To Jeremy, my live-in life coach, who recently moved out
A few months ago, I hired a live-in life coach. His name is Jeremy. He’s this deaf-mute that follows me around like a shadow, and writes things down in a little legal pad. He’s not actually deaf or mute, but one of the conditions of the Live-In Life Coach Contract is no direct communication. Ideally, I’m supposed to treat Jeremy as if he’s not there, but I have trouble feeling my parents are not in the room with me, and they’re three thousand miles away.
Why not just wear a webcam at all times, you ask? You’re an idiot for asking, but nevertheless: would you do the same thing on an average day if you knew you were being recorded the whole time? Of course you wouldn’t. Especially given the fact that you’re hiring a life coach to fix the embarrassment your life’s become. You probably wouldn’t shit for a week if you thought there was a chance it’d end up leaked to PornHub. Your friends would be delighted of course, and you’d cut them off and pack up and move to another country, one with more traditional fetishes, but it wouldn’t help.
“Hey man, you look vaguely familiar, have we met before?” you’d hear from a twelve year old Putin’s Aphorisms Encyclopedia salesgirl in Russia one day, or a thirty year old MILF interviewer in Prague (she interviews MILFs, it’s an honest profession), or your grandma on Rosh Hashanah. And you’d wonder. Trust me, it’s no kind of life.
This is why the flesh and blood live-in life coach is the only viable 24/7 self-monitoring and self-assessment option. Before they move in, they sign an NDA that would have them waterboarded in Guantanamo for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of their lives should they leak a word. By Barrack Obama personally, or Michelle if he has the kids that day. It’s the scariest contract I’ve ever seen. I signed it as quickly as I could, before I could see more of it and be scarred for life. It puts me in mind of the magic phrase Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson used in Wedding Crashers, to grease the girls’ bras off:
John (Owen Wilson): we lost a lot of good men out there
Hot girl #62: playing with the Yankees?
John: life coaching
Hot girl #62: [takes off her bra]
Jeremy has clearly been trained in the zen arts of unobtrusiveness and tolerance. You can see it in his eyes when you’re taking a shit. There it is, right there. In his eyes. You see it? Exactly, not a damn thing. He’s not judging you. He’s not wrinkling his nose. And neither is he getting off on it. He’s dispassionately recording how many grunts you made, how many beads of perspiration you produced on each temple, and whether your latest oeuvre uses the same palette as the masterpiece from yesterday. Or two days ago, if you’re on a low-fiber diet. I thought he’d judge my every little thing, but he’s proved compellingly indifferent.
In fact, his polished-to-obnoxiousness stoicism started to felt like a challenge, once the freshness wore off. “Challenge accepted!” I cried after Jeremy was unfazed by my reuse of my coffee cup for orange juice, and later for a second latte, without so much as a perfunctory rinse in between. I decided at once to be so outrageous as to elicit a reaction from him, ideally an unequivocally judgmental one like, “you’re going to use those socks again? To wash your coffee cup? Sorry, your everything cup? I see.”
But Jeremy remained professional to a fault. I gave up almost immediately, so disheartened was I at the inefficacy of my efforts. Also, I give up easily in general, as Jeremy wrote in his final report. In fact, when I read the report, this was the first example that came to mind.
I tried to make contact in other, less hostile ways. I’d lay there at night, unable to fall asleep (Jeremy’s report said that the latte nightcap doesn’t help), trying to pick out Jeremy in the dark. It was hard, even knowing which corner he stood in. I invariably gave up and addressed the shapeless black pit of the ceiling.
“Are you going to stand there all night, Jeremy? Hello? Jeremy? You can talk to me, you’re not on the clock after midnight.” He was, this was just an extremely clever ruse. “Seriously, say something. Do you want me to get you a cot? Shit, I don’t have a cot, I don’t know why I said that. How about a sleeping bag and a blanket? I have those, for emergencies. You know, in case of an apocalypse. You know how much a sleeping bag goes for after an apocalypse? A thousand bucks is how much. At least. The question is what to do with the thousand bucks when it’s nuclear winter outside. Pray to God you find a guy with a sleeping bag for sale is what. Try to get some protein bars thrown in too.
“I know you can’t speak, Jeremy, so just nod if you want a sleeping bag and a blanket. OK? OK. Wait, did you just nod? It’s really dark in here, I can’t see if you nodded. If you didn’t nod before because you missed your chance, nod now. Shit, I still can’t see a thing. Why is this room so dark? Is it healthy to sleep in the complete absence of light? Jeremy? If it’s unhealthy to sleep in the complete absence of light, you need to tell me right now. It’s in our contract, you can’t just watch me off myself. I’ve been sleeping in absolute dark for the last ten years, this could be the night it kills me. Jeremy? Fucking say something!”
Jeremy never answered. If he did, I would have fired his ass that instant. I’m sorry, but I’m a hardass that way. You try sleeping in absolute dark for ten years. It does something to a person’s mind. But if there’s even a little bit of light in the room, I can’t fall asleep. Even if I don’t drink a latte beforehand.
“Jeremy. Hey. I’m sorry I snapped at you a second ago. The darkness kind of gets to me sometimes. I start feeling like if I don’t hear someone else’s voice soon, I’ll never find my way out of it. Like I’ll never hear anyone’s voice again, or see another annoying sleep-obliterating pinprick of light. But you don’t have to say anything, I think I can sort of feel your presence. I actually kind of feel safer with you here…
“Hey Jeremy, did you know that the human eye can detect a single photon? I know, it sounds crazy. That’s why I can’t sleep unless there’s absolute darkness. All those photons, like a fucking battering ram to the skull. But a single photon, can you imagine? Fascinating stuff. Fascinating. You see? This doesn’t have to be just another job for you. You can learn stuff. I know stuff. All kinds of stuff. And I’m willing to part with my hard-earned knowledge, if you just give me a little nod. Just a little nod, and I’ll get you a blanket and a sleeping bag. And some fucking priceless knowledge. Jeremy? Fuck, Jeremy! What did they do to you?”
Eventually I gave up. I stopped trying to talk to Jeremy, I stopped trying to feed him, make him comfortable, drive him crazy. I stopped thinking of him as a human being, and started thinking of him as a piece of furniture. A useless piece of furniture that wouldn’t talk back. My couch, on the other hand, takes it upon itself to fill the gap in conversation, any old time of the day:
“Bill, you’re sitting with poor lumbar support. Bill, did you hear what I said?”
“Bill, you gained three pounds since yesterday. Do you want me to call doctor Lipshitz?”
“Bill, would you like me to turn on the heating pad?”
“Bill, it’s going to be OK.”
I stopped trying to make contact. Which made him happy I think. Or I’d like to think. His emotions didn’t inform his face.
When I resigned myself to Jeremy’s physical presence, and in all other ways, absence, I went back to my old routine. It was easy. It greeted me like a warm butt-print on the couch, form-fitting, uninspiring, vaguely disgusting, but comfortable.
I shaved once every two weeks. I ate oatmeal for breakfast, a burger from In-N-Out for lunch, and whiskey for dinner. Once every few days, I’d break down and rage at Jeremy, who listened to my tirades with the patience of a stone. After every such “incident,” I went straight back to my life, as if it didn’t happen. It became just another form of elimination, no more or less embarrassing, no more or less memorable, just nature taking its course. I got a second opinion, just in case.
“Grandma, at what age did you first start having periodic rages?”
“Rages? Darling, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What about pissing blood?”
“42.”
Hm, maybe I was different. I definitely wasn’t getting enough blood in my urine.
I worked. I can’t say what I do for a living, exactly — this has long since ceased to baffle me — but it makes OK money. Pays the bills. Moves me up a step on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So high up, I get vertigo most days. I don’t think we were meant to get so high in the hierarchy, I think poverty agreed with us better than abundance. If only I were poor, I wouldn’t have a care in the world. I’d be miserable in exactly the way I was designed to be. I certainly wouldn’t have a couch giving me shit, or a life coach debugging my “suboptimal life experience.”
I went on dates. Jeremy came with. Lots of dates, with lots of women, all of whom had nothing to say. Some of them didn’t make a sound the whole time, I swear. They just stared at me, uncomprehendingly, through dinner, an evening’s entertainment, drinks, foreplay, sex, breakfast, the ambivalent goodbye kiss. Their heads bobbled, so I knew they weren’t wax sculptures, but they never spoke a word. Some of them stuck around for weeks at a time, to my vast confusion, silent as the grave, but exhibiting great lumbar support. Never as silent as Jeremy, of course, he was the fucking champion.
Speaking of which, they never looked at Jeremy, though he was unfailingly present. He never sat down at the dinner table, the man had the spine of a young T-Rex, but he was in all the selfies. At first, I was impressed at their decorum. You know, because life coaches thrive on being ignored and all. Then I was offended, on behalf of Jeremy. He may be a life coach, but he’s still human, at least give him a nod or something, will you? Then I stopped caring. There was a moment there when I thought to myself, “wow, I’m not sure I’m capable of caring about this much longer.” And the next moment I stopped caring altogether. A self-fulfilling prophecy, they call it, I believe. The fuckers.
Me, I stared. I stared at my dates’ life coaches, sneered at them, made snide remarks to my dates, and then made eye contact, to make sure they knew who was being insulted here. I don’t know why I did it, it was patently childish. I think I was used to my Jeremy, but these other Jeremies, they rubbed me the wrong way. And I was trying to see if they were made of less stern stuff than my Jeremy. They weren’t, which made me furious! Finally, I gave up. I just sat there and felt a vague nostalgia for the infuriation I could no longer muster. And listened to the sound my dates’ heads made when they bobbled. You had to really listen to pick it out at first, but once you got it, it was all you could hear.
One day, Jeremy was gone. I woke up to a horribly bright room, full of sunlight, a real disaster, and Jeremy wasn’t standing there in the corner. At first, a vicious thrill coursed through me, and I raced to the bathroom, whooping and grinning like a jackal, sure I was finally going to catch him being human. “Aha!” I shouted as I flung the door open.
There was no one there. There was no one on the pot, no there wasn’t, there was not, a Dr Suess line ran through my brain. I raced to the kitchen, no longer as hopeful, but it was empty. I slunk back to the bedroom, where I saw the fat manilla envelope on my desk, next to my coffee cup.
“To Bill,” it read. Jeremy’s handwriting, holy shit. I felt like I’d intruded, it felt so intimate. I looked away, pretending I didn’t see it, and had two lattes in a row, a real routine-breaker for me. I poured myself some orange juice, but the second latte was still hovering somewhere up near my Adam’s apple and I didn’t want to lose it.
I played coy with the envelope for a good thirty seconds, then ripped it open and extracted a sheaf of paper, bound together at the spine like a paperback. “Bill Jorgensen,” the title page read, unnecessarily. I tore it off and flung it away. I felt a nervous energy building up in my joints. My head began to hum, like before one of my tantrums.
“Bill, Jeremy here. Sorry to have been such a spook the last few months, but it’s the job, and I take it very seriously. Still, I feel like I should apologize. I’ve been through it all from your side — we all have to do it before we get licensed — and it’s hell on the nerves for the first few days. You should know that you behaved firmly on the normal side of the spectrum, when it comes to adjusting to perpetual invasion of privacy.
“You’ll find a complete report enclosed. There’s a lot of science, statistics, directives, imperatives, infinitives and subjunctives (see what I did there?), more jargon and information than a person could possibly process and then apply in a coherent way to their life. Don’t quote me on this, of course, but in the pursuit of giving people their money’s worth, we err on the side of over-analysis.
“As someone who feels like they’ve become your friend, if it’s possible to become someone’s friend through pure observation — and I understand completely that the friendship goes one way here — as someone privileged to see the real you that is in our society hidden from view to even the most intimate of friends and family, I want to be as straight with you as possible. Where the document you hold is an encyclopedia, I will attempt in these next paragraphs to give you a gist. Have an orange juice, take a breath and read on.
“Welcome back. All pomposity aside, I’m afraid the main revelation I have for you is not one you’ll want to hear. You hired me, undoubtedly, to map your plethora of deep psychological problems and be given a pill, a prescription for therapy, or at the very least some names of afflictions. A diagnosis. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your frame of mind I guess, there is very little to report. Yes, you suffer a dissociation from people, society, romantic entanglements. Your work is unfulfilling, your relationships are tepid, your motivation is lacking, your interests are fleeting, your joi de vivre is joi-ing someone else. You have bizarre idiosyncrasies, disgusting living habits, an unsustainable diet, and enough money for doctors to keep fixing you up for the next seventy years.
“I’ve got news for you. This is the new normal. As people go in your generation, you’re within one standard deviation on virtually everything that matters. Any pills you might take to alleviate the symptoms would do just that: alleviate the symptoms. It’s up to you of course, and there are pills out there, but I can’t honestly recommend them. Regression to the mean is a bitch, and it’ll have you upping the dose till the day you fry your circuits.
“All I can offer you in good faith then, are the tried and true classics. Fill your time with whatever seems to raise you from your particular baseline. Based on my observations, you don’t fluctuate a whole lot from your median happiness level, but I did notice you give a slight smile to no less than three dogs. It won’t fix you, but maybe you can get a puppy? It’s an ancient form of therapy, believe it or not-”
I dropped the packet back on the table and rubbed my eyes. The hum in my head had dissipated, but I felt no relief. God, I was tired. And there was so much living still do, seventy years of it if Jeremy’s estimate meant anything, and I didn’t know how I was going to survive it. I’d need at least a dozen puppies smothering me with blind adoration every minute of every day, like a metaphysical sled dog team. Raising my needle to hover over the As Good Mental Health as Can Be Expected of This Generation mark.
I missed the Jeremy from before he opened his mouth. The Jeremy who wouldn’t recommend puppies if you’d held a gun to his head and told him to blink twice for puppies. I raised my coffee cup with orange juice in a silent toast and drank to his departure. And my clean bill of health.
