Chapter Thirty-Four
Dan
Three weeks since free solo attempt
“W ell, look at you FaceTiming me like you care,” Peggy Jo says by way of hello.
“I need to know how to get sponsors.”
Peggy Jo lifts the baby off her shoulder and passes it over to Bella—at least I assume the pair of womanly hands that grab the infant belong to Peggy Jo’s daughter—before she gives me her full attention again. “I’m sorry, did you just say you want to get sponsors?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For money.”
Peggy Jo guffaws and rolls her eyes. “Dan, listen to me closely. I’m real glad you admit that money is a thing you need and want— finally , praise the baby Jesus for that—but, darlin’, you’ve plumb missed the train on sponsors.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sponsors want to pay you to look great climbing a wall wearing their gear. They want to show you eating their energy bars and then bouldering a 5.10 rock. They don’t want a man with a broken leg who might never climb again.”
“I’ll climb again.”
“I know that, and you know that, but those sponsors I was trying to get you hooked up with don’t. If you’d done it back then, maybe you’d have a recovery story to sell to Ace bandage or some shit like that, but woe, money was too dirty for your pure soul.”
“You don’t have to bust my balls like this.”
“Oh, you bet your sweet butt I do! I know Sejin’s not busting them! And someone has to.”
“Rye does. Sometimes. A little.”
“That’s not enough. Everyone should be busting your balls so you listen better.”
“What do you want me to hear, Peg? That free soloing is a bad idea?”
“If I thought you’d hear that? I’d be happy.
But you won’t listen to me on that subject any more than you listened to yourself back on Sejin’s birthday.
Remember that? When you were trying to talk yourself out of being in love with him?
You were so smitten. Thought you might float up into the sky from looking at him. ”
“He does make me feel floaty,” I agree. “Not so much lately, but before. And he will again. But things are tough right now.”
“Don’t you fuck it up with him, Dan. Do whatever you need to do to keep that boy. He loves you, and you love him, and you need each other.”
I don’t know if Sejin needs me, but he wants me. That’s good enough. I’ll be his angelfish until the end of time, so I need to make sure he stays a seahorse and doesn’t move on just because the ‘breeding season’ is over.
Whatever that means. Guess I need to fuck him more, if he’ll let me.
“That’s exactly it,” I say. “I’m trying not to fuck things up with him, so I need to get some kind of income. The financial stress of our situation is getting to him. I mean, he’s struggled financially for as long as I’ve known him, but the weight of me is really dragging him down.”
“Well, I can make some calls, but chances aren’t good for a sponsorship now, Dan. There’s not much I can say besides that.”
“Thank you for trying.” I stand up with my crutches and almost drop the phone.
“Why look at you! Mobile again! What’s it like?”
“It’s good,” I say, edging my way carefully toward the kitchen table where I quickly take a seat and drop my phone to the tabletop.
I hunch over it. It gives Peggy Jo a nice view of my nostrils, which I’m sure she appreciates.
“The doctor put me in a knee-high moonboot yesterday. My leg is healing faster now.”
“Youth,” she says. “It’s in your favor.”
“The boot isn’t that protective, though. I feel like if I knock it against the table or something, I’ll set myself back.”
“Well, just don’t do anything dumb.”
“Like what?” I glance up at the refrigerator door where Jeanie’s card hangs in all its glittery, gruesome glory. HELP , it reads, and I gaze at the O-shaped open mouth of the man representing me, suspecting that Sejin hung it up where I’d see it daily on purpose.
“Like, I don’t know, start training for your comeback. Take your time.”
Training for my comeback…now that’s an idea. Maybe even a marketable one. But not to Ace Bandage.
“I could sell my comeback,” I tell Peggy Jo. “The North Face might buy it? Or Reel Rock, maybe? Or whoever it was that shot Free Solo . Why not make a film about me?”
“‘Whoever it was who shot Free Solo ,’” Peggy Jo repeats and scoffs. “As if Jimmy Chin is going to want to swing by to pay you a bundle of money to film your recovery.” She sighs. “Dan, like I said, I’ll make some calls, but you made your choices.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means everyone in the valley knows who you are, sure, but you didn’t spray, you didn’t post on social media, or YouTube, and you haven’t made a name for yourself outside of Yosemite. There’s not a ton to sell, honey. I’m sorry.”
I know she’s right, but this is the only thing I can offer Sejin, unless I start looking into those “how to make twenty-thousand dollars a week with your computer” schemes.
We talk briefly about the demon baby, and I ask about its pointy ears. “Where’d she get those from? Is she a changeling?”
“Her darling ears look like her father’s.”
“Ah, well, okay. Who is her father?”
“None of your business.”
“Fair enough.” I pick up Julio who has come over to wind around my feet. “Look who likes me now. And the other little monsters like me too.”
Julio taps my face with his nose, and then squirms until I let him down.
Peggy Jo coos and blows kisses at the screen. “Always said you’d like them if you gave them a chance. Like most everything else in life you’ve ended up liking.” She ticks her fingers. “Climbing. Sejin.”
“You never told me anything about Sejin. I found him myself.”
The sound of the demon child’s cries lift in the background, and I sign off quickly. I’m not going to grow to love anything that makes noises like that on the regular. Bigger kids, like Jeremiah or Jeanie? Cute. Infants? Yikes.
There had been one foster family I’d lived with who’d had twin six-month-olds in their care. Endless screaming. I’d been so glad when they told me it wasn’t working out, and I was sent on to the next home.
I scratch my stubbly chin.
Babies. Cats. Love. Interesting all the things I learned to distrust while in foster care.
As it turns out, cats are all right, and love is pretty cool—and also awful because it makes you want things like money and smiles—but babies? No way. Never.
I hobble back over to the couch and tuck my crutches down next to the coffee table. I grab my computer and start looking into the various sponsorships Adam Ondra and Alex Honnold and other famous climbers have going. Then I google my name and can find only a few things about me:
Rye spraying on SuperTopo about me, news articles about my fall, and a picture of me from a climbing competition I’d won as a teenager.
A link to the GoFundMe Rye had set up after my fall.
That’s it. Nothing else. No social media.
Nothing to lure anyone into being interested in handing over boatloads of money to me.
Keeping a low profile had seemed like a good idea before, but now I see that those who have sponsorships also have a wide social media presence on everything from Instagram to Facebook to YouTube to TikTok.
I don’t know where to start with any of those sites.
But I know someone who will. And luckily, he lives with me.
*
Sejin
“I only know about the KPop side of things, though,” I say after Dan explains his plan to start documenting his recovery on social media and asks for my help setting him up.
“If you wanted to know what sorts of things to put into a successful VLive for your devoted KPop-loving fanbase, I could tell you. But I don’t know what climbers want to hear…
and I don’t know how to make edits or anything like that. ”
“That’s okay,” Dan tells me. “I’ll figure that part out myself. I just need to know where to start. What do you like about the VLives?”
Sejin shrugs. “You’ve watched them with me.”
“I know, but what do you like ? What do you get out of them?”
“Are you going to copy KPop marketing tactics but for climbing?”
“Maybe. It can’t hurt. They’re doing something right.”
I sit with my coffee for a few minutes, staring out at the mountains and the trees. I’ve cracked the door to let in fresh air, and the cats have pushed it wider, with Romeo going out to sprawl in a sunny patch in the back yard next to the hot tub. The crisp November breeze flutters his fur.
The doctor told Dan at his last visit that soon, very soon, he’d be allowed to get into the hot tub, so long as he could climb in without putting any weight on his leg. Once in the water, he can start practicing weight-bearing again. At that news, he’d looked like a kid in a candy store.
“Sejin?” he prods.
“Well, when I think about it, I guess the one thing the solo VLives—that’s where only one group member or a soloist is on camera—and the group VLives—where the whole group interacts—have in common is that they make you feel like you’re part of it too.
” I take a sip of coffee, and notice that the woodpile next to the stove is getting low.
I’ll have to go out to chop some more after this conversation.
I’m developing some fine muscles from that work.
I go on, “Like with the groups, when you see them joking around, laughing, talking, crawling over each other, sharing inside jokes, it makes you feel like you’re sharing it all with them.
Their joke is my joke now. Their friendships are my friendships.
It’s very…what’s the word I’ve seen bandied about online? Parasocial or something like that?”
“What’s that?”
“Basically, it means having a false sense of closeness to a celebrity or influencer. I also watched a YouTube video where a psychologist explained that our brains release dopamine when we see others bonding—like when we watch a romance movie or go to a wedding—and so the KPop marketing plays into that. We see the group members enjoying themselves and each other, bonding and laughing, and we get a hit of dopamine. We feel good too. That’s part of it. ”
“Mm,” Dan makes notes in an empty paper journal he typically uses for climbing notes. “Go on.”
I pick up Muggs and tug my fingers through his soft fur.
He starts to purr and knead my jeans. “As for a solo VLive, a lot of the better ones make you feel like you’re on a video call with a friend or a boyfriend.
They look in the camera seriously, talk about how happy they are to be with you, how they’ve missed you. ”
Dan scoffs. “Manipulative.”
“It’s strategic, but some of it may be born out of aspects of Korean culture.
I don’t really know. But it’s fascinating all the same.
It works on our brains even if we don’t want it to.
They’re sharing intimate thoughts and fears—but not too intimate—and granting us access to things like their hotel rooms, their kitchens, and their dogs or cats who crash the Live.
That sort of authentic access to their lives can feel really…
well, real.” Muggs purrs even louder. “The happiness it creates, the dopamine hits, those are certainly real enough. And what’s the harm in it?
Assuming everyone’s mentally well enough to see the very real boundaries as well?
Like characters from a favorite show, idols begin to feel like family, like people you know and look forward to spending time with.
And the fact that they say they also look forward to it? That feels nice.”
“Mmm,” Dan keeps scribbling in his pad. “So, the production quality isn’t that important. You don’t need the videos to be slick.”
“No, not really. Lives are just…live.”
“But YouTube content is different.”
“Right, it’s a different culture there. The videos posted to YouTube from KPop groups are much more produced and edited.”
Dan nods, puts his pen down, and sits back, crossing his arms over his chest. He stares out at the view and then nods again. “Right, so this will be a challenge.”
I tilt my head. “What will?”
“Being likable. Pretending to like them too.”
I snort. “You’re really going to do this?”
“Sure. What else do I have going on? I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, as my fourth foster father used to say, but maybe something can come of it. A sponsorship, donations, something.”
“Maybe.” I don’t want to get his hopes up, but I’m excited to see a glimmer of energy in his eyes that hasn’t been there since before the accident.
I don’t want to stamp it out with tales of the uncaring internet. It’s probably just as uncaring as the walls Dan loves conquering, so he’ll undoubtedly be all the more inspired by it.
Maybe that’s good.
I check my watch. “I have to leave. Pete moved my shift from lunch to closing so I can go with Martin on those plumbing jobs this morning and early this afternoon, which means fewer tips, but the plumbing cash should more than make up for it.”
I touch my buzzed undercut and grimace. “At least my hair won’t be in the way while I work. Bright side of a bad decision.”
Dan reaches over and fondles the bristles too before slipping his fingers into the longer locks that frame my face. “It’ll grow.”
“It’ll take years to get that long again.”
Dan shrugs. “I keep being told patience is a virtue by the likes of you and Peggy Jo, so…back atcha.”
I slap his shoulder, but then lean in for a kiss which quickly gets a little steamier than I’d meant it to. I reluctantly pull away and hustle to get the cats back inside so Dan doesn’t have to worry about them. “Sorry, I need to go.”
“Duty calls,” he agrees, but he smiles and it’s the closest thing to the old Dan I’ve seen in a while. Maybe this new project will crash and burn, but if he gets energy from it, then I’m happy.
“I could probably blow you really fast,” I offer.
He grabs me by the neck and pulls me back in for another heated kiss, but then lets me go. “I’m fine. Got plenty to occupy my mind and learn about today. Get going, so I can work.”
Bossy Dan. Grinning, I think I like him like this. Very much.