When the Screeching Stop

Thunder rumbles like a starved stomach. It's 7PM and 89 degrees on this day in May. I want to walk Penny before the storm floods the streets and blacks the sky. I take a plastic bag and an umbrella. Quick twenty minute walk, a little loop, I tell Scott before clicking Penny's leash and leaving. The white curly haired dog on the left comes bounding toward us, barking at the edge of his property. Penny pulls to meet him, but I yank her to the middle of the street. When we return to the overgrown grass on the side of the road, a small squirrel darts by my dog. Penny rushes the frantic little thing, snatches it up with her teeth and crushes it until the screeching stops. I yell at my dog to drop it, but then scramble away in fear the tail of the deceased will graze the backs of my bare legs. After a few fretful seconds of scolding, she lays her limp victim down in the center of the suburban street. I jerk her away and stare at the stilled body. When I look up, two men and a woman stand in their driveway staring at me and my dog. They have witnessed the entire event. I can see it in their opened mouthed expressions. I apologize for the horror, but then I don't really know what to do. "It's okay." The woman says and I take this as an indication for retreat.  "Big storm coming in." I say to the strangers as I pass by. The woman smiles faintly and agrees. I would have transported the animal with a stick back to the side of the road, but Penny would have grabbed the stick and then grabbed the squirrel and I would have screamed like a fool. So instead, we leave it behind and walk toward the school yard. Once on the other side of the softball game, where thirteen year old girls in purple uniforms hang on a fence chanting rhymes to distract the yellow team's pitcher, Penny poops. I pick it up with my plastic newspaper bag. As I tie the knot, I notice the older of the two men walking up the road toward the scene of Penny's crime. I can't tell, but I think he has a shovel. 

I call this the year of Rejection

I take the day off work. In bed, I watch the director's most recent film, Young Adult, on my phone with headphones. I make sure to go jogging to pink my cheeks. I wear the same dress I wore to my audition, along with my tall brown boots and cranberry colored cardigan. I eat lightly, apply makeup carefully and keep my heart from abandoning its steady beat. Scott drives the two hour journey. I sit beside him, rehearsing my lines and giving him directions. We find the run down office building we're looking for. The first and second doors I try are locked, but the third opens and I walk inside for my first callback of a major motion picture. 

Directed by Jason Reitman, the film, Labor Day, stars Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin and is scheduled to film in Massachusetts during the months of June and July. I had auditioned a few weeks before in Northampton with Suzanne, a friendly casting director who was only slightly distracted by her sudden sniffling sneezing sinus infection. Surrounded by script sides and tissues, she wore sandals with jeans and stood looking over her reading glasses and camera saying, "I like you." Two weeks later, I got a phone call from a New York City telephone number while driving the twins I nanny home after a morning of toddler adventuring. My chest expanded to accommodate my flipping heart as I held the phone up, chanting, "Voicemail. Voicemail. Voicemail." I couldn't answer it. Not with boys in the backseat who crank their voice boxes from minimum to maximum whenever I answer the phone. 


"Who you talkin' to? RACHEL, 'scuse me, WHO YOU TALKIN' TO?"


Questions along with urgent jabber about passing fire trucks, grazing cows and spinning or not spinning weathervanes quickly accumulate. A voicemail was left. I made the boys lunch, sat them down at the table, told them I had to make a very important phone call and requested that they PLEASE not fight.  Jessica, from the casting office, "...wanted to see if (I was) available to come back for a callback with Jason on May 2nd..." With a notebook, pen and phone in hand, I closed the bedroom door and called to calmly confirm my callback. At my audition, I had read for both the Nurse and the larger role of Bank Teller. The casting director told me she would send me the sides for the Bank Teller, but that I shouldn't be upset or surprised if the role has already been cast by the time of my callback. Primarily, he wants to see me for the part of Nurse, which consists of one line spoken to a news reporter about the convict's (Brolin) escape from the hospital where she works. One line. Two sentences. Twenty-one words. I had never rehearsed a single line so much in all my life and now I would have a chance to do it again for the film's famous director. 

I arrive to my callback on time, a little early, but not too early. The building is a maze of white walls and coarse blue carpet, but I follow appropriate signs and find the two casting directors. They instruct me with smiles to sign-in on their clipboard and have a seat. Soon, three other brunettes between the ages of twenty-five and forty show up, sign-in and sit. I make awkward small talk with the girl beside me. "SO quiet." I whisper. Then I see him, the director, Jason Reitman, walking down the hall toward us and the audition room. He wears a dark winter hat and stares at his phone. As he passes by me, we make eye contact and I say "hi". He returns my salutation by pressing his lips into a small smile. I was the first brunette to arrive which means I am the first to be called in. I walk in with my headshot, which I know they won't want and my Nurse and Bank Teller sides, which I know I won't need. The casting directors point me to where I am to stand. They are friendly, but fast. Jason requests that I move in a step. I do. Then, in this bare square room, with two young casting directors, Jason Reitman and a small Canon camera on a tripod, I am read the news reporter's line. Oh, it's happening right now! I realize. No introductions. No chit chat. This shit is happening. I find my focus and when it's my turn to speak, I deliver the Nurse line as I have rehearsed it. "Good" He says. "Now can you try it again more frazzled?" 

"Sure." 

The casting director reads the line again and I deliver my beloved two sentences as frazzled as I can. "Great." He says next, standing. He then explains that he's also looking to cast another small part, a pregnant woman. He then pauses in his explanation to jokingly ask if I can get pregnant by June, of which I respond, "I'm on it!" far too loud and with an embarrassing amount of enthusiasm, which is echoed by a light chuckle by the casting directors. He then asks me to stand in a particular spot, hold a protruding imaginary belly and pretend to shop. Simple enough, an experienced actor and improviser should think. However, I have never been very comfortable with miming objects. I much prefer props. But with no time to practice, I grab my pregnant paunch of air and begin sifting through invisible fruit. I reach and grab for a piece of something undefined and pull my clawed hand back toward my face to observe. After careful inspection, I return this unidentified piece of produce to its shelf. The room is quiet. I reach for another oddly shaped object. This time, however, I study my blob of nothing and decide it's good enough to drop into the invisible basket by my feet. Fucking brilliant. I am an oafishly unnatural shopper of blobs. He's seen enough. He concludes my one minute callback by shaking my hand. I thank them, find my things on the floor by the door and escape to the hallway where I can return to real time and run to find my husband in the parking lot. I pass the brunettes. "They go right into it. No intros or anything." I tell them. They nod their heads a little, but they probably know how this works. I'm sure they'll all be sniffing oranges, feeling melons and picking out bananas like a bunch of grocery store champs. Not me. This was my first time. Clearly. I hike across the parking lot. 

Two days after my callback, I email to thank Kate and the casting company for their thorough professionalism and kindness. She emails back that I did a great job. 

It's been three weeks now and still no word. I try staring at my phone, willing it to ring. I try ignoring it in hopes I'll have a voicemail when I discover my phone hours later. However, my superstitious pleas to the universe prove useless. I'm tired now of inventing false hope, fantasizing scenarios where the casting directors apologize that they've been too busy to call me with the news or that director, Reitman has been sidetracked and hasn't watched the callback tapes yet. So today, of all dreary days, I decide to email Kate, the casting director. 

Hey Kate, Is it safe to say I was not cast in Labor Day if I haven't heard anything? Thanks:) ~Rachel 

One minute later, I receive this message: 

Hi Rachel, You did a really great job, but, unfortunately, you were not one of his picks. Thanks. Best, Kate. 

For the past several weeks, I've had dreams where I suddenly find myself hanging out with Kate Winslet. I have nothing incredibly witty or interesting to say, but I somehow know not to bring up her film, Titanic. She appears grateful, lingering in my quiet company. I expect these dreams will cease now. 

After work, I find Scott on the couch and collapse beside him. "I'm never anybody's pick." I say, tugging on the twisted frays of my cut off denim shorts.

Looking to me, his despondent wife, he says. "I think it takes more guts to be your own pick." 

MOMMA DAY

goose poop PUKE

My dog and I hike a mountain. She wants me to take her leash off so that she can really run, but I keep her tied up because it's the law (and because last time I let her loose she didn't come back for twenty minutes and we thought she was dead). It is early on a warm Sunday morning in May. Penny eats some grass and a few treats from my fanny pack, stops to drink from streams and puddles and pulls toward squirrels, nothing unusual. The hike takes about two hours and just before we reach the car, we pass the lake where a family of geese swims. While I take a picture with my phone, my dog discovers a pile of green goose poop and takes a bite. I scream, but she swallows. This is unusual. She never eats poop. We get to the car and I drive to the grocery co-op across town. I crack the windows and leave her to sleep in the front seat. I shop for about twenty-five minutes before returning with three full canvas bags. When I open the door, Penny is not as excited to see me as she usually is. Must be tired, I assume. I jump in the front seat and throw the key into the ignition. With one hand patting my pup's head, I drive out of the parking lot and pull onto the road. However, just as I do, I feel something wet seeping into my pants. I reach my hand beneath my left leg and pull out a handful of wet green goop. My body convulses in a gag as I pull the car into the breakdown lane. I am grasping partially digested goose poop strung together by wads of grass. Horrible. I jump out of the car and Penny follows. I grab her by the collar with my clean hand and walk her to the passenger's side to close her leash into the door to keep her from running off. I grab the roll of toilet paper from the center console and begin scrapping the goose poop puke from my hand and then from the back of my spandex pants. Cars slow down, but I do not. Scraping, gagging, cursing! I go back to the driver's side. HOW DID I MISS CLUMPS OF POOP VOMIT ON MY LIGHT BEIGE SEAT? I must be completely out of it. I scrape the globs off the seat and fill a plastic bag with the greened toilet paper. Penny has not only puked on my seat but inside my closed umbrella on the floor. I pound the handle onto the pavement and the puke lands with a unsatisfactory splat. I pour water over my hands and let Penny drink from my cupped palm. Finally, I pump several squirts of antibacterial onto my hands and drive home.  

Shrewdness

I am the introvert hostess hiding inside her bathroom. Guests arrive to my writings on the wall, to platters of awkward tension and to unopened bottles of confrontation. I stand at the sink, blushing, stammering, despising the work of my blistered, blabbering fingers. I wipe soap scum from the shower tiles, replace the toilet paper, brush my teeth and cut my finger nails. I am stalling my entrance to the room of snide remarks and negligent ignorance. I wish I had sewn my written opinions into silent stitches along the inside hem of my whitening hair before taking the needle to my lips and making a straight seam. Yet, here I am, with fingers tapping keys. 


I am tired of what tired people think and how tired people think. Sick of watching sick people sleep walk, slurping curds and whey, and pausing only to recite rituals, recipes and out-dated data. Then call me, the vagabonding vegan, strange. I follow my family around with a book of warning label prose, refusing to ignore my impulse to speak. No longer my mother's "peacemaker". She calls me "the protector" now. I sit belted in the back seat, alerting drivers of pedestrians, red lights and ambulances until someone I love turns around to press his/her thumb to my mouth in a hush. Apparently, precaution, self-reflection and change are all abominably rude suggestions. 


I am striving to prevent the infiltration of this society's contrived laws of living, which coerce me from my intelligence, individuality and independence. 


Every day, I am beating back my subconscious from convincing my conscious mind that the only women who get anywhere in this country are those with bodies of rails and surgically inserted racks and whose groins and botoxed lips pucker sex appeal. Photoshopped photographs of nearly naked girls flash before my eyes, embedding me with an unquestioned normalcy of 97 pounds of puffy lips, fragile bones and stretched skin. And just when hope for gender equality flickers in the future, some snarky television personality rants that we'd never want a woman president because she'd wage war whenever her monthly menstrual cycle was underway. 


Oh, to be the cliche of the perfect American woman. To be skeletal skinny, ageless, frail and in need of a big strong man of masculine brute force to throw me over his shoulder and carry me to the car. To bolster my breasts with sacks of jelly, rolled up socks or push up bras. To remove my brain entirely for it is far too distracting and heavy. To have men whistle at me from passing cars. To have groups of gangly teenage boys gawk at me from across the mall. To be the ultimate woman. My closet would be gluttonous, swallowing sweaters, screaming for purses with golden clasps and whining at me to feed it new knee high boots, fish net stockings and mini skirts. I would never be president. I'd never bear children. I'd never go running, do push ups, or play basketball. Never shout, spit or intimidate anyone. Never be a doctor. I could never go to law school. Never build a house, drive a boat or grow a garden. I could never do that. Girls are supposed to be fairy tale princesses. Women are to be queens of magazine covers, the art across city buses and the boobs blown up for sparkling billboards. I don't want to be called a tom boy, butch or manly. I want to be pretty with pink doilies and daisies in my hair. So I hide my sneakers and books. I don't care about school, I say. I care about getting drunk and easy with the football team. I care about blow job technique and dry hump dancing. I care about snorting coke from makeup mirrors and sneaking into clubs with fake IDs to swing on poles and see how many drinks creepy old guys will buy me. I care about rumors, cell phones, and the opinions of boys. I go out with men who only want to sleep with me. (Of course, when I don't want to sleep with them, I have no conviction nor strength to refuse. In fact, I am so feeble, I fall asleep in their aggressively greedy arms, too sleepy to stop their advances.) I will wear fat diamonds on my fingers, toes and along my collar bone. I will dress in slinky tank tops and underpants and take picture to post online. I will be desired and admired. I will be loved.  


I prefer pursuing personal strength in a country which idolizes female frailty. However, despite my covetable searches for light phrasings, silly jokes and the pleasantest point of view musterable, my pessimism still kicks me down. I don't know my place in the car anymore. Whose ears I've made bleed. So I'll pose my criticisms as questions. Why does anorexia exist? Why do teenage suicides happen? Why is conformity so comforting and all rebellions considered irresponsibly rash? Why do we know our pharmacies, but not our farms? Why do people liter, drive Hummers or refuse to recycle? Why do so many refuse to believe they have a drinking problem because they're younger than 40? Why are there teachers who are bullies? Why is there a war on drugs, but not a war on the fast food industry? Why are we bogged down with things we don't need and harmful habits we should do without? Why does bigotry continue to kill? Why is every generation a shock to the one before?  And why do I fucking care so much? 

Scott and I are sitting each on the ball of a sewing pin, waiting with draining patience for news. The ball I sit on is red with dread. His, yellow with hope. We stalk the mailbox for news of graduate school acceptances and rejections for three months. I hear a news report on the radio that there's been a rise in loans, a sign for an upswing in the economy. Faith in the end of this recession, the newscaster reports before sneakily stating that most of the loans granted are for education and car loans. I'm afraid that isn't because the economy is getting better, but because so many do not know what else to do. We, the college educated children of the baby boomers (who were once forced to get "real jobs" with "good educations") graciously encouraged us, their idealist children, to be whatever we wanted to be. Now many of us are college educated nannies, grocery store cashiers, clothing store stockers and restaurant waiters. We have bachelor degrees in English, Theater, Film, Music and Fine Art, however we are stuck in a world too preoccupied with pornographic advertisements, social network updating, celebrity tabloids and binge drinking to go to a play, museum or to pick up a book. We children are then caught in the rip tides of the real world where strength to build new sculptures, soliloquies and stories has been entirely exhausted. Now nearing the dreaded age of thirty, we become too nostalgic to leave our learned love of art and so we search for the acceptance of master degree programs in desperate hope for professors to nod their gray haired heads and imply such statements as: "You belong in this field" and "You will one day be famous for your work".  But what happens when we are not accepted to these programs? Do we start over entirely? Forgo having a family and go back to college to add new bills to the pile of imaginary money we already owe the government for the first time we went eight years before? Get that bachelors degree in business we probably should have gotten the first time around? Because I'm too stubborn now. I don't want to be a manager or saleswoman. I have no interest in nursing school, law school or to obtain a doctorate in biology. I don't want to be a teacher, police officer, or librarian. I want to be a writer who encourages introspection and an actress who reveals the complexities of character. Scott aggrees. He wants to pursue the life as a director and performer whose work reflects life's intricate toils and bountiful bliss. 


A total of ten rejections arrive in our mailbox. Briefly saddened, Scott quickly encourages me to embrace this new found freedom. We will not be tied down to school schedules, particular cities or to student debt. We are free to go and do as we please. I suddenly feel relieved and even grateful for our rejections. A couple days ago, I dig up this Calvin Coolidge quote my brother sent me three years ago. 


"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." 

Many might think I should be settling down with a bump beneath my shirt and a fifty year mortgage on a two bedroom ranch in the sticks, but instead my husband, Scott and I are moving. We emptied our storage unit and I held a yard sale. I dragged our unwanted possessions to the driveway and stuck them with price tag stickers. I put on my fanny pack and made $713. Next, I'm making an appointment with the used book store in town and then I'll sell my wedding dress. I no longer feel compelled to nest, instead I want flight.     


When we graduated college, Scott and I moved to New York City. After one year in New York, we moved to Boston. After two years in Boston, we moved to Western Massachusetts. After three years in Western Massachusetts, we're moving to Chicago. There we hope to make our own film, starring and written by yours truly: a real American woman.  

In, Out, Up and Up

In Valencia, the air is sweet from groves of orange circles on green blurs as I drive the curves of one California highway. In Arkansas, gnarly balls of thicket tumble across faded gray concrete highways while cows stand in dark dirt, munching on feed and cud. In New Mexico, distant mountain ranges conjure country pride through the belting of "purple mountains majesty" out unwound windows. Primary colors painted on gas pumps in Oklahoma. The way my pulse pounds in Santa Fe, unaccustomed to the high altitude. My tall brown leather boots in a vegan restaurant in Santa Barbara, California where a small town rally about undisclosed monosodium glutamate (MSG) in packaged food travels between the lips of wealthy hippies while packs of posters are distributed for hanging. I feel the eyes of a nurse in blue scrubs land on my zippered cowhide. "I bought these boots last year, before I went vegan." I prepare to say and, "Most people are eating the meat so I'm just making sure the cow's skin isn't wasted." But no fight progresses past her fleeting glance and my soft tacos arrive to distract me with juicy jackfruit, guacamole, black beans and salsa. We climb copper boulders at a rest stop in Arizona. I photograph Scott's silhouette, capturing his rolled shirt sleeves, angular chin, reflective rimmed glasses and the digits of his long curved fingers. I photograph a fat black crow on a telephone line. I photograph toilets: rest stop toilets, restaurant toilets, hotel toilets. But a toilet is a toilet is a toilet, I learn. I don't know why I thought they would change state by state. In Crossville, Tennessee, the battery light on the dashboard shines. Southern hospitality saves us on this Sunday morning in holy Tennessee where rain is turning into snow. A mechanic drives to his shop, replaces our alternator and charges just $55 for an hour and a half of labor. In Oklahoma City, we find a restaurant oasis, Matthew Kenney, where an eager red headed waiter tells us about his favorite menu items. Scott and I share a smoothie of raw chocolate, almond milk and banana. I order a butternut squash soup and for my main course, a dish of curried kelp noodles with vegetables. For dessert, we share a delectable chocolate chai sampler. Two hours east of Amarillo, 60 mile-an-hour winds push the driver's side window to sink slightly, causing an irritating whistle. Scott cranks the manual lever again and again, creating brief moments of quiet. However, the cranking eventually causes cracking and the disappearance of the window into the door. Gusts of cold roar in. We pull off the highway. It's nearly 4PM on Presidents' Day and all the auto shops who answer our calls can't help until the next morning. So we bundle up. I get into the driver's seat, pull back onto the highway and grip the wheel with my gloved hands. The car wavers in the wind and I imagine we are picked up and tossed into the spinning blades of the wind farm fans. Chopped into tiny pieces, our wet remains sprinkle over the mile long cow ranch we pass and into the vents of the many mysterious metallic barns we see. In Oakland, California, we meet Scott's brother and his wife, the new owners of this car we've been driving for 3,600 miles. We meet at their city's Saturday farmers' market where a middle aged man sings Jamaican songs and beneath tents are piles of citrus, herbs, and strawberry samples. In San Francisco, they buy us burritos and beer and we sit in a park on a pink and orange sheet while a middle aged man with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon under his tattooed arm hollers "cold beer". A little later, a twenty-something stoner with a queer smile and a black backpack crouches beside me and offers to sell us some drugs using lingo we are unfamiliar with. Shrooms and weed baked into brownies, he translates. "No thanks." Another dealer quietly carries brass hot pots of drug infused chocolate truffles. He is the classiest dealer around, wearing a straw pointy hat, a button down shirt and sun kissed skin. The park is packed. Gathered groups sit in rows, all facing downhill away from the sun. It looks as if we are watching a show. And we are, I suppose, watching and simultaneously performing the show of strangers. A frisbee flies for a fast pup. An amateur tightrope made of yellow car straps wraps two trees. Someone's bottle cap pops behind us and lands at the center of our sheet, causing us to look around and receive a jolly apology. A baby in pink overalls waddles by alone before flopping her diapered bottom beside two snuggling lady lovers. After a brief chat, we watch the baby stand and begin retracing her uphill steps when three drunk girls bend low to ask for her momma in high pitched voices. The baby walks on. The drunk girls follow. The baby's mother stands with a wide smile to the right of us and when the drunk girls see her, they laugh. They thought the baby was alone, they say before collapsing back onto their blankets, all secretly sad for babies of their own. Guitars, bean bag football, an old Asian woman collecting cans, miniature canines, and toe nail dirt. This is my new knowledge of sunny Saturdays in San Francisco. In Knoxville, Tennessee, we drink local beer from pint glasses and go swimming in the hotel's indoor pool. At a gas station in Montville, New Jersey we fill the Geo Prism's gas tank and empty our pee tanks in the convenience store restroom. The small car is fun to drive, but "We're dead if we get into an accident." I say, my shifty eyes bouncing from blue tooth talking drivers to a guy with an orange kitten on his lap to the sunlight splashing the scaffolding of the bridge in New York and to riverbank hills covered in houses. The car's four wheels drift with my eyes into sleep strips, lane lines and steering wheel jerks. "You might want to stay in your lane." Scott says before "Break lights. Breaaaaak lights!" Scott and I perform a firm hand shake at every state line. I drive 80 miles an hour when the speed limit marks 75. It feels like flying. We pass cargo trains, eighteen wheeler trucks and trailers towing trailers. We see black bulls, brown horses and hundreds of billboards for burgers and Cracker Barrels. The car shop in Amarillo, where we get the window wedged shut, is a dealership and while we wait we chat with the waiting room hostess. A sweet old woman adorned with big shiny jewelry and a southern drawl, she owns a jewelry business and a window cleaning company. She works at the dealership for fun. I can tell she wants to chat so when the sun starts to rise behind the buildings across the street, I stand up and initiate conversation with "pretty sunrise." My obvious remark is all she needs to get chatting. A widow of a "real cowboy" she lived in New Mexico for twenty years, she says after my mention of our next destination. She used to go to the rodeos, sip whiskey sours and watch her man down in the ring. Somehow the conversation turns to restaurants. "Can't get a bad meal at Cracker Barrel." she says, "they have everything." and "You don't have Olive Gardens in Massachusetts, do you?" and "Oh you probably don't like cat fish, but we love it down here." When it's time to leave, she wishes us luck and I tell her it was nice talking to her because it was. We listen to an entire book on tape. We listen to Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Patsy Cline in Tennessee. We listen to the wind and we hardly talk or think about the future.  


The night before our road trip's departure, my family gathers at a Chinese restaurant for Mom's birthday. My little sister, who is amidst a graduate school course about race and equality, speaks of her shock. She's learning about the harsh truths of current racial inequality in this country. Man created racism. She tells us. We are all exactly the same on the inside. I tell her that I actually watched Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech on my computer that afternoon. I had been watching one lecture and it inspired me to look for more inspiration. I wasn't planning to watch the entire speech, but I couldn't help myself. When King begins his famous August 28, 1963 address at the March on Washington, his eyes carefully follow his written word, his nervous tongue tripping a little and echoing through the huddled group of microphones at his mouth. Soon, he becomes more comfortable at his familiar place behind the podium, referring less to the pages at his fingertips. He rallies listeners for his dreams to be fulfilled. The camera goes to the gray statue of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. Stoically, he sits as a massive reminder of his abolition of slavery one hundred years before at the conclusion of the American Civil War. Where will America be in 2063?  I wonder. And will we ever all be "free at last"?  


What if Scott and I were black? What if we were lesbians or gay men? What if we were of Mexican, Iranian or Kenyan descent? Would we have taken this trip from our liberal city in the Northeast, down through the southern states and up through California? What would have happened when Scott walked into that gas station where that group of middle aged white men sat drinking coffee and telling jokes that started with "those black boys"? Would we have felt unsafe in Knoxville, Little Rock or Amarillo? We have friendly faces, kind smiles and innocent eyes, but is our peach colored skin all strangers see? Is our skin the reason why the persons we pass return our smiles and gentle speech? Is our skin color the reason why so many go out of their way to help us when we have car trouble? Is our skin color the reason why those three hicks with individual facial ticks in that Arizona car shop charged us $40 for an oil change?


In Santa Barbara, I have never seen such flaunting wealth. This is probably where celebrities shop, I imagine, looking around for rock stars, basketball players and famous film actors. We pass four old-fashioned movie theaters with bright bulbed marquees on our way to dinner. We see gold and crystal chandeliers glowing in arched entrances and beneath outdoor staircases. We see stores, restaurants, and ice cream shops equipped with high fashion window displays where gravity is redefined, color is reexamined and money is of no object. Yet across from these shiny windows, leather skinned homeless men and women sit on wrought iron sidewalk benches beneath oval antiqued streetlights holding cardboard signs for food. The next morning, I go for a jog. I pass a church lawn where, behind its high hedge, tents are being shoved into hitchhiker sacks and stolen shopping carts.   


In Oakland, before our red eye flight back to Boston, we attend my brother-in-law, Jonathan's planetarium show. We sit in the front row on reclined cushioned chairs and learn how scientifically miraculous our planet is. At the end of the half hour show, curious children raise their little hands and inadvertently trick Jonathan into articulating the speed of light by way of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. A little while later, he sets up a telescope and points it to our cratered gray moon. We are so small, aren't we? An idea which can be very hard to grasp. It's like when you're in high school and your boyfriend breaks up with you or your mother sends you to baseball practice with the wrong kind of pants and all the senior baseball jackass jocks relentlessly tease you. It is nearly impossible to look past one's awkward teenage ecosystem of broken naivety, savage rumors and spiking hormones to see flat empty highways, fog ringed mountain ranges and strangers. And yet, even after graduating crowded cafeterias, American History classes, and Algebra graphs, it seems we still struggle to see past our picket fences, car doors and country lines to comprehend really how alike we all are. We are all souls stuffed into bodies made of livers, lungs, joints and hearts. We all walk this planet in search of acceptance, sex and survival. We are all born of mothers, begin as babbling babies and waddle around as defenseless children. We all suffer heart ache and growing pains. And we all must choose between slowly dying and constantly growing. Personally, I want to learn the past; expand upon my present perspective and develop an extraordinary future. Because I only have this one chance with this body, with this family, with these friends and I know that I can only do it here, on this one spectacular and extremely exhausted Earth. 


I'm not going to waste any time dying.  

At a rest stop in Shenandoah National Park, I take a picture of Scott and he takes a picture of me. In my picture, I am laughing because I am farting and the thunder of my toot echos through the valley below. In Lexington, Virgina, we find a coffee shop and walk circles around a neighborhood, stretching our car cramped legs. At the Grand Canyon at sun rise, I sit on a rock at Mather Point willing the rising sun to pink my purple lips and soothe my quivering muscles. We drive the coastal highway, Interstate 1, up and up California where the views of the Pacific Ocean give us new images for which to judge future landscape beauty contests upon.  

One Hopeful Herbivor

I am so lucky to live in this progressive time where bright GREEN signs all point to an upswing from our country's disease riddled depression and lead to the ultimate destination of dirt and kitchen sinks. Farms and rooftop gardens where carrots, kale, tomatoes, spinach and grains are grown. Apple orchards, raspberry bushes and pear trees adorned with brimming baskets and baby teeth and fingers the color of blueberries. It is vegetables steaming on stovetops, pots of brown rice simmering, butternut squash soup steeping, and a wide bowl of crisp salad sitting. In the sunshine, my hope balances high on tight ropes made of strong veins and poised bones where one day I can stop fearing my father's prostate, heart and arteries will prematurely fail or rot and that my mother's breasts, blood and brain will knot into tumors and dementia. Hope that my sisters and brother will experience true energy, enthusiasm and open mindedness for an alternative. Hope that they will all live long lives at home and not in hospital beds. Hope for everyone throughout the world to embrace individual empowerment through healthy living. Because it doesn't matter what your culture, race, gender or genes are. What matters is how you choose to treat the vessel of your soul.   

"People are sensitive about their food choices." Scott tells me. "Don't be a preacher." He is warning me, reminding me of the last time I went vegan five years ago and began bombarding the email inboxes of my family members with films about animal cruelty.  Hidden camera footage of pigs packed in filth, chickens trampled by the cramped chaos of factory farms and cows screaming while they wait in line to have their hind legs yanked and their throats slit. If I am a preacher, then these pages are my church for I have no interest in contributing more quiet to the gluttonous greed of big American businesses crushing the ignorant citizen with addictions, misinformation and disease. 

I grab a cheddar cheese stick from the dairy drawer, husk the wrapper and chomp. I order a 6-ounce beef burger on a bun with a side salad. I pinch and peel smoked salmon flesh from its shiny cardboard and lay it across chive cream cheese on a toasted everything bagel. I grill turkey burgers and garnish them with strips of pork bacon and crumbled blue cheese. I fill my belly with three egg omelets of oily roasted red peppers, goat cheese and breakfast sausage. I gnaw on the bones of my crispy roast duck legs and spoon creamed spinach and garlic mashed potatoes into my mouth. I experience a fluctuating body weight, energy levels, butt dimples and face pimples. 

Then I am shown the documentary film, Forks Over Knives and it teaches me that the animal dependent diet is what has caused the health of our human race to plummet so considerably over the past century. The film presents irrefutable scientific and historical studies linking the consumption of meat and dairy with multiple degenerate diseases. 

The first time I went vegan it was from the book, Skinny Bitch. I was twenty-two at the time and too embarrassed by the book's title to ever tell, but I liked cutting meat and dairy from my diet. It felt good. Like I was rejecting the entrance of bad food into my body. Yet after a year and a half I quit out of guilt. I didn't want to be an inconvenience to hosts anymore, my mother in particular. "You're comin home? Awww shit, Rachey, what am I gonna feed you?" She'd say surrounded by miniature cups of strawberry banana yogurt, deli salami, and swiss cheese. "I'll be fine." I'd say, packing pita chips and peanut butter into my purse before boarding the bus for Boston. The book convinced me why I shouldn't eat animal derived foods, but I was too naive to learn how to eat nutritionally. Rice and beans, soy milk and cereal, apples and honey roasted peanut butter became my daily diet. When I gave in to scrambled eggs on Christmas morning, I felt enormous relief. I could agree with my family about food again. Scrub away that sticking point and talk about something other than Tofurkey and hummus. But I am twenty-eight now and no longer feel impulsed to agree with everyone about everything. In fact, I think to agree with the majority at this point in our health history, would be quite stupid.   

The documentary teaches me of a civil war in this country. A war between the ignorant sick citizen and the big wigs of the meat, dairy, processed food and pharmaceutical companies. The war is fought with false public announcements of big business favored food pyramids and of national advertisements asking if we've got milk and if we were aware that beef was for dinner. Years later, commercials for Lipitor, Viagra, and Slimfast litter our eyes and ears while we fight about the kabillion dollar health care bill in this country. It's a war that isn't so easily seen if looking for bullet wounds and cannon ball cavities for this battle field is across our innocent insides. At the front lines, our arteries are splitting into heart disease, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, chronic fatigue and diabetes. Our pores are impoverished from necessary nutrients due to malnutrition and dehydration from energy drinks, lattes and liters of diet soda. Our discolored skin sags and our bellies jiggle while we steer motorized carts up and down grocery store aisles, wheezing while we reach for cans of beef stew, clam chowder and boxes of Oreos. When we reach middle age, dementia begins to tangle our minds like silly string as we forget our insurance cards at the pharmacy again, our hands red with white stripes from sinking bags of orange bottles.  We're losing the war because we aren't even putting up a fight. We are literally purchasing the weapons of our enemies and pushing the barrels into our mouths because we either don't know better or because we fear change and admitting we were misled by our mothers, health professionals and by our commercialized culture.  


I'm choosing to spring from this infested environment of refined sugars, packaged obesity, inevitable arthritis, and unrelenting misery and give my body what it truly need: plants. Since my introduction to this knowledge, I feel like the world makes so much sad sense now. Standing back, I see widespread physical damage, prevalent psychological destruction and an undeniable surge in disease-related deaths. 

This enlightenment first began when I quit coffee a few weeks back and my energy skyrocketed. I stopped trying to self-medicate my mood with cups of caffeine and my reward was a real sense of self empowerment. Clarity dragged me out of my hazed state and reminded me that health is not achieved through medicine cabinet chemistry or creamed coffee, but through whole grains, vegetables, and fruit. I have been a vegan for a week now and I feel consistently energized and balanced, like I am no longer forcing my body to fight what I feed it. 

What do you tremble?

What do you tremble? Are you all afraid? 

Alas, I blame you not for you are Mortal 

and Mortal eyes cannot endure the Devil. 

Lady Anne 

King Richard III 

William Shakespeare 

Over bridges floating on fog, we drive to Brooklyn in the rain. I have spent the morning rehearsing my audition in the living room beside the glowing pellet stove where a mug of honeyed herbal tea sat steaming. I swept the floors, gathered the trash, washed the dishes and walked the dogs. I wrote a list and packed my bag. In Clinton Hill, we park the car and walk to a cafe around the corner. The sidewalks are slippery and cracked, the buildings beside them mismatching as if school children had dressed the bricks and wood, not grown men with hard hats, receding hairlines and hammers. We walk fast, an old instinct crafted while living in this city for twelve months, five and a half years ago. Suburban white kids we were with hidden maps and persistent paces. We were never not new, yet after a few months we were elbowing tourists and weaving through dense train cars as if we had been conceived in Chelsea, born in Queens and raised in Greenwich Village. 


At the cafe, we wait for our friends, Claire and Jay. I order a ginger tea, Scott a chai. They are served in pretty white porcelain cups. The cafe is lit by copper chandeliers and the day's shy sunlight who still, at 4p.m., hides behind the dime-colored clouds of the morning. A big mirror with a tarnished gold frame is mounted on the wall behind the register, a list of menu items drawn in marker at the top. The bottom reflects the barrister's bum cleavage, pressed and bolstered between his belt and the hem of his tee shirt. Beside our table, stacks of vinyl records rise, jagged. Three record players with speakers sit idle, wires plugged and wrapped like a stringy oil spill. A stanchion rope of rippling book pages and twine drapes to prevent curious, entitled fingers. After a couple hours of reading old magazines and playing Scrabble on our phones, we order a cheese plate. Purple pitted olives and navy blue figs pile in two ramekins, slices of brie, mozzarella, and jack cheeses lay like fallen dominoes, and a baguette rests on a bed of mixed greens. After I wipe away the crumbs, I sketch Scott's face onto a paper napkin with wet black ink. 


It's work just to get a haircut in this city, remember train fare. Work to lug groceries and hampered laundry. Work to pay rent. Work all the time just to pay rent. I remember. I did it once, briefly. It can make people hard, in a way. It did us. In this mighty metropolis, shields of tension began layering across our young bodies like metal molds. By spring, we were armored knights. It's survival. Don't fuck with me, you learn to show with a facial expression and the secure nature with which you walk. If from out of town originally, as many residents are, there is an undefined pressure to look like you belong.


When I worked at the grocery store in midtown years ago, a customer asked me if I was from Seattle. No, I told him, Massachusetts. You're certainly not from here, he said next, looking around to the braided, boisterous Harlem girls and Brooklyn boys who surrounded me at the other registers. I was a quiet girl. My hair dark brown, eyes blue, skin pale with pink cheeks. When I began working there a few asked if the other white girl in our department was my sister. "Hey. Y'all sistas?" Kristina was 6'2", maybe taller. She kept her yellow hair long and in an enormous mess of a nest perched at the top of her head. She wore big red glasses and strange clothes. She was a funny girl. A photography student. No, we're not sisters, I'd tell them. 


Drowning in the city's vulgar current, too proud to holler for help, too shy to show our teeth, we fled for Boston. 


Our evening in Brooklyn is spent eating out. With a scratchy throat threatening a full body invasion, I don't order wine. Instead I keep the model/waitress repetitively retrieving the water pitcher. Years ago, I would have drunk less to prevent such a pretty person from working so hard for me, but I've since lost the desire to disappear beneath pressed white linen, silver candlesticks and extravagant tips. 


That night, we sleep on a slowly deflating air mattress, while the steam heat resembles river rapids and the bellows of Brooklyn blow in from the open window behind our heads. At 6:30a.m., I hear four horn beeps, a pause, then "shut the fuck up!", then another horn beep, then "fuck you!" The exchange makes me smile as I read encouraging phone messages for my morning ahead. At 7:30, I roll onto the floor and gather my brown polka dotted dress, my olive green tights and my tall leather boots. In the bathroom, I wash and dress. When ready, I walk out. Scott gazes up from where he lays across the pink velvet couch. I tell him I'd like to leave earlier than we had planned, just in case. "Today is all about you." He says, sitting up. While I pack, he unplugs the mattress, folds our borrowed blanket, and piles the pillows. Jay walks out of his bedroom and asks if I'd like him to put the kettle on. I would, thank you. 

At the top of the stairs to the inbound subway station, I pause to pick up an empty soda can that's tumbled from a homeless man's shopping cart. I hand it to him and smile. He thanks me and smiles back. 


Underground, Scott and I lean on tiled walls, whispering. Nearly every woman who walks by "checks" me out, Scott says. My yellow coat is like the sun rising amongst a sea of sleepily rocking ships after a raucous storm of cannon balls, coffee and eye crusties. Everyone else here is on their way to work. I am headed to my graduate acting school audition. The train is ten minutes tardy. People peer down the railroad tracks, willing the tunnel to illuminate. When it arrives, we squish onto the last train car. We giggle as the train starts, remembering that lurch we have grown so unaccustomed to after living with cars in the country for three years. When a seat opens up, I eye a stalky square woman who's standing near by to see if she'd like to sit. She waves me off. I slide down and press my caboose onto the slippery plastic seat. At the next stop, the elbow of a business man punctures my personal bubble, allowing stress to spill in. I reach into my purse to pull out my headphones, but first look to Scott who is wedged between the sliding door and strangers. He smiles, his blessing to press play and close my eyes. 


As we drove through Brooklyn the day before he told me he no longer saw the beauty in the city. I was quiet before disagreeing. The filth, I said, the diverse buildings, the crowded street corners and florescent bodega signs are beautiful in an unequivocally raw way. I didn't convince him, but I wasn't really trying. This morning, while straddling strangers on the subway, he begins thinking these thoughts again when a delicate white feather floats past his face, glides over to me where I sit with my eyes closed, circles my face and then lands on the woman's coat to my left. Oh, he sees, there it is. When he tells me this little story later on our drive home, goosebumps rise across my arms and over my back. "Maybe that means someone was with me." I say. 


In midtown, we find the building. We're thirty minutes early, but we go in anyway. I walk up to the front desk. "What are you here for?" A big security man asks. 


"I have an audition in RipleyGrrrierrs Studios" I say, stumbling. Not a good sign. I need to warm up. Do some tongue twisters. He waves me on. 


"I'm with her." Scott says behind me. 


In the restroom on the sixteenth floor, I look to my reflection and begin reciting my first monologue, Lady Anne from William Shakespeare's King Richard III. "What do you tremble?" My hands do, yes. "Are you all afraid?" Very afraid. I exit the bathroom, walk over to Scott, smile, give him my yellow coat and a kiss and walk away. I say hello to the others in the waiting area, sign in and begin stretching in the side hall. 


My name is announced. I walk into the white audition room and over to the table. The first gentleman smiles to me. With a slight tilt to his head, he embraces my hand with a calm security. You can do this, he is saying with this gesture. This isn't scary. We aren't scary. I recognize him from the program's website. He is the chair of the department. The second gentleman introduces himself and shakes my hand. They ask what I will be performing for them. I tell them. My introductory words come out as I have rehearsed them. I can do this. "Would you like me to begin now?" I ask. 


"Yes when you're ready." 


A mirror spans the wall to my left, the direction I plan to address my imaginary characters (the men holding the casket of my recently deceased father-in-law, King Henry VI). He and his son, Edward (Anne's husband), have both been murdered by Richard. Before my speech in the play, Richard has ordered the men carrying the body to wait. These men, as they should, fear Richard tremendously. I, Lady Anne, want him dead. I turn around, take a deep breath. This is it. I turn back to face my audience of two and begin. 

"What do you tremble?" I hear my voice shake. "Are you all afraid?" I bark now, determined. "Alas, I blame you not, for you are Mortal, and Mortal eyes cannot endure the Devil." I look above the table to the wall to address Richard (the man I call devil). There is a stain on the wall. Look at that stain. It looks nothing like the lamp in the living room at home. Stab that stain with your words! Stab it. My voice sounds foreign with a harsh echo lingering around me like a static cloud.  This is not as good as I've done it before, I think next instead of what I should really be thinking, which is to tell that stain to leave me and my imaginary friends alone. "Avant thou dreadful minister of Hell; thou had'st but power over his Mortal body, his Soul thou canst not have: Therefore be gone." Now I am truly quivering. "Foul Devil, for God's sake hence, and trouble us not, for thou hast made the happy earth thy Hell: fill'd it with cursing cries, and deep exclaims: if thou delight to view thy heinous deeds behold this pattern of thy Butcheries." This is when I look down to Henry's body and see that it is bleeding. Richard is to blame for this. But when my head bows, I catch my own body's posture in the mirror and am pulled again to the mercy of my thoughts. Focus, you damn fool! Focus. "Oh Gentlemen see see dead Henry's wounds open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh." Make him melt. "Blush, blush thou lump of foul Deformity: for 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood from cold and empty Veins where no blood dwells. Thy Deeds inhumane and unnatural provoke this Deluge most unnatural." Plead for help. "O God! which this Blood mad'st revenge his death: O Earth! which this Blood drink'st, revenge his death: either Heav'n with Lightning strike the murderer dead: or Earth gape open wide and eat him quick, as thou dost swallow up this good Kings blood which his Hell-governed arm hath butchered."  

When I finish my second monologue, one of my eyes has dripped a long tear. I wipe it. Damn dried out contact lense. The man on the left agrees that his do that to him sometimes too. We are talking now about why I'd like to go to graduate school. I tell them the specific training I am looking for, about my original one-woman show and that I am only applying for their program. I'm twenty-eight, I tell them, if I am to go away to school, I only want to attend the program I am most interested in. I manage to tell them about the theater company I've helped establish and organize and the certificate in theater management I have completed. Conversation, in stark contrast to my monologues, is easy. They like me and I very much like them. But today is the first day of auditions. They have a week in New York City before going on to Chicago and San Francisco. I believe they accept two, maybe three females into their program every year. They audition hundreds. As I am walking out of the room, the director of the program asks if my husband is an actor too. "Yes, but he's pursuing directing." I say. "He's applying for graduate schools in directing. A couple in San Diego." I say before blurting something awkward about how "that would be my golden..." I trail off before I can remember the word, scenario, meaning if Scott and I were to both be accepted to schools in their southern California city. I wave at my words like a stinky fart, thank them, wish them luck and walk out of the room. 


In the hall, I tell the guy who's about to go in for his audition that they're very nice. "Seriously." I tell him, as if to my past self. "Don't be nervous." 


Outside, a soft breeze cools my cheeks. I look up to catch it. Through the tinted windows of my plastic sunglasses, I see soft sunlight cascading across the avenue's angles. I hear sounds rumble from subway grates, honk from raspy horns and click from soles on cement. I ask Scott to lead me to lunch. From 39th Street to Soho, we weave through midtown's crowded sidewalks like shoelaces in search of loopholes. Photographing colors, referencing street maps and pointing to the places of old memories, I introduce New York City to my new unabashed self. 

"What do you tremble? Are you all afraid? Alas I blame you not for you are Mortal..." My Lady Anne record plays on repeat for ten days until one optimistic thought reveals itself as if it were some hidden message embedded in the iambic pentameter.  I, the actress, was nervous to perform this audition and upset by my jitters, but a similar crippling fear could just as well have overcome Lady Anne when forced to face Richard, the ruthless murderer of her beloveds. Maybe the audition actually went well. This thought, whether true or utterly false, has at least the force to flick the turntable's needle to screech and leave me with the quiet hum of spinning vinyl.    

Cracked and Crashing

One awaits the next triple shot cappuccino, cigarette break, fudge gorge, bulging blunt, bottle of wine, pint of beer, shot of scotch, line of coke. Awaits the next sexual encounter with a stranger in a barroom bathroom. The next purge into a potty. The next slit into soft forearm skin. The next theft of x-rated magazines from corner stores, bicycles from dimly lit front porches, unlocked cars from grocery store parking lots. One anticipates, participates and then is (sometimes) pummeled into pits of regret from these ritualized tactics that make life bearable. One contemplates quitting an addiction, but if there isn't a vacation planned, a raise in order or any sort of prospect for golden happiness, what then is to prevent this person from creating small joys out of harsh adrenaline rushes and chemical dependencies? 

I believe a life without daily coffee consumption is a life without joy. Every obstacle, gloomy moment and irritating task can be overcome once I've prescribed myself an appropriate dose of caffeine. We, coffee and I, fix everything. We say witty things to people we're partying with for the first time. We tell old friends we're eating brunch with that we love them. We go grocery shopping. We write for five hours. We take enormous emergency poops in the park. We crash. We weep, shakily spouting that nothing is working, everything is stupid, and that I had to shit in the woods again.   

The day my tongue turns tan and coarse as a cat's is the day I decide coffee and I are in an abusive relationship. I need to take a break to gather my thoughts, I tell her. She isn't happy. Sends aches to my temples and seductive cravings to my mouth to meet her in the kitchen to get completely cracked out on her silkily intoxicating caffeine. I crave her with a sick constancy. But I am determined, at this time, to not allow winter to suck me into coffee cups, wine tumblers and beer bottles. When I quit, I am rewarded with rest. My ticker slows to its proper pace and my brain exhales, its little thought projectionist whooping in delight, relieved I no longer require him to run seventeen images at once with an internal dialogue of lists, worries and wonders. I feel my age of twenty-eight now as I welcome a little pessimism, sleepiness and secluded silence back into my life. 


Coffee has been unexpectedly quiet since those first days of my detox. I'm sure she'll make one or two final pleas for a pleasurable and then remorseful reunion. We'll see how I do. My track record proves me weak. I sucked my fingers until I was nine years old. Like many others, there's just something in me that yearns for the comfort of a reliably familiar ritual that can temporarily separate me from the commotion of life.