LJ Idol, Week 4: I Think I Thought You Were Someone Else

[rm]

The cab drivers from Africa always ask me if I am a movie star from France.

"You look familiar," they say. "I cannot remember the names, but I liked your movies."

It seems as if I am living lives I don't even know about.

Certainly, it would explain why people always tell me that they'd thought I'd be taller or really didn't expect for my laugh to be so incredibly awkward and geeky. Somewhere I am sophisticated and sunning myself. Somewhere I am rich. Somewhere, I am even beautiful (that, again, is apparently France, at least according to agents who assure me I could get work there where the standard of beauty is different, and they cringe when they say it), but here, I'm just not what people expect.

Sort of like the Spanish Inquisition, except I don't even like Monty Python, and that tends to confound folks a bit too.

There are so many strange cases of oddly perceived identity in my life -- like the way I get called sir when I wear my hair down and long -- that while interesting and powerful to write about, don't really affect my life that much, probably because my life is so created, so written and breathed into at least seemingly deliberate being.

But as much as many people, especially people here, often view my life as a triumph of desire, the truth is, my life is also a product of the failure of it.

Because I wanted to be a cocktail waitress. A politician. A pilot. I wanted to be a war reporter. To be a dancer. To be a soldier. I wanted to be a chemist. Or a mathematician. I wanted to be a beauty queen. I wanted to move to Australia. I wanted to move to London. To Colorado. I wanted to like soccer. I was going to go to Amherst. Or Northwestern. I wanted to like Indian food. I wanted to be a corporate vice president by the time I was 30. I was going to go to law school. I wanted to have five sons: Julien, Gabriel, Michael, Daniel and Philip. I wanted to marry. Or be a nun. I wanted to have a dear little wife and kiss her pregnant belly and feel full of terrifying and possessive pride. I wanted to be strong. And brave. And I just wanted to like dogs. I wanted to be a priestess. Or a scholar studying the classics. And I wanted to farm. To direct. I wanted to work in hospice. Or be a midwife. I wanted to do things that were hard. And I wanted to be lonely.

But mostly, I just wanted to be the most beautiful girl in the world.

Of course, none of that really worked out. But just because I let it go or it never really made any sense in the first place doesn't mean it wasn't real. Doesn't mean it weren't true. Doesn't mean I wanted any of it any less.

There's this person I think I should be. That I'd like to be. That I can't help but think is a hell of a lot more dashing and stylish than me. And maybe she's a movie star from France, and maybe he works for the CIA. Maybe she's just a hell of a leader or was never ashamed to go to his knees. Maybe there is a fondness for scotch. After all, we're all about the fashionable vices around here.

Meanwhile, one of my many more pedestrian vices is HBO's Big Love. It's a vice because I know better, and because I have a friend who was a child in the FLDS, but they're rerunning it on HBO2 now, and I watch.

A few nights ago there was a moment wherein Nicki goes to visit the mostly toxic compound she and her husband Bill (they've moved to the suburbs where they are in a plural marriage with two other wives) grew up on.

It's one of the few times the show idealizes that world simply and non-sexually, and don't ever tell me camera angles can't break your heart as she and Bill chase each other through fields of laundry hung ghostly in a night breeze. The next day, as the massive, tangled family they are both a part of gather for a portrait, she turns to Bill and says simply, but with the saddest eyes you have ever seen, "I gave up hundreds, for just ten."

And I just can't stop thinking about it. Because even with my small biological family and my reluctance and suspicion when it comes to the true and solid reality of much of my chosen family, I get Nicki, jealous, conniving, fucking heartbroken, Nicki.

Because I'm her.

Because I gave up hundreds too. For just ten. I know it every time I look in the mirror.

And sure, I had to, just like anyone else. But I know it. And maybe not everyone else does. And more than that, maybe not everyone gets reminders the way I do of the men and women they aren't and the movies they're still apparently making back home in a France they've never seen.

Sometimes I dream about men watching my image wreathed in smoke and flickering on the wall of a cafe somewhere in North Africa. And always I have a secret, and that's that all things are true.

Comments

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I understand this. I think I'm glad that I don't have children, because as much as I would want to tell them they could be everything they dreamed of, I would also want to shield them from that lie. I'm afraid I'd teach them to wish for a small life, because I feel like such a disappointment, even though everyone in my world who had expectations of me is gone - except for me.

[lilmissmagic71.livejournal.com]

A wonderful internal accounting... it resonates with me. I wrote a poem once about all the things I am that I never was...

Excellent entry...

[cleverthylacine]

I love Big Love, too.

Also, people are always telling me they've seen me somewhere else doing something I wouldn't do...but I think I just look like someone else. It may be related to the fact that every foreign country or place I travel to, people think I'm one of the natives. Even in Japan. I learn to move in and speak in the rhythms of a place even if I'm not good at the language (and I'm not bad at Japanese) and I'm a dark-haired, dark-eyed person.

[walkertxkitty.livejournal.com]

Wow...I've seen a lot of your writing and liked it but this here has to be some of your best. It's powerful, packed with emotion, and a delicate introspective thread. Well done.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

Beautifully written.

This topic resonates with me, not because I get mistaken for other people but because I project so many different versions of myself I sometimes forget which one people have met.

Any chance that this might be the actress you are mistaken for: http://scenedecrime.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/marie_trintignant.jpg

[sleepwalkdance.livejournal.com]

This was really well written!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I think that it's a composite impression, more than a specific individual. She looks Mediterranean, she's beautiful, and she's in New York- maybe I saw her in something...?

[zillah975]

Somewhere, I am even beautiful

But...but I've seen you. You are beautiful. I mean, not just pictures of you, which are also beautiful -- I saw you briefly on one of the D*C panels that I couldn't stay for, and you're beautiful.

Also an awesome writer.

But I don't understand the part about giving up hundreds for ten. Maybe if I watched the show?

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I don't know those other people, but if they don't write, it's a bloody shame...

[rm.livejournal.com]

Basically Nicki's family has hundreds of people in it -- she grew up with over 40 mothers, and hundreds of siblings, and she left it to live in the suburbs with a husband, 2-sister wives and 6 kids.

And it just felt familiar in this sense to have anything that's really yours you have to totally give up stuff and even if that stuff is crazy, it's still one hell of a hit if you stop to think about it.

Also, Nicki's nuts and pretty much embodies all of my worst traits, but that's a separate post.

Anyway, thank you. I think one of the weird things about my life is the difference between pretty in life and pretty for a job, which Dragon*Con at least marginally was (and one day, I'll sort out my feelings about Dragon*Con too, because man that shit was weird).

[wcg.livejournal.com]

All those roads not taken do have a way of haunting your memories, don't they?

But mostly, I just wanted to be the most beautiful girl in the world.

I suspect a lot of women have wanted the same thing. You're brave to come right out and say so.

You are beautiful.

[gement.livejournal.com]

the difference between pretty in life and pretty for a job

I'll say it again. Yes, you clean up real good when you want to give a specific impression. But I have seen a great variety of your photographs, and I don't think you have to put on a glamour to be beautiful. Unrepentantly, unequivocably beautiful.

I wish all these lives for you, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the glorious. And I suggest they may all be the same one.

the "all of me"

[newwaytowrite.livejournal.com]

thanks the "all of you" for sharing this

[shadowwolf13]

This was beautiful and very touching. I feel like you spoke to something deep within that I haven't even fully notice yet.

Fantastic post.

[brightflashes.livejournal.com]

I love the creative twist on the subject and, as always, your flowing prose is both powerful and inspiring. :)

[boxsofrain.livejournal.com]

Entries like this is what inspires me to write more. Thank you, and great post.

[gracilejenn.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely the best entry I've read. You did a wonderful job.

Re: You are beautiful.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

What she said. I love your writing, but if you looked like somebody else, and someone else completely different looked like you instead, I would really want to be able to like that person, because he or she would be really attractive.

[kittenboo.livejournal.com]

so beautifully written, I can feel what you are saying, you have a way with that, to make people (or at least me) understand truly what you are saying.

[caersidi.livejournal.com]

Another beautifully written entry - thank you for sharing.

'Big Love' doesn't seem to have cracked the UK or disappeared very quickly. Always thought it sounded interesting.

[solstice-singer.livejournal.com]

This was absolutely amazing! I love the phrase "Given up hundreds for just ten". It breaks my heart.

[johnmill79.livejournal.com]

I can definitely identify with the desire to be so many things and unable to really settle on one of them.

Nice.

[baxaphobia.livejournal.com]

I love "Big Love". This was a very interesting read. It's interesting to look at what I wanted to be vs. what I am. Nice entry

[tigrkittn.livejournal.com]

I "get" Nicki too. *nods lots*

This was great, particularly because I'm right smack in the middle of dealing with turning fortymumblemumble and all the things I gave up dreaming about being and doing and the rapidly approaching too-late-ness.

[imafarmgirl.livejournal.com]

nice entry.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

You know, I've been struggling with a reply to this for days.

All I can really come up with is that the shudder accompanying the word "different" had best be a shudder of joy or I'm going to have to smack a motherfucker.

This entry is beautifully written. Damn.

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

Once more, I enjoyed reading your piece. You have a way of starting with something small and expanding it so that it incorporates some of life's biggest issues.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Hubby and I are poly and we adore Big Love; I find myself resonating with each of the three wives at different times and for different reasons.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. While I am not poly currently (it just isn't the right fit for me), I'm very much of the culture of it, if that makes (convoluted) sense, and I like when poly people see the relevance of the show, which I don't think all do.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. People think it's awful, I think, a lot to say you get Nicky, but I think she's very real and her bad behavior is born of terribly understandable things.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Awwww you're going to have to smack a motherfucker.

And thank you. This was very hard to write and I didn't feel like it got to what I wanted to get at, at the time, but it's grown on me since (and the rest of my crazy emotional info dump came out in that post after the burglary).

And have you seen the AWESOME from The Hub?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Damn. This flies in the face of my no assault (usually) policy. *pushes up sleeves* Ah well...

And I haven't, though I've heard a lot of awesome.

[rm.livejournal.com]

http://smirnoffmule.livejournal.com/52435.html

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

...

Fah.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I can't make words either. I like need to stop looking before I commit RPS.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

RPS requires sentences.

(Rhys/Ianto? Bwuh?)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was weird too.

Also, you know, as much as I have much lust for these men -- did I need to see the undies? I don't think I needed to see the undies.

Some of the JB/GDL pics were just ... still depriving me of words.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

These will require additional study. For science.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Like, so psyched that GDL will be at Gallifrey One, but now I'm like "come on.... another TW guest.... please.... please please" because clearly they're better in groups.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm sorry for the delay in comments. It has been difficult for me to respond to replies on this entry, both due to circumstance and subject matter. It is all so fraught.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm a mimic when it comes to cadence too, makes for strange things.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Good to hear. I felt like I struggled with this one.

[rm.livejournal.com]

THanks, and truthfully, no damn idea at all, although she sort of looks like my mom.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I knew you had a lot to handle. I'm glad things are getting better.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Maybe this one?