It Chooses You

  Domingo walked us back to our car. We thanked each other many times. It was unclear why we were so thankful — it had to have been for totally different reasons, or maybe just the shared high of communion. I found myself paying him a little bit more than everyone else, as if this would somehow level things out. Because of all the people I had met, Domingo was certainly the poorest. Not the saddest, not the most hopeless, but the person whom I felt most creepily privileged around. We drove home, in my Prius. If I interacted only with people like me, then I’d feel normal again, un-creepy. Which didn’t seem right either. So I decided that it was okay to feel creepy, it was appropriate, because I was a little creepy. But to feel only this way would be a terrible mistake, because there were a million other things to notice.

  All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life — where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it. Domingo was compulsive and free-floating, seemingly unashamed, and his insides, his dreams, were taped to the walls. That night Brigitte sent me the day’s photographs; I looked through all of them, in case there were things that I had missed by actually being there. I studied a picture of Domingo’s calendar. “Today is my birthday,” read one square. “I’m 45 years old, an old man.” I imagined that being forty-five seemed totally implausible to him, given that he had no wife, no babies, no job, none of the trappings of time as they are described to all of us.

  I clicked through all the pictures Brigitte had taken so far. What was looking for? I supposed I was looking for calendars. More pictures of calendars. And there they were. Everyone had them, and they were all hardworking calendars. They seemed weirdly compulsive for a moment, as if I’d stumbled on a group of calendar fanatics, and then I remembered that we all used to have these, until very, very recently. We all laid our intricately handwritten lives across the grid and then put it on the wall for everyone to see. For a split second I could feel the way things were, the way time itself used to feel, before computers.

  Trying to see things that are invisible but nearby has always been alluring to me. It feels like a real cause, something to fight for, and yet so abstract that the fight has to be similarly subtle. When I was in my early twenties, making performances and fanzines and trying to conceive of myself as a filmmaker, I felt certain that this task was harder not simply because there were so few movies made by women, but because this felt normal, even to me. So I set out to make myself able to feel the absence of these movies made by women. I interviewed teenage girls and busy mothers and old women on the streets of Portland, stopping them and asking, “If you could make a movie, what would it be about?” I compiled their answers and portraits into a poster called “The Missing Movie Report.” Some of the answers were interesting, most weren’t. But was I feeling the absence now? Now that I’d called upon them, were these unmade movies changing me, like ghosts? The results of the report were inconclusive.

  It was a similarly annoying question, but I doggedly asked each PennySaver seller if they used a computer. They mostly didn’t, and though they had a lot to say about other things, they didn’t have much to say about this, this absence. I began to feel that I was asking the question just to remind myself that I was in a place where computers didn’t really matter, just to prompt my appreciation for this. As if I feared that the scope of what I could feel and imagine was being quietly limited by the world within a world, the internet. The things outside of the web were becoming further from me, and everything inside it seemed piercingly relevant. The blogs of strangers had to be read daily, and people nearby who had no web presence were becoming almost cartoonlike, as if they were missing a dimension.

  I don’t mean that I really thought this, out loud; it was just happening, like time, like geography. The web seemed so inherently endless that it didn’t occur to me what wasn’t there. My appetite for pictures and videos and news and music was so gigantic now that if something was shrinking, something immeasurable, how would I notice? It’s not that my life before the internet was so wildly diverse — but there was only one world and it really did have every single thing in it. Domingo’s blog was one of the best I’ve ever read, but I had to drive to him to get it, he had to tell it to me with his whole self, and there was no easy way to search for him. He could be found only accidentally.

  Scientifically, my interviews were pretty feeble, as questionable as “The Missing Movie Report,” but one day soon there would be no more computerless people in Los Angeles and this exercise wouldn’t be possible. Most of life is offline, and I think it always will be; eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it’s not impossible to imagine losing my appetite for those things; they aren’t always easy, and they take so much time. In twenty years I’d be interviewing air and water and heat just to remember they mattered.

  DINA

  —

  CONAIR HAIR DRYER

  $5

  —

  SUN VALLEY

  —

  Sun Valley was familiar to me; earlier that year I’d worked with a fabricator based there who helped me make a series of sculptures. I had driven through the area a couple times a week, but always with my mind on myself and always in a hurry — the car is so hard to stop once it gets going. Now I noticed that lots of other things were manufactured in Sun Valley too, giant props for movies and enormous metal beams. Big things were also destroyed and recycled here, like cars and appliances. And as I walked toward Dina’s house I suddenly became aware of the largest of all the large things, the Verdugo Mountains. Sun Valley lived in their shadow. I wondered how I’d missed those all the other times I’d driven through here, and I felt like I was probably a better person now — a woman who wasn’t interested only in her own internal landscape. I might never finish the script, and the world would be none the worse for that. Most likely I would go into one of the helping professions, maybe become a secular, married nun.

  We clattered into a fenced-in lot filled with rows of movable-looking houses forming carless streets. The community had a tidy FEMA quality to it. It wasn’t depressing, but only because it was so new; like new Tupperware, it would become old immediately. Dina and her daughter Lenette had just moved in and were thrilled to be there. It was a brand-new life and a good time to get rid of things.

  Miranda: So it works?

  Dina: Oh, it works. It works.

  Miranda: And how long have you had this hair dryer?

  Dina: Oh, the hair dryer I’ve had for a long time, a long time. Since junior high or high school at least, so that’s been many years. But it has issues.

  Miranda: You have it here?

  Dina: Yeah, I do have it.

  Miranda: Could you get it?

  Dina: Want me to get it now? Okay. It’s not bad for being that old.

  Dina left and came back with a very old hair dryer.

  Miranda: Yeah, that is actually not a modern dryer.

  Dina: No, it’s not, but still — it’s got the cold button, the cool button.

  Miranda: So you got it in junior high or high school — do you actually remember getting it?

  Dina: I remember using it. I think my mom bought it. Yeah, I remember using it. We used to do hairspray.

  Miranda: Do you have pictures from back then?

  Dina: No.

  I wanted to see how she had become the mysterious woman she was. Her large, freckled body was decorated with tattoos and piercings, and her painted eyebrows only loosely referenced real eyebrows — they were the color of wine. She wore a hot-pink cell-phone earpiece like it was jewelry, and a picture of Popeye scowled on her T-shirt. I didn’t know if she was older or younger than me, or maybe she was a new age, one that didn’t involve numbers.

  Dina: You know what — wait a minute. I do have a scrapbook. I can show it to you.

  Miranda: That’d be great. I’d love that.

  She opened a closet and bumped around in there for a while, talking out loud to the scrapbook, asking it where i
t was at. Finally it revealed itself and she carried it over, shaking her head.

  Dina: This scrapbook is looking bad, huh?

  Miranda: It’s the real thing.

  Dina: Yeah, this is the original. Look at that! Look at that! Very creative — I took them out of the magazines.

  Teenage Dina had glued magazine pictures of black women into the scrapbook — they were her pretend sisters. It seemed everyone I met had an imaginary paper family. Dina smoothed the face of the model and deciphered her own bubble handwriting.

  Dina: “Wish, wish, wish upon a star for sisters.” Isn’t that something else? But if I remember correctly, the best sister is on the next page. I even named them.

  Miranda: Right. So this is Sharon and that’s Linda. “I want my best, truly sister. I really mean she is always my sister. She loves me too.”

  Dina: That’s pretty deep.

  As Dina talked about her family I studied the living room. It didn’t have the layers of living that I was used to drawing my questions from. Most of the furniture looked as temporary as the house, designed for dorm rooms.

  Miranda: How’s the inflatable couch?

  Dina: That’s awesome. We haven’t put it to the test yet, but that thing can hold… it’s a queen size. It’s five-in-one, actually.

  Miranda: It turns into a bed.

  Dina: Yeah. It’s five-in-one.

  Miranda: So a couch, a bed… that’s two.

  Dina: I forget.

  Miranda: Maybe it floats, so it’s a boat — that’s three.

  Dina: It does look like one, huh? And you know the good thing — it can hold up to six hundred pounds. Seriously, it can hold a lot of weight, so that’s good. I like different things, you know what I mean? I like that.

  Finally I realized Dina herself was the most intricate, storied thing in the house. Her size might have been intimidating, but her decorations were a clear invitation.

  Miranda: Tell me about your amazing face — your piercings and stuff. When did you get into that?

  Dina: I just like decorating the body, even though we shouldn’t — okay, we know that. The thing is, I love decoration. I like art. So why not?

  Miranda: Can you do anything special with your tongue piercing?

  Dina: Yeah, you can. You’re gonna take me there?

  Miranda: I’m curious.

  Dina: I don’t know if I should say this.

  Miranda: You totally can.

  Dina: Actually, when I got older, I started getting curious, so I — I’m blushing now. I’m gonna say it. Oral sex, yes. This will put a really good spice to it. I called the shop way before I got this done, and they actually had vibrating ones.

  Miranda: No way.

  Dina: Yes way. So I was like, “Wait a minute! That sounds awesome for me, in my book!”

  Miranda: So has that been put to the test?

  Dina: It’s too soon.

  Miranda: Because it’s still healing?

  Dina: Yeah, still healing. I’m waiting for that.

  Miranda: And do you have a partner?

  Dina: Well, not really, but their dad, you know. He’s an iffy-sometimes person, but yeah. He would be a candidate.

  Miranda: And what is this tattoo?

  Dina: Oh, that’s the kids’ father. I didn’t do my homework and I didn’t know how much it would cost to laser off his name. So what did I do? I put “RIP” underneath it — “Rest in Peace.” He kept hearing I took it off, and then when I saw him again, I showed him. That surprised him. I said, “Well, at least I didn’t put ‘RIH’” — like “Rest in Hell,” you know what I’m saying?

  Miranda: Oh, right — that’s true. You said “Rest in Peace.”

  Dina: I was just trying to tell him, you know, break it down. Because when you’re done, you’re done. You may go back to the people, whatever, but you’re done. I wanna get one that says, “Respect the Queen,” on my back, by my skirt line. That’s next.

  I asked Dina to give me a tour. It was a short one. We poked into the bedroom of Dina’s daughter Lenette; she was texting while watching TV, but after her mother cajoled her, she agreed to come out into the living room and sing a Miley Cyrus song for us. It was called “The Climb.” Lenette sang it with a wide mouth, waving arms, and hands that clutched the air.

  I can almost see it,

  That dream I’m dreaming, but

  There’s a voice inside my head sayin’

  You’ll never reach it.

  Every step I’m taking,

  Every move I make feels

  Lost with no direction.

  My faith is shaking but I

  Got to keep trying,

  Got to keep my head held high.

  There’s always going to be another mountain.

  I’m always going to want to make it move.

  Always going to be an uphill battle,

  Sometimes you’re going to have to lose.

  Ain’t about how fast I get there,

  Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side,

  It’s the climb.

  Keep on moving.

  Keep climbing.

  Keep the faith, baby.

  It’s all about

  It’s all about

  The climb.

  Keep the faith.

  Keep your faith.

  I felt like Miley Cyrus was speaking directly to me through Lenette, and she was being very clear — she wanted me to keep the faith. I read Dina’s Popeye T-shirt, I YAM WHAT I YAM, and I felt that I too was what I was. I was a writer, and my characters, Sophie and Jason, were right here with me. In fact, they were me, both of them. Was it possible that Jason read the PennySaver? I knew for a fact that he did, because the movie was set in LA and everyone in LA, real or fictional, gets the PennySaver with their mail. It was so obvious, there all along, the invisible bridge — Jason wasn’t selling trees, he was buying things through the classifieds. He was meeting strangers, just the way I was, and it was transforming him and uniting him with humanity. He would stand in a living room just like this living room, and listen to someone like Lenette sing. We probably wouldn’t be able to afford the rights to the Miley Cyrus song, but who knew? Now was no time to think small. I tried to imagine who would play Dina. Or Ron. Or… Domingo. The thought was offensive. No, clearly these people would have to play themselves. We thanked Dina and I said goodbye, knowing that it wasn’t really goodbye. I wanted to wink at her or give her some kind of indication that she would soon be starring in a major motion picture, but I restrained myself.

  It was like the scene in Pollock where Marcia Gay Harden looks at Ed Harris’s first splatter painting and says, soberly, “You’ve broken it wide open, Pollock,” and you know she’s right because those splatter paintings are worth a kabillion dollars in real life now. Marcia Gay Harden wasn’t with me as I drove home from Sun Valley, so I had to say it, soberly, to myself — You’ve broken it wide open, July — and then I had to look exhausted and unaware of the greatness I’d stumbled into, the way Ed Harris does, and then I had to be the woman watching the movie based on my life, someone who might have been born today but who thirty-five years from now would know that history had proved the brilliance of Jason buying things through the PennySaver. She shivered a little, this woman who would be thirty-five in thirty-five years; tears jumped to her eyes as she watched the reenactment of this pivotal moment in film history. It didn’t even matter that she wasn’t a fan of my work — I’m not a huge Pollock fan. It’s just the way Marcia says it. I whispered it again: You’ve broken it wide open, Pollock.

  I’d had a similarly groundbreaking revelation twenty-five years earlier, when I was nine. The epiphany came one night, just before I fell asleep: I would make an entire city out of cereal boxes. I’d collect the boxes over months and I’d paint them, hundreds of them, stores and streets and houses and freeways, forming a whole little world that would be an accurate representation of my hometown, Berkeley (although I wasn’t totally married to the specifics yet — it
might be better to make it more of an Everytown, USA, since geography wasn’t my strong suit). The city would take up the whole basement floor and I would bring special people down there, to the basement, and turn on the lights and, boom, their minds would be blown to pieces. After passionately nursing this idea for about an hour, I suddenly had another idea: No I wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t make an entire city out of cereal boxes in the basement. The moment I had this second thought, I knew this was the real one. But I also felt certain that the thought itself was the only thing that had stopped me, like a witch’s curse — or, no, like the witch hunters, the small-minded, fearful Local Authorities.

  From then on to this very moment, I had done everything I could to avoid them, but after almost three superstitious decades I’d come to realize that the Local Authorities are always there, inside and outside, and they get most riled up when I begin to change. Each time I feel something new, the Local Authorities step in and gently encourage me to burn myself alive.

  So now I called Dina immediately, before the second thought could come. She took the idea of an audition in stride, as if it were the usual outcome of trying to sell your hair dryer. The next day I drove back to the FEMA-like encampment with Alfred and a video camera and suggested that we begin by reenacting our meeting the day before. I would knock on the door, she would let me in, she would tell me about the hair dryer. Get it? Yep. Okay, let’s try it.

  An unexpected thing happened when Dina opened the door, and it wasn’t the unexpectedly wonderful thing I was expecting. She stopped using any contractions or colloquialisms — isn’t became is not, yeah became yes. Her arms suddenly moved like a museum docent’s or a stewardess’s, gesturing formally this way and that. Every living thing had mysteriously died the second we turned the camera on. I tried in vain to start over, to loosen the air, but after a while I felt out of line, almost rude. Eventually I let go of my plan and asked if Lenette might sing for us again. Lenette performed a rap she had written herself, titled “La La.” It was very, very catchy. I had it in my head for days. But Dina and Lenette would not be in the movie, and this was a very bad idea, casting people through the PennySaver. Whoever was responsible for such a bad idea should be burned at the stake.