Chapter 7
I end up watching Arnie sort of regularly. It becomes an unspoken agreement that I’m Chris’s go-to dogsitter. My time with
Arnie ends up being one of the highlights of my summer, maybe even the highlight, not that I’d admit it to Chris. There are some other bright spots too, but I never remember them in the morning
the same way. The experiences don’t stick between my toes like being with Arnie does.
By the time Labor Day rolls around, I’m kind of wishing that Chris and Olivia would just stay in the Hamptons forever. I’ve
started sleeping in Chris’s bed when I stay over, not the spare. I’m not trying to roll around in his scent or anything; it’s
just a Tempur-Pedic mattress and I like the way it holds my shape and shows me the indents I make in the world.
I haven’t lost my populist soul, no risk of that, but I really don’t mind playing with privilege for the weekend, using the
bougie espresso maker and having a quiet place to crash without Tara mumbling lines in her sleep and Hal banging things around
in the living room for her latest product invention.
I wouldn’t want this life for good, but it’s fun to put on the costume and ridicule the rich from the inside.
I understand more why Hal was dating that trust fund girl, though they’ve broken up now.
Hopefully Jenni catches the hint and splits from Peter too, but it’s not looking promising from how things are going. Her autonomy is fading by the day.
On my last weekend watching Arnie, I return Chris’s spare key. I’ve made a copy of it just in case I ever need it. I don’t
tell him about that, no need, but I just thank him for employing me. “It’s been better than expected,” I tell him. “I wish
you bad luck with nothing.” It’s a less mawkish way of wishing him good luck with everything.
“Well, it’s not goodbye,” Chris says, looking caught off guard. “There might be some weekends in the fall that I’m out of
town that I might see if you can come by. Arnie has really grown fond of you, I can tell.”
I know Chris means that he’s grown fond of me too, but I don’t ask him to say that explicitly. It’s easy enough to interpret.
Opening night for Tara’s show arrives a little bit after that, sometime in early fall when the city has finally shed the humidity
because it was too clingy. I can relate to that.
While Hal, Jenni, and I are getting ready at the Inn before heading out, Hal barges in on me in the bathroom and flicks on
the lights.
“Hello there,” I say from the toilet.
Hal shrieks. “EJ, why the fuck do you always pee in the dark?” she says, like I’m the one with poor manners here.
“I like to conserve electricity,” I say. “Now you’re welcome to hang out in here with me, but FYI, the aroma might not be
divine. I’m ejecting last night’s Thai dinner.”
“Unbelievable.” Hal makes a face and exits the bathroom, turning the lights off as she goes. “And hurry up, we need to leave
in five,” she calls back to me.
Moments later, Jenni bangs on the door. “EJ, hurry up, I need to fix my makeup.”
“You don’t need makeup,” I yell back to her as I adorn my own face with glittery eyeshadow while sitting on the toilet. It’s
peak multitasking, and I have the muscle memory down so well that I don’t even need to look in the mirror.
After a bit more ruckus and revelry, we head over early to the Metropolitan Playhouse in Alphabet City to warm up the audience
for Tara’s show.
Audiences are such malleable things. They hardly ever have an opinion of their own; they just react however the person next
to them is reacting. The key is to have enough enthusiasts in the crowd that the applause catches on like wildfire until everyone
believes it’s the best thing they’ve ever seen.
The three of us split up and find our seats. We’re all in different sections to spread out the euphoric reactions across the
crowd so they don’t seem manufactured. I plunk down toward the front and start feeling secondhand nerves for Tara. She’s got
to be freaking out backstage right now, all those self-doubts flapping around inside her.
I try to picture what I’d be feeling if I were about to go out there and perform. It makes me itchy and sweaty at the same
time, or maybe that’s just the sound of the too-loud piano that’s playing in the background while people are taking their
seats. Either way, I’m reminded why I’m meant to be the writer, not the actor. I want to give life to it all without the responsibility
of having to deliver every line just right. I’m not enough of a perfectionist to enjoy that.
Sitting there in the sold-out theater inspires me to put more time into writing, to earn my own moment to shine.
I vow to go straight home after the show and stay up all night working on a script so it can be performed in a place like this.
But even as I think the thoughts, I know they’re flimsy.
I know I’ll be out at the after-party until morning or noon and then dip into a fidgety sleep the moment I get back.
It’s kind of disappointing to admit that, but it’s also validating that I’m living such a liberated life that I don’t have anything to prove to anyone.
That damn piano finally stops and the theater falls quiet. It’s that delicious liminal space before everything starts. I take
a swig of the vodka I’ve snuck in and prepare to rally the crowd.
But as it turns out, Hal, Jenni, and I aren’t needed at all. Tara slays the first song. Her voice doesn’t shake and she hits
every note. But the second song is a blazing dream. She loosens up and pours every last drop of herself into the empty containers
of our bodies until we overflow.
That’s the power of art: how it can turn secondhand experience into firsthand experience, dissolve all the walls between the
past, present, and future until you wonder how your eyes ever saw them as separate at all.
When Tara finishes, there’s this pause and I can feel her wondering if she flopped because no one’s clapping. But it’s just
that we all needed a second to catch our breath after she rocked us like that, threw us from our safe little lifeboats into
the churning seas, soaking us with water, with salt, with soul. Suddenly the whole place is alive in that way that makes you
realize how dead it was before, how dead you were before.
The lead comes on next and performs something, but it falls flat next to Tara’s solo and the whole theater feels it. This
woman with coiffed white hair and jangly pearls who’s sitting next to me grumbles about it to her husband. “That’s racism
right there,” she says. “The Black girl should’ve gotten the lead; there’s no justifying that.”
I swell with pride and ask the woman if she can say it again while my phone is recording so I can play it back to Tara later.
The woman looks offended and scared too, like I’m trying to catch her, cancel her.
I explain that I’m Tara’s best friend and that I really don’t have a higher motive than that.
But that doesn’t help; she stays tight-lipped and tight-eyed the rest of the play.
Next time I’ll just record the whole thing without telling anyone.
People only speak the truth when they don’t think anyone is listening.
When the cast comes out at the end, I spring to my feet for a standing ovation, but I’m not even the first one up. The whole
crowd is clapping and they’re swaying too, which is the real sign of success in showbiz—if the performance seeps into people’s
essences, beyond their muscles and bones and bodily organs, and gets them moving to some imaginary beat that’s truer than
any reality.
I meet back up with Hal and Jenni. Peter’s there too. Apparently Jenni invited him, but I’m in too good of a mood to let that
fester in me. I just plow my way backstage and tackle Tara in a massive hug.
Her makeup is all smeared like she’s been crying tears of joy, and I feel that shot of pinch-me-is-this-real-life because
here we are in fucking New York City and my best friend is making it as an actor despite all the gatekeeper bullshit she’s
had to break through. Sometimes the improbability of the odds is the most empowering feeling, knowing how you defied the statistics
just by being born and now are defying them on a whole other level by thriving with the best friends in the brightest city
of them all.
In the movies, this is where the big break comes and the no-name person gets instantly famous. But things don’t happen like
that in real life. That doesn’t make it any less incredible, though. It just means we soak up this night even more fully because
we know it’s not about to become the norm.
The after-party is at a loft in Bed-Stuy, grungy and crowded.
We enjoy the party games and ride the euphoria all the way to the top and then higher, giggling in unison as the world shifts around us, reminding us that we’re the epicenter of it all.
We get emotional in that ethereal way and it feels like the good old times again, the glory days of the Redstockings before Lilly moved back to Oregon and before Jenni started ditching us for Peter and before Hal and Tara were too busy chasing their dreams to join me in choosing this dream.
“I don’t tell you enough how much I cherish you,” Hal coos, draping her arms around Tara and me. “I wish we could just freeze
time right here.”
“Same,” Tara says. “But impermanence is the only thing we can count on.”
“Permanence and impermanence can coexist, though,” Jenni muses, her photographer’s eye seeping through. “The permanence of
our friendship and the impermanence of the exact arrangement of our friendship in this particular moment. They’re not mutually
exclusive.”
“Hope not,” Tara says. “I never ever want to lose any of you. Success means nothing without soulmates to eat pizza with at
3 a.m.”
“You’re the great loves of my life,” I say, my affection bleeding out as I sponge it all up, hoping this moment might stretch
longer.
It doesn’t. Tara is recruited for photo booth pictures with the cast, Jenni peels off with Peter, and Hal reigns over a new
ring of admirers. I glide around the party trying to fall in love with someone or everyone, but there’s this fake aura following
me that I can’t shake. Anxiety clenches. It feels like I’m stuck or something. It’s probably from the energy of the cast.
They’re so keyed up and focused on themselves that they can’t let anyone else into their sphere. But there’s a part of me
that has this horrible feeling that I’m the stuck one. Last year I would’ve fallen in love with five of these people on the
spot, but now things just aren’t flowing.
I have a couple drinks to try to loosen up, but that just makes it worse.
I get paranoid that everyone is looking at me and wondering why I’m here, like I didn’t earn it the way they did.
Everything starts sinking at different speeds, and it’s hard to stay on the ramp.
All I want is to get outside and flap my way over to Tribeca and curl up with Arnie on Chris’s couch, but they wouldn’t want me.
They’d tell me I don’t belong there either.
So I stop thinking about that and just keep willing myself higher, up into the lights that might point me toward love or pull
me into it.
The next morning I stumble home from somewhere in the East Village. I tell myself that this is good, that the world is in
its natural order again. I’m doing the walk of pride back to Bushwick just like usual, but it doesn’t comfort me much. I don’t
feel well at all, probably just the side effect of mixing too much and sleeping too little, but everything aches. Not the
type of ache that has a clear origin, an easy fix. The kind that sprawls everywhere, plugging up my pores from the inside
out, making me cynical about everything except my own cynicism.