Exam 2 Response in the format of a novel for PHL3090 Existentialism, taught by Dr. Donovan Miyasaki

Exhausted from an hour of running/jogging/slogging through underbrush non-stop, Doc leaned back against a somewhat-inviting tree and sat down on a clear bit of dirt that looked devoid of things that could bite him. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep, slow breath, listening to the intensely-loud insects and feeling the tired burning sensation of muscles that have taken enough. 

What had become of his life? As Doc gulped down some more air he looked around. He was in the middle of thick, forsaken rainforest. No people or decisions around for miles (at least he hoped). Only snakes and biting flies existed around these parts, and he was glad for that. Much better than men with guns and dogs and cocaine (and B.O., which Doc experienced personally when he sat uncomfortably close to Big Sancho’s 300-pound security guard). Doc then smelled his own armpit and experienced a similar intensity of B.O., which three days of running for your life can do to you.

It had all so suddenly came on him. Unable to decide what to do next, he ran east through the forest for what he thought was at least a mile, realized he didn’t want to get too far from civilization, and then turned north and kept on going, trying to make the hypotenuse of this cursed triangle as long as possible in three days’ time.

Doc was unsure whether he should wait until things cooled down and then go back into town or stay in the forest and make his way out of the country clandestine-style as best as he could. Things had gone horribly wrong.  Either way he knew he couldn’t go back. He had done too much, which wasn’t very much at all: he had said no to Big Sancho’s request to help him find the mummies. What kind of law did he break? If it was Big Sancho’s law, then Doc certainly didn’t consider that worth following. He said no because he couldn’t possibly associate himself with a crime ring, let alone give them the entirety of the find he was close to making. A no-good Mexican Soprano family has no business with a treasure trove of cultural and historical artifacts. Also, Big Sancho didn’t seem too serious about the whole ordeal, making it seem like a joke. 

“So, when are you going to find them?” Big Sancho had asked.

“Well, I don’t really know they exist. All I have is a photo, but I think I am close. If I do find them, however, there is no way I give the findings to you,” Doc responded. At this, Sancho slowly lifted a cheesy tortilla chip up towards his mouth and said, “I think you choose unwisely, my friend, but it’s okay. I guess I will have to get another tall, skinny gringo to help me find this.”

Doc remembered how he had asked to leave, how the bodyguard had looked at Sancho, and how Sancho had nodded and said, “Let him leave. However, my friend, I don’t want to see you in this country anymore. Have you ever heard of the word repercusiones?” 

Three days later Doc dyed his hair, bought a beret, and grew a mustache (as much as he could in four days or so) to hopefully throw off wandering eyes. He was so close to this find he could taste it, and he felt it was the best decision at the time to keep looking for this thing. Mark, too, had decided to wear sunglasses, a backwards baseball cap, and hipster jogger pants while growing out his beard to blend in with the tourism crowd as much as possible. 

Now, Doc was here, ruminating on what had happened and experiencing a wicked charlie horse cramp from dehydration, electrolyte imbalances, or a combination of both. Doc still couldn’t believe his best friend Mark had been taken hostage. It all had happened in the middle of the night through a broken hotel window who’s fragments Doc only got a glimpse of the morning after all this happened when he realized how lucky he had been to have changed rooms at the last moment. Doc was who they really wanted, not Mark. Their disguises apparently had not worked.

Anyone else in his shoes would have done the same. Isn’t that what everyone does? Of course, if you were purposely trying to prove the point you could make a poor decision you wouldn’t want anyone else to make, then you could make a choice you knew wasn’t best, but no one in everyday life forgoes choosing the best option in their circumstances. Doc thought about all this as he walked back west to try and get back to civilization. Luckily, after about 3 hours of trudging through thick jungle avoiding any brightly-colored snakes and swatting flies, Doc caught the faint waft of burnt hamburger through the trees. 

He followed the direction of his nose for several more minutes until he could see the back of a low brick building through the trees. Smoke rose from an industrial-sized grill in the back (the source of the smell) that a man in an apron stood next to. Doc pulled out a light jacket from his backpack and pulled the hoodie up over his head. He didn’t want to tip anyone off to where he might be, specifically where a gringo with brown hair and a bounty on his head might be. 

Doc felt the responsibility of his choice to walk past the brick building and out into the open on a worn-down, paved street. He looked around. The building he had been behind was a bar, and other spread-out buildings were around—mostly what looked to be lower-income apartments.

Doc walked into a convenience store and looked around for a pair of scissors. He needed to disguise himself again otherwise he would be a goner. Doc looked around and found a pair of those safety scissors with the round edges they put on your kindergarten supply list. Doc thought this would work for his appearance-change, but he realized he couldn’t pay at the register because this would mean human interaction (and someone to possibly tip off his location). Doc fumbled around in his money waistband and left five George Washingtons on the counter where the scissors were and made his way out. He went back behind the store, gave himself a discount buzzcut, tried washing out the dye in his hair as best he could with some shampoo from his backpack, and made his way back to the bar, hopefully looking different than his previous description. 

He opened the creaky, wooden door, looked around, and saw about five people scattered around at different tables and then one group of three older men sitting at a table off in the far-left corner. Doc really just wanted a bite to eat, but he didn’t want to let too many people get a glimpse of him, so he made his way to the table around the part of the restaurant with the lowest density of people. Doc ordered the most calorie-dense thing they had—spaghetti—with the least eye contact possible. 

When Doc sat back down he took a couple of deep breaths. There were so many things he could do to try to get out of this situation, but which would even work? Which one was the best? Just thinking about the sheer number of options made him anxious. He could call the police and report the kidnapping, but that could give his position away in a place with such heavy cartel influences. 

Doc thought about all this while he was munching on his spaghetti, eating like he had survived on peanut butter for three days (which he had). As Doc’s heartrate was elevating thinking about how he alone was going to be responsible for what he was going to do next, the three old men on the other side of the restaurant made their way over to where Doc was sitting. A hand fell on Doc’s shoulder and a gray-haired, skinny guy that looked eerily similar to John McEnroe said, “Hey there. My friends and I saw you come in and we wanted to say hi. It’s not very often a tourist ends up around here.”

The three men all had gray hair but looked like they were from widely different backgrounds. The pale man that had just talked sat down across from Doc at the square table wearing a dress shirt and tie—a vastly different outfit than the very obese man with a stretched out t-shirt that sat to Doc’s right. The short man on Doc’s left wore a suit with a pocket watch. Who wears a pocket watch anymore?

“What’s your name?”

Doc paused a moment before answering, pondering whether he should trust these guys. They were all very light-skinned and everyone that he had seen working for Big Sancho had a darker Latino complexion, so that was going for them. They also spoke perfect English, which the fifteen or so of Sancho’s colleagues he had encountered did not seem to. He decided to give them a name he hadn’t used around Sancho, just in case.

“Doc.”

Lifting an eyebrow, the skinny old man sitting across from him said, “Is that some kind of pet name? Who in the world calls himself that? Do people come up to you and say, ‘Hey Doc, can you check out this growth on my back?’”

The three men laughed, and Doc asked a question of his own, “Who are you all?”

“We are all Westerners, like I assume you are because of your midwestern accent. Don’t give me that surprised face. You people have an accent, too. No accent is an accent, buddy. Well, I should say we are ex-westerners. We are all here because…”

“We want to get away from the frivolities of luxurious Western society,” they all said in unison. 

McEnroe went on, “We stay here year-round in this town because Costa Rica is one of the most stable countries in Latin America and this place is far away from any yuppie tourists.”

“Okay,” Doc said, still less than totally trusting. He decided to test them and asked, “Do any of you know where I can get my hands on some high-quality cocaine?”

McEnroe looked around amused at the two others and said, “Sorry, buddy. We can’t help you. We prefer to stay far away from those no-good dealers. They seem to be all over the place, but they skip right over our small podunkville town. We must not be profitable. From what I have seen, though, I think they are the slime of humanity.”

The little man on the left said, “Also, one needs all his mental faculties to make his choices in life, so cocaine isn’t our thing. I myself prefer to stay intellectually independent.”

Doc was inwardly relieved they didn’t try to sell him anything. Any associate of Sancho’s would have jumped over that opportunity with a tourist, so Doc was now confident they had nothing to do with the cartel.

Doc said, “Okay, just forget about it. The name is Drew Barrymore, but people call me Doc.”

The huge man on Doc’s right said in a high voice that didn’t seem to fit his massive frame, “Well, what is your business around here?”

Doc wasn’t sure himself what business he had here anymore. Doc’s mind subconsciously reeled with the massive, life-altering decision to stay or go, so Doc interpreted the question to refer to whether he was traveling with a company or something because this was a question with much less hinging on it. 

 “Oh, I am not on any kind of business trip. I’m just visiting the area,” Doc said.

“No, no,” the large man on the right said.

The man on the left, who was, as mentioned, noticeably short, said with a French accent, “Non, I think he meant—what are you doing here?”

“Just trying to get something to eat,” Doc’s mouth said in a strange mind-body disconnect. Doc would have never said he was purposely misinterpreting the question, but thinking back later on the conversation Doc was convinced he answered the way he did so he didn’t have to fully and freely choose why he was still in the country. He was kind of escaping the reality of his situation so the conversation was pleasant and devoid of serious commitment.

“No,” McEnroe said. “That’s not what we mean. We are just curious why you showed up today, that’s all. I originally meant—what is your overall purpose for being in Costa Rica right now instead of in the U.S. right now?”

There were numerous ways to respond and none of them without consequence. If Doc was here on his way out of the country, then this would be committing himself to leaving his friend Mark behind and hoping that the cartel released him eventually. This would be easier on him, but did Doc really want to leave his friend high and dry? If Doc went back and said he would help Sancho find the mummies, then he might get close enough to Mark to engineer an escape from this whole mess, but they might keep Mark much longer than Doc promised. They might even blackmail Doc into being their own personal cartel medical provider. Also, if he didn’t find the mummies, what good would he be to them then? Big Sancho might think Doc was withholding information and have him shot. What good would he be to Mark if he were dead? During this conversation at the bar Doc was not actively thinking about all these things—this is what occupied his mind the majority of the time he was frantically running for his life—but again he strangely interpreted the man to have no ulterior motivation with his question, “Well, I don’t want to have to wait to eat until I get all the way to America! That will at least take a couple of days. I want something to eat now.”

The obese man to Doc’s right said, “Alright,” and pulled a revolver out of his waist belt. Doc hadn’t seen this gun up until now but, who knows? This guy could have been hiding a lot of things in those numerous rolls of fat. 

“Cheetos, that’s a little much, don’t you think? Put that away,” McEnroe said. 

“There you go again Cheetos, doing-then-thinking. You have taken my advice too much to heart,” the man with the French accent said.

“No, I am sick and tired of his disrespect,” Cheetos, the obese man, said.

Doc stared at the gun pointed directly at him. He slipped out of the strange disconnect where he thought the here and now didn’t matter and that he could postpone deciding why he was here. As Cheetos cocked the revolver, Doc said, “I am here because my friend has been kidnapped and I’m his only chance to get out alive.”

“That’s baloney,” Cheetos said.

Now what was Doc going to do? Doc freaked out a bit and said, “That’s the truth! I swear. His name is Mark, and we were on this archaeology trip when the cartel tried to force us into finding this…”

Cheetos interrupted, “That’s more like it. Keep it coming,” as he un-cocked the gun and put it away.

Doc slid his chair a bit farther away from this Cheetos character and went on to tell them all about what had happened up until then, from the missing plane tickets to the tip from the cab driver. They all looked very interested and occasionally asked questions to clarify certain points. When Doc mentioned running into Emily, John McEnroe, who by now Doc knew was actually named Jeff, scooted forward in his seat, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Interesting!”

The French man with the mustache and round circular glasses, whom Doc had learned a couple minutes ago was named Gaël, said, “Wow Jeff. Always the player. You are as interested in women as Cheetos is in food.”

“Guilty as charged,” Cheetos said.

“Not guilty as charged. What authority’s rule book am I breaking? I am not impinging on woman’s freedom by being attracted to them,” Jeff said. “Having an interest in others is healthy for you. Isn’t that right proctologist?”

“I don’t have an interest in rear ends, so I am not a proctologist, but I also don’t have an interest in her, if that is what you are implying Jeff,” Doc said, a little embarrassed. 

“You mean you don’t consider her life fascinating, any particular part of her life interesting?” Gaël asked sarcastically.

Doc gave him an annoyed look. Jeff said, “He’s just giving you a bit of your own medicine buddy.”

Doc said, “I guess what I mean is that I don’t need someone else to complete me.” After Doc said this, he felt the weird twinge of mental pain only felt after being more open than one would like. Why was he being so candid with a bunch of hippie societal rejects he just met in a sketchy Costa Rican bar?

“Nein. Do you see this sugar cube right here?” Cheetos said as he lifted one up with a cute pair of prongs from a plate in the center of the table. He grabbed his glass of water and said, “I hate to break it to you, but you are sugar water.”

Cheetos dropped the sugar cube in the glass. It very slowly started to dissolve.

“Ok, I thought that was going to be cooler to see. I’m trying to make Gatorade, essentially,” Cheetos said. 

“So you need some salt,” Jeff said as he took the salt shaker and shook salt into the glass. 

“Can you hand me that lemon over there, Gaël? Cheetos asked pointing to a random lemon lying in the center of the table next to them. Gaël threw Cheetos the lemon who caught it in one hand and squeezed a bunch of juice and seeds that rushed into the glass and incidentally onto the table.

“One thing I noticed about you from your whole story is that you think you are separate from other people,” Cheetos said.

“Is this just because I mentioned I don’t have interest in that girl?” Doc asked.

“That was one way you could interpret what you said. But, you said you ‘don’t need someone else to complete you,’ which is frankly complete garbage. You are this ghetto Costa Rican lemonade here. This lemonade…is it bad that even this looks good to me?” Cheetos asked Gaël. 

“Extremely,” Gaël said with his usual solemn face and flat voice.

“This lemonade exists as the sum of all these other things—sugar, salt, lemon-innards. But who defined what those other things are? Not the lemonade itself. Doc, what are some things that describe you? One of them is obviously doctor because of your silly name,” Cheetos said as he smelled the glass looking interested in its contents.

“Well, that’s one thing. I am a professor, too, at the medical school,”

“Stop right there,” Cheetos said. “Who made up what ‘professor’ means?”

“I don’t know, I guess someone paying them, like the administration, who came up with the job requirements,” Doc responded.

“Exactly, not you, right?” Cheetos asked as he gestured the squeezed lemon in Doc’s direction. “Anything else describe you?”

“Um, maybe part-time archaeologist?” Doc responded.

“Other people came up with that idea, right? You seem like you are trying to be some Indiana Jones character, but someone else made up the script to that movie to give you the idea in the first place,” Cheetos said.

Cheetos took a swig of the lemonade and continued to say, “So, basically, you are defining yourself in other’s terms. Without others, without the salt, sugar, and lemon guts, it wouldn’t be the crappy lemonade this is. And the sugar, salt, and lemon wasn’t the lemonade’s idea.”

Doc asked, “So if you are a made up of a bunch of other people’s ideas, then do you think nobody is original and unique?”

Gaël said, “Oui, that is the question.”

Jeff said, “Cheetos has a point with his lemonade. You are the toothpick around which all kinds of rubber bands—doctor, professor, archaeologist, American—each wrap around. If it weren’t for your relationships you would be nothing, and it’s easy to just accept this and conform, which I bet you do.”

“What?” Doc asked.

“Yep,” Cheetos said, “I totally agree, Jeff. We have a classic case here of ‘going with the flow’ and pretending you aren’t even in the flow.”

Doc thought for a moment, intrigued. “How, then, do you guys say I fix this?” Doc asked, somewhat curious about this way of looking at the world.

Gaël said, “You need to create who you are. You are the artist; your life the canvas. It is easy to be a participant in the bystander effect and let the guy on the ground die. Jeff, do you mind getting on the ground and pretending you are dying?”

“Uh, in your dreams little man,” Jeff said.

 “Okay, well, pretend he is on the floor and I decide to not give him CPR. Not giving someone CPR is still a choice. And choices are scary, because there are so many of them, and they are of such weight.”

This hit Doc at his core. This was his situation right now. If he ran away and got out of the country he would be making a choice by not going to rescue his friend. Then again, if he decided the other way and went back to Sancho, he would be taking his and Mark’s life into his own hands, or rather into the cartel’s cold, clammy hands. If he died, he would never be able to set up that medical mission organization in Haiti him and his friend were planning on. If he died, he would be taking away all the good he planned to do for others. What should he do? The Bible would say that the best friend is one who lays down his life for his friend, but it also says to love your neighbor as yourself, which he wouldn’t be doing by dying (because being a neighbor, good or bad, is physically impossible from six feet under). 

“From what I can tell about what you told us—you need to make a choice and commit to it,” Cheetos said. “If you go back, the cartel will probably release your friend, but there’s no guarantee. If they don’t release him, though, you would have to live with it.”

Jeff said, “You need to care about two things. You can choose not to care, and who would I be to blame you? But, there are two things you need to do. You must do them, not just intend, because doing is reality, right Gaël?”

“Oh yes! None of this touchy-feely stuff,” Gaël said.

“First, you need to go ask that girl out. You are not an island, and others make up what it means to be you, so quit running from a close relationship and ask her out for coffee or something. I can help you, I have had my fair share of practice,” Jeff said while raising his eyebrows.

“And look at how that has worked out! Old as dirt and single in middle-of-nowhere rural Costa Rica,” Cheetos joked.

“You are looking at a self-certified expert here, buddy. I don’t need to convince you of that,” Jeff replied. He went on, “But second, you need to go back to help your friend out. You are the reason he is in there in the first place. There’s no good way of determining if this is the universally right thing to do, but it’s consistent with who you are as far as I can tell and you just have to embrace the uncertainty, man. And, if you do that rather than go out of the country, we can help you.”

“Whoa!” Gaël said. “I didn’t agree to messing around with some cartel. I came here to have radical freedom, polygamous relationships, avoid bad faith…”

Cheetos replied, “I’m down. I’ll drag Gaël into this, too. I weigh 150 more pounds than him so all I have to do is sit on him and he will comply. We’ve been sitting here at this bar talking about what to do with our lives for too long. I’m ready for some excitement other than soccer goals on TV.”

They all looked at Doc, waiting for a response to all this. Doc was a bit unprepared to make these massive decisions about his life right now, but something was resonating with him when Jeff was talking about what he should do. Something deep inside him had been stirred up. Some deep doubt about the world but some deep assurance that everything would be okay in the end. He barely knew these guys, but something felt right about it all. 

“Alright,” Doc said. “It’s time to make my mark on the world and save my friend.”