BullShi*t
Short Fiction
“Bullshit.”
I slumped back in my chair, finished yet looking down nonetheless because otherwise the old professor would have suspected me of cheating. We students sat so close around the cramped table that my head rang with the anxious breathing of the promethean frat-bro to my right. The exam’s single question? To “summarize human praise in as few words as possible, borrowing particularly from the philosophic thought and insight of the Roman Stoics.” Well, I’d “summarized,” all right. To the Stoics, human praise was bullshit excreted from temporary creatures too prideful — or scared — to realize they were temporary. I couldn’t think of a more perfect answer.
Fifty minutes before class would end, and I already knew that everyone else in this school of gunners was going to stay for the full in order to fill their pages with the mixture of facts and bullshit that comprise any exam.
Briefly I considered adding some bullshit to “Bullshit.” But my bullshit tolerance was too low (that had always been my problem). And besides, the truth was too beautiful to pollute. So I closed the exam booklet and handed it to the old professor — looking pretty perplexed — then left. On my way out I could practically smell the smugness of frat-bro. The guy was glad I’d failed. The bastard.
I headed to my room, curled my blankets into a burrito, slept until 3:40 AM. Then I woke up, fondled my backpack’s innards for a cigarette, and walked outside. I crossed the manicured lawns of my “prestigious” college, reclined against a manicured tree, and let out a long sigh as I watched my cigarette smoke curl up towards the full moon and beyond.
Truly it’s amazing, how sprawling against a tree and gazing up at the night heals everything. Looking up at the stars that have burned for thousands of centuries and that will burn for millions more, you feel the full weight of your insignificance. Once, when I was religious, I felt this when imagining God — what was I, next to Him? I’m secular now — but plain old nature is just like God: It doesn’t give a damn about humans.
The insignificance of it all frightened me, mostly. But in some ways it was a good thing — comforting; it put things in perspective … tests, homework, dating, friends, society, fame, frat-bro, the Earth itself — a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. What were all these things against the stars, those holes in heaven’s blanket, constant, burning — forever? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing at all.
So while nothing was worth being happy about, well, nothing was worth being sad about, either.
At 5 AM, long after my cigarette expired, I still sat there, feeling calm for the first time in a long while as I gazed up at the whole of which I was a reluctant part. A line from Poe came to me: “Deep into that darkness peering / Long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, / Dreaming dreams no mortal dared to dream before.”
Maybe, I thought (as I marinated in my emo mood), just maybe the problem was that I was struggling to find meaning in a meaningless world. All the books I’d read, the philosophy studied … it had all been part of a desperate attempt to find meaning. But what if all this knowledge I’d tried so hard to attain was revealing the opposite? What if the truest interpretation of reality was that there was no meaning. What if that fact — meaninglessness — was a great truth? The great truth, precisely because it was the only truth?
“No,” I whispered. “It has to mean something.” I suspect that I said this with such conviction because, if it weren’t true, I would have gone insane. Part of me knew that I, like a religious zealot, was holding on to an edifice as abstract as God.
I snuffed out a final cigarette against the great oak and stood to face another day.
First up was Ancient Philosophy. As usual I entered class five minutes late. The old professor — a kind man, actually — met my eyes, nodded. Neatly-stacked exam booklets told me he’d already graded the test. I couldn’t tell whether there was disappointment in that slight pasty crease in his forehead, or if he just felt sleepy.
How many years does he have left? I thought, and glanced at frat-bro, who was sitting splayed out next to Diana — a beautiful girl, Diana — and gazing at me with a slight, idiotic smile. Ten? Fifteen? Why does he have to die when frat-bro will live? When I will live?
I took the seat next to Diana and waited patiently. Everyone around the seminar table had gone quiet at the prospect of receiving exam grades. You could tell they were nervous, but I wasn’t. In fact, I was distracted by the scent of Diana’s perfume. (Which, God knows, sent my heart flying.)
“I graded your exams,” Professor Herman said, slowly and through a ragged series of phlegmatic coughs. You could tell that at his age every word was tough. Every time he spoke I felt pain for him — truly. The guy was clearly suffering as he sat on the fence between life and death.
Old Herman sighed. “I expected better. These men we’re studying, they’ve thought through questions that I know must plague you as they’ve plagued me. Why are we here? Is there a purpose? Is a lived life rational, when death — that great eraser — lies at the end? The exam yesterday was meant to quiz your knowledge of two such men, Marcus Aurelius the emperor and Epictetus the slave, who — despite a vast gulf in social status — arrived at similar truths; more, it was meant to examine your knowledge of the Stoic way of life…”
…There was a marked silence, during which Professor Herman looked at me. I felt ashamed beneath the weight of those heavy slate-grey eyes. It was a look that said he’d expected better of me, but that I hadn’t performed to his expectations. I’d actually read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, had actually taken the time and effort to understand the old farts — everyone else had just googled Internet summaries — but I’d screwed up the exam because I was too annoyed with my life, with the restrictions on it, to study. I’d screwed up because the French philosopher Rousseau’s idea that “man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” spoke to me, deeply so, and because I constantly tried to shirk society’s chains, even to my own detriment…
…I’d screwed it up because I was too much of a no-good slob, too depressed by clinical anxiety and depression (we’ll get to that later), to respond with anything more than “Bullshit.” Yet that answer was the correct one — wasn’t it? The Stoics did think of human praise as bullshit; and the exam had said to use “as few words as possible.” Suddenly the thought that I was about to fail this test enraged me; sure, writing a one-word response was unconventional, but here it was warranted. I had a feeling that old Herman’s idol Marcus Aurelius would have agreed, too.
So stuck was I within these thoughts that I hardly noticed when Herman began plumping down exam booklets. Yet I did notice when frat-bro opened his booklet, for after glancing at his grade he suppressed tears behind his massive right bicep.
When Professor Herman reached me our eyes met; I could barely look back, the guilt was too much. Then he set, gently, a hand on my back, placed the exam booklet in front of me very slowly. My fingers sat on the edge of the cover; they could have stayed there forever. I fully expected an F.
“Good job,” came the whispered voice of Professor Herman. What? In disbelief I opened the exam booklet.
A+.
Frat-bro glanced at the exam, saw the one compound word — “Bullshit.” — I’d written, and gaped at the professor with anger etched on every facet of his face.
*
That night I went to a frat party. You know, those phony events that provide excuses — alcohol, music, socializing — so that everyone can fuck later, all the while pretending that that their main purpose was really not fucking, and that anyway if they fucked they weren’t fully aware of it, so it didn’t mean anything.
I dunno why I went — I guess I was feeling it. And my old roommate wanted me to go. And I really wanted to drink a bit to dull myself to the pain of living. (God, I had a messed up mind at that point in my life, huh?)
“Nice job on Ancient Philosophy,” someone said. Shit. It was frat-bro — standing in front of me, wearing a bow tie, a backwards hat, some expensive shoes. He looked like the fucking frat president; scratch that, he probably was the fucking frat president. (This inference was supported by the fact that his shirt read “Philosopher-King & Polemarch-in-chief of Epsilon Psi.”)
I noticed with a sinking feeling that he had his meaty right arm — every muscle, vein, and hair as explicitly-etched as a Renaissance statue — around Diana. The bastard.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I gotta say, I dunno how you did it. He wrote one word, Diana — ‘Bullshit!’ Maybe old man Herman really is senile.”
“Well, the exam did say in as few words as possible.”
“You’re right, it did.” Frat-bro bit his lower lip for a second, then looked me in the eye and again opened his mouth to speak. He had this strange accent — artificial, for sure, and it sounded like he was trying to sound like a frat boy, which was interesting since all the other frat boys were trying to sound like frat boys, too, so in the end they all ended up sounding like looping versions of each other. “Say, what’s your name?”
“Rafic,” I said, thinking: It’s strange. Me and frat-bro have been in the same seminar class for about a month, and we still don’t know each other’s names.
“Rafic what?”
“Rafic Gibran.”
“Funny name, Rafic Gibran.”
“Yeah? Call me Ralph then.”
“Yeah, Ralph, yeah, man …”
I stared at him. What did he want from me? This was the inanest conversation I’d had in a while, and in this college of privileged dullards masquerading as intellectuals, that was saying a lot. Diana stood next to him, our eyes met for a second, and I nodded at her. She looked away and took a swig of whatever shit beer she held.
“Well, Ralph,” said frat-bro. “Aren’t you gunna ask me mine?”
“Oh yeah, sorry, I already had a name for you in my mind.”
“What would that be?”
“Nothing,” I said to frat-bro. “So what do you call yourself?”
Frat-bro smiled. “The name’s Josh,” he said.
I smiled at frat-bro. “You must be joshing me.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
Over the next few hours I proceeded to get absolutely shit-faced. Then frat-bro ushered me over, bent close to my ear, and whispered. “You gotta try this stuff, man.”
I took the powder from him, sniffed it (a lot of it), and suddenly I was a very, very happy young man. Life was good.
The first thing I glimpsed was a unicorn. It bounded across the frat-yard and tried to climb one of the manicured trees. I laughed so hard at that, at its hooves uselessly scratching at the tree. Frat-bro — I mean Josh — did too. Hahahahaha! Haha!
And then for a moment, a glorious and incandescent instance, I saw everything that ever was and everything that ever could be. It came in a flash, yet the flash was glorious. In that immense moment I looked at Diana, sitting next to frat-bro and drinking with a contemplative look on her face. Damn, but she was so beautiful. Dark brown hair, green-brown and narrow eyes, olive-tinted skin. Where was she from again? Lebanon or Greece or Cyprus or some other Mediterranean place, probably. Maybe half-Asian? God damn. I wondered if the countries her parents came from looked as beautiful as her.
Suddenly I saw an image of Diana naked, and for a second I thought I saw her climb the unicorn and ride it around the yard. Hahaha! I laughed, aloud and in my head, and frat-bro laughed too and for a moment I thought of him as Josh, as only Josh, my good old buddy Josh, and his arm was around my shoulder, and we both sat in mutual satisfaction, questions of meaning extricated from our minds and my only thought this — that I, at this divine and singular moment, really wanted to have sex with Diana, the goddess, the beauty. Damn, I wanted to mate with her like a monkey on steroids. I really did.
Immersed in all the history that ever was and ever could be, I thought I could see Marcus Aurelius or one of those other old Greek farts from Ancient Philosophy chilling next to Diana. What would he say? “Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily.” Yeah, that’s what he would say — that’s what he did say, in his writings. Or was that Epicurus? Whatever.
Whoever he was, he was a wise man. A true bro.
I made a move. I scooted up close to Diana — who had also had some of the drug-powder stuff — and we started making out. Just straight up making out. It was amazing. I’d never felt so confident in my life. “Hey, let’s go back to my room,” I said.
“Let’s go back to your room,” she said.
“Bullshit,” someone — Josh, frat-bro, my new best buddy — said, and socked me in the face.
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