forgive the cliché, takes place in every relationship at almost every moment. I remember it from childhood, between friends, between myself and my dad, between me and the kid with the locker next to mine elbowing for space. I’ve seen it in the most intimate relationships I’ve had since, as well as with editors, agents, business clients, waiters, hair stylists, prostitutes, appliance salesmen, and neighbours. How little we understand what’s going on between human beings when choices get made. His way or my way. Her way orthe highway. Why do we lean one way, not the other? How do we learn to force others, imperceptibly, with the precision of acupuncturists channelling and shifting energy flows that no scientist can prove exist? I’ve seen children do this! I’ve had children do it to me! And yet this process of influencing, this jostle of personal power, this rough dance of desires and drives goes utterly unstudied. We don’t even see it happening, though we feel the effect. No wonder, in the parlance of self-help, we’re fucking morons when it comes to other people.
I didn’t really believe Chris needed me to rob a bank. I didn’t think for a second that any contribution I made would mean the difference between success or failure, that I could augment Chris’s skill set. But I did have an inkling, the vaguest, most gossamer insight into what he was really looking for: he wanted nothing more and nothing less than my approval.
Chris must have sensed I was emotionally rattled—wrecked, really, thrown to the side of the road like a hit-and-run victim—by the very idea of robbing a bank, so he went easy on me at first. It was a psychological relief. We did a lot of jokey kid stuff. We played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in a year. We ordered pizza and lobbed rancid farts at each other. We hung out at the mall, played video games in the arcade, and floated around the bookstore for hours. I talked to him about my ambition. He knew I wanted to be a writer, a goddamn great novelist, but it helped me to keep saying it aloud. I also told him about my deeper fear—that I was missing something, that I hadn’t accumulated enough experience in life to write reallygreat work, that I probably never would. I was an eighteen-year-old white male raised in a middle-class suburb in the armpit of North America. What kind of greatness could come from that?
You mean lopping off orc heads in a DnD session isn’t going to cut it?
Chris got it. He always did.
Like all writers who lack life experience, I turned to writing classes to fill the void. I focused on one particular course in second semester that was restricted to seniors unless you put together a kick-ass portfolio. I wanted someone to recognize my talent and give me a shove in the right direction. I worked my ass off to produce something worthy, driven by my fear that ordinary life was a trap designed to funnel me toward mediocrity. For the next few weeks, I roused myself at five to write for a couple hours before getting on with the day. My strategy was not very productive. I was so ripped by lack of sleep that I occasionally threw up. I sat bleary-eyed before my typewriter, not typing more often than I typed. And the words that appeared during those intermittent bursts of gunfire often didn’t sound right. But I was certain I had to squeeze the trigger on a regular, consistent basis, or die a failure.
In early December, the evening after I turned my portfolio in, Chris and I drove to the larger mall (called Mic Mac, after the neighbouring lake, and the Indians who presumably once paddled there) to do some early Christmas shopping. We aimed to find a counter where they sold Chanel No. 5 for the moms (since that was the only gift any mom had ever wanted or been givenin the history of Christmases), and a store where some item not too expensive or embarrassing could be purchased for a dad. Chris drove. (He always drove; which put my role as the driver in his
I didn’t really believe Chris needed me to rob a bank. I didn’t think for a second that any contribution I made would mean the difference between success or failure, that I could augment Chris’s skill set. But I did have an inkling, the vaguest, most gossamer insight into what he was really looking for: he wanted nothing more and nothing less than my approval.
Chris must have sensed I was emotionally rattled—wrecked, really, thrown to the side of the road like a hit-and-run victim—by the very idea of robbing a bank, so he went easy on me at first. It was a psychological relief. We did a lot of jokey kid stuff. We played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in a year. We ordered pizza and lobbed rancid farts at each other. We hung out at the mall, played video games in the arcade, and floated around the bookstore for hours. I talked to him about my ambition. He knew I wanted to be a writer, a goddamn great novelist, but it helped me to keep saying it aloud. I also told him about my deeper fear—that I was missing something, that I hadn’t accumulated enough experience in life to write reallygreat work, that I probably never would. I was an eighteen-year-old white male raised in a middle-class suburb in the armpit of North America. What kind of greatness could come from that?
You mean lopping off orc heads in a DnD session isn’t going to cut it?
Chris got it. He always did.
Like all writers who lack life experience, I turned to writing classes to fill the void. I focused on one particular course in second semester that was restricted to seniors unless you put together a kick-ass portfolio. I wanted someone to recognize my talent and give me a shove in the right direction. I worked my ass off to produce something worthy, driven by my fear that ordinary life was a trap designed to funnel me toward mediocrity. For the next few weeks, I roused myself at five to write for a couple hours before getting on with the day. My strategy was not very productive. I was so ripped by lack of sleep that I occasionally threw up. I sat bleary-eyed before my typewriter, not typing more often than I typed. And the words that appeared during those intermittent bursts of gunfire often didn’t sound right. But I was certain I had to squeeze the trigger on a regular, consistent basis, or die a failure.
In early December, the evening after I turned my portfolio in, Chris and I drove to the larger mall (called Mic Mac, after the neighbouring lake, and the Indians who presumably once paddled there) to do some early Christmas shopping. We aimed to find a counter where they sold Chanel No. 5 for the moms (since that was the only gift any mom had ever wanted or been givenin the history of Christmases), and a store where some item not too expensive or embarrassing could be purchased for a dad. Chris drove. (He always drove; which put my role as the driver in his
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