The Metaphor Peddler

My name is Ryan W. and I’m looking for a roommate to share my 2 bedroom/1 bathroom rental at a neat, modest mobile home park in the East Side. Mine is a vegan household, therefore vegan candidates are preferable. If you’re interested, please PM me for details. Thank you.

Luckily for Ryan, there were no restrictions on subletting a room in the mobile home park, either because no one cared, or because no one was paying attention. A few days after he posted his request on a neighborhood networking website, three candidates showed up at his place. The first one was a recently divorced middle-aged man from Alabama, eager to start a new life from scratch and build a social support network in an unfamiliar and fascinating environment. He said that although he was not a vegan yet, he was open to becoming one, as part of the process of reinventing himself. Ryan liked him but wanted to do more interviews before deciding. The second candidate, a vegan woman studying Philosophy at the nearby university, who uttered deep assertions interspersed with long silences, texted him a few hours after meeting him, saying that she had just found a more convenient place. Then Amir appeared. A down-on-his-luck novelist from the Midwest in his mid-fifties, he was clearly gay and very handsome. He had a full head of wavy dark hair, greying sideburns and moustache, and tanned skin. Ryan sensed a charming, romantic melancholy in his brown eyes. He made his decision right then and there, but didn’t say anything, letting their conversation about other matters flow.

Amir told him that he hadn’t published anything in years. In his heyday, he had authored his fair share of best-selling romance books. Things changed when, in an attempt to inspire his readers to ponder meaningful issues, and to be taken seriously by the intelligentsia, he decided to include social and political notions in his writing. He showed a new manuscript to his agent and then to his publisher. They were not thrilled. They dismissed it as didactic and dogmatic. All parts with a political angle read like a lecture or a pamphlet, not like a novel, they said. He recast those parts feverishly, day and night, for months in a row, producing numerous different versions to convey the same messages. Again and again, he was told that none of that belonged in the art of literature, but in political activism. He was advised to abandon that hopeless pursuit and to just keep doing what he knew. But it was impossible for him to look back. He didn’t want to write silly best-sellers anymore. He was an artist attuned to what was going on in the world. The great problems of his time––climate change, economic inequality, humans’ barbaric exploitation of animals, the return of fascism, genocidal imperialist wars threatening a nuclear catastrophe––were having an effect on him. No matter how hard he tried to prevent it, statements and analyses of objective historical facts kept sneaking into his writing. That would actually be a positive outcome, he was told, if only he knew how to translate those statements and analyses into novelistic language. But he tried and failed. It dawned on him that he was a bad writer. He plunged into depression and quit his career.

Fortunately, he had made enough money to retire and leave the Midwest for the little piece of paradise that was Ryan’s town. It was an expensive area to live in, but he would be careful not to splurge.

“So how are you feeling these days?” asked Ryan. “I mean, with the great problems of our time and whatnot.”

“I’m doing activism, Ryan. A lot. Like, next week I’m participating in an anti-war protest action at a port, North of here.”

Ryan had no idea what the heck Amir was talking about.

“We’re going to try to block the loading of war material onto a ship,” he explained. “Why don’t you join us? There will be hundreds of activists there. Workers, students, environmentalists, immigrant rights advocates, atheists, non-atheists, you name it.”

Ryan thought about it for a few seconds and apologetically said that, although he supported the protesters one hundred percent, he’d rather stay in town and stick to his work schedule to make a little bit of money because he was unbearably anxious to get his life back on track. Wondering if Amir was dismissing him as individualistic and alienated, he was quick to add that he would be very happy to stop working in order to be part of a nationwide workers strike, were it to happen, and he hoped it would happen soon, but unfortunately that was not yet the case. Amir replied that there was a tidal wave of social resistance growing bigger and stronger by the minute all over the world, and that it would reach Ryan in no time. Ryan liked the metaphor.

Amir moved to his place two weeks later. They rarely met afterwards, but it didn’t take long before Ryan developed a massive crush on his roommate. Wet dreams with Lucas were replaced with wet dreams with Amir. Ryan knew that there was nothing wrong with himself, physically or psychologically, but he couldn’t help being embarrassed with the fact that, at almost thirty, he was a lonely guy with the sex life of a virgin teenager. He needed to do something about it. He desired Amir and he should let him know it. He mustered the courage to text him just to offer him a special dinner at home. He was going to order vegan take-out from an Arab restaurant. Amir texted back, asking if it was OK for him to bring a friend. Ryan wrote the sentence Sorry, but no, three is a crowd. Then he deleted it, wrote the line Of course it’s OK to bring a friend and sent it.

Amir showed up with a boyfriend, Kenzo, an exquisite Japanese American majoring in Oceanography. Kenzo contributed to the dinner with three huge joints and two bottles of sake. The couple smoked, ate and drank with pleasure, talking about themselves, the NATO powers’ drive to a catastrophic third world war, other global affairs that Ryan was not familiar with, and yoga. A moody Ryan just smoked weed and drank sake. Amir asked him why he was so quiet.

“I have a heartache, I mean, a headache,” said Ryan.

He could barely sleep, listening to the energetic lovemaking taking place on Amir’s bed. When it started, he felt miserable, jealous, envious. As night dragged into day, he resigned himself to his aloneness. In the morning, when he got out and inhaled the marine layer embracing his town, he felt refreshed, with the funny hope that he would eventually join Amir and Kenzo in a threesome.