There's a woman, F., who works in my office, who was the inspiration for the character Ripley in the movie Alien. I've watched the washed out 1980s talk show footage in which Sigourney Weaver was asked about what it was like to play such a tough female character. In response, Sigourney calls F. out by name, saying that, as Ripley, she would ask herself, "How would F. handle this situation?"
I've seen the footage a few times now (my office is kind of proud to have Ripley's inspiration in our midst, so the tape gets shown whenever sort-of appropriate), and every time it never fails to give me totally uncynical chills.
Naturally, although F. is incredibly nice and polite, I find her enormously intimidating. The other day it was just the two of us in the elevator, and F. was being particularly chatty. Even though most of what she said was weather-related, I couldn't stop thinking about how many aliens this woman was capable of killing.
Later that same day, I found myself riding the elevator with another unsettling fellow -- a man who (I swear) looks just like Peter Braunstein, the "fireman rapist" who permanently graced the covers of all New York tabloids during the last half of autumn. In fact, the man looks so much like him (although he's too short, I admit), that in a very uncharacteristic paranoid moment, I once called 911 to report a Peter Braunstein sighting upon walking past this man. (In my defense, he was walking in Chelsea, which is where the majority of real PB sightings happened. He should've known to avoid Chelsea, looking like that.)
Of course, it was well after Mr. Braunstein was apprehended and sent to jail that I discovered my Peter Braunstein worked in my building. I wanted to apologize to the man, in case he actually got pestered by the police that day, but of course there's no way I'm going to admit to such a thing.
Incidentally, the man in my building always seems kind of angry and dark; I'm not sure, though, whether that's reallly the case, whether it's just me transferring the real Braunstein's crimes onto the man, or whether it's simply the guilt I feel whenever I'm in close proximity. In any case, I don't love riding the elevator with him, because whenever I do I become irrationally convinced that He Knows.
On Wednesday night I performed at my favorite comedy reading series in New York. I didn't read a long piece (it was a special show, designed like a funeral, and I was there to fake-eulogize), but it was a pretty big deal for me nonetheless.
For one thing, I was in good company -- the other performers are not only friends of mine, but are writers and comedians whom I really admire, who I've watched from the audience for more than a year. For another thing, I almost never perform. I don't think the others quite understood that when I said I was nervous, I meant something entirely different than they did when they said they were nervous.
Half an hour before the show started, my chest felt tight and my head hurt. Dan gave me the advice that I should simply pretend I felt confident, and that I could trick my body into believing it. I took his suggestion, along with a single gin and tonic and a fair amount of distraction.
Being on stage wasn't so bad this time. The stage lights graciously gave the audience a celestial glow, which made them seem friendly and pleasantly inhuman. I was pretty prepared (if I were to tell you how much time I spent preparing versus how much time I stood on stage, it would make you cry), and the audience laughed in all the places they were supposed to laugh, which surprised me, because I didn't expect it to actually work.
A big part of my performance involved showing photos and video, and while I certainly wanted that to go smoothly, I was much more concerned with the part in which my voice was amplified by a microphone while everyone stared expectantly in my direction. I have no gauge for that sort of thing, and it's quite different than the creative things I normally do: most of my projects are completed before they're ever seen, and there's little chance of an unexpected element to mess up their presentation. A performance, on the other hand, is completely uncertain, and not anything I can hope to perfect.
I'm also used to some level of permanence with the things I produce. Wednesday's show instead felt like a meal you scarf down in five minutes, after spending all day in the kitchen. I wish my memory of it didn't already feel so fuzzy.
I've mostly stopped listening to music when taking public transportation. Not because of the recently prevalent iPod thieves (mine is relatively inconspicuous anyway, in part due to the ratty black headphones that connect me to it, which are, in spots, just a tangle of naked gold wires), but because I've been kind of enjoying the general quiet produced by vehicles full of preoccupied strangers. If my thoughts are somewhere else, I often don't consciously see anything at all, and I mechanically stand when my stop arrives. Lately I've been reading.
Usually the bus is equally quiet. A couple Sundays ago I boarded a bus behind a feeble black lady with chin-length gray hair that curled into her cheeks like horns on a ram. She was wearing a round flat bellhop hat (the kind with wide mesh that pokes out at the brim and floats in front of the eyes), and she was carrying a small, wheeled suitcase with a retractable handle.
"You're going to have to go to the back of the bus with that," the bus driver told her, gesturing toward her luggage.
It wasn't initially clear whether she'd heard him (she had), because not only did she not acknowledge his request, but she promptly disobeyed it, and sat right behind him, on one of the seats facing the side of the bus. I took the seat opposite her. The bus was nearly full.
The bus driver repeated his request, this time with more boom in his voice. She stared straight ahead, as if she were stone deaf. The driver said it again, adding, "I'm not going anywhere until you move to the back." With that, he turned off the bus and folded his arms.
One after another, various passengers -- all of whom happened to be old black women -- began admonishing the driver. Things like, "You can't make her go back there! She's an old lady!" And, "There's plenty of room on this bus for that suitcase!” “You'd better turn this bus back on!"
He sat there for a minute, weighing his options, before ultimately deciding to concede. He started the ignition and began to roll forward.
The women had not forgiven him. They continued to yell at him, as comebacks came to mind. "You outta be ashamed of yourself!" more than one person said. "You'll see! One day you'll be old, too, and you'll know what it's like!" Occasionally the suitcase lady muttered a comment, as well, but she didn't share the others' anger; instead she seemed quietly defiant and detached, as if she were almost bored by the stir she'd helped create.
Whenever I thought the comments had finally died out, another would bubble to the surface from the back corner. "For shame! Makin an old lady go to the back!" One woman, armed only with a sharp tone of voice, offered her support. As she stepped off the bus she yelled sarcastically, "Have a nice DAY, bus DRIVER!"
It continued until well after the lady who'd inspired the drama had exited the vehicle (who did so amidst a chorus of supporting words). By that point most of the passengers on the bus had been recycled, the new ones having no idea what the spontaneous outbursts were about. The bus driver didn't say a word, and was locked facing forward.
I spent part of yesterday in Chinatown, where it was raining confetti and the people cleared the street to make way for dragons. I took photos, which you can see here.
Another movie! This one I made with the help of my friend Jena and a strange answering machine message from a woman named Patty. (Patty, you got the lead, sort of!)
