Sleepwalk

by Dan Chaon

“What do I have to do to get you to trust me?” “That’d be a good tombstone epitaph,” I say.

One of the things I’ve observed about white folks who grew up well-to-do: they have a deep investment in the idea of merit, and there’s a special scorn, I’ve noticed, for the poor of their own kind. They may acknowledge that race plays a role in keeping people down; they may even be sympathetic to the plights and sufferings of certain marginalized groups—but white trash is trash for a reason.

I’m trying to keep a tight rein on my sympathetic urges.

These days, nearly everyone you meet has patched together a different version of reality, depending on which news sources and websites and YouTube influencers they’ve decided to trust, and so my policy is just to listen with an open ear, hoping there might be some small kernel of truth at the core of what they’ve come to believe. We’re all trying our best to make sense of things. We’d all prefer it if the world would just be reasonable and logical, but it refuses.

I’d like to think that I wouldn’t be a bad father … even though, at this moment, I’m planning to go to my daughter’s hideout and kill her.

kind and generous when it was possible, and ruthless and quick when it was necessary,

It occurs to me that I’ve been living my life for a long time as if I’m not doomed.