Life, Lies, and the Little Things Read online

The walk back to his apartment after hearing the news that he had not been chosen as the new senior attorney was easily the longest of his life. How delusional he had been. Somehow he thought that his success would solidify the position for him but it actually ensured that he would not be selected. It only made financial sense to keep him where he was. He was already forced to work with the most lucrative clients and the firm could only lose money by promoting him and allowing him to choose his own. His aspirations to work with lower income clients had become common knowledge in the firm. They logically had to promote someone who would chase the six figure clients. This was not news to be taken lightly. Later that day, he sat, how I most often remember him, on his living room couch, with his thoughts turned completely inward. An empty glass and an unopened bottle of vodka sat before him on the table. Held tightly yet delicately in his hand was the gun his uncle gifted to him on his twenty-first birthday, a few years before he passed. It was his uncle’s most valuable possession; a custom crafted Beretta 918 with an ivory plated handle. Its small frame fit comfortably his hand. A single .25 ACP round rested in the chamber, not designed to do much damage yet enough to end a life, if well placed, from point blank range.

  Click, click. Click, click. Click, click.

  His thumb gently slid the safety back and forth, with a nearly hypnotizing rhythm. Besides the pendulum of his thumb, he sat completely motionless. A looming thought consumed him, a thought that had been ever so slightly creeping up on him over the past few years. Yet that night he could no longer push it to the back of his consciousness.

  He was a liar, a phony, a hypocrite.

  He was no different than the reality TV stars and pop singers. His entire life he had lied, in any way necessary, and for what? He had always had a greater end to justify the means and now that end had been shattered. The man selected as the new senior attorney was, in fact, younger than him and considering the amount of money that would soon be lining his pockets, there was virtually no chance that the position would be available in the foreseeable future. Sure he could go to another firm but there was no guarantee things would be any different there, and even if they were, none of that mattered to him then. It initially seemed to be a fairly recoverable blow, yet it now brought rise to a far more disturbing reality. He had lied so endlessly that he barely had a vague concept of who he actually was, what he wanted, or what he believed. He had compromised something of such underestimated value, all under the assumption that he had control over the external happenings of his life. Through lies he had always been able to obtain desired outcomes, degrees, jobs, friendships, favors, and pleasures. For the first time in his life the extent of his lack of control had been actualized. Perhaps the greatest lie he had ever told, his most convincing deception, was that he had convinced himself that, if he was willing to lie, he commanded a fundamental control over his life. The only control he had, or perceived control for that matter, resided deeply within his mind now. The only aspect of the external world that he seemed to have any dominion over, at that very moment, was the gun in his hand.

  He had never used the gun. It was only removed from the safe on the long nights of the riots. He often sat in a similar fashion on his couch, gun in hand, as he heard the shouts, broken glass, and sirens in the streets. Of course, the sirens came not from police cars but ambulances, since the police rarely bothered themselves with defusing the riots unless they got completely out of hand or threatened to reach Upper West Side. Though it seemed evident that the chaos below would never reach the ninth floor of his building, he still sat, median nerve to steel, every night the streets caved in. The gun wasn’t even a means of protection, but a form of perceived control. It possessed an indescribable, intrinsic power that provided him with a peculiar sense of peace and comfort.

  The riots had become as common as fortnights, and no one seemed to know what they were even for or against anymore. There was no longer a specific entity, or government, or institution, or even person to blame. The lack of a clear enemy or equalizing force was exactly what made the riots so frequent and uncontrollable. People simply had become so desperate, so inexplicably oppressed, so dissatisfied with their current condition, that they finally reached the crucial tipping point and lashed out against anything in their way. Any provocation, or even lack of submission, became causation for indiscriminate violence and destruction.

  The rioters were not so different from an animal born in captivity who one day begins tossing itself with reckless abandon into the impenetrable viewing glass. It smashes its head until the point of unconsciousness, with no regard for the pain or the futility of its actions. That futility is essentially inevitable because of the lack of awareness of the actual force that restricts its freedom or the meaning behind its captivity. This ignorance forces it to lash out against the only thing in its way, the glass, though it is far from the ultimate confining force. Even if somehow the glass one day gave way to the force of the animal's body, without identification and elimination of those who keep it trapped, its recapture is a forgone conclusion. Matters are only made worse by the fact that it has no concept of what it wants or what it would do outside of captivity. It only knows that it wants out of its current situation. All of its experience has been in captivity and if given freedom would it even have a real chance at bettering its condition? Maybe that’s why many revolutions and rebellions eventually fail. After overthrowing the oppressive force, it is not long before either chaos and anarchy ensue, or, since it is all that they know, a similar condition is reverted back to.

  At least the animal born in the wild, who is taken from it, has an ideal to strive for. At least that animal can find some comfort in its suffering through its memories and dreams of freedom. At least it can remember a more agreeable time and hope that one day it will return to that state. The animal born in captivity cannot, even in its dreams, experience what freedom is truly like. It seems that, if the animal’s most fundamental need was not to simply survive, it would surely attempt or at least desire to take its own life. Its deepest rooted instinct can’t be overridden, yet the desire to no longer continue in its current state, the desire to be free, nearly rivals that instinct. This is where the rioter differs from the captive animal. A human’s most fundamental need is far more ambiguous. As unclear as it may be, it seems that it is definitely something far more than to simply survive, in this life at least.

  Our truest desire may be to love and be loved, or to understand and be understood. It just as well may be to fight for something that one deems worth fighting for. Most intriguingly, it may be to be truly free. The lack of perceived freedom, the lack of an alternative, the lack of control and subsequent lack of hope for a more desirable existence is what was driving the rioters now. It occurred to Waldin that maybe the common rioter, a young, frustrated man with a crowbar in hand, took to the streets on those endless nights, with a deeply suppressed desire to end no one’s life but his own. Each act of destruction and violence was, on the most concealed level, an attempt to provoke someone else to take his life for him and give him at least the illusion of an honorable and purposeful death. Whether by his own hand or the hand of another, the rioter was exercising his final form of control, control over his own existence. Just as billions of other people chose to continue on in their current state that night, he decided to bring his to an end, and in that choice he escaped with the most primitive form of freedom.

  For the first time in several hours the clicking stopped. Waldin felt an unnerving relation to the rioter and it finally occurred to him that he himself was contemplating exercising that final freedom. As abruptly as the thought arose, he frantically expelled it out of his mind. He was a rational man, and there was nothing rational about suicide. Suicide was for the desperate, the hopeless, those with nothing. A man with a six figure salary, a loft in the heart of the city, and a flourishing sex life did not consider putting a bullet in his head. He was simply a man sitting in his living room, holding a means of defense from a real and consid
erable danger. That was all, nothing more. His nerves settled. The clicking began again. The lies slowly maneuvered back into his mind and he came to rather disturbing, yet probably common truth. In all recollection, there was not a single person that he had ever known whom he had never lied to. Even family, even his mother who he cared about so deeply, he had lied to countless times. Complete honesty had never really occurred to him upon meeting someone, and before he even knew someone at all, he usually lied to them at least a few times, without any real malice. Though the same likely holds true for most people, its poignancy was unshakeable in that moment.

  An overwhelming desire for truth overcame him, or, if truth was too vain and ambitious a pursuit for this life, the absence of lies would have to suffice. Maybe honesty was too elusive as well, yet in order to expect it he had to first come forth with it. His only opportunity for any satisfaction or redemption would have to come through the rejection of all lies and delusions in his life. He first had to accept his current condition for what it was. That night he had truly considered killing himself and there was no use in denying it any further. Though the moment had passed and he was as uncertain as ever, Waldin was fairly certain he never wanted to feel that way again. Regardless of what he was in that moment, tomorrow would be a new day and who was to say that he couldn’t wake up tomorrow something of an entirely different nature, a genuine nature?

  He placed the still unopened bottle back on the shelf, locked the gun in its safe, looked at himself briefly yet intensely in the mirror, and, upon ever so faintly smiling, laid down and fell immediately asleep.

  Chapter 3