Real Life

by Brandon Taylor

It had been a couple of years since he had gone to the lake with his friends, a period of time that embarrassed him because it seemed to demand an excuse and he did not have one.

Wallace was on the verge of turning back—he was uncertain if the company of other people, which just a short time ago had seemed somehow necessary, was something he could bear—when

In the past few months, for the first time in his four years of graduate school, he had begun to feel that he might be at the edge of something. He had gotten to the perimeter of an idea, could feel the bounds of its questions, the depth and width of its concerns. He had been waking with the steadily resolving form of an idea in his mind, and this idea had been pulling him through all the unremarkable hours, through the grit and the dull ache when he woke at nine to return to work after going to sleep at five. The thing that had been spinning in the brilliant light of the tall lab windows, like a speck or a mote of dust, had been hope, had been the prospect of a moment of brief clarity. What did he have to show for all that? A heap of dying nematodes.

they fell into that chilly silence that comes between two people who ought to be close but who are not because of some early, critical miscalculation.

it was automatic, this reflex to turn to lab, because as long as they were talking about science they didn’t have to attend to other worries. It was as if graduate school had wiped away the people they’d been before they arrived.

He again felt the edge of shame at seeing something private turning horribly public right before his very eyes. And yet he could not look away.

The words fell out of him like the exhalation of some hot, dense space inside him, and when he was done talking, he looked up, thinking that no one had really been paying attention. That’s how it was. He talked and people drifted in and out of concentration.

He made for the lake. He would gather himself until he could once again present to his friends a reasonable semblance of happiness.

Thom was all affectation all the time. He was getting a doctorate in literary studies, and he was strapped to the drowning enterprise of academia. Still, Wallace liked Thom more than he disliked him. He gave Wallace reading recommendations. He talked to Wallace about books the way the others talked about college football and hockey.

Things moved through the group in this way, information sliding around as if through an invisible circulatory system, carried on veins made of text messages, emails, and whispered conversations at parties.

They kissed again, the slow, downward sweep into desire. And then they came out of their clothes, shedding them like skins, so that when they touched again, they were bare and quivering like small, naked beings new to the world.

Miller made a small sound in his sleep and rolled over, seeking out Wallace’s warmth. Wallace lay back down next to him and let himself be enfolded. The hum of the fan fell in and out of his perception.

Katie is almost feral with a desperation to graduate; she emits a kind of raw and blistering energy.

That his gradients are clearer, sharper than even Katie’s, does not reflect a superiority on his part—a greater mind, for example—so much as it demonstrates that Wallace has the time to burn, time for the idle stupidity it takes to sit in front of a scope and wait for hours.

“It doesn’t have to make sense. She’s gifted,” Brigit says, spitting out Simone’s favorite word for Dana but meaning the opposite. Wallace laughs. Gifted is the sweetness meant to make the bitterness of failure palatable—that a person can fail again and again, but it’s all right, because they’re gifted, they’re worth something. That’s what it all tracks back to, isn’t it, Wallace thinks. That if the world has made up its mind about what you have to offer, if the world has decided it wants you, needs you, then it doesn’t matter how many times you mess up. What Wallace wants to know is where the limit is. When is it no longer forgivable to be so terrible? When does the time come when you’ve got to deliver on your gifts?

He spent hours wondering what he would do if he failed. Not even the humiliation scared him as much as the utter drop into the unknown. He’d have to leave the program. He’d have to figure out a different thing to do with his life. That’s what paralyzed him all those months. It was impossible to do anything. Then, one day in late September, Henrik came to Wallace’s apartment and pressed the buzzer until Wallace relented and let him in. Once upstairs, he dropped a stack of research articles and notebooks and markers on Wallace’s floor and told him to get to it. For hours every day, Henrik taught Wallace everything he’d failed to learn. They covered cell signaling, gradients, morphology, protein structure, the composition of cell walls, the entire lineage of the gonadal tissues in flies and nematodes, yeast screens. Technique after technique Henrik diagrammed, patiently and then less patiently, and when that failed he slapped his thick palm on the table and shouted, You have to learn this, Wallace. Get it together. Wallace sat there listening. Taking notes. Reading the articles every night until the text swam before his eyes. He lost five pounds, then ten pounds, then fifteen pounds. Henrik started taking him to the gym. Forcing him to jog and to read, to recall at any moment some obscure fact of nematode embryological development.

They discuss the lives and fates of faculty the way one might track the paths of minor planets. Careers move in orbits, fixed by certain factors. One typically stays at the level of their graduate or postdoc institution, or goes one step lower. It’s difficult to migrate across tiers. Fellowships lead to good postdocs, good postdocs lead to good grants, good grants lead to faculty positions at institutions that are more or less commensurate with the stature of one’s first faculty adviser. It all rises and falls on money. Wallace’s stipend now comes from a moderately prestigious, nationally recognized research fund. Simone is considered senior in their field. They enjoy a path forward, into the future, that is level and good. It is for this future that he has worked his entire life. For the alignment of these particular advantages.

Professors kissed the backs of their teeth and spoke in that smooth, glossy voice popular in certain widely circulated videos on arts and sciences. Everything was I’m going to tell you a story, or Today, I’m going to share with you three intriguing narratives or I’d like to walk you through how we got from here to here.

“How are you?” Miller asks. Disappointment. A conventional question. All that playful teasing gone to waste.

The most unfair part of it, Wallace thinks, is that when you tell white people that something is racist, they hold it up to the light and try to discern if you are telling the truth. As if they can tell by the grain if something is racist or not, and they always trust their own judgment. It’s unfair because white people have a vested interest in underestimating racism, its amount, its intensity, its shape, its effects. They are the fox in the henhouse.

Wallace bites the tip of his tongue, which is already so raw today. He swallows down what he wants to say: that a person doesn’t belong to you just because you’re in a relationship, just because you love them. That people are people and they belong only to themselves, or so they should. Miller can do whatever he wants with whomever he wants, is the thought that flashes through Wallace. He has a jealous heart. Love is a selfish thing.

“My boyfriend is looking for a boyfriend.” “You don’t know that. You haven’t asked him.” “What are you on there for, on the app, I mean?” “To pass the time, mostly. Curiosity, maybe?”

Wallace has not considered the possibility that Cole, the simplest of all his friends, the kindest and most gentle among them, might be unknowable to him. He has not considered the possibility that the ease of Cole’s nature might be distorting something else, flattening it; or that it might be the result of a carefully orchestrated game, an illusion. All the parties, the deferring in conversation, the thoughtful inquiries about well-being, the baked goods, the plainness of his clothes, the flexibility of his schedule, the placid nature of his demeanor—all of it suggesting a genuine concern for others and a lack of selfish regard. How can Cole, of all people, doubt himself, who he is, when the person he presents to the world is so carefully constructed? It’s only now, even, that Wallace is aware of a certain puckering at the seams, a hint of construction showing through. It’s only now that he realizes that all along, Cole has perhaps been smiling with teeth to hide a grimace.

Of course Cole is afraid to lose Vincent. Of course this is the peak, the pinnacle of Cole’s desires, not only for this relationship, but for the very configuration of things: a career, a loving partner, friends, lovely little parties, tennis on the weekend. What Cole wants from life is, above all else, that matters be settled before they are even raised, that everything fall into place. He expects that they’ll simply finish graduate school and settle into the next phase of life just as they are now, only a little older, a little wealthier, a little better off. He has not planned for a loss, for any of the many ways that life can and will go wrong. Vincent is not just Vincent, but also a symbol, collecting with each passing day more and more significance. He is a ward, an inoculation against the uncertainty of the future.

“Thanks,” Wallace says, letting the edge of an emotion he doesn’t feel rise in his voice. “It’s been really helpful to have people in my life who really get me.”

It is why he does not trust memory. Memory sifts. Memory lifts. Memory makes due with what it is given. Memory is not about facts. Memory is an inconsistent measurement of the pain in one’s life.

“Zoe,” she says by way of introduction. “It’s nice to meet you.” “Same,” he says with more warmth than he feels.

“I think it’s like—you know how when you look back at something and you realize how stupid it was to be upset that Tiffany Blanchard didn’t invite you to her slumber party? And how stupid it was that Greg Newsome didn’t ask you to homecoming? Like, when you’re climbing or hiking or just out there in the hills, when you see, like, the products of geological time—it’s like that. It’s like—” Zoe fumbles, makes slow circles with her knife, trying to find the word.

But they brought you in knowing what your deficiencies were and—” “My deficiencies?” “Yes. Your deficiencies. I won’t say what they are. You already know. You come from a challenging background. It is unfortunate, but it is how it is.” Wallace can only taste ashes in his mouth. He dissects a piece of a casserole and chews it thoughtfully. His deficiencies are indeed what they are. There are the gaps in his knowledge about developmental biology, which he has closed steadily over the past few years, through study and coursework. There was also, in those early years, a lack of technical expertise, which he has acquired through practice. But the deficiency to which Roman is alluding is not one of those, not one of the many ways in which people come into graduate school unprepared for its demands, wrong-footed this way and that by its odd rituals and rigors. What Roman is referring to is instead a deficiency of whiteness, a lack of some requisite sameness. This deficiency cannot be overcome. The fact is, no matter how hard he tries or how much he learns or how many skills he masters, he will always be provisional in the eyes of these people, no matter how they might be fond of him or gentle with him.

Emma puts her head on Wallace’s shoulder, but she won’t say anything either, can’t bring herself to. No one does. No one ever does. Silence is their way of getting by, because if they are silent long enough, then this moment of minor discomfort will pass for them, will fold down into the landscape of the evening as if it never happened. Only Wallace will remember it. That’s the frustrating part. Wallace is the only one for whom this is a humiliation. He breathes out through the agony of it, through the pressure in his chest.

They are always laughing. This is it, Wallace thinks. That’s how they get by. Silence and laughter, silence and laughter, switch and swing. The way one glides through this life without having to think about anything hard. He still feels the sting of embarrassment, but it has ebbed.

“I don’t know where to go or what to do,” he says, and because the words are so true, strike such a fundamental chord with who he is, he vibrates at high frequency, shivers like a tuning fork. “It’s not so bad,” Miller says. “It is.” “It’ll work out.” “You don’t know that.” “Don’t tell me what I know,” Miller says, cracking a smile. It is a deflection, and a bad one at that, which annoys Wallace. A deflection out of kindness. A kindness that seeks to encompass all futures, that asserts its constancy regardless of what might come. Miller, stroking the back of Wallace’s neck and looking down at him like an amused nursery school teacher, is saying something, promising something, and all Wallace has to do is find it in himself to accept it.

“I don’t know if it’s good. Sometimes, I think that this is all I’ve ever wanted. Good research. Steady. Learning all the time. Other days I’m just miserable and want to cry. We all are, I think. In our way. We’re all fucking miserable in this place. But then, to actually hear it. It’s like somebody said something rude during church.” “Is this church?” “Hush, you know what I mean. I felt like, Oh no, oh no. First, I wanted to hug you. Because I’ve had days like that. Then I wanted to strangle you so you’d hush and not make us all think about it.” But the difference, Wallace wants to say, is that you have the option of not thinking about it. His misery is not novel, but it is distinct. They’ve all lost data, ruined experiments. There was the time in second year when Yngve’s crystals failed to come out of solution and he was left with a flurried mess, all because he’d miscalculated the concentration of potassium in his buffer. Or the time Miller killed off a venerable line of bacterial cells in his lab that had been handed down from postdoc to postdoc for some twenty years because he’d taken the entire container from the -80°C freezer rather than a small aliquot and blown it all in a failed inoculation. Another time, Emma forgot to upload her latest data to the server and her laptop crashed, and there was no way to recover her qPCR runs, and she had to repeat the experiment, which took weeks. Or the time Cole dumped acid down the drain and chased it with bleach, resulting in...

for a moment he thinks of lightning and thunder, those twin forces that shape a southern summer, where the weather is wild and full of strange magic.

Eventually, they are all just people going about their lives, shopping and eating, laughing and arguing, doing what people in the world do. This too is real life, he thinks. Not merely the accumulation of tasks, things to be done and sorted, but also the bumping up against other lives, everyone in the world insignificant when taken and observed together.

The world spins, shifts underfoot. The week is ahead of him, waiting, with all its demands, its structure, and soon enough another academic year will begin. If he advances toward it, marching ever closer, will it swallow him, till the sound of his weight traversing is absorbed into its bulk, his life no more discernible from the outside than the lives of others on the street are to him? He would like to sleep for a long time, but there is lab, the nematodes, and so while he might go home, he knows that he must leave again. He pushes off from the building, gathers his strength, and points himself toward home—a little rest, he thinks, he’s earned that much.

she smiles again, showing her imperfect teeth, the discoloration that comes with age and coffee and life lived, if only briefly, outside this charmed circle.

He feels unhappy when he looks at someone beautiful or desirable because he feels the gulf between himself and the other, their body and his body. An accounting of his body’s failures slides down the back of his eyes, and he sees how far from grace he’s been made and planted. It’s not even that he wants to be them—though queer desire has this feature baked in, so better to say it’s not just that he wants to be them. He wants to be not himself. He wants to be not depressed. He wants to be not anxious. He wants to be well. He wants to be good.