by Dave Eggers
You know what I mean. Jeff and I had drifted in high school, but at this party, Andrew Wagner’s party, under the withering porch lights and both of us full of keg-pulled Schaefer, we caught up, punched each other in the arm, everything. When the party was moving from Wagner’s to this bar called McCormick’s, Jeff and I decided that I’d be going with him.
“You’ll come with me,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I wanted to be eleven again, with him, throwing eggs at cars. But then, as we were walking to his car, I ruined it and said, “Jeff, my mom’s dying.” Just threw it out before I knew what I was doing—
No, that’s not right, I knew what I was thinking, had thought of it, had been thinking of telling him all night, as we talked under the porch light, because he knew her, was there from the beginning—but I kind of sprung it when we were walking to the car, and he slowed down, and in his scratchy voice, scratchy even when we were very young, said, “I know.”
And so on the way to the car we were both crying, but just for a second, and then we got in his car and drove on the highway through town, past Lake Forest and Lake Bluff, and to McCormick’s, a roadhouse sort of bar on the way to Libertyville and Waukegan. The lot was full. Everyone, from football players to their hangers-on and anyone, really, had been coming here for years. I had never been.
Inside it was full, and I was struck by the fear that if Jeff knew, everyone there would know. There would be silence, gasping. Snickering. But no one said anything. We walked in and there was that one stout, apple-cheeked guy bartending, Jimmy Walker. There was that Hartenstine guy, huge, older, who once played for the Bears.
And there was Sarah Mulhern. Oh, oh.
We had almost grown up together, Sarah and I, had been on the same swim team when I was nine and she was eleven, were on that swim team for some years after. But we had never once spoken. She was older and a better swimmer. And a much better diver. I was a liability to that swim team, to the diving team. I was a slow swimmer and a hapless diver, wouldn’t do an inward, couldn’t even pull off a one-and-a-half. She could do it all—inwards, one-and-a-halfs, doubles, back one-and-a-halfs, whatever—always with her legs together and toes pointed and the little splash at the end. She was on the medley relay, always won her heats, was the name everyone knew, the name that was broadcast over the loudspeakers. But I never talked to her. Not in junior high or high school, the two years that separated us were too many, and her hair was too straight and blonde, and I had not yet developed the tools to mentally or physically handle the sort of curves she was working with.
But then there she was, Sarah Mulhern, at the bar, and I have no idea how I began talking to her, or much of what we said, but then Jeff was gone and I was getting into the backseat of a car with Sarah, driven by Sarah’s friend. The car smelled of smoke and old vinyl. Sarah smoked.
Then we were in her bed, in her parents’ big house, and there was some of this and that but I passed out before—
I woke up in a canopy bed, and she was already awake, watching me. The furniture and walls were drenched in yellow-white, as if not only the walls but the air itself had been painted. We sat on her floor and talked about grade school, about the retarded kids who we were told to treat kindly, who would die young. We played records, talked about the fall—she was trying to be a teacher, had gotten her certificate and was doing some tutoring.
Then we snuck out through the garage—her parents were home—and she drove me home. As we sat in my driveway, I wanted to say so many things—that I was actually dating someone else, Kirsten, and that what I had done was a mistake, a terrible crime, that I had slipped because I was confused—
But then I saw a figure through the window, someone sitting up in the family room looking at us, and didn’t want to explain about my mother to Sarah and didn’t want to explain Sarah to my mother so—
We kissed quickly and I jumped out.
That’s Sarah.
Yes. You know, the great thing is that this format makes sense, in a way, because an interview where I opened all this up to a stranger with a video camera actually did take place—MTV could conceivably still have the tape (the application had said: “We will not be able to return the tape to you and a portion of it could end up being aired in conjunction with the series. Your signature on the application gives us the right to do this”)—and besides, squeezing all these things into the Q&A makes complete the transition from the book’s first half, which is slightly less self-conscious, to the second half, which is increasingly self-devouring. Because, see, I think what my town, and your show, reflect so wonderfully is that the main by-product of the comfort and prosperity that I’m describing is a sort of pure, insinuating solipsism, that in the absence of struggle against anything in the way of a common enemy—whether that’s poverty, Communists, whatever—all we can do, or rather, all those of us with a bit of self-obsession can do—
Wait a second, how many of you do you think are so self-obsessed? All the good ones. Or rather, there’s actually two ways the self-obsession manifests itself: those that turn it inward, and those that turn it outward. For instance, I have this friend John who just channels it all inward—he talks about his problems, his girlfriend, his poor prospects, how his parents died, on and on, to the point of paralysis—he literally isn’t interested in anything else. It’s his whole world, the endless exploration of his dark mind, this haunted house of a brain.
And the other kind?
The people who think their personality is so strong, their story so
interesting, that others must know it and learn from it.
Let me guess here, you—
Well, I pretend that I’m the latter, but I’m really the former, and desperately so. But still, my feeling is that if you’re not self-obsessed you’re probably boring. Not that you can always tell the self-obsessed. The best sort of self-obsessed person isn’t outwardly so. But they’re doing something more public than not, making sure people know that they’re doing it, or will know about it sooner or later. I guarantee that the applicants for The Real World—I guarantee that if you put all these tapes in a time capsule and opened it in twenty years, you’d find that these are the people who are, in one way or another, running the world—at the very least, they’ll be the most visible segment of the demographic. Because we’ve grown up thinking of ourselves in relation to the political-media-entertainment ephemera, in our safe and comfortable homes, given the time to think about how we would fit into this or that band or TV show or movie, and how we would look doing it. These are people for whom the idea of anonymity is exis-tentially irrational, indefensible. And thus, there is a lot of talking about it all—surely the cultural output of this time will reflect that—there’ll be a lot of talking, whole movies full of talking, talking about talking, ruminating about talking about wondering, about our place, our wants and obligations—the blathering of the belle epoque, you know. Environmentally reinforced solipsism.
Solipsism.
Of course. It’s inevitable, it’s ubiquitous. You see it, right? I mean,
am I the only one seeing the solipsism?
That was a joke. Yes, yes. So.
So. What do you think you can offer the show?
Well see, I’ve thought a lot about this, and I’m figuring I’ve got it happening two ways: first, I can be the Tragic Guy. Second, we’ve got this magazine.
Right. Now what’s it called again? Might.
M-i-t-eP
No, M-i-g-h-t. Everyone spells it M-i-t-e. It’s ridiculous. Why would it be named after a bug? Mite is such an obscure word, compared to Might, right?
Well, what is it named after?
Well, it’s a double entendre, see—you’ll love this, this is great, it can mean two things at once, can sit right on the fence between two meanings—with, in this case, “Might” meaning both power and possibility.
Oooh.
Yeah. I know. Its good.
And what’s it about?
Well, see,
that’s what’s great—it’ll be this perfect match. It’s geared to the same demographic that you’re reaching. We’re trying to make clear that we aren’t just a bunch of people sitting around farting and watching MTV. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with MTV, really, but—you know what I mean. So yeah, I get on the show, the show films us putting this magazine together, reaching millions, denning the Zeitgeist, inspiring the world’s youth to greatness.
Do you work a lot? Yes.
How much?
I don’t know, maybe seventy hours a week. A hundred maybe. I don’t know. We all do. We punish ourselves for our comfortable childhoods. Marny probably more than all of us—she waitresses at a restaurant in Oakland, one in San Francisco, but still keeps up with the rest of us... But that’s good, right? Young people, working hard to, you know, achieve their dreams, striving for greatness. That’s good TV, yes?
Well...
Or not. We’re flexible. I mean, I could work less. I could work part-time. I could let the other people do most of the work. Whatever. You tell me.
Well, that would be something we’d have to talk about. Right. Does that mean I’ve got the part? I’ve got it, right? Don’t I shine through the fog of the rest of these loser applicants? All these boring people? I mean, isn’t it all perfectly clear now? Don’t you want the Tragic Person?
The Tragic Person.
Right. There’s seven cast members, right?
Yes.
So, let’s work this out. First, you’ll get a black person, maybe two— they’ll be hip-hop singers or rappers or whatever—and then you’ll get a couple of really great-looking people, who will be nice to look at but completely ignorant and prone to terrible faux pas of taste and ignorance, their presence serving two purposes: they a) look wonderful on screen, and b) also serve as foils to the black person or people, who will be much sharper and sawier, but also easily offended, and will delight in raking the dumb people over the coals week after week. So that’s three or four people. You’ll probably throw in a gay guy or a lesbian, to see how often they can get offended, and maybe an Asian or Latino, or both. Or wait. A Native American. You should get a Native American! That would be so great. No one knows any Indians. I mean, I’ve never met an Indian. Actually, there was that one guy in college, Cletus, who said he was one-sixteenth— But so you need to get one who’s easily offended, not a passive sort. You need someone who’ll actually care about and debate the “tomahawk chop,” the Redskins and everything. That’d be great. So. Let’s see, that’s five or six people so far. Then you’ll need a really straight professional type, a doctor or something, a lawyer maybe, someone in grad school. And then me.
The Tragic Person.
Right. I realize I seem much too average, at first. I’m white, not even Jewish, my hair is horrible and I’m poorly dressed and everything—I know how blah that seems, suburban, upper-middle-class, two parents (why do we seem so boring, all of us? Are we as utterly boring as we seem?)—it certainly didn’t help with my college admissions experiences, let me tell you. But you need someone like me. I represent tens of millions, I represent everyone who grew up suburban and white, but then I’ve got all these other things going for me. I’m Irish Catholic, and can definitely play that up if you want. And then the Midwest thing, which I don’t need to tell you is pretty valuable. And if you want to go hard-core rural, play that angle, I went to school in the middle of a cornfield, have seen cows, smelled their waste every day there was a south wind. Oh and: it was a state school. So, I can be the average white suburban person, midwestern, knowing of worlds both wealthy and central Illinoisian, whose looks are not intimidating, who’s self-effacing but principled, and—and this is the big part—one whose tragic recent past touches everyone’s heart, whose struggles become universal and inspiring.
It must be hard. What?
Raising your brother.
How do you know about him?
It was on your application.
Oh. Right. Well, no, it actually isn’t hard at all. It’s like...do you
have a roommate?
No.
Have you ever?
Yes.
It’s like that. We’re roommates. It’s easy, it’s actually often easier than it would be with a regular roommate, because you can’t tell a regular roommate to sweep the hall, or go get some margarine. So it’s the best of both worlds. We entertain each other. So no, it’s not— Oh, but if it needs to be, it can be. It can be hard. Actually yes, it is hard. Very hard.
Well, how do you plan to manage being on the show? How do you mean?
With your brother and all.
Oh, right, right. Well, I’ve talked it over with my sister, and she’d be willing to pick up the slack for the duration of the show. She lives only like a block away— Wait. How long does the filming go on for?
About four months.
And I’d have to live in the Real World house?
Yeah, that’s the idea.
Yeah, I mean, I could do that. We talked about it. We made a deal, Beth and Toph and me, from the beginning. The deal was, that we’d do everything we could to keep everything normal, to maintain, actually, more normalcy than we grew up with, but at the same time we wouldn’t feel obligated to make the all-encompassing sacrifices that our mom had made, that had for all intents and purposes killed her, we felt.
On your application you said it was cancer.
Well, sure, technically. But it was stomach cancer, which is extremely rare, its provenance unknown, and Beth and I—we’re the ones who ruminate on such things, while Bill has moved on, is mentally much healthier, by all appearances completely normal—
Beth and I got to thinking that its contraction, the development of this cancer, was due to her internalization of all her stress, her many burdens, all the combat within our family over twenty-odd years, it coming down to her to—it was like, in a way, it was like a soldier jumping on a mine to save his... maybe that’s a poor analogy. I mean, she swallowed the chaos, sequestered it there, and there it festered and grew and darkened and then was cancer.
Do you really believe that? Sure. Kind of.
You were saying, about the deal?
The deal was that while Beth and I were holding together and starting over, and creating a world of relative order, and giving Toph as normal a life as possible, under the circumstances, if opportunities arose, that we would do everything we could to— The point is that we would not use each other, to use obligation as an excuse to say no to things. At least not if we could still manage. I mean, you have no idea how thoroughly we shelter him from absolutely everything—honestly, like, he’s never even heard more than a few swear words in his life—but we’ve agreed that we’ll do whatever we can to facilitate the things we want to do, will not hold back and become bitter and years later blame him or each other, right? Oh wait, that’s a funny story. There was a word my mom used to call us sometimes, that I only figured out in high school. I’ll try it out on you. Okay, the word was “mahdda.”
What’s a mahdda?
Oh ha ha. You’re good. You’re good. I should have seen that coming. But seriously, that’s what I always wondered. When we were sulking about something, or if we had a cold and complained about going to school—we were forbidden from staying home, by the way, never missed a day until late in high school—my mom would say, Oh don’t be such a mahdda We always assumed it had something to do with being sullen about something we hadn’t gotten. Then in high school I figured it out. The word was mangled by her Boston accent.
Martyr.
Right, the word was martyr. Of course, my mom was one of the
great martyrs of all time.
About the show...
Right, in terms of The Real World, I figured that I’d still see Toph all the time, but he’d live primarily with Beth for that period. She’d probably move into our place, and sleep there and everything, with me being there as often as I could—probably not that much less than now, really. I mean, I ha
ve it all pictured, the traveling back and forth, between the show and my world in Berkeley, the camera crew maybe with me in the car, following me driving home each night, or whenever, the music going in the background, me making the trip home to be with him, like the divorced dad—you see the potential, no? It would be sort of touching. And then he’d occasionally come into the Real World house with me. It’d be great. He’d be good on TV.
How would he feel about it? I’m sure he’d love it.
Is he comfortable in front of a camera? Not really. He’s kind of shy, actually.
Hmm.
My heart is pure.
I know what you’re thinking.
I know what I mean.
Excuse me? Nothing.
Why do you want to be on The Real World? Because I want everyone to witness my youth.
Why?
Isn’t it gorgeous?
Who’s gorgeous?
Not like that. No, I just mean, that it’s in bloom. That’s what you’re all about, right? The showing of raw fruit, correct? Whether that’s in videos or on spring break, whatever, the amplifying of youth, the editing and volume magnifying what it means to be right there, at the point when all is allowed and your body wants everything for it, is hungry and taut, churning, an energy vortex, sucking all toward it. I mean, we’re in the same business, really, though we take vastly different approaches, of course, your Real World being kind of brutally obvious, no offense, whereas the videos at least don’t purport to be anything but what they are— but you guys, your show claims to do more but then has a strange ability to flatten all the depth and nuance from these people.