The Art of Living Other People's Lives

by Greg Dybec

  The second time around would be different, I told myself. I tell myself this a lot, but this time I really believed it, because thinking back about the kids I painted with, and all the others I didn’t get a chance to paint with, it’s clear that having a second chance is a luxury, not a guarantee.

  Millennial Mousetrap

  My first ever apartment was a small two-bedroom in Astoria, Queens, located directly above a deli with a neon sign and the kind of tuna salad you always think about ordering but never do. So I wasn’t surprised when I saw a mouse. It was more of a shadow that darted past my feet one night while I staggered, half asleep, to the bathroom. It spurred a delayed shock in me—the mouse was probably back downstairs in the deli munching on crumbs by the time I flailed my limbs and jumped backward, like a lagging video-game character.

  I was oddly proud that I had survived my first run-in with a New York City mouse. Growing up in suburban Long Island, the only things that ever got into my home were spiders and ants. I was in the big leagues now.

  After I broke the news to my roommate Phil, who had grown up across the street from me, also without mice, we went on a search for the most classic-looking mousetrap on the market. We decided on an old-school wooden trap with “kills mice” written across the package in large, no-nonsense letters. This was enough of a guarantee for us.

  We set up one of the death traps with a dab of peanut butter as bait and placed it on top of the stove, where we had found mouse droppings. (For some reason, mice have the luxury of having their shit called droppings.) The next morning I woke to find a little gray body, cold and stiff, on the stove. The trap had come right down on its head, collapsing its skull in a gruesome way. I couldn’t look at it for more than a few seconds at a time.

  I felt conflicted about the small corpse in front of me. The mouse had seemed much more menacing when it was just a speeding shadow. Now he looked tiny and sad. Perhaps we could have compromised with it before going the murder route. Maybe the miniature shits were actually kind of cute. It was I who deserved to be branded with “kills mice,” not the mousetrap. I shook my head. Clearly, I was going soft.

  Phil helped convince me that we’d made the right choice. Mice carried diseases. We couldn’t spare the life of anything that took a dump where we cooked and ate. But I was glad I at least felt some remorse for my actions.

  As we stood looking down at the mouse, like we were attending some miniature, horribly depressing funeral, I was reminded of a time when Phil and I were younger and came across a dead bird in the middle of the road where we were riding our bikes. We kept riding back and forth, our tires coming closer and closer to the body each time. Eventually one of us, I can’t remember who, “accidentally” ran it over. The guts popped from the bird with force and we fled the scene as fast as our legs would pedal. The fact that I still feel sorry to this day has to count for something.

  Over the next few months, mice would come and go. We’d find droppings in strange places or get startled by a quick-moving shadow with a tail. Each time we’d plop peanut butter onto a trap and within hours we’d be chucking a dead mouse into the trash. It was like clockwork. We woke up, went to our respective jobs, killed a mouse or two, and went to sleep. We ran a very efficient operation. At twenty-two years old, living on our own for the first time, we felt like we were handling the real world the way it was supposed to be handled. No questions asked.

  But one day, we came home to find an untouched trap that was somehow missing its peanut butter. We stood above it, staring like it had a secret to share. Which it did. We determined that we had used too much peanut butter and the mouse was able to eat it without actually stepping on the trap. So we set up a new trap with a smaller amount and called it a day.

  But for the next few weeks we’d wake up to the same untouched trap, perplexingly devoid of the peanut butter that had been added the night before. We did our research and learned that some mice are too light to set off a trap, even the classic wood and steel death machines we’d called on to carry out our dirty work. The next step up was a futuristic-looking mechanism that required the mouse to climb inside before snapping its deadly fangs shut, guaranteeing a kill each time. Compared to this sleek-looking robotic executioner, we may as well have been stoning the mice to death. Our mousetraps were straight out of Tom and Jerry and at least a decade behind modern mouse-killing technology.

  We set the new trap up on the stove, which by then was caked in shit pretty much every morning. With the amount of free peanut butter we’d been offering the little guy it was no surprise he had to clean out his system so often. On top of the white stove, the shiny plastic trap looked like an alligator poking its long, crooked snout out of the water, waiting patiently to snatch its next meal. I went to bed confident.

  The next morning we woke to find a long tail snaking its way out of the trap. Phil ran to look in excitement, but when he grabbed it the mouse jumped out and made a run for it. It made sure to stop on the counter and get a good look at us both, its beady eyes cutting right through us, before it took off under the stove. If it could have given us the finger, it would have.

  From then on, the mouse terrorized our lives. Day in and day out it let us know it was faster than us, cleverer than us, and—through a series of inexplicably intricate maneuvers requiring splinter cell–like elusiveness—better than us. I have a theory now that a person isn’t a true New Yorker unless they’ve encountered a mouse that has made them question the proposed hierarchy of species.

  Every step we took in the apartment was a cautious one. We’d peek around corners and walk on tiptoes, our eyes darting to each corner of the room with every hint of movement. The place may as well have been haunted.

  No matter how well we checked a room, the mouse would find a way to scurry past, scaring the living shit out of us each time. If we were on the couch watching a movie, it would run through our feet. If we had company over, it would do laps around the room, making sure every guest caught a glimpse. Each time I’d jump up in panic or let out a yelp more embarrassing and high-pitched than the last.

  We were losing the battle in a psychological war. We were simply renting rooms in the mouse’s apartment. Residents in a rodent house.

  At the time, we had a third roommate, Ethan, living with us so Phil and I could cut costs by sharing one of the bedrooms. Ethan was the true definition of a stoner, unable to get through a day without being high. He went to work high, worked out high, ate high, lived high. His room was decorated with enough grinders, bongs, bowls, and rolling papers to start a wholesale business. Each day we’d ask him to not smoke in the apartment, and each day he’d give a heartfelt apology that truly convinced us he’d never do it again.

  One night Phil and Ethan came back into the apartment after smoking. Whenever Ethan did go outside to smoke he’d invite Phil, as if to show off the fact that he was cooperating with our requests. We were all sitting on the couch, Phil and Ethan’s mouse paranoia heightened since they were high, when we were startled by a loud scratching coming from the kitchen. The rapid scratches were relentless and sounded like nails quickly sliding across a chalkboard.

  We made our way to the kitchen in slow motion, peeking our heads around the corner. Inside the sink was the mouse. The tiny bastard must have fallen in and couldn’t quite make its way up the slick stainless-steel edges of the deep sink. It would get a running start each time, but its small body didn’t have the momentum to carry it over the edge to freedom.

  As afraid as we were to go near it, we understood this might be the only chance we’d get to end the nightmare. “We’ll drop the trap on it,” Phil suggested, and I realized he was right. The murder would have to be done with a trap. Anything else, like dropping a book or swinging a hammer, would be too real. The trap allowed you to at least sleep at night. The blood wasn’t on your hands directly.

  Phil picked up the cocked and loaded trap from the stove and held it steadily above the sink. The mouse sprinted from side to side in unpredic
table zigzags. Phil dropped the trap, but the mouse easily eluded it. Phil tried this several times while anxiously giggling and dancing around on his tippy-toes as he reached in to retrieve it. After a few more tries it was obvious that the mouse was just too fast.

  “If only we could slow him down somehow,” Phil muttered.

  Ethan’s face lit up. “I have the greatest idea ever.” Both their eyes were bloodshot and their slow speech hung in the air like the smell of gas. It occurred to me in that moment how high they really were.

  “You know how weed, like, makes us slow and tired?” he asked. “What if, like, we got the mouse high to slow it down?”

  A smile crept across Phil’s face, as if the answer was that obvious all along. High conversations are often among the most poetic. They are profound in their simplicity and earnestness. A person in the midst of a high thought can never be thoroughly convinced that what they’re saying isn’t truth. There’s something exceptionally admirable about that sincerity.

  “This can work,” Ethan said assuredly, desperate for us to believe him.

  Ethan brought out his biggest bong and he and Phil took turns taking monster hits and directing the smoke into the sink with oven mitts. After about five hits each, the smoke was so dense in the sink you couldn’t even see the mouse. Phil and Ethan could barely stand and were in the grips of the kind of howling, full-body laughter that can only be caused by a scheme devised with your friends. And weed.

  After the smoke cleared and Phil and Ethan’s coughing fits had settled down, we eagerly huddled together to take a look at the mouse. It stood still in one place, its beady eyes staring dead ahead.

  “I think it’s high,” Phil whispered.

  He was right. For the last few torturous months we’d only seen the mouse scurry feverishly around with endless energy, and now, after being on the receiving end of a few bong hits, he was as apathetic and stagnant as a regular pothead.

  Phil raised the plastic trap over the little guy and this time it fell straight onto its target, swallowing the mouse up in one vicious snap. The problem was solved.

  Ethan took another hit from the bong.

  And people are worried about millennials running the world.

  Confessions of a God-Fearing Atheist

  If you were to ask me if I believe in God, I’d say it’s hard to imagine there’s one person overseeing this whole mess whose name isn’t Mark Zuckerberg or who doesn’t have top-level security clearance with the NSA. Yet some nights I find myself under my covers, apologizing to God in a half whisper for doubting His existence. Herein lies my dilemma with committing to one belief. I’ve met plenty of self-proclaimed atheists and a ton of people my age who wholeheartedly believe in God, though I find myself somewhere in the middle, prepared to live-tweet the second coming but not expecting it to ever actually happen.

  I blame my uncertainty on the fact I grew up in an age where it takes two seconds and a Wi-Fi connection to find the answer to just about any question. Having instant accessibility to information makes it difficult to buy into the idea there’s a power greater than the battery in our cell phones. It also makes it easy to dismiss religion as being outdated and man-made. When you type the phrase “Religion is” into Google’s search bar, the autocomplete suggestions that appear are “bullshit,” “dying,” “the opium of the people,” and “fake”—in that order. Of course, the one question the Internet can’t answer is, What happens to us after we die? I mean what really happens. Not just the fact that worms eat through our decomposing corpses and fertilize the earth. Unless that is all that happens.

  It’s this fear of the unknown that leaves me hanging on to faith despite my skepticism. It’s also why I end up apologizing to God more than I find myself praying. Aside from apologizing for doubting His existence, I’m often saying sorry for wondering things like, Did Jesus ever get friend-zoned? or Will God ever be a trendy name for kids in Brooklyn? Luckily, I was taught that God is willing to forgive anyone, which is an extraordinary deed. Even Santa keeps a naughty list.

  When I do find the time to pray, my prayers are infrequent and selfish. I’ll ask God to help me get a raise and make sure a store has sneakers in my size. Then I feel guilty and go right back to apologizing. The next day (especially if the sneakers were out of stock) I’m back to doubting there’s anyone on the other end of the phone line of my internal thoughts. The cycle of confusion is a draining one.

  When I was younger I attended Catholic mass on Sundays with my family, along with religious education classes once a week. Every Monday I’d file into the church basement with twenty other tireless kids to learn about Catholicism from a volunteer teacher who looked and spoke like he was in the mafia. I wasn’t allowed to watch The Sopranos at the time, but from the scenes I’d caught my parents watching, I figured my teacher, with his slicked-back hair and larger-than-average gold cross around his neck, was a hired gun for God.

  Religious education actually felt a lot like after-school detention, though that could have been the point. Throwing kids into a classroom in the church basement and giving them work that resembles what they receive in school is an effective method of teaching, after all. As far as I knew, Jesus was as real as George Washington, since they both had Xeroxed worksheets about their lives handed out by adults. So I made my communion and confirmation and ate the body and blood of Christ without giving it a second thought.

  As I grew older I never denounced my faith. I sort of just stopped thinking about it, like a scab I’d finally learned to stop picking at. My mother on the other hand has always been religious. She’s not fanatically religious and she doesn’t push any of her beliefs on anyone else. But she does believe, and finds a great deal of comfort in the church and the community it offers. One day she was giving me a ride home to my apartment in Queens and played a CD of a priest’s sermon in the car. I found it amazing how well I knew the passages, names, and songs from a childhood of attending church. It was like hearing the very first Now That’s What I Call Music! album and realizing just how big of an impact those mainstream songs had on your life. But what did any of it really mean to me? Did the fact that I remembered prayers and the stories of some of the apostles mean I was religious? It reminded me of high-school science classes. Sure, I had memorized some facts for a few tests, but that didn’t mean I really learned anything. If you were to ask me today what a sedimentary rock is, I’d probably say a type of music.

  I decided then that I owed it to myself to form my own opinion about religion and faith as an adult. I figured the simplest way to do so would be to go back to church, and luckily there was one only a couple blocks from my apartment. The only problem was keeping the visits consistent. I’d go one week and walk out feeling surprisingly satisfied, though I couldn’t tell if it was simply the same satisfaction that comes with checking something off a to-do list. Then I’d end up not going for a full month. I did attend a free weeknight showing of Les Misérables in the church’s basement thinking it would make up for missing mass, but that just made me feel like I was cheating the system.

  Since I couldn’t manage to get to church frequently, I tried to at least keep my praying consistent. I knew plenty of people who believed in God but didn’t affiliate with a particular religion. Maybe defining God on a personal level would be a more productive first step than jumping right back into a community of devout Catholics at least twice my age. With thousands of religions and traditions around the world, there’s clearly no one right way to do things.

  At night I made a conscious effort to not mention material things in my prayers. I instead asked God to look over the people I cared about most. After running through the list of names, I’d converse with Him briefly, the way I would with a distant uncle at a family reunion. I didn’t say anything of much substance. I was really just trying to get acquainted and feel out the situation. Though on one particular night, I decided to lay it all out on the table and admit to Him that I was in the process of determining what I actually be
lieved in. Then I thought, if God were listening, wouldn’t He just know everything I was thinking without my having to say it? The idea made my head hurt the same way the ending of Inception did and I fell asleep shortly after.

  When spring came around I planned a spiritual venture to Central Park by myself. I had read somewhere that to know God is to know nature and appreciate all that He has created. I may have seen it on a bumper sticker or refrigerator magnet. It was a gorgeous day and I strolled through the park alone, doing my best to take in my surroundings and keep an eye out for a sign. But mostly I just tripped over my own feet behind groups of tourists and running, screaming kids. I eventually settled on a bench in a less crowded area where I could do some quiet reflecting, but was distracted by a man having a picnic alone off to my right. I watched as he fumbled with a hot dog before it fell from his hands and into the dirt. Without hesitation he picked it up, wiped the specks of dirt and loose blades of grass off with his hand, and placed it back in the bun so he could continue eating. I decided I’d had enough nature for the day.

  Praying and trying to find places of solitude in a bustling city soon became as sporadic as my church visits. During most weeks I was so consumed with work and my social life that I’d forget I was supposed to be on a makeshift spiritual journey. My life had become busier than it had ever been. The website I’d helped build from the ground up got acquired by a larger media conglomerate, things with my girlfriend were starting to get serious, and I had just landed my first book deal, which had been a dream since my first high-school English class. Things were going well, to say the least. And when things are going well, praying doesn’t seem as necessary as when they’re going to shit.