He’s middle aged but still young. He adventured in his youth and saw the world, then started his career and found his forever home. He’s educated and makes $75,000 take-home per year with benefits on a small business he runs himself; he squirrels 25% away to a 401k that’s growing at a 7% annualized rate and owns his own home, a four-bedroom, three bathroom, two-story building with a storage attic and a recreational basement which mortgage costs less than 30% of his income and will be paid off in full by the time he retires early.
His business puts him in touch with people and gives him challenges to do from time to time, but runs pretty efficiently and takes him only 30 hours a week. The rest of the time he earns income on the side writing the occasional novel (he recently delivered his third) that published okay on the midlist but hasn’t earned out. He also has a couple screenplays and even an optioned one. He enjoys photography and has a workshop where he can tinker with electrical devices or small carpentry.
He gets 8.5 hours of sleep every night. He wakes up everyday at 5am, exercises for a half an hour, writes for an hour, makes coffee, and then wakes up his wife and two children, one son and one daughter. The family gets ready for work and school together and they all leave together. They live in a walkable suburb that’s a 30 minute drive from a city center full of cultural wealth and cheap and readily available parking, an hour away from dense woods and mountains they can hike, and an hour and a half away from accessible but unbusy public beaches with crisp and clear blue water during the 90° summer months. The kids don’t need a ride because they go to school three blocks away. They excel in the AP program there.
His wife and he have their own hybrid vehicles and go their separate ways. His wife runs an art gallery and volunteers in local municipal culture boards, running events that keep him, his children, and his community entertained during spiritually and intellectually fulfilling evenings and Saturdays.
He works from home but likes to use the earlier hours to run errands and hold meetings at the nice coffee shop he knows that is always quiet and has available seating but well-attended by polite and colorful patrons that he enjoys watching while he sips his delicious fair trade but reasonably priced coffee while waiting for a client to arrive. The best part of the client meetings is when they’re impressed by the coffee shop he knows and tell him they’ll have to come back for another coffee sometime. Sometimes, indeed, they do, and that is when he can count his clients to be among his friends.
After a few hours out, he returns to his house, which in his absence has been cleaned and organized by the local affordable housecleaning service. His grounds, a perfect acre, are tended by landscapers too, though the garden is left alone because its his wife’s hobby, and he’s always willing to shell out a few bucks to any enterprising neighborhood children who would like to mow his lawn.
Home at last in midday, he retires to his home office, the fourth bedroom which has been set aside for his work. It is also a personal library featuring all the books, Blu-Rays, and vinyl he’s collected over the decades. He clears mail both e- and snail, then reads a book for an hour while eating a simple but refreshing lunch. He then works for three hours fulfilling his duties to his clients and sending out the new contract to the client he just made in the coffee shop this morn. His kids arrive home at 3pm, and they all have a light snack before they sit down in the living room to do their homework, which time he uses to send query letters for the book he’s working on next.
His wife arrives home at 5:30pm, which time the kids and he are done with their extra work. They cook together while the kids do chores, and they all sit and eat together and recount their days. All of them are witty people and they love to laugh together. His wife and he have wine and about once a month the kids ask for some, which they give in a little shotglass, which the kids immediately drink and retch and turn up their faces. “This is why you shouldn’t drink, it tastes awful!” he chuckles, and the joke never gets old.
After dinner his family likes to play board games or watch a movie together. Occasionally one of his kids goes over to a neighborhood friend’s house or a neighborhood friend comes over. Occasionally they mix it up by doing something crafty like painting or scrapbooking together. When a family member is not interested in participating, they read quietly in the corner.
Bedtime is at 9. The kids are sent promptly to bed, where they fall asleep without trouble. He and his wife make love. It lasts 25 minutes and always feels like the first, incredible time, and they cum together. He had four long term relationships and slept with 12 women total, but none of them ever made love as sweet as the one he later married. She had two long term relationships and has slept with four men before him but was never satisfied sexually until she met him. They had their two children precisely when they wanted to, and never needed contraception since.
Afterward they get comfortable and read together. She likes 200pg thrillers and mysteries, he likes to read 650pg histories and biographies. She likes to tease him that she’s more well-read because she finishes more books than he, and the joke never gets old. She finishes about two books per week and he gets through one about every ten days.
She falls asleep first, and he likes to watch her for ten minutes before turning off the light and going to sleep himself.
You might notice at this point that my math is weird here. I said he sleeps 8.5 hours per night. It is now past 10pm and he is supposed to awake at 5am.
This does not bother him. In fact, he hardly notices the discrepancy. Each day aligns to his comfort and eustress.
Nor is he bothered by my other bad math. He works 3 hours per day but 30 hours per week. Even if we account for his coffee shop meetings with clients, he would have to work all seven days to hit 28 hours, which he doesn’t.
Of course he doesn’t. He takes weekends off on principle, to spend with his friends and family.
Saturday mornings his family likes to do something cultural, like go to a museum or a movie matinee. In his community there are frequently and regularly neighborhood potlucks and barbecues that they can attend for lunch after. The kids like to take off with friends on supervised adventures to hiking or theme parks in the evenings, while he and his friends meet up for a few small drinks and gentlemanly ribbing at the nearby sports bar.
Sundays they go to church, though they don’t consider themselves religious. He believes in God but doesn’t really have much to say about it. Really, they go to church for the community. He and his wife particularly like helping with the church’s food drives for the homeless, because it helps them feel like they’re doing something for the needy. There are no homeless people in their neighborhood, so the food is driven into the city center. Sometimes he drives it in himself, in his hybrid truck.
After church he likes to insist on his family having a quiet, rejuvenating Sunday evening. In this neighborhood, it rains every Sunday afternoon, though it always clears just in time to sit on the back porch and enjoy the stunning sunsets over the hiking hills. During the rain they get to sit at home and drink tea while working on their individual hobbies. He does not write or read during this time because he has that time carved out elsewhere. He spends his Sunday time in his workshop, tinkering, having time to think for himself.
On school breaks they travel somewhere cultural, to introduce the kids to the world. During summers they have two family reunions, his family and his wife’s family, and they take the time to drive the kids across the country so that the kids can see the wealth of their nation. The kids are allowed iPads during the trip if they get bored, but they don’t use them, preferring instead to make up games for each other as they watch the landscape slide by.
He reads the newspaper. Well no, he doesn’t. Well, he looks through it. That is to say, he is informed about current events but blissfully remote from politics. At any rate he does his part and never steps on anybody’s toes. He votes, conscientiously, for both primary and general elections, and sends letters to City Councillors and Congresspeople. He doesn’t belong to a party but is registered to one. He’s completely comfortable with the fact that everyone has their differences of opinion and retains the option in his mind to see both sides and vote for the better argument, but he’s pretty sure the other party is held back from getting his vote year by year because it’s predominantly controlled by power-seeking sociopaths, which if they got rid of, he’d be more amenable to their ideas. At any rate even when his party loses, he knows in four years they’ll be back in the saddle, and despite the fact that he votes for them, they’re no angels either, and often deserve their political losses. He avoids talking politics at barbecues even though he gets swept up into a good back-and-forth with his neighbor who always believes the exact opposite things than him, probably because his neighbor was miseducated at the wrong school.
And when he dreams, his dreams are vivid. He both remembers them and finds them remarkable, and employs their generative imaging to the work of his screenplays and novels. They fill him with curiosity and inspiration. They’re easy to remember because they follow solid three-act structures and consistent world-building rules. He likes to tell the occasional podcaster who invites him on to their show about his books that he gets as much work done in his dreams as in his waking life.
He’s middle aged but still young. He adventured in his youth and saw the world, now young adults look up to him as learned and wise. His doctor has started talking to him about how “men of a certain age” must be alert to various age-related advancing illnesses, before tearing off a clean bill of health. He always registers just under the number for elevated cholesterol, so gives himself a post-checkup treat of a double quarter pounder with bacon and cheese and smokes a cigar after every annual check-up.
His doctor never notices or at least never addresses that he does not poop; and when he does poop, it does not smell; and when it does smell, it’s only so that one of his kids coming into the bathroom after him can loudly complain. The family laughs together. This joke never gets old.
“I don’t want to be prideful, and I count my blessings,” he says to his friends over at the sports dive Saturday night, rapping his fingers against the wooden bar in mock superstition, “but all in all you could say I have a pretty good life.”
Cheers to that. Clinked glasses, frosty and frothy. A friend gets up to pee. Another offers to buy another round. He declines. He never drinks more than two.
This satire is presented for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month STSC members create something around a set theme. This cycle, the theme was “The Good Life.”
If you are a writer or filmmaker, you should consider joining us.
To experience my previous STSC Symposium submissions:
We'll Burn that Bridge When We Cross It
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To read other clearly nonsensical fiction:
After the Dream
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What To Do About It
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I guess that’s not a bad life on paper but it leaves me feeling hallow and a little disgusted at his life because he’s missing the very human aspect of getting fucked by life and struggling to live with it and overcome it. Wouldn’t get a beer with this guy, he sounds like he’d have the personality of a shoe but that’s probably why it’s such great satire!
Perfect photo that intros the writing