by Dave Eggers
Trouble in paradise?
Yeah...My parents divorced when I was sixteen and subsequently all my money got tied up in that divorce. I lost it all. To this day I’m STILL FUCKING PISSED OFF ABOUT IT. Put that in your magazine. My father is a Beverly Hills surgeon with MONEY And my mother got a really large divorce settlement. I don’t talk to them.
And what are you doing now?
I have done every fucking job you can imagine. My first job was at Swenson’s scooping ice cream. I was a baker, a gas station attendant, a pastry chef; I worked at EF Hutton as an assistant broker, I worked at a stationary [sic] store, I was a painter. I tore down buildings with my BARE HANDS. A lot of unemployment time.
So there goes the myth that child stars are set for life. Yeah, it broke the myth for me.
The last page of the issue is a fake ad, featuring five of our friends, for something called Street Harmony Jeans. The five friends-as-models are posed in a corner of South Park, one sitting on a Dumpster, two others draped against warehouse walls, and, at the center, is Meredith pouting at the camera while dropping a quarter into a cup held by a hairy panhandler. The homeless man, played by our motorcycle-repairman friend Jamie, is grinning, giving a thumbs up, and holding a cardboard sign that says: WILL WORK FOR FASHION
And somehow we think this sort of thing will endear us to advertisers. Not that we need clothing ads. Or tobacco ads. Or ads from big companies. Or anyone, forget it.
But as shortsighted and pessimistic as we’ve become, we still cling to the idea that the right moves might quickly reverse our fortunes. Thus, Moodie and I sit around, looking at Judd’s cartoons, wondering if we should have him come on down, show us more work, talk about contributing. We agree that he is not at all a good fit for Might, thematically or aesthetically. He has nothing at all to do with what we’re about, really, except that he—
We clamber for the phone. I make the call.
“Yeah, why don’t you come down and bring the cameras—er, your portfolio.”
Two days later he does come by. He walks in, a regular-looking person with thick black hair, and we get up to greet him, and are then confronted, close at his heels, by a scampering eight-legged insect of black video equipment, lights, microphones, clipboards. Shalini, an MTV devotee, at her Mac across the room, is awestruck—we had forgotten to tell her they were coming. It’s chaos. People walking by on the sidewalk outside stop and press their faces against the window. We bring Judd to our conference table, under the punching bag, and begin the show.
Judd, with his portfolio, pretends that he really cares about having his work published in our tiny magazine, with its ten thousand readers, even though in two months millions will be watching his every quiver. Moodie and I sit with him, pretending that we are editors of a real magazine, one where people sit down to talk about things like this, and that we care about his work, and believe that it belongs in our (real) magazine. We are wearing what we always wear, shorts and T-shirts, having decided, after thinking about what to wear and then remembering not to think about what to wear, to wear what we would have worn had we not been thinking about what to wear. We are happy with our shorts and T-shirts, one side tucked in, just an inch of it on the right side, showing some belt, the rest hanging out—this is our look—it having been arrived at in high school through careful consideration, through the eschewing of so many possible mistakes. We wear no tattoos, because we feel tattoos indicate too much attention paid to one’s look and anyway, though the trend is still on the upswing in 1994, we are sure that inside a year, maybe just only a few months, that whole boom will go bust. (How long, after all, could something like that last?) Same with dyed hair, piercings, brandings, creative headwear, neckwear, T-shirtwear, all other indications and accoutrements. We have opted out, taken the ultimate apathetic approach to looks and attire, have moved past the check-me-out look, past the look of rejecting-the-check-me-out-look-in-favor-of-darkly-rebellious-look—have rejected both and have chosen a kind of elegance through refusal—the check-me-out-if-you-must look-but-you’11-get-no-encouragement-from-me look—the look of absolutely no look at all. Which is not to say we wouldn’t mind looking good, Moodie and I, because it would be nice, since we’re bothering to slum on MTV and all, to at least be looking appealing, thus increasing our chances of sleeping with Charles Bronson’s daughter, or at least the girl from Caffe Centro, the one with the hair down to here, the legs up to there.
We talk to Judd, with both grave seriousness and measured nonchalance, about how and how often we will be working together, all the while choosing our words carefully, needing to sound both articulate and casual, of our demographic, loose but smart, energetic but not eager, because, of course, we are also young people pretending to be young people, putting across an image of ourselves as representatives, for now and posterity, of how youth were at this juncture, how we acted, and in particular, how we acted when we were pretending not to act while pretending to be ourselves. At the same time, it would also be nice to make clear the mistake Laura in casting has made, to have our cameo make clear who the real stars are, stars who far outshine this dowdy Judd person—we the brilliant ringed planets, he just a tiny, cold moon.
And while we must relate to Judd, mano a mano, Judd being on first impression and thereafter a very very nice person, Moodie and I must also try to act cooler than Judd, because we have to make clear that we are not the sorts of people who would be on The Real World—or even try out for it!—in the first place. We need to make clear to a casual viewer that, while we are willing to let ourselves be thrust into rec rooms and basements around the world, gazed at by surely adoring teenage girls and their less believing older brothers, by college students eating falafel between classes on couches that came with their apartment, we must make clear to these people that we are on this show only for the purposes of our own perverse amusement—that if you look closely, we are winking, smirking ever so slightly, that all this, our meeting with him, the cameras and everything, will probably be used in Might as fodder for some kind of wry and trenchant article or ha-ha chart soon enough. We can play it both ways, all ways. We can look into the eyes of this Judd person, whose eyes look like ours, and we can pour forth to him kindness and understanding, and crack jokes with him and make plans with him, all the while calculating what we might be able to get out of this association, how much of his sort of access we can get without having to too seriously compromise the purity of our own endeavor by fouling it with his presence, he who, for his part, is probably only talking to us because Casting Laura felt bad about cutting me from the team and so sent him our way, as consolation.
And even while we think we’re pulling it off, that we are acting nonchalantly like ourselves, are looking good, are discussing matters vital to Judd’s career, the importance of these cartoons to us and him, something weird is happening: the camera guy and the sound guy, slightly older, backward-hat-wearers, are clearly unimpressed, are almost rolling their eyes at us, because they clearly see through the whole thing, that we are using this to get exposure, to prove to all and ourselves that we are real, that we like everyone else simply want our lives on tape, proven, feel that what we are doing only becomes real once it has been entered into the record.
After the first visit, Judd comes by three or four more times, and, a few months later, when the San Francisco Real Worlds burst onto the air, Moodie and I are there, in Episode 2. For about eight seconds, of course, but with that eight seconds, we expect to raise the eyebrows of thick-skulled and starstruck advertising-buying proles, not to mention impress people from college and high school. We get one wish but not the other. The appearance does next to nothing in terms of solving our financial woes, but on the other hand, everyone we know and have ever known calls or writes to say they saw it. How they’re able in the blink that constitutes our appearance to make out who we are is beyond comprehension. We hear from grade school friends we haven’t heard from in eight years, we hear from old teachers, all no doubt because the w
ords spoken to Judd, by me in an appealing sort of drone, were emblematic, unforgettable. Those words:
“If you, you know, don’t draw the way you want to draw it’s gonna suck.”
The appearance makes us mini-celebrities in the neighborhood, particularly in the eyes of Shalini, who’s busy with Hum, the “new voice of the progressive South Asian American twentysome-thing community.” In it are articles about the persistence of arranged marriages, gang activity in the South Asian American community, and a health advice column written by her father, a doctor. Moodie and I design it in exchange for use of her laser printer and for her thrillingly frequent, unbelievable, semi-erotic during-work backrubs. Friends, people from upstairs begin to avoid our office, because each time they step in, Shalini is kneading our shoulders as we moan, grunt, pant, often while being entertained by her brutal imitation of Indians she calls F.O.B.s— fresh off the boat.
“Oooh, I tink dat you are dooo dense! Feel da dension in your shoulders! You need do get out, relax more, go do da dancing, da partying with da udder youngsters.”
She is constantly bothering us about the hours we keep. Also about our need to work out more.
“You wood look much bedda eev you worked out some.”
We offer to fulfill her obvious wish to see us naked by inviting her to our next photo shoot.
“I don’t have to be nude, do I?”
“Actually, yes.”
“No.”
“No, you won’t do it, or no, you don’t believe us?”
“Both. No.”
But Judd says yes. It’s our second big nude shoot. This time we are setting out to demonstrate what people’s bodies actually look like, the exercise being a response to a familiar complaint, of course: the media’s and advertising’s distortion of our perceptions of our own bodies, how the average person does not and cannot meet the unattainable expectations rammed down our blah blah blah. What we want to do, just to see if it’ll work as much as anything, is to assemble thirty or forty friends and acquaintances, ideally being of thirty or forty different sizes and shapes, and have them pose naked. We will then display the pictures on the page, unadorned, in a simple grid, one God-given body after another, making clear how seldom actual people look like the people seen on TV, how all bodies, while not necessarily all beautiful, are at the very least valid, are real and—
Okay. So. We hire a photographer, a sober, softspoken Dutch fellow named Ron Van Dongen, who will do the shoot, this groundbreaking shoot, almost for free. He asks only for the cost of film and a chance to keep the negatives. Yes. So.
In the interest of demonstrating inclusiveness and diversity, in the interest of making clear that differentiating between this one and that one, discriminating on the basis of size or shape or color, these superficial distinctions, is obscene, barbaric, in the interest of setting all this straight, we make calls looking for volunteers:
Do you have any black friends?
Oh yeah? How light?
Really? I thought he was Indian.
How about large friends?
No, we need guys. We already have enough women.
How big is he?
You think he’d do it?
Also, do you know anyone flat-chested?
Like, flat-flat. Bony.
Where is the scar? Is it noticeable?
She has hair where?
In contrast to the first naked photo shoot, this time it’s infinitely easier to find people, because at this point we have an actual magazine to show people, and because this time there will be no running-with-penis-flapping, and early on we make two compromises: a) we promise to grant anonymity by cropping the pictures at the neck, and b) we let everyone wear underwear, if not on top at least on the bottom. We do this for them as much as for practical reasons, realizing with a deep, regret-filled sigh that filling our pages with stark naked people, particularly those whose bodies are clearly imperfect, will not help the magazine’s struggling newsstand distribution. Yes, it’s another heartbreaking compromise—and do know that each one is a five-lane highway through our souls—but this point must reach America, however tattered it is once it arrives.
Judd says he’ll be bringing a friend, another member of the cast. We are thrilled. With two cast members present, this will definitely get on the air, this’ll be the thing that pushes us over the edge, and when we see the car coming down the alleyway, an old periwinkle blue Dodge or something, a prototypically San Francisco car, a boxy sunwashed old thing, we can feel the pieces coming together, our doing something sociologically huge, with appropriately sized media coverage, a loud point being properly amplified, disseminated to millio—
There are no cameras. They drive up and—
There is no van following them. I meet them at the car, as they park in the alley behind the studio, and, as casually as I can, I look up and down the alley for the van. But there is no van. There are no cameras. We have expected cameras.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” Judd says.
“So. No camera crew, huh?”
“Naw, they’re with Rachel today.”
“Oh. Well, good. We sure didn’t want those cameras getting in our way today, messing everything up.”
“Right.”
“Cameras can be so distracting...”
“Yeah.”
“...in your face, recording everything, all the things you say and do.”
“Right. Oh, this is Puck.”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
I shake hands with Puck. He is wearing long shorts and a white tank top. He is rangy, pale, his eyes alert in a jarring sort of way. As I have his hand, he starts talking. Quickly, without taking breaths, without blinking. When I hear Puck talk I immediately wonder if Puck is on some kind of speed-oriented drug, some kind of hallucinogen. I have seen TV movies about people on such drugs. There was one with Doug McKeon and Helen Hunt, where she takes PCP and jumps out the school window, falls two stories, gets up, runs around, dies. Maybe Puck is on speed. Is this what speed is like? He will not stop talking.
He is talking about The Real World, and how he’s going to ride it all the way to the top, that there’s no stopping him, that he’s also a bike messenger you know that car road cuts racing motocross fuck yeah shit cool all the way to the top.
He is easily the most unsettling person I have ever met. He has scratches all over his body, including his face. Maybe he has cats? It’s hard to tell. He will not stop talking. Used to ride motocross and there’s some fine women in the cast but they seem frigid and yeah, got an agent and party cool shit yeah dude dude dude all right gotta split soon all right dude. Dude.
He is fantastic and horrible. He is magnetic and repulsive. His eyes are hungry, fucking yeah shoulda seen it dumbshits mamas brews ollie rad bitchin. He pulls up his shirt to show us his tats.
We all mill in the alley, waiting for our turn with Van Dongen. Kirsten, always the good sport, arrives, and Carla, a smattering of interns and friends, their friends. We have called everyone we know.
One by one, we walk in, close the door behind us, and are alone with Van Dongen in the studio. He motions us to step into a U of white screens, and gestures for us to take off our clothes, whatever it is we’re planning to take off. We do, and when we do, fumbling with exactly what to do with our arms, our hands, we wonder what he thinks of our bodies. We do not know what to do with our hands. We have them at our sides, then in front of our privates, then behind our backs. What can one do with one’s hands when the camera is interested in other things? When he shoots, the flashes in front of us and behind us all woosh at once, and we are frozen in the white. Then it is dark again. He takes about five pictures of each person, a few of the front, a few of the back—we can’t afford the film to do more—and then we are done, opening the studio’s heavy door to the overwhelming light, a hundred times that of the flashes—San Francisco at midday.
But we approve of these people, those who agree to be naked. We thin
k less of those who refuse to do this, our many friends who said no; we deem them not only overly chaste but stingy, small, lacking in heart, a basic sort of courage. We favor those who pose, favor further those who, like Moodie, Marny, and me (and Puck), offer to pose nude, even though the shots are unlikely to be used. Naked! Naked means something, we decide. Those who pose are our people, people who are living the sorts of grabbing lives we favor, people who cannot say no—with all this, how could we, how could anyone, possibly say no?
In the alley, Puck becomes impatient. Party shit move chicks fuck yeah motocross X9-45GV boozin gotta split. As we are talking (or he is talking), a small dog comes to us, literally sniffing around. We play with the dog, and soon discover that the dog, though looking well cared for, has no tags. Shortly after meeting the dog, Puck decides that he will be keeping the dog. When he is done with his shoot, Puck and Judd leave, and over our protests and Judd’s, Puck grabs the dog, who no doubt belongs to a nearby resident, and brings him to The Real World compound, where he will join the cast.
Shortly thereafter, when I’m at the house, the one time I visit, playing pool with Judd, I see the dog, and see the other cast members lolling about, with seemingly nothing at all to do—the show having cornered them into a weird problem: because they’re discouraged from working (boring), or traveling (unfeasible), they cannot produce and cannot move, are left to wander from couch to kitchen to bed, talking and waiting to offend or be offended.
When we get the pictures back, Moodie and I pore over them for hours on end. We study them, try to identify who is who. But because the subjects’ heads are cut off, we cannot immediately discern identities, even our own. We cannot tell the difference between one of our interns and a large, furry man who showed up unannounced. We cannot, much to my embarrassment, tell the difference between Kirsten and Carla, who are both thin and unblemished. Most unsettlingly, it takes a second to tell me from Puck—we have the same shorts, the same build, the same stance. The only difference lies in the tattoos—I have none, while he has a bunny, a bumblebee, a bird. Otherwise, we are shocked by the variance of people, the oddness of our peers, how high that large-breasted woman wears her bra, how furry that guy’s back is, how unusually shaped that one’s shoulders, how flat this one’s butt—it’s all so much weirder than we imagined. The variety of malformi-ties, the unexpected flaws, the premature sagging, all the tattoos, flowers and snakes, how hairy all the crotches are, bursting from panties and briefs, that one woman who, even with her breasts obvious, convincing, somehow seems too like a man—