Fahrenheit

by Sterling Davis

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​    There once was an artist. He and his confederate frequented a café I worked in. The café was popular among wealthy pseudo-intellectuals and their hangers-on. 

    He was unprepossessing. He was, however, endowed with a certain haughty gravity, that was, at any rate, widely admired.

    His friend, though decidedly more attractive, was aloof, plagiaristic and vaguely patriarchal. He was a conformist and a traditionalist with a taste for luxury. 

    The more interesting one of the pair--the haughty, hideous one--was prone to silent and despondent flourishes. And he was also exceedingly sickly. His father, a minor official in some misty, distant bureaucracy, provided a regular allowance for his cerebral and spendthrift progeny. This enabled him to, among other things, sketch startling and dreamlike portraits of beautiful women he would encounter in fashionable cafés near the Quai d’Orsay. He maintained a tasteful, small blue calfskin Montblanc notebook for this purpose. His lodgings were decidedly upscale. There was a concierge, nosy and officious and a building manager with an appetite for high-grade sinsemilla.

​    He lived alone. He was a suitor to a wild, fantastical girl who affected intellectualism. Only during those most midnight of hours, after consuming copious amounts of expensive absinthe would she admit her secret desire to wear Chanel and be utterly empty.

    This most peculiar of artists was a study of contradiction. He was at once both exceedingly egomaniacal and conceited and completely insecure and diffident. Such contrastive personality traits are rarely constituted harmoniously in one person. His mind was a visible cacophony. And, however strangely, his tastes were oddly proletarian. His favorite snack was Ruffles with Beluga Caviar. He read bodice rippers. He did, however, possess a praiseworthy fascination with the works of Marcel Proust. But this was mostly aesthetic.

​    In certain company, he would hold forth on Proust. Gesticulating, pontificating. The well-heeled bohemians of his salon would view his rhetorical prolusions as one views a never-ending, oleaginous film in which one is dying for the credits. However, even his love of Proust was inflated, apocryphal. Though reading that great master in the original French, he intuited nothing. His insights were not artistic, or even philosophical. Just vaguely academician. Today he is dressed in Saint Laurent. A small bone china demitasse of Turkish coffee brims at his side. And of course, his eponymous Montblanc notebook is open, no doubt full of dreamscapes of beautiful, inaccessible women. His confederate, on the other hand, is boredly swiping Tinder, dying for an assignation. 

    "What should we do tonight?" the Confederate asked languidly. 

    "I haven't a clue. Let’s drink coffee all day and be cynical."
 
    "But we do that every day!" 

    "I am rather bored. Is your friend--what's her name? You know, the Starlet with the cute buck teeth, meeting us for dinner?"

    "In fact, she is. Incidentally, she will be joining us for coffee any minute." 

    "I love celebrities because they are invariably rich. Like Scrooge McDuck." 

    "Scrooge McDuck had class."

    The café suddenly grew quiet. The line of eyes anchored their gaze at the beautiful, amorphous woman sashaying in among the unfamous.

    "Here she comes now, clutching the Balenciaga bag like a dissevered body." 

    The artist scrutinized the Starlet with obvious pleasure. She was undeniably sexy. But what bedewed her sexiness with a monomaniacal intensity was the sweetly virtuous innocence of her countenance. But behind that silk-soft innocence was a subterranean, incipient, burgeoning naughtiness. But what made her unforgettable was her exceedingly cold demeanor. The set of her mouth was chillingly frosty, even cruel. She lowered herself into the chair next to the Artist. Her eyes were supernovas. She fixed her powerful gaze first on the Artist, then on his Confederate, then on the Artist again. 

    "Do I know you?" the Starlet asked, contemptuously. 

    "You may," the Artist replied haughtily. "My artwork has appeared in many periodicals." 

    "I don't read periodicals. I am indifferent to beauty."

    At this juncture, the server sauntered on over lazily. He cast his great bored eyes on the table. "What can I get you?" He said, exhaustedly. 

    "Nothing for me," the Starlet said. "I prefer to drink my calories. Matter of fact, bring me a bottle of Veuve Clicquot." 

    The server sighed then disappeared. 

    "I admire a woman who knows what she wants," the Artist said, approvingly. 
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    "Is that so?"

    "Yes. I am attracted to women of taste. And of great elegance. So seldom does one encounter someone who knows precisely what they want." 

    "Oh, you don't know the half of it." 

    The Artist closed the leaves of his book. "Care to enlighten me?"

    When I was young, I craved great beauty. Now, I am perfect and it is terrible." 

    "As an artist, I can certainly appreciate beauty." 

    "But you merely imitate beauty in your depictions. I, on the other hand, am beauty incarnate. Which is superior and antecedent." 

    "You certainly are nubile," the Artist blurted out.--His pride forsook him. 

    "Let me guess. You desire me. The very notion is hackneyed."

    "What? You don't believe in love at first sight."

    "I want to believe in love. But there is only infatuation. You, in truth, don’t desire me for what I am. But for what I symbolize. All love is narrative." 

    "I don't follow." 

    "Allow me to put it another way. Beauty is not desire, it is destiny. It is utility. Through beauty, we are able to find ourselves. Through beauty, we become precisely what we are." 

    "So, what you're saying is that, by selecting a partner, we not only define who we are, but we also express our aesthetic choices to the world. And, through that choice, we ultimately actualize our destinies." 

    "Yes, very good. You follow me well." 

    "I am very cerebral." 

    "One should choose a mate that we have the capacity to create the profoundest memories with. A partner that causes us to be lost in reverie. That makes us dream, and dream big. The best partner is one that helps us achieve immortality." 

    "I have to disagree, my dear. I think the best partner is one that encourages folly. A world without love would be a world without laughter." 

    "Love can be cruel. There is often cruelty in laughter."

    "But love enables us to enjoy the good life. Things that we love, we dedicate ourselves to. Love is the motive force of human life."

    "Love is illusory," the Starlet said cynically. "Love is ephemeral. If we are to be truthful with ourselves, the motive force of human life is not love. It is the pursuit of power and immortality."

    The Artist loosened his tie. 

    "You are forgetting the primacy of eros in everyday life. People, ideas, and objects that further us along on our pathway of destiny give us energy. Energy is, in fact, power. Nothing can be done without energy. And the best way to achieve immortality is to create energy, first for yourself, then for the rest of society."

    "Very interesting," the Starlet admitted. "But how does love create energy?" 

    "Humans will go to extraordinary lengths to make themselves most eligible to the object of their desire. I aver the first caveman climbed the first tree to impress a certain cavewoman he had his sights on."

    "Go on." 

    The Artist pulled out his gunmetal monogrammed cigarette case. He carefully lit a cigarette and continued. 

    "As I mentioned before, love enables us to live the good life. We work to improve ourselves and the world around us to pursue the people and things that we love. Three very different thinkers have attempted to articulate what drives human beings. I will be mercifully brief because the champagne is yet to arrive. First, there was Marx, who said that life is essentially about money. He was right and wrong. Without–you will forgive me if I use a colloquialism--cheddar--you can't meet your basic biological needs. Accordingly, it's significantly harder to attract an eligible partner or appreciate beauty if you're worried about where your next meal is going to come from. Or if you have nowhere to sleep. None of the higher values of life--art, the cultivation of the intellect, and the establishment of institutions--are possible without some sort of economic subsistence. Access to capital, to invest, as it were, in the cultivation of the Soul, is essential to the good life. Where Marx was wrong, wrong, wrong was in his critique of capitalism. Capitalism doesn't repress the human Soul. It is, in fact, the best economic system for humans to flourish in. Now, bear with me. By setting the right incentives, it drives people to innovate and cultivate their full potential, so that they may attain the objects of their love. Choice, my dear, is freedom. And it is love. We love the things we choose with the agency of our own subjectivity. By choice, we define who we are. Marx's philosophical education neglected the primacy of choice for the human spirit." 

    "Marx always struck me as a hater," the Starlet said, giggling. 

    "A brilliant man with a mutilated psyche." 

    "Where is the champagne? I'm parched," the Confederate complained, not lifting his gaze from the glare of his iPhone.

    "Next, we have Freud. A smart man, though exceedingly kinky. He was, in many ways, a metaphysician of sex. There would be others, Foucault, to name just one. He postulated that sex is the motive force in daily life. He wasn't wrong. But his thinking was somewhat shallow." 

    "Tendentious." 

    "Freud failed to properly emphasize the purpose and telos of sex. Namely: immortality. Sex and procreation are the most basic means to attain a measure of immortality. It is natural and perfect. By producing offspring, our genetic distinctiveness lives on, in the next generation. The desire to have sex is merely a vulgar form of the desire to attain immortality."

    "The way I see it," the Starlet said, lighting a cigarette of her own. "There's only two ways to achieve immortality. Procreation or by doing some great deed." 

    "Precisely." 

    "You are very cerebral," the Starlet said, impressed.

​    "There's one final thinker that I must, at least mention. Carl Gustav Jung. A brilliant man, invariably. He believed that the good life, that is, happiness, is attained through the pursuit of individuality, and by living authentically. Who could impeach such a forthright and humanistic notion? His writings are drenched in spiritual dignity and bear the charisma of truth. It is incumbent upon all of us to "know thyself." Individuality is the ultimate sophistication. The man or woman who is at one with the contents of their soul and cultivates a passion that is authentic and prosocial typically achieves some measure of immortality. By disciplining desire and reconciling and accepting our manifold contradictions in the pursuit of destiny, we can attain love, which is immortality." 

    "Beautifully stated. I must confess, when I first sat at this table and cast my eyes on your unshapely countenance, I thought the notion of going to bed with you would be vomitous. Now, I am full of wonder." 

    "Individuality is the ultimate sophistication." 

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Sterling Davis is the editor of Poetries in English Magazine.


​​​​​​​​​​SHARE - Issue: 1.8 / April 2026