Randy Rudolf walked past my house as I was sitting on my stoop. It had been a long afternoon and the hazy sun fell across my pale face in sharp angles. I'd fallen asleep at a little past four in the morning, had gotten up two hours later, and kept on falling prey to periods of productivity before succumbing once again to slumber. Each burst of activity punctuated the subsequent power nap like italicized exclamation points: Another doze!
I was getting really tired of the twitch surrounding my right eye. The frustration welling in my chest burned like I ate some bad sushi. And man, if you had seen the pile of bills collecting on my dresser, you'd understand.
On the plus side, though, I was looking good. Hard times brought out my hard eyes, my high cheek bones, my try-your-luck-strut. I'd perfected the hoodrat glare of seasoned sexual experience, and could shoot a salty stare farther than you can spit. Maybe that's why Randy Rudolf smiled at me as he walked home. He knew that look on my face, knew what I was capable of when I glared at guys like I had game for miles, knew that a perverse mania swept my psyche every time my eyes shone like pearls.
"You know you can get a ticket for that," Randy Rudolf said as he motioned to the beer bottle in my hand. He pecked me on the cheek - a greeting and acknowledgment of our shared history.
I took another swig of my Heineken and laughed. "At this point, I couldn't care less," I said with a shrug.
We lowered our stares and directed our attention to the street, where a blue and white was rolling. Cops were patrolling our block a lot, and even though I was no longer involved in the hijinx of the neighborhood low-lifes, I couldn't help but fall back into my old self. No matter how law-abiding I am, I will never trust police.
Randy Rudolf swept his gaze back at me after the blue and white had drifted from sight. He seemed to be thinking over my last words, sizing up my answer; I simultaneously searched it for truth.
It's been a long time since I ran numbers around my way, whistled high to announce the arrival of squadron cars, fucked with the dudes in the corner house. - (To my credit, I hadn't allowed myself to stoop to the level of ho or trick; I'd fuck with the dudes, but I laughed at the idea of fucking them.) - Now, years after I'd snuck out of my parents' house to partake in tasteless talk about taboos, it all feels surreal.
I am not the same girl who wore puffy princess dresses in elementary school. Nor am I the wide-eyed and wild-limbed pre-adolescent who, suffering from insomnia, took it upon herself to wander the streets at night. I am not the girl who, at the age of fifteen, got stabbed in the leg with a steak knife and bandaged the cut by herself. I am not the girl who, at the age of sixteen, moved to Virginia with her brother and attended class with the attorney general's son. I'm sure as hell not the same girl who moved in with a suit at the age of seventeen, and thought I could handle it because he wasn't my first love, my first fuck, my first live-in relationship.
I am not the same person who deemed it excusable to print my close friend's sex life in a blog, under the guise of art. I am not the same person who cut ties with her childhood best friends because she didn't know how to continue being someone's best friend. I am not the same person who smoked up daily, got drunk daily, snuck into bars, fucked voraciously, loved shallowly, befriended anonymously, partied haphazardly, nearly fucked up everything because of Daddy Issues, Mommy Issues, abuse, fear, quarterlife crisis, pressure, hubris, stupidity, just to feel what it's like to hit rock bottom.
I am not that person.
So when Randy Rudolf stared at me with those dark glittering eyes of his, while flipping in his head my words - "At this point, I couldn't care less" - and sizing me up, I didn't know how I was feeling. In the context of the other Marias - the unsure ones, the inexperienced ones, the less intelligent ones, the luckier ones, the rough-and-tumble ones, the scholarly ones, the jaded ones, et al. - I knew how to size up who I was. The contexts had been used before, in classic stories, beloved movies, old time songs. I knew the roles, knew the stereotypes, cast myself in each shadow before learning how to shine.
But at that very moment, with a remnant of my past staring me in the face, I realized that I was something, someone entirely different from anything I'd ever imagined or come across.
Somehow, in between all of the introverted introspectiveness and wild extroverted perversities, I'd come into my own skin. I didn't know yet what that skin was made of, which parts of which Marias had remained, but I knew that I was more or less fully formed, and I really couldn't care less what life had to throw at me. I was gonna be okay.
Randy Rudolf smiled at me, and at once his face was kind, mischievous, and fatherly. "You did good, kid," he said.
Other Marias would've beamed, but I earnesly nodded my head in agreement. "I know," I said as I put down my beer and picked up my journal and a pen. "Man, do I know..."
Showing posts with label non-fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label non-fiction. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Friday, December 7, 2007
This is what I know.
Part 1
I know that I'm an opportunist who will milk any situation, and that if I'm truly honest with myself, I have painted my way into a corner.
Part 2
The docs tell me that I have paranoid and sociopathic tendencies, and that I suffer from severe procrastination that stems from dissociation. They suggest that I go to therapy regularly, and probably think that because I am paying my medical bills upfront, by check, I can afford several sessions of cognitive behavior therapy per week.
There goes the money T wired to my account.
Part 3
I've never liked therapy. I was brought up to believe that people with friends and family don't need "professional help." The only reason that I even saw the therapist was---well, I don't know exactly. The thought of being in a hospital and having the doctor call on a psychiatric consult seemed exotic at the time, like I belonged in an episode of ER or House or Grey's Anatomy. A small part of me believed that I would suddenly become Katherine Heigl or Sandra Oh, just because I was staying in the hospital. And besides, I thought it would make another great story to tell my friends, another facet of my life to spin into allegory or fiction.
Part 4
This was me, on Wednesday: in a hospital bed, drowsy, popping pills. I'd slept for most of the previous night and that morning, and I'd talked with a psychiatrist. Scans and x-rays and all sorts of tests were conducted on me, and one thing was clear: I suffered from anxiety.
Part 5
Is there anyone who doesn't suffer from anxiety? Isn't anxiety just a sign that you're truly alive, that you're doing things, that you're scared of things, that you're not braindead? Isn't anxiety as natural as sweat and tears? Breathing and heartbeat? What's the big deal with "suffering from anxiety"?
Part 6
Yesterday, second visit with the psychiatrist: I told him all sorts of things. Like, how sometimes a sense of doom will come over me, and I'll be so scared that I can't move. It'll happen at the oddest times, but mostly in the dark, when I'm alone. I'll imagine a man coming out of the dark to attack me, and all of a sudden I'll be petrified and absolutely terrified. I want to scream, but there's no sound in my throat. I want to move, but my legs are stuck in place. Tears gush out of my eye sockets, uncontrollably.
But I only told him about my hysterical fear after I told him about my severe procrastination. How I can't seem to do anything on time - pay bills, do homework, call people back - because of no particular reason but that I don't want to. I think I have a phobia of success. Success, to me, equals loneliness, and I don't want to be lonely. I already feel so alone all the time, and success - monetary, status, academic - would only create a larger gulf between myself and the people I want to relate to.
The first thing I told the doc, though, was that I'm horny. It came out as a joke, a sort of ice-breaker. But after he laughed, there was a glint in his eyes that let me know what he was really thinking. He was going to write down my inappropriate joke and think about it some more, and maybe suggest to colleagues that something had happened to me when I was younger, that I'd been sexually molested or abused. So I qualified my joke, explained it away as something I always do out of nervous anxiety, and when he asked if all of my friends did the same thing, I looked away and laughed. "Friends?" I'd said, incredulously. "I texted people that I'm in the hospital, and only three people bothered to text me back. One of those people didn't seem concerned at all, but sounded purely snide about the situation."
And that's how I started talking about people and how they can't be trusted, and how I've always had so much on my mind concerning the nature of human beings. I trust blindly, because that is my way of trusting completely. I love blindly, because it's the easiest way to fall in and out of love and know that I'm giving all I have to give.
And yet, despite all of my blind actions, I know instinctively that there is a nugget of my self hidden deep within me, and that nothing negative - failure, betrayal, destitution, hunger, etc - can take it away from me. It is this nugget of self that I keep hidden and do not share, and if by some stroke of fate I found happiness in a particular situation and vowed that I would stay in that situation for as long as I live - with a lover, with a spouse, with friends, with my station in life, with my career, etc. - I would give away that nugget of self. My identity would be in whatever I vowed to encompass, and if that thing ever went away, I wouldn't know who I am.
Part 7
My memory is slipping. The doc found that out during our first session together, and he attributed that to my concussion. I nodded, but what I wanted to say was, "I couldn't tell you anything about any recent day - and that's not because I collapsed in a pharmacy parking lot and hit my head hard on the concrete. It's because I've been distant from my reality. I've been distant with myself. Nothing I do feels like it's really me doing it. Nothing I say feels like my own belief. I feel like I'm always acting, like I am not anything people believe me to be. I feel like a fraud."
Rob tells me that my memory sucks, and I laugh because I know it's true. Days can be boiled down to three or less sentences, and not out of boring circumstances. I can string together a story and write out a tale, but when it comes to my life, I don't know what it's about or what to do with it. There is no arch, no skeleton, no conclusion to be made that isn't purely existential.
Part 8
Today, I woke up, and everything felt brand new. I had sloughed off everything that had once defined me - my grades, my internships, my political activism, my writing, my friendships, etc - and decided to take along for the rest of my life journey only the things that I really need. Everything else can be picked up again in due time, but for now, I'm all right.
I don't know where my sense of resolve came from. Maybe it's the pills prescribed by the doc. Maybe all I really needed was to talk to a professional. Maybe I'm done with feeling bad about myself, about my circumstances, about my actions. Maybe I'm ready to remember every facet of every day and stake claim to everything I do and am as my own.
Part 9
This is what I know: A guy stole my parking spot on Tuesday night, and I got out of my car to curse him out. The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital, and the nurse told me I'd collapsed.
Now I'm in my own bed, after having forgotten about my life for three days, and everything makes sense. I don't know why everything suddenly makes sense. I don't even know if I truly think everything makes sense, or if it's a defense mechanism (a kind of denial) which regulates my emotions and my well-being that's making me believe that everything makes sense.
But I'll tell you what I do know: I'm okay.
I know that I'm an opportunist who will milk any situation, and that if I'm truly honest with myself, I have painted my way into a corner.
Part 2
The docs tell me that I have paranoid and sociopathic tendencies, and that I suffer from severe procrastination that stems from dissociation. They suggest that I go to therapy regularly, and probably think that because I am paying my medical bills upfront, by check, I can afford several sessions of cognitive behavior therapy per week.
There goes the money T wired to my account.
Part 3
I've never liked therapy. I was brought up to believe that people with friends and family don't need "professional help." The only reason that I even saw the therapist was---well, I don't know exactly. The thought of being in a hospital and having the doctor call on a psychiatric consult seemed exotic at the time, like I belonged in an episode of ER or House or Grey's Anatomy. A small part of me believed that I would suddenly become Katherine Heigl or Sandra Oh, just because I was staying in the hospital. And besides, I thought it would make another great story to tell my friends, another facet of my life to spin into allegory or fiction.
Part 4
This was me, on Wednesday: in a hospital bed, drowsy, popping pills. I'd slept for most of the previous night and that morning, and I'd talked with a psychiatrist. Scans and x-rays and all sorts of tests were conducted on me, and one thing was clear: I suffered from anxiety.
Part 5
Is there anyone who doesn't suffer from anxiety? Isn't anxiety just a sign that you're truly alive, that you're doing things, that you're scared of things, that you're not braindead? Isn't anxiety as natural as sweat and tears? Breathing and heartbeat? What's the big deal with "suffering from anxiety"?
Part 6
Yesterday, second visit with the psychiatrist: I told him all sorts of things. Like, how sometimes a sense of doom will come over me, and I'll be so scared that I can't move. It'll happen at the oddest times, but mostly in the dark, when I'm alone. I'll imagine a man coming out of the dark to attack me, and all of a sudden I'll be petrified and absolutely terrified. I want to scream, but there's no sound in my throat. I want to move, but my legs are stuck in place. Tears gush out of my eye sockets, uncontrollably.
But I only told him about my hysterical fear after I told him about my severe procrastination. How I can't seem to do anything on time - pay bills, do homework, call people back - because of no particular reason but that I don't want to. I think I have a phobia of success. Success, to me, equals loneliness, and I don't want to be lonely. I already feel so alone all the time, and success - monetary, status, academic - would only create a larger gulf between myself and the people I want to relate to.
The first thing I told the doc, though, was that I'm horny. It came out as a joke, a sort of ice-breaker. But after he laughed, there was a glint in his eyes that let me know what he was really thinking. He was going to write down my inappropriate joke and think about it some more, and maybe suggest to colleagues that something had happened to me when I was younger, that I'd been sexually molested or abused. So I qualified my joke, explained it away as something I always do out of nervous anxiety, and when he asked if all of my friends did the same thing, I looked away and laughed. "Friends?" I'd said, incredulously. "I texted people that I'm in the hospital, and only three people bothered to text me back. One of those people didn't seem concerned at all, but sounded purely snide about the situation."
And that's how I started talking about people and how they can't be trusted, and how I've always had so much on my mind concerning the nature of human beings. I trust blindly, because that is my way of trusting completely. I love blindly, because it's the easiest way to fall in and out of love and know that I'm giving all I have to give.
And yet, despite all of my blind actions, I know instinctively that there is a nugget of my self hidden deep within me, and that nothing negative - failure, betrayal, destitution, hunger, etc - can take it away from me. It is this nugget of self that I keep hidden and do not share, and if by some stroke of fate I found happiness in a particular situation and vowed that I would stay in that situation for as long as I live - with a lover, with a spouse, with friends, with my station in life, with my career, etc. - I would give away that nugget of self. My identity would be in whatever I vowed to encompass, and if that thing ever went away, I wouldn't know who I am.
Part 7
My memory is slipping. The doc found that out during our first session together, and he attributed that to my concussion. I nodded, but what I wanted to say was, "I couldn't tell you anything about any recent day - and that's not because I collapsed in a pharmacy parking lot and hit my head hard on the concrete. It's because I've been distant from my reality. I've been distant with myself. Nothing I do feels like it's really me doing it. Nothing I say feels like my own belief. I feel like I'm always acting, like I am not anything people believe me to be. I feel like a fraud."
Rob tells me that my memory sucks, and I laugh because I know it's true. Days can be boiled down to three or less sentences, and not out of boring circumstances. I can string together a story and write out a tale, but when it comes to my life, I don't know what it's about or what to do with it. There is no arch, no skeleton, no conclusion to be made that isn't purely existential.
Part 8
Today, I woke up, and everything felt brand new. I had sloughed off everything that had once defined me - my grades, my internships, my political activism, my writing, my friendships, etc - and decided to take along for the rest of my life journey only the things that I really need. Everything else can be picked up again in due time, but for now, I'm all right.
I don't know where my sense of resolve came from. Maybe it's the pills prescribed by the doc. Maybe all I really needed was to talk to a professional. Maybe I'm done with feeling bad about myself, about my circumstances, about my actions. Maybe I'm ready to remember every facet of every day and stake claim to everything I do and am as my own.
Part 9
This is what I know: A guy stole my parking spot on Tuesday night, and I got out of my car to curse him out. The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital, and the nurse told me I'd collapsed.
Now I'm in my own bed, after having forgotten about my life for three days, and everything makes sense. I don't know why everything suddenly makes sense. I don't even know if I truly think everything makes sense, or if it's a defense mechanism (a kind of denial) which regulates my emotions and my well-being that's making me believe that everything makes sense.
But I'll tell you what I do know: I'm okay.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Under the Influence: A Love Story from Beyond the Grave
Chapter 1
"Let me fall in love, that's all I wanna do/Let me fall in love, fall in love with you/Let me break my heart by giving it away/I'll let you tear me apart every single day"
- Lyrics from "Let Me", by Jonesy's Epiphany
"Once I wanted to be the greatest/No wind or waterfall could stop me/And then came the rush of the flood/The stars at night turned you to dust"
- Lyrics from "The Greatest", by Cat Powers
I tell myself that it was okay to have lost the last words on my screen. They were no good anyway, I say. Just trite verifications that I have lost my ability to see into the souls of things - but I'm not altogether sure. Perhaps, I think, there was a chance of resurrecting those words and making them into something grand and meaningful. Or maybe they already were grand and meaningful and I just hadn't realized their value. Maybe they were like me: unable to measure up to their potential, but bursting with enough kinetic energy to transcend lost goals. Or maybe I'm just making a mountain out of a molehill.
"I've never understood that saying," Caleb says to me as he reads my laptop screen. The puffs of smoke that surround us make me sure that he's high. Or that I'm high. At least one of us is high.
"High as a kite," he laughs as I type.
"Hey!", he hollers, "that last line rhymed!"
He playfully sings his last four words again and again, meshing them into a bluesy beat before picking up my guitar. The way Caleb plucks the strings is like the way he used to touch my body: expertly, as if he had known preternaturally what to do. He was always very skilled with his hands.
I take another long toke and relate to him the scene in Children of Men where Michael Caines' character talks about "strawberry cough." In the old days, Caleb would've laughed and offered an amusing anecdote. Now, he only grimaces. "I haven't been to the movies in a long time," he says as he puts down the guitar and I hand him the j. I nod my head understandingly.
It's been a long time since I've seen Caleb. When we were dating, it wasn't unusual for us to go months without seeing each other; he lived in California and I lived in New York. Now we see each other even more seldomly. I guess that's just what happens…
I wake up with an empty stomach and a full computer screen. Caleb is gone. I know he'll be around this week. He's always there when I need him. Man, do I need him now. Before I can think of something to do, he's back in my bedroom, sitting on my bed and playing my guitar. "You paused when you were gonna write man," he says confidently. "You were thinking to write boy instead, weren't you?"
I don't say anything. He smiles smugly and starts strumming my instrument's strings. He knows he's right. It's been two years since we've talked, and still he can read my mind.
Sleep has stolen my high, so I don't speak. I simply desire the seduction of sentences. I want them to lay down before me and let me swallow them whole. I want to will them into beautiful and complex positions and forge hedonistic satisfaction from their company.
Even though Caleb's eyesight has waned since we've last spoken, I know that he instinctively has a grasp of the words on the screen. He plays a ditty we wrote while we were dating, coaxing me to sing the words. His voice still haunts me like it used to. I can feel his soul when he sings, like miniscule droplets of drizzle that drop from the heavens; it is a moist mist that envelopes me.
When we are done with our duet, there is an awkwardness between us, as if we have just cheated on our significant others and need to come to an understanding behind our actions.
"I hear you're moving in with your boyfriend," Caleb offers kindly, putting my guitar back on its stand.
"I've been doing a lot of changing lately."
"I know," he mocks. "Two years ago, there was nothing I could do to make you even consider moving in with me."
"I've been meaning to visit you," I quickly interject, taking the opportunity to change the subject. "It's just that I've been in a funk and-"
"It's okay," he says soothingly.
We smile at each other warmly, both of us unsure of what to do next.
"I read as much of your writing as I can," he says, gesturing to the computer. "I know you've been going through a hard time."
This is the part I dread, the part I know I'm going to repeat over and over again when I see people I know: explaining why my life is so messy, confusing, difficult. Relating the feelings that I can't help but feel, the visits to the shrink, the prescriptions that I never filled, the lies that I had to tell myself in order to feel normal. Coming to terms with the fact that there are 2 emails I'm afraid of reading, both from internships I'm certain that I've lost. Wondering if I should explain that I have no liquid assets, that all of my money is wrapped up in investments and that I need to find another job.
And the fear. Does everyone fear talking? Saying the wrong thing? It's not a fear of peoples' perceptions; it's a fear that your own doubts and insecurities are true. How do I tell people that I felt like a fraud, like I no longer knew the whys and hows? How do I tell Caleb that I've lost that part of me that he used to love - the part that I loved because it made me lovable? And how do I explain that I'm now a differ-
"I know you're a different person," Caleb cuts in. "You're personality is more defined. You now know what you're all about. You're afraid of pushing away the people you care about due to differences in your beliefs." He walks towards the desk and picks up a political science text book. "You've always been very assimilationist in your ways," he says knowingly. "But now you're more combative. You have a distinct feeling that you're right, and you don't want to back down."
Then we talk. We talk about the past, about the future, about the way things are and the way they should be. We talk about politics and love and music. We talk about the people in my life, the hard decisions I'm facing, the depression I was in. We talk about the fact that I've never really been in the driver's seat of my own life, and how that's changing.
"It's funny," he says hours later, as he prepares to leave. "All that time we knew each other, and I never doubted for a second that you knew what you were doing - but then, neither did you."
"This time," I say, "I really know what I'm doing, ya know."
"I know you do," he laughs. He goes down the list of statements I've made during our conversation: that I've decided to stop going to therapy; that I'm going for broke when it comes to love; that there's a possibility I'm in denial over the past; that there's a lot I need to work on in order to feel complete.
Caleb enters my email password and double clicks a subject line that reads "INTERNSHIP." "There are no mistakes in life," he says as he kisses me goodbye, "only consequences to your actions."
Later, I'm procrastinating on reading the email and sitting by myself in my bedroom. I'm thinking about moving in with my boyfriend. I'm listening to Cat Powers. I'm reading the issue of TIME magazine devoted to the human brain.
There are many truths in this world, I realize as I put down my pipe and take up my pen. There are the histories written by the victors, the secrets kept by the defeated, the universals that the entirety of humanity refuses to believe.
And then there are the truths that shed light on personal identity, none of which need be real.
The smell of marijuana clings to my clothes as I walk over to my laptop to check my email. A great weight lifts as I read it and find out that I haven't lost my internships. One task done, a million more to go. Maybe today will be the day I visit Caleb's grave.
"Let me fall in love, that's all I wanna do/Let me fall in love, fall in love with you/Let me break my heart by giving it away/I'll let you tear me apart every single day"
- Lyrics from "Let Me", by Jonesy's Epiphany
"Once I wanted to be the greatest/No wind or waterfall could stop me/And then came the rush of the flood/The stars at night turned you to dust"
- Lyrics from "The Greatest", by Cat Powers
I tell myself that it was okay to have lost the last words on my screen. They were no good anyway, I say. Just trite verifications that I have lost my ability to see into the souls of things - but I'm not altogether sure. Perhaps, I think, there was a chance of resurrecting those words and making them into something grand and meaningful. Or maybe they already were grand and meaningful and I just hadn't realized their value. Maybe they were like me: unable to measure up to their potential, but bursting with enough kinetic energy to transcend lost goals. Or maybe I'm just making a mountain out of a molehill.
"I've never understood that saying," Caleb says to me as he reads my laptop screen. The puffs of smoke that surround us make me sure that he's high. Or that I'm high. At least one of us is high.
"High as a kite," he laughs as I type.
"Hey!", he hollers, "that last line rhymed!"
He playfully sings his last four words again and again, meshing them into a bluesy beat before picking up my guitar. The way Caleb plucks the strings is like the way he used to touch my body: expertly, as if he had known preternaturally what to do. He was always very skilled with his hands.
I take another long toke and relate to him the scene in Children of Men where Michael Caines' character talks about "strawberry cough." In the old days, Caleb would've laughed and offered an amusing anecdote. Now, he only grimaces. "I haven't been to the movies in a long time," he says as he puts down the guitar and I hand him the j. I nod my head understandingly.
It's been a long time since I've seen Caleb. When we were dating, it wasn't unusual for us to go months without seeing each other; he lived in California and I lived in New York. Now we see each other even more seldomly. I guess that's just what happens…
I wake up with an empty stomach and a full computer screen. Caleb is gone. I know he'll be around this week. He's always there when I need him. Man, do I need him now. Before I can think of something to do, he's back in my bedroom, sitting on my bed and playing my guitar. "You paused when you were gonna write man," he says confidently. "You were thinking to write boy instead, weren't you?"
I don't say anything. He smiles smugly and starts strumming my instrument's strings. He knows he's right. It's been two years since we've talked, and still he can read my mind.
Sleep has stolen my high, so I don't speak. I simply desire the seduction of sentences. I want them to lay down before me and let me swallow them whole. I want to will them into beautiful and complex positions and forge hedonistic satisfaction from their company.
Even though Caleb's eyesight has waned since we've last spoken, I know that he instinctively has a grasp of the words on the screen. He plays a ditty we wrote while we were dating, coaxing me to sing the words. His voice still haunts me like it used to. I can feel his soul when he sings, like miniscule droplets of drizzle that drop from the heavens; it is a moist mist that envelopes me.
When we are done with our duet, there is an awkwardness between us, as if we have just cheated on our significant others and need to come to an understanding behind our actions.
"I hear you're moving in with your boyfriend," Caleb offers kindly, putting my guitar back on its stand.
"I've been doing a lot of changing lately."
"I know," he mocks. "Two years ago, there was nothing I could do to make you even consider moving in with me."
"I've been meaning to visit you," I quickly interject, taking the opportunity to change the subject. "It's just that I've been in a funk and-"
"It's okay," he says soothingly.
We smile at each other warmly, both of us unsure of what to do next.
"I read as much of your writing as I can," he says, gesturing to the computer. "I know you've been going through a hard time."
This is the part I dread, the part I know I'm going to repeat over and over again when I see people I know: explaining why my life is so messy, confusing, difficult. Relating the feelings that I can't help but feel, the visits to the shrink, the prescriptions that I never filled, the lies that I had to tell myself in order to feel normal. Coming to terms with the fact that there are 2 emails I'm afraid of reading, both from internships I'm certain that I've lost. Wondering if I should explain that I have no liquid assets, that all of my money is wrapped up in investments and that I need to find another job.
And the fear. Does everyone fear talking? Saying the wrong thing? It's not a fear of peoples' perceptions; it's a fear that your own doubts and insecurities are true. How do I tell people that I felt like a fraud, like I no longer knew the whys and hows? How do I tell Caleb that I've lost that part of me that he used to love - the part that I loved because it made me lovable? And how do I explain that I'm now a differ-
"I know you're a different person," Caleb cuts in. "You're personality is more defined. You now know what you're all about. You're afraid of pushing away the people you care about due to differences in your beliefs." He walks towards the desk and picks up a political science text book. "You've always been very assimilationist in your ways," he says knowingly. "But now you're more combative. You have a distinct feeling that you're right, and you don't want to back down."
Then we talk. We talk about the past, about the future, about the way things are and the way they should be. We talk about politics and love and music. We talk about the people in my life, the hard decisions I'm facing, the depression I was in. We talk about the fact that I've never really been in the driver's seat of my own life, and how that's changing.
"It's funny," he says hours later, as he prepares to leave. "All that time we knew each other, and I never doubted for a second that you knew what you were doing - but then, neither did you."
"This time," I say, "I really know what I'm doing, ya know."
"I know you do," he laughs. He goes down the list of statements I've made during our conversation: that I've decided to stop going to therapy; that I'm going for broke when it comes to love; that there's a possibility I'm in denial over the past; that there's a lot I need to work on in order to feel complete.
Caleb enters my email password and double clicks a subject line that reads "INTERNSHIP." "There are no mistakes in life," he says as he kisses me goodbye, "only consequences to your actions."
Later, I'm procrastinating on reading the email and sitting by myself in my bedroom. I'm thinking about moving in with my boyfriend. I'm listening to Cat Powers. I'm reading the issue of TIME magazine devoted to the human brain.
There are many truths in this world, I realize as I put down my pipe and take up my pen. There are the histories written by the victors, the secrets kept by the defeated, the universals that the entirety of humanity refuses to believe.
And then there are the truths that shed light on personal identity, none of which need be real.
The smell of marijuana clings to my clothes as I walk over to my laptop to check my email. A great weight lifts as I read it and find out that I haven't lost my internships. One task done, a million more to go. Maybe today will be the day I visit Caleb's grave.
Exercises in Futility: Explanation
I often suspect that the most daunting challenge for a writer to face is a blank page. Imagine, if you will, the limitless possibilities uncovered by the very existence of that blank page! There are so many stories, so many styles, so many words that can flow out on that page and rearrange history.
And yet, more often than not, nothing ever comes about of that page. It becomes another tossed out piece of garbage, and no one knows that it exists. Worse, no one cares if it exists.
I'm currenly enrolled in Fiction 1 at Brooklyn College. The course is a cakewalk for me, and I refuse to believe that I'm killing myself with my work schedule just for an easy A. My solution: I challenged myself. I've taken the weekly writing assignments and written a novel, each chapter corresponding to an exercise. The coherence is questionable, but sure enough, all the components of a story are there.
This piece, Exercises in Futility has been the most eye-opening and jaw-dropping writing experience I've encountered yet. I've been unashamedly honest and raw about everything I've written. That bitingly real look at my life makes me flinch, so I suspect it'll do the same for you.
Exercises in Futility: Chapter 1
Truth
Exercise: Describe the inside of a train station from the point of view of someone whose good friend has recently died. Do not mention death or the good friend.
I missed my creative writing class today and now all I can think about is how much of a fuck-up I am because there’s a good chance I’m going to fail. I think that I might resurrect my grade by visiting the professor and telling her my personal problems - which are the reasons I’ve been absent - but therapy’s never been my thing. Too bad, too, because it starts off the best case scenario: she’d listen and sympathize, tell me there’s a chance I can still pass the class, and then apologize for the hardships that have befallen me. Or maybe we’d bond over a mutual affinity for the written word, she’d tell me to come by if I ever want to talk (since I seem like a good person and all), and we’d develop the kind of relationship which starts out mentor/mentee and eventually evolves into a friendship between equals.
Or maybe she’d just tell me that there’s nothing she can do; I’ve failed and-“You’re not supposed to smoke here,” a woman snaps. My thoughts are drowned out and it dawns on me that I’m on a train platform, suspended above Liberty Avenue in Queens, and that the middle-aged Guyanese woman has a point. If a cop walks up the steps (which happens often at this hour) I could get fined a good chunk of cash - maybe two hundred dollars.
I consider this and I check myself: I’m wearing the ten dollar jeans that make my ass look like it could get insured for a million bucks, and just enough of my cleavage is popping out of my skin-tight, scoop-neck, cotton T-shirt to make any hetero-male hard. I sneer at the woman and blow smoke in her face: if a cop shows up, and it’s a guy, I have nothing to worry about.
The woman waves her hand in front of her face and jeers at me as if she knows what I’m thinking. I suck on my teeth and take a long drag of my cigarette. Not all cops are men, the woman seems to be saying in her glare. I laugh heartily. If a cop shows up and it’s a woman - well, I have it on good authority that most female cops are lesbians anyway. I lick my lips as if savoring the smoke, and suggestively suck on the tip of the cigarette. The woman stalks off and my line of sight is empty.
My neighborhood is a ghost town at this hour. All of the respectable people are asleep in their beds, waiting for the morning sun to tell them it’s time to get ready for church or temple - or wherever the hell it is they worship. My neighbors are all brown and most of them are poor, and as I inhale, exhale, and wince, I realize that while John Singh or Jane Persaud is sleeping away the night, I am two flights of stairs above them, thinking about cops and professors and what I want to do with my life. So much for the American dream.
This sentiment: this old, worn, sentiment - So much for the American dream - stings my eyes because of its honesty. It’s so goddamn true that it makes me think I can’t handle the truth. Truth is for people who realize their potential and reach their goals. Truth is for the lucky ones who’ve profited from the system. Truth isn’t for the weak-willed or the feeble-minded, the depraved or the destitute, those who know nothing more than dreaming for realities that never come to pass.
You want truth?
This is what I know: I’m twenty-three years old and I feel like I’m forty-three. Every second that passes feels like a minute in the last leg of a marathon, and my legs are jelly. I’ve been running for so long, trying to catch up to something that I wouldn’t recognize if it bumped up against me. I’m tired. The bags under my eyes have been saturated by cucumbers and a Filipino face cream that my mom bought in bulk, but I can feel grooves etching themselves permanently into my skin. My joints are hard, like rigor mortis has set in, and I swear the wind is dark like coal. The sky looks like it’s about to cry, and I think to myself that that’s crazy. Wind doesn’t get dark and rain is only precipitation. But the thoughts are stuck in my head and I can’t shake them free: I am cloaked in a cold and damp darkness, as if a thick blanket of wet, woolen night has wrapped itself around me. And I am being led to my oblivion. The conductor might as well have a scythe in his hand.
No: I should have a scythe in my hand. I reap what I sow, and it’s my fault that I’m self-destructive.
I think again of my creative writing class, of pens on paper, of the click-clack sound made by typing sixty words per minute nonstop for an hour and a half. I think about how much I’ve always loved writing, and how it’s always set me free, and I think, What’s it always set me free from? Then I think about my creative writing professor, and how I bragged on the first day of class that I’ve been published on a couple of literary websites. I take another pull from my cigarette as I’m resigned to the truth: I’ve been talking too much, sharing too much, being too open. I think that communication makes people civilized, so speaking out on my problems and accomplishments must make me more genteel. But the sad truth is, everyone prefers brutes to gentlepeople. We aren’t accustomed to the complications of lives other than our own, and we shrink at the idea of discovering them.
I take another drag from my Marlboro ultra light and cough. I haven’t smoked cigarettes in a year, but I’m sad and I’m stressed and I need to believe that I’m in control of something. I might not be able to control the train schedule, or my class schedule, or my budget - but damnit, I can control the way I feel. And the truth, I must admit as I put out my cigarette and climb onto the express train, is that I feel a little afraid because I’ve over cut my class. I say “ a little” because in truth, I’m not afraid of failure. I know that one man’s failure is another man’s misguided-but-ultimately-worthwhile-adventure, and I’m not beyond altering others’ impression of one till it more resembles the other.
Inside the train, it’s cold, gray and hard. I set my big, heavy black bag on my lap and open the zipper of the biggest compartment. I feel like a coroner, about to take out a sharp instrument; I could dissect my life with the contents of this bag. Elle magazine, Fitness magazine, Spin magazine, Rolling Stone magazine, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander, three thin Women’s Studies textbooks, two notebooks, my planner, a water bottle that I’ve refilled, a microwaveable meal of steak, mashed potatoes, and corn, two cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli, a large bag of white cheddar popcorn, three fruit and nut granola bars, and my wallet all stare back at me. They tell me it might be a while till I get back to my warm bed with its overstuffed white down comforter and plump white pillows. I nod and sigh, my eyes too tired to cry. Some people just don’t have enough time.
The train is snaking along the tracks like a snake I write, then reread, then cross out. Great. My shift’s going to start in an hour and a half and I can’t even form coherent sentences. I’m sure that’ll go over well, since I talk on the phone for a living and all. I suck my teeth in disappointment and my eyes meet those of the woman from the platform. She is sitting across from me, feigning disinterest in what I’m writing. Her smug and ugly face smacks of a superiority complex, and I would not hesitate from bitch-slapping it if someone dared me. Her thrift store sneakers and blue pants are tacky and ill-fitting. The tongues of her shoes stretch above her ankles in the style of most teenage boys’. Her pants are too short. When I realize all this, I’m almost tempted to give her one of my cans of ravioli. But then I remember how she talked to me on the platform and I think, Fuck you, bitch. Your stupid ass probably deserves to be poor.
The woman from the platform haughtily lifts her eyebrows when she notices me inspecting her, and there in her eyes is a kind of recognition which chills me. I am staring at her staring at me and aware that we are two sides of one coin. For all I know, she might be my future: once having dreamt of breaking into a creative writing career, this woman could’ve been bogged down by family duties and financial woes, taken up working as many odd-jobs as she could to keep her family afloat, and then failed all her college classes along the way.
She might even be commuting to a night job that’s similar to my own. An hour and a half from now, she might be thinking about cotton candy, ferris wheels, and Coney Island to keep herself from gagging - all this because she’s just realized that the man with whom she’s having phone sex fantasizes about choking his eleven-year old daughter with his cock. Maybe ten minutes after that, she’ll be moaning to a man in Michigan while listening to the sound of his lubed southpaw working up and down his four-inch shaft. Maybe forty-five minutes after that, she’ll pretend to care about a caller whose ex-wife cheated on him with his older bother. And then twenty minutes after that, maybe she’ll be laughing up a storm with a regular who calls from San Diego to get his mind off suicidal thoughts.
But what are the odds?
The train is still empty as we pass the cemetery at 80th Street, and I think to myself, We’re all zombies. We do what we must in order to survive, even if it means ripping each others’ throats out or having phone sex with strangers while calling them “Daddy” and telling them not to stop fucking you even though it hurts so much and they’re so big and you don’t mean it. Nothing is real. The train slows down, more passengers get on, and I notice that many of them are wearing work uniforms. There’s a nurse and a security guard and a cop, all seated in front of me like it’s career day in elementary school, and since I’m teacher’s pet I sit all the way in the front of the class and get to look up-close at everyone.
Only it’s not career day and I’m not in elementary school. I need to land a real job soon, but I haven’t yet earned my degree. If I’d only have continued working, I could’ve landed a cushy corporate job which would cater to the bourgeoisie tastes that I don’t presently have but that I’m sure would spring up if they were within my budget. (That’s what my best friend, Daria, did.) The truth is, I’m not sure if a bachelor’s degree in creative writing is a fool’s attempt at grandeur. I’ve invested so much of my time and energy into making it work, that I don’t want to look back. Instead, I look at the nurse, the security guard and the cop, and I am dumbfounded when I realize that I look just as world-weary and washed-out as they do. I may not have a real career or even a degree, but I have problems. Real problems. The kind of problems that adults have. And as the woman from the platform gets off at Broadway-East New York, I realize that no adult is really alive. Her ill-fitting sneakers squeak away, and this newfound truth almost makes me sorry to have wished her ill. Before I can retract my bad omens, she innocently looks back at me from over her shoulder and, without thinking, I give her the finger. Confused and ashamed at myself, I turn back in my seat and forcefully curl my middle finger back into a fist. The sad truth is, most of us wouldn’t know how to live if our lives depended on it.
Right now, my life - my sanity - depends on my creative writing class. The truth is, I haven’t written any new fiction in four or five months, and I’m afraid my wit’s dulled. I’m afraid that reality will surface in my fiction writing and I won’t be able to escape my day-to-day existence. I’m afraid that I’m an empty vessel, and nothing will flow out. Or the wrong thing will flow out. Or an ugly truth will flow out. I’m afraid that I will put pen on paper and purge myself of so many feelings that I will cry in the subway like a crazy, homeless woman, and my cheeks will be stained with Maybelline’s extreme black triple lash mascara.
As the train fills with people, I’m sobered by a wafting stench of alcohol and I realize that I’m procrastinating. The gaggle of teenage girls in front of me has probably found my old hotspot in Chinatown - the one that doesn’t card as long as you’re Asian and female. I know that I’m procrastinating on writing stories for my creative writing class, but the truth is, I feel like there’s a reason I have to stare at these teenage girls. It’s not a latent homosexual tendency, or a lust for the forbidden. Their slanty eyes accuse me of knowing something that I’m holding out on, and just as one of them raises her hand as if she’s about to flip me the bird, I realize what’s captivated me: I can’t help but see myself in them.
Ten years ago, wearing too much make-up and not enough clothes, I was them. No doubt about it. Their breath, thick and mellow, smells like cheap liquor and puke, and I remember what it was like to bow to the ivory gods for the first time. I remember what it was like to stand outside of my house - it was my parents’ house back then - and be too afraid to slip my key in the front door. I remember what it was like to gnaw at my nerves with the edge of my good sense, and I remember that I need to write, and I need to write right now. The thought becomes a song, and the song becomes catchy, and before I know it, I’m thinking, Write now. Right now. Write now. Right now. Write. Right: write. Write right. Now.
“Now,” I say to myself as I dig into my coroner’s bag and the girls leave the train. A flash of pride and a lightning bolt of inspiration beam through me when I find a notebook and a pen, and just as I’m about to begin the next great American novel, the train lurches to a halt. I have arrived at my stop.
It is 10:23 and my shift starts at eleven p.m. I quickly make a mental note of this and quietly file my thoughts away. All that exists now are myself, my pen, and my notebook. I need to surrender myself to the page. I need to write. I don’t know what I’ll write about. I don’t know if it’ll turn out any good. I don’t know if there’s any sense in what I’m doing, and I know for damn certain that there’s a chance I’ll lose track of time and write so much that I’ll miss my shift and even though management doesn’t care I have pride in my work no matter what it is I do for a living-
No. This has to stop. Now. “Now,” I command myself. “Write.”
So I do.
*As a steady stream of fun-chasing youths stroll into the subway car, the light from the platform seems muted and gray. Marisa Rubierno sits on the bench, watching these party-seekers as they step into a metal coffin and pack themselves in like sardines. She watches as their shiny new threads flash and gleam. Her eyes follow them as they are made brand new in this uptown speeding bullet. Like angels that have taken their fall in stride, they laugh, drowning out the sharp clamber of metal on metal, of hammers on nails, of an eternally blissful ignorance. Booze, laughter, tits, weed, cocks, blow, pussy - it’ll all be theirs for the taking, like a smorgasbord of scintillating sensuality set out on the city street. They need only to leave the purgatory of the platform, get their bodies on board the train, and ride it till their destination.
“It’s just too fucking much,” one girl says from the edge of the platform. The bodice of her little black dress is clinging to her hefty bosom as she absent-mindedly relates her thoughts to her girlfriends. “I mean, twenty dollars just to get into a club?” She throws her hands up in a gesture of futility.
The other two girls nod in earnest agreement.
“It’s a good thing we’re hot,” one of them chimes in as the last of their trio self-consciously checks her make-up. “That way, we don’t have to worry about money for drinks.”
A giggle frenzy ensues: high-boned cheeks accentuated by ventriloquist laughter. Each of the college-aged women is attempting to garner the attention of a handsome man wearing a black tailored suit, but the man is unimpressed. He looks away and removes his wedding ring, placing it in his pocket and pursing his lips before walking to the opposite side of the platform; he’s already made plans for tonight.
The women in little black dresses have already shifted their attention. They shamelessly adjust their pantyhose and inspect their cleavage, seemingly unaware that as they do so, their breasts threaten to spill over their dresses. Curly tendrils of light brown hair have been placed strategically along their temples and hairline to look “accidental.” Their eyebrows are meticulously crafted into hyper intensified Roman arches which frame their smoky eyelids and fake eyelashes. Clad all in black, they are wearing the universal uniform of girls on the town - yet beneath the mask of heavy make-up, their faces are malnourished and pale. From Marisa Rubierno’s perch on a nearby platform bench, they look like a bunch of widows. She hopes they’ll all chop off their pathetically pampered tresses, exchange their party wardrobe for ill-fitting frocks, and properly go into mourning. Someone should.
The 10:38 express train enters the station and the widows file in, hollow laughter following them. Marisa remains on the platform and inhales a heady mixture of flowers and smut - like the set of a pornographic movie where long-stemmed roses are used as props. If the 34th Street/Penn Station platform is a porno set, then it’s campy and melodramatic - like the ones on late-night cable. A wash of gray tints the people, making their faces look haggard in the fluorescent light. Faces look translucent and thin, paler than pus and just as sickly. Shadows make jaundiced zombies out of everyone by dropping like black veils on the facades of passengers. Beneath the tracks, the rats have fully accepted their roles as the vultures of subterranean New York City: they wait for an unsuspecting commuter to silently lose their footing and fall off the face of the earth.
There’s still half an hour to go before her shift starts at eleven o’clock, and Marisa is casually observing the nightlife commuters. There’s no point in climbing the steps to wander; her body is too tired to take her anywhere. At the age of twenty-three, she is well aware that she should be one of those souls unshackled from occupational obligation at the stroke of five o’clock every Friday evening - but this is simply not so. Her muscles ache and her mind is swimming. It’s Saturday, almost eleven o’clock - is she sure that she’s working at the office tonight? Or is she supposed to be bartending? Tomorrow she has English classes from nine a.m. till 3:30 in the afternoon. She knows for certain that she has a promotional gigs most Sunday nights. Is it possible to squeeze in a nap before she has to tout Coors light? And what about her dog? Will she walk him? Give him a bath? She’s been working too many shifts in order to pay her bills, and her grades are slipping. She hasn’t handed in any work for her English classes. Ever since her father came into her bedroom, crying jaggedly and speaking in short gasps, she hasn’t been able to tear her attention away from making money. She can’t let her parents live out on the street. She can’t-
Marisa shakes off her thoughts and sits on the platform bench, taking in the scene: mundane people doing mundane things in a mundane world. She calms herself at the thought of doing nothing - all anyone ever does is nothing, anyway - and settles into her seat. She loosens her mental grip on reality and forgets her problems. The opportunity to think without influence by budget or schedule is rare, and when Marisa lets her thoughts roam, all she wants is to tell the girl in her creative writing class to enjoy the steady flow of words while it still lasts. Preternatural gifts have the shelf-life of dairy products and are forgotten easily when yours is not the only mouth you have to feed. For now, she feels the need to say, make a life out of writing. Breathe verbs and dialogue and plot. Spend your free time - everyone but Marisa has free time - scribbling away in notebooks and spare pieces of scrap paper. Don’t hesitate to vomit your insides onto the page. Take advantage of your youth and your vitality. You’re only young once.
The thought makes Marisa wince as she stands to leave the train station. She’ll snake through the winding corridor of Penn Station before walking a quick two blocks to her job. As she’s passing people she’ll feel like her insides have been weighed and measured, like her skin has been stretched to cover parts of her personality, like she is hiding herself in her responsibilities.
But who can blame her?
She’s got to make a living, and who wants to hear about her problems anyway? There’s no time for the spilling of insides and the inspecting of problems. You have to move fast, do what you have to do, get results. No one wants to know why you’re not living up to the standard - they just want easy, cut-and-dry actions to react to.
In this nighttime metropolis, hum-drum existences fade into thumping bass lines as disk jockeys spin hits and responsibilities are not missed. The rent or mortgage has been paid on time, the credit card debt has been paid off, medical bills are moot, and school is a vague, happy memory. In the instant Marisa’s head pokes out from beneath the city streets and the manufactured brilliance of streetlights streams over her facade, she will assume her role as another passerby, another part of the whole. The stench of piss, dead rats, and half-eaten fast food will envelope her body. She will be just another slave to mediocre living, living within her means as opposed to living like she means it. And, just like every day, she will take it all in stride. This coming April is the first time she’ll be legally obligated to file her own taxes. One inevitability will be crossed off her list.
Exercise: Describe the inside of a train station from the point of view of someone whose good friend has recently died. Do not mention death or the good friend.
I missed my creative writing class today and now all I can think about is how much of a fuck-up I am because there’s a good chance I’m going to fail. I think that I might resurrect my grade by visiting the professor and telling her my personal problems - which are the reasons I’ve been absent - but therapy’s never been my thing. Too bad, too, because it starts off the best case scenario: she’d listen and sympathize, tell me there’s a chance I can still pass the class, and then apologize for the hardships that have befallen me. Or maybe we’d bond over a mutual affinity for the written word, she’d tell me to come by if I ever want to talk (since I seem like a good person and all), and we’d develop the kind of relationship which starts out mentor/mentee and eventually evolves into a friendship between equals.
Or maybe she’d just tell me that there’s nothing she can do; I’ve failed and-“You’re not supposed to smoke here,” a woman snaps. My thoughts are drowned out and it dawns on me that I’m on a train platform, suspended above Liberty Avenue in Queens, and that the middle-aged Guyanese woman has a point. If a cop walks up the steps (which happens often at this hour) I could get fined a good chunk of cash - maybe two hundred dollars.
I consider this and I check myself: I’m wearing the ten dollar jeans that make my ass look like it could get insured for a million bucks, and just enough of my cleavage is popping out of my skin-tight, scoop-neck, cotton T-shirt to make any hetero-male hard. I sneer at the woman and blow smoke in her face: if a cop shows up, and it’s a guy, I have nothing to worry about.
The woman waves her hand in front of her face and jeers at me as if she knows what I’m thinking. I suck on my teeth and take a long drag of my cigarette. Not all cops are men, the woman seems to be saying in her glare. I laugh heartily. If a cop shows up and it’s a woman - well, I have it on good authority that most female cops are lesbians anyway. I lick my lips as if savoring the smoke, and suggestively suck on the tip of the cigarette. The woman stalks off and my line of sight is empty.
My neighborhood is a ghost town at this hour. All of the respectable people are asleep in their beds, waiting for the morning sun to tell them it’s time to get ready for church or temple - or wherever the hell it is they worship. My neighbors are all brown and most of them are poor, and as I inhale, exhale, and wince, I realize that while John Singh or Jane Persaud is sleeping away the night, I am two flights of stairs above them, thinking about cops and professors and what I want to do with my life. So much for the American dream.
This sentiment: this old, worn, sentiment - So much for the American dream - stings my eyes because of its honesty. It’s so goddamn true that it makes me think I can’t handle the truth. Truth is for people who realize their potential and reach their goals. Truth is for the lucky ones who’ve profited from the system. Truth isn’t for the weak-willed or the feeble-minded, the depraved or the destitute, those who know nothing more than dreaming for realities that never come to pass.
You want truth?
This is what I know: I’m twenty-three years old and I feel like I’m forty-three. Every second that passes feels like a minute in the last leg of a marathon, and my legs are jelly. I’ve been running for so long, trying to catch up to something that I wouldn’t recognize if it bumped up against me. I’m tired. The bags under my eyes have been saturated by cucumbers and a Filipino face cream that my mom bought in bulk, but I can feel grooves etching themselves permanently into my skin. My joints are hard, like rigor mortis has set in, and I swear the wind is dark like coal. The sky looks like it’s about to cry, and I think to myself that that’s crazy. Wind doesn’t get dark and rain is only precipitation. But the thoughts are stuck in my head and I can’t shake them free: I am cloaked in a cold and damp darkness, as if a thick blanket of wet, woolen night has wrapped itself around me. And I am being led to my oblivion. The conductor might as well have a scythe in his hand.
No: I should have a scythe in my hand. I reap what I sow, and it’s my fault that I’m self-destructive.
I think again of my creative writing class, of pens on paper, of the click-clack sound made by typing sixty words per minute nonstop for an hour and a half. I think about how much I’ve always loved writing, and how it’s always set me free, and I think, What’s it always set me free from? Then I think about my creative writing professor, and how I bragged on the first day of class that I’ve been published on a couple of literary websites. I take another pull from my cigarette as I’m resigned to the truth: I’ve been talking too much, sharing too much, being too open. I think that communication makes people civilized, so speaking out on my problems and accomplishments must make me more genteel. But the sad truth is, everyone prefers brutes to gentlepeople. We aren’t accustomed to the complications of lives other than our own, and we shrink at the idea of discovering them.
I take another drag from my Marlboro ultra light and cough. I haven’t smoked cigarettes in a year, but I’m sad and I’m stressed and I need to believe that I’m in control of something. I might not be able to control the train schedule, or my class schedule, or my budget - but damnit, I can control the way I feel. And the truth, I must admit as I put out my cigarette and climb onto the express train, is that I feel a little afraid because I’ve over cut my class. I say “ a little” because in truth, I’m not afraid of failure. I know that one man’s failure is another man’s misguided-but-ultimately-worthwhile-adventure, and I’m not beyond altering others’ impression of one till it more resembles the other.
Inside the train, it’s cold, gray and hard. I set my big, heavy black bag on my lap and open the zipper of the biggest compartment. I feel like a coroner, about to take out a sharp instrument; I could dissect my life with the contents of this bag. Elle magazine, Fitness magazine, Spin magazine, Rolling Stone magazine, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander, three thin Women’s Studies textbooks, two notebooks, my planner, a water bottle that I’ve refilled, a microwaveable meal of steak, mashed potatoes, and corn, two cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli, a large bag of white cheddar popcorn, three fruit and nut granola bars, and my wallet all stare back at me. They tell me it might be a while till I get back to my warm bed with its overstuffed white down comforter and plump white pillows. I nod and sigh, my eyes too tired to cry. Some people just don’t have enough time.
The train is snaking along the tracks like a snake I write, then reread, then cross out. Great. My shift’s going to start in an hour and a half and I can’t even form coherent sentences. I’m sure that’ll go over well, since I talk on the phone for a living and all. I suck my teeth in disappointment and my eyes meet those of the woman from the platform. She is sitting across from me, feigning disinterest in what I’m writing. Her smug and ugly face smacks of a superiority complex, and I would not hesitate from bitch-slapping it if someone dared me. Her thrift store sneakers and blue pants are tacky and ill-fitting. The tongues of her shoes stretch above her ankles in the style of most teenage boys’. Her pants are too short. When I realize all this, I’m almost tempted to give her one of my cans of ravioli. But then I remember how she talked to me on the platform and I think, Fuck you, bitch. Your stupid ass probably deserves to be poor.
The woman from the platform haughtily lifts her eyebrows when she notices me inspecting her, and there in her eyes is a kind of recognition which chills me. I am staring at her staring at me and aware that we are two sides of one coin. For all I know, she might be my future: once having dreamt of breaking into a creative writing career, this woman could’ve been bogged down by family duties and financial woes, taken up working as many odd-jobs as she could to keep her family afloat, and then failed all her college classes along the way.
She might even be commuting to a night job that’s similar to my own. An hour and a half from now, she might be thinking about cotton candy, ferris wheels, and Coney Island to keep herself from gagging - all this because she’s just realized that the man with whom she’s having phone sex fantasizes about choking his eleven-year old daughter with his cock. Maybe ten minutes after that, she’ll be moaning to a man in Michigan while listening to the sound of his lubed southpaw working up and down his four-inch shaft. Maybe forty-five minutes after that, she’ll pretend to care about a caller whose ex-wife cheated on him with his older bother. And then twenty minutes after that, maybe she’ll be laughing up a storm with a regular who calls from San Diego to get his mind off suicidal thoughts.
But what are the odds?
The train is still empty as we pass the cemetery at 80th Street, and I think to myself, We’re all zombies. We do what we must in order to survive, even if it means ripping each others’ throats out or having phone sex with strangers while calling them “Daddy” and telling them not to stop fucking you even though it hurts so much and they’re so big and you don’t mean it. Nothing is real. The train slows down, more passengers get on, and I notice that many of them are wearing work uniforms. There’s a nurse and a security guard and a cop, all seated in front of me like it’s career day in elementary school, and since I’m teacher’s pet I sit all the way in the front of the class and get to look up-close at everyone.
Only it’s not career day and I’m not in elementary school. I need to land a real job soon, but I haven’t yet earned my degree. If I’d only have continued working, I could’ve landed a cushy corporate job which would cater to the bourgeoisie tastes that I don’t presently have but that I’m sure would spring up if they were within my budget. (That’s what my best friend, Daria, did.) The truth is, I’m not sure if a bachelor’s degree in creative writing is a fool’s attempt at grandeur. I’ve invested so much of my time and energy into making it work, that I don’t want to look back. Instead, I look at the nurse, the security guard and the cop, and I am dumbfounded when I realize that I look just as world-weary and washed-out as they do. I may not have a real career or even a degree, but I have problems. Real problems. The kind of problems that adults have. And as the woman from the platform gets off at Broadway-East New York, I realize that no adult is really alive. Her ill-fitting sneakers squeak away, and this newfound truth almost makes me sorry to have wished her ill. Before I can retract my bad omens, she innocently looks back at me from over her shoulder and, without thinking, I give her the finger. Confused and ashamed at myself, I turn back in my seat and forcefully curl my middle finger back into a fist. The sad truth is, most of us wouldn’t know how to live if our lives depended on it.
Right now, my life - my sanity - depends on my creative writing class. The truth is, I haven’t written any new fiction in four or five months, and I’m afraid my wit’s dulled. I’m afraid that reality will surface in my fiction writing and I won’t be able to escape my day-to-day existence. I’m afraid that I’m an empty vessel, and nothing will flow out. Or the wrong thing will flow out. Or an ugly truth will flow out. I’m afraid that I will put pen on paper and purge myself of so many feelings that I will cry in the subway like a crazy, homeless woman, and my cheeks will be stained with Maybelline’s extreme black triple lash mascara.
As the train fills with people, I’m sobered by a wafting stench of alcohol and I realize that I’m procrastinating. The gaggle of teenage girls in front of me has probably found my old hotspot in Chinatown - the one that doesn’t card as long as you’re Asian and female. I know that I’m procrastinating on writing stories for my creative writing class, but the truth is, I feel like there’s a reason I have to stare at these teenage girls. It’s not a latent homosexual tendency, or a lust for the forbidden. Their slanty eyes accuse me of knowing something that I’m holding out on, and just as one of them raises her hand as if she’s about to flip me the bird, I realize what’s captivated me: I can’t help but see myself in them.
Ten years ago, wearing too much make-up and not enough clothes, I was them. No doubt about it. Their breath, thick and mellow, smells like cheap liquor and puke, and I remember what it was like to bow to the ivory gods for the first time. I remember what it was like to stand outside of my house - it was my parents’ house back then - and be too afraid to slip my key in the front door. I remember what it was like to gnaw at my nerves with the edge of my good sense, and I remember that I need to write, and I need to write right now. The thought becomes a song, and the song becomes catchy, and before I know it, I’m thinking, Write now. Right now. Write now. Right now. Write. Right: write. Write right. Now.
“Now,” I say to myself as I dig into my coroner’s bag and the girls leave the train. A flash of pride and a lightning bolt of inspiration beam through me when I find a notebook and a pen, and just as I’m about to begin the next great American novel, the train lurches to a halt. I have arrived at my stop.
It is 10:23 and my shift starts at eleven p.m. I quickly make a mental note of this and quietly file my thoughts away. All that exists now are myself, my pen, and my notebook. I need to surrender myself to the page. I need to write. I don’t know what I’ll write about. I don’t know if it’ll turn out any good. I don’t know if there’s any sense in what I’m doing, and I know for damn certain that there’s a chance I’ll lose track of time and write so much that I’ll miss my shift and even though management doesn’t care I have pride in my work no matter what it is I do for a living-
No. This has to stop. Now. “Now,” I command myself. “Write.”
So I do.
*As a steady stream of fun-chasing youths stroll into the subway car, the light from the platform seems muted and gray. Marisa Rubierno sits on the bench, watching these party-seekers as they step into a metal coffin and pack themselves in like sardines. She watches as their shiny new threads flash and gleam. Her eyes follow them as they are made brand new in this uptown speeding bullet. Like angels that have taken their fall in stride, they laugh, drowning out the sharp clamber of metal on metal, of hammers on nails, of an eternally blissful ignorance. Booze, laughter, tits, weed, cocks, blow, pussy - it’ll all be theirs for the taking, like a smorgasbord of scintillating sensuality set out on the city street. They need only to leave the purgatory of the platform, get their bodies on board the train, and ride it till their destination.
“It’s just too fucking much,” one girl says from the edge of the platform. The bodice of her little black dress is clinging to her hefty bosom as she absent-mindedly relates her thoughts to her girlfriends. “I mean, twenty dollars just to get into a club?” She throws her hands up in a gesture of futility.
The other two girls nod in earnest agreement.
“It’s a good thing we’re hot,” one of them chimes in as the last of their trio self-consciously checks her make-up. “That way, we don’t have to worry about money for drinks.”
A giggle frenzy ensues: high-boned cheeks accentuated by ventriloquist laughter. Each of the college-aged women is attempting to garner the attention of a handsome man wearing a black tailored suit, but the man is unimpressed. He looks away and removes his wedding ring, placing it in his pocket and pursing his lips before walking to the opposite side of the platform; he’s already made plans for tonight.
The women in little black dresses have already shifted their attention. They shamelessly adjust their pantyhose and inspect their cleavage, seemingly unaware that as they do so, their breasts threaten to spill over their dresses. Curly tendrils of light brown hair have been placed strategically along their temples and hairline to look “accidental.” Their eyebrows are meticulously crafted into hyper intensified Roman arches which frame their smoky eyelids and fake eyelashes. Clad all in black, they are wearing the universal uniform of girls on the town - yet beneath the mask of heavy make-up, their faces are malnourished and pale. From Marisa Rubierno’s perch on a nearby platform bench, they look like a bunch of widows. She hopes they’ll all chop off their pathetically pampered tresses, exchange their party wardrobe for ill-fitting frocks, and properly go into mourning. Someone should.
The 10:38 express train enters the station and the widows file in, hollow laughter following them. Marisa remains on the platform and inhales a heady mixture of flowers and smut - like the set of a pornographic movie where long-stemmed roses are used as props. If the 34th Street/Penn Station platform is a porno set, then it’s campy and melodramatic - like the ones on late-night cable. A wash of gray tints the people, making their faces look haggard in the fluorescent light. Faces look translucent and thin, paler than pus and just as sickly. Shadows make jaundiced zombies out of everyone by dropping like black veils on the facades of passengers. Beneath the tracks, the rats have fully accepted their roles as the vultures of subterranean New York City: they wait for an unsuspecting commuter to silently lose their footing and fall off the face of the earth.
There’s still half an hour to go before her shift starts at eleven o’clock, and Marisa is casually observing the nightlife commuters. There’s no point in climbing the steps to wander; her body is too tired to take her anywhere. At the age of twenty-three, she is well aware that she should be one of those souls unshackled from occupational obligation at the stroke of five o’clock every Friday evening - but this is simply not so. Her muscles ache and her mind is swimming. It’s Saturday, almost eleven o’clock - is she sure that she’s working at the office tonight? Or is she supposed to be bartending? Tomorrow she has English classes from nine a.m. till 3:30 in the afternoon. She knows for certain that she has a promotional gigs most Sunday nights. Is it possible to squeeze in a nap before she has to tout Coors light? And what about her dog? Will she walk him? Give him a bath? She’s been working too many shifts in order to pay her bills, and her grades are slipping. She hasn’t handed in any work for her English classes. Ever since her father came into her bedroom, crying jaggedly and speaking in short gasps, she hasn’t been able to tear her attention away from making money. She can’t let her parents live out on the street. She can’t-
Marisa shakes off her thoughts and sits on the platform bench, taking in the scene: mundane people doing mundane things in a mundane world. She calms herself at the thought of doing nothing - all anyone ever does is nothing, anyway - and settles into her seat. She loosens her mental grip on reality and forgets her problems. The opportunity to think without influence by budget or schedule is rare, and when Marisa lets her thoughts roam, all she wants is to tell the girl in her creative writing class to enjoy the steady flow of words while it still lasts. Preternatural gifts have the shelf-life of dairy products and are forgotten easily when yours is not the only mouth you have to feed. For now, she feels the need to say, make a life out of writing. Breathe verbs and dialogue and plot. Spend your free time - everyone but Marisa has free time - scribbling away in notebooks and spare pieces of scrap paper. Don’t hesitate to vomit your insides onto the page. Take advantage of your youth and your vitality. You’re only young once.
The thought makes Marisa wince as she stands to leave the train station. She’ll snake through the winding corridor of Penn Station before walking a quick two blocks to her job. As she’s passing people she’ll feel like her insides have been weighed and measured, like her skin has been stretched to cover parts of her personality, like she is hiding herself in her responsibilities.
But who can blame her?
She’s got to make a living, and who wants to hear about her problems anyway? There’s no time for the spilling of insides and the inspecting of problems. You have to move fast, do what you have to do, get results. No one wants to know why you’re not living up to the standard - they just want easy, cut-and-dry actions to react to.
In this nighttime metropolis, hum-drum existences fade into thumping bass lines as disk jockeys spin hits and responsibilities are not missed. The rent or mortgage has been paid on time, the credit card debt has been paid off, medical bills are moot, and school is a vague, happy memory. In the instant Marisa’s head pokes out from beneath the city streets and the manufactured brilliance of streetlights streams over her facade, she will assume her role as another passerby, another part of the whole. The stench of piss, dead rats, and half-eaten fast food will envelope her body. She will be just another slave to mediocre living, living within her means as opposed to living like she means it. And, just like every day, she will take it all in stride. This coming April is the first time she’ll be legally obligated to file her own taxes. One inevitability will be crossed off her list.
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