The Invisible Man, New Year, Business Miso, Billie
the invisible man
We watched The Invisible Man and it was chilling. There is a lot of silence, a lot of long shots panning through the rooms of a house and Elisabeth Moss’s face, rubbing tears from her eyes as the people around her look at her, carefully. She is not believed. A slow unraveling. The psychological architecture upturned, landing on new facets. Of course you think of The Handmaid’s Tale: June in another life, the colors of what it means to be powerless, which shapes torture can take. Cecilia scans the empty space ahead of her, around her. It doesn’t matter that she snaps on the light, because there’s nothing to see. But you can almost hear someone breathing.
It’s been almost a year since I was in the hospital, deep into my own cataclysm. When I was shown to my room, I realized my bathroom sink was motion-activated, but it seemed inconsistent. When I waved my hands, there was a small delay, sometimes, and then it was instant, sometimes. I assumed there was a camera, that they were watching me, that there were manual buttons that the staff pressed to usher forth water. I smiled when I looked up and I thanked them, just in case. I inspected the swinging bathroom door, with huge gaps at the top and the bottom, how it could be swung out to block the door to the room, which the staff didn’t like. I wasn’t sure what was true, but I had to assume the staff were watching, that they were studying me, that everything was part of a test to evaluate how to diagnose me, or maybe do a clinical study, how much time I had to spend there before I was released. Everything could be true, like I was in Legends of the Hidden Temple, feeling along the walls to find keys. The techs flipped their badges or covered them so I couldn’t see their names, and I don’t know, even now, if it was to mark how well I could retain fine details and how well I was integrating with the world, or if they simply wanted to safeguard their identity for when I was outside, and still knew them. Everything was true.
My neighbor, an old, balding, short white man with wide eyes behind glasses who was in the room next door, introduced himself as Dennis, “like Dennis the Menace, whoo, but I hope I’m not,” laughing. He kept re-introducing himself, forgetting we’d met, smiling. I re-introduced myself in different ways, hoping that one would stick. I sang the 1960s Batman theme song. I explored the rec room and found a sheaf of papers forgotten on the counter where there were unused ketchup packets and cups of ballpoint pens. I paged through forms filled out in a stuttered scrawl. Dennis had written his name at the top, a labored signature. On one page, the form asked for his emergency contacts. I recognized it as one I’d filled out, too, where I had copied from my phone J’s number, and some friends. Here, Dennis had listed his primary care doctor, and his eye care, but no names. My eyes flooded with tears. I was thinking of my parents, how they were getting older, how their hands would shake, how they would have to be taken care of. When Dennis walked up to say hi again, I rushed to hug him. “Thank you. Really, thank you,” he said, stunned. “You don’t know how much it means to me.”
Later, his face changed. Later, he would suddenly have a perfect, precise memory. He followed me around. When I was in my room, he would cough and hack and urinate and flush the toilet, so much I asked for ear plugs. When I was out of my room, he would wander the hallways and change the TV channel to show violence, bodies being opened. He saved unused ketchup packets and packets of sugar and jam and left ballpoint pens in cups for people to find. He took pieces out of puzzles. He left books as clues. He left me meticulous collages of Batman and Catwoman cut from magazines in the art room. Posters of astrological signs with glitter. This I have no ambiguity about. How he walked near me and talked about showers, wouldn’t it be nice to take a shower? And ask for more hand lotion. The staff cleaned the surfaces, told me to wash my hands. I made friends with the women, who told me about how he broke his own glasses by smashing his head against the wall, and followed them around and whispered things to a girl who was under eighteen. The menace.
I keep thinking about different lenses on The Invisible Man, whether it’s really about women who aren’t believed, the invisible threads of trauma, the body keeps the score. Or if it’s about slowly losing yourself, your mental illness changing you until you realize your loved ones are looking at you in horror. Or something much more simple: the invisible men, the men who can do anything they fucking want, in plain sight, with privilege, with power, defining normalcy, constructing buildings, hierarchies, palaces, realities.
new year
I don’t remember last January. In a way, it feels like last February was where the year really began, when my life — our life — fractured. I quit my job, we moved to Portland, and now we both work at new places. Yesterday there was sunlight, and it was warm, and I was driving from the dentist. I started to cry because it was so nice, to be alive with the window down, redbud and cherry trees blooming in the streets, to be going to a cafe near the place where we would meet our friends later for dinner.
My friend S and I watch This is Us and we usually rate the episodes by how much we cried. J has zero interest in watching it because he doesn’t like things that are too sad, especially things that are designed for maximum emotion, the score calibrated to drive the most tears. But it’s a lot more than that, I think. There are layers of sadness, of affection, of taking care. Of course there is always the undercurrent of tragedy, a loss that is unimaginable, except that people lose people every day, every minute, every hour. I think it helps us to see loss in other ways than ours. I also cry when parents try to be good parents, scoop up their children and laugh, wards of these vulnerable little beings just before a deep loss. I cried at Into the Spider-Verse. I cried at The Land Before Time which we were watching with our friend JK and her daughter, at baby Littlefoot. “They’re so happy,” I sobbed. “They don’t know yet.”
business miso
I’ve taken to bringing Miso into the office once a week, mainly because my coworkers adore her. She greets everyone with joy, and barks furiously at perceived invaders. She keeps watch at the window, follows people who are eating, and is a general nuisance. We love her deeply.
billie
I didn’t really start listening to Billie Eilish until recently. I didn’t understand the appeal. Now she’s pretty much all I’ve been listening to, the charcoal slash of her voice, sometimes soft croon, sometimes pixelated, a bass cloud.
albums on repeat
- Billie Eilish - WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?
- Tennis - Swimmer
- Beth Ditto - Fake Sugar
- Post Malone - beerbongs & bentleys (LOL)
- Kesha - High Road ; Rainbow