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During the night immediately preceding the day of his Eternal Damnation, the YouTube perfume and men’s fashion influencer felt engulfed by a vast warm darkness. It took hold of him and refused to let go no matter how many times he tried to fend it off, even though he was sleeping, and it was cold outside, colder than it should have been this late in the Spring. Where was he? he thought the first time he broke free from whatever it was, waking up to go to the bathroom, at first navigating himself through the darkness as though he were in his own room at home, before hitting a wall that shouldn’t be there, trying to remind him, but obviously in vain, that he was in a hotel and he was not alone. The darkness nudged against the windowpane and pushed inside without a sound: an unwanted intruder. He felt vulnerable, exposed as he was before, to whatever unseen chaos the night had in store for him, reaching out to touch familiar walls that were no longer there. Was he in a strange place far from home? His fingers found a light switch and with a flick he saw himself naked in a mirror, standing there in a strange bathroom surrounded by gleaming fixtures and intricately patterned Moorish tiles. As he stood there urinating in this smartly fit, perhaps even ridiculously so, bathroom, he had––or recalled having, he was not sure which––the lingering sensation of being profoundly happy in his sleep, but he did not know why. It was a memory of having been ecstatic, but empty of any knowledge of what had made him feel this way.
When he returned to the bed he became aware of a figure lurched there beside him, a lump beneath the blankets that would have been an inanimate object of some kind––a giant mass of children’s putty or perilous mound created by vermin––had it not been for the soft and slow rhythm of inhalations and exhalations that reminded him in a gradual but tender realization that it was a woman, his woman, at least at this moment in time. Like a drunk remembering piece by piece his embarrassing behavior from the night before, the whole picture congealed in his head, although there was nothing remotely embarrassing about it. This bird’s eye view of his previous day was a surprisingly pleasant one.
As he drifted off to sleep, he became keenly aware of returning to that sense of rapturous envelopment from which he had just emerged to go to the bathroom, even though he was not even slightly conscious. It was as though his body was telling his spirit that he had needed this sleep for many days, even weeks, and it was time for a wholesale physical and spiritual makeover. Or maybe it was just the beacon light of his spirit rejuvenating his body for what he unconsciously knew would be a difficult day ahead.
When the morning came, its light piercing through the frail shell of his dreams, an unwelcome transgression even against the soft hissing sound of a woman, we will simply call her M–, taking a shower, our YouTube men’s fashion and perfume influencer had been dreaming The thought of her softly tanned figure, the water dancing off her lacquered toes as she stood against a backdrop of Moorish tiles in the steaming onslaught of water as seen through the frosted, and no doubt temporarily fogged glass shower door, was hardly a comfort given the sudden memory of having just been jarred out of a pleasant dream in which he was having coffee with his daughter and nothing negative had ever transpired between them. Such a dream now seemed impossible; but was it really?
He would meet her that very evening in a downtown café after years of silence punctuated by the occasional brief truce followed by degeneration into a more and more stale, and predictable invective of petty accusations, many of them surprisingly detailed, given they were dug up from a time when she was certainly too young to have any accurate recollection. Her mother had left him for another man when she and her Irish-twin brother were only three years old and since then he had done everything to be a good father, even well into their adulthood. Only after she got married and gave birth to her first child did she suddenly and inexplicably turned against him, often with shocking displays of verbal hostility. Yet this very day he had a chance to mend things, even though he was certain he had never done anything wrong to begin with––or had he?
But that was why he was here in the hotel with M–, having travelled many hours on an endlessly delayed flight with her to get here, and why he had just been dreaming of some favorable resolution––perhaps she could show him why he was wrong and deserving of such treatment, so he could at least understand and apologize? ––before the light of morning had so rudely woken him up. Previous attempts to divine from her what he might have done wrong were always met with ‘You mean you don’t know? I guess we can’t all be as victorious (said as if his recent success was somehow an attack on her) as you. How callous, and exactly why you give me no choice,’ or like the police inspector exclaiming to Kafka’s Joseph K in the Orson Welles version of The Trial, a play he had once performed in as an amateur actor, ‘Certainly you are not claiming innocence?’ This ‘contagion’, he liked to call it when he became the observer outside of himself expressing off-color sentiments, he would never express himself, had now ‘infected’ his son––a ski instructor with whom he had always had a positive relationship––to the extent that they, too, were no longer speaking. His son and daughter were close, so he reasoned that his son likely believed that if his daughter had something against her father––no matter how abstract, frivolous, or even unknown––then it must be for good reason. But perhaps today would be the day things would finally change, or so he hoped as he sat there stirring in bed with the pillow over his face to block out the light as he listened to M– taking a shower.
When our YouTube fashion influencer woke up a second time, he realized that the morning call of the shower must have been more of a lullaby and his shutting out the light from the window with the pillow had been enough to tip the balance and allow him to fall back asleep. This time the hotel room was silent––had M– left him?––except for the sound of traffic outside and he had the memory of having living inside a dream for what seemed like an entire life, or possibly more, where everything he had accomplished from the day he was born (or even further back into a previous existence from which he had been reincarnated in the context of this overarching dream) had culminated in taking a university course from a school teacher who taught him from grades five to nine, who should have been dead because he was already close to retirement when the dreamer was going through puberty. The teacher looked the same as he had in his childhood but did not seem to recognize him no matter how many times, he tried to alert him that they had met before, many decades ago when he had been his star pupil. At one stage he even scolded the dreamer for not handing in an important assignment when it was due. But this dream had finally ended with the teacher handing him a bingo card scribbled over in garish purple crayon, which suddenly burst into flames. When he threw the card to the floor, he realized he was standing in the middle of a slaughterhouse surrounded by legions of men in yellow protective suits splattered with dried blood who were busy dismembering pigs with frightful tools and implements, some which looked like giant power drills with swirling blades like those in a jet engine. With a combination of relief and reluctance he lurched himself out of bed, almost losing his balance when his feet took hold on the wooden floor beneath him.
He parted the curtains. A bird circling somewhere in the wild blue yonder. A branch bent in a metaphor of sadness. A human face, also bent in sadness, although this time not a metaphor. The coming of lightning––or was it lightening? ––he did not know. All he knew was that he was now looking out the window into the world outside as though into an aquarium, a place that was not meant for him. Buoyed by the hustle and bustle from this world outside––the sound of roaring engines and screaming children he imagined were on a bust going to school––he walked out of the bedroom of the hotel suite into the living area in search of M–. Was she in the suite at all, and if not, had she indeed left him as he feared only moments before? He had no reason to think she did, because in the three months he had known her she seemed to be the most stable and predictable person he had ever met, but in a way that made her refreshing and unique, instead of tedious and cloying. Whenever he was with her, he felt perfectly at ease, as though she were his best friend, and he could say anything without fear of upsetting her or appearing like a ‘typical male asshole’, a term he knew she would never use anyway. Yet this didn’t mean there was no romantic tension. Quite the contrary. This sense of openness allowed them to explore all manner of topics, from spiritual philosophy, which he had been interested in for many years before concluding it was a sham––but was it really? ––to alternative music, politics, and conspiracy theories, or even ways to enhance their sexual encounters. They once even shopped in person for sexy lingerie that he previously imagined only prostitutes would wear. Yet despite all this, she had a relatively conservative outward appearance and manner, like a luminous businesswoman philanthropist with an interest in art and theater, rather than some commonplace bank manager or accountant.
He went to open the bathroom door but the silence that greeted him on leaving the bedroom told him he was alone with only the memory of having made love the night before, a ritual they shared that was always memorable but rarely spontaneous, because was obsessed (in a healthy and attractive way) with hygiene and insisted she needed to shower beforehand. While this eliminated the possibility of sudden conquests in unforeseen places, it had the tradeoff of giving them time to prepare for ‘the event’ down to every detail. Which perfume? Not eating or exercised beforehand. No drinking the day or even night before. Washing his hands with soap immediately before. All this gave their sexual encounters the anticipation of some deliberate and grand performance, a private opera for the Duke and Duchess, a secret encounter with an upscale call girl, or even in the extreme Sardanapalus laid out in his desert palace with the pick of his harem.
He looked around, hoping to find at least a note from her: none, only emptiness. But this emptiness had teeth, jarring him into the unwelcome awareness that the hotel suite was shivering with the eerie silence of a space station in a Sci Fi movie, belying the Louis XIV styling with powder blue boiserie wall paneling decorated with French wrought iron lanterns that looked they could have been lining the walls of Versailles. But there was a shadow of dread in this silence that made it more akin to the silence after a mass shooting than the septic feel of a space station: which children had been shot in which school or distant shopping malls or movie theaters, their parents left to mourn, the vigils asking––no, demanding––action from the hypocritical politicians? Suddenly the room took on a distinct grayness and the light from outside became somber, anchored in foreboding, as heavy as lead. It was the kind of light that came only on the coldest overcast days of winter that recalled bare trees with gnarled skeletal branches. Where was she? Had she indeed left him, or was it something completely harmless? Maybe she just stepped out to see the front desk about some small request––an extra set of towels or laundry that should be done, or perhaps she had already left for the day, going shopping for the new pair of shoes she had been searching on the internet the night before? They were gold in color and more like elegant sandals than shoes. Gold was here color and that was why he had recently gifted her Kilian’s Woman in Gold––a niche perfume created by Kilian Hennessey of the famous cognac family––he had recommended on his YouTube channel featuring aldehydes over a powdery base of florals and vanilla. She was an interior designer and when meeting clients it was important that she project the same image of herself that she wanted to convey in her designs, renders that she posted weekly on Instagram––bright bed linens, creamy beige walls melded with gold highlights and pinkish grays hovering in the background without seeming the slightest bit cold or harsh.
Just when he convinced himself that she must have just gone down to the reception on some errand (she would never leave for the day without telling him) he found a small note on the floor next to the small writing desk in the corner. ‘Gone out for the day to get those shoes! See you at dinner. I love you, my Prince!’ Joy, but only momentary. In fact, felt an emptiness that bordered on panic at the thought that he would have to make it through the day alone. As he held the note in his hand, his mind was invaded by the recollection of a handwritten letter he once received from a fan, complete with a naked photo, saying only: ‘Should I jump? What if it turns out to be you after all?’ After that, he received many such cryptic communications from the same woman, until suddenly none at all or ever again. Had she ‘jumped’ and if so, was he responsible? The grey light from outside became more ominous––crevices in his very existence opened everywhere; doubt would surely become his maxim, his song. This was the day of his Eternal Damnation, and he couldn’t go through it alone. He wondered if he would see M– again at all or if he would be run over by a bus or attacked by some maniac and end up six feet under. But when he looked at the note again the words ‘love’ and ‘Prince’ leapt out at once again and saved him, reaching down like hands of a stranger in a park helping a drunk lying on the grass to his feet.
They had only been dating for a little over a year so the word ‘love’ would have seemed forced, especially because her mother had just died a few months before they met, but he had to admit he was flattered that she always used the word ‘Prince’ in her notes and texts. It refreshed memories of being in high school when a group of attractive women once commented on how ‘radiant’ he looked, like a ‘Renaissance Prince’, they said, their eyes beaming into his in ways he had never witnessed. It was a compliment that embarrassed him––did he stand out somehow, perhaps like a man dressed for a Medieval fair or fairy tale book reading, when he dressed plainly and was trying like most teenagers just to ‘fit in’? Was he conveying the wrong impression? The tremors beneath their dreamy gaze said otherwise. Now he was much older, not old, but middle aged and already a grandfather––a young one, albeit––so he certainly did not feel ‘radiant’ or anything like a ‘Prince’. He knew he was still attractive, maybe more so than ever, with a weathered dignified face and silvery receding hair line like a lead actor in the golden era of European cinema––Jean Marais? Max von Sydow? ––but he was certainly no longer a ‘Prince’. So, when she called him this it made him feel like he had somehow preserved that person he was in high school inside a magical bell jar for all those years and had finally come out on top when most of his peers were already starting to ail. But was he a Prince? Only today would tell.
He met M– online just over a year ago. She made a comment on one of his YouTube videos about a new limited edition summer fragrance from the Dior Privée line. It was a simple compliment like many he received weekly. She said she had just bought it on his recommendation and thought it was ‘fantastic’. He thanked her and asked what it was she liked about it. He normally didn’t go this far, liking a comment was enough; responding was something he did only rarely, since he usually got thirty or more compliments per video. But responding to a response with a further question? ––an invitation to something further: the burden of an online fan to whom he would always feel obligated to respond. But she didn’t respond back, and he was surprised to find this irked him. Had he been presumptuous in thinking she wanted more than just to endorse his recommendation? Two weeks later she finally responded, but to a different video, and this time he was sure to only ‘like’ her comment. This cat and mouse game continued for two months with incremental steps of intensification until they were regularly sharing views on various fragrances and occasionally even the clothes he recommended––mostly 1960s Mod-inspired fashion, which was his area of expertise. He was, after all The Perfume Mod, or so his YouTube channel was called, and he usually wore slim fitting Italian suits or button-down shirts with vests during his videos, gothic jewelry, or miniature scarfs as accessories. Four months later they started to follow each other on Instagram and were already texting several times a day. Her DMs started out short and non-threatening, like ‘To the bank––boy I hate banks!’, ‘Just bought some cashew milk.’, ‘What do you think of Brando?’, ‘The world is becoming China.’, ‘Just sprayed on Xerjoff’s Via Cavour, what is your SOTD (scent of the day)?’, but gradually became more flirtatious, such as ‘Have you ever been to Venice?’, ‘I love Burgundy, it makes me so giddy.’, and once so suggestive it bordered on risky: ‘I just got out of the shower and am standing here naked staring out the window. I hope nobody sees me! How ridiculous I feel!’. Such messages would normally have seemed like an invitation to more, but since they lived in different cities, they never felt like anything more than light fun until one day she messaged him out of the blue saying she would be in his city the coming weekend and would like to meet him, perhaps just for coffee. He agreed and they met at a small café near downtown. He had never asked for her photo––they didn’t meet on a dating site, after all and he was used to people flirting with him online anyway and had become impervious to it, so he never thought such harmless interactions could ever lead to anything serious. As such, it came as a great surprise to him, one of the greatest surprises of his modern life, that he was immediately attracted to her. She had the unassuming beauty of a child that had grown into the body of a woman, who always saw the world with fresh eyes and had never become jaded or set in her ways, yet also displayed the etched maturity and effortless grace of a successful businesswoman when she wanted to. Hers was an inviting beauty of demeanor and class sublating mere physical beauty: her chestnut brown hair falling across her milky rounded cheeks, highlighted with a touch or rouge, her broad inviting smile and deep brown eyes that shuttled one into another galaxy, but one of emotion and bliss, barred to anyone she chose. After coffee, he invited her to his YouTube studio to show her his collection of over five hundred niche perfumes, arranged against the wall like a glittering Kandor, the shrunken city from Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. The space was a small, rented room near downtown that was secured by a double bolted door and had nothing but his fragrance shelves and some lighting equipment. This was his ‘castle’, or rather his ‘palace’ since the former might suggest something dark––a dungeon perhaps––and she was his guest from ‘afar.’ They agreed to meet later for dinner and slept together that same night. Why not? It would have been rude not too. She was leaving the next day and there was an obvious attraction that demanded immediate action, not only by their mutual attraction, but by the Universe itself or whatever unseen entity it was that had brought them together.
Their relationship was something entirely new to him. Not that any relationship with any woman, man, or even creature (the smallest fly, for example) would not be ‘new’ in some tiny way, but the blueprint, the pattern or floorplan of their love, was new. When he was a young man, he would see some woman from afar, as in romance novels or classic films, and decide in some great revelation even before they met that he needed to ‘get that woman in his life’ as in the joyous Beatles song. And if she gave into his awkward advances on account of his sincerity and good looks rather than any persistence or technique he might have applied––because he had no technique and was easily put off by ‘the cold shoulder’––their ‘love’ would unfold like a dream or fairy spell in which he could only see her as an entity of pure beauty and kind heart, without any cracks in the divine ‘sculptors marble’. Yet it was precisely for this reason that he was never able to find any true friendship with the women in his life: these things existed outside of the bubble he had created around them and as soon as reality came too close this bubble would pop, the walls of their illusion having been slowly eaten away by their true personalities until there was nothing left but the inevitable collapse. Sometimes it would take six years, sometimes six weeks. There were even two children involved (who have already been introduced in this story) the first time around––born when he was only nineteen because their mother lied to him about taking birth control in a scheme to lock him down for life but no matter how hard he tried to be a good father and keep the romantic illusion going, eventually their differences emerged and she ran off with a flute player, just the first in her endless cascade of failed affairs and relationships that were to follow.
But with M– things were totally different. Because they met out of common interest on the internet and became friends first without any expectation of romance or sex, it was always the friendship that mattered most, while the sex and romance was always hovering there beside them in some parallel universe whenever they wanted it. They would have continued with or without it, no matter how bed-splitting their orgasms, or sexy she looked in her new French lingerie, picked out just to use once in some triumphant encounter in a five-star hotel. Sex and romance were an act they played outside their friendship––wasn’t he an actor, after all? An actor on his YouTube channel presenting an image of himself that was at once magnetic as it was false? ––and because of this he often had to forget she was his best friend the moment he entered her and pretend instead she was a woman he just met in a hotel or imagined in a pop song. Wouldn’t sex somehow be damaging to their perfect friendship? No. In fact, it wasn’t, and that always amazed him. The man as rapist, the man as abuser, the man as a villain exploiting the woman: all these notions pumped by the media would always threaten to cloud his mind that first moment he entered her, but once their eyes connected, he would enjoy it as much as he did, and their friendship was not only intact but strengthened.
A pitter patter of rain on the window suddenly surged into a drum roll and finally a stampede before dying down to nothingness. A bird landed on a branch outside, which could have been a bluebird, but it was too far away to know for sure. The sun appeared suddenly, its dense rays warming his feet as he sat on the velvet sofa opposite the unmade bed. Weather changed so quickly in this city, a city he had visited so many times before just to see his daughter. Her mother no longer lived here, so it was safe to stay. She had been nothing but trouble since they broke up, several times physically assaulting him and constantly lying to the social workers who hovered around the situation like angry bees, even though he always paid child support on time and took care of his son by himself for four years, all while he was still learning his trade and she was running around Italy with the flute player and their daughter. Trading down from one fast-track relationship to the next––even including a marriage to a foreign university professor––she now lived alone in a tiny ‘green home’, he had heard, a collapsible shack with wheels bought from some store like Ikea.
During a long period of his life, he referred to in his imagination as ‘the deluge’, a time he gradually became jaded while living in a small town where it was almost impossible to meet unattached women, and explored, amongst other things Theosophy, a nineteenth-century occult branch of new-age spiritualism, he was single for almost ten years. It was during this time that he gradually transitioned from his life as a carpenter (a profession that seemed natural because his father was a successful architect) and amateur actor on the side––or was it an amateur actor doing carpentry on the side? ––to a YouTuber. It started when he became interested in high end men’s fashion, complete with the glamorous runway exhibitions, hoping it might somehow lift him out of ‘the deluge’ into some more luxurious life where he wasn’t reading obscure mystical texts about the Akashic Records or self-help books about dating and how to get ahead in the world. In particular, he liked a new American men’s fashion line that was starting to receive many accolades, even major awards, from fashion critics for its combination of Mod styles with other vintage elements in a way that was daringly fresh and modern, but also distinctly American. On a whim he visited their flagship store in New York and quickly became a fanboy, even attending fashion shows and collecting coveted limited-edition pieces that featured on the runway each season. Although the auburn-haired salesgirl he became familiar with in the New York store because she had once lived near the town in which he had grown up (and did she also not indulge herself in fitting out the wardrobe of this awkward new ‘diamond in the rough’?) had cautioned him never to aspire to look like the runway models because they were too feminine, he began to collect and curate runway stills for each fashion show, imagining each look on each model told a story, a dazzlingly unique one at that, a different manifestation of the same a person that was at once him and wasn’t: The Midnight Rider, named from the Allman Brother’s song, although he preferred the cover version by Patti Smith. In one image The Midnight Rider had just escaped the Russian Front––draped in a deconstructed military jacket with an enormous wool scarf that covered half his torso––and was penning a war poem on the back of a napkin to impress some woman he had just met; in another he was about to attend a grand ball or gala event in a shaved velvet tux and wingtips; in yet another he was marauding the moonlit streets of some city on an Italian motorcycle, a sleek black horsehair moto jacket shielding him from the wind. The Midnight Rider followed him around every day and night, hovering beside him, but never saying a word, because his language was one of image only, but how powerful was that image! He had not failed to make it big as an actor for so many years only to succeed as a carpenter––his story had something else lying in wait for him. His interest slowly expanded beyond clothes to men’s fragrances, something he never cared about before beside ensuring he always had a stick of deodorant wherever he went. But there was something almost mystical, even alchemical about them––the exotic bottles and intoxicating scents that seemed like a physical manifestation or outgrowth of his former interest in the occult, only obviously more sensual. Soon he had a collection of over fifty bottles, some glass, others metal, and a few almost expensive as the leather jackets he had, and he started to feel like a new person, or rather the same person, only ‘outside of himself’. Had he not become The Midnight Rider to such an extent that his entire life had morphed into an act; because of this wasn’t he the greatest actor of them all?
His acting career had only been successful to the extent that he had several prominent roles in Fringe plays, including Waiting for Godot, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a stage adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, and Macbeth, and even a locally written comedy about drag queens, but it never went far enough to become anything more than a hobby outside his life as a carpenter helping people realize their dream homes––especially kitchens. So, he as the actor only existed outside his life, but now he as The Midnight Rider was suddenly an actor in his entire life––who, after all, expected a carpenter to look like that? His clothes were the self-same pieces endorsed by the likes of Jimmy Page, Paul Weller, and Kiss, so wasn’t he ‘the carpenter’ while posing as an actor the ultimate poseur? But wasn’t a poseur an actor by definition? Didn’t that make him a new kind of actor, an actor whose entire life was a film or play about a man working as a carpenter hoping to be an actor?
One day a Hare Krishna approached him dressed in the usual orange robe and just as The Midnight Rider was backing away to avoid him, the swarthy, deeply tanned man reached out and touched his arm: ‘You look like a YouTube influencer.’ ‘That’s because I am,’ he replied without thinking––but with a confrontational cockiness that seemed to come from nowhere––and walked away. Even though he had never even considered such a career line, it suddenly dawned upon him that it was what he should be. The sudden rupture of cockiness was a cry from the depths of his soul, trawled out by the Hare Krishna, a rescue call from deep within or far without, perhaps the first time The Midnight Rider had uttered a single word to him, a message from outside––or inside? ––his consciousness, a voice Theosophists said was a manifestation of the ‘higher self’, although he no longer believed in such things, or so he always reminded himself. The next day he bought lighting equipment from a camera store and set up a small studio in the unused corner room of his apartment. He had seen many videos from fragrance and fashion influencers during his rocket ship voyage of sartorial self-discovery and heard many of them were making enough from ad revenue to support themselves and more, especially those that posted the most often and used as many social media platforms as possible. With a wardrobe full of the latest fashions and a base of over fifty fragrances he had as good a shot as anyone.
He started with one video per week, while still supporting himself as a carpenter, building frames for new housing projects in the suburbs of his city. His initial attempts at videos were awkward, sometimes having to rerecord them ten or more times to get the perfect gesture or facial expression coupled with the necessary fluidity of speech, completely free of pauses or misspeaks. At first, he was uncomfortable being his own director, because he often found those he worked with overbearing, even pompous, and so could never see himself in that role. Furthermore, he wasn’t used to looking at himself objectively––it was like being the audience and the actor simultaneously. How was that even possible? But after many clumsy attempts he gradually settled in with a new ‘be kind to yourself’ approach. He was more talented than his previous directors had given him credit for and if he were to be a director he would be supportive and constructive, rather than the bossy and judgmental type he was already tired of. If the handful of encouraging comments were any indication, his first videos were well-received but nowhere near enough to crack the YouTube algorithm and spread effectively. So, to get things moving and jump-start his new career he scaled down to part time on the housing sites. He grasped at clichés to pump his confidence: ‘Now or never! Nothing ventured, nothing gained! In for a penny, in for a pound!’ But no matter how shaky his future seemed, it was a risk he was prepared to take to launch his presence to the world, gain a base of followers, and start earning enough to at least supplement his income from carpentry. Although he had to trim down his lifestyle to make ends meet, it was a make-or-break shot at a new life and not trying and slowly fizzling out was worse than trying and crashing down to earth. There was always his trade to fall back on.
It took a year to get a thousand followers, two years to get two thousand, but by the third year he had jetted to the stratosphere with a fifty thousand followers and the fourth year it was over a million. It was never clear to him what had changed to precipitate the sudden surge, but he put it down to an increase in confidence and fluidity in his style leading to greater charisma and magnetism––after all he was always dressed as The Midnight Rider and he could do a video in a single take, rather than ten. At five hundred thousand followers he was making enough in ad revenues to quit carpentry altogether, celebrating the event by buying himself a gothic diamond skull pendant from a famous Cuban jeweler from SoHo whose work was known for its numerous Vogue cover page cameos, dangling from the necks and wrists of some of the world’s most famous models and rock stars. All but the most successful actors were at the mercy of agents and casting directors, who, if you were lucky, would put you at the mercy of a director or producer who had little appreciation for the emotional toil and grit involved with being an actor. The insecurity, need for validation, sense of emptiness at the end of a theater run. As an actor he would have been a product and nothing more. But as a YouTuber he was his own boss. He was the boss. There were no middlemen syphoning off profits and accolades from his labors, so quick to criticize and reject him, but even quicker to despoil him of what was rightfully his: his offering of everything that he had from the depths of his soul to the world. His gift. His legacy. But now the reigns were in his own hands, and he could guide his chariot wherever he willed and reap the Lion’s share of whatever rewards came his way. The only downside was that his audience was invisible, a roaring crowd forever behind a black curtain, a digital identity or email address brandishing an avatar, bereft of a real face beaming its rays of satisfaction from a front row theater seat. It was something he could live with because it also protected him from the corollary––such an appreciative face could just as well be critical, impatient, and churlish, grounding his stage performance in midflight, the canonical boos, hisses, and occasional rotten tomato thrown at the cast. That black curtain protected him as much as it isolated him from direct human validation. He could ignore trolls, even block them, while taking the praise and suggestions for future videos and reviews at face value, using them as a divining rod to guide him on to further success.
In his third year he started to receive free perfumes for review from some of the world’s most expensive niche brands, and even started working on releasing his own sub-line of three perfumes for a new French brand, where he got to pick the main notes and a master perfumer would execute it with all their refinement and blending expertise to be released as a joint venture with his name and signature on every bottle. One would be a gourmand based on bergamot, dark chocolate, almonds, and oud––the animalic intoxicating resin of an infected agarwood tree––the second would be a floral Chypre, a style of perfume pioneered by Guerlain over a hundred years ago based around notes of citrus, labdanum, and oak moss, while the third would be a mass-appealing show stopper: a spicy oriental leather fragrance featuring a unique combination of ingredients, he was not yet sure which. Maybe black cherries, rosewood, and artificial deer musk? He would have to see.
During the early stages of his transformation to a successful YouTube influencer, ‘our YouTube Influencer’ because social media belongs to all of us and this story belongs to all of us, his recently-married daughter suddenly dropped out of her Master’s program in Animal Welfare Studies (the only program of its kind in the country and one in which she had been excited to be admitted just six months before). A few days later she announced that she was pregnant. While he was overjoyed to become a grandfather, especially so early in life, it still came as a shock to him: he never expected such a sudden U-turn in her life, which he had actively supported for years. Only two years earlier she had complained that he didn’t support her career objectives, which surprised him because he had always striven to coach her through her master’s program and maintain a close friendship with her through annual visits or vacation weeks during which he would pay for her and his son to meet him in some bustling metropolis or tourist haven. It was their history, their never-ending-story, their family outside their first one that crumbled to a heap the first-time round. Wasn’t there some way she could just take a maternity leave and finish the degree later? Dropping out of an elite program with no warning wouldn’t sit well with her academic advisors and might become an indelible mark on her career, consigning herself to the life of a housewife, the very thing that she had sworn to him she would never become, once even pleading to him during one of their road trips that he do everything he could to save her from such a fate. She had bigger plans with her life, and he was obliged to do whatever he could to help her. But didn’t she have a history of dropping out? Never holding a job for more than two weeks because she thought the people at work were ‘against her’? He didn’t even want to go there. She was his only daughter and he had to support her no matter what. But that wasn’t the end of it. He had promised on her wedding night only two years before that he would give her a sizeable ‘nest egg’ if she ever had a baby, a ‘third installment’ after his ample wedding gift and the two thousand dollars each he gave to her and his son as a high school graduation present, an act of generosity he never saw from his own parents or grandparents. Now she was suddenly asking him for the ‘third installment’ at the worst time possible, exactly when he was in debt trying to launch his YouTube channel. Couldn’t she have told him sooner she was planning on having a baby so he could have started saving to help her? Maybe she could work part time like he and her mother did those first toilsome years after they were born? Did she really need the money that very instant? Couldn’t she wait or her husband, a criminal psychologist whom he treated like his own son, work overtime if need be? It was all so out of the blue.
When he suggested she stay in the Animal Welfare program and take maternity leave instead, she told him to ‘go fuck himself’ on the spot, and when he implored her to forgive him and emphasized his commitment to her––‘you are my daughter and I hope you don’t mean this. The door is always open.’ ––he just got another ‘go fuck yourself’. After a third and finally a fourth appeal, followed by even worse, even shocking insults and baseless accusations about how he had abandoned her as a child, he had no choice but to block her on Facebook Messenger, the app they were using as their communication channel. It seemed harsh, but he had to cool things down before he fired back at her and made things even worse. He was just sending her to the corner like an impudent child, he reassured himself; shutting her off was better than risking he become angry and unhinged himself and say something irreparable. If a friend had treated him this way, he reasoned, wouldn’t he do the same?
This was their first falling out, after which came long breaks of silence followed by various attempts to make amends only to lead to yet another attack out of the blue, leading to him blocking her once again. It had become a pattern, a circle, to be exact: a merry-go-round of misery from which there was no escape. To make matters worse, his son was now his son was on her side, which was even more surprising since they had always been so close, often going on fishing trips together or him providing in-depth feedback to the music he created in his spare time with some friends in his garage rock band.
The hotel room filled with light. It was a light that reminded him of Easter and the scent of Lilly of the Valley, at once palpably vibrant and ethereal, as though radiating from the lush belly of a female Godhead worshipped by pagans in some Spring ritual. It made his limbs feel light and powerful, like they used to be when he once finished second in his high school track and field championship. Youth! Outside the sky was cloudless, but not painted in the deep azure of summer, but a much paler shade of blue, as though the sky itself was deliberately lowering its saturation level to match the otherworldly light in his room. Orchestral instruments had to play as a single instrument and not as disjoint parts and with light it was no different. The sky was a lid on the world, opposing the ground with all its oceans, rivers, mountains, and lakes, as though there were nothing beyond its vast blue barrier and all the creatures inside were trapped here for eternity. But that was all illusory, because beyond this vast blue ceiling lied trillions of invisible galaxies at least as big as our own. Suddenly afraid of what this thought process implied––how small all lives really were––he retreated into the comfort of the room. The air smelled like M–, not her perfume, but her: her hair, its sebum, her skin––all scents that he found comforting. There were familiar objects around him that were not his, but part of a familiar life: the life of a traveler––a hair dryer in the bathroom, a full selection of tropical-inspired hair and body products in the bathroom, an ironing board in the closet (where was the iron, or did you need to call the front desk?), a notepad on the desk, but no pen in sight. Despite the excusable absences, the overall sense of order and ‘everything being taken care of’ put him at ease. It made him feel at once peaceful and successful, but not in a way that was haughty or swelled with judgement, looking down on his peers, rather simply ‘successful’, which implied safe––first and foremost safe. Yes, he was safe. Safe from the Universe and safe with M–. That was enough.
When he looked outside again there were five parallel clouds striped beside each other in perfect lines, as though the sky had been lacerated by a giant bear claw and morning’s white blood was slowly oozing from its blue skin. Such geometric perfection was obviously the work of outside intervention––but what? Had he somehow missed the sound of jets screeching through the sky? Was there an Air Force show somewhere out there with a team of pilots painting intricate exhaust patterns across the sky, the public on the ground looking on in silent shrieks of awe? He stretched out his neck to scope every corner of the horizon but there was no suggestion of anything man made. Maybe the stripes were the manifestation of some God previously known only to Zebras? The notion made him laugh out loud. Deu zebra! ––a Portuguese expression that mean something unexpected just happened, like a highly favored football team losing to a weaker one to the surprise of everyone, and literally meant ‘gave a zebra’ or more accurately translated as ‘a zebra came’. Yes, it was a portent of some kind whose meaning had yet to be divined––smoke signals from the aboriginal elders of the Cosmos––and something amazing would happen to him that day, something meant only for him that would change his life forever. A moth fluttered through his line of sight and landed on the wall. He felt an immediate urge to crush it under his thumb since he had been waging a war on moths in his own apartment because they ruined one of his favorite suits while it was stored away in a closet during the pandemic. But no, he felt blessed today by the stripes in the sky and decided to spare it. If the maids wanted to kill it, OK––that was their right, their duty, their problem, or whatever it was to them. He would not do their bidding. Not today, anyway. Not when something amazing was about to happen to him. All of history and time, and with it even the future––his future––was looking brighter by the minute.
With the certainty that he had finished his morning rituals and had suitably woken up, he prepared to go out for the day, a day that would end with a reunion with his estranged daughter. It had not started out that way, when he awoke in the middle of the night at first terrified of the massive hump beside him in the bed before realizing it was M– and he was in a strange hotel room with her. The image still hung in his mind as he dressed, but distantly so, as though the night had belonged to someone else entirely and he was only experiencing it through some form of virtual reality goggles. He had lain awake for what seemed like hours, and then only minutes, and then hours again. The clock would tick, or was it the sound of some unspecified electrical unit somewhere in the room or beyond? It came from far away, but then it was so close it could have been inside his ear, his head even. His brain. That was it. His brain was on fire and only he could put it out––but how? The sound disappeared, leaving him hovering there in complete silence: there, beside her, beside M–, the woman he truly loved like no other. But when his mind turned to his daily life, he was suddenly stiff with peril. Would he be sued by some unknown entity, a perfume company perhaps, for inadvertently performing some small forgettable act that only seemed that way to him, but to them, his legal adversary, constituted a major transgression or violation of patent rights? He had said something reckless and damaging in one of his videos and had inflamed the ego of some great perfumer like Olivier Creed without even knowing it. Creed’s lawyers were gathered around a conference table that very moment plotting their strategy against him, collecting every crumb of data from his various social media accounts to build their case. Would he be driven to bankruptcy, bled of every penny in a frivolous lawsuit, left begging on the streets with M–? Beside him M– was breathing. It was his only comfort in the entire Universe, but how long would she continue breathing? When it stopped, she would stop, and they would stop. Perhaps there was a dormant cancer cell somewhere in her body, lurking in its miserable little foxhole beneath her unsuspecting skin, waiting for the moment when it would emerge and begin its diabolical replication on a genetic trajectory to ultimate supremacy. But then the first peep of sunrise came through the curtains, which were thick and dark, hanging from rails ensuring that the two sides would always overlap and eliminate any light; they were clearly not perfect. After putting his pillow over his eyes to block out the light, a habit he started recently at home when the dawn came, he suddenly felt at ease. The chimeras of the night retreated into the dim gray that filled the space around him and he fell back asleep.
So, there he was standing there in the hotel room thinking about the night before as he dressed to meet the day, a day that would bring about his Eternal Damnation, although he wasn’t even remotely aware of this as he hopefully decided which pieces from his suitcase, now airing out in the closet on elegant wooden hangers, he would wear to help usher out a resolution with his daughter, an event which would spread out like a spill of magical ink across his entire family, bringing them all back in his favor. It was best to look professional yet casual, maybe like a businessman on his lunchbreak. If he wore a trench coat with a scarf or that diamond-studded pendant he bought to celebrate the success of his channel, she would take it as a deliberate provocation, a subliminal message that he was a success, and she wasn’t. She would also take him as irredeemably selfish, and she would be right. Why hadn’t he instead bought her a new baby carriage, filled with an arsenal of the most popular toys of the year, which were so important these days to ensure children were accepted by their peers; or what about a college fund? Indeed, he had already given her these things but there was always room for more. His son and daughter had even said so when he treated them to a trip to San Francisco to see their favorite heavy metal band as a graduation present. His son explained to him as they waited for the band to take the stage that a friend of his had received a new car as a graduation present, and further, that their other relatives always gave him and his sister more money for Christmas and their birthdays than their visibly successful father did. ‘What a joke,’ he lashed out in his defense, ‘The Prince of Bahrain got a 747 for his birthday, so does that mean you should too?’ Maybe he had inadvertently become ‘and old goat’ but when he grew up, he got little or nothing from his parents for graduation, and his parents stopped giving him gifts of any kind once he turned thirty.
After some deliberation he decided to wear a simple grey wool crew neck sweater and jeans with a dressy waist-length officer’s jacket in a shade of blue so dark it was almost black. It was professional but still gave a glimpse of the real him without the razzle dazzle of how he appeared on his channel. It was important not to look like ‘someone else’, lest he be seen as trying to impress her, or use his clothing as some kind of weapon of manipulation to gain unfair foothold. As a final step he washed his face; bending down to stare into a droplet on the marble counter from so close that it occupied his entire field of vision and he could see the reflection of the ceiling as clearly as if it were right in front of him, until his breath gradually evaporated the droplet, and all was left was the marble. He dried his face with a towel and, putting his best self before him, stepped towards the door to open it, making sure to leave the ‘please service room’ sign on the outside handle as he went out to meet the day.