The Potential of Zeroes

by Eric Mattys

  An airy female voice would say, “Tell me, Bartholomew, what do you dream about?”

  He dreamed about naked women and men with limbs and sexual organs rotating and interlocking like the gears of a clock whose faces would change when the sex organ teeth of gears finally met. All he could do was watch the gears grind away as their plain faces turned ecstatic with the proper gear alignment. After not saying any of these thoughts, he would say, “I have a lot of dreams about catastrophes.”

  The woman would pause and smile. “They say catastrophe dreams indicate an unfulfilled potential.” It would be their second date. “What do you think your unfulfilled potential is?” she would ask, biting her lower lip.

  His unfulfilled potential would be his sexual desire, but he would respond, “I don’t know… I could probably... read more books.” That’s what she would want to hear.

  “Hmm… I could read more books, too.” After a long pause she would ask, “Do you want to come upstairs for some coffee?”

  “OK.”

  Between sips of coffee, she would say, “Wow, I’m sleepy. Are you sleepy? You can stay the night here, if you want.”

  He imagined all the interlocking sex gears piling on one side of a balancing scale with absolutely nothing on the other side, and yet the scales would never tip. It would be a clear invitation, and he would want so much to make love to her like in his dreams; unspoken, understood, and inconsequential. But this would be reality and she a person with words, not just a gear in which to fit his cog. He would tell himself that he was a gentleman, but then he would remember that sex is not a gentleman’s game.

  He played the game in his mind; he would have already fucked her. He knew fucking is all it would have been at that point, and for six months they might fly blithely sedated on the fumes of passion he had watched his mother go through so many times when he was little, not bothering to actually show their true selves, submitting to the whim of the other in order to make a longer term relationship seem like a positive possibility. And one day he would have seen how short-sighted he was in his meaningless sexual advance, how it would start as a sweet love song but build to a slow-motion bear trap.

  Her words would become transparent mimicries of possession founded on the imagined, unspoken contractual agreement which would’ve read something like, “The woman and man agree to forego possession of self and, in return, each party shall gain possession of the other.” He would know that she did not belong to him, and he did not belong to her. She would not understand this, and it would hurt her; or, even worse, she would understand it better than him and start sleeping with someone else first. He would regret being the root of this kind of misunderstanding which he may not be able to escape. Having already seen the endpoint, he would stammer, “I’m not really that sleepy after all this coffee.” He would consider himself wise and powerful for his ascetic mastery over passion.

  Next, the girl would lose sexual interest and they would become friends, then acquaintances, and, finally, a forgotten few evenings. Night would come, and he would despise his own immutable but infallible forethought and tell himself it would be obvious when the right girl made herself known.

  Growing up with the name Bartholomew generated its own set of difficulties. The nickname “Bart” evoked a sort of sweaty, beer-drinking, wife-beater-wearing bastard, or so his mother told him, making it clear the name was his long-gone father’s idea. So, she called him Mew. The name somehow stuck, which served to build Mew’s habit of getting in fights.

  “Mew? You know what that kind of reminds me of? A pussy. Ha! Ha!” Right hook to the lower jaw, two missing teeth, and a three-day suspension. Happened monthly at the public school. As a result, Bartholomew’s mother sent him to a private school where kids with names like Walter, Edmund, or Percy might find peace. After establishing that his existence did not include being a cat, nor effeminate, nor a vagina, he came to accept his nickname. Escaping the realm of the hyper-aggressive, heteronormative male peer group didn’t hurt either, but it left a certain mark on his perspective.

  10

  Singles Group

  When Terese was in school at the University of Ohio, her dorm phone rang and an unfamiliar voice asked, “How far would you be willing to go to serve God?”

  “That’s a pretty tough question, really. If God is all powerful, than I’d be serving God even if I didn’t mean to, right? So, yeah. I guess I’m always going the distance to serve God, even when I’m not sure I mean to.”

  “Ok. Good. A little bird tells me that you don’t have a boyfriend, either…?”

  “Uh, weird. How would you even—”

  “There’s no such thing as coincidence, my dear; there’s only God’s will. I work for a non-profit organization that is interested in spreading love, and I think I might have found the perfect man for you.”

  “Really?” Terese put her hand on her chest to contain the warmth and excitement she suddenly felt. She questioned, but she already believed.

  “Just come to the big church just off of University this Friday at eight and you can meet him.”

  Terese was just lonely enough to go. Unable to find an obvious group of singles, she found the priests’ office and asked shyly, “Father, could you tell me where the singles’ group is?”

  The father hissed through his nose twice and cracked a smile, tilting his head down so his eyes could look over his reading glasses and see Terese. “Singles’ group…” He shook his head and sighed. “They’re right down the hall.”

  Terese followed his directions to an open door to find a long table with what appeared to be a council of nuns. The room felt dark despite the white fluorescent lights. Their lips turned down in the corners but still put forth the effort of making a smile. If smacking knuckles is your only means of human contact, it must age the face prematurely. How sad to have no guarantee the reward they toiled for would ever come, in this life or after. It was nice of them to put the singles’ group together, but no sex? That’s just silly. If their God existed, it made them human. To deny any kind of sexuality would be to deny God’s will. The older nuns had wisps of fuzzy facial hair on their jaws and upper lips at which Terese tried not to stare. Then she noticed a complete lack of men in the room.

  “This isn’t a singles’ group?” asked Terese still hoping that the perfect man might be on the other side of some secret door. Churches have those, right?

  “Oh, you are correct about that my dear. We’re married to the Lord,” replied one of the nuns in a perky way that seemed absolutely unholy. “Come on in and join us!” As the down-turned corners of their identical mouths struggled to smile bigger, they motioned, nearly in unison, for her to sit down.

  “No, no. I think you misunderstand. I’m here for the singles’ group. I was told a perfect man would be here…” And she put it all together. Singles group. It was never specified if they would be attempting to overcome their singleness.

  A cute-faced nun opened her mouth wide. Terese thought she must have been new; her smile had the fewest frown lines. The nascent nun shrugged and said slowly in a high-pitched voice, “It’s Jesus.” Her voice was nasally, and the words oozed out of the woman’s mouth the same way her tongue tried to squeeze through her teeth. She smiled as if someone told her the more teeth she showed, the more Jesus would love her.

  Their attempts to deny eternal frowndom weren’t just displeasing to the eye; they represented Terese’s possible future. Nope. She shook her head before speaking. “This is not… a good way to find new nuns.”

  “We thought that with your advanced home economics skills and your lack of a boyfriend, a nunnery might be a good fit for you.”

  “Wow.”

  “Have you considered being a nun, dear?”

  “No. I’m going to leave now and imagine this is less insulting, embarrassing, and depressing than it actually is.” She turned to leave, but turned back aro
und. “Anger is not my currency, and if it were, I would not spend it on your sad situation.”

  “Wait. God brought you here.” One of the nuns put up a hand to try to make her stop. “What would He say if you denied this opportunity?”

  “God would say, ‘Y’all are nuts.’ Maybe tone it done a notch on the whole recruitment process. You know, actually this a great opportunity. You’re what drives me crazy about living in this country. I don’t know how you got my information, but I don’t want any contact from your organization ever again. You’re trained to think that you have a monopoly on goodness, and you seem to have zero remorse for the marketing, packaging, and manipulation of God. Does this work? I mean really. Are there women who come here thinking they’re going on some speed-dating thing and then realize being a nun is easier?”

  The youngest nun with the weird smile looked down at the table, closed her eyes, and said, “Jesus will never hurt you the way that men will.” She tilted her head with her eyes still closed and jutted her jaw to the side while pinching the closed fingers of her fist.

  Terese put her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry some asshole drove you to this. But I’m not that afraid of even the most fucked up men.”

  One of the older nuns squints. “Given that you came here alone after a cold call without any other information, you’re clearly not.”

  “Yep. Shame on me for believing this was a dating thing and for not having a male escort to keep me safe. I’m totally a wanton hussy in need of some unsolicited Christ love.” Terese walked out the door. “Bye ladies. I hope Jesus finds your clitoris.”

  11

  Colonial Neighbors

  With Terese in the kitchen packing up the brownies and Mew taking a mid-morning nap, Max feels aimless. He walks over to the corner of the living room, looks at a little line of ants crossing a solid but aged desk, and pounds it crushing a few of the tiny arthropods and rattling an ancient-looking computer. It can barely connect to the neighbor’s wireless internet which is titled magicpornmachine01. Why 01? Was magicpornmachine already taken? Whatever. No password required. The computer collects more dust than user information since the signal never rises above two bars. It’s a protection service really. At no cost, the endless distractions of the internet remain out of reach. No YouTube or streaming videos or downloads of any kind reach their screen unless they start it, pause it, and let it buffer overnight. They tell themselves this is good; purity through simplicity like technological monks on the edge of society. However, when Terese hears Max crashing on the desk, she wonders if it might be worth it to throw out her ideals and an extra few bucks a month so that Max might have a less-noisy way of entertaining himself. Even technological monks need a little something from time to time. Pound rattle. Pound rattle. Pound rattle. Pound rattle.

  Terese leans her head out of the kitchen and interjects, “Killing them won’t make them go away, you know.”

  Max sucks at his teeth. “Well, we have to stop them somehow. They’re attacking my desk.”

  Terese walks out of the kitchen after putting the last batch of brownies in the oven to see the full absurdity of Max and all the tiny crimson blotches on the desk. “Well, now, maybe they’re not actually attacking, Max. Maybe they’re just curious or even polite. Think about it, somebody new moves into the neighborhood and they just want to make friends… with their new neighbors… as a colony.”

  “I don’t want to make friends with them.” Pound rattle. Pound rattle. Pound rattle.

  Terese rolls her eyes. “So you crush them like sinners under the fists of a vengeful god? That’s a cruel thing, Max. How would you feel if an angry fist fell out of the sky and crushed you?”

  Max pauses with his fist at its pinnacle, “I wouldn’t feel anything because I would be dead.” Pound rattle.

  Terese raises her pointer finger. “What if the fist fell on the only one you could ever love in your whole life?”

  Max lowers his eyelids and stares at Terese. “Ants don’t have love lives, or complex emotions.”

  Terese raises her eyebrows. “How do you know they don’t have complex emotions? How do you know you have complex emotions?”

  Max purses his lips together and shrugs. “I kinda try not to.”

  Terese looks down breaking eye contact with Max as he smashes the desk again. “Mmmm, healthy. What if the omnipotent fist of the sky decides you don’t have complex emotions?”

  Max stops and sighs. “They’re just ants.”

  “You’re right, Max. They are just ants. So why is it so important to obliterate them?”

  “Because they’re attacking our desk!”

  “Max, they’re not attacking. They’re just walking on it looking for food. Speaking objectively, you’re attacking the desk more than they are.”

  Louder pounding and rattling.

  Terese pleads, “Just stop, Max.”

  Maximus pauses and leaves the room only to come back carrying a fly swatter in his hand and bug poison under his good arm. He dances joyously, swatting like a one-armed tyrannosaurus rex at anything resembling an ant.

  As he’s about to go for the bug spray, Terese intervenes and takes it away. “You’re not going to spray the whole basement with that toxic shit.”

  Max swats the desk one more time emphatically. “Fine. But I want you to understand something. Death is nothing more than a mathematical certainty. It means nothing. My mass killing of the ants will not have any momentous outcome. Even if you had let me spray the whole basement with bug spray, the downside would be that I might die slightly sooner from toxic fumes. It means nothing to me because when I die, I’ll be dead. I won’t have any questions to ask because I won’t have a mouth or a brain to ask them.”

  “You’re crushing an entire civilization, for what?”

  “It’s not the entire civilization; it’s more like I’m pruning the civilization.”

  “That sounds like it could be a...” Terese puts up finger quotes. “...momentous outcome. Like, you’re altering their evolutionary path or something.”

  Max shakes his head. “Ants don’t breed like that.” Pound rattle. “They work as a colony. Wiping out the workers doesn’t really change the gene pool.” Pound rattle.

  “Would you ‘prune’ a human civilization? Are non-breeding humans just as disposable?”

  Max stops pounding. “Of course not. Humans have potential. Ants steal sugary stuff.”

  Terese opens her eyes wider and glares at Max. “You steal my sugary stuff all the time. Should I crush you with my fists?”

  Max squints with one eye. “I do, but I’m a human. My potential is way more valuable. The point is that the ants don’t sit around and contemplate why an omnipotent fist of the sky wipes them out of existence. They just do their I’m-looking-for-food thing or their I’m-protecting-the-queen thing. They don’t have to worry about having potential.” Max pauses. “Wouldn’t that be nice. We could just do our slaughtering-some-ants thing until an omnipotent fist ends us.”

  Terese lowers her jaw a little and squints her eyes. “You’re so frivolous and full of shit, Max. The only thing ants can do is their own thing. They lack the ability to question their world. What you’re saying is that it would be more preferable to live and die like ants? I’m sorry, but no. If I can stop the omnipotent fist, I will.”

  Max holds up a finger. “If you could stop an omnipotent fist, it wouldn’t be omnipotent. It would be a semi-potent fist.” He cocks his head and looks up. “Semipotent?”

  She sighs. “You’re an idiot, Max. Death might be nothing but a mathematical certainty, but life is definitely something greater than frivolity and some kind of avoidance of potential.” She takes the last batch of brownies out of the oven.

  Max shakes his head. “It must be very pretty to think so. I’ll tell you, it’s sometimes very pleasant to smash things.” Pound rattle.
>
  12

  Trigger

  Gustave barely finished high school. He saw through it pretty early on. Winners and losers so often depended on a teacher’s favorite instead of the smartest person in the room. The poor school he went to didn’t offer anything that interested him. College wasn’t for him because he didn’t want to jump through hoops anymore. What would college be besides more hoops followed by a job with more hoops and a boss telling you how high to jump? No thanks. He saw an opportunity much closer to home.

  Despite not having the money for him to go to college, his parents bought heaps of useless goods made on the other side of the world; an instant S’more maker, a George Foreman grill, promotional bags from Avon, Tupperware, a candle-making kit, a water purifier, an ab-o-matic exercise machine, multiple massage devices, countless pairs of shoes and cheap sunglasses, imitation designer jewelry, camping goods that made it out of the packaging exactly one time. A heap of infomercial dreams unrealized.

  With such an accumulation of unused products, he calculated he could take some of them without his parents ever missing them. With the intention of testing to see how long it took before anyone noticed, he began stealing the random and useless items. He would put it back if or when they asked. He started with the junkiest pieces first. The S’more maker and the imitation jewelry never made waves. The George Foreman grill raised a single drunken afterthought from his father. The last item he took from his mother was a gaudy diamond ring from his great aunt. She asked two days later if anyone had seen it. He put it back the next day, thinking he had found the upper limit on what he could take. Two days would have been more than enough time to get some money for it at a pawnshop.

  Then he hit his parents’ friends’ houses in order to practice, this time keeping what he took. If he had been caught, which he never was, he would have given or snuck the goods back to avoid any legal trouble. Finally, he moved on to strangers’ houses. He managed to pay his bills (and then some) by stealing the smallest but frequently most valuable items. He stole the thing that people might not even notice was missing and nothing else. He never cleaned anyone out of an entire jewelry box, nor did he displace anything else in the house. In this way, he believed his chances of culpability to be almost zero. He looked for houses with unlocked doors, and if he suspected an alarm system, he exited immediately.