A Year of Riots

Halfway around the world, a man has set himself on fire. You found him scrolling through your phone in the darkness of your apartment this morning, your family still asleep, the haunting image previewing the day’s coming shape.

Outside your Uber, the arches of the Manhattan Bridge shuttle by like frames in a movie. The river below you is iron, flat, distant. The sun is a splash of salmon on the horizon. You have made this trip to the airport a thousand times before. Your face is a blurred reflection in the window; the shaved head, the graying beard, your brown skin merging with the morning’s murk.

Your gaze returns to your phone and the brutal vision of this Tunisian man. A question has been posed, the answer a shadow just outside of your line of sight. Ghostly and ominous, you can’t quite make it out. But you feel it. You feel it every day.

~

Lately, your wife Sunny’s appraising gaze is hinting at the need for your replacement. She eyes you across the dinner table the way she eyes the last remnants of the Ikea furniture you bought when you first moved in together. When you sit at night, Game of Thrones spewing violence into your living room, your wife’s computer on her lap, you wonder what possibilities the internet is proposing to her, what alternative reality is unfurling?

~

“The Project,” as you like to call it, is a lifeline for you. Your business has been languishing, its checking account often hovering in the four-digit range, your business credit cards never zeroed and flirting with the max.

“Think about getting more steady employment,” Sunny said to you the summer previous on a glorious day when the earth vibrated with beauty. You spent that afternoon, a Tuesday, reading a book in the shade of Washington Square Park’s plane trees. You might make less money freelancing, but you are in charge of your own hours, your own life. If days get lost in the sun or at the bottom of a bottle of wine, so be it.

But you took Sunny’s implicit threat seriously and reached out to some old contacts who do quasi-governmental contracts as part of the big consultancies that take on such ambiguous work. Bill Henderson, a man of golf shirts, khakis, and boat shoes, had something interesting.

“It’s a year-long assignment. You can go home, but you’ll be gone four to six weeks at a time. The money is good, and the per diem will go a long way in some of these countries. Mostly you’ll be in Europe. It will be fun. You’re just interviewing NGOs, nonprofits, and their clients, getting a sense of the state of civil society and such.”

You agreed because it solves a few problems at once: the money problem and the marriage problem. Except maybe it’s making the marriage problem worse. But at least it gives you time to think. You remind yourself of this at your gate in Frankfurt Airport, your fifth hour there, the allotment of free Wi-Fi long since used up, your coffee drained, the grit in your eyes tangible with every blink. Time to think.

~

In Zagreb, you meet a pack of British and Australian expatriates. You spot them at the very end of your solitary wanderings around the city, just as you turn towards your hotel. The sun has set and the air has turned to needles in your lungs, the wind a scouring pad across your face. The thinning hairlines and beer bellies are illuminated by ceiling lighting that is much too bright for a bar; you can see them dancing from the street. You step into eighties music blaring from two tinny speakers whose subwoofers are on the verge of complete failure. You’re offered a beer right away and you take it.

“I came here too early,” the owner of the bar explains to you. He’s a slight, bald man of probably 35, with a wiry physique that suggests latent violence. “There’s fuck all happening in this country now. I should burn this place to the ground, but I doubt I’d see a dime of insurance money.”

“I think my wife is dating an MMA fighter,” you say. This falsehood feels like an essential truth.

“Well, fuck me dead. Beers are on the house, mate.”

You feel badly about the lie, but you are happy to enjoy the commiseration. You accept the good cheer of your new friends and join them in their dancing among the bar stools, the frenetic movements a ritual in which reality is banished.

Later, you stumble toward your hotel, your vision having turned blurry and the winter evening feeling as warm as a bath. When you stop to take a piss in the treed shadows of some unknown park, trying to access homing instincts not yet shorted out by ten drinks, you see a large crowd of short-haired young men in red and white checkered jerseys yelling and smashing the occasional car window.

“Hell, yes,” you say, one hand on your member, the other raised in the air. “Burn it all down.”

~

“Hosni Mubark resigned,” you tell Sunny from your hotel room in Brussels. She is back-lit by a sunny day that erases her. The tail of your brown tabby flickers periodically onto the screen. In the background, you can hear The Teen Titans and your son Miles cackling to himself. Out of the view of the camera, on the hotel desk in your room, is a can of beer. Three more empties are right behind it.

“I saw he did,” she says. “It changes nothing.”

Hosni Mubark, Ted Koppel, and Steve Martin are on your wife’s “approved list,” meaning if she encounters them in real life, she has permission to have sex. On your own list is Zoe Saldana, Salma Hayek, and Christina Hendricks. Your own choices seem completely ridiculous. Where are you ever going to run into these women and if you do, what chance is there of them wanting to have sex with you? Whereas three years ago you saw Ted Koppel at the local playground, pushing what you presume was his grandchild on the swing.

“He’ll be less attractive without the power.”

“Do you think it’s power I want?” She glances backward in the direction of the living room and your son, and for a moment the sun frames her in a golden halo. She looks sad and beautiful.

“It’s what I want.”

Sunny says nothing, the kind of silence that says everything.

“I’ll let you get back to it,” you say. When she has disappeared off your screen and you can only hear the hum of the room’s heater, you finish your beer and then crack open one of the four remaining in your mini fridge.

~

In Munich one of your interviewees offers to show you where the naked people sunbathe.

“I’m not sure if they will be there,” she says, indicating a park that is beginning to green, the trees still skeletal, the air still fragile. “Spring has just started.”

Later, she takes you to dinner and you try pig’s knuckle and drink lukewarm beer from a stein.

“We love our Angela,” she says, pushing back a lock of blonde hair that hangs over a mottled face that has seen too much sun. “These countries, especially the Greeks, have behaved so irresponsibly.”

“If that’s true, wasn’t it irresponsible to lend them so much money?”

“You have to pay your debts,” she says with a shrug.

She makes you pay for dinner, and later tries to kiss you. She doesn’t seem put off by you declining.

“I always wanted to kiss someone who is black,” she says with a shrug.

~

Really, in retrospect, it seems crazy to build a nuclear power plant so close to the sea in an earthquake prone part of the world. And who knew that if nuclear power plants are cut off from their power source, they melt down? When you view the whole thing from that angle, it seems inevitable. Hundreds of plants around the world, latent disasters of heat, fission, and radiation, poised to poison us all when the inevitability of human nature makes a mockery of the word “failsafe.”

This is the world we are building for our children, you think. A house of cards, a pyramid scheme, a mass delusion, a grift to end all grifts.

“Have you paid the mortgage this month?” Sunny asks you during one of your less and less frequent video chats.

“No. I will.”

And you will, as soon as they pay you, the time horizon for which is totally unclear. The pay schedule for these sub-contracts is net 90 days, sometimes longer. Meanwhile, you continue to live, Miles continues to live, Sunny continues to live, and the world continues to want and to want, subsuming you in its need.

~

What drives a man to set himself on fire? There have been more immolations in Tunisia, and when you do a little searching, Tibet too. Are these the ultimate acts of despair or the ultimate acts of resolve?

Your own resolve feels in question as you’re driven along the flat farmland of central Serbia, bleak, low-hanging clouds rendering everything featureless except the distant mountain peaks just beginning to surface over the horizon. The car is filled with smoke from the cigarettes of your driver and the rest of your entourage from the embassy.

“You have asthma?” they asked sympathetically as they lit up and then rolled down the windows to the chilly March air.

At a gas station, two pretty girls ask if they can take a picture with you. You agree, snaking an arm around each of their waists. They smile for the camera and then disappear, giggling.

“They think you must be an NBA player,” your driver says with a laugh and a shake of his head, as if this idea strains credibility.

Later, in your hotel, you light a match and then slowly lower your hand closer and closer to the flame, the heat at first a comfort, and then a searing warning that shoots through the core of you. You jerk your hand away and then stare at the mottled brown of your palm. You still feel an echo of pain, but the skin is not even blistered. No, the desperation isn’t there, and neither is the resolve.

~

You use a credit card for the mortgage. You use the same credit card to buy tickets for Sunny and Miles to come see you in Istria. You apply for two new credit cards.

~

Sunny looks beautiful in the sunlight that flows over the Adriatic and strikes her bronzed skin. Her Irish half has contributed to a sprinkle of freckles across her nose, and her Filipino half, dark eyes that are both soulful and serious. A worry line in the shape of a V is etched into the skin of her forehead, a mark you feel gives her more depth, makes her beauty more serious and formidable. I’ve given her that mark, you think.

The view is of the water and the beach, sail boats docked in rows, families and tourists tossed across the sand, some kind of super yacht anchored far off the coast. Straw wine sits on the table in front of you. You can’t remember the last time you and Sunny were alone, relaxing, enjoying a lazy day. You aren’t technically alone. Miles’ joyful cries can be heard as he plays in the resort pool with some of the other children, but it’s as close as you can realistically get these days and you savor it. Your son is happy, you feel happy, and Sunny at least seems content.

She snakes an arm forward across the table and grips your hand in hers. The surrounding sunlight is like a rainfall of crystal shards.

“On days like this, I think we can make it,” she says, and you nod, both happy she has made this statement and alarmed that she has said aloud what you have known, but that has also been hidden. The words make your challenges more real, rather than dispelling them.

~

In Zurich, you are taken to dine in a small restaurant with wonderful fondue and wooden tables draped in red gingham. Your host, a bearded man named Nicky with a fleshy nose and a wide smile, is explaining the world to you. He waves his fork as he speaks, as if orchestrating reality.

“Is this the beginning or the end?” he asks you with a squint.

“The end?”

“Close,” he says with a self-satisfied smile. “It’s the beginning of the end.”

He pours you some of the house red from the carafe at the table.

“How much longer do you think people are going to put up with the likes of you and me?” he asks. “We who have fondue and drink wine and get paid to travel around Europe for a year, interviewing people? Not much longer. No, my friend, not much longer.”

“They’re going to have their way with us,” he continues. “You’ll see. You’ll look back and see this was when it all started.”

Nicky doesn’t seem bothered by his own pronouncements. He stabs an apple slice and dips it into the bubbling gruyere. You nod knowingly, taking in his prophecy. Yes, it all seems very true. There is a relief in this knowledge, a feeling that your own failings are part of some larger calamity, that you are just a leaf being carried away in a flash flood. Absolution. You catch Nicky’s eye and raise your glass.

~

Sunny and Miles have returned home, and The Project has finally paid you. You use the money to pay next month’s mortgage and to pay off some of the credit card debt. You video call Sunny to tell her and catch her while she is out for a walk on a gray afternoon with Miles. Behind her is a wash of ashen sky framing newly budding trees. The sound of traffic and pedestrians occasionally bursts through the line.

“I can call you back. It’s going to be expensive if you use the network instead of Wi-Fi.”

“Miles has something wrong with him,” she says. “He’s listless. I took him to the doctor today. They don’t know what it is. They need to run some tests.”

“Okay,” you say because you’re not sure what else to say.

“This is all out of pocket. We aren’t anywhere near our deductible.”

“Use the credit card. Let me know how it all goes.”

She pauses and then says “sure,” and you feel the full weight of that pause and its meaning. When you hang up, you pour yourself a glass of wine. You stare out of your hotel window at the Amsterdam skyline.

~

In June, you go home for a few weeks. The city is already overheated, its people on the edge of some violent understanding. Discontent sizzles like water on the heated pavement.

They still don’t know what is wrong with your son. You and Sunny sit on a park bench under the shade of an elm that does nothing to dampen the heat while you wait for test results. Miles is playing happily with some other children on the jungle gym, his long arms propelling him across the monkey bars. Today is a good day and his energy is high.

“We lose that,” you say. “The ability to hold up our own body weight. To do half the things any six-year-old can do.”

You watch him, his perfectly formed features, his unblemished skin golden in the light of the afternoon. You love him so much and you cannot bear the thought of your son’s corruption, if not this mysterious illness draining him, then what the world will inevitably do to him, how it will wear down your perfect son into someone like you.

“The credit cards are getting close to maxed again,” Sunny says.

“We’re almost at our deductible.”

“And the mortgage?”

“The Project will pay me again soon, hopefully.”

She snorts. “Hopefully.”

You take her hand and pat it. She doesn’t respond.

“I don't need to be comforted. I need something to change. Maybe I should go back to work.”

“If you can find a job, your salary will all go to childcare.”

We never know when the last moment of something is. When was the last time you felt in control, happy, relaxed? When was the last small moment when things were okay? You wonder when you missed it.

~

You leave for Marseilles on a sunny, sweltering day just before the July 4^th holiday. You drag yourself to the airport, your bags feeling as heavy as your life. As you cross the ocean, you are torn between the ache you feel missing your family and the relief that might accompany the plane suddenly dropping from the sky and shattering into a million pieces on the surface of the Atlantic. You ask for a refill of your wine as a compromise between the two feelings.

In Marseille, your hotel is close to the water and you eat at a restaurant with a view of the quay teeming with fishing boats. As you eat your fish and drink rosé, the server begs you not to leave your phone sitting on the table while you read from your book.

“Someone will steal it,” he explains. “You will turn your head, and it will be gone.”

The sun is still high in the summer sky and the smell of fish, seaweed, algae, and oil is a tonic spiking something primal within you. You feel strong, determined, but to do what you are unsure. The bottle of rosé finished, you wander the streets of Vieux-Port, noting the shops where seafood is sold, the charming restaurants, the lull of the water as it patiently wears everything away. As the sun drops and the shadows stretch towards the sea, you cut through a wide alley on the way back to your hotel. Teenagers in jerseys are playing soccer and as you pass by them, one kicks the ball towards you. They are not smiling, and they consider you, these ten lanky, dark emperors looking down at a vanquished gladiator in a coliseum.

Go ahead, you think. Go ahead and do it. Thumbs down. I wouldn’t blame you.

You nod and kick them the ball, trusting they will have seen some commonality between you. You walk briskly through the alley, afraid to look back.

~

In London, a man who looks like you is killed in a barrage of police-issue hollow points, and the city is engulfed in flames. The flames spread from city to city across England and you watch the news alternately on the TV in your room and at the hotel bar, Sunny warning you on pain of your life not to leave, to stay out of the streets.

You can barely tolerate the philosophers, prognosticators, and apologists at the hotel bar, some of whom avoid you, others eager to engage you. You keep your eyes forward, staring at your drink, staring at the scenes of smoke, ruin, and shadowed bodies, as all meld into a single muddle of displaced anger, sickness, and despair. Your own despair is rising in your throat.

You want to feel anger, but anger implies something can be different, that something can change. Anger implies a new beginning, and this feels like an ending.

~

In your room, the energy you felt earlier has completely dissipated. You call Sunny.

“I miss you,” you say to her.

“Uh huh. Let’s talk about money. Between the medical expenses, the maxed credit cards, and the 90 days it takes for your employer to pay you . . .”

“How is Miles?”

“The same. He’s the same. But let’s talk about our finances. Maybe we need to make some changes. Maybe we just can’t swing the way we live right now.”

“Look, I’ll push my employer on the money thing. I promise. We can make this work.”

You head down to the hotel bar and order a glass of wine. What does it even mean to “make it work”? Nothing is working. Everything is a holding action, cover fire for the retreat. The promise to Miles implied by the best private schools, tutors, educational games, limited screen time, lessons in civil rights and social justice, squash and soccer lessons, sushi and organic lunches, will be broken. The world he is expecting will never manifest. Better you should take him to the shooting range than the skills you are giving him now. You should take him camping, teach him to live off the land. You should buy a cabin on a hill somewhere, and when the time comes, the three of you can watch the glow on the horizon as the cities burn.

~

Instead of feeling on fire like the man in Tunisia, you feel you are slowly cooling off and fading, that your universe is experiencing the heat death of all universes, the gradual pulling apart of your world, its entropy accelerating, the winking out of your life and what you know more and more evident.

~

In Belgrade, on an evening shadowed by tall thunderheads, two young men contemplate whether they should assault you and your companion. Dragan, who you met as part of The Project, is the head of a nonprofit dedicated to bringing a gay pride parade to Serbia and a local reality TV star. You went for a drink, and here you stand in the tree-lined streets of the old city, the beautiful and normally passive neighborhood of Dorćol, while two heavy set men eye you both. They confer in Serbian and Dragan grins at them, spreads his palms in front of him.

“They recognize me from TV. They know who I am, which is both the reason why they may kick my ass, and also the reason why they may not.”

Dragan takes a step towards the two men, and you know this will be the thing that catalyzes what comes next or defuses it.

The attack is fast. Two quick punches, one breaking Dragan’s nose and the other dropping him to his knees. His breath is audible as it flies out of his mouth.

You run over to Dragan, but the two men are already walking down the street laughing. A patter of rain begins to fall and then a deluge and you both duck under the nearby awning of a shop dedicated to rug cleaning.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

Dragan shrugs. “I’ve gotten my ass kicked four times in the last three years.”

You both sit on the little stoop of the shop and you offer Dragan your shirt to staunch the flow of blood. You watch the rain pour from the dark sky, the street deserted except for the red bodies of trams crawling by. After a while, a sliver of pink appears above you and the glow of an unseen sun back-lights the clouds as the rain lets up just a little, a slight falter in its determination to drown the world.

“I’m going to go for it,” Dragan says, grins at you, and then steps from underneath the awning and sprints down the street. You watch his awkward figure disappear and then you pull out your cell phone and call Sunny, oblivious to what will be an exorbitant bill for an international roaming call.

“Is everything all right?” she asks, alarmed.

“Everything is okay,” you say, with a laugh, with a cry as you gulp air and tears stream down your face. The rain hammers the ground, and the sun is a fireball through a crack in the sky, its light a halo erasing the street, the city, the world.

“Everything is fine.”