I had a friend who was always mindful of the path he took to cross a room. As he navigated between two chairs, around the table clockwise, and over to the coffee maker, an invisible line was drawn behind him like a spider’s thread. Such was his belief. Returning to his origin by a different route would spell entanglement, his efficiency declining throughout the day as he became ensnared in his own past.

My friend’s philosophy never worked for me because of the cognitive load. Where was the true origin, after all? Was it reset at will at the beginning of each day? After first coffee? Could the line be severed under special circumstances, or was that against the rules? My fear was that these questions could never be answered to my satisfaction, as seductive as the concept was. But my position was that if one was going to hold a belief then one must stay true to it regardless of the inconvenience involved.

Which is why I prefer to obsess over imaginary things that don’t require as much attention to physics. My obsessions should be troubling, inherently, but intuitive. Thus, for the most part, my preoccupations all have to do with social affiliations. These are the taffy-like connections that form spontaneously between people, usually those in close proximity. For these nonverbal accords to be struck, the sole requirement is that a group’s constituent members find themselves properly arranged. What denotes “proper”? Well, that is an elusive thing.

Office Orphan

By way of example, say that you’re at work and need some technical support. You stroll over to the technician’s desk only to find them having a conversation with someone else, so you linger at the back of the queue, waiting until they’ve finished their dialog. However, a connection of sorts has already been made, and when your party suddenly gets up and leaves with the other person, you must wait where you are until your party returns. Are there any other realistic options? Trudging back to your own desk without an answer would be as inefficient as it would be humiliating. Or, to follow the two of them… well, that would be tantamount to stalking. No, you must wait for as long as it takes. It’s a burden, clearly, for what if they have gone to lunch? Or what if they’re both enjoying a stress-induced bout of amnesia, and are even now wandering the streets, shirtless, howling?

Spontaneous Servitude

Or maybe you stop to speak to a friend briefly as you’re leaving a party. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t spend more time talking to them during the party, but you were busy exploring the house. But say, did your friend find the opportunity to see the amazing cellar? You enlist the host to take your friend on a tour, and a moment later you watch as they both descend the staircase. Unfortunately, your transaction has committed you to a tacit contract which effectively bars you from leaving the party until your friend has returned, no matter how long that takes. If you left now it would appear as though you had consciously ditched your friend. And to follow them… well, not only would that be stalking, but it would also seem like you were looming just to gauge your friend’s level of cellar appreciation.

Social conduct is tricky business, even without the additional burden of subconscious game-playing. But it’s only the structure imposed by these games that prevents disparate groups from engaging in melee after orgy after melee. Have you ever wondered, as I do, what perverse constructs keep your friends on the visitor’s side of the orangutan cage? Even now, are those around you obsessively labeling, ordering, and concatenating each interaction in inscrutable ways that would be impossible for them to articulate? If so then be glad of it, for I believe that we are all merely savages in costume, momentarily distracted by the music of creativity, lest tooth and groin have their final say.

Standing at the rental counter my palms are so slick that my car keys slip to the cracked linoleum with a clatter. I debate whether to leave them there, but the girl waiting on us pauses in the middle of her spiel and levels a pointed look at me. A moment passes. “You need to get those,” she says, and in her urban brogue I’m not sure it’s a question.

“Oh,” I say, as if I hadn’t noticed. I squat down to retrieve them and wipe my palms on my pant legs, feeling super-white and un-cool. “Sorry about that,” I say upon resurfacing.

Mine is a sweat of trepidation, because I don’t know the answer to her insurance question, which she’s just about to ask my partner and me. “You have the option of purchasing insurance for an extra $30,” she says, in accordance with prophecy. Her pen is poised at the appropriate item on the rental truck contract, and my eyes are focused way past that. I don’t even have a basis upon which to form an answer. Insurance? I frown like a monkey tasting a Rubik’s Cube, and the world slows to a dull smudge as my mind diverts every resource toward this one monumental problem.

The other questions–the size of the truck we’d need, how long we’d need it–are easily answered. I knew what I was going to say before I woke up this morning. But I hadn’t anticipated the insurance question. And it’s a philosophical question, isn’t it? Questions of quantity require little thought. There is but one right response, and I’m the only one who knows it. But insurance requires a deep understanding of myself and of my potential, as well as an instinctual understanding of the world around me. What are the chances that I may meet with peril? Will my reactions be quick enough? Or will I invite disaster through a string of bad decisions? Is there a flaw in my understanding of the world that cumulatively guides me toward the glistening beak of chaos? Or perhaps none of that is true, but the flaw in my character is one that will cause me to purchase insurance needlessly.

I don’t know which is worse.

Should we get insurance? The question seems unfinished somehow, like something has been left out. Of course I’d heard her ask the question of everyone else, and it didn’t seem to be much cause for consternation then. But I was watching like I was sitting in front of the television enjoying a show about a truck rental agency that would never bear on my life. Maybe this is a test of how closely I was watching then, and the real question–the whole question–is: What are my insurance requirements relative to the insurance requirements of other people?

I remember now that the scrappy couple had discussed the question, and decided against it in less than ten seconds. Maybe it’s that much of a no-brainer. But they were both wearing overalls, and I would never do that. Perhaps they had learned to embrace their reckless natures. The glitter-like metallic blooms on their chests suggested that these were creatures who welded their own furniture. But then again, they were about the same age as I, so maybe I’d be at equal risk, regardless of temperament.

Insurance then.

The older black couple in polyester track suits opted for insurance the way a soul lost in the desert might opt for a snow cone. “Most definitely, give us all you got!” Because neither of them had any other sort of coverage of their own. Their story couldn’t be more different from mine. In fact, my coverage is so redundant that certain parts of my insurance statement are covered in the case of loss or injury.

So no insurance for me.

The gay, sandy-haired action duo in their checkered racing shorts (still dark with perspiration) fought about the question between themselves. He was so sure they should need it that it was almost a morality issue, whereas he found the idea patently offensive. The counter girl left them in the middle of their debate to help us, and that’s when the world went into motion again.

I wipe at the sweat forming on my brow. “I’m not really crying,” I explain to her as I blink my eyes through the salt sting. “It just looks like I am. Huh!” My voice-cracking puberty laugh should infuse the moment with some much-needed levity, but she’s looking less than entertained.

If I were the only human then there would be no right and no wrong. My way would be The Way, merely by the scarcity of alternate ways. Indeed, it’s only as competitors and adversaries are introduced to the picture that I must worry about whether my way is the wise way, whether my way makes sense in the greater scheme of things. Therefore I must possess the ability to see myself in contrast to other people, with their arbitrary, inscrutable viewpoints. In that light, how could I ever expect to come out ahead?

While I’m still worrying at the specifics of the greater question, my partner steps up and takes the decision for the both of us.

And that, really, is the only correct answer.

I don’t even know the name of the motel I’ve been staying in. I’m only passing through, but already routine has settled on me like residue. In the morning and at night, as I’m preparing, I find myself stealing glances at the appendage on my bathroom wall. Though the leg remains, the spider two whom it belongs is long gone. As out of place as it is, I can’t summon the will to brush the leg away. Day after day I see it there, next to the mirror. Each time I catch site of it I imagine it’s fastened there by the minutest trace of dried ichor, a bond that a whisper of air might break. But though the temptation exists, I leave the arachnid gam there, perhaps as a reminder.

It’s like dust, really. Dust with form. A trace of something that used to be, a hint of a thing once greater. We would be fortunate to be in the quiet company of such mementos: reminders of the past in a form that still piques emotion. Something more than just the pink, paper-thin scars so delicate that your lover once said they appeared to have been coaxed from the inside.

What gifts these artifacts would be, scattered about like discarded garments. The grainy gray suspicion of the girl you dated three years ago lies still on the sofa, her hands still covering her face to hide the tears. She is there, frozen as she was the very last time you and she were still friends. Next to her, in a faded box of gossamer and shadow are the family photos that were lost in the fire that you started. And don’t trip over the child who is you, now the briefest shimmer scampering underfoot to escape the wrath of some long-fallen authority figure.

Visited by these precious moments from times past, you could never truly be alone. These are phantoms reconstituted of vapor and web, flake and crumb, no longer content merely to coat your appliances passively. Now they will move and kick, and, if you dangle your hand over the edge of the bed, you may find, when you wake, a pair of dental crescents pressed into the meat of your palm.

I lean in close to the appendage on my bathroom wall, and for just a second consider licking it off. Eating the dried brown limb doesn’t seem an unreasonable notion. What a loss it might be otherwise, and a moral defeat! And what more responsible tribute than ingestion can there be to something you’ve personally dispatched?

Instead I direct a blow at it, and it drops at last, falling neatly into the envelope I hold beneath it. I’ll address it to my parole officer over breakfast in the diner across the way as I watch the flames leaping from the motel roof.

That will be something to remember.