All This Heavenly Glory (22 page)

Day 14: Call M., who reports that he’s been busy making a short film for a festival that is to take place in about an hour.
Invite self. Vacuum a friend into drama for support. Attempt to act casual, like we were on our way from there to the masked
ball where we’d already planned to be but were just squeezing this in. (M.’s film, in which he also stars, is, wouldn’t you
know, about his obsession with a girl he can’t have, a married bipolar chain-smoking West Indian model whose regular habit
of accidentally setting their bed-sheets on fire with her cigarette ashes makes him wild with desire, possessing him, in their
brief relationship, to make love with her on the floor with the flaming bed next to them, which apparently is supposed to,
you know, mean something, anyway the whole movie, largely out of focus, is mostly just a tight shot of him talking into the
camera about his obsession with her, and the destructive nature of the relationship, and how he’s just broken up with her,
running his fingers through his dark, wavy, thick, magnificent hair and the countless products it’s hosting, and chain-smoking,
dragging on his Winstons as though she might be inside them, occasionally looking around meaningfully, and then at the end,
a slender brown hand comes into the frame and takes his still-burning cigarette out of his hand and flicks it behind him and
the camera pulls back wide enough so you see the entire West Indian girlfriend, who has been on the floor waiting for him,
and whose presence calls into question the guy’s concept of a breakup, and he goes to make love to her and the camera pans
over to the cigarette he’s just flicked onto the bed, slowly igniting into flames. It’s as though it was designed with me
in mind as a target, in terms of the mind-fuck aspect of it, and remember, I invited myself.) Tell him it has flashes of Tarkovskyesque
brilliance. Use the word
nuanced
. Afterward, when he introduces me to some people there as his
friend,
engage self in mental thrashing about deeper meaning of ongoing
friend
usage (because we may not be dating, but we’re definitely not friends, and as far as I’m concerned, when an introduction
kind of scenario comes up before you’ve established what you are to each other, there should be no title or modifier of any
kind). Tell him my movie’s being released nationally the following weekend. He said he can’t wait to see it and that he’ll
call as soon as he does.

Later that evening: Review entire evening as filmstrip projected onto bedroom curtains starring Benicio Del Toro as M. and
Christina Applegate as me.

C
HRISTINA
A
PPLEGATE
: What did you mean by calling me your friend?

B
ENICIO DEL
T
ORO
: I meant I want to fuck you up against these curtains so that your yuppie neighbors and their purebred dogs can see the silhouettes
of our writhing figures and envy our fame and spontaneous lovemaking.

CUT TO:

ARTY MONTAGE of Christina Applegate and Benicio Del Toro doing it up against the curtains, the silhouettes of them doing it
up against the curtains, doing it one more time up against the curtains.

CUT TO:

Y
UPPIE
N
EIGHBOR
#1 (
staring at window, holding Weimaraner on leash
): I envy their fame.

Y
UPPIE
N
EIGHIBOR
#2 (
staring at window, holding Jack Russell on leash
): I envy their spontaneous lovemaking.

CUT TO:

B
ENICIO DEL
T
ORO
: Goodbye, my friend Christina Applegate.

C
HRISTINA
A
PPLEGATE
: Benicio Del Toro, why are you leaving?

B
ENICIO DEL
T
ORO
: I will leave you to always wonder about that.

ROLL CREDITS.

Make note that my fantasy sequences are still going horribly wrong.

Day 16: Unplug all phones due to national release of the film and thus the reviews, sticking with commitment to not read them
even though the early buzz has been largely positive. (I just think that if I’m supposed to believe the ones that say the
Congressional Medal of Honor would not be enough to convey the significance of my contribution to contemporary cinema then
I also have to believe the ones that suggest I should be permanently exiled to another planet, but not one of the good ones,
like Neptune probably, and minus any reviews at all, I think I have my head on straight about the level of my talent as being
better than some/ worse than others/not a genius/not an idiot; I could be quite susceptible to believing I was a genius, I
think, if it was unanimously agreed, but then let’s say that even one critic out of a hundred says I’m an idiot, I am just
as likely to focus on the one who says I’m an idiot, and eventually come to see that I am an idiot, and overall it seems like
a lose-lose situation I might just as well steer clear of.) Listen to a few good CDs and experience brief moment of unwavering
belief that Owen Wilson will star in my next film, fall madly in love with me, and impregnate me with little Wilson-Byerses
who will grow up and take advantage of nepotism and resent us both for it.

Day 21: Plug phones back in. Erase any and all messages that seem review-related. Receive five-minute call from M., reporting
that he hasn’t seen the movie yet and will see it as soon as he possibly can, but that he wants me to know that several of
the people on his film had already seen it and loved it and had been discussing at length favorite scenes of theirs. (He also
quotes a section of the review from the
Trib,
before I have a chance to cut him off, which is supposedly congratulatory, except it’s something like “… luminous performances
by the lead actresses convey a rich inner life that is not always reflected in the script,” which I don’t need to hear for
so many reasons, not the least of which is why is he passing this on like it isn’t terrible, or does he in fact see the plain
and apparent terribleness of it and if so, what the fuck?) Note that in this call, exact time 5 mins. 14 secs., the word
friend
is used twice. In a five-minute call. Twice.

Day 49: Not one call since day 21. Progress from the biweekly meltdown to a constant, dull ache, a state in which the tears
are held in abeyance only by a combination of exhaustion, the strength and will of my eye and throat muscles, and the avoidance
of anything that might possibly bust the dike (virtually impossible as I am already prone to weeping over the evening news
or even the guy who passes out flyers on Damen dressed in a hot-dog suit, which never fails to strike me as being both terribly
poetic and sad but also weirdly hopeful).

Day 51: Discover fingers pressing MATTEO CELL as though separate from command of brain. Hear self inviting him to a local
indie premiere, which he is unable to attend and says, But let’s definitely do something next week, as though it’s normal
for fifty-one days to pass between the first date and the second. M. volunteers that he is ashamed that he still hasn’t seen
it. Immediately regret making the call. Have a small regret-based meltdown.

Day 52: Make attempts to understand and accept the simple meaning of someone not calling after a date. Delete MATTEO CELL
from phone.

Day 65: Over the course of a week, exchange glances, smiles, or “hi”s with at least four different cute strangers on the street,
inducing a mini-meltdown, in considering these as possible missed opportunities. As they pass by, think, Was that him? What
if I never see him again? What if it’s the one who smiled at me at Atomix? Or the guy from the farmer’s market? Or the guy
on Huron and Hoyne? What if it really is Owen Wilson? What if any one of them could have been the one, what if it’s just a
matter of starting an actual conversation and any one of these guys was the one and I just didn’t talk to them because they
were strangers? HOW DOES ANYONE MEET ANYONE IF THEY DON’T DRINK? How is it I’m only asking this question now that I’ve been
sober for ten years?

Day 70: Meet with the other cute filmmaker to discuss a collaboration. Feel excited about the project. Carry on with life.

Day 80: Janet apologetically invites me to a party to which M. is also invited.

Day 81: Erase this information from mind until last possible minute.

Day 87: Spend party trying to act as though I just haven’t gotten around to talking to M., at the other end of the table,
followed by an awkward but baffling moment in which it appears that he’s going to cry (in which I am thinking that I am the
one who is supposed to be crying, what the hell would he have to cry about, but to which I say instead,
Are you all right?
to which he says,
I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you where my head was at,
and asks if he still can, at some point, and I say yes, because I’m wondering where his head was at, and because although
it seemed apparent at first glance that his head was in fact attached to his body in the normal location, it seems more apparent
now that the head on his shoulders was actually some kind of duplicate replacement head and that his real head was at an undisclosed
location, possibly being cleaned or borrowed or simply vacationing, and because I agree that wherever it happened to be that
he should have told me where his head was at, and also because I would really like to know where his head was at, and I kind
of want him to know where my head’s been at, although as a friend I am always advising people to check their motives before
they tell people where their head is at, primarily because I am of the belief that if you want to tell someone where your
head is at with the intent of this changing them somehow, whether it be into some perfect person who understands you from
that moment on or whether it’s just that you want them to feel as crappy as you’ve been feeling, it either won’t happen, which
is most common if you are trying to get people to change, or it will happen, since people successfully punish people all the
time for making them feel shitty, except for if this is the case, you are maybe not as highly evolved of a person as you could
be, and although I have decisively concluded that this guy is not going to change into my perfect boyfriend, apparently I
am somewhat interested in making him repent, and therefore, in spite of my protracted efforts at evolution over the years,
not as evolved as I like to think, even though I like to think I can state things in such a way it seems that that is not
my motive, and that I am tremendously straightforward and articulate about my feelings and that nothing is as big a deal as
it is, for example I’ll say something like
I had a great time at the beach that day, and I thought we had made a connection, and I was hurt and confused that I didn’t
hear from you,
which isn’t entirely false, which is actually pretty much true, even if the underlying message is YOU FUCKED UP MY SUMMER).

So you know, don’t try this at home. I did have one more meltdown, after I got home that night, a final meltdown in which
I concluded that it would probably be best to give up, not just on this guy, which I had already done, but on all guys, because
it seemed like it was the fucking hope that was fucking killing me, and it seemed like as good a solution as I’d ever come
up with to just eradicate all the ruinous fucking hope. I called him the next day about getting together for a cup of coffee,
and we sat down for what turned out to be several hours in which I learned of his extensive and lifelong depression, recently
given new life during rehearsal for a play. The gist of it is that for his entire life he’s been battling depression, largely
of a self-hating nature, which I can of course relate to, although before we were finished talking I concluded that his peak
levels were vastly more debilitating than mine had ever been, and that although he had been in therapy for some time and had
had better and worse periods, he recently entered into a worse period again, due to unfavorably comparing himself to the other
actors in his play and questioning whether his motives for wanting to be an actor at all were valid (he, unlike some of the
actors I’d dated in the past, seemed at the very least to have an awareness that the adulation given to people in the performing
arts, particularly famous ones, does not, ultimately, compensate for how crappy one might feel about oneself), and questioning,
apparently a lifelong self-interrogation, what it really even was that he wanted to do with his life at all, which, if a thirty-six-year-old
is the one asking the question, you have to realize is a pretty painful situation to find yourself in. I’ve had various careers
over the years and more than a few skids off course, by and large compromises in an effort to do something more secure, thinking
this would gain me the favor of certain relatives and, I don’t know, society in general, but the Super 8 camera and the typewriter
I got for my eighth and ninth birthdays, respectively, have always been in use, even if a lot of it was shitty, even if for
years I only made movies for little birthday and Christmas presents, and even if it took some time, and a lot of people telling
me I should really make longer movies, and like I said therapy, to get to the point where I a) made something decent and b)
was willing to put it out into the world. The point is, I wasn’t ever really wondering what I should do, it was more like
will I ever do it and if so, how. I can’t even imagine being his age and not having some kind of a clue. I told him I thought
he wanted to be a filmmaker. He said he wasn’t so sure anymore, that his experience at that festival had also caused his self-doubt
to flourish, that he’d overheard someone whispering
self-indulgent
to someone else right after his film was screened, and that he punished himself by fucking his ex-girlfriend for a few weeks
(the West Indian actress from the movie, big surprise), the details of which were frankly unnecessary for me to get the gist
of it. He said he felt sure he wanted to do something, but truly had no idea what. Imagine. He also said that most of his
friends know, and that maybe he could have mentioned to me but forgot, that when he gets like this, he tends to
check out,
meaning that he doesn’t really call anyone and I guess doesn’t go anywhere unless he really has to. And you know, I related
to so much of what he was saying, I check out myself from time to time, but not ever when there’s a cute guy out there I like,
which brings me back to the notion I still couldn’t get rid of, which was that this was all a big excuse.