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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.
"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.
