I’ve come to believe that choice is a false concept, created by man to give us a feeling of control, a sense of ownership to our lives.
Rob McIntosh would probably have agreed. I’m not sure if I ever thought to ask him. Life gets so busy with the little things, the details of our needs and the rationalizations that justify it all, that we forget to talk about the big stuff. The meaning of life. The inevitability of death. The purpose of our time’s fleeting passing on this Earth and the people we meet, the people that go, the people that are left when the rest is distilled away. Had Rob and I spent any of our time together in such philosophical musings, maybe it would have taken the sting out of it all. Then, again, maybe not.
I’m sad to say that I haven’t really figured out much more than that, what substitutes choice in my theory. An all-knowing Orchestrator doesn’t make much sense. If so, He’d have to have an incredibly sadistic sense of humor about his great experiment that began with Adam and his rib. I imagine Him drunk and nearly asleep, eyes hoisted just enough to catch the rare folly of man that qualifies for His attention, his lack of caring betrayed only by an occasional twitch of laughter’s first convulsion. He’s slouched and folded in His golden throne, one leg sloppily dangling over a red velvet arm rest, sharing the demeanor of an alcoholic propped on the bar at last call, crumpled on his barstool, it’s wooden seat and his buttocks coevolved. The silver chalice drooping from his hand spills a drop of wine from his wilting grasp, a crimson tear falls down through His castle of clouds and onto humanity. All of history like a very long night, sitting here as the jukebox plays its finite list of human emotions and mistake on repeat, waiting for the time to pass, another drink and still another until the last one is poured. It would be hard to leave, this late in the game. It would be such a shame to miss out on something worthwhile after investing so much.
The polished knob of the RS3’s mother-of-pearl stick shift jabbed through Rob’s right upper quadrant and into his diaphragm, making it impossible to breathe. 2009 was the last year Porsche released this beauty in manual, graduating to the touch shift technology in the subsequent years that took the dexterity out of the dance through the 6 gears as the world accelerated all around. Rob remembered passing on a 2010 at a fraction of the cost of this one, determined that the dexterity of the dance was the whole point of the union of man and machine. Regret was sneaking through the cracks now, and the decision to hold out for the manual now seemed misguided as his body wriggled weakly but desperately like a fish on the deck. This is how it must feel, his thoughts so very distant, to be suffocated by it all, death by the very sun and air, incessant, weightless, inescapable.
Predetermination seems equally meretricious, tempting in its absolving of responsibility but too trivializing. Could this really be Rob’s fate, a patrolman yellow-taping the scene as cheerleader-packed convertibles and school buses with their children pasted to its windows passed by on another dreary Ohio day? And if so, was all the dramatic lead up truly necessary? The women, the wedding rings and the recurrent anaphylaxis they induced, the unvaried cycle of divorce that each time demanded more skin to be scraped until it was all gone and only bones remained. The skyrocketing crescendo and ultimate collapse of his financial success, each of the rapturous clients, the 10,000 square foot houses and their infinity windows through which spilled the majestic Pacific, the Ferarris and the Spiders and this Porsche and its 540* horsepower that went 0 to 100 in a mind-shattering 5.4 seconds, the Forbes top 500, the black-tie affairs and the hubris-filling toasts, the first time he met Rebecca and how they escaped from the hoards and into the moonlight that sparkled like stardust across a million perfect mirrors on the Mediterranean’s cobalt blanket, the warm summer night of Mallorca that turns to crystal on your skin and sinks in, penetrates the thick armor that masks the mistakes and melts the past away, turns it into liquid like a chrysalis and then into the impossible, her perfect black dress, tight on her bronzed skin, diving deep between and below her hand-cupped breasts that would mature from succulent objects of hedonism to the selfless nourishment of a life that was greater than either one of them.
Niki, the single bright light in this, a lonely black darkness. Regret now flooded in, the cracks fracturing into wide-mouthed crevasses. There was still hope for him, the consciousness that was Rob firmly grasped as he defiantly shifted his weight for a second time, this time with something resembling conviction. If he could only get himself out of the way and stop fucking up were the thoughts when the agonizing pain inhaled in a rare moment of respite, the knob in his gut, the fire in his veins, the cramping of his legs folded under his fat lifeless body. Maybe, for once, just remember, stay committed, dammit. You’re a fucking asshole, Rob. That’s the bottom line. It’s not rocket science or beating the market. Just hold tight to this one lesson, grab onto the little orange lifesaver that comes in with this tidal wave of remorse. It was the same every time in this part of the movie. The same cracks that widened to chasms that swallowed him whole, chewed him up and spat him out a wet and rotten shell of a man. This was not Rob’s first conversation with himself. He had negotiated this deal over countless depths.
Destiny. Rob considered the concept from the cold darkness, still deep within the score’s tendrils. All of what came before as foreplay, this his final scene? No. The rush was sweet like a first kiss, a first swim within her depths, only without the nectar he once knew, empty of the lush fullness, hurried and only partly revealed. It was the same magic from that moonlit escape long ago but now somehow singular, like a solitary glimmer upon a distant undulating and geometric patch of sea between crests and troughs that angled to form a faraway plane, a mirror, brilliant and clear but tiny and alone where before there had been infinite. But the rush faded more quickly now, and the price to pay that followed in its wake was too great a trade for a reasonable man. Every past sin then filed past, bringing with it relived anguish and remorse. No, this recurring nightmare had no place in a life of predetermination and fate. The repetition was not necessary. And still, in the end, the man remained. Yes, deep within it all, after the debts had been paid and the devil stared down from within the depths, the man that is Rob was still there. And weak as it may be, it was that threadbare life force that now considered the equation of life at this final hour. No, a predetermined destiny robbed humanity of too much.
For as tempting as it was to let go of the role he played in the path that led up to this moment, to absolve himself of his sins and past miscalculations and free himself of the egregious mass of this responsibility, his diminutive will remained. His fists remained tightly clenched around the memories that defined him, and his role in those memories as an independent and sovereign being, with both choice and a determining cause to his effects, remained non-negotiable and resolute. Jessica and that moonlit night and the perfect being their short union birthed. Timmy and all of his potential. To absolve himself as the cause for the rest would rob him of too much. His pride in his son was greater than the sum total of his regrets. And for this, he was willing to keep on.
Over time, Rob pushed himself up from the floorboards. A convertible full of cheerleaders honked as it blurred by. Later, children pasted themselves against the windows of a noisy yellow bus at the fancy red race car that would fill their dreams until puberty. Slowly, he fought the might of gravity and lifted himself into the red-stitched leather cockpit seat, wheezing from the effort. A distant crow cawed in contrast, mocking his breathlessness and spiraling down over a newly-seeded field, arcing tightly around a telephone pole and toward a pale sun. For a moment, Rob felt normal, if one can use such a word. The score had now passed, and the chasms turned to cracks were sealed once again. Yellow turned to orange and the sun fell low on the flat Western horizon. Rob had dozed off again, and now felt ready to turn the key. Where was the key? He gripped it between his two fingers, inserted it into its home, teeth aligning in machine like perfection. The deliberation in his hazy mind that came next spoke more toward the painstaking choice of restarting the hands of time than the simple act of turning a key in its ignition. For if time’s marching flowed onward, the cycle would invariably repeat itself, the rise and the fall, the flood and the suffocation. Cause and effect.
I’ve come to believe that choice is a false concept, created by man to give us a feeling of control, a sense of ownership to our lives.
Rob McIntosh made his choice and the engine roared to life, his body rumbling in the same frequency as the 8 cylinder behemoth. He stepped hard on his left foot dropping the clutch to the floor and then a subtle twitch of his right calf muscle flexed his ankle downward as God Himself reigned thunder into the universe. A dance of dexterity with his right shoulder, a flick of the small fibers in his wrist, and a gentle tug of precision from the left as metal racks and pinions spun in metallic symphony as the machine spun to life, spitting up a fine Ohio dust as gravel sprayed across a barren lifeless plane.