My only friends are unserious people. A man should strive to be humble, okay, and they are right about some things and I\u2019m 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\u2019re somewhat unwound.<\/p>\n
During our scheduled group call to decide this year\u2019s destination, they riffed fake ideas ad nauseum. Owen suggested Racoon City, which I had to look up. It\u2019s a fictional midwestern town that gets nuked in a Japanese video game, for Christ\u2019s sake. \u201cI hear a Springfield is nice this time of year,\u201d Jake said. \u201cThe Sahara,\u201d Andre said. \u201cNo, a favela.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hung up. I can\u2019t 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\u2019s ring road, pull over, and sleep.<\/p>\n
In the morning I jog over the island\u2019s roadside wild grass before driving over the marble-smooth roads. The sky is cloudy, claustrophobic as if I\u2019m 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\u2019m too amped to soak in. Without company, it\u2019s all echoes\u2014disappearing even as I watch them. My head is elsewhere, future-oriented. It\u2019s 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\u2019s gas and take to the ring road once more.<\/p>\n
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\u2019m on safari, listening for a glint of melting.<\/p>\n
I was twenty-two when I collected my first mil. By the end of summer, I\u2019ll almost reach five. My system works because I\u2019m 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\u2019t a dalliance\u2014it\u2019s meant for raw, myopic exertion.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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\u2014tour 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019ll 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\u2019ll be loaded and I\u2019ll be a stay-at-home-dad: I\u2019ll learn how to wash a plate.<\/p>\n
And I drive and imagine where I\u2019ll 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\u2014a 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\u2019ll tell them I remember when the Sahara was a desert.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s edge. They witnessed my submersion, and when I come to, they\u2019re smiling and applauding me and I finally feel like a trillionaire in the making.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If nothing else, you must respect the classical hustle; the Roman legionaries 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\u2019t a dalliance\u2014it\u2019s meant for raw, myopic exertion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[764,2592,3708,3852],"class_list":["post-20494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-friendship","tag-iceland","tag-legionary","tag-romans","writer-andy-bodinger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21028,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20494\/revisions\/21028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}