Exercises in Futility: Chapter 1

Truth
Exercise: Describe the inside of a train station from the point of view of someone whose good friend has recently died. Do not mention death or the good friend.

I missed my creative writing class today and now all I can think about is how much of a fuck-up I am because there’s a good chance I’m going to fail. I think that I might resurrect my grade by visiting the professor and telling her my personal problems - which are the reasons I’ve been absent - but therapy’s never been my thing. Too bad, too, because it starts off the best case scenario: she’d listen and sympathize, tell me there’s a chance I can still pass the class, and then apologize for the hardships that have befallen me. Or maybe we’d bond over a mutual affinity for the written word, she’d tell me to come by if I ever want to talk (since I seem like a good person and all), and we’d develop the kind of relationship which starts out mentor/mentee and eventually evolves into a friendship between equals.

Or maybe she’d just tell me that there’s nothing she can do; I’ve failed and-“You’re not supposed to smoke here,” a woman snaps. My thoughts are drowned out and it dawns on me that I’m on a train platform, suspended above Liberty Avenue in Queens, and that the middle-aged Guyanese woman has a point. If a cop walks up the steps (which happens often at this hour) I could get fined a good chunk of cash - maybe two hundred dollars.

I consider this and I check myself: I’m wearing the ten dollar jeans that make my ass look like it could get insured for a million bucks, and just enough of my cleavage is popping out of my skin-tight, scoop-neck, cotton T-shirt to make any hetero-male hard. I sneer at the woman and blow smoke in her face: if a cop shows up, and it’s a guy, I have nothing to worry about.

The woman waves her hand in front of her face and jeers at me as if she knows what I’m thinking. I suck on my teeth and take a long drag of my cigarette. Not all cops are men, the woman seems to be saying in her glare. I laugh heartily. If a cop shows up and it’s a woman - well, I have it on good authority that most female cops are lesbians anyway. I lick my lips as if savoring the smoke, and suggestively suck on the tip of the cigarette. The woman stalks off and my line of sight is empty.

My neighborhood is a ghost town at this hour. All of the respectable people are asleep in their beds, waiting for the morning sun to tell them it’s time to get ready for church or temple - or wherever the hell it is they worship. My neighbors are all brown and most of them are poor, and as I inhale, exhale, and wince, I realize that while John Singh or Jane Persaud is sleeping away the night, I am two flights of stairs above them, thinking about cops and professors and what I want to do with my life. So much for the American dream.

This sentiment: this old, worn, sentiment - So much for the American dream - stings my eyes because of its honesty. It’s so goddamn true that it makes me think I can’t handle the truth. Truth is for people who realize their potential and reach their goals. Truth is for the lucky ones who’ve profited from the system. Truth isn’t for the weak-willed or the feeble-minded, the depraved or the destitute, those who know nothing more than dreaming for realities that never come to pass.

You want truth?

This is what I know: I’m twenty-three years old and I feel like I’m forty-three. Every second that passes feels like a minute in the last leg of a marathon, and my legs are jelly. I’ve been running for so long, trying to catch up to something that I wouldn’t recognize if it bumped up against me. I’m tired. The bags under my eyes have been saturated by cucumbers and a Filipino face cream that my mom bought in bulk, but I can feel grooves etching themselves permanently into my skin. My joints are hard, like rigor mortis has set in, and I swear the wind is dark like coal. The sky looks like it’s about to cry, and I think to myself that that’s crazy. Wind doesn’t get dark and rain is only precipitation. But the thoughts are stuck in my head and I can’t shake them free: I am cloaked in a cold and damp darkness, as if a thick blanket of wet, woolen night has wrapped itself around me. And I am being led to my oblivion. The conductor might as well have a scythe in his hand.

No: I should have a scythe in my hand. I reap what I sow, and it’s my fault that I’m self-destructive.

I think again of my creative writing class, of pens on paper, of the click-clack sound made by typing sixty words per minute nonstop for an hour and a half. I think about how much I’ve always loved writing, and how it’s always set me free, and I think, What’s it always set me free from? Then I think about my creative writing professor, and how I bragged on the first day of class that I’ve been published on a couple of literary websites. I take another pull from my cigarette as I’m resigned to the truth: I’ve been talking too much, sharing too much, being too open. I think that communication makes people civilized, so speaking out on my problems and accomplishments must make me more genteel. But the sad truth is, everyone prefers brutes to gentlepeople. We aren’t accustomed to the complications of lives other than our own, and we shrink at the idea of discovering them.

I take another drag from my Marlboro ultra light and cough. I haven’t smoked cigarettes in a year, but I’m sad and I’m stressed and I need to believe that I’m in control of something. I might not be able to control the train schedule, or my class schedule, or my budget - but damnit, I can control the way I feel. And the truth, I must admit as I put out my cigarette and climb onto the express train, is that I feel a little afraid because I’ve over cut my class. I say “ a little” because in truth, I’m not afraid of failure. I know that one man’s failure is another man’s misguided-but-ultimately-worthwhile-adventure, and I’m not beyond altering others’ impression of one till it more resembles the other.

Inside the train, it’s cold, gray and hard. I set my big, heavy black bag on my lap and open the zipper of the biggest compartment. I feel like a coroner, about to take out a sharp instrument; I could dissect my life with the contents of this bag. Elle magazine, Fitness magazine, Spin magazine, Rolling Stone magazine, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander, three thin Women’s Studies textbooks, two notebooks, my planner, a water bottle that I’ve refilled, a microwaveable meal of steak, mashed potatoes, and corn, two cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli, a large bag of white cheddar popcorn, three fruit and nut granola bars, and my wallet all stare back at me. They tell me it might be a while till I get back to my warm bed with its overstuffed white down comforter and plump white pillows. I nod and sigh, my eyes too tired to cry. Some people just don’t have enough time.


The train is snaking along the tracks like a snake I write, then reread, then cross out. Great. My shift’s going to start in an hour and a half and I can’t even form coherent sentences. I’m sure that’ll go over well, since I talk on the phone for a living and all. I suck my teeth in disappointment and my eyes meet those of the woman from the platform. She is sitting across from me, feigning disinterest in what I’m writing. Her smug and ugly face smacks of a superiority complex, and I would not hesitate from bitch-slapping it if someone dared me. Her thrift store sneakers and blue pants are tacky and ill-fitting. The tongues of her shoes stretch above her ankles in the style of most teenage boys’. Her pants are too short. When I realize all this, I’m almost tempted to give her one of my cans of ravioli. But then I remember how she talked to me on the platform and I think, Fuck you, bitch. Your stupid ass probably deserves to be poor.

The woman from the platform haughtily lifts her eyebrows when she notices me inspecting her, and there in her eyes is a kind of recognition which chills me. I am staring at her staring at me and aware that we are two sides of one coin. For all I know, she might be my future: once having dreamt of breaking into a creative writing career, this woman could’ve been bogged down by family duties and financial woes, taken up working as many odd-jobs as she could to keep her family afloat, and then failed all her college classes along the way.

She might even be commuting to a night job that’s similar to my own. An hour and a half from now, she might be thinking about cotton candy, ferris wheels, and Coney Island to keep herself from gagging - all this because she’s just realized that the man with whom she’s having phone sex fantasizes about choking his eleven-year old daughter with his cock. Maybe ten minutes after that, she’ll be moaning to a man in Michigan while listening to the sound of his lubed southpaw working up and down his four-inch shaft. Maybe forty-five minutes after that, she’ll pretend to care about a caller whose ex-wife cheated on him with his older bother. And then twenty minutes after that, maybe she’ll be laughing up a storm with a regular who calls from San Diego to get his mind off suicidal thoughts.

But what are the odds?

The train is still empty as we pass the cemetery at 80th Street, and I think to myself, We’re all zombies. We do what we must in order to survive, even if it means ripping each others’ throats out or having phone sex with strangers while calling them “Daddy” and telling them not to stop fucking you even though it hurts so much and they’re so big and you don’t mean it. Nothing is real. The train slows down, more passengers get on, and I notice that many of them are wearing work uniforms. There’s a nurse and a security guard and a cop, all seated in front of me like it’s career day in elementary school, and since I’m teacher’s pet I sit all the way in the front of the class and get to look up-close at everyone.

Only it’s not career day and I’m not in elementary school. I need to land a real job soon, but I haven’t yet earned my degree. If I’d only have continued working, I could’ve landed a cushy corporate job which would cater to the bourgeoisie tastes that I don’t presently have but that I’m sure would spring up if they were within my budget. (That’s what my best friend, Daria, did.) The truth is, I’m not sure if a bachelor’s degree in creative writing is a fool’s attempt at grandeur. I’ve invested so much of my time and energy into making it work, that I don’t want to look back. Instead, I look at the nurse, the security guard and the cop, and I am dumbfounded when I realize that I look just as world-weary and washed-out as they do. I may not have a real career or even a degree, but I have problems. Real problems. The kind of problems that adults have. And as the woman from the platform gets off at Broadway-East New York, I realize that no adult is really alive. Her ill-fitting sneakers squeak away, and this newfound truth almost makes me sorry to have wished her ill. Before I can retract my bad omens, she innocently looks back at me from over her shoulder and, without thinking, I give her the finger. Confused and ashamed at myself, I turn back in my seat and forcefully curl my middle finger back into a fist. The sad truth is, most of us wouldn’t know how to live if our lives depended on it.


Right now, my life - my sanity - depends on my creative writing class. The truth is, I haven’t written any new fiction in four or five months, and I’m afraid my wit’s dulled. I’m afraid that reality will surface in my fiction writing and I won’t be able to escape my day-to-day existence. I’m afraid that I’m an empty vessel, and nothing will flow out. Or the wrong thing will flow out. Or an ugly truth will flow out. I’m afraid that I will put pen on paper and purge myself of so many feelings that I will cry in the subway like a crazy, homeless woman, and my cheeks will be stained with Maybelline’s extreme black triple lash mascara.

As the train fills with people, I’m sobered by a wafting stench of alcohol and I realize that I’m procrastinating. The gaggle of teenage girls in front of me has probably found my old hotspot in Chinatown - the one that doesn’t card as long as you’re Asian and female. I know that I’m procrastinating on writing stories for my creative writing class, but the truth is, I feel like there’s a reason I have to stare at these teenage girls. It’s not a latent homosexual tendency, or a lust for the forbidden. Their slanty eyes accuse me of knowing something that I’m holding out on, and just as one of them raises her hand as if she’s about to flip me the bird, I realize what’s captivated me: I can’t help but see myself in them.

Ten years ago, wearing too much make-up and not enough clothes, I was them. No doubt about it. Their breath, thick and mellow, smells like cheap liquor and puke, and I remember what it was like to bow to the ivory gods for the first time. I remember what it was like to stand outside of my house - it was my parents’ house back then - and be too afraid to slip my key in the front door. I remember what it was like to gnaw at my nerves with the edge of my good sense, and I remember that I need to write, and I need to write right now. The thought becomes a song, and the song becomes catchy, and before I know it, I’m thinking, Write now. Right now. Write now. Right now. Write. Right: write. Write right. Now.

“Now,” I say to myself as I dig into my coroner’s bag and the girls leave the train. A flash of pride and a lightning bolt of inspiration beam through me when I find a notebook and a pen, and just as I’m about to begin the next great American novel, the train lurches to a halt. I have arrived at my stop.

It is 10:23 and my shift starts at eleven p.m. I quickly make a mental note of this and quietly file my thoughts away. All that exists now are myself, my pen, and my notebook. I need to surrender myself to the page. I need to write. I don’t know what I’ll write about. I don’t know if it’ll turn out any good. I don’t know if there’s any sense in what I’m doing, and I know for damn certain that there’s a chance I’ll lose track of time and write so much that I’ll miss my shift and even though management doesn’t care I have pride in my work no matter what it is I do for a living-

No. This has to stop. Now. “Now,” I command myself. “Write.”

So I do.


*As a steady stream of fun-chasing youths stroll into the subway car, the light from the platform seems muted and gray. Marisa Rubierno sits on the bench, watching these party-seekers as they step into a metal coffin and pack themselves in like sardines. She watches as their shiny new threads flash and gleam. Her eyes follow them as they are made brand new in this uptown speeding bullet. Like angels that have taken their fall in stride, they laugh, drowning out the sharp clamber of metal on metal, of hammers on nails, of an eternally blissful ignorance. Booze, laughter, tits, weed, cocks, blow, pussy - it’ll all be theirs for the taking, like a smorgasbord of scintillating sensuality set out on the city street. They need only to leave the purgatory of the platform, get their bodies on board the train, and ride it till their destination.

“It’s just too fucking much,” one girl says from the edge of the platform. The bodice of her little black dress is clinging to her hefty bosom as she absent-mindedly relates her thoughts to her girlfriends. “I mean, twenty dollars just to get into a club?” She throws her hands up in a gesture of futility.

The other two girls nod in earnest agreement.

“It’s a good thing we’re hot,” one of them chimes in as the last of their trio self-consciously checks her make-up. “That way, we don’t have to worry about money for drinks.”

A giggle frenzy ensues: high-boned cheeks accentuated by ventriloquist laughter. Each of the college-aged women is attempting to garner the attention of a handsome man wearing a black tailored suit, but the man is unimpressed. He looks away and removes his wedding ring, placing it in his pocket and pursing his lips before walking to the opposite side of the platform; he’s already made plans for tonight.

The women in little black dresses have already shifted their attention. They shamelessly adjust their pantyhose and inspect their cleavage, seemingly unaware that as they do so, their breasts threaten to spill over their dresses. Curly tendrils of light brown hair have been placed strategically along their temples and hairline to look “accidental.” Their eyebrows are meticulously crafted into hyper intensified Roman arches which frame their smoky eyelids and fake eyelashes. Clad all in black, they are wearing the universal uniform of girls on the town - yet beneath the mask of heavy make-up, their faces are malnourished and pale. From Marisa Rubierno’s perch on a nearby platform bench, they look like a bunch of widows. She hopes they’ll all chop off their pathetically pampered tresses, exchange their party wardrobe for ill-fitting frocks, and properly go into mourning. Someone should.

The 10:38 express train enters the station and the widows file in, hollow laughter following them. Marisa remains on the platform and inhales a heady mixture of flowers and smut - like the set of a pornographic movie where long-stemmed roses are used as props. If the 34th Street/Penn Station platform is a porno set, then it’s campy and melodramatic - like the ones on late-night cable. A wash of gray tints the people, making their faces look haggard in the fluorescent light. Faces look translucent and thin, paler than pus and just as sickly. Shadows make jaundiced zombies out of everyone by dropping like black veils on the facades of passengers. Beneath the tracks, the rats have fully accepted their roles as the vultures of subterranean New York City: they wait for an unsuspecting commuter to silently lose their footing and fall off the face of the earth.

There’s still half an hour to go before her shift starts at eleven o’clock, and Marisa is casually observing the nightlife commuters. There’s no point in climbing the steps to wander; her body is too tired to take her anywhere. At the age of twenty-three, she is well aware that she should be one of those souls unshackled from occupational obligation at the stroke of five o’clock every Friday evening - but this is simply not so. Her muscles ache and her mind is swimming. It’s Saturday, almost eleven o’clock - is she sure that she’s working at the office tonight? Or is she supposed to be bartending? Tomorrow she has English classes from nine a.m. till 3:30 in the afternoon. She knows for certain that she has a promotional gigs most Sunday nights. Is it possible to squeeze in a nap before she has to tout Coors light? And what about her dog? Will she walk him? Give him a bath? She’s been working too many shifts in order to pay her bills, and her grades are slipping. She hasn’t handed in any work for her English classes. Ever since her father came into her bedroom, crying jaggedly and speaking in short gasps, she hasn’t been able to tear her attention away from making money. She can’t let her parents live out on the street. She can’t-

Marisa shakes off her thoughts and sits on the platform bench, taking in the scene: mundane people doing mundane things in a mundane world. She calms herself at the thought of doing nothing - all anyone ever does is nothing, anyway - and settles into her seat. She loosens her mental grip on reality and forgets her problems. The opportunity to think without influence by budget or schedule is rare, and when Marisa lets her thoughts roam, all she wants is to tell the girl in her creative writing class to enjoy the steady flow of words while it still lasts. Preternatural gifts have the shelf-life of dairy products and are forgotten easily when yours is not the only mouth you have to feed. For now, she feels the need to say, make a life out of writing. Breathe verbs and dialogue and plot. Spend your free time - everyone but Marisa has free time - scribbling away in notebooks and spare pieces of scrap paper. Don’t hesitate to vomit your insides onto the page. Take advantage of your youth and your vitality. You’re only young once.

The thought makes Marisa wince as she stands to leave the train station. She’ll snake through the winding corridor of Penn Station before walking a quick two blocks to her job. As she’s passing people she’ll feel like her insides have been weighed and measured, like her skin has been stretched to cover parts of her personality, like she is hiding herself in her responsibilities.

But who can blame her?

She’s got to make a living, and who wants to hear about her problems anyway? There’s no time for the spilling of insides and the inspecting of problems. You have to move fast, do what you have to do, get results. No one wants to know why you’re not living up to the standard - they just want easy, cut-and-dry actions to react to.

In this nighttime metropolis, hum-drum existences fade into thumping bass lines as disk jockeys spin hits and responsibilities are not missed. The rent or mortgage has been paid on time, the credit card debt has been paid off, medical bills are moot, and school is a vague, happy memory. In the instant Marisa’s head pokes out from beneath the city streets and the manufactured brilliance of streetlights streams over her facade, she will assume her role as another passerby, another part of the whole. The stench of piss, dead rats, and half-eaten fast food will envelope her body. She will be just another slave to mediocre living, living within her means as opposed to living like she means it. And, just like every day, she will take it all in stride. This coming April is the first time she’ll be legally obligated to file her own taxes. One inevitability will be crossed off her list.