Seamless

I have one night to spend before I pick up my camper van. I was planning to do a fjord cruise, the classic Norway In A Nutshell, but I cancelled it. Five hours out to an inland town just to get on a train and come back. Commuting for fun. Da fuck. So I last minute find an Airbnb an hour away on the western coast, out past Sotra, close to the ocean.

I go back to the station for my bags, take a bus out of the city, and let the host know I’m on the way.

I keep messaging. Boarding the bus. Thirty minutes away. Just arrived at the station. He never answers. I call Airbnb support and they give me his phone number. He answers startled, like he didn’t expect me to arrive. He’s sniffling nonstop through the phone.

He lives fifteen minutes off the road, up a hike, in a brand new cabin he just bought. I go up and down a mountain to get there. The Airbnb address and pin are totally wrong. I go up the wrong hill at least twice. I’m sweating, tired, and grumpy when he finally comes out to get me. Lars. Fifty four. Frazzled. I’d come to understand that he had been coked up and fucking his girlfriend at the moment I called. Too hard and focused to bother thinking about his Airbnb. The whole experience feels like it belongs on Couchsurfing.

He talks to me for fourteen hours.

He was a healthcare executive. Twenty years in hospitals, HR, and then an executive at the National Hospital of Norway, very young. One of the most successful in Norwegian hospital history, he says. The media called him constantly. He worked weekends. He worked on vacation. Three weeks in Thailand with his wife and three children, forty degrees, and Oslo calling him with contracts.

He commuted to Oslo for eight years and stayed in a hotel Monday through Thursday. Eight years of hotels. It would have made more sense to rent an apartment. I guess someone else was paying.

He crashed his car. I suspect while he was coked up. He was arrested, but he promises he’s not a threatening man. He thinks about the Porsche a lot, the 911, and he sold it, and the Audi, and the Volvo. Three cars sold.

Get my license the hell out of here, he says. I don’t want it. And he reframes his drug-induced car crash bender into a blessing.

He quit his job and divorced his wife in the same week. One year’s salary for severance. He’s been traveling since 2018.

It was in the media that I quit, he says. In Norway it’s a small country. People know me here.

Five hundred square meters, about 5,000 square feet, down to sixty, because they sold the mansion on the ocean after the divorce. He also has a studio in Bergen he never uses and an apartment in Málaga he plans to retire to, when he is more retired than he currently is.

Do I still love my ex wife? Yes. Can I live with her? No. Do I have a good relationship with my kids? Yes.

Me and Maria, he says, we weren’t compatible.

You were not seamless, I say.

No.

Seamless is his word. He got it from his boss.

You and me, the boss told him. You take decisions. You don’t need to call me. You take decisions on my behalf.

Shall I call you?

No.

He trusts me, Lars says. We were seamless.

The boss died at 61. Lars is 54. He is still mourning him.

Can I touch you, he asks. Sure, I say. He puts his hand on my arm.

Morsen, he says. That’s Norwegian for you and me. Morsen. We are sinners and holy.

He asks me nine or ten times that night if we’re cool. Are we cool. Are we good. Are we seamless. He asks if I’m straight, which I answer, and he tells me he follows not the Bible but Jesus Christ, and then he brings out his grandfather’s Bibles.

And I keep saying yes, we’re cool, because obviously I can’t say no. I’m in a cabin fifteen minutes up a mountain and there is no other place to sleep in this entire country. Every hotel in Bergen is booked. I have never seen such limited supply.

But he does keep asking.

He cooks with three things. Sea salt, black pepper, chili.

The Italians say you only need three ingredients, he says. And I follow that.

What are the three ingredients for the Italians?

Pasta. Tomato. Some meat.

He has honey from Ukraine. He wants me to know it’s from Ukraine. He wants me to know about the war.

He keeps telling me to look at the view, which is actually incredible, the North Atlantic straight out there past the trees, and a red boat, and out beyond that is where they gather the oil. Every Friday and every Monday the helicopters come over his cabin bringing the offshore men back in.

He has three children. A daughter in Trondheim studying psychology. A son in Oslo, engineering. A daughter in Ålesund, marketing. He is in politics, he says, and management, and economics.

If we use our different powers, he says. My son, tech. My oldest daughter, psychology and philosophy. My youngest, marketing and business. And me, political scientist.

Like a constellation, I say.

No, he says. I know where they are.

He has video calls with them. He sits here on the coast and they sit in Oslo and Trondheim and Ålesund and they connect and they build something together.

Do you like bees, he asks.

Bees like a hive, I say.

B Cube, he says. It’s an interesting philosophy. How they work. What they do.

They work very nice together, I say.

If we work like bees, he says, we can take away the shit. The racists. The narcissists. We can take away all the maggots, all the tramps that are trying to intrude on our good life.

Then he says, if a person in a suit came around here right now they would think we are two crazy persons.

You like Johnny Depp?

Johnny Depp, I say.

He’s not here, Lars says, pointing at the middle of his own head. He’s there. He got it. He got it.

Brad Pitt is getting it.

He’s not really there yet, I say.

He’s not really there yet, Lars agrees. But he’s getting it. Johnny Depp, he got it.

I’m not at ten, he tells me. I’m at eleven.

His global business is going to the moon, he promises. He is a writer and a lecturer. He teaches strategy and management to executive master’s students at the business school, and he does it from this cabin.

He never uses PowerPoint. If I use it, I use some pictures. I talk. I want focus.

I said to people, he tells me, I see you taking notes, why are you doing that? And they say, I want to remember. And I say, don’t take notes. Listen to what I have to say.

It’s Obama’s technique, he says. I can stand on a stage silent for fifteen seconds. Totally still. And then I go, so where are we.

You have to bring your audience into your place, he says. It’s not a stage and an audience. It’s the same room. I can talk to five hundred people in a stadium with no problem at all. I would be more nervous sitting around a table like this, if there were five other people here.

There is one other person here.

He teaches me origo.

You need to find your origo, he says. Where is your origo.

Your center, I say.

Come here. Stand here. Breathe. Relax. Close your eyes. This is your origo. This is where we are in the world. Now, at this nanosecond, you are at origo. At the west coast of Norway, far away from home, New York.

What do you see?

I see the sunset outside.

Now you are at origo, he says. And when you are at origo you are at equilibrium. And finally you find your homeostasis.

Homeostasis, he says, is the most beautiful word in the world.

Then: are you Adam from Norway? Adam from New York? Adam from the world? Adam from the globe? Or Adam from the universe?

I have done a lot of meditation. It’s good to find my center.

Grounded, he says. This is me. I do this every morning, standing here, because this is my origo.

I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t work. It works. Somewhere in the middle of it I am actually there, making real eye contact with a stranger, which I sometimes can’t do.

He centers me. The coked up man centers me.

Then he tells me how he tracks his sleep.

He puts it in Excel. He learned it from the top surgeons at the National Hospital. Sometimes he sleeps eighteen hours. Sometimes he’s awake for three days in a row. Then eighteen hours. And he plots it and takes the weekly average and it comes out to six hours a night.

I’m confident the three days up are coke-induced.

I don’t recommend this, he says. I don’t recommend this for intelligent people.

He pees on a stick every third day to check his pH. If something’s wrong, he calls his doctor. But mostly he doesn’t need one, because he worked in hospitals for twenty years.

When I stand like this, he says, I know if I have cancer here. I know it.

He asks me what’s next for me. In life, not tomorrow.

And I feel his openness deserves mine, so I tell him honestly.

I say, I have the same story. I had a business and I was making a lot of money and I was very successful, and I had a girlfriend who I really loved. And one day I was driving on a beautiful day, a gorgeous day, with my girlfriend in the car, and I said, wow, I am very, very, very unhappy. I’m going to a beautiful nature spot with this great girlfriend and all this money, and I hate all of it.

Exactly, he says.

So I broke up with my girlfriend, and I sold my company, and I went and fucked off for five years.

I called it cultural suicide.

It’s very common, I tell him. People have a job or a career or a husband and they say, this is not the life I want to live, I’m going to cash in my chips and go live a different life.

Culture suicide, he says.

First cultural suicide, I say. Then real suicide, if you want.

And I did it young, I say. And five years later I work a job making similar money, but I work for someone else, so it’s a bit worse. Also it’s less stress, because it’s not my business.

And I have the same girlfriend. I just got back together with her.

You know the girl I was supposed to go on this trip with? I broke up with her to be with my ex girlfriend from five years ago.

He says, you’re so young. You have your whole life.

Sure, I say. But I’m not so young. There’s a generation younger than me now.

Look at me, he says. I’m fifty four. I left a beautiful wife. Two beautiful daughters. A fantastic house on the west coast. Five hundred square meters. Ocean view. Three cars. I cut the line.

And now I’m sitting here with you.

We talk about Trump.

Trump is a success trap, he says. In strategy we call it the success trap. He’s never satisfied with anything, so he had to be president, and when he failed he had to be president again. Do you think Trump has a good life?

I think he’s made a lot of money for his family, I say.

But do you think he’s happy?

Yeah, I do.

He’s not sleeping. He looks like shit.

I say I think he doesn’t feel the stress of the job the way other people do, because he cares a lot less. I say Obama’s not happy. Obama is very worried. Trump doesn’t care.

And that’s because Obama is more intelligent, he says.

I say, I think most presidents are trapped, and I think most presidents are selfless people. You’re selfish, but you really care about other people too. Trump is pretty much only selfish, and so there’s less pressure, because you’re not doing it for anyone else.

I really like your perspective, he says. Because when I look at Trump he looks like a man about to explode.

He shows me his first book. 1999.

Wow, he says. You weren’t born, were you?

I was two years old.

Two years old. Perfect.

He signs it and gives it to me.

My fourth book is in English, he says. This one is impossible in English. And there in that book is your hometown, man. This is your hometown. New York. You have heard about The Great Gatsby.

I see, I say. Jay Gatsby.

Jay Gatsby on Long Island.

Start writing, man, he says. You’re a writer?

Yeah, I say. I write a lot.

I’m a publisher. Global publisher. If you want to make a statement in the world, the best way is to write.

I agree, I say. I agree. I agree.

Later, when he’s making my bed with flannel sheets, because he uses flannel all year, never cotton, winter and summer, he asks me where I go when I die.

In a box, I say.

No, in your mind.

My mind stops.

No. In your mind. Where are you going?

I don’t know, I say. Where do you go?

I know exactly where I’m going, he says. I’m going to heaven. And it’s not like God. It’s not like Jesus. It’s more like Nirvana.

That’s nice.

For me, I say, it’s like a computer being unplugged.

That’s for you, he says. For me it’s when I can say to my friends, my family, my beloved, my children and all the people I loved who are dead, goodbye. I am finished here now. But my work will continue.

I ask where he wants to be buried and he says here. This is my origo. This is the place I’m going to die.

I know where I’m going to die too, I say.

Where?

New Orleans. Next to my sister.

That’s nice.

Yeah, I say. It’ll be fun. I’ll be drunk and listening to good music.

He says, you came here today and it was fantastic that it was you. Another person, we would have a problem.

He says, I have to say I am impressed by your patience.

I am a good listener, I say.

He says, I like you, Adam. I’m so glad I met you. Because if you were a woman from New York with a big suitcase.

You would be in trouble, I say.

It’s a good thing my girlfriend broke up with me, because she’d be chopping my dick off right now.

He starts describing his girlfriend, Larissa. He describes her as poor. That’s the first word. Larissa is poor. She’s a nurse and she has kids and she can barely pay her bills, so she doesn’t have money to go to a bar and drink. He says this is the first time in years she’s been able to afford wine, because wine is very expensive in Norway and he’s helping her.

I met her when I first arrived. She has light brown skin. She’s quiet and she’s pretty and she’s about his age. They’ve known each other for years and only started dating recently.

He pays for everything.

I can’t believe someone fucks him.

I take a melatonin and sleep better than I have in a week. My throat is sore. I’m achy. I have weird dreams.

In the morning he’s still talking. He does yoga and tells me about his center, his exercise, his kids, his divorce.

At some point he says, I love this indigenous music of the native people. The Indians of our country. I don’t know what it says, but they love the nature, and I love the nature, and I can feel that.

And I think, God, man. You are just so performatively full of shit.

He keeps saying that he likes me. That we’re similar.

He just needs an audience. He just really needs someone to talk to.