Blackouts

by Justin Torres

I read how a chronic loser constantly misplaces objects, useful or necessary—in my case, watches, keys, wallets, gloves, hats, sunglasses, eyeglasses. Sometimes they are recovered; mostly they are not. From what I understood, this is a symptom of altered libidinal processes; something misfiring in the deep, where desires are formed, making attachment difficult. (So I’m reenacting some infantile drama of neglect? Perhaps, nene, who knows?) But this made sense to me: In our attachments, whether to objects or others, there exists a continual fluctuation of our energies. We wish to possess, to be possessed, and to be relieved of our possessions all at once. The hoarder solves the problem of value and attachment by holding on. The chronic loser lets it all go.

My father was a proud man, and moody. He could be sentimental, loving, hilarious, but he could also explode into violence. My mother explained this had to do with the prejudice and indignities of poverty he’d dealt with in childhood. Explaining away the “bad father” and redirecting us toward the “good enough father” is so often one of a mother’s covert responsibilities. Yet whatever or whomever flashed in those moments, when he wore the charms and called forth this other persona, with both self-mockery and reverence, this trickster figure, hard and cool—well, I did not want this man explained away. I wanted him to stay.

I suppose a part of him is embarrassed at his own sentimentality, and another part is thinking: How can you blame a person for needing love?”

One of the girls says to the kid, “You walk around with this huge fucking neon sign above your head and this arrow pointing down at you, like those signs in front of motels that say ROOMS AVAILABLE, except your sign says SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED TO ME, and you keep that sign all lit up like that above you, and you want people to ask, you want the whole fucking world to feel sorry for you, but no matter how much you tell it, no one’s ever going to understand, and it’s never going to be enough.” To which the kid replies, “I’ve been fucking these guys.” For a moment, no one speaks. Then one girl laughs, another nods. They’re all high. “For money. I’ve been saving up.”

For years after, I considered never missing a trick to be the highest form of intelligence. Later, I came to realize the cost of believing so fully in one’s powers of perception. In my daily life, at work on the committee, I swing between states of anxious hypervigilance and fantastical egoism. But at night, you see, I find myself incapable of self-delusion, incapable, even, of simple escape, so I drink and drink and still miss nothing. Only I find moments of mercy in the drink, usually around dusk, when at least I feel less.”

I’m always hungry, and often angry, and covetous, and in bed, especially inwardly, I feel a kind of detached disdain, though I’m an expert at hiding all of that, and I hide it for Liam’s sake, or at least I tell myself it’s for his sake, to protect him, and this is one self-justification for the whole prostitution thing, a kind of steam release, where I can at least be myself and hate the sex I need.