I hated the one and only play I did during the years I called myself an actress. I hated the play so much that I would buy these little bottles of sake to drink before the rehearsals. I’d wrap the little glass pink glass bottles up in plastic bags and bury them under the take-out food containers and tissues in the trash can.
I wanted to quit the play from the beginning but something akin to guilt wouldn’t let me, which is odd, because I rarely finish things I start.
And yet and still. I stayed on.
Nothing good culminated from that play. Especially not the crashing of my car into the side of the freeway after closing night. That was the opposite of good, although there was this homeless man on the side of the road who helped me change my tire at 3 am (and yes, I was in a short skirt and heavy make-up and a sequined halter top, and yes, I know I am lucky I am that I’m still alive, and how I made it back to the director’s house driving only a wheel and no tire is beyond me). I had given the homeless man or drug addict or whoever he was some stuff that was in my trunk to thank him since I had no money on me. Some books and clothes which he took as hungrily as if I handed him burgers there on the dark corner.
I was desperate and had been drinking, yes. Proud of that? No.
I don’t know what I felt but I can tell you that it wasn’t pride or any recognizably human emotion I had ever known.
I was out of my body. I was in my body praying to my father or to anyone in the godamned heavens to help me as I sat weeping on the side of Venice Blvd at 3 am. I was out of body and floating in the telephone pole wires. I didn’t make it. I was killed by the man. I never crashed my car.
There are so many ways this story could have gone.
But here I am, writing it, so many years later, so let’s say it went this way: a man who was most likely blasted out of his mind helped me enough that I was able to get out of harm’s way and I gave him a blanket (I think) and some books and I drove on a wheel without a tire up Robertson Blvd in the dead of night to a director’s house who made me shake with disgust and I slept on a sofa with a Mexican blanket thrown over me until the morning when I called my step-father to tell him I crashed my Tracer. My Mercury Tracer. That little beast of a car that got me around for so many years held up well under the duress. Banged it right into the divider and it didn’t crumble like metal sometimes will. It didn’t fold into itself or flip over although I know somewhere deep inside the organs and heart of the car, I had broken something integral. Something that could never be repaired. I had driven backwards to get off the freeway.
Amazingly, not one car was on the road. How can you explain that? But this is a true story so maybe I don’t need to explain or justify, just tell the facts, and the facts were this: not a car besides mine on the freeway entrance. I drove backward onto Venice Blvd where the homeless man or drug addict or angel, or whoever he was, helped me.
Then I drove tireless, on only a back wheel, back to the place it all started.
It’s funny because now I can’t even remember his name. This guy who I thought I had fallen in love with. It began with a “J.” That’s all I can remember now.
Isn’t it funny how other people can feel so important, so earth-rattling and vital to us that we crash our cars and yet, years later, their voices elude us. His name: a mystery. Anyway, I thought I had fallen in love with “J” even though I hardly knew him. He had maybe played football with my cousin who isn’t really my cousin in Pennsylvania and that small coincidence was enough to make him familiar and that familiarity was what I was always on the hunt for. So, he became “it”.
We spent so many hours a week rehearsing this ridiculous play that I confused hours spent together with intimacy.
This happens. Why do you think people fall in love so much in Hollywood, while they are off making movies? You spend all these late night hours together, all these long days eating food off paper plates and going over lines, pretending to love or hate that person, and what do you know? You start to feel that old tug at your heart of I think I like him. I think I love her. He belongs to me.
So in my mind, this guy “J” belonged to me. I concocted a life together with him in my imagination. It was familiar.
The truth of the matter is, I don’t even know if I liked him. Yet, he was mine.
This other actress, one with whom I was alternating roles, would flirt with him. I would drink my sake and hide it in the trash and retreat into the corner until it was my turn to go up onstage.
She is better than me, I thought. Her flirting, her acting.
I couldn’t flirt. I could only be angry and upset. I didn’t understand how to show vulnerability. I only knew how to pull hair, or ignore, to suggest I like you. These don’t work as well when you are an adult.
That’s what jealousy did to me.
It didn’t make me cute or talented. It made me sit in the dark, in the back row, with my feet up on the seat in front of me and say things like, Like I care. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Fuck them both.
It made me a monster. It made me hate myself.
The thing is, I don’t even think I really liked this “J” guy. I mean, he was nice enough, and he was good looking, but if I met him now I wouldn’t be interested. I probably wouldn’t have coffee with him.
It was circumstantial. Then it was possessiveness. He became mine and the thought of anyone else having him made me territorial. I became a sake drinking lion who sat in the back of a dark theatre in Hollywood and bit her nails before she spit them onto the floor. Well, fuck them then.
I don’t even know why I was so angry.
The play ended. We couldn’t get anyone to come see it except maybe ten people a night and those ten people were the cast members’ friends. The play was also over three hours long. It was a dark few months in my life and although I’d like to say that I have no regrets, I have a few small ones. This play is up there with a few others.
The play ended and we all went to party at the director’s apartment. The director who used tactics such as yelling at me or insulting me in order to make me cry or get me upset so that I would give a good performance. His house.
We all went there and started drinking. In my short skirt and sequined top, I remember trying to get the attention of “J.” “J” had been sitting on the couch next to the actress who also played his wife when I wasn’t.
He had his head resting on his (other) wife’s shoulder, which was enough to make me feel wild and undomesticated. I am a goddamn boar, a wild pig, a feral animal and give me another drink.
My husband’s shoulder. Another’s woman’s head on it!
Well, fuck them both.
Give me another drink.
I don’t need this shit.
I didnt even say goodbye to these people I had spent more hours with than I care to admit, over many months, before I slammed the door and walked to my Mercury Tracer.
I remember letting the windows down and getting onto the freeway before a wall made its way into my car.
So this guy who helped me, the crackhead, or homeless man, or whoever we decided he was–this guy, he didn’t kill me. He could have. Easily. He could have killed me and taken my car and all that would be left would be dirty sequins. That could have happened.
In some version of this story somewhere, he did kill her.
But not me.
I lived.
Eventually, I sold that car for $300 to a mechanic from Honduras who had helped me with some repairs and needed a car.
I didn’t want to let it go even though it was old and dirty and broken in places that, for all I know, had no names. I think the heart of the car was broken.
I was sad to see it go.
So much had happened in that little car that when the buyer pressed three one hundred dollars bills into my palm I almost gave them back. Thanks, but no thanks. I’d like to let it just sit here in my garage. Forever. I don’t want anyone else to have it.
I don’t want anyone else to have it.
Oh, the trouble that gets us in.
Here. Have it.
None of it is mine anyway.
In some story, in some version, maybe it is all mine. And maybe I have long fingers and I don’t bite my nails and maybe the play was a huge success and maybe I remember “J”’s name and maybe jealousy isn’t a thing in the world but rather an idea like the words never and always. Maybe jealously crashed that night on the freeway and went up in flames and no one in the world could find its heritage anywhere. Maybe that man on the side of the road at 3 am wasn’t a drug addict. Maybe he read the books I gave him, whatever they were, and maybe in his mind, I was his. I was part of his story and he tells it over and over. My girl.
She was mine and I saved her.
30 responses
At first I was annoyed and almost didn’t continue reading. Imagine. I was thinking, Oh, it’s either Molly or booze that people must include in their little adventures and I’m tired of it. But I kept reading. The writing pulled on my coat and wouldn’t let go. And now you’re mine.
Beautiful.
awesome
Beautiful and honest!
I love that there we no other cars on the road…riding backwards on the rim. Yep, you were carried by angels that night. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time, and certainly not the last.
Such beautiful writing. So enjoyed reading this on the Rumpus.
How do you write in such a way that people connect so deeply? Thank you for sharing your words, your heart, your soul.
I have so begun to realize as you say “none of its mine”…& it changes everything I see.
It is like you are the writer that is locked inside of me that has the courage and the discipline and the motivation to express herself no matter what. I live your vulnerability and honesty. I love the last paragraph and the alternative ending. Thank you! I always identify so much with what you write and it makes me feel in touch with my own self expression.
I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this, but I’m glad I did. “I don’t want anyone else to have it. Oh, the trouble that gets us in.” The stories I could tell about that… Recognizing that “none of it is mine anyway” changes everything. I really enjoyed this piece!
Hi Jennifer Love Pastiloff. You have a huge heart. Sometimes that heart gets buried with the trials and tribulations as life evolves. Sometimes we want things / people to be complete us. We get so specific in our desires that we lose ourselves, and when we’re lost we self medicate to dull the pain. Been there too. We want, and want, and want so much, that we fail to see the miracle that we are. Love your honesty, love the recognition that the addict/homeless/killer really may have been your guardian angel, and love the awareness that you may be as much a part of his story as he was yours. As you were in a position to need help, perhaps he was equally in a position to need to help. Life hits hard. It’s up to us whether we get back up and learn.
You have a wonderful ease in story-telling. Always inspiring. Love it!
Beautiful.
Jennifer, This was a powerfully raw and honest story. I appreciate that you had the courage to share this because it is not pretty and neatly tired up in a bow but then life rarely is and I think you give me courage to be honest and authentic. I loved this essay. Thank you for being you. <3
I love the authenticity of your writing… I think you knocked this one out of the park! Thx!
i love this.
Rose DiMatteo Says:
September 8th, 2013 at 8:18 am
At first I was annoyed and almost didn’t continue reading. Imagine. I was thinking, Oh, it’s either Molly or booze that people must include in their little adventures and I’m tired of it. But I kept reading. The writing pulled on my coat and wouldn’t let go. And now you’re mine.
Such beauty this comment. This is exactly how I felt the first time I read you. And now you are mine also.
Incredible and inspiring as always…can’t get enough of your writing and hope to continue to find it on The Rumpus!!!
Loved this. It was raw and beautiful
Jen, is it OK if we call you ours? Yet again you touch a nerve. I am so glad you’ve come through your bad experiences with all the good a person can wring out of such things. How helpful it is for us that you’re good at bringing it out in such a way that can benefit us all. Your healing brings us healing.
Jen, I love to read what you share with us; your tribe. You are a terrific writer who has the ability to make me see, and understand. I appreciate your honesty. It also helps me to be more honest with myself. Upon reflection I have gotten to know Hope better. Love ya
A sake-drinking lion…love it. My favorite thing in life is this…to start reading a piece you aren’t sure you even have the desire to read and by the time you get to the end of it you are scrambling with the certain knowledge that you must read everything this writer has ever written.
Thought provoking and well written. Kudos!
Jennifer, your writing always pulls me in and touches some truth of my own. I myself am just beginning to understand that nothing is mine, and it’s a strange internal struggle, but as I let go, I feel more free, more light.
Great article!
your word pictures beautifully illustrate surviving self imposed human angst: we must repeatedly revisit dark places in order to grow and ultimately realize we can choose to live in the light THANK YOU looking forward to your book
I enjoyed this essay so much! The bit about the car rings true for me, my ford truck sure is a beater, I even repaired the crack in the frame, it’s that nostalgia for a car, a story that keeps you hangin’ on, the emotional connection.
Love this! Thanks for always sharing your truth.
brilliant, absolutely brilliant!
What a great story. Insightful and honest. “J” should read you now!
Wow…just WOW…
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