My only friends are unserious people. A man should strive to be humble, okay, and they are right about some things and I’m wrong. They tell me, bring balance to your life! Try dating apps! Take a night off a month! Walk a few laps if your legs are aching, reduce weight if the going gets tough, and they never let me say no to a summer vacation. But a man also ought to be a spool of discipline, and even my friends would admit they’re somewhat unwound.
During our scheduled group call to decide this year’s destination, they riffed fake ideas ad nauseum. Owen suggested Racoon City, which I had to look up. It’s a fictional midwestern town that gets nuked in a Japanese video game, for Christ’s sake. “I hear a Springfield is nice this time of year,” Jake said. “The Sahara,” Andre said. “No, a favela.”
I hung up. I can’t afford endless deliberation. I eat off paper plates to save hours in front of the sink; I avoid the frivolity of modern dating. So, I set out for vacation on my own. Round-trip to Reykjavik is dirt cheap, as is renting a van and camping in its trunk. I set out on Iceland’s ring road, pull over, and sleep.
In the morning I jog over the island’s roadside wild grass before driving over the marble-smooth roads. The sky is cloudy, claustrophobic as if I’m coasting through an empty stadium. I force myself to stop and attempt to enjoy the attractions, but Iceland is a slideshow of vistas that I’m too amped to soak in. Without company, it’s all echoes—disappearing even as I watch them. My head is elsewhere, future-oriented. It’s a two-week vacation I vowed to see through and I easily drive fifteen hours in two days and loop back to Reykjavik no worse for wear, so I top off the van’s gas and take to the ring road once more.
On my second loop, I soak in the same natural hot springs as the first loop to soothe my claw grip posture. I meditate adjacent to the same waterfalls. I walk up to glaciers like I’m on safari, listening for a glint of melting.
I was twenty-two when I collected my first mil. By the end of summer, I’ll almost reach five. My system works because I’m a Roman legionary. If nothing else, you must respect the classical hustle; they signed twenty-five-year contracts, sacrificed their youth and delayed marriage to be muscle. After being discharged they received a parcel of land, found wives, and retired. This is how men (and, fuck it!, some women) should be: youth isn’t a dalliance—it’s meant for raw, myopic exertion.
I continue my morning jogs. My muscles are deflating faster than I can do push-ups. I drive on and reach Reykjavik on my fourth night before tackling the loop again. I don’t bother with the glaciers anymore. I steep in the hot springs, air out the van. I drive slower to really stretch out this third loop and cars begin to pass me—tour groups from Indonesia, drunk Brits on holiday swerving over the yellow line. Two young Polish women ask me a question at a rest stop, and before I can fall in love, I mumble a one-word answer and flee. I piss on the side of the road a kilometer away when the coast is clear.
I have to resist regret. I think about the routine, how I bench or squat or run six days a week to keep my body pure and adrenaline pumping. I maximize efficiency as I sit in front of my three computer monitors; trading stocks and crypto, creating reams of content for my followers, and dropshipping a small fortune on the daily. But then as I drive the sun lingers in the sky well after I feel fatigued and the northern lights never dance across my windshield and I wonder what Owen and the gang would joke about, what do the Polish ladies see here that I’m missing, and when it does start to get dark, I wonder if my inner life is enough or if anyone has an inner life at all.
But then I remember who my ethos is for; my future wife, a beautiful young woman, whose name I cannot wait to learn, desperate to see stitched with my surname. I’ll retire at forty-five, fifty if inflation is severe, and I want a gaggle of kids, a flock, a conspiracy, a parliament. She can work if she wants space, but we’ll be loaded and I’ll be a stay-at-home-dad: I’ll learn how to wash a plate.
And I drive and imagine where I’ll take my family for vacation to enculturate us and I remember what Andre said and think, what about the Sahara? I read that climate change is bringing rain, and a Great Wall of trees is being erected at the desert’s arid borders and that in the years to come the Sahara will mutate into an undulating steppe—a Sahara as vegetative as Iceland. As I round my final Iceland loop, I picture myself atop a verdant plateau, my wife standing behind me, my brood all around at my feet, and the lot of us staring at what was once an ocean of sand and I’ll tell them I remember when the Sahara was a desert.
By morning I take one last skinny dip in my usual hot springs. My hair is knotted and greasy so I dunk my head under for a few seconds. The heat is nothing to me. When I emerge, I’m surprised to see a man and a woman in bathing suits with digital cameras hanging from their necks standing at the spring’s edge. They witnessed my submersion, and when I come to, they’re smiling and applauding me and I finally feel like a trillionaire in the making.
