Ways and Means

by Daniel Lefferts

He began to suspect that he was an ordinary person who would be leading an ordinary life if he didn’t have money and that Elijah was an extraordinary person who would be leading an extraordinary life if he weren’t broke.

“I love a dog that can kill,” Jay said. “He sits, he stays, he waits for his treat. But his genes remember. Ancient aggressions course through him. It’s a little like the gays”—he flicked Elijah’s arm—“don’t you think? They lie around listening to Diana Ross, drinking their vodka sodas. But they lift, they run. They have bodies made for war.”

“That there exists no better metaphor for the world we live in,” he said. “Top and bottom, lord and serf, boss and peon, victor and vanquished. A totally unnatural and therefore creative act. Two individuals inclined by instinct to dominate, locked in a struggle for power that brings even its winner sorrow and even its loser ecstasy.”

“You know what those rallies look like to me?” Jay said. “Like the first three minutes of a fantastic orgy. Bodies shifting, hands traveling, gazes leering—clothes are about to come off. Those people, they’re tired of their daytime lives. They’re tired of being browbeaten, of being on their best behavior. They’re ready to express their most beautiful, most brutal instincts. And they’re looking in awe at their dear leader, with their mouths open and their legs spread, waiting for him to overpower them, to fuck them into oblivion.”

For these people, the problem with the ‘elite’ isn’t that they’re oppressive. It’s that the elite’s form of oppression is too respectable, too educated and sterile, too bleh. It doesn’t excite them, it doesn’t satisfy them, it doesn’t validate their erotic impulses. Trump, in his swaggering authoritarianism, does. He swings his dick around in a way that they understand, and they’re content to live through him. Even if he turns around and crushes them, even if he takes that dick and fucks them with it, they’ll be happy, they’ll be ecstatic, because someone will have crushed, someone will have fucked, someone will have claimed his beastly freedom, and their carnal essence will have found vicarious expression.”

Money is one of the ways we sublimate the libido. Whenever we talk about money we’re really talking about fucking.

“Gay men understand the centrality of the libido better than anyone,” he said. “They conduct their lives with lusting rapacity. They earn good grades, secure jobs and promotions, acquire wealth, climb social ladders, give perfect wedding presents, curate wardrobes and home furnishings, all with the same ravenous zeal they bring to their fucking. They know, better than anyone, that fucking is where the truth of life resides. And they understand the authoritarian nature of desire. They top, they bottom, they roar in conquest and squeal in defeat. They get down on their knees and look up at their lords with worship. They know that, whether they fuck or get fucked, they’ve made contact with the beating heart of human experience, and the beating heart of history.

“My project is offering the most truthful statement about America as it exists today,” Jay said. “We yearn, we clamor, we pursue our dreams by any ways and means. But it’s all futile. We’re all fucked, and it feels good to be fucked. The only solution to the pain is to accept it and give in to it, to see the joy in it. The only thing we can do, to save our sanity, is step back from this struggle, this orgy of striving and suffering, and admire it in its cruel beauty.”

“Why be disdainful when you can be curious? Why be righteous when you can be fascinated? Why be dismissive when you can be interested? It’s so much more fun. I thought you knew that.”

It occurred to him that the crucial difference between Mark and Jay was that Mark was gone and Jay was here, that Mark had abandoned him and Jay had quartered him, and that while there were a million things he could do to drive Mark away there was literally nothing he could do to make Jay cast him off. He could murder someone and Jay’s first response would be to ask what it had felt like.

Add up everything you’re willing to give, subtract what you might get back, and whatever’s left over is the measure of your soul.

Renounce, renounce! It was the hardest and simplest thing to do. Renounce your object, abandon your singular infatuation, give up whatever yearning blinds you to everything but its endpoint, diverts your energy away from everything but your pursuit, justifies whatever harm, whatever waste, your quest entails. Renounce, renounce, and see how your love flourishes.