todd of tacoma

1. The Great Gatsby is a good story about the folly of the American Dream.
2. The Good Gatsby is a terrific, unfinished sequel. It was ultimately abandoned as “a little heavy-handed” with its mythological themes, particularly the trial of Ixion.
3. Ixion was King of the Lapiths, a penniless tribe in ancient Thessaly. In Ixion’s second year, he sent three of his five servants, the virginal ones, out into his kingdom to search for the most beautiful woman he could afford to marry.
4. Virgins have discerning taste. Once they’re despoiled, they’ll fuck anything that moves, and at times, things that don’t move.
5. Each virgin servant King Ixion sent out into his kingdom reported back separately that the most beautiful woman out there was Dia, daughter of Deioneous, a man who knew what his daughter was worth, and there was no way Ixion could afford her.
6. Let’s hear a different story:

Nate Billings merged onto I-5. Californians call it The 5. I suppose we could call it that, it’s cool.

No, here in Washington, Nate merged onto I-5. Our story takes place on I-5, by 72nd, not that that matters. It had been foggy the last four days, not that that matters too much, either.

Nate was cutting across his second lane. He had to cut across two lanes to be in a lane unabated for the next eight miles. What all good drivers want on their way to work.

Cutting across his second lane, merging carefully and slowly, like an old man, he didn’t see a car. It was in his blind spot. Sure, in the fog. Glowing there like an aura with its brights on, about to start flashing them. But it wasn’t flashing them yet. It was merely there and Nate was inching toward it, not yet seeing a thing.

But if he was to continue this reasonable and slow merge of his smoothly, just like he was, no sudden change in movement, a perfectly fundamental merge, he would see it right before he crashed, the car that existed in his blind spot like an aura. And maybe others would crash, too, probably terribly, as no one on I-5 that day by 72nd was giving up speed or an inch. Like everyone was refusing to know what to do.

In this moment, consciousness hit Nate Billings like a brick dropped off an overpass. He felt like he was being born into the moment. Like he hadn’t existed before then and was just shot out of the womb and injected right into I-5, his first light the glow a car he was about to hit.

What could he do? He could move back into his lane and wave sorry. He could honk politely to please let me in and stay the course while the car in his blind spot waved thanks for the heads up and moved into the far lane, which had not yet turned into the highly coveted carpool lane. Or he could not change course, and let the pileup begin.

But he couldn’t swerve. For God’s sake, never swerve.

At this point, when he could still return, Nate chose not to care. He just kept going. No honking. No flashing. No waving. No braking or speeding up. He chose nothing, which is no choice. He did not even hope the car in his blind spot would decide something and act upon that decision.

This is going nowhere.

A world-shattering crash wouldn’t be the worst thing.

Nate entertained the idea.

He listened to his tires on the road. When you entertain an idea like dying on I-5 you can really hear the wheels beneath you.

Then he found himself in his intended lane. He noticed that nothing had happened. He turned his blinker off. He didn’t wave sorry and no one honked. No one had honked, in fact, the entire merge. Headlights swerved like glow sticks, but no one had honked and no one was honking. They probably all needed both hands 100% on the wheel.

Nate checked his heart rate.

Nothing, he said. He actually said that. With no inflection.

Like: nothing.

Then he looked for somebody crossing the road. Or jumping off a bridge. Someone else like him. Born on I-5 dying.

But there was no one in the darkness.

No one in the fog.

No one in the world.

7. Deioneous, father of Dia, the most beautiful girl in Thessaly, knew that thanks to his daughter’s beauty he was sitting on a load of cash should a king like Ixion want to marry her. He had a number in mind, and he wasn’t going to give Dia away unless that number was met or exceeded.
8. Deioneous never told anyone the number, because that would be bad negotiating. Mythologists have it the number was up there, since, before Ixion, there hadn’t yet been a single offer. Just one humble father’s humble dream of a bidding war. So when Ixion offered him double the number, Deioneous was so surprised he didn’t even think to ask for anything up front.
9. Have you seen the fog at 6th Street and Proctor? I guess it’s the elevation there. It looks like it’s being poured out of the street lamps, like you’re in a wet sauna.
10. Surprise, surprise: Ixion didn’t really have the money to marry Dia. But he had a plan. A terrible plan. He invited Deioneous to a post-wedding dinner where he was supposed to fork over the astronomical bride price. Before dinner, though, Ixion called Deioneous over to look at a cool pit of fire, then he pushed him into the pit of fire to let him die there with his avarice. It worked.
11. Ixion tried to make the murder sound like an accident, but motive did him in. It was obvious to the gods and Thessaly.
12. Thessalonians gave Ixion the first-ever headline grabbing nickname, The Kin Killer, given that the deceased had just been named his father-in-law. Thanks to the egregious premeditation–pit of fire, bride price fraud–he would never live down the name, and a jury of the gods would finally find him guilty of the first murder.
13. Let’s do a quick follow-up about Nate Billings:

Same day, later.

He was speeding through the dual school zones on Union Street. I think there’s a third one in there, too, between Target and the Walgreens on 6th, not that that matters. He was in urgent need of Plan B.

Target was out of it, he’d determined. But it occurred to him while he was driving in the middle of the school zone that he might have just missed the Plan B, or didn’t feel like he had time to press a button and wait for a teenaged floor associate to come to him and not be helpful.

He hit his brakes. A car behind him honked egregiously and swerved around him. When the car had passed, he spun his wheel to the left to prepare for a U-turn, but in the end turned his wheel straight again and screeched his tires lurching forward and speeding on toward Walgreens.

Another car honked.

He didn’t care.

He was in a race against sperm.

At Walgreens, the pharmacy was open for questions and directions and the pharmacist was a wizened old codger. Nate asked him, pardon me, I would like to purchase a Plan B. Very polite, a dash of shame.

Aisle 10, the pharmacist said brusquely and walked away.

How reassuring the brusque old man is! Nate thought. He nearly said it aloud. Since the morning’s near-fatal near-crash he was saying things aloud.

It was there. In Aisle 10. The Plan. Its box said it was radio-monitored.

Nate carried it to the front of the store, with two hands so as not to disturb the radio. He set it on the countertop in front of the cashier as if the box concealed old dynamite.

The cashier turned around and ripped off a Plan B coupon from a book taped to a shelf and handed it to Nate wordlessly, so Nate could hand it back to him wordlessly, a few steps later.

It worked.

$10 off.

But still a load of money, Nate thought, even with $10 off. The capitalist Plan B was preying on little emergencies.

He sped the other way down 6th Street with his shiny new Plan box and imagined again a scenario that he’d already imagined on his way to Target and Walgreens. He’d imagined a cop had pulled him over. He’d imagined sitting there pulled over and impatient in the fog and flashing lights and saying to the cop, look, and then describing his situation. I just couldn’t pull out, officer, not today! I nearly died this morning! Etc. And then revealing the Plan B carton. He’d imagined the cop’s eyes widening, his face suddenly white with knowledge and he’d say follow me! and then escort Nate quickly and dutifully home. With that same sense of purpose a cop might feel for a pregnant couple pulled over speeding to a hospital. Lights on and everything. Waving people to the shoulder.

Precious cargo! Coming through! Move!

Since Nate was imagining the scenario a second time he thought he should give it a name. He called his little scene Protect and Swerve. Not that that matters. It was just for him.

End of story.

14. Speeding through a school zone at night is no great crime.
15. It’s a truism that old men are tedious when they talk about sports back in their day. But it’s also true.
16. Ixion. Of course, it was Zeus who took pity on him, the conniving Kin Killer. He intervened on Ixion’s behalf and pardoned him and set him free and protected him from retribution. Ixion was tired of Dia by now, given all his personal setbacks for her sake, plus she was his wife, and he now had eyes for Hera, Zeus’s girl.
17. Zeus suspected Ixion had eyes for his girl, so he set up a little test for him. He cloned Hera out of a cloud and named her Nephele, which means cloud. The little murderer fucked the cloud. Even got her pregnant. She gave birth to Centaurus, a grotesque thing who eventually fathered a race of centaurs after having been banished to an island with a lot of horses. The horse-human hybrids were, as expected, violent and murderous and mean.