The Narcissism of Small Differences

by Michael Zadoorian

  Joe had made the room into a work space a few years back. It was meant for both of them: just a lightly bashed-up Paul McCobb fifties maple desk set for their Mac, an old Plycraft imitation Eames lounge chair and ottoman, as well as shelves for all their many books and LPs and CDs and DVDs. It was a place to work or write or read or use the computer, as well as somewhere to go to get away from the other, when it was necessary.

  "Hey," he said, still concentrating on the screen in front of him.

  "What are you working on?" she said from the doorway.

  "Eh, just some reviews for Out of the Attic. Couple of old CDs—Spade Cooley, Mildred Anderson, some Krautrock sampler, Babs Gonzales's memoir, DVD of Two-Lane Blacktop, reissued Nick Drake."

  Ana stepped into the room and walked up behind him. "Ohh, I love Nick Drake."

  Joe nodded, still staring at the screen. "Ah yes, Nick Drake. Supertalented, once-obscure sixties Brit folkie, now ruined by advertising." He looked up at Ana slyly, waiting for her response.

  Ana rolled her eyes, put her hands around Joe's neck, and playfully squeezed his windpipe. "Yes, that's right. It's so horrible. Millions of people actually know how great he is now because his music has been used in—ack!—commercials."

  Joe nodded, half smiling. "Exactly. Ruined."

  Both she and Joe liked to play this game. "Not so much ruined as appreciated."

  "Oh, I see," said Joe. "If by appreciated you mean exploited."

  "That's right, Mr. Arbiter of Taste. I forgot—now people like you can no longer feel special for enjoying his music because he's not obscure anymore. Because an artist can only be good if other people don't know about him. Preferably, he dies poor, alone, and forgotten. Oh, and of an overdose."

  Joe sighed blissfully. "Absolutely. It's the perfect storm of cool. Artists are much better that way, there's no doubt about it." Suddenly, his eyes widened in false indignation. "Wait a second, are you calling me pretentious?"

  Ana patted his unshaven cheek. "Of course I am, dear. And I notice there are plenty of your precious little obscure bands who are quite happy to have their music in commercials."

  "Sellouts."

  And so it went. Both kind of kidding and both kind of serious. Joe resumed typing.

  "I hope you're being pithy," she said, chiding him as he wrote. He had once used that word and she never let him forget it.

  Joe didn't move his eyes from the computer screen, but she saw him smile. "Always down with the pith," he said.

  Ana pulled her purse up over her shoulder. "Okay, I'm taking off now."

  The clicking continued for a few seconds, then stopped. He looked up at her. "All right. Be careful."

  Ana leaned forward to kiss him on the lips. "You going to be around tonight?"

  "Yeah, I think so," he said, adjusting his glasses. "Why?"

  "Thought maybe we could go grab a bite to eat or something since I'll be out of town. A little guilt dinner."

  "I don't have a lot of cash right now, Ana."

  "It's okay, I'll get it. I said it was a guilt dinner. I'm abandoning you here in the tundra while I go frolic on the coast."

  Joe eventually nodded. "Okay, that'd be great then. Thanks."

  "I feel bad for leaving you here to take care of everything. See you tonight." She gave him another quick kiss. "I love you."

  He grabbed her hand as she leaned down to him. "Love you too," he said dolefully, and she knew he was thinking about last night's argument about nothing. "See ya."

  As she headed for the door, Joe gave a little wave and turned back to the computer. "Be careful," he repeated, after she had headed down the stairs, put on her long down jacket, and opened the front door to leave.

  It was always the last thing he said to her every morning when she left for work. There was something comforting about it to Ana. As if he worried that she wouldn't come back. She loved that about Joe, that he thought about things like that.

  On the way to work, she suddenly felt a lot better. She put in a Beth Orton CD and was singing along with "Stolen Car," until she remembered that she had left her stupid laptop at home, still in its padded bag, having meant to do some work last night. Instead, the meltdown with Joe had pretty much taken up the whole evening.

  Ana turned the car around in a bank parking lot. She rolled her eyes at how familiar it felt to her. She wondered how many parking lots she'd turned around in over the last twenty-four years of her life since she started driving. The bad thing was that Joe's sense of direction was even worse than hers. Most couples she knew had at least one person who was good at directions, but not her and Joe. The two of them with a map was a pathetic scene that usually ended with an argument. Thank heaven for GPS.

  At home, not wanting to disturb Joe, she quietly used her key and pushed open the heavy wood door. That was when she heard the sound of a woman gasping for air, a kind of panting. It alarmed her.

  "Joe?"

  The sounds got louder for a moment, then immediately stopped. From the front door, she walked up the stairs, stopping at the door of the study, where Joe was at the computer, clicking screens away while fumbling with something in his lap. Finally, he just slammed shut the top of the computer.

  "What's going on?" she said.

  "Nothing," he snapped, putting both his hands up on the desk, his posture impossibly straight. "What do you want?"

  "Take it easy. I just forgot my computer." Something told her not to step into the room, so she crossed the hall toward the bedroom where she had left her Mac, next to the dresser. She heard muffled cursing from the other room and it was starting to occur to her what she had witnessed. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or be upset.

  Joe appeared at the doorway. "Hey," he said meekly.

  Ana looked at him. His cheeks were burning red and his eyes were everywhere except on her.

  "What's going on?" she said.

  "Nothing."

  She almost laughed. "Right. Nothing. You can't even look at me. You were masturbating, weren't you?" She said it, but not with horror or derision in her voice. She said it as if she had just figured it out, which she had.

  "Um."

  "Jesus, Joe. What was I gone for, like, five minutes?"

  He looked up at her sternly, and then shrugged slightly. "What difference does that make? I thought you were gone."

  "I don't know. I just thought a person would give it a couple of minutes, that's all."

  He exhaled. "I'm sorry."

  "So what were you looking at in there?"

  He frowned at her.

  "Seriously."

  "No," he said angrily. "I don't want to tell you that. Stop it." He headed back into the study.

  Ana followed him. After a few steps, he was confronted by the scene of the crime. He turned to face her again. She was genuinely interested. What was pushing his buttons these days? It sure wasn't her. "Come on, seriously. I want to know."

  Joe sighed loudly. "Jesus, Ana, I don't know. Internet stuff. Porn."

  She stared at him, her head tilted. "Joe, I'm not an expert in porn, but I know it tends to be fairly specific. It's okay, I want to know."

  He scratched hard at his jaw, just below the ear. "You're freaking me out here, Ana."

  "Come on. Really. Please?"

  Joe looked at the floor, eyes wide. "I can't believe this."

  "Joe."

  He exhaled loudly and crossed his arms even tighter. "Fine. Cum-hungry MILFs, okay?"

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "I guess I did. What's a . . . MILF?"

  Joe squeezed his eyes shut. "Just never mind, okay? Jesus, I'm sorry. This will never happen again."

  "Ha! Come on, what's a MILF?"

  "How can you not know this? You work in advertising."

  "We don't advertise porn, Joseph. Tell me."

  "I'm going to tell you, then I'm going to leave the house."

  "Fine."

  "It's an acronym. It means Mothers I'd Like to Fuck."

&nbs
p; She tried not to look aghast. "What? These are women who look like your mother?"

  Joe shook his head violently. "No! Jesus! It's just hot women in their thirties and forties."

  Ana brightened slightly. "Oh. Well, it could be worse." She was trying to keep from laughing. She wondered if she should be more upset about this, but it wasn't like some big surprise that Joe masturbated. They used to talk about things like that, what got them off, what was sexy to them. They used to have phone sex when she was out of town. She used to masturbate a lot more than she did these days.

  "Ana, stop being this way. Stop being so understanding. Yell at me or something."

  "All I'm saying is that it could be worse. Could have been golden showers or bestiality, but it's not. It's women my age."

  Joe looked up at her. "Um. These women don't look anything like you."

  Ana closed her eyes, took a breath, then opened them. He was just standing there with his arms crossed. "You asshole." She hefted the soft tote that held her computer and flung it over her shoulder.

  "Ana."

  "Fuck you. Go jerk off, you pig."

  "Ana. Shit."

  She pushed past him through the doorway and headed toward the stairs. Behind her, she thought she heard the sound of a zipper.

  5

  The Detroit Way

  It was good to get out of the house. Café Limbus wasn't too crowded during the day, so it was a decent place to work. At night, it was filled for open mics, hootenannies, and poetry readings, and during the weekend, there were popular vegan brunches, which Joe mostly avoided. Though he wasn't Vegan Intolerant like Chick, it was still a tad crunchy for his tastes. During the day, though, it was just crowded enough that you didn't feel like the only loser in the coffeehouse. By the time the waiter dragged himself from the huddle of smokers out on the sidewalk and loped over to his table to take his order, Joe had his laptop set up.

  Tall and brutally thin, the waiter had long dyed-black hair twisted into shanks and tufts of varying lengths, and, of course, endless tattoos. All ink from fingertips to neck. Joe couldn't really distinguish what any of the tats were, but it had the effect of his body being turned inside out, as if the guy were wearing arteries, capillaries, and tendons on the outside. It was many more tattoos than Joe normally preferred on a food-service professional. He ordered a large black coffee and the waiter disappeared in a vapor trail of nicotine fumes.

  Joe felt weird as hell about what had happened. He was relatively sure that Ana wasn't going to leave him for it, but it made him realize the precariousness of his situation. The fact was, when he really thought about it, she had a lot of much more valid reasons to boot him out than wanking to Internet porn—most of them financial. Ana paid most of the rent, most of the utility bills, and bought most of the food. He would kick in maybe a quarter of the rent and bills (on a good month), pay for his own cell phone, and was the house's main purveyor of alcoholic beverages, which should be noted was a fairly sizable amount, since they both loved to drink. That was it though. He got a small stipend from the paper for his column. His income was also supplemented by whatever he got from freelance feature writing and reviewing at various low-paying pubs and websites. (Then there was the dirty little secret of selling the review copies of everything that he received. Everyone did it, but no one admitted it. Some months, he made more money doing that than by writing. Unfortunately, everything was now starting to switch to digital.)

  Awhile back, he'd had a steady gig working for the Detroit News as a second-string film reviewer (kids movies, trashy comedies, B horror films, and anything else the regular film critic was too cultured to watch). It was a good feeling, paying his share of the household expenses. Although Ana usually didn't complain about her disproportionate share of the bills, he could tell she was pleased that he was finally pulling his weight for a change. Then after a year or so, there was a change in management and he was suddenly out. It had happened just as he was getting used to the extra cash.

  The fact that he wasn't paying his way somehow made today's situation all the more embarrassing. It wasn't that he felt bad about jerking off. He, like most men he knew—married, single, gay—pretty much considered it a normal thing to do. He felt bad about getting caught. Maybe he felt bad getting caught while Ana paid for the Internet access.

  He also felt guilty about the pornography part. Certainly part of him liked it (it wasn't hard to figure out which part), but another part of him found it grotesque. Basically, he considered himself a fairly enlightened modern male, but most of the porn out there was not so enlightened. In his queries on the Internet, he had found none of the "couples friendly" material that was alleged to exist, supposedly erotic to both men and women. (At one point, he was thinking of getting some of this mythical pornography for him and Ana to watch together as a sort of turn-on, something to rekindle the fire and all that pathetic nonsense, then he chickened out.) No, what he saw out there during his research was anything but couples friendly. It certainly wasn't woman friendly—hell, it wasn't even man friendly. A lot of it was just mean. It didn't look like fun, but the women were usually trying to act like it was, which just made it sad. He didn't understand why anyone would subject themselves to this sort of thing.

  Of course, he did know the reason: money. That was the main reason for everyone doing things they didn't want to do. He was sure there was other stuff too: bad childhoods, bad parents, bad relationships, bad pornographers, and, well, stupidity. Stupid men and stupid women. That was the main thing you saw in pornography—all the plenteous and wondrous degrees of stupidity in all its glory. All the men thinking they were so smart and all the women just doing what they had to do. Joe hated the men in porn and felt sorry for the women, but it didn't seem to stop him from looking at it.

  The waiter arrived at the table with Joe's coffee. Besides the tattoos, he also had all the requisite epidermal punctures—lip, nose, brow, cheek. It was a lot of hardware. Joe considered asking him if his face ever got tired of carrying that around all day. He thought of a book from the fifties that he had reviewed in Out of the Attic a few weeks earlier called The Dud Avocado, where the main character, a young woman living in Paris, refers to a group of expatriate nonconformists as "so violently individualistic as to be practically interchangeable." Was that why this guy looked familiar? Then it came to him.

  "Hey, man," said Joe. "You in a band?" Of course you are. Why am I even asking?

  The illustrated man nodded somnolently. "Yeah, dude. I'm in a couple. The Stuckists and Merkins of Death."

  "Right," Joe said, nodding back. "Yeah. I've seen the Stuckists. You guys are really good. Didn't I just hear that you all got signed?"

  "Ye-huh." He set down Joe's large Ferndale blend, then took out a cloth and smeared a small blotch of spilled sugar and coffee around on the table.

  "That's awesome. No offense, but why are you still waiting tables?"

  The waiter pursed his lips and cocked his head. "Got to make a living, dude. I ain't no rock star yet."

  "Pretty close."

  "Maybe in Rotterdam, but not here." He gave Joe a smirk. "Anyway, I ain't gonna blow all my cash, then get dumped by the record company for not selling enough units. I know too many people that's happened to. So I work here when we're not rehearsing or touring. Keeps my head straight."

  Joe couldn't help but smile. "I guess you're right. Still, good for you. Congrats."

  "Whatever, thanks. Need anything else?"

  "No, I'm good. Thanks."

  "Rock on."

  That last comment by the waiter was made at a level of irony that Joe almost couldn't hear anymore. Dog-whistle irony. It was something that was happening more and more these days. Humor he couldn't quite laugh at, cultural references that he wasn't quite getting anymore. Was he getting to the point where he just wasn't understanding the younger generation? Oof.

  Then there was the comment about how working in a coffeehouse "keeps my head straight." So funny. This was one of the thing
s Joe loved about Detroit. Even the creative folks, at least the ambitious ones, the people who were getting their work out there, their music or writing or art, hardly ever quit their crummy day jobs. The only people who did were musicians who had to because their bands were touring Europe all the time. Places like Berlin and Dusseldorf and Amsterdam absolutely loved Detroit music and pretty much everything to do with the place. Strange: to most of America, it was fucked-up Detroit, a forgotten manufacturing wasteland with decaying buildings, and the murder capital of the nation. But to Europe, Detroit was the embodiment of überurban, echt-industrial, protoapocalyptic, rust-belt cool. (At least it was to the extremely well-paying Euro culture magazines for which he sometimes wrote about the Detroit scene.) Europeans were way more hip to the positive things going on in Detroit, the music and art and history, the grit and spirit of the people—and even if they sometimes overappreciated the aesthetics of blight, they at least understood the way the whole place somehow inexplicably got under your skin.

  Even if a Detroit band made it big, you'd still hear them say things like, "I haven't forgotten how to deliver pizzas," or "I could go back to doing upholstery work if I had to." It was that twisted Midwestern work ethic, the factory-rat DNA that threaded through Detroiters, embedded by generation after generation of immigrants who put their heads down and ground it out in a loud, grimy, windowless place for thirty or forty years, because that was just what you did.

  There weren't discussions about happiness or fulfillment or self-actualization. You shut up and went to work because people were counting on you. Then, after all those great-grandfathers and grandfathers and fathers and mothers who toiled silently (and often bitterly), came the spoiled generations after, the ones that went to college, that thought it was their right to be happy at a job.

  That was Joe, of course, who had deluded himself into thinking that he could actually make a living as a freelance writer. He used to think it was okay not having that much money, always buying cheap beer and thrift-store clothing. It was officially part of his lifestyle. It was part of Ana's too, at one time. Now, here in his late thirties, being poor didn't seem like so much fun anymore. (During his brief tenure at the News, he had developed a taste for microbrews and top-shelf booze. He started drinking above his station.) He was tired of saying things like "I don't have a lot of cash right now" to Ana. He was tired of being a mooch. He was getting the feeling that Ana was tired of him being a mooch too.