“Can’t those be the same?” he wants to know, and I have toexplain that no, audiences want the characters’ fates to neatly tie together in the end, whereas characters want to break free in the end.
“But can’t those outcomes overlap?” he presses. “Things tying together and also breaking free?”
“Of course they can’t,” I snap, but it’s weird that I’m not fully confident in my answer. The Redstockings are at the door now, waving me over. I tell Chris I have to go, my soulmates are calling. He asks where we’re off to, is it the House of Yes?
The infamous Bushwick club is our social calendar staple and I’m annoyed that Chris guessed it. It makes me feel like he thinks he knows me, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I defy every stereotype, you just can’t always tell right away, and I like it that way.
“Care to join?” I ask him. I know he won’t, but I’d give a lot of things to see him in that place, the sheer juxtaposition of it. He predictably declines but then asks for my number, which actually makes me laugh aloud, a chunky syllable adding some texture to this two-dimensional gallery.
“Believe me,” I tell him, “I’m not your type.”
He seems to realize I’m probably right. “Okay,” he says, fiddling with the buttons on his blazer, making sure they’re lined up just so. “Well, maybe you could base a character off me in one of your future plays. Just make sure he’s not the villain.”
“He won’t be.”
I don’t tell him what I’m thinking: that he’s not interesting enough to be a villain, or a hero either. I just kiss his cheek and leave a flaming orange lipstick stain, a souvenir for him to remember me by.
Following the Redstockings out of the gallery, we hop on the L train at Bedford and skid off at Jefferson right across the street from the House of Yes.
The club doesn’t look like much from the outside, just another graffiti-streaked warehouse with a falafel food truck out front.
But when you walk inside, it’s a different world—trapeze artists and strobe lights and glitter and flesh. It’s unapologetically loud and accepting. The only place in the city that still dazzles me every time.
I fall in love more than once that night, locking eyes, locking lips, locking legs. The reason most people are so miserable is that they buy the myth that love has to last in order to be real. The trick to love is letting it flow in and out, not trying to trap it or freeze it or morph it into the mold you think it should fit. Ordinary people choke love to death, that’s the problem.
My knack for plunging into love and bursting out of it again, drenched in its holy water, is all part of the playwriting thing, I guess. Experience the full range of human emotions, break the bounds in all directions, then spill the excess onto the page.
At some point in the night I realize I’m wasted. This frees me even more because I’m no longer constrained by any bad habits I’ve learned over the years. I’m back in touch with my primal instincts, floating up to the stage and taking my place as the rightful lead of the dance troupe, rearranging the choreography like I was always destined to do.
I can’t pick out the Redstockings and don’t try to. But I feel them with me and we’re dancing, swaying together, changing the angles of our galaxy and every other galaxy too.
Then I’m popping some pellets with the mannequins in the bedazzled bathroom, and next thing I know I’m up on the roof in the hot tub. The air is cold, but it’s got me sweating and my thoughts are spinning in a gorgeous non-pattern. Sideways, upward, outward, then backward to Chris and how stiff he looked in that suit.
I wonder if he wants to take it off. I wonder what his body looks like underneath, if his skin is so taut that his spirit can’t dance, if his spirit wants to dance at all. It probably doesn’t because a person who’s lived under a candle snuffer his whole life wouldn’t know what to do if he were suddenly on fire again.
I’m on fire now, and I flip over so my other side can burn too, and then I’m back on the stage, wrapped around a new body. Our energies sync as we sink into each other and tangle on the trapeze bars, crossing in and out of the big birdcage that’s suspended above the stage. We fly into the sky, liberated in this single moment and therefore liberated for eternity.
And it’s so clear in the haze why I’m never going to let myself be locked to loving one person forever. I mean, what kind of a prison is that?
Chapter 3
As the days and weeks ooze onward, I keep coming back to that thing Chris mentioned about whether the ending the characters want and the ending the audience wants can be the same. It’s not like I’ve been thinking about him or anything, just the premise.
I’m not giving his theory much weight. It’s just like an accountant to try to turn art into math and think that everything can fit into an overly simplistic Venn diagram. I want to disprove him, but the problem is I haven’t actually made it far enough in any of the plays I’ve started writing to reach the ending, and even if I did, it’s not like I’d have much of an audience to test it on.
I’m tempted to debate the whole thing with him just so I can win and let it go, but there are way too many “Chris accountants” in this city to track him down. Not that I haven’t toppled down a few rabbit-hole internet searches. It’s better that I can’t find him, though. The only reason I’m pulled to him at all is the sense of the unfamiliar, the magnet in me that sticks to anything new before inevitably repelling it the next day.
It’s on my mind one afternoon a month or three after the art gallery opening as I head outside to the shared courtyard behind the Inn that we treat as our own private garden. Occasionally some other tenants from the adjoining apartments will come over andsmoke with us, but mostly they just let us do our thing. It’s pretty clear that the space belongs to us.
Jenni has strung some colored Christmas lights that we leave up year-round, Tara feeds the squirrels all the best Lucky Charms marshmallows, and Hal is always out there absorbing inspiration from the clouds or typing up some new business proposal. I sort of float around like an urban nymph doing whatever the fuck I want. Occasionally I even remember to water the weeds that we call ivy. I like helping them climb up the walls and go wild.
Hal’s out there now in her throne. It’s one of those hanging egg chairs, swinging back and forth to induce creative flow. Her laptop is perched on her folded legs and she’s punching away at the keyboard.
I start to ask about the character versus audience thing, but she disengages with that I’m-in-the-zone look. She’s been honoring a burst of entrepreneurial energy, up straight for the past who knows how many hours or days, surviving on cold brew and cold ramen. I’ve got no idea what Hal’s working on, but she’ll tell me when she’s ready. Poking the bear never works even though it’s fun.
I pick up Hal’s empty ramen bowl and a stray dishrag to take back inside. But she pounces and claws the rag back from me like I’ve just stolen her most prized possession.
“What’re you doing?” she shrieks. “That’s the demo!”
