Dave has leaned his bike against the light pole and watches traffic go by. His blond curls peeking out of his blue hoody catch wet pearls, his clenched hands in his pockets. He does not know how long he has been standing there. Maybe 10 minutes. He does not know exactly why he is standing there, but he feels that he should not go home yet.
At home, only a mountain lion awaits him. The contrast between his smooth fur and his death claws have scared him out of the house. Dave had never felt comfortable with the novel. How does one deal with a lion? When humans were closer to primates than to Dave, there was a well-defined course of action to be taken if a mountain lion found its way onto human territory. The group of not-exactly-Daves would be gathered, supplied with rather ineffective weapons, have communicated a strategy in grunts and wheezes and eliminated the threat.
Dave, on the other hand, had to deal with animal protection and the division of the government handling illegal immigration, contraband and smuggling. Dave’s backyard was tiled and too narrow to secretly bury a lion. Burying an illegal immigrant was also novel to Dave and something he desperately wanted to avoid. He had not even wanted a lion, but one day it just stood on his porch and let itself in once the door was answered.
Moths are periodically flocking around the lamp post, fluttering off disappointedly every time its light dims. The rain is slowly but intrusively seeping through the holes in Dave’s right shoe. A red Honda smiles at a black Toyota. The Honda’s headlights give it the appearance of a girly cat, the Toyota looks more like one of those fast bugs Dave can never catch but always sees lurking in the dark corners of his pantry.
There is nothing wrong with Dave. He has a part-time job at a copy shop, goes for runs in the park, likes foreign movies and cooks the same four meals in a rotating order. It makes it easier to remember his grocery list. It is not appreciated or even considered worrisome to not have connections, so Dave has a handful of friends he sees once a month. He does not have a girlfriend and is unsure if he actually wants one. None of his friends are girls, so to think that first he has to find a girl to befriend and then make her his private girl-friend does not seem within his capacities.
The day after Dave went to the therapist for the first time, the mountain lion became his roommate. The therapist is nice but asks difficult questions:
“Do you have problems relating to others?”
“Have you been feeling different this week?”
“How do you deal with stress?”
She has long brown hair that cascades over her shoulders. A few locks have tangled themselves around the wooden buttons of her wrinkled blouse. She is good at watching Dave kindly and waiting for him to formulate an answer.
“What makes you happy?”
One moth has been caught by surprise when a fat drop engulfs and smashes it into Dave’s left sleeve. He sees how the brown powder creating the patterns on its wings bleeds into his jacket. It probably cannot take off and fly anymore and has to spend the rest of his short existence on Dave’s arm.
D: “What makes other people happy?”
T: “That shouldn’t matter in what brings you happiness.”
D: “More as an example.”
Her nose wrinkles when she pushes her glasses into
their preferred position. Her eyes dart from the aloe vera plant in the left
corner to the supposedly calming painting of a sunny meadow on the north wall
of the consultation room.
T:
“For example, most people gain happiness from pursuing a goal or an interest,
that can be a promotion, a study or course, a family, a pet or journey.”
D:
“I already have a pet.”
She sighs, closes her notebook and chucks it aside to
then arrange it in line with the corner of the table.
T:
“I’ve told you this before: the mountain lion is not a pet. But that does not
mean you shouldn’t take care of it.”
D:
“Every time I approach it, it does something unpredictable, I don’t like it.
Every time I chase him off the porch, he is back in the living room by the time
I come in again. How can I be thinking of my happiness if the source of my
unhappiness is on my sofa, eating my dinner every night?”
The therapist knows that she put that mountain lion on
Dave’s porch. She has been telling him that since their second session, but he
is a stubborn patient. There is nothing wrong with Dave. He has a job, enough
friends to call him sociable and does not mind bad weather.
He was not a bad psychiatric case, did not need
medication, maybe did not even need therapy. Because his life was alright. She
took him on as a patient because he seemed empty, unaware of his routine,
emotions and fears.
His first session he came in with his eyes widened,
his blond curls a fuzzy halo. He sat down on the leather sofa that seemed to
have belonged to Sigmund himself. He told her that he had got a letter that was
not addressed to him, but opened it anyway. It said:
Dear Marras,
I’ve been thinking about you a great deal. It must be
lonely without knowing my whereabouts. I really could be anywhere. I assure you
that I’m fine. Me and the boys always find something to keep us busy, happy and
maybe also useful. Soon I’ll tell you more about this mission, but its details
are still confidential. Sorry honey.
I think we should go on that trip together we always
talked about, once I’m back and settled in again. This fucking desert is so hot, I’d like to go someplace cold. Maybe Norway. You always wanted to
go to Europe, right?
I have also been working on a list of novels and poems
we should read to each other and movies we should watch in our bed. I miss our
orange curtains that make our room look like a circus tent every morning, when
the sun tries to beam through them. Maybe Harriette can join us, if you make
sure I got enough tissues to battle my allergies. Speaking of, I surely hope
you’re feeding Harriette less these days, remember that the vet said clearly
that she should lose weight!
I have to admit I even miss that furry scoundrel.
Marras, you’re the light that wakes me up at 5am and guides me through the day,
my fig princess. I can’t wait to hug you again. This time, I will hold you
forever.
Yours, Keith
T:
“Why do you think you
opened the letter?”
D:
“It was on my doormat. It felt like it was mine.”
T:
“Then what struck you
when you read it?”
D:
“I can’t seem to connect
to Keith’s feelings for Marras. The letter seems to be filled with pockets of
happiness and love. I made me realize that I have never experienced anything
like it.”
T:
“Love? Affection? Intimacy? Happiness? Can you explain what you mean?”
D:
“None of it. But I’ve also never felt like I needed it. I am alright. Now,
after reading this letter, I wonder whether alright is enough for me.”
Dave flicks the moth of his sleeve and grabs his bike.
He does not cycle, but walks along the boulevard, reading the license plates,
wondering how many spy agencies communicated through these combinations of
letters and numbers. He speculated what an Arabic license plate would look like
and whether you would have to read it from the left. Then how would someone
unable to read the Arabic alphabet report an Arabic-license-plated car?
D:
“I feel off. Confused.
Not necessarily boring, but empty. I have never registered specific moments of
happiness, so why do I constantly notice my unhappiness since I read the letter?”
T:
“Because you are socially comparing yourself to Keith. He has a partner, shared
memories, future plans and apparently a mission. Maybe you feel like you don’t
have that. There is nothing wrong with you. You just need to adjust to the
small disappointments in life. Keith is just different from you, not better or
worse. But you should try to work on yourself and find things to trigger
happiness. In the long run, the small issues will slowly expand from the back
of your mind until they are so big that you can no longer hide from them and
then there is something wrong with you. Stress builds up and you have to tend
to yourself. Don’t let this problem become a mountain lion.”
D:
“What does that mean?”
T:
“Dave, you are a modern human with modern problems. When your ancestors had the
same amount of stress as you have about your unhappiness, it was usually caused
by an identifiable threat. Maybe a mammoth or mountain lion. Cortisol,
adrenaline and other hormones, causing an alert, stressed state, would make
them more efficient at killing the beast, after which their bodies would return
to its baseline. Even though our society, lifestyle, technologies and stressors
have changed, our biological circuit hasn’t. If you worry too much about your
unhappiness, but don’t take steps to live a life you deem worthy, you don’t go
back to that baseline. The threat becomes unidentifiable.”
D:
“So my unhappiness is a mountain lion?”
T:
“I think humans consider a lion a bigger threat than unhappiness. Or at least
they should.”
I AM WORKING ON IT
he writes in the middle of his smudged mirror. He observes his reflection through the letters and says, “What makes you happy? Well, the answer is obvious: evict the lion. Does that mean I want to become Keith?”
Dave realizes that he feels uncomfortable talking to himself and that he wants orange curtains. He sneaks into the living room to his desk, where one lonely volume has been catching dust next to a cactus. One Hundred Years of Solitude had been a present from his friend group. Just like a foreign movie, they said, but then in words and sentences. Dave wipes the cover clean, slowly approaches the sofa and sits down next to the lion. it yaps contently in its sleep and stretches its legs over Dave’s lap. He strokes its soft greyish fur and wrinkles his forehead in preparation of the first sentence.
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