Chapter 8
As the autumn days wiggle along, the slump wears off, but there’s still that lingering guilt that I’m not writing enough,
that I should be creating stuff and seeing people applaud it in theaters. It’s not like the applause is the motivator. I want
it for intrinsic reasons, but I’m not going to tell people to stop applauding if they want to. It’s hard, though, because
the only creativity I’ve got right now is how to find new ways to procrastinate.
One October afternoon, I bring my laptop to Kora’s. It’s my favorite neighborhood coffee shop. The walls are dotted with art
by local painters and there are pool tables to play at, or you can just grab a stick and poke someone for the fun of it.
I plop down in one of the antique armchairs in the corner and dabble with some concepts for a script. I sort of feel like
Hal, with so many ideas I don’t know which one to pursue. I make myself work for a long stretch before I go up for another
coffee. It’s an act of frugality as well as bribery, but it doesn’t work. I keep slamming against a wall, deleting one first
page after another because I don’t even want them sitting on my desktop polluting the energy.
It might sound like I don’t have a good work ethic, but it’s not that; it’s just that I set a very high bar for myself. A
lot of people go around submitting things they vomited onto the page. Not me. I won’t submit any of my work until it impresses
me, and I guess I must have a more refined eye for quality than most.
Chris asks me to dogsit again. He and Olivia are headed to the Hudson Valley to see the foliage.
I try to disguise my snort as a sneeze when he tells me that. I mean, I don’t try that hard; I don’t mind if he knows I think
it’s ridiculous, the whole leaf-peeping craze, this obsession with colors. Why should trees get all this praise for being
different colors when people are punished for it, murdered for it?
Chris asks what I have against foliage and I tell him that people shouldn’t focus on color because it fosters subliminal racism.
He listens to my argument, disagrees. “I think we should admire the foliage in humans as much as we do in nature.”
I’ve got to say it’s a pretty good answer, and it almost makes me wonder if I’ve been seeing things wrong. I don’t think I
have been, but I just didn’t expect something like that from Chris.
“What woke podcasts have you been listening to?”
“No podcasts,” he says. “But I learn more from you than any show.”
If it were anyone else, I’d think he was giving me some line so I’d take off my clothes, but Chris doesn’t have game like
that, and I also don’t think he’s preoccupied with seeing me naked. It’s kind of a shame but also flattering in its own way,
that he likes me for other reasons.
“That’s good, but you can’t just sit back and listen to my genius,” I say. “You’ve got to get out on the streets, use your
own voice and be heard. You should come with me to a women’s march. I think there’s one next week in Fort Greene.”
He says marches make him nervous. “The potential for violence.”
“Well, how do you think people of color and women and gays feel every time they step outside? Being nervous is the norm. You do realize how much privilege you have to be able to feel safe on a daily basis, don’t you?”
He clams up after that, goes into OCD mode checking everything before he leaves. He puts out only three lists this time, not
ten, but he still seems stressed that I’m going to screw something up. I don’t get offended by that anymore; I know that’s
his issue, not mine.
After he heads out, Arnie and I troll around town, walking down the West Side Highway bike path. It’s on Chris’s list of places
not to take Arnie, but I don’t believe in coddling. Arnie’s got to learn about the world sometime.
The cyclists go whizzing by, ringing their silly little bells as if that’s going to intimidate us, get us to move. This one
guy screams at me, “Get the fuck out of the bike lane, you fucking idiot!” to which I call out, “And a very merry evening
to you, kind sir!”
Arnie gives a friendly bark too, which multiplies the man’s fury, and it’s all great fun. I’m cracking myself up with our
antics, but I do make sure Arnie’s walking off on the side over in the bushes so if one of the cyclists really does have the
balls to take me out, Arnie won’t get hurt in the process; he’ll be there to avenge my murder.
Later that night, I’m scrolling through social media when I see a whole carousel of baby shower photos from my sister, all
pastels and princess aesthetics. It’s a girl, if I forgot to mention that, so naturally they’re indoctrinating her into every
gender stereotype before she even takes her first breath.
My sister’s Instagram stories are packed with videos of the nursery (ten shades of pink—surprise, surprise) and updates about
how they’re expecting the baby any day now. She’s already made the baby her entire personality and it’s not even here yet.
I don’t usually watch my sister’s Instagram stories. I wonder if she’ll notice that I did, or if she’ll even care.
A week or a month ago, I’d texted her to say I wouldn’t be able to go to the shower, and she’d replied, Yeah, I figured, which actually felt worse than the much longer, much more impassioned voice note that my mom left.
(Having a full voicemail box was a nice reprieve before my mom figured out the voice note function.)
I had told my mom that work was busy and I was already planning to come for Christmas, so I could only add an additional trip
if my flight was paid for. That sent her into a spiral about how I’m thirty years old (not true—still twenty-nine) living
in the most expensive city in the world (not true—that’s Zurich) and that if I valued my family at all, I would find a way
to be there for the shower and the birth. It was all very fitting of the dysfunctional family trope with me cast as the big-city
villain once again, surprise, surprise.
Being with Arnie puts me in a good mood now, and I’m struck with the spontaneous desire to leave my mom a voice note of my
own.
I tap the Record button and tell her that I hope the shower was great and that all goes well with the delivery and that I’ll
look forward to seeing the baby over the holidays. I don’t say the “I love you” part aloud, but I imply it with my tone, and
it’s really a very sweet message that is sure to disarm her. She’ll probably vent afterward to my dad, tell him I’m trying
to butter them up for money, and my dad will say that if he had any extra money, it would go toward Lions football tickets,
not his blue-blooded rebel daughter.
The family stuff makes my legs feel restless, so I decide to go out and explore the Tribeca scene. Arnie’s napping and I’m
not too fond of sitting alone with myself, so I get ready to go out. I find a blazer in Chris’s closet and put it on. It’s
more formal menswear than anything I’ve worn before. It’s not like I’m picturing how his body has touched exactly where my
body is touching now; I just want to experiment with a new style. When in Rome and all that.
Walking through the cobblestone streets, I pass all these swanky bars with twenty-four-dollar cocktails, what a deal.
Finally I find a dive bar on Chambers Street.
The Patriot Saloon, it’s called. It stands out like a sore thumb, which would usually be a good thing, but not here.
The Patriarchy Saloon would be a more fitting name as I can basically smell the misogyny drifting out.
I walk inside for a better look. It’s a total filth show. Country music belches out from all sides and it’s almost like I’m
back in Michigan, all these men reigning supreme, most of them in their suits and ties, rich but miserable, wishing they’d
been born rednecks instead, wondering if it’s too late to jump ship.
Hanging from the ceiling, rusty chandeliers are draped in bras and thongs. Men must’ve flung them up there over the years,
trophies from their sexual conquests since guys are worshiped for sleeping around while women are ostracized for it.
I get the feeling that one day perhaps I’ll return here to set this place on fire so “arsonist” can be added to my epitaph.
I could do it tonight, but I really just want to get back to Arnie.
I’m not going to roll over without doing anything, though. That would make me complicit. So I go up to the bartender, this
bearded guy with a fleshy belly and a sleeveless tank that he probably calls a wifebeater because he doesn’t see any kind
of problem with normalizing violence against women. He fingers me with his eyes and pours me a beer from the tap though I
didn’t ask for one. I ask if the manager is here and he says nope but anything I need he can take care of.
I throw my sharpest rant on him, but it hardly seems to hit him. He looks at me like I’m a little kitten or something, so
I just go over to one of the only other women in the place.
“Let’s get out of this hellhole,” I say to her. “Dismantle misogyny one unpaid tab at a time.”
She snarls at me, says she’s here because she wants to be, then calls me a bitch and says to get the fuck out of her face.
It just shows that you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. This gets me thinking about my sister and my ex-friend
Lilly, as well as Jenni, who hasn’t fully gone to the dark side yet.
I text Jenni as I leave to see if she wants to get high this weekend, just the two of us.
She gets back a few minutes later, says that’s so sweet of me to ask but she actually already has plans with Peter.
She doesn’t say what the plans are, which is how I know it’s total bullshit.
They’re probably just staying in bed all weekend, watching Netflix and popping each other’s back pimples, how romantic.
It makes me lonely for a second before I remember I don’t get lonely. I decide I’ll pour the extra time into writing instead.
It’s about time to finally see one of my plays through to the finish line.