Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets

by Jessica Fox

  You would think that at an American scientific institution, there would be a common language spoken by all, perhaps the language of astronomy or mathematics, but it wasn’t so. There were many languages, which made my job more complicated. For example, engineers had a totally different vocabulary from project managers, astro-biologists may see the world differently from astro-geologists, and NASA had to bring them all together in one incredible symphony in order to complete a unified mission. The success came, I felt, despite the spectrum of specialities, languages and perspectives because in the chorus of stories I heard there was a common voice shared by all: a unified desire for knowledge and a thirst for exploration. Together they were like the fire in the belly, the jet propulsion, that motivated each individual at NASA.

  When I was young I was moved by a book called Black Elk Speaks, a story about Black Elk, a Shaman, and the role of visions in a community. When walking through the halls of NASA, this book would often come to mind. “I think I have told you, but if I have not, you must have understood,” Black Elk said, “that a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on Earth for the people to see.” Whether applied to creating a film, or a space mission, this continued to resonate with me.

  Truly deep visions, I believe, well from our deep subconscious, holding in them a complicated mix of information, metaphor and feeling. Then, dragged up into the light of day, the vision is subjected to our many voices, each like lawyers, arguing different yet legitimate perspectives to keep us sane. Without ritual, the dream gets held up to reality, like a snowflake on the tip of your finger, ultimately to dissolve before there is time to explore its mystery. One reason I had found an instant affinity with NASA was that I knew scientists were kindred spirits when it came to mystery. An answer I heard often from my colleagues there, enunciated with a twinkle in their eye, was “I don’t know” or “It leaves room for more questions”. They loved the continual call of the universe for investigation; the idea that the more we know, the more mysterious things become. At NASA, visions and dreams were something that seemed to be incorporated in the totality of modern life.

  Through the door of my cubical, I could see a NASA poster of the shuttle with bold lettering which read, “There are no problems, only solutions.” This was their motto, along with “Failure is not an option”. Both had at first sounded militaristic but, over time, had softened in my mind to seem incredibly wise: giving up is not an option, not on yourself and not on your vision.

  *

  My mind, like pages fluttering backwards in a book, returned to the party the previous evening. “Oh, so you’re a lesbian,” the producer had said before getting knocked into the pool, as if that would explain my desire to make something more substantial than the average chick flick. Many more conversations like that later, I had found myself waiting for a cab, frustrated and tearful.

  The cab had appeared quickly. As I slid into its warm, comfortable seats, protected by the car’s metal enclosure – my Los Angeles safety blanket – my phone beeped.

  “Hello?”

  Josh’s voice sounded worried. “Where did you go?”

  “Home. I’m sorry. I couldn’t take much more.” I suddenly felt guilty. Josh had only been trying to help.

  “You can’t take them so seriously, Jessica.”

  “Josh, they had zero interest in me as a director. They were more interested in why I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit.”

  “Look,” he had said, sounding exasperated. I could hear the echo of the party around him. “You’re young and attractive. You’ve got to use it.”

  “I’m hanging up.” The way things were hadn’t been his fault and I was taking it out on him.

  “Hear me out,” he had persisted. “Dress sexy, charm them. Then when they find out you’re smart and talented too, they’ll be wowed.”

  “Woody Allen never had to dress sexy.”

  “Yeah, and look, he still struggles to get financing.” Josh had a point. “Think of it like a game.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, I have to go.” The cab had slowed and I switched off my phone.

  Maybe it would be one of those memories that would improve with age? Maybe decades from now I would look back and be glad I had had that experience. For now, however, I felt disempowered, icky mortification sticking to me every time I thought back to myself standing there by the pool, the only woman fully clothed, handing out my business cards and trying desperately to be taken seriously.

  Further down the hall, I could hear the voice of our project manager coming closer, pulling me out of my day dream.

  “Jessica, you here for the meeting?” Nancy appeared at the doorway, smiling and leaning against the cubical wall. She gave off a glow of exuberance that only those who love their job can have.

  “Yes, wouldn’t miss it.”

  “We’ll talk more about Second Life. There are exciting things on the horizon.” She patted the top of the cubical as punctuation. “See you soon.”

  I gathered my things to prepare for the meeting and took out my phone. The text from the previous night was still in my inbox, waiting for me to respond. I had almost forgotten about it, distracted by the past night’s events. However, now in cubical-land, there were no distractions. No matter how many times I read the two silly sentences, a fresh flip of the stomach shocked my senses.

  “I’m eating grapes right now, green ones,” it read. “That’s how exciting my life is now that you left.”

  It was Grant, trying to be funny and tempting me to respond. It was a typical Grant message, sweet and simple on the outside but completely loaded. Universes existed in between each word. This was the first I had heard from Grant in five months, since he had told me that I was keeping him from being the man he wanted to be. It had completely crushed me.

  I had embraced the newness and the change that Los Angeles afforded partly because I was as far as I could possibly be from Grant and the East Coast. Ours had been a badly matched, intense and dramatic year-long affair. Grant had been one of my actors. No one else in the cast had known about our relationship, partly because we had never referred to ourselves as dating, or boyfriend and girlfriend, or in a relationship at all, but I had fallen very deeply in love with him.

  Grant was charismatic and good-looking. I had loved his long dark hair, his blue eyes and broad shoulders. He was ruggedly artistic, a sensitive, motorcycle-riding actor. I was ten years younger than him, his director, and had felt incredibly powerful as a result. Most male directors had affairs with their female actresses, so here I was, turning the tides.

  The belief that I was doing my share for gender equality hadn’t been my only delusion about the relationship. In his company I felt giddy and uneasy, and my usual desire to be in control felt deliciously challenged. He was unpredictable and passionate, and believed in an unattached life, to anyone or anything. Our relationship was always undefined. He advocated dating many people; he was physically intimate but easily turned cold, and by the time I had fallen in love with him, I realised that this would not be the simple girl-meets-boy, girl-likes-boy, girl-dates-boy scenario.

  Grant and I had agreed that when or if we wanted to see other people, we’d let each other know. We promised always to be honest, even if it hurt the other’s feelings. However, I could never “let go” enough to date other people, so I was constantly worrying, wondering whether he had found someone better to move on to. I knew I was on unsteady ground, but at the same time I was determined that I could be liberal enough to love someone without wanting anything from them. That was true love after all, wasn’t it?

  Grant pushed my boundaries and instead of running in the opposite direction, I convinced myself that dating someone so confusing was bold and important; magic happens outside your comfort zone – well, that’s what the yoga teachers say and the inspirational books tell us. This was the transcendentalist ideal, was it not? I was following Gloria Steinem’s words from Outrageous Acts and Everyd
ay Rebellions, “the margins are where the growth is” – by challenging myself, I believed I was expanding the person I was.

  It had been after a couple of months of seeing each other that the dynamic had changed. I had woken up as usual in his bed, looking up at the flapping trash bags above me where windows should have been. Grant’s house was something he was constantly working at but never quite completing – like Sisyphus attempting DIY. Outside the windowless bedroom was a funeral home. On some mornings I looked out to see a parking lot full of hearses and families dressed in black. I imagined myself among them, watching my old, confident self being carried away in the coffin. This relationship had been killing me emotionally, the lack of intimacy and affection was sticking little needles into my heart and, instead of thriving, I felt myself disappearing.

  That morning I had rolled over and found Grant missing – not unusual, as he would often leave to enjoy the morning alone. Where Grant should have been I noticed he had left his journal open flat, revealing a page scrawled with writing. I sat up and glanced over my shoulder. It was too tempting not to glance; it was a rare window into the elusive mind of Grant and, as my eyes quickly flickered over it, I saw my name staring back at me in the middle of the page. I felt myself flush. Even just a glance made me feel ashamed. I was intruding. Footsteps had sounded from outside the hall and despite myself I glanced again, catching the whole sentence before the door opened.

  In scratchy thoughtless letters he had written: “I’m not in love with Jessica, and that’s okay.”

  “Ah, you’re up. You want breakfast?” Grant entered the room, his towel wrapped around his perfect waist.

  Something stabbed in my chest. At the time, I assumed the heartache was my own fault. What else had I expected? I had fooled myself into thinking he loved me in an alternative way, when in truth he had not loved me at all. All his rules, his lack of focus and his fiercely independent manner were not some advanced state of being, rather they were signs of a lack of emotion. I felt stupid and naive, and shook my head, politely.

  Grant cocked his handsome face to the side. He could tell something was wrong. “Are you sure? Let me take you out. You’re my lady, after all.”

  “No breakfast for me, thanks.”

  I did my best to distance myself from Grant. I moved back into my Boston studio apartment and tried unsuccessfully to date other people. However, six months later, when I was out with someone else, I discovered Grant did actually have feelings for me. Over the phone, on a crowded bus, he told me he loved me and promptly had a panic attack.

  Two days later in Cambridge, as I sat in a production meeting at 1369 Coffee House, my “office” at the time, my phone beeped in the middle of reviewing storyboards with my production designer. I quietly slipped my phone out of my pocket, not wanting to disturb the meeting, and peeked to see it was a text from Grant. No explanation. No warning. The message was a simple, straightforward: “I can’t do this any more.”

  My heart broke in two and spilled out onto the coffee shop floor. What I glimpsed inside that broken organ terrified me – a lonely, dark and empty centre. I quickly excused myself from the meeting and fled to the bathroom, where I cried and vomited in equal intervals. My only clear memory was the graffiti above the loo roll that read in dark ink: “Bonnie Ray 4 EVA” and “Derek is a tool”.

  I tried to call and text back but Grant had cut off all communication and refused to speak to me. I couldn’t sleep or eat because everything about Boston and my work reminded me of him. My short film had just finished the festival circuit and at each festival I went to I had had to sit through the screening, with his face parading in front of me. Never again, I promised myself, would I date one of my actors.

  When NASA offered me the chance to relocate to JPL and Los Angeles, I knew I had to take it. I would have work that I was passionate about, I thought, in a sunny land at the heart of a film centre. I could feel the power of my life’s momentum pulling me far away from Boston.

  I was sitting across the table from my sister in an Italian restaurant when I told her that I had got a transfer to Los Angeles.

  “California! Oh Jessica, that’s fantastic. You’re a director. That’s exactly where you should be.” She was giving me all her attention and her love. “And NASA,” she said, “I still can’t believe you’re working for NASA. That is so cool.”

  I raised my wine glass and clinked it to my sister’s. Through its wine-soaked sides, her blurred reflection smiled back at me.

  “It’s your time to shine, Jessy.”

  With that memory frozen in my mind, my thumb hovered over the delete button on Grant’s message: “I’m eating grapes right now, green ones…” I pressed delete. The message was gone. I felt a sudden lightness, and made my way out of my cubicle to my meeting. As I passed the NASA “Failure is Not an Option” poster on the wall, a jolt of joy ran through my veins right to my fingertips.

  *

  Friday night and I was to go out on a date – my first since my manicure and margaritas evening with Josh. The previous week, I had met a talented screenwriter in Silver Lake, who had tried unsuccessfully to buy me coffee at Intelligentsia Coffeebar; on seeing I was already drinking tea, he had insisted on buying me dinner instead.

  Intelligentsia was a stunning location, with brick arches and lovely tiled floors, a 1940s building beautifully converted for the coffee-drinking 21st century. It was the hub of hipsterville, where everyone came to faux-socialise, spending more time on their laptops than chatting to each other. A long line would always extend out the door – streaming through the outdoor seating area and acting as a slow-moving fashion show. I would get new ideas for outfits as I people-watched, waiting in line. 1980s high-waisted chino shorts, Ray-Ban-inspired sunglasses and mismatched sweater vests seemed to be the current uniform.

  The screenwriter who charmed me into chatting with him had been sitting two tables over. He claimed to have written one of the The Fast and Furious movies, and was now working on “something big, something indie”. Staring at the people around him, he had taken a long drag of his cigarette with the jaded confidence of someone who had enjoyed early success, and exhaled slowly with the frustration of someone who hadn’t had any since.

  I didn’t know why I said yes when he asked me to dinner. I was far more interested in his screenplays than his phone number, but after requesting the former he gave me the latter, and so I thought, why not? He said to meet him at Flore, my favourite vegan restaurant, and to bring my bicycle because he had something fun to introduce me to afterwards. It seemed mysterious and enticing enough, but the thought of going on a date made me feel agitated and I couldn’t help hoping it would rain.

  Of course, it didn’t rain. It was, in fact, a beautiful evening like always, cool and clear. Downtown Silver Lake was buzzing with people and the excited energy of a Friday evening.

  And so I found myself sitting halfway through my bean and setain burrito, enjoying the cool breeze outside the Flore café. The date was going surprising well. He had showed up on time, nicely dressed in a button-down t-shirt and khaki shorts and told me how he had been nervous to ask me out in case I turned him down. He seemed to have more depth to his personality than I first gave him credit for. Unlike most people in LA, he did not blindly follow Eckhart Tolle, he did not belong to a gym and he had never owned a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, nor had he wanted to. He had grown up in New York and wanted to be a journalist, when in a weird twist of fate, someone had asked him to turn one of his stories into a script. It was bought, but never made, and his future was sealed; he was hooked on the world of screenwriting.

  “Journalism, goodbye, Hollywood, hello.” He smiled, finishing the last of his wine. “So you work for NASA?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not a scientist. I’m more on the know-ledge-sharing side of things.”

  The Screenwriter checked his watch, then signalled for the check. “Wait,” I began to protest, “I’m only halfway through my dinner.”

  “Y
ou eat too slow.” As the check came he grabbed it, insisting on paying. “Your job sounds cool, but you’re a director. Don’t you miss, you know, making films?”

  “I’m still making things,” I said, annoyed and still hungry. “Anyway, NASA’s inspiring for any artist. I’ve found more creative minds there than during all of my time in TV and film put together.” He didn’t look convinced. “I mean it. There are more passionate, interesting people there, filled with ideas, open to innovation and new technology, than any community of artists I have found.” I watched while the waitress took my half-eaten meal away.

  “You’re going to love what I have in store for you then,” he said. “Ever heard of Midnight Ridazz?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good. Come on.” He grabbed my hand. We flew out of the restaurant and onto our bikes. The Screenwriter looked at my bicycle. “A vintage fixed gear – very cool.”

  My belly still growling, I pedalled hard to keep up with him. A couple of yards ahead, in front of Intelligentsia Coffeebar, hundreds of cyclists were grouping. There were tall bicycles, trick bicycles, on road and off road, choppers, fixed gears – I had never seen so many bicycles in one location. Many had glow-sticks decorating their frames, which, in the twilight gave our gathering the look of a junk-yard travelling circus.