Carl Boon
The Fulsome Apathy of Daphne Alexander
Just after her twenty-first birthday, Daphne Alexander decided that the evils of the world could be eliminated by the practice of “fulsome apathy.” Nobody knew exactly what she had in mind. Her co-workers at the beauty salon thought it sounded pretty good. The Saturday night group at Danny’s Pub agreed—after a few rounds—that it was a step in the right direction. Her mother was concerned. And her father, who was living in Phoenix at the time with a woman who was exactly Daphne’s age, wanted to know more. He’d be back in El Paso for a few days over Christmas, and they could talk.
I’d gone to high school with Daph and thought the whole thing was a crock of shit, which I told her over coffee one lunch break at the Guarded Owl. “Look,” I said, “you just went through a bad breakup, your dad’s out in the desert hammering on some college girl, and we happen to be in the midst of the worst pandemic in a hundred years. Maybe lay off the New Age dazzle and, I don’t know, be normal.” The problem was it wasn’t New Agey at all, her practice. As she explained over flat whites (no one drinks regular coffee anymore), it meant “caring deeply from a honed distance.” It meant “total and utter human connection minus the mechanics of connection.” She wrapped her hand around her coffee cup and (yes, I wanted to kiss it, blue fingernails and all) elaborated. “To be honest, one mustn’t care.” I got it, but I really didn’t, so we decided to catch a movie and dinner after her shift at Darneen’s.
Denzel Washington surprised us. He’d shed a few pounds since the last flick, and though he wasn’t quite The Rock, he looked damn good. Then we went to Martin’s, a Tex-Mex place out of 43rd Street, where Daph downed a pair of margaritas to gather what I assumed was the courage to tell me it was something she’d read about online, probably on one of those Reddit pages. But I was wrong. My old friend was more nuanced than I’d expected. “Distance functions as a gift. The gift of distance is the gift of giving, and the gift of giving is a trial whereby the gifted may arrive at his or her conclusions. Like, look. Say I’m in love with Pierre and he composes a piano sonata for me. That’s his soul, his effort, his mercury. What good is it for me to get up into him? He has to breathe it; he has to be that thing for a while. Or else I’m aiding in his misplacement, his shadow of opportunity. As for my part, that would amount to a transgression, a rousing of what shouldn’t be roused. Not yet.”
If you’re confused, think how I felt. I asked the waitress for a Tecate and another plate of nachos. A man two booths over was wearing an obscene sombrero; it must’ve been his birthday. The manager was serenading him with a José Feliciano song about unrequited amor. I wanted to die, but first I wanted to make love to Daphne Alexander because she seemed so sincere. (You don’t get that too often among members of my generation.) To be precise, I thought I could fuck the confusion right out of her, but she was onto me. “If we make love tonight, Carl, be it at your place or mine, you must always remember that it was not a pursuit but rather a statement of vast human inadequacy. Not a triumph or even a moment but something that exists on its own, a fallen olive or the last bit of waffle batter left inside the bowl.”
The philosophical doctrine meant sex was out. We ate our burritos in silence (mine beef, hers chicken) and mused on Denzel, his better movies, and how cold it was for El Paso in November. She spoke about her father and I spoke of mine, and we concluded that I should take the leftover burritos home. She looked tired. I thought at first it was the margaritas or her work—so much hair to cut, so little pay—but I realized it was something deeper, like a wound that wouldn’t heal. I offered to drive her home, but she opted for a cab. She wanted to go to the cemetery and be among the dead for a while. She wanted to do that, and I had no way of stopping her.