Feeling unsustainable

Here's a short story I wrote a while back.

I’m walking around in the museum of knowledge, kinda bored if you want to know the truth, and it occurs to me I must’ve skipped past a few of my favorite exhibits

the out-of-this-world
space adventure,
the dam’s-done-broke-
gushing-rushing log flume,
the hands-over-my-eyes
shouldn’t-peek-but-I-do
funhouse with the witches
and the blood and the goo

Excuse me, I say, walking backwards on the conveyer belt, I want to go back.

You can only go forward in the museum of knowledge, says the woman behind the counter.

But I didn’t start at the beginning, I pleaded. Someone dropped me off midway by mistake, and all you’ve got here is atlases and dinosaur bones and periodic tables.

What’s back there wouldn’t interest you, she said, it’s kids stuff.

Oh, but it would interest me, I said, it’s… it’s important. You know the funhouse back here?

She nods solemnly.

The funhouse is important. I need to remember it.

She nods again, frowning, grave, but I get the sense that she’s going to lift the velvet rope.

It’s my dream, see, she just works here.

***

I’m walking arm-in-arm with sprightly, smiling, wool-capped Kimber Dean. It’s not her, really, but a close approximation, and in this world I’m embracing her, but it’s not Kimber the woman I’m embracing, though I have those dreams too, no, it’s Kimber the activist I’m holding tightly this time, the Kimber who was quoted all the time on all things leftist and labor-related, only after a while there was someone else heading up the coalition on fair trade and I remember what a mutual friend once said about her, how she told him she just plain burnt-out on activism by her junior year and decided to settle into life instead, and it was then that I met her, smiling and smart-assed and hunkered down with a girlfriend that didn’t last long but none of that mattered anyway because Kimber never knew I existed, never knew I cared.

In this world, though, Kimber Dean and I walked arm-in-arm, she could barely keep her eyes open, and she was self-deprecating about her achievements and her appearance, and this was so unlike her, not that I knew what she was like at all, but this was so like me, and I tried to tell her she was beautiful and cool and great, but she just shook her head and told me how tired she was.

And so I told her to sleep, and then I told her I’d carry her, and she fell asleep, and carry her, I did.

She was light at first, and it felt good to lift her up real high above the pavement where the boy had been beaten, above the grassy quad where the kids had camped, and I convinced myself I could carry her all the way home.

But of course I couldn’t.

***

I tell him about the dreams, about the war between the me who was never really a kid and the me who is most certainly already an adult, between the me who cares deeply about the world and the me who wants to not give a fuck, and I say, Even when I was young, I felt like I was old, and even though I know I’m young now I’m still older than I was then, back then when I didn’t realize I was young.

It’s just, I sigh, It’s just… I want Marc Jacobs to dress me. I want Marc Jacobs to want to dress me.

While I still have lots of collagen, I add.

And he says, I don’t know why all the pretty girls think they’re not pretty.

That’s not what I’m saying! I say. I know I’m pretty. I just want Marc Jacobs to make me a dress which, you know, makes that clear. And while I’m at it, I want a casio keyboard, and not to care, and… Remember all the people who saw Joy Division play for the first time?

He does.

I want to be part of something like that. I’ve never been part of anything like that. Not the Seattle riots, not New York in the 80s or even New York in the 90s. I never toured with the Dead, or danced in Ibiza, or even saw a Dark Side of the Moon laser light show. I never wrote about the war or protested the Republican National Convention’s descent on New York or threw a brick at Starbucks; I stayed at home and watched it all on the Internet.

Look, I said, I’m not even talking about Woodstock or Four dead in Ohio or Dylan going electric because I wasn’t alive for that stuff so I can’t feel guilty about not being there, but as for the other stuff I’ve got no excuse.

He knows what I’m talking about because he was Christian as a teenager.

I conclude, There’s simply no reason I shouldn’t be friends with M.I.A.

I draw a diagram in the air with my beer.

On the one side, there’s me

And I’m fabulous and political
And Marc Jacobs wants to dress me
And I’m a total fucking rockstar

And on the other side, I’m editing a book on sustainability
And I have a day job
And I’m really responsible.

Do you really want to be a rockstar? He says, knowing I don’t.
ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY, I say, knowing I do.

Well, then give it ten years of performing in dive bars. With dirty bathrooms.

This is a dirty trick because he knows I hate dirty bathrooms.

WHERE
IS
MY
AUDIENCE? I roar.

Ah, fame, he says, so elusive.

I don’t want to be FAMOUS! I said, spitting out the word, appalled thoughts of the Britney Spears, American tragedy article still unsettling my mind. I just want a small New York following. Maybe I should start a blog.

You have a blog, he points out, and might I remind you you only wrote two posts?

That doesn’t matter, I say. If a blog lives on the Web and no one links to it, it doesn’t exist at all. Maybe I’ll call my blog “I want Marc Jacobs to want to dress me” and someone will link to it and eventually Marc Jacobs will link to it, too

and then it hits me.

I don’t even like Marc Jacobs’ Fall collection, I sigh. I mean I like Marc, don't get me wrong, the shimmery dresses I saw at Bloomingdale's are to die for. But the jackets make even the skinny girls look fat.

I feel fat, I say, and he gets angry and I know he’s going to say something about pretty girls again but only because he misunderstands.

Not fat physically, I say,

Fat… mentally.

Unsustainable? He asks and I know he understands.

Yes, I say, I feel unsustainable.

Because if Marc Jacobs told me he wanted to dress me in the coat
that makes even the skinny girls look fat

(and if he added that it was made in a Sri Lankan sweatshop)

I’d still put it on.