Man Undercover: Maybe My Incessant Complaints about Everything That Happens Can Tell Us Something about the Need for "Conflict" in Works of Fiction

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Man Undercover: Maybe My Incessant Complaints about Everything That Happens Can Tell Us Something about the Need for "Conflict" in Works of Fiction

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I wish I could wear a wire to the jacuzzi at the YMCA near my house. I wish I could record the voices of the old men who stand in the hot tub for way longer than they’re supposed to and harangue everyone who joins them at the hottest tubby-tub in the city. There’s this guy who goes there every day with a plastic cup full of ice. I have learned that under no circumstances can I make eye contact with him. If I do, he will ask me a question, pretend to listen to my answer, and then talk at me about whatever is on his mind until someone else gets there—fresh meat!—or I leave.The other day, he learned that another man in the rub-a-dub-dub tubby-tub had served in the Marines, in Vietnam. The ice cup guy proceeded to admit that while he himself never served in the military, he admired what the Marines have done and continue to do. He asked this veteran if he had heard of Fallujah. Did he know what the Marines did in Fallujah? “They cleaned that place out,” he said. I don’t know why he brought up the battles of Fallujah—there were two of them, in 2004. A lot of people died in those battles. Many civilians were killed. Twenty-seven US servicemembers perished in the first battle of Fallujah. In the second, ninety-five were killed. Many more were wounded. I had to look those figures up; I am no military historian; but I remember hearing how brutal the fighting was in Fallujah, back when it was happening. If it had occurred to me, I would not have guessed that I would hear an old man who, like me, was never in the military, recall it fondly twenty years later to a real-life Marine combat veteran.Maybe it’s a way to support the troops, to brag at the YMCA about bloody conflicts you had nothing to do with, while having voted for the guy whose administration is working to eliminate what real-life support veterans have in the USA. I mean, I’m pretty sure the guy with the ice cup voted for our current president; he insisted to yet another old man, not long ago, that the president was making strategic use of tariffs, that the man he was speaking to was misinformed when he questioned that strategy. The president was making all those other countries finally pay. It was the right thing to do.More recently, I heard this same guy tell a couple of men, who were eating up everything he said with grins on their faces, how glad he is he doesn’t live in a country with secret police, like the Gestapo coming and hauling you away to a secret prison. He’s so glad that instead of that we have the regular police. “And if you get pulled over,” he said, “you know what to do, don’t you? You put your hands on the steering wheel, you keep them there, and you do whatever they say. ‘Yes, dear. No, dear. Yes, hon. Mm-hmm.’” He meant, in case it’s not clear, that you should do what they say as if you were obeying the orders of your domineering wife. This prompted a man who was almost completely submerged in the water, like you could only see his bald head sticking out from the surface, to talk about how he would never, ever take his wife with him to get his pontoon boat reupholstered. I can’t wear a wire to the YMCA jacuzzi. I always have on a bathing suit when I’m there, and no shirt. It’s very sexy, and someone would see the wire. They would ask about it. I would have to talk to them. Also, the wire would get wet. I could wear a suit and a tie to the jacuzzi. But I think someone there might think something was up if I tried doing it that way.Why am I like this? Why do I complain about people? What if that guy from the jacuzzi reads this? Isn’t it bad enough that all the slime and the juices that ooze out of that old man’s pores and his hair and scrotum get into the hot tub and mix with my slime and touch my skin? I don’t want that man to get mad at me, and splash his juice into my mouth in retribution.I’m not really worried. I know what will happen if that guy reads this. He will go straight to the hot tub, make eye contact with a stranger, tell them about it, and then yell at them about something else for forty-five minutes while chewing and slurping ice. But you know what? I think that my tendency to find a problem with every experience I have, and my insistence on complaining about even the good things that happen in my life, help me as a fiction writer. One way I make money is by reviewing and critiquing the work of other writers. I read entire novels sometimes, by writers who think they could use some assistance. Lately I have read several manuscripts that have a fundamental problem running through them: they are lacking in tension. They have no conflict. In scene after scene, characters get along with one another. They have a great time. Maybe one character develops a crush on a new character, who arrives from someplace else. Everyone encourages this person to pursue their crush. There’s no competition; there is no strife. Everyone is living it up in their personal galaxy of ...