=Film School=

(image: Moan Lisa/Meeah Williams)

I'm sleeping with a man who's gone on an extended vacation by the sea and he's brought me along. There's only one problem. He's brought his wife, too! He's stashed me away in a cheap motel where the lock on the room doesn't work. Well, what did I expect? I've failed to establish boundaries. The sea is too loud, the bedclothes are perpetually damp and salty, the TV won't focus, and when I call my mom to complain she isn't home. It's like living in a French film, oppressively symbolic. I check the script and sigh: this is where I decide to take a long sad walk along the shabby beach. Somewhere along the way I pick up a large stick and within a few steps I feel like there is an old man walking beside me. He's invisible but somehow his arm is my arm, his hand my hand holding the stick. He doesn't say a word, looks straight ahead, as if I weren't even there. I feel like he is guiding me along the jagged, treacherous path that I must go, which is back to the soggy and sordid room, the fritzy TV, the unsatisfactory affair. To the naked eye, nothing has changed, nothing has even happened. The film ends and real people leave the theater shaking their heads and saying "how depressing," "pointless," "typical." I sit on the bed, pick up the phone, and dial my mom's number. On her end a phone rings and rings and rings and goes to voice-mail. Thank god! I hang up without leaving a message. It would spoil it to try to explain.