Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Tuesday, March 22, 2005 The Pitch: It's like Zelig meets Mr. Baseball! I go through periods--not always, but there are definitely periods--where I think I see people I know, where names in movie and t.v. credits ring bells for me, where the picture of that person makes me think about someone or someone else, and I start to wonder...When Edi and I first started dating, I was going through one of those periods. I remember seeing CQ with her and being utterly and completely convinced that one of the attractive Italian models was an ex-roommate of mine, and I searched for her name in the credits. I did the same thing (I can't remember for what or whom) when we saw Bartleby. (Amusingly, it wasn't until days later that I realized that one of the movies--About A Boy--did have the name of someone I went to high school with: a guy in my class I only knew of by name, who a mutual friend had told me was into music and incredible with production, who went on to make records with Beck.) It's been happening again recently. There was a woman in the lobby yesterday talking to one of the paralegals, her back turned to me, and the way she wore her hair I was sure it was someone who used to work here, back years later in search of a job. (Nope.) Or the bald guy talking with his buddies outside Starbuck's who I also thought was one of my old roommates. Or the woman who was Barry Bonds' girlfriend for nine years. Was she that popular girl in my high school class, the pretty brunette who, with the pretty blonde, was essentially the clique of girls who acted, more or less, like they were better than everyone? First name is right? Second name might be right? Hair color and eye color? Check. I know she ended up around here, at least for a bit (I totally dove behind a pillar rather than bump into her at a Peter Gabriel concert. Granted this was, ummmmm, 1987?) If I had ever attended any of my high school reunions (last year was the twentieth), I might be a bit more keyed in about these things: ho, ho, that can't be Kim testifying against Barry Bonds! She married an Italian architect and has been living in Genoa for the last fifteen years! And yet, I'm opposed to high school reunions. I hate the idea of them (people who served time in prison don't hold reunions, do they? High school reunions are just to help us think there's some difference...), I hate the idea of going to them (because I am not infinitely rich and powerful and therefore capable of rubbing it in the face of the people who were shitty to me), I hate how I feel when thinking about the idea of them (because knowing that I would hate to discover that some people were doing well, and would only appreciate their misery), and I hate what I realize about myself when thinking about them (that it's all caused, largely, by a hurt over not being accepted which is deeply, deeply childish). Part of me hopes Edi and I can become rich and powerful by 2009 so we can slam-dunk our 25 year reunions, but I think it's just better that I forget such an idea ever happened. Ex-cons get out of prison and they start new lives--that was my only goal when I was inside, and I'm glad for the one I have. But there's also the part of me that wants to know--or wants to think I know (as my poor, wonderful Edi has been dealing with all too much lately: she's taken to saying, "You know an awful lot that you didn't seem to know before they announced it" when we listen to DVD commentaries.)--and so I'd really like to know: is that her? Did the few last tatters of hope I held out for Bonds being an amazing player and family man, and not just a daring steroid user and chronic adulterer, get scattered to the four winds by the woman who was one of the pinnacles of what I found terrible and wrong about high school when I was in high school? Did the girl who always hung out and talked with her friends and the jocks and acted like nobody else existed, find herself in the life of the kept woman--the house in Arizona where she could entertain during spring training, the hotels where she stayed at the team rate, the hours spent listening to the man talk about himself, the empty rooms she thought she was filling when, in a way, she was merely part of their emptiness? Maybe it's better I don't know: at least there's the possibility for something richer to grow in my imagination than the simple bitterness the truth would carry. posted by Jeff Lester | 12:20 PM | |
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