Life, Lately
The last three years of my life have been straight out of a movie. Or, actually, make that movies, plural. The kind they screen at NYU student film centers, very late into a weekday, when no one but the most dedicated film nerds even think of showing up. Interspersed with discarded scenes from a B-list rom-com - one with so many badly written leads, you’re really just in it for the gratuitous flesh shots.
Scene. Woman is all alone in a two-bedroom apartment in Las Vegas, eating two-day old pizza from Papa John’s. The living room is prettily done, but the rest of the flat is sparse, unfinished. Her room only holds a bed, nothing more. The other room is bare, save for the plethora of books she has lugged around with her from across the country. She writes and writes and leaves only to go to clubs, where she must paste a smile on her face and interview the D-listers who cavort with D-list wannabes in a haze of alcohol and aritifical breasts and protracted foreplay. She talks to them as if they matter, knowing that they never will.
Scene: Jumpcuts from one country to another, all over the globe; a montage of cities and friends and lovers and different lives.
Scene. At a hospital, someone she cares for is on the bed, shrunken and weak, a shadow of his or her former self. In a few days or weeks, the beloved is gone. There is a trip to the morgue, and a few days spent in a strange, surreal state of celebratory half-grief. Tradition dictates that the dearly departed’s life must be commemorated, and friends and family gather as if for a party. Only the party is held at a funeral parlor, and the guest of honor is in a coffin. Rinse and repeat over the course of two years. Multiple times.
Scene. Girl goes on a wanton dating spree. With New Yorkers. If you’ve ever dipped your toes in that pool, you ought to know the breadth and scope of the lunacy that lies curled up in that phrase. I will mine that myriad of stories, forever. Really, this should speak for itself.
Scene. Girl stops dating. In New York. Refer to line above.
Scene. Female leaves New York in search of intrepidity. She needs a break from the rat race, from the scores of sewer-spawned lowlifes that seem to inhabit the sidewalks of the city. She needs fresh air, the taste of something new and fun. She sets out on an adventure. She crosses military checkpoints manned by mice pretending to be men, and goes on treks through strange tropical jungles. It is sweaty work, and towards the end of it, she eats a bamboo rat, served in a cloudy, melting pot of a stew. The irony does not escape her.
And even more recently, comedy in the form a plotline that reads like this:
It begins, as most of these things do, with a wanton female asking a beautiful boy out. It progresses, as most of these things do not, to encompass two (verging on three) continents, veganism, a harem of hookers and almost-whores, a Brooklyn ghetto, a crass third-world capital, a variety of exes, many bookstores and cafes, doctors, credit card theft and pickpockets, a hospital emergency room, and bail money. Oh and the eventual dissolution of boundaries - and on occasion, tact.
The narrative is steadily paced at first, but then bulldozes its way to a series of events that can euphemistically be described as unfortunate. One such scene sets itself up when the boy, unbeknownst to him, gets his wallet stolen before a short visit to a strip bar. He tries to leave said bar, but finds himself faced with a tab he cannot pay. Formerly wanton female picks him up and settles his bill. With her PARENTS. The next night, still skint from aforementioned theft, male friend calls female friend in the wee hours of the morning needing two grand. To pay for a hooker he ACCIDENTALLY picked up, and with whom he will not sleep. And no, he can’t just run because there are men with guns somewhere in the vicinity. Rifles and AK 47’s. Things take a turn for the ridiculous when the female realizes that she has also lost her bank cards save one, and it’s a credit card, which they won’t take. The only way to get the money is to drive deep into the labyrinthine bowels of Northern Manila, home of drug addicts, killers-for-hire, and other shady characters. It sounds like the bastard child of The Hangover, I know.
I often wonder how this is all going to end. Sometimes I envision myself at fifty, alone and descending into mild-mannered lunacy, comforted by a colony of cats in a slightly unkempt house, with forgotten books lined neatly on shelves nailed on the walls. Other times, I simply see nothing, and I assume it’s because in this version of the future, I’m dead. I’m not quite sure which one is worst.
Originally published on Tumblr, August 2011.