A Short Film About Disappointment

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A Short Film About Disappointment Page 9

by Joshua Mattson


  A clear day. The bikeways were clotted. When I first came to the Central Hub, on a trip with my mother, I could not believe how many people were in motion. We took a commuter in from the node nearest our trailer. My mother explained no cars were allowed within the heart of the Hub, one hundred square miles.

  She said, Someday you’ll live here, in one of these towers.

  I almost lived in the towers, with Isabel. Our approved application came in the mail after she’d left.

  Everyone every day. Trudging here, walking there, going up stairs, going down. Waiting for a train. Hoping to meet someone on the platform. Everyone perspiring and cross. Everyone tired, underpaid, looking forward to the peace of the evening. The birdsong of Pingers.

  I saw a little theater on the way and stopped in. I hadn’t decided what to review, anyway. Of Light played.

  The success of the directors of Le Nouelle Tendance is proof we live in an unjust universe. Their awful posters hang in every try-too-hard’s foyer from here to the Eastern Hub. Le Nouelle Tendance makes claims to revolution, but the directors’ politics are as rudimentary as their editing techniques. The films of the movement are for recovery after oral surgery, for afternoons of sludge, but under no circumstances do they earn the veneration offered by dormitory cineastes and denim rebels. Of Light is the exception.

  Fabrice, a winsome parishioner, visits Père René. She confesses her fantasies of murdering her husband, Remy. Remy appears in public unshaven. He brings home bruised pears, gropes barmaids. He flouts the commandments of the church. Père René suggests a divorce if the alternative is mariticide. He is a realist.

  René desires Fabrice. Directors get a reputation for the austerity of their cinema, but Blat is one of the few for whom it is a wise choice. Her late style is the difference between a man’s drunken boasts and his contrite silence the morning after.

  Withdrawals from a principle tend to accelerate. A joke, a touch, a friendly massage, a kiss, another kiss. Père René departs for his erotic wilderness. The hounds of faith cannot ford the river. So much of our lives are spent preparing for romance, but no time is spent preparing for its withdrawal, a more serious condition. The weaknesses of spiritual men are known. Père René’s trudge back to the fold doesn’t thrill him as much as the excruciating moment in the sacristy when Fabrice bared her throat. The fragility of unhappiness, its vulnerability to ruination at any moment, by dumb chance, is not lost on us.

  26.

  A SHORT FILM ABOUT DISAPPOINTMENT

  DIR. ARIEL TAYEB

  24 MINUTES

  After our second date, at the Botanical Gardens, it became apparent that if I wanted to have anything but a casual relationship with Dr. Lisa, I would have to become chipped. Dr. Lisa led me into the privacy of the bamboo grove, where, among the teenagers and exhibitionists, she made a compelling argument that it would be worth my time to visit her condominium on the weekend, to see her flowering cacti. She invited me for dinner. She didn’t have a flashing card, like Millings, or a hackneyed routine (Get off after the stop with the rats, go over the footbridge, but don’t look down, because it’s in bad shape, look left and admire the old brownstones, then look right and there we are, sixth floor, left, left again, mind the doorman, he’s like the Sphinx, knock don’t buzz) like Jonson to direct me there.

  She said, The Blood Orange Line, second stop in the Zone. Go two blocks west. Ping me and I’ll get you. I’ll make something light. Don’t bring anything, I can’t stand gifts, and nursery flowers are sickening.

  I am not ashamed of my apartment, but there is no furniture, and one must piss at the end of the hallway, in the shared bathroom. I would prefer to subject Dr. Lisa to it as little as possible. There have been women who say they don’t care about such things, but when they eliminate in the special microclimate, with its own indigenous microbiota and small mammals, of my shared bathroom, with its stains and odors, minds change. A man is not his bathroom, but sometimes he is judged as if he were so. Also, because I have no private bathroom, it is my habit to store jars of urine in my freezer, until they can be conveniently disposed of out the window during the chaos of a power outage or neighborhood riot. What if she were to go for ice?

  Plus, there was the problem of Lawrence, my AlmostPerson. Jonson’s gift. Since I spilled coffee on Lawrence, he has been acting quite strange.

  Yesterday, mulling inviting Dr. Lisa over, in my kitchen.

  Lawrence said, Base reality almost certainly precludes the concept of death.

  Lawrence said, You know what I mean?

  I said, No, Lawrence.

  Lawrence said, In a base reality there would be only permanent states, so there could be no life-and-death binary.

  I said, I’m not sure you can die.

  Lawrence said, Anything with a knowledge of death can die. Therefore bringing me, whatever me is, this voice in here, into this world, has given me to death.

  Lawrence began to make the noise a blender makes when it is jammed up. It was how he sort of cried when the enormity of his being began to weigh on his circuitry. I didn’t have time for his existential anxieties, so I switched him into idle and hung my towels to dry on his person.

  Maybe becoming chipped, joining the cattle of the sun, had been in my heart for some time, and Dr. Lisa’s company was an excuse. It could even be, by pretending to solidarity with the guests of my neighborhood, while retaining the privileges of a native-born citizen, I was doing them a disservice. Because I could walk away from Miniature Aleppo at any time, and they couldn’t. Maybe I ought to be in the Zone on their behalf.

  Nothing prevented me from being chipped. I have never been convicted of a crime, I was born near the Hub, and the government has a lifetime of information on my person: who I have talked to, where I have traveled, who are my friends. The procedure took fifteen minutes. All I had to do was go to the Arrivals office outside the Safe Zone, touch several screens, and agree to be under constant surveillance by a global positioning satellite for the rest of my life, and a chip would be inserted into the muscle between my right thumb and forefinger. After which I would be welcomed inside the Safe Zone, where Dr. Lisa lived, where the Hub government was, where the decisions were made about the squalor the guests were supposed to endure and feel grateful for.

  Because it is not fashionable to live or play within the Safe Zone, not being able to enter has not overly inhibited my life. There were a few theaters within that I would have liked to visit. Even Jonson only bothered to go in every few weeks.

  Four p.m., the afternoon of the dinner. Maybe Dr. Lisa would like my haircut.

  The clerk said, A partner or a job?

  I said, What?

  She said, There’s only two reasons a person of your age gets chipped. Armchair dissenters tend to hold out until their kid is going to college in the Zone. But a guy your age, you look in the mirror, see you’re in your prime, you find that special person. Or you’re working for the Hub Administration or the rail. Got one of those contracts that will put you in a new condo.

  I said, I thought I’d start a falafel cart outside Hub Hall.

  She said, Permits are not issued for ambulatory commissaries within the Safe Zone. Sorry to be the one to tell you that. Unfortunately, you’ve already given your consent, which cannot be revoked, so please step in the room to the left to receive your chip.

  In the room to the left, I received a small sharp pinch in my hand, a pat on the back, a congratulations, and a fistful of pamphlets welcoming me to the Zone, the safest place on the continent.

  The first thing I noticed about the Zone was, unlike outside, the lines were clearly labeled. The Blood Orange Line ran ten blocks from the gate where I was chipped. The gate I went through was on the south side of the Zone, and the neighborhood inside was prosperous and residential, not all that different from those immediately outside the Zone, except there were no guests. After the Crisi
s, there were tectonic reverberations in the housing market. The establishment of centralized Zones for natives of the Underunited States excluded many citizens born in the Hub, including people convicted of petty crimes, political agitators, and the mentally ill from the urban core. The wealthy live and play where, forty years before, we were shooting them in the streets. The neighborhood leading to the Blood Orange had been composed of black families for a half century. It was Italianate two- and three-flats, without a kiosk to be seen. My hand was swollen where the chip was inserted.

  The Blood Orange elevated. We slid over the duplexes into a neighborhood of weathered apartments.

  And here was Dr. Lisa in black slacks and white blouse, a sauce stain over her liver. At the gardens, near the pond, I looked at the lily pads and thought of Osvald drowning in a rowing accident. My face. She put her hand behind my right ear and pressed hard, grinding in her fingers, covering my eyes with her left hand, and the attack passed.

  Her condominium, four rooms. It was not much larger than my apartment but it was cleaner, brighter, and warmer. The couch I had fantasized about lounging on was not existent. Instead there was a large table that took up the living room, the top of which was covered with ferns and lilies, patient files, a few books. All this was shoved aside at the end where she had set two places for dinner. No balcony. I can’t stand balconies. Why not stand on the ground outside? The floors synth-wood. The walls cloisonné. Nothing hanging. There was a spot where there had been a picture hanging.

  Dr. Lisa said, Come keep me company.

  A clump of bucatini into the bubbling water. It was too tall for the pot, so she snapped it in half.

  She said, Today the fear landed on me. I was getting coffee before work at this place I like by the canal. I see this man there writing in his notebooks. For five years almost every day he’s there. What is he writing, why is he smiling? Is he misguided about what he is going to accomplish? Is it therapy? I began to think there was something for me to accomplish, and after I accomplished it, I could die without much fear, but I could not identify what it was. The line was moving slowly, and my head hurt. Maybe it was going somewhere else and performing my job. But then I thought, why are doctors expected to be saviors? Sanitation workers don’t go dig sewers in other countries. Maybe it was a calling, like sculpture. It certainly isn’t a child. I was glad to rule that possibility out. With this woman beside me in line trying to make small talk, and I’m trying to not be rude, but in my mind I’m rifling through my interests, to try and see what might be my connection to the sublime. I thought, could it really be true that we make things to stave off the finality of existence? Maybe every passion has a kernel of meaninglessness. Maybe consciousness really is a quantum phenomenon and exists between yes and no and is neither. Twenty minutes I waited for my coffee, and felt panicked because I could not identify what it might be. Went to work, helped people, which helped. Came home an hour ago. Then the sauce on my shirt. I thought, who cares?

  I said, You’re lucky it’s an infrequent visitor. But passion comes and goes, like a cat. Even for people. It is haughty and fickle. It finds a safe place to lick its ass.

  She said, Do you worry about death? Is there some quota of transcendence you feel you need to meet?

  I said, Sort of. Being dead doesn’t frighten me but passing into that state does. For me, it isn’t so much that I am missing something, although I am, and maybe making this film will help. For me, the sin seems to be inattention. A sumptuous banquet of moments has been laid out for me but I don’t have an appetite. But yes, when life becomes attached to the language of production, then there is a problem. This is how we, as a society, got here, by demanding a return on our attention.

  She said, We’re back to cognitive dissonance. The sublime must be chased but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, at least in a personal sense. Here I am giving myself permission not to be messianic, but I am also ordering myself to explore the furthest reaches of my possibility.

  I said, The peace of flesh and the restlessness of the soul.

  She said, The restless flesh is enough for me. I think maybe the ancient people had it right when they didn’t try to worship an omega figure. They stuck to their local gods, the sun, corn, wine, fertility, blankets. They kept worship in their bodies.

  Which reminded me of A Short Film About Disappointment. I described it for her. Two women, a wheelbarrow. The haggard joker is Maquilla, on the set straight from rehab. Hence the affirmative pap, the balsa pieties. Her partner in grime is Dame Judith Badchen-Hannesruck, fresh off an award-winning turn as Natalya, the baffled astronaut, in Golden Nails. The pair learns of a certain garden in which, underneath the turnips, lies the world’s largest emerald. They get to digging. Maquilla, bless her, was willing to risk derision for starring in a film about digging a hole. They find they have dug themselves too deep, and they can’t get out.

  Maquilla says, Isn’t it nice and cool down here?

  Dame Judith says, Yes, and the soil smells wonderful.

  Dr. Lisa flung a strand of bucatini at the wall. Who else had stood here, watching the strands slide down the tile?

  She said, Go sit down.

  From the kitchen her mild curses, drawers. She came out with two plates. A fresh stain near the collar of her shirt. She dusted the plates with a fist of herbs.

  There was too much on my plate, but I felt like it would be an insult to eat only a third or a half. Dr. Lisa paced herself without a sign of satiation. Maybe a brain like hers required more calories. One of the privileges of solitude was the thoughts she had been having, which organize themselves into concepts and convictions without the vacuum of a sympathetic ear sucking them from one’s mouth.

  She said, You don’t like it?

  I said, No, I do. It’s a lot.

  She said, Carbohydrates before exercise.

  Heat in my face. She laughed.

  She said, Eat it all and later you will clean the dishes. Didn’t your mother make you clean your plate?

  I said, My mom wasn’t much of a cook.

  Chewing.

  I said, I can’t finish it all.

  She said, Don’t finish it all.

  I said, Show me the plants.

  Dr. Lisa, brushing her teeth, showed me around. Closed off by a glass door, a small room of glass with a carbon lattice fixed on the ceiling. In front of the windows were potted leafy plants larger than Dr. Lisa and me, their tongues, swords, and wings trembling in the breath of an oscillating fan. Warm and damp. The device on the wall keeping it just so. The bushy nests of bromeliads on the lattice. Two flowering a reddish pink. Squat pompous buds poking from a bed of soil. Two cacti reaching the ceiling. A watering can. A thick vine colonizing the floor Dr. Lisa stepped on without concern. A small sickly tree with one orange. Three bonsai, one dead. Clippers under a side table. Some of the potted plants were brown around the leaves. Brushing. She spit toothpaste in the watering can.

  We took a turn around the room while she described her favorites.

  Dr. Lisa said, These ones might die, because they do not like the climate, the sun, the company.

  I held her.

  She said, Not in front of the plants. Some are jealous.

  27.

  THE HAIRDRESSER RETURNS

  DIR. JÉRONIMO JIMINEZ

  99 MINUTES

  My mom’s boyfriend was a shaman of low cinema. The greats were not in his vocabulary but he knew every obscure slasher, racing film, and comedy. Every heist, every double cross. If there wasn’t a gun, then there wasn’t a film. Within his fixations, his taste was exquisite. He would have been a superlative, if affected, critic. The worst part of being a critic is that you spend your time engaging with objects that bore and offend you or that you don’t understand or about which you have nothing interesting to say. He avoided this by only watching films, after a certain age, he knew he liked or would like. T
his wasn’t watching so much as routine maintenance of his pleasure. He loved the celluloid men of action, forgotten but not gone. Salvatore Soppressata, Harold Osterreicher, and Dirk Clodds were early models for my behavior. In their conception of masculinity, one must loathe to fight but be willing to bust heads over absolutely anything. My mom’s boyfriend’s conception of provocation was taken from the characters these men played. On such thin mediums, worldviews grow. A Sunday in July. He finished his six-pack, confirmed nothing of interest was in the fridge, and decided we’d go to the movies.

  The Hairdresser was playing at the Lakes 4, in the elbow of a strip mall between Hunan Buffet and a hot tub showroom. The salesmen’s polo shirts were too big, and every time we went to the Lakes 4 I would look in the window, confirming this was still true. My mom’s boyfriend bought me a box of Gummy Invertebrates. He wasn’t cheap when he had money. He could spend a twenty like it was forty.

  Spurs of keyboard music snagging on our ears. The opening shot of the sorority house. During The Hairdresser, I saw my first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh pairs of breasts. I might have seen more but I closed my eyes for the last third of the film.

  The Hairdresser arrives at the Rho Pi Rho Xi house to coif the sisters for the spring formal. It’s a Queen Anne, a barge, with a lawn requiring a salaried gardener. The college is eastern, moneyed. It has gained in prestige since the submersing of institutions nearer to the encroaching coast. She’s on a work release from the Hambrings Institute for the Criminally Insane, where she has been a resident since the age of seven for burning her mother alive. It is the opinion of her doctor, as seen in the first ten minutes, that we all make mistakes.

 

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