extra-small Dinosaur Jr. shirt was gone, and in its place she wore a tasteful cardigan. She still had a Misfits tattoo on her ankle. That would never go away. But for the first time in her life, she looked less like a rock star than a mom.

  Zoe led her family through the grounds, to the modest room she shared with a recovering photographer.

  “This is where Mommy sleeps,” she said to Alice. “There’s my bureau, where I keep my cardigans. There’s my phone, where I call you to say good night. And this is where I journal.”

  Tom and Alice shared a look.

  “They let you journal?” Tom asked.

  “It’s not creative,” Zoe assured him. “Sit down. I’ll read you some.”

  Tom and Alice sat down on the bed and watched skeptically as Zoe cracked open her notebook.

  “Okay,” she said. “This entry is from earlier this week.” She drank some rosé and read it out loud to them. “‘Whole Foods grocery list: pasta, pesto, arugula, balsamic vinegar, that olive spread they have, tomatoes, rosé.’”

  Tom and Alice grinned ecstatically.

  “That was great!” Tom said.

  “Really?” Zoe asked earnestly. “You liked it?”

  “We loved it, Mommy!”

  They broke into applause and wouldn’t stop until she bowed to them.

  Hands

  When I first came to the desert, I could tell the other monks didn’t respect me. They took one look at me and thought, That guy’s not going to last out here. He’s going to sin the first chance he gets.

  I didn’t pay much attention to them. To be honest, I don’t really care what other people have to say about me. If I cared about other people’s opinions, I never would have left Babylon in the first place, and I certainly wouldn’t have decided to cut off my hands.

  I remember telling the monks about my choice. We were kneeling by the swamp. We had been fasting for five days, and on the third day we had each eaten a handful of salt to further heighten our agony. I could tell by the other monks’ groans that they were nearing their breaking point. But I was just getting started.

  “When this fast is over,” I told them, “I am going to cut off my hands. Both of them. With a sword.”

  The eldest monk, Dominic, was the first to respond.

  “That is crazy,” he said. “You need your hands to do so many things.”

  “To do what things?” I challenged. “To weave baskets and other material possessions that the devil makes us covet? To feed myself food and break the holy fast? To commit sin with my genitals?”

  While I was saying all this, I was punching myself in the face, to cancel out the sin of speech.

  “Tomorrow morning,” I declared, “I will go to the mountaintop and cut off both my hands. And that’s final!”

  The monks pulled at their beards and scratched their ribs. They didn’t know what to say. I was new to the desert, but already I had risen high above them. There was nobody humbler; it wasn’t even close.

  “Please do not do this,” Dominic said. “You will suffer so horribly.”

  “It will be nothing compared to the suffering of Christ,” I reminded him. I was standing naked on the mountain, sharpening my blade against a rock.

  “Why don’t you do another fast?” Dominic tried. “Or maybe carve a cross into your chest, like Mordecai?”

  I took a long, slow breath. Mordecai is a total hack. Whenever pilgrims visit our camp, he is always at the center of the clearing, “coincidentally” whipping himself at that exact moment. “Oh wow!” they say as they pass him. “What a holy monk!” Mordecai pretends not to hear them, like he’s so engrossed in whipping himself that he isn’t even aware of their presence. But as soon as they leave, the smugness returns to his face and his whipping comes to a stop.

  “I suppose I could carve a cross into my chest,” I said. “And parade around, flaunting it to laypeople, trying to win their cheap praise. Or I could make a real sacrifice.”

  I held the blade over my head and examined it in the hot summer sun. It wasn’t particularly sharp, but with enough savage hacks it would “do the trick,” as they say.

  “I cannot help you with this act of penance,” Dominic said. “God gave you those hands, and I think you should keep them.”

  “I didn’t expect you to help me,” I said. “You are too weak and hypocritical.”

  After I said it, though, I realized I actually would need some assistance if I was going to cut off both my h
ands. I could use my right hand to cut off my left hand—but the next part would get tricky. I was trying to devise a solution to this trivial, earthly problem when my thoughts were interrupted by the gaudy blast of a horn.

  I turned toward the sound and gasped. A procession of caravans appeared to be heading toward our camp. I counted over a dozen wagons—giant, horse-drawn carriages sheltered from the desert wind with silks of gold and purple.

  Hallucinations are common among monks, due to our constant, gnawing hunger. So when you see something unusual, it is standard policy to check with a nearby monk to make sure it is real.

  “Caravans, right?” I asked Dominic.

  “Yeah,” he confirmed. “I see them too.”

  We climbed down to a clearing so we could get an unobstructed view. I had never seen such a sickening sight. Each wagon was laden with indulgences: marble busts from Athens, bronze urns from Phoenicia, and garish idols from the wicked monkey worshippers of India.

  The only empty wagon was the front one—a cushioned carriage reserved for a single individual.

  I squinted at the smooth-skinned aristocrat. At first, the absence of a beard made me think it was a boy. But as the carriage drew closer, I realized I was looking at a young woman.

  Her golden hair was glossy from a lifetime of decadence, and her lips were painted red, in the manner of a Moabite whore. She made no attempt to conceal the presence of her breasts. Her silk shirt clung to them, as taut as the skin of a grape.

  “Let’s go say hi,” Dominic said.

  “What about my hands?”

  “You’ll figure it out later.”

  I screamed with frustration, put away my blade, and followed the old man down the mountain.

  Her name was Fabiola, and she came from Rome itself.

  Her father was a consul, and for her eighteenth birthday, he’d consented to send her on a grand tour of the world’s great wonders.

  It was hard not to vomit as she held forth at our campfire, defiling our ears with tales of her decadent adventures. She’d knelt before the Statue of Zeus at Olympia and sketched Alexandria from the top of the legendary lighthouse. And now here she was, in the spiritual home of our faith. There could be only one reason why.

  “I want to see it,” she told Dominic. “The tomb of your God. Where you believe that he was resurrected.”

  I snorted at her predictability. Tourists never want to see the field where Jesus wept. They have no interest in the hill where he was crucified. They just want to see the happy ending.

  We should be thankful, I suppose, that Jesus is even remembered by laypeople. In the three hundred years since his death, so much has been forgotten about our Messiah. Only a few written accounts of his life remain, and even among these there are numerous discrepancies. The Gospel According to John differs wildly from the Gospel According to Matthew. And neither account is as accurate as the Gospel According to Hector.

  (Incidentally, Mordecai is in charge of protecting the Gospel According to Hector, and I am 90 percent sure he’s lost the scroll. One time I flat-out asked him where it was. “It’s in my tent,” he said. So I was like, “Great. Can I see it?” And he was like, “It’s under a lot of stuff.” How much stuff can he possibly have? The man is a monk.)

  “The path to Jesus is arduous,” Dominic told Fabiola.

  The girl grinned with excitement. “Is that, like, one of your monk parables?”

  “No,” Dominic said. “I just mean, like, getting to Jesus’s tomb is a real hassle. It’s a three-day climb up a mountain through all sorts of streams and thickets. There wouldn’t be room for your caravans.”

  “That’s fine,” the girl said, waving her polished nails through the air. “I want the full, authentic experience. That’s the whole reason I’m doing this trip. To expand my mind and see the world.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up, punched myself preemptively in the face, and began speaking.

  “How can you ‘see the world’ when you are blind? Your eyes notice only that which glitters!”

  I expected the girl to weep with shame, but instead she smiled and nodded.

  “You seem like a pretty hard-core monk,” she said. “Why don’t you guide me to Jesus’s tomb and, you know, explain it to me?”

  “Not a chance!” I said. “Its meaning would be lost on you!”

  “I’d be happy to make a donation to your group.”

  “How much?” Dominic asked.

  “We don’t accept gifts,” I reminded him.

  “What about grain?” said the girl. “You guys must need some grain to live out here in the desert.”

  “It’s true that our weak mortal flesh requires grain,” I admitted. “But we do not accept it as payment. We eat only food that people leave behind by accident.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I showed her the large earthen urn that contains our communal grain supply.

  “Once a year,” I explained, “we go to the market and pick up the grain that people have spilled on the dirty, filthy ground. And even this grain is too decadent for us. Which is why I add urine.”

  “You’ve been adding urine?” Dominic asked.

  I nodded. “I’ve been adding some urine.”

  “Your own?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “To the big urn? The one we all eat out of?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh man,” Dominic said, softly shaking his head. “Man.”

  There was a long silence. Eventually the girl cleared her throat.

  “Listen,” she said. “I totally understand that you guys don’t accept gifts. Everyone has their own quirks. For example, my servants, they’re really forgetful. Whenever they get distracted, they leave stuff behind.” She locked eyes with Dominic. “You know…by accident.”

  Dominic swallowed. “Explain more what you mean by that.”

  The girl continued, a mischievous smile on her face. “Well, for example, if they found out that I had been all the way to Jesus’s tomb, the news would distract them so much I wouldn’t be surprised if they accidentally left behind five urns of grain.” She leaned toward Dominic, her dark eyes shining demonically in the fire’s glow. “Five urns of urine-free grain.”

  Dominic gestured at me. “He’ll take you.”

  “No I won’t!” I said. “I came to the desert to purify my soul! Not to help indulge some privileged Roman whore!”

  I punched myself once more in the face and then headed off into the freezing night.

  “Wait,” Dominic said.

  I turned around. “What?”

  Dominic covered his face with his palms. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he murmured. “This is so crazy.” He shuddered slightly and then looked at me. “If you take this girl up the mountain…I will help you cut off your hands.”

  “He’s going to cut off his hands?” the girl asked.

  “Yes,” Dominic said, meeting my eyes. “And when he does, the feat will make him the most respected monk in Christian history. He’ll surpass everyone: Macarius the Sufferer, Palladius the Sunburnt, Pablo the Getter of the Rash.”

  I bowed my head, humbled to hear my name among such luminaries.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m in.”

  I watched with impatience as the girl packed for the journey, filling up crate after crate with her extravagances.

  “It must be kind of fun out here,” she said. “Just camping out all day with your friends.”

  “I have no friends,” I said.

  “What about the other monks?”

  “They are just that,” I said. “Other monks.”

  She looked up from her baggage. “What about back home?”

  “The desert is my home,” I reminded her. “The sand is my bed, the sky is my walls, a rock is my pillow, my hands are my toilet.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “I meant, like, your home home. Like, where you’re originally from.”

  “Who cares where I’m original
ly from?”

  “Come on, just tell me.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I was born in the city of Satan himself,” I confessed. “Babylon.”

  “Oh cool, I love Babylon,” she said. “I have camp friends from there. You ever go back?”

  “Once a year.”

  “To visit family?”

  “I will never again break bread with those idolaters!”

  “So why do you go back?”

  “To test myself,” I explained. “Last year, for example, I went to the market and picked up a large sausage. I held it inside my open mouth and kept it there for hours. Tears of hunger streamed down my face. But I didn’t take so much as a nibble. Instead, at nightfall, I placed the sausage back upon the table and drank urine.”

  “Where’d you get the urine?”

  “I carry urine with me on these trips.”

  “How?”

  “In a urine bag that I continually refill.”

  “That sounds like a pretty bad trip,” she said.

  “It was,” I said proudly.

  She added one last crate to her pile.

  “Okay,” she said. “I think that’s everything.”

  She picked up the smallest of the crates. “Think you can handle the rest?”

  “My condition is so weak from fasting that it hurts to even stand. Walking is agony, climbing is torture, and carrying crates would be pain beyond description.”

  “Isn’t pain your thing?”

  I averted my eyes. She had me there.

  “I can probably carry two crates,” I said.

  “Then we’re going to need more help,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “How about that whip guy?”

  I turned and saw Mordecai standing right behind me, pretending not to eavesdrop.

  “I am sorry for disturbing you, ma’am,” he said. “I was self-flagellating, and in my meditative state, I happened to wander to this spot.”

  “What a coincidence!” I said facetiously. “Of all the spots in the desert you could wander to, you ended up at the one that contains a tourist!”