Octopus in a Garage

Have you ever felt like an octopus in a garage? What, haven’t you heard that one before?

“Why an octopus in a garage?”

“Why not?”

One might think this were a conversation born of disinhibited inebriety, but if we, dear readers, take a closer look, we’ll find that our protagonists’ beer bottles and half-torn labels bear the wide, caricaturesque eyes of 0.0%. (Four eyes, in fact, if we puzzle-piece the poor shreds back together).

Four eyes. They called him that at school, Joaquín. Never quite fit in. Went to therapy for it, actually. How could he relate to others without abandoning himself? At least that’s what he told Nora, fairy lights flickering golden across his spectacles. And in this light, there was no trace of the tentacles that constricted his youth, no pulpo en un garaje.

She, on the other hand (or tentacle), had no such problem. Abroad for eight years, there was nobody whom she had to please, no roles to play, no boundaries overstepped. In fact, she readily cut out anybody who did cross them. Ceremonious, it felt, like ribbon cutting with an obnoxious pair of scissors. The audacity, she’d think, to believe she actually needed them, needed anybody.

And sure, there was probably a lot to unpack there between the two of them. But let’s take a moment to appreciate our two flawed individuals showered in blinking lights, seated at a high table and squeezed up against an asphalt wall like the face of Mercury.

“¿Algo más?” asked the waitress. They shook their heads, and she carried away their sad bottles with a clink.

And I’ve decided to plant you, dear reader, like a camera, in the body of a lone man in a leather jacket (faux, we hope), fidgeting with his zipper between swigs of Guinness as dark as his hair. You didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but you did, and so you outstretched a hand and pretended to examine your nails, the lines on your palm, your veins like tree roots. Not that they noticed you – they didn’t.

“But we all slip into that trap, I think,” said Nora. “It’s a defence mechanism.”

Joaquín nodded.

“Haven’t you ever romanticised your inability to belong, interpreted it as a sign of exceptionality?” she continued.

“Yeah, the whole soy un incomprendido trope.”

“Exactly. When our isolation is self-imposed, and even glorified, it’s empowering. We change the narrative.”

“We weren’t rejected,” said Joaquín, “but did the rejecting.”

“And sometimes it’s valid, but it’s unrealistic to believe we’re above everybody. That’s self-indulgence, and it’s tempting but untrue. That’s why I put Pessoa down. He wears his suffering like a badge of honour. No, really, I felt like I was watching him masturbate between sobs, moaning about his victimhood.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“Masturbatory,” repeated Nora.

“Why masturbatory exactly?”

“The indulgence of it, the self-absorption. The superlative – I’m in the most pain – as though it were a marker of distinction. It’s the narcissism. He genuinely believes he’s been condemned to suffering by some divine scheme. What, everyone else’s suffering is just plain suffering while yours is divine retribution? I mean, really? He’s sucking his own dick.”

“Tempting,” smiled Joaquín.

“The thing is, it’s juvenile. Incredibly well-written, don’t get me wrong, but juvenile.”

“At the end of the day, they were all ordinary people.”

“What, writers?”

“And poets and the lot.”

“Right? With blackheads and morning breath,” agreed Nora.

“Who took a shit in the morning, maybe with a cigarette.”

“Or in the evening without one.”

“Or in the evening without one,” he agreed. “And they lacked self-awareness like the rest of us. But death elevates us and now they’re untouchable.”

“Revered, even,” said Nora. “Some guy who probably spat his phlegm out on the sidewalk… who scratched his asshole and smelled his fingers.”

Joaquín cracked a smile. “You are something else.”

“Soy una incomprendida.”

And while we’re being honest, Nora’s breath, it smelled mildly of garlic.

You, meanwhile, pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from your jean pocket and snagged one between your lips. If you’re not a smoker, dear reader, I apologise; and if you’ve quit, now’s your chance for a vicarious puff. You sparked up and took a toke, threw back your head as it swelled in your throat – ah, distant yesterdays, first kisses and blowjobs in carparks. Pearl Jam on the radio as you stuck your hand up Sally’s shirt.

The waitress approached and gestured to a no-smoking sign on the wall. You grunted and stubbed it out, smoke slithering out from between your lips. You gave up zipping up your jacket a while back when it got caught on a tongue of cotton. Now it gapes awkwardly like that zipper mouth pencil case you bought your niece for Christmas. The one she still hasn’t used (which, let’s admit, kind of hurt your feelings, didn’t it?).

“Have you read Apuntes del subsuelo by Dostoyevsky?” said the girl, Nora. And you noticed how she leant in, immersed, both elbows on the high table. You noticed how she rested her chin in her ivory palm curved like a crescent moon.

“Well,” she said, “the protagonist goes out with a group of other men, and as soon as he feels rejected, he sabotages the entire night. That way, at least, he invited the rejection. It was his own doing.”

“The illusion of control.”

“Exactly, and then he could cling to the misconception that had he actually tried, he’d have been accepted.”

Beneath his glasses, Joaquín’s pupils dilated like a total eclipse, his blue irises barely visible.

“Your pupils are massi—”

The waitress’ voice interrupted, a clapperboard, as she politely asked if you could, perhaps, move to another seat. They were about to receive a party of ten, you see. And so, you clambered off the high stool, groaned from the ache in your thighs (last Wednesday was leg day), and seated yourself somewhere out of earshot, your Guinness sloshing in its glass.

“Oh God, I’m not one of those people who just recounts the entire plot, am I?” groaned Nora.

“No,” said Joaquín, resting a hand on her forearm. “Go on, it’s interesting.”

“Well, he promises a prostitute a better life, but when she seeks him out and witnesses him crying—after the whole self-sabotage scandal and stuff—she comforts him and then he verbally attacks her.”

Joaquín raised a brow. “Because she no longer served him,” he said. “He was trying to be someone he wasn’t and when she witnessed his vulnerability, his weakness, he was reminded of who he was: somebody flawed – not a hero, not a saviour.”

“Right? When she comforted him, he was reduced to her equal.”

“Which was unbearable because he held her in such low esteem.”

“Dehumanising, isn’t it?” said Nora, “The condescension, I mean. They use the other as a springboard to reinforce some deluded self-concept.”

“Condescension is dehumanising,” mused Joaquín, savouring it.

“But it’s compensatory, I think, for their own sense of inadequacy. You know, I armchair diagnosed the protagonist.”

“With?”

“Borderline or covert narcissism, or both: a comorbidity.”

Their voices wafted over where they found you, dear reader, picking at the table, at its flaking varnish like a sunburn that peels. You shook your drunk head. Maybe because you disagreed with what they were saying. Maybe they were too loud, too obnoxious. Or maybe because there was simply a mosquito buzzing about your face.

“But perfection is vulgar,” said Nora.

“Perfection is vulgar?”

“Perfection is vulgar.”

“Why?”

“Because imperfection is quintessentially human. Perfection, then, is dehumanising. It’s objectifying. To pursue perfection is to objectify oneself.”

Joaquín sat with the idea a moment, while you, wearer of faux leather, drank the penultimate sip of your pint which tasted of courage, didn’t it? Or, perhaps, a bad idea.

“I hope you don’t mind me butting in,” you said, rising from your stool.

“No, not at all,” said Nora, as Joaquín blinked fish-eyed.

And that’s when you began to ramble, because apparently you’re quite passionate about the ethics of perfectionism (which may or may not require some imagination on your part). But when you stopped, and neither listener responded, your face froze, you froze, right beside their table – an immobile item of furniture, say a coatrack or a lamp (though your speech wasn’t quite as illuminating).

“That’s an interesting perspective,” Nora finally said, fidgeting with the label confetti. And she spoke to you for another four minutes before announcing they were heading off. It’s getting late, isn’t it? And you weren’t quite sure if you’d scared them off, I mean, she’d engaged, hadn’t she? She even shook your hand goodbye.

And that’s how you found yourself alone at their table on a stool still warm, watching the silhouettes of two strangers re-enter the orange glow of the bar. Glimpsed an azure scarf, billowing like the lick of a blue flame, half-hanging out the girl’s coat pocket.

And that’s how you found yourself, last sip of Guinness, listening to the clack of boots against the floorboards inside, listening to their footfall fading like the final reverberation of an echo. But you could still kind of hear it in your head. Sometimes, you still do.

So, dear reader, let me ask you again. Have you ever felt like an octopus in a garage?