Thomas M. Mendosa

The Perfect Man

Lee Trank-Qua was one of the finest specimens the human experiment had yet produced. He was so fine, in fact, that for a time a loud minority of people resented him. Schadenfreude fantasies, perhaps. Though more respectable—more Lee-like—folks found him to be a tremendous inspiration. He was a good guy, but also a good guy if you know what I mean. Lee was nice and caring, but he was caring in the best sense; he knew precisely what you needed, not what you wanted. Lee was fun, always thinking ahead a few months to plan lively outings with friends; he was that guy (beyond being an excellent planner, Lee would take any opportunity he could just to go and do something off the cuff, yah know, spontaneous and all). But he wasn’t just that guy; even during those outings. he was fun: daring, unpredictable, SURPRISING (even to close friends), a perfected blend of introvert and extrovert. This perfect balance of nature and Lee’s ability to get along with pretty much anyone meant he had countless friends. Understandably, he had a smaller number of best friends, but don’t worry, he didn’t neglect them. Lee was one of the best people to talk to; he knew and was familiar with nearly any topic brought up to him: conversing with empowering respect and chummy playfulness, never too easy or too hard, too rational or too emotional, riding that perfect line that every conversationalist strives for. He did this so well that most reported losing their sense of time due to the remarkable ease with which they could talk to Lee, even about guarded topics; the chore-like quality of conversing completely melting away, they felt themselves truly speaking, some for the first time in their lives. Legend has it that he never gave anyone that shitty face when asked to do something he didn’t want to, or when faced with a difference of opinion, not even for a microsecond. Lee’s nature even inspired the most hard-up libertarian, anarchist, nihilist, loner, social-outcast to feel a certain, small admiration for him; though only in their private moments, generally at the very wee hours of the morning when the personal convictions of daily existence hadn’t yet fully reformed in the mind. By the way, he regularly was able to change people's opinions (though he didn’t aim to). He once cured someone of racism in an afternoon. At a BBQ, over smoked brisket and ham hocks, he brought them to tears. He was able to convert a life-long Westboro Baptist Church evangelical in forty-five minutes flat. And he was just picking up his laundry. Also, for what it’s worth, the person said they felt “closer to God,” whatever that means to you. 

Lee was a romantic as well. He believed in Love. As a partner, Lee was considerate, understanding, cooperative. But don’t get me wrong, he was excellent in the sack too. Despite having a decidedly average-sized penis, Lee was able to transform the bedroom into baptismal waters, helping his partners to ascend to the shiniest patch of earthly paradise available. Nearly all of Lee’s sexual partners ranked him as their best lay. Beyond being good at sex, he was good with the products of sex: children. Fathering three highly sociable, intelligent, emotionally mature, and not unimportantly, FUN kids. Now fully grown, they regularly called Lee to tell him about their lives and their feelings and their ideas and just to say, “Hey Dad, I love you, do you know that?” He listened with attentiveness and answered with a divine wisdom and sensitivity that gave one the feeling of their heart rising in their chest; hard to describe, a Godly feeling. He stayed together with his first and only wife, Leota, and she stayed with him. That decision, all the way to the bottom of their hearts and even inside its secret chamber, was immensely satisfying to both of them. But it wasn’t all cupcakes and honey-doos. Leota in their first year of marriage suffered a severe mental breakdown, nearly killing Lee one night when he woke up to her running toward him with an eight-inch kitchen knife. He hugged her that night for twelve hours as she sobbed and shook, spit and moaned. Over the next year, Lee worked with her to unravel the cause of her mental illness; he had the intuitive sense that every psycho-analyst yearns for. He helped her to fully come to grips with the sexual assault she was victim to at the young age of thirteen, something which she had long suppressed. Leota was able to finally wash out that sinking feeling of humiliation, of total inadequacy in the eyes of the world that had haunted her so many nights; those snuffed out voices were finally able to yell their throats dry and, having said all they could say, sloughed off back from where they came. The best part of it all? Leota did that herself; Lee was just there and was what he needed to be: supportive. Leota loved him for it, and Lee loved her for not hiding her demons; he felt so much closer to her after that long and treacherous episode. Her future symptoms were manageable for the rest of her life. 

Now to Lee’s work. He worked for a non-profit that planted trees to combat climate change, that worked with local governmental bodies to help stamp out institutionalized racism, and that helped supply impoverished children with a quality education, teaching free, specialized classes to help kids find a career. A Montessori program for those who were not financially fortunate. Lee did more than the job asked for. For those kids who lacked father figures, he stepped up and taught them social skills. With no father in their lives, a lot of the young men didn’t know what to do with their aggression. Lee was able to rein this in, teaching them to channel that aggressive energy into solving problems, not creating them. Lee was no wussy either. He was strong and forceful, had what sociopaths who read books like How to Win Friends and Influence People might call natural “command presence.” You didn’t mess with Lee, not because he was just so gosh-darned nice but because you feared his rage, which he rarely showed. He showed it when he needed to. When it was right. The boys looked up to Lee; he was so popular that most of them, noticing him slipping to the bathroom in the hallway, would follow him in just to say “Hi” at the urinals. The crime rate in Lee’s city took a noticeable dip after he showed up on the scene. Later in life, many of the boys would pay Lee regular visits to introduce him to their children and to make sure he was okay. 

When he wasn’t hard at work helping less fortunate people grow into beautiful human beings, Lee would work on his art. In the small amount of free time that he had, he wrote stories. Now these stories, while being short, took the fancy of Lee’s friend in publishing (Lee had friends in everything) who was able to read them after forcing the reluctant Lee to hand over the manuscript. They immediately were published, a wide collection of short stories that Lee had written over a couple of decades, humbly titled Notes. Despite no marketing, the first wave of sales was very promising (some credit this to Lee’s massive circle of friends). The brevity is also credited for the book's success; without a thousand daunting pages laying between the reader and artistic transcendence, the book was read by those who wouldn’t have touched a book in their life. It was as popular as the Bible, the only difference being that people actually read it. Critics deemed it a “modern myth,” finally something that was able to capture the imaginations of the modern psyche, cross-culturally reconciling the many philosophical contradictions between the West and East. Each story being unique and specific to a particular psychology yet broad enough to capture more than one person’s imagination, the net result was thirty-three stories rendered as thirty-three buckets for people to fall into, each catering to a certain psychological/philosophical/religious hang-up. The book caught on like a brushfire, spreading its way across every household on the planet, and into over two hundred languages. Many credit the book as having changed their lives. Life felt different during and after you read it. The stories gave full credence and validity to mental illness: anxiety, depression, laziness, death-wishes, homicidal thoughts, all types of neuroses, but instead of making the work a simple mirror to reflect people’s struggle, he showed them a way out. Without preaching or patronizing, he was able to show people not to allow themselves to use their crutch as an excuse, as much it deserved to be one. He helped his readers to believe their problems were solvable, but he didn’t just say that. He showed it. It was the reader who came to that conclusion. It was this aspect that made the stories so effective. Since its publication, Lee regularly received visitors to his house—repaired souls wishing to thank him for his writing—and Lee would invite them in for coffee every time. Over a few years, the sales of the book reached dizzying heights. Every penny of it was donated to medical research and charities. Lee took it all in stride, mostly treating accolades and compliments to a cheeky smile and a wink. Lee never left his one-floor, three-bedroom cottage.

All in all, you could say he was a well-liked guy, a real mensch. So you’ll believe it when I say that it came as a shock to everyone when Lee killed himself. 

At seventy years old, Lee took a fatal dose of Acetylcholine, which makes your diaphragm collapse and, hence, your breathing stop. The same stuff is used on the tips of Amazonian darts. His body was cleanly removed from his bed by the authorities, no mess. He even called them beforehand, saving Leota the trauma of finding him (though many are convinced to this day that she had already known). Before departing, he left each of his family members a personal, forty-page letter explaining his leaving. The letters must have been good because it’s said that each of his family members had a prideful, stoic demeanor during his funeral, with thousands in attendance from around the world as witnesses. But the letters were never released to the public. So why would the nicest guy ever kill himself? Well, I don’t know, but that was the question on literally everyone's mind in the world. Interest levels were so high, in fact, that an international petition and fund was started to figure it out. The net result was the amply-funded, world-renowned psychologist Jacalyn Rénu being hired for the job. Jacalyn was a pioneer in her field, combining classical psycho-analysis, state-of-the-art neurological research, zoological knowledge of our closest living ancestors, cross-cultural art-history knowledge dating back thousands of years, cognitive development theory, and a deep working knowledge of continental, analytic, and Eastern philosophy (she spent 10 years under the guidance of a Zen Master at a Buddist temple in Tibet). All that blended into a tour-de-force psychological powerhouse: the world's best psychologist. She was fit for the job, clearly. 

Jacalyn started where all scientists worth a damn start, with no hypothesis. She simply started collecting data; home movies, photographs, diaries, job records, and interviews with friends and family (there were no shortage of anecdotes). But she kept coming up empty for motives, throwing aside obvious ones like, “He didn’t want to break his perfect streak.” This guy had a clean record; he was really good. As any modern psychologist would, she looked for biological factors. But his MRI scans came up clean for any brain mutations, any enlarged tumors prodding his amygdala, perhaps. His hormone levels were perfectly normal, no shortage of oxytocin or dopamine.  She pressed for any potential notes of sadness in his speech, moments of hopelessness, a clear lack of spirit—none. No one (and that was a large group) had ever picked out any suicidal tendencies in his thoughts or behaviors. Lee was always optimistic (but not in an annoying way). Jacalyn knew this would be the hardest case she would ever be dealt, but she assured the world she wouldn’t give up. It was ten years later that her records show any sign of further progress. 

Jacalyn had something, a small thread, and nearly un-verifiable at that, but it was something of a theory. By this point, she had memorized just about every recorded moment of Lee’s life, and one thing that stuck out to Jacalyn was the constant praise Lee received. “Man, he’s just so nice,” “What a swell guy,” “Lee’s my hero,” “How do you do it, man?” There was hardly a moment in Lee’s life where he wasn’t the darling of envy by everyone around him. Could this have caused the suicide? At this point, this theory hovered in mid-air with no pillars to suspend it; but she pursued the line of thought anyway. Perhaps a perfect man feels a slight resentment towards constant flattery. After all, don’t the flatterers somehow deny him of his humanity by constantly praising him? Hey this is hard, ya know, might have been the constant phrase on Lee’s mind, but to utter it, he would have had to sacrifice his morals, as saying something like that was akin to bragging of one’s misery, which was something Lee never did. Maybe he read the compliments as back-handed remarks on his bio-socio-economic status, and not of him!  He was a man caught between two opposing impulses, and he was crushed. “A-ha!” Jacalyn thought, “I’ve got it!” She slumped back into her chair, but a higher truth in her head spoke: “No you don’t, prove it.” She couldn’t. If only she could get those fucking letters! The family still refused to release them (and no evidence of them has ever surfaced; they were likely burnt). Jacalyn concluded that this theory rested too heavily on the assumption that Lee found life’s hardness unsatisfactory and, therefore, wished to share his burden. Misery loves company. But no, Jacalyn was a better detective than that. That was too easy. Lee was stronger than that, less fallible. But what could it be? Typically psychologists look for a lack of meaning in one's life when trying to diagnose depression, anxiety, or God forbid, suicide. But Lee’s life had been the antithesis of that. His life was jam-packed with meaning! It would be hard to argue there was anyone alive whose life was more meaningful than his! Every last molecule of Lee was meaning, meaning itself. Something didn’t fit. 

Another five years passed; Jacalyn’s health rapidly declined. Her lifelong partner, Alden, had long since hit the dusty trail. She was spending every last waking moment of the day on the Lee case and had turned her office into a rat’s den of tapes, papers, letters, newspapers, books, and takeout containers. One day, Jacalyn was going over an old second-grade essay of Lee’s in which he was waxing on about the coolness of alien spaceships, when in-between spoonfuls of (amazing) clam chowder and swells of Wagner’s Parsifal that played in the background, she had a thought, “Will!” Had it been the Wagner or the strong dill flavor in her chowder that had caused the association? “Ah, it doesn’t matter right now,” she thought. Whatever the subconscious trigger, the thought was now there. It was a show of Will [sic, Jacalyn capitalized Will in her notes]. Lee had killed himself to prove something: that above any emotional, biological influence, he could simply end his life, just like that, that he had a Will, a free Will! “Yes! That’s it!” Jacalyn was beside herself; this was finally a crack in the dam. “He did it to prove that he could!” Her cackling filled the room, chowder dribbled down her chin, and she was happy. There had been much ado in the scientific community recently about how much of a role we humans play in our lives, and now a majority of researchers had concluded that every behavior, every action, every thought could be explained by materialistic causes. Not even turtles all the way down—there was a bottom and it was caused by something but not by “You.” Jacalyn, while agreeing with the bulk of the we-aren’t-the-masters-in-our-own-home literature, still believed in a slight influence, a slight soulfulness, a grooviness to human life that was special. “So maybe we are riding atop elephants, but we can at least pull the ears a little.” This was her conviction. That we could focus our attention. And that truly was our decision. She needed to sit down. She grabbed a beer from the fridge and some Fritos from the cabinet and sat on the only cleared spot of her office couch, next to stacks of Lee’s photo albums. “Maybe Fritos would be good in chowder,” she thought. Focus! It had been a long day; she took a mouthful of beer and sloshed it around. So this was the message Lee wanted to leave, and he left it by not telling anyone about it? This didn’t sit well with her. Not to mention that it had taken her—one of the, if not the best psychologist on earth—to figure this out? What a crummy way to send a message, right? She pounded a few more Fritos between her teeth. Suddenly a thought, distant now but hurtling toward her at such a clip that she couldn’t look away. The words “He left the message for me” circled her head. Lee had known there would be another “great person” out there, and he had left it for that great person to uncover. Almost like those secret societies that leave hidden clues for the worthy to riddle out. 

Now, this is where Jaclyn's notes get hairy, and I can’t begin to decipher them. What I can tell you for sure is that she ended up hanging herself by her office fan; the police found her still spinning (her drop must have activated it). We (those of us who have read Jacalyn Reno’s notes, which isn’t many) have surmised that she must have committed the act as a display of kinship toward Lee. A sort of, “Hey, I’m like you” sort of thing. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist and won’t pretend to be one. What I can say is that I wish Jacalyn would have waited a little longer. You see, forty years after Lee’s death, after his life and book became household knowledge, Lee’s message finally seeped its way through to all those who were slow to get it, to the officials in governments, to the owners of industry, to the scientists and whiz-kids in Silicon Valley. Eventually, Lee’s message did travel, and I think most people got it.

Thomas M. Mendosa holds a BFA in film from Rochester Institute of Technology. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California but is originally from Hudson, Ohio. Thomas is pursuing a career in writing and directing feature films but can also be found playing the guitar or cooking an obscene amount of breakfast food in his free time.