The First Man

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONE

My name is Adam, and I am the First Man.

I was formed from dirt and mud and shit and have walked the Earth ever since. You might’ve heard my story. Of course, like most good stories, it is a lie. Eden, Eve, the Serpent and everything that came after; fiction stitched from rags of fact. A story designed to hide the truth: that I am this world’s greatest mistake. And by inference, so are you.

I apologize if this is different from what you have been told. Kaliyah says people don’t like the truth. He says it is better to lie and make someone happy than it is to tell the truth and make them sad. By his own admission, Kaliyah is both a liar and a cheat. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

The truth is a weapon of subtraction. It takes from you. Often in fractions so slight you barely notice them. Children know this better than most: Santa Claus does not exist. You are not special. Your parents are not the people you grow up thinking them to be. Tiny truths that forever rob you of the fulsome happiness only ignorance can provide. Each new piece of knowledge ages you, abrades the very girders of your soul. And so you bury yourselves in lies, shoring up your days with as many empty promises and false hopes as it takes to make them bearable.

This is all my fault. Hubris perhaps, but the truth nonetheless.

TWO

I do not like your cities. They are too big and filled with too many people. And yet, paradoxically, they are too small to contain the hopes and dreams squeezed into them.

I stand at a corner. Around me people huddle together. Desperation and denial and apathy jammed into suits and blouses, fear and confusion in glossy heels and casual flats. All of them bound and held together by nothing more than the gossamer promise of “tomorrow”.

They get as close as they must without having to acknowledge one another. Lives hidden behind distant stares and averted gazes. They might be together, but they are always alone, nothing more than background noise, as much a part of the city as its buildings and cars and pollution. Across the street, amongst the tangle of people—shuffling problems gathered at the corner—a father and son hold hands and wait for the light to cross.

The child is happy. He does not know why he was pulled out of school early or why his father has taken the day off work to spend with him. Nor does he care. What he knows is that it’s been a day filled with pizza and ice cream and rollercoaster rides. It has been one of the best days of his short, young life.

He does not know that earlier in the morning, while he was learning how to add and subtract, his mother was thinking of him as blood filled her lungs and the weight of her mangled BMW pressed down on top of her, or that his father has spent the day trying to decide how to tell him that his mother is dead. He doesn’t see the sadness in his father’s eyes or the pain in his smile.

I know this as you know the winter is cold and the night is dark. The truth is an easy thing to see, but a hard thing to accept. And so you choose not to. You pretend not to see just like you pretend the person standing next to you does not exist.

The light turns green and people flood into the street. The boy smiles at me as we pass and in that moment I want to hold him. To snatch him up and protect him from a universe that is random and cruel. Instead, I look away. It was not supposed to be this way. In another time I might’ve tried to help. In another time I did. A mistake I do not intend to repeat.