Closer (short story)
By Luke Labern
I
So close to success.
A lifetime of ambition, of strong words and stronger will. And it’s within touching distance. The acquisition of such dreams reveals that an age of maturity has been reached – intersected by the culmination of years of hard work, training, practise and of course, the obligatory good deal of fortune. But it is finally here: it’s time to revel in those few precious moments that loom large in the distance, in the future, but that we don’t quite know what to do with when we achieve them.
They really don’t last long. And it’s all too easy for them to become tinged with sadness. When a dream, a lifelong goal, is reached, we are granted a few seconds in which it becomes a novelty. After that, it becomes a memory, making the imperceptible transition from future to past.
Will there be champagne tops uncorked, followed by the unique sound of thin glasses filled with bubbling success? I don’t drink so I don’t care much for that. What other western traditions can I reel off to describe the picture? A lot of people in suits, some balloons with strange ribbons attached to them; bites to eat on a platter, and, of course, more alcohol in different forms. Small talk perhaps.
Whilst that goes on in the real world, as it’s called, what’s going through the mind of the person to whom the toasts are made? Exactly these thoughts: I’m standing outside the building where the party is being held – my flat, on the seventh floor. I’m wearing a tuxedo-type thing and I’m holding a glass of champagne because someone handed it to me earlier. My agent. I came outside because I feel like a stranger in my own home. There is confetti all over the floor and there are various publisher types all over my flat making small talk, discussing whether my first novel will sell better as an e-book or as paper in people’s hands. I hate all of that; there’s only so much I could take so I used the customary line ‘I’m going outside to get some fresh air’.
If they’re going to be cliché and performative in their unoriginal roles, celebrating the fact that I will make them money, then I won’t hesitate to use the same clichéd lines I stole from some terrible film. So I’m standing outside, looking up at my flat. I’m in the middle of London and it’s a summer’s day – the weather is incredible, the sky is at its most vivid and the few clouds in the sky are picture-perfect. I look ridiculous in my tuxedo, but those people who are walking all around me can tell from the untouched glass of champagne in my hand that I’m ‘celebrating’.
So close to celebration, anyway.
II
I’m walking away from my own publication-celebration-thing. My first novel has been picked up by a publisher in London and they’ve really taken to it. I’ve received a healthy advance (the same money from which I have had to buy this tuxedo) because they see ‘big things’ in my future. They think I’ll speak to people across various cultures because of the universality of my work. They like that the topic is controversial, and that I have a well-defined voice: it’s a novel about addiction and makes the bold claim that all people, everywhere, are addicted to something; it’s an attempt to wrangle certain topics away from the rigid ‘objectivity’ of science and to explore them philosophically, subjectively and artistically through literature, based on my own experiences in the life I’ve lived so far.
They say that my passion spills onto the pages, and that I write as though I’ve lived a tough life even though I haven’t. In fact, my life has been painfully pleasant. I realised this long ago, and decided that the fact I could recognise that ambition is driven by a need to better one’s circumstances meant that I should define for myself my station and how to raise to a new, higher one.
It’s a powerful undercurrent that runs through all I do: wherever I fail, or am rejected, or need to improve, I deem that a ‘low point’: it’s something I do to incinerate my life. I dramatise my life. I narrate my life. I don’t so much life my life as paint it, or write it: I am a character that I am constantly revising. I have powerful traits both negative and positive, and I sensationalise everything I did. I define my own meaning, my own narrative, my enemies and my goals. I can (and will) turn the smallest events into catastrophic, momentous milestones: it’s the only way I can keep my head above the surface.
Life can become all too mundane.
It’s the curse of the time we live in: in the ‘first world’, where most people die of old age. Life expectancy continues to rise and our lives are made easier by the technological advancements we constantly involve ourselves in. I can do so many things with my phone that I now take for granted that if I forget it somewhere, I feel like a piece of me is missing. Life is becoming too easy, in nearly every way: the only difficult things left in life are those things I deem universal, and write about: meaning in life, the passing of time, mortality, emotional attachment, death and loss.
I spend too much of every day forcing myself to consider these unavoidable issues precisely because it’s too easy to do those things which my ancestors would struggle to do. Is it any wonder I sensationalise my life? I want things to be difficult: I need the pleasure and motivation of being able to set myself tough goals and meeting them. If everything was easy all of the time, what would be the point? Beauty is overcoming the odds; fighting and clawing your way to the top, pulling off an improbable result, achieving what people said you couldn’t. Not waking each day to spend nine hours organising a virtual database with information you can’t physically touch.
I have always relied on sensational, lofty dreams: now that I’m so close to achieving them, I’m having second thoughts. I’m so close to success.
III
I’m on a bridge watching the steady flow of traffic below. I don’t know how long it took to get from my flat to here, but now I’m mesmerised. I’m dazed by the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of what’s before me: what could be more simple or pleasing than the pattern of objects moving in straight lines in a trail, as with the flow of traffic; but consider the complexity of the cars and their constituents parts. I see the symmetry between this and my life: I’m a complex organism, and yet I have such simple dreams.
It has always been: make it, make it as a writer; change the world for the better by spreading my unique message. And now I’m so close: I’ve already signed my signature and am bound by a contract. My first novel is being printed en masse in some anonymous factory and will be shipped around the world soon. All I have to do now is make my presence as a publisher author (as opposed to being a writer) felt – I have to perform the role of the successful tuxedo-wearing, champagne-drinking Englishman. But what I’m really just an outside who wants to bring authenticity back to modern literature, away from serialised money-making plots with stock characters, clichéd situations and predictable plot-structures. I’m dressed like the author, but my mind could never change.
I’m so close to success.
But success is the closest step to death: when I’ve ‘made it’, then what? I write a second novel, the public reaction ringing in my ears. Won’t their reaction affect what I write next? Will I ever be alone with my thoughts again? Could I ever ignore the status of celebrity, even if I rejected it? To reject it would be to engage with it.
This is the last time I’ll ever be alone. I’ve spent my whole life in this level of relative obscurity, aware of my passion, my ability, my vision (in short, aware of myself in my entirety) – but soon I’ll be a product, a brand, a commodity. I’ll be the subject of conversations. People will begin to talk about me as if they know me.
It’s almost as if, in fulfilling that dream which has always been my motivation up until this point (a self-define goal and a self-defined path) I will be handing over control of my self to the world, losing myself in my process. As proud as I am of who I am now, and of all I have achieved, I am aware of the complexity of the human condition. There are impulses both moral and immoral in all of us, myself most definitely included. If I continue to live, what then? I see those closest to me pass away; I see my talents decay; I allow poor judgement to seep into my life; I become tired and sluggish; I lose the authenticity I’ve worked so hard to achieve – in short, I die a slow and painful death. I do not mean physically -- I mean psychologically, philosophically. That is far worse to me than physical death.
I’m so close to success. Which means I’m so close to death.
If I could only preserve the person I am now, and leave at my peak. I cannot imagine anything more beautiful or poetic. I cannot imagine anything more like something I would do.
It would be the difference between writing, and drinking champagne and talking about e-books. It would be the difference between authenticity and performativity. It would be the difference between honesty and lying. The difference between living and dying. The difference between stamping myself on the world versus becoming someone I am not.
The difference between a full stop and running out of ink.
Fulfilling my greatest dream is the most dangerous thing in the world: what could possibly take its place? How could the passion I have at this moment be replaced or substituted? Is there anything wrong in being happy right where I am, with all that I have and all of those around me? Why must I continue to strive for more and more, when I am not that greedy?
I am satisfied: I am alive: I am complete.
I’m so close to success. But success would be akin to walking back across this bridge, back to my needlessly expensive flat and to the champagne-drinkers, the tuxedo-wearers – back to the small talkers. Back to everything I’m going to be, but am not. And don’t want to be. I want to be right where I am now. Who and what I am at this moment is how I want to be remembered.
I’m so close to success.
But I’m closer to jumping.
A Short Story,
Published 24 May 2012
Published 24 May 2012