My layover was mushy. Sitting on the floor in whatever city, watching the people go by—and it looked like every one of them was so much more on top of it than me. They all fit in, and they all made more sense than I ever did. They didn’t look like people who were questioning their lives to the core every minute of every day. And honestly, with respect to not comparing my insides to their outsides, they very likely were people who didn’t question all the time, who had little going on inside, such that inside them there was very little there. I have been like that—no, I have never been like that. I was going to say at the top of the roller coaster but no—at the top of the roller coaster I felt it all so sharp and so deep and when my life has flashed before my eyes, it was heavy enough and broad and long enough that it crushed me every time I went through those inane motions.
I thought about my mom and dad—whether I had done enough to deserve their turning their backs on me. Or if all I had done was be thoughtful in a way they were not prepared to handle, had tickled parts of them they had never explored themselves. I thought of what it must be like to be a parent (knowing I would never do it myself) and I wondered what it was like to get divorced and have your partner fall away, have your children fall away, have your brothers and sisters fall away (and I knew something about this last). I knew something about trying to find communication methods that people would listen to—and that didn’t scare them. When you’ve become willing to give up your life, where all these people loved you as a child—which is to say they loved the knee-high tree or the acorn—and then my branches start to spread and the true nature of the tree spreads out in ways impossible to stop..how do people respond to that. When you’ve invented things and written things (both glorious types of go) and those other peas who were in your pod have not, who is responsible for softening the blow to them?
And when my one sister starts to have babies and my other sister and I look at each other and say: “Why is this worshipped as magic? That she has a child—has three? Everyone knows how you’re doing that!” Congratulations! You had sex with someone and a little bit of spunk mixed with your hot little almond. It’s hard, perhaps, to raise a child. To stay home and wrangle everyone through potty 🧻 training and eating lunch and going to the newfangled doctors that have come about in the last ten years. It requires constant attention but zero innovation. And why are people having children in this way, still? Haven’t we worked it out in a Petri dish? It just seems like such a ripoff that family worships babies and families, ignoring the artists to favor safety and repetition and it’s a ripoff both for the family who worships new parents and the children they ignore as the price of paying attention to the ones who had kids.
I sleep after this sort of theoretical babbling dies down in my mind, probably snoring on the airplane, people looking at me like I’m a scourge of the universe. Thinking of Charisma, how when she finally had kids it was like she had tried everything else she knew and gave up, resigning herself to make copies of her genes 🧬—it was after these thoughts of Charisma that I finally gave away my theorizing and let sleep embrace me. Rested on the plane after not much sleep 💤 in days. Got off in LA and grabbed my bag and was back in Hollywood in 30 minutes.
I had the cab drop me on Sunset and I walked to Ivar and took it, going north. I’m back in the land of my film school. Of postproduction studios. Of dance clubs and restaurants I shouldn’t afford. Of bookstores with wide sections on screenwriting and directing film. Back to the land where I will dick around doing snail puzzles and independent, unassigned film projects instead of helping my classmates with their theses. Unassigned film projects which my most talented classmates will say are better than the projects assigned us by Salvador Carasco and that I should teach his class. That’s what I think when I pass my my big blue film school building. And I think: What is more pretentious than a film school student with a loan paid by Dad who goes on to direct star ⭐️ movies and make millions of dollars? Probably a film student who graduates 🎓 with honors and goes on to do nothing with my degree. Yes. Probably that. A film student who is not only too scared and too unwilling to pursue film interests and who quits job after job in the tech industry, who would rather be homeless than work as a software developer. Who would rather die than sacrifice my ideals. Who would literally rather die than work for a psychopath. Who promises to stick with my golden ideals at the cost of every friend and lover I have ever had.
Just above Sunset, my apartment building visible another block up the street, down here I see that nameless building with the twice-a-week dance party and the excellent rib eye 🥩 and the red carpet and I go to the end of the carpet the farthest from the door and, holding my carryon, I walk up to a black door and raise my hand and knock on it like it’s the entrance to Oz.
The door opens a bit. A guy comes out.
“Yes?”
“I’m here for the party!”
“We’re closed for the night.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Um. What days are you open?”
“Sunday and Thursday. Sometimes Wednesday.”
“Today is Sunday,” I say.
“Today is Sunday today is Sunday how do I tell you this, kid, we’re not open till later and later means much later and even if we are open later you’re not exactly..you’re not exactly dressed for the part!”
“I was here last week!” I say. “Can I come in and have a steak?”
“You can’t come in and have a steak and I’m very well aware you were in here last week. I made that rib eye for you!”
“For real?”
“Yes. Two eggs, blue cheese, and—Jesus Christ jalapeños—I’m sorry I didn’t have Serranos! Were you able to stomach it you extra-rare motherfucker?”
I twist my head and look at this guy.
“And I know Miss Sarah Jones who you hung out with off of Brasserie Les Voyeux a couple months ago.”
“Who is Miss Sarah Jones?” I say. “Oh! You mean Sarah? How do you know Sarah?”
“I’m her fucking husband,” the guy says. He has tattoos all over his head and neck. Sarah didn’t show any tattoos.
“Look,” I say. “I’m sorry about Miss Sarah Jones but she and I never fucked.”
“You never fucked her.”
“No!”
“She just bragged that you did?”
“Yes! We smoked some weed. She put her baby to sleep. That was it. She showed me the Body exhibition book and I left.” I clapped my hands. “That was it.”
“Did you give her any crystal?”
“What? No! We never even discussed crystal.”
“Ok,” the guy says. “I believe you. Can you just stay away ‘cause she is on crystal now and if she shows up here I don’t want you two hooking up. No offense. She had our baby with you?” the guy asks. “When you two met?”
“Yeah, she had your baby—” I start.
But he closes the door in my face.
“Cute baby,” I finish. And stand there for a second. And I turn and go up the street to the Alto Nido building.
The homeless guy is there, asleep on the white couch on the corner where my building is. I think about waking him and asking him, “What do you think of this life!?” but I resist on the suggestion that he is dreaming my entire world and if I wake him, I will—poof!—disappear along with the rest of my reality.
I key myself in through the front door and go downstairs to my studio on the lower floor.
Going in, it’s dark wood and windows full of greenery. My window looks out on the sidewalk behind the building where I people-watch teenagers smoking pot and couples making out in what is a secluded enough area for them. I set my bag down. Pour myself a glass of wine and take it to my writing desk. Open the central drawer, check that my cocaine is there. Sit down. Drink.
There is that silence that happens in the daytime dark. When you can still hear people stepping along the hallway outside my door, you can still feel the traffic from outside my windows. But it’s quiet enough for me, as quiet as the city allows.
The phone rings.
Charisma.
I debate answering.
I do pick up the phone and say, “Hello?”
“Matthew. It’s Charisma.”
“I know!” I laugh. “Because right here on my phone it says, Charisma, so I can decide whether I want to talk to you or not.”
“Matt. This is serious. I think Brooklyn killed her baby.”
“Little Baby Faulkner?”
“That’s the one!” Charisma says.
“Why do you think this?”
“Because,” Baker says. “I can’t find him and Brooklyn’s despondent on the couch downstairs. I called her voicemail and she’s got a weird message there.”
“What does it say?”
“I think you should call it,” Charisma says.
“Why.”
“So you can hear it and make up your own mind.” Silence on the line. “Are you going to call it?”
“I guess so!”
“Matt, come back to Earth 🌏. I need you here with me. I need your help—worse than the time I needed a ticket to America.”
“Ok. I’ll call it. Would you text me the number?”
“Yeah.”
I press on it and the phone purrs. Brooklyn’s voice comes on: “..I was kneeling over the bathtub and I pushed him under. Little Baby Faulkner. None of my housemates were in on it—none of them know. But I couldn’t get away with not telling someone so I’m telling you. Whoever and wherever you are. I’m sitting on the couch at 1205 South Carolina Avenue waiting to be arrested. The door is unlocked. If anyone with any power or ability to help, hears this, then I will accept full responsibility for killing this wonderful kid..my kid. And please come quickly.”
Then were the sounds of bubbles coming up through water.
I hung up. Put my phone face down on the table. I thought about why I moved here. It was film school. To make contacts. But I didn’t do that. I made drug contacts like I do everywhere. People just look at me and they say, “That guy’s gonna party with us.” And back then, that’s exactly what happened. It was also the ocean, the warmth, the beaches in Santa Barbara. I like that I found a place where I can get my hair cut and drink alcohol at the same time. I like the Hollywood farmer’s market where I once saw a Beastie Boy. Los Angeles is a dream. So is Ohio.
And I guess just this, about dreams: When someone sells me a dream, I may take my time to find out how dear it is—how much I’m willing to pay—but once I pay, I expect it to come true.