Woke Up Lonely Read Free Page B

years? Her husband worked for the Department of the Interior. He was about to turn sixty, was a good and kind man. And yet here she was. Someone passed her a microphone; she shared her story with the room. Sometimes, she said, she’d wake up in the night, stare at the stranger next to her, and say: Olgo, I like cheese sticks and corn in the can, and when no one’s looking I wet my finger and dip it in the rainbow sprinkles at the back of the cupboard, and you love these things about me, you know me, so why can’t I be reached? And then she cried some more.
    Two Helix came up on each side of her. They held her hands. They said: We know.
    The woman blotted her eyes with the cuff of her sweatshirt. She would join, no doubt. She might as well. It cost only ten dollars a head to be here, but the reward was priceless. The idea, thus: Come in with your best friends, whose lives are as alien to you as yours is to them, come in steeped in the tide of loneliness and despair that grows out of precisely these moments when you’re supposed to feel a part of things, because, after all, you’re hanging out with your best friends. Come in a wreck, leave happy. How? Start from the beginning. Start over, start fresh. Tell me something real. At issue was not just isolation born of actual, literal solitude, but the solitude of consciousness. The very thing that lets you apprehend feelings for other people also tends to keep you severed from them.
    There was a Pack for her not two hours away. As soon as membership cleared five thousand in any one area, a Pack was born. The Helix was seventeen Packs in seventeen states. Fifty-two million website hits a month. Bonds nationwide.
    Thurlow drank from a water bottle. He said, “Now, I know what people say. They say that extreme detachment usually means mental illness, but that the pioneering spirit of individuality just means you’re American. Freethinking and unencumbered. But what we have today? When so many of us are destitute of intimacy with other people—intimacy of any kind—that’s American, too. And it’s not right. Now, believe me, because I know. I know firsthand. From my life and also from polling and statistical modeling procedures that corroborate a decline in frequency of every single form of social, civic, religious, and professional engagement since 1950. These stats are the God of tedium. But I’ve read them. The Roper Social and Political Trends survey, the General Social Survey, the DDB Needham Life Style studies, Gallup opinion polls, Mason-Dixon reports, and Zogby files. The bottom line? We are cocooned in all things, at all times, and it’s only getting worse. Today we debrief with our pets and bed down with Internet porn. So what can we do?” He paused here while the crowd said, “Tell me something real!”
    “That’s right,” he said. “Tell me something real. Talk to each other. Get back to basics. And start feeling better.”
    As he spoke, he managed to contact the audience with his eyes, to see people one by one, and in this way to blinker and laser his attention.
    When he was done, he thanked everyone for coming. He said they’d made his day.
    Cheers, applause, exeunt.
    There was a new suit waiting for him at his hotel. Twenty-four roses and puffer vests in red, blue, green, purple, yellow. He had it all sent to his penthouse, then headed there himself. He pressed his head against the elevator door and nearly fell out when it opened to his room. He was so tired. The event had taken hours—they all took hours—so he had time enough only to shower and shave. Perk up. Esme was coming. She might even be on her way. He had forgotten, though, about Vicki, who was standing tall at the foot of his bed with legs apart. PVC boots zipped up her thighs. A latex corset and thong.
    He tossed his coat on the duvet. “Get dressed,” he said, and he took off his shoes. “Not today.” He made for the window, peered out the blinds. The White House facade was soft-lit,