Reflections on a Year Since my Play

I’ve been talking on the phone almost every day with an old friend who lives across the country. She is someone who knows me so well it almost makes me cry every time we are on the phone together. How are you doing? We ask. It feels really exposing right now. The crazy thing is that that question is, in its essence, an exposing question. It makes sense that we would feel exposed answering that question. But before the crisis, the many many crises, I felt comfy in my armor, comfy in my whiteness, comfy in the ways I questioned my whiteness, comfy in my depression, comfy in my liberalism, comfy comfy comfy.

Facebook has reminded me that my play This Show Is About Progress opened the first week of September last year. My body had just been through a vibrant transition. My depression was under control. My diabetes was under control. I could see the way out of the darkness of isolation. I was finally eating for the betterment of my life. I felt like my actions had an actual effect in the greater world.

Over the last year the world has gone through tremendous loss after tremendous loss. Some of the losses feel new and some are so old and worn that it fills me with shame everyday. The people of my community, the theater nerds, are without a space to explore these losses, to grieve in the way we know how. We are without the space to make beauty out of the mountainous detritus that is life on this planet. How are you doing?

There have of course been and continue to be beautiful online performances by the bravest and most fastidious of us all. I am forever grateful to those of us who perform theater online even when it feels like screaming into the void. Screaming into the COVOID-19.

I am redoing my website, posting old essays that I like from a while ago now. I’m sorry if any of them are tone deaf. I’m trying my best to get a job to replace my lost income and to find perhaps a new way to be known.

After some struggles with my illness I am again eating for my betterment. I am teaching children which gives me some stability and gives me the shining eyes of the future of humanity. I am taking my medicine. I am finding ways to take actions that have effects in the greater world. I have been getting on the phone asking if people will vote in the election, how they will vote, etc. I talked to this 80 year old woman in Florida and she said Trump made her believe in reincarnation. She railed against him. She had had hip surgery and was unable to walk or leave the house but she assured me that she had everything figured out to get her ballot in the mail. She was determined. 

I’ve also been going on dates. I tell this story only to spark some modicum of hope. A boy with who I went on a date (who uses whom anymore?) told me that he had never voted once in his life. He was 29. He also told me that he worked in finance “for the money.” Do you like anything else about your job? I asked him. “I’m at this job for the money.” He told me. We were not a match if you can imagine. But he did tell me that, “I’m voting in this election.” Why? I asked. “Because I don’t want Trump.” He said. Like I said, a modicum.

It’s nowhere near enough to elect Kamala Harris as the first female Vice President, the first South Asian Vice President, the first Black Vice President to fix the deep gash that has been cut into fresh skin the last 4 years, the gash that has been reopened in the last 4 years, the gash that has been joined up with gashes already gushing for centuries. We are bleeding so much blood as a country. The blood is coming disproportionately from black and brown human people. Real blood. This is not a metaphor. It needs to stop.

Nothing will fix this gash. This terrible, long and winding gash. 45 didn’t start the cutting. He was handed the knife and he grasped it happily and he waved it around like he wasn’t standing in a room filled with our most vulnerable people. He was by the way. He waved a knife in a room filled with the most vulnerable people in our country. I guess this might technically be a metaphor but the bodies are real.

Vote, please vote babies. Vote, please vote. But do so much more. How are you doing? What are you doing? I love you. I MISS YOU. I miss seeing you randomly at a function or at a crosswalk. I miss kissing you. I miss asking if I could touch you and having you tell me that you don’t want me to touch you right now but having it be for a completely different reason. I MISS YOU. How are you? I can’t see you. I can’t see you. I love you. I MISS YOU.

My fabulous friend and stage manager Scofie sent a google hangout request a few weeks ago for the cast and crew to get together and hang out. A reunion. I forgot how truly wonderful it is to be backstage at a show. I know for sure that theater will never die because it is simply too fun to be backstage. It is simply too fun to be with the most charming people the world has to offer. I miss you. I will be seeing you backstage. Maybe not soon, but I will be seeing you again backstage.

Here are some highlights: Liza and Scofie are figuring out school for the little ones in their lives. Pods! Julia is engaged to the best dude. Thank you for all the help and the burritos, Kiki. Carolina has a job for you if you want to work for the county. They are hiring! We talked for a long time about cribbage. James has a theory that seemed to pan out about how to count the 15s in your hand. It had us all doing spoken word. Evan has a working air conditioner. That much is definitely true. Amerigo the dead cat will be making a wonderful cameo in a Christmas special. And Monika has started making earrings. I made her show them off 5 whole times as people came in and out of the chat. I was never bored. Here are some pictures I made her take this morning:

When Your Body Fails You

When your body fails you people will worry. People will worry about your safety and your sanity and your cervix and your spit ends. People will carry you even if you’ve tied yourself to the ground. But it’s like a metaphor right? “Where will they carry you if you’ve tied yourself to the ground?” You might ask. Well they won’t carry you anywhere specifically, mostly they’ll just stand there holding you in their arms in the middle of the street sometimes. The amount of time that people will stand there holding you, unsure of what to do, while you are tethered to the ground, because you have tethered yourself to the ground and they’re not the type of person who would put you down here in the middle of the street—It would surprise you how long they’ll hold you. Actually they won’t hold you that long. They’ll put you down to adjust their bag of groceries, or to open a door, or to pick out a wedgie. Well they won’t really do that. They won’t put you down because of that. They’ll put you down because you ask them to.

You’ll say, “What I really need right now is for you to put me down.”

And they’ll say, “Right here in the street?”

And you’ll say, “Yes. What I really need right now is for you to put me down right here.”

“In the street.”

“Right here in the street. Look at this rope. I tied myself to this…fire hydrant because fire hydrants are…yellow and yellow calms me down.”

And they’ll be like, “Okay, I mean, okay yeah you know your own body, and I shouldn’t treat you like a baby. You’re an adult and you can take care of yourself.”

And you’ll be like, “I can’t believe this person who claims to be my friend is doing the same thing that so many others have done before, tying me to a fire hydrant—I hate yellow—and leaving me in the street. If they could read my mind, if they were a real friend, they would know what I want them to do is cut the rope, carry me somewhere, and feed me Hershey’s chocolate sauce with a spoon,” But that’s all, you know, in your own brain.

And they’ll be like, “I’ll see you later right? At work or the bar or Sunday School or something?”

And then they leave cause you’re like, “I’d really like to be alone with this yellow.”

And then you curl your body around the fire hydrant and think about how cold works. How the metal in the hydrant is sucking the warmth out of you. Out of your breast right here, and out of your thigh right here. You start to feel the sucking feeling spreading, like it’s been injected into your veins. It’s like a frozen Jacuzzi and you slip in and sit down in it. You can feel the hydrant sucking at you all the way in the back of your spine. And then you think: I’m cold. If I can feel the sucking feeling in my tailbone, and at the back of my neck I must be cold. I think I’m too cold. What are you supposed to do when you’re too cold? Then you look down and you’re in a pool of your own piss. Oh no it’s sweat. Fuck I must have sweated a ton! Oh no, no it’s piss. Or is it sweat? You turn your head to look for the sun. It was just here. But you have trouble moving your head to where you want it to look and you think, “Bodies are heavy. Especially heads.” You think, “Heads are especially heavy.”

And then you think: I have a disease. What’s it called again? Diabetes, I’m sure of it. Something doesn’t feel right because I have a disease and I must have taken too much medication. That’s what is usually wrong with me when I feel like I’ve never felt before.

And then you think: I could die. Maybe I’m dying.

And you sit with that for a while, for longer than you would think you’d sit with that. The first thought of dying echoes in your head until you really hear it. And then you think, I should probably pull out everything in my fridge with sugar in it.

I always thought that Shelby was over-doing it in Steel Magnolias.

“Stop it, Mama, I have some candy in my purse.” She says.

Her mother responds with “No no no! You didn’t bring your purse, you didn’t bring your purse sweetheart.”

I identify with that moment a lot, that look on Shelby’s face when she realizes her mom is right. She was focused too much on life and her wedding that death and familial obligation crept in. It’s either she has her purse and there’s candy in it, or she is an invalid.

“If you don’t leave me alone I’m gonna leave.” She says at another moment shaking, covered in sweat, fighting for her life.

“Oh ho! I’d like to see you try. Cooperate please.” Her mother responds giggling to herself.

Sally Field is so heartless as her mom in that scene. She just laughs in her daughter’s face as she is having an insulin attack and then gossips about how she can’t have children over her head even after Shelby begs her with her little glass of orange juice in her hand: “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

But by the end you’re so into her. After her daughter is dead—spoiler alert: Shelby dies—there’s a part of you that thinks: Shelby should have stayed with her mama. Her mama’s the only one who really knows how to take care of her.

When your body fails you people will pull you in different directions. They’ll call into question the things you have believed about yourself for years, maybe your whole life. You’ll find yourself landing everyday somewhere between two extremes. Independence comes with the threat of death. Dependence comes with wiped bottoms and diaper rash, and Sally Field as your mother. Dependence might also come with asking for things, admitting to things. Independence comes with deniability. You have nothing to fear but the damage you can do to yourself. Independence comes with no one being able to see that damage. Dependence airs your dirty laundry to the world. That’s true of anyone. But when you’re sick and dependent, your dirty laundry also forces you into submission.

That’s the whole thesis of Shelby’s story in Steel Magnolias. She can’t stay with her mother, what she needs is someone to trust her and treat her like a human, but her independence is what ultimately kills her. That moment at the end when she’s leaving work for the last time and she gets a pain in her kidney, she’s in her scrubs, with her short hair, and you see her hand go to her side for a second. Her coworker asks her if she’s all right. That’s the moment, when she could have chosen dependence. Where the viewers at home believe she should have chosen dependence. But instead she leaves. And then she goes back to her house and goes into a coma. Sometimes independence comes with death. That is the risk you take when you’re alive.

When your body fails you you’ll scare people. You’ll start relating to characters in movies who serve to advance the emotional plot with their deaths: Shelby, Angel, Fantine, Guy Pearce’s incredibly sadistic wife in Memento. Life seems easy, you either make the mistake that kills you or you don’t. Like in scary movies when the stabber comes around and the victim runs up the stairs. It’s easy to think that you would never run up the stairs in that situation. But independence can manifest in mistakes, in wrestling with fate, in lying for hours on the sidewalk while the sun sets, pissing your pants.

A Gentle Hand and the Invisible Woman

It would be so nice to walk to the coffee shop with the blue door this morning. I said to myself as my hands dug deep into the pockets of my jean jacket. I had been en route to the coffee shop with the red door, the coffee shop who’s door had six tiny windows in it and who’s proprietor had suggested that I listen to a podcast which I was now deeply in love with. She was a thin woman with big shining eyes and straight, but frizzy hair. She liked cash. I had cash in my pocket that I had planned to give her. I peered up at the blue sky and tried to gauge if it would rain. My head was uncovered and my hair was done and my ass looked good and my bra was the one that actually fit me and my shoes were the black boots that sounded like a slow, firm clap coming up the street.

I was approaching a church that, like most churches, was deserted on a weekday morning, and it had this window that stretched all along one side—very Frank Lloyd Wright—the perfect place to strut around and look at yourself like a 4 year old. Clap, clap, clap, my boots said. My reflection came into view. I looked good. I pranced a little. I maybe turned around once or twice to look contemplatively at the back of me and to agree with whatever information I found there. Wait let me just check again that I agree. I thought. Yes. I do. I squinted up again, still blue. The decision was made and the black boots clapped their way around the next corner.

I was off course. The first time I walked from my house to the coffee shop with the blue door Google Maps had given me a streamlined, topographical line to follow that took me through an alleyway for two blocks. I loved walking up this alleyway because it made me feel like a local, like a woman who’s sure of herself. Having never lived in any apartment or shared house for more than two years I was giddy with excitement every time my life brought me into contact with local secrets. Every time I noticed the children in one house had left their dolls out under the same tree they had the week before, or during the holidays when the decorations went up I pondered them like a local who could have strong opinions either one way or another.

The door at the coffee shop with the blue door is painted a powder blue and has a large window set inside it. You can see all the way into this coffee shop from the sidewalk outside. You can see the counter and the door to the bathroom and the tops of the heads of the people sitting in the reading nook and all of the many singular people sitting at tables working.

“Americans are always working.” I said to a strange man one afternoon who I agreed to meet because we matched on Tinder. We were talking inexplicably about the coffee shop with the blue door. I hadn’t brought it up, though I think about that coffee shop often and had maybe conjured it through telekinesis from his infinite well of memory.

“That’s what it felt like in this coffee shop!” He had said, “I couldn’t believe it. It was just row after row of people on their computers or with papers all around them, like they were guarding against something. It was quiet, like silent.” I had asked him to meet me at a coffee shop in Fremont called Espresso to Go. I can’t remember what color the door was because it was always open. He had arrived late and was palpably disappointed that I had already bought a coffee. I think it was because there was an inherent vulnerability in him. He walked around like a huge bruise, bumping into things.

“That sounds eerie.” I had said. I had thought for a moment of what might be the perfect word to use in this context. I had decided on eerie.

“The coffee shop is one of the only public spaces Americans have to interact in a real way anymore. I mean, standing there I was like immediately hit with this sadness. All these beings just separated by their own fear. Eerie is right.” He sipped an 8 oz Americano and I felt decidedly less than as I waited for my huge 12 oz Americano to cool down. He was a seer and a doer and I was a pussy. And his tiny coffee told me so.

I was too ashamed to admit that I enjoyed the silence in the coffee shop with the blue door. I went there for the collective silence, the pulsing of the many bodies and the agreement we had all made to concentrate, or distract ourselves together. No one was asking for attention. The baristas were on call if needed and when you did need them they were so gentle. Each of the paper cups they used had a little cloud on it with a hand coming down from the little cloud. I really liked that coffee shop.

“Bummer.” I said to the strange man. I tried to sip my coffee. It was too hot. I returned it to my lap.

It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that I frequented a coffee shop that was a 22 minute walk from my house only because I enjoyed the silence I found there. There was also a thing that had happened to me recently while I was there one weekend morning. A Saturday. I had been wearing a crop top and had my hair neatly braided in a crown braid. A gentle barista had spoken to me while brewing my Americano in a cup adorned by a cloud.

“I like your earrings.” He had said. Like there was nothing sexual about it. Or no. He had said it like there was nothing wrong with there being something sexual about it. You’re a woman. I’m a gentle, cloudy man. Let’s get together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“Thank you.” I had said, instantly ashamed and possibly showing the bud of a red flower growing in my cheeks. I had looked at him but had hidden much. I think I was flirting but it’s hard to pin that kind of thing down. Sometimes when I find myself in the problematically enviable position of having at least a modicum of a man’s sexual attention, it feels quite surprising. Like I’m a mermaid minding my own business swimming with the fishes and then suddenly I see one of the fishes has a knife. Or it’s as if I’m a prisoner attempting escape in the middle of the night. It’s 2am and all is going according to plan. I’m sneaking across the yard to the next fence when the spotlight shines blindingly on me. The guards hand me a microphone and ask me if I know any Neil Diamond songs. I don’t. That day at the coffee shop with the blue door I had the feeling that you get when you stare at a dish on the wall for a long time, admiring the intricate patterns painted there when out of the patterns emerges the image of a face with closed eyes and a closed mouth. I had the feeling you get when you stare at a face on a dish for a long time and then suddenly the eyes open and they look right at you.

“Did you make them?” The dish asked, gently smiling. “I’ve been seeing people wearing those kind of face earrings around lately. They’re really cool.”

“They are super cheap on Amazon right now.” I said to the gentle barista in a way that made me think of him as a bad little boy. Hidden in my words had been these other words: I don’t play your little games…

“Oh that makes me really mad actually.” He said. I said nothing in return. I felt small and bad in my own way now. I’m a bad little girl who shops on Amazon aren’t I? My eyes said as I picked up my cup and walked back to the reading nook. He watched me. I think he watched me.

“That’s where our sense of rage comes from.” The strange man said as we sat outside at Espresso to Go, a hint of that rage present in his voice. “I’d just like to know how long it will go on like this. There’s a veritable end point that I don’t like to think of. Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Like to think of the end point of humanity?” He was looking deeply into my eyes at this point. At Espresso to Go you sit outside in two wooden cinema chairs side by side. You can also sit inside if the one table inside is free, or you can just take that shit to go. We were sitting outside side by side and he was looking deeply into my eyes. It seemed to me somewhat of a waste of energy to be turning so severely just to look into my eyes. But to each their own. “Some people do you know.”

“I guess I do think about it. I don’t think I like it, but I kind of can’t help it. Stories are meant to run their course. It feels like they will accomplish this by any means necessary.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, as soon as you think of the beginning of a story its like you’re at the end already. That’s the way with the history of humanity. It’s only a matter of time.”

“But you’re inventing the way to get there.”

“Sort of. Have you ever just like, found a story inside you?” I said, “A story that’s been there like, the whole time? It almost feels like you didn’t even write it?”

“I’ve always found when I strip it all away I’m a blank slate.” He continued to look deeply into my eyes.

“I think I’ve always felt like a crumpled up piece of paper. But it’s like a blank piece of paper.” I said. This whole time he’d been staring into my eyes in a way that made me feel nervous. I had the feeling that if I were more comfortable—if I could just will myself to be—I might have found it sexy. If I could have just willed the comfort into being, but the only thing that came into my mind when I thought of willing the comfort into being was creating a kind of mind-powered exoskeleton that leaked out of my brain and covered me, protecting me from everything, and I would just sit there as the whole world faded away, every sound, every beat of a butterfly’s wings…

“I find my microdosing has really helped me with my anger.” He said. “And my runaway lusting after women I can’t have.”

“Oh yeah?” I said.

“Yeah. Like right now. I’m just here. With you.”

“Cool. That sounds relaxing.” I said. I checked my coffee. I found it cool enough to drink. So I drank some.

My black boots clapped up the sidewalk. And my face came into contact with the air flowing down the local alleyway. I was halfway to the coffee shop with the blue door. I turned and stood in the air current taking in the natural and fabricated beauty surrounding the opening, the little pebbles in the pavement, the wooden fences, the well-maintained, craggy exteriors of the expensive houses lining the alleyway, every crag hiding another adorable door. I clapped up the alleyway feeling separate but also close to the inhabitants of these houses. I was in their space but they couldn’t see me, just the way I like it, the invisible woman.