First Part of a Two Parter From First Days
A two part essay from my 2017 show, First Days, at Steppenwolf Theater. Look out for Part 2 next week.
American Style: Part I
The first layer of the town of Ely appears to be peeling and chipping under the Nevadan sun, as though even a fresh paint job or new pavement or fair skin couldn’t hope to endure for very long before splitting and cracking. A contained reality all its own off Highway 50, Ely borders an old copper mine, a mound of orange dirt piled so high it could be represented topographically on a map. Driving the road winding into town, it’s unclear where the residents go to work everyday. The mine functions sporadically, and small shops line the main road along with a few motels and a casino. However, it’s very clear where they worship, because this tiny community is home to twelve churches. There are no corporate franchises in Ely, which boasts on t-shirts that it is, “400 miles to the nearest Walmart.” I’ve never seen a place in America like it. The nicest restaurant here advertises on its own billboard, “The Jailhouse,” which is a steakhouse where you can eat dinner inside jail cells, and then later gamble in a jail themed casino. My boyfriend, Mike, a very strong, sweet man, has been to jail six times, so when we ate dinner there one night I asked him if this is what jail is really like and he said, “No.”
In a place so remote, I wonder what the locals think of many things. Do they know that there exist other worlds like Chicago, where people push their dogs around in strollers instead of the children they’ve chosen not to have? Do they know that there’s a land where the inhabitants silently look down on you for being religious instead of believing in astrology? Do they know that there are faraway places where accidentally offending someone is the worst possible thing you can do? Or that flaking on your friends and commitments is called self-care, instead of rude? How about love? When they watch romantic movies, do they assume true love exists everywhere and that they will find theirs in Ely? Do they wonder if it’s just a matter of time before someone they’ve known their whole lives becomes The One? Can they even believe how beautiful the people are on television?
Never have I felt more like an astronaut who has been dropped onto a new planet than in the two weeks I spent on the west coast of my own country. Each little world I visited taught me exceptions to the rules I grew up convinced were universal. But, culture shock after culture shock sent waves of cognitive dissonance through my brain, forcing inside it a greater space for what “normal” means in America.
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Mike’s birthday fell on the first day of our trip, which we spent in Stockton, California visiting his mother, stepdad and sisters. I grew up on the east coast and had never been west of Minnesota, so I was very excited to experience the famous In-N-Out burger and for all the highways. The morning after we arrived, we sat outside eating breakfast and getting to know each other. I was nervous to meet Mike’s family because I knew it was my job to fit in, and that they may not like me if they discovered I was a democrat and spiritually undecided. One time in highschool I invited my non-Italian boyfriend to a barbecue to meet my family and my five uncles took him for a walk around the block. Then, he left early.
Sam, Mike’s mom, insisted we take a family picture, which I thought was very welcoming considering I had just met the family a few hours earlier, and only began dating her son 9 months ago.
“Go sit by Gina,” Mike’s sister Keddie told her daughter, Morgan. “Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite.”
“Yea, don’t worry, Mikey’s controlling her,” Mary assured her.
Mike’s younger sister Mary is twenty-five, and loves the Disney Channel, singing and dancing, gorgeous men, and going to church.
She has down syndrome, and is the most brutally honest person I have ever met.
“I came in here to get a break from you guys but here you are,” she said when we wanted to use the bathroom in her bedroom.
After breakfast, we all drove to a winery for a tasting which, on the outside looked like a villa in Tuscany, but on the inside looked like a gift shop in a nursing home. It was filled with knick knacks for purchase like purses in the shape of martini glasses made entirely out of beads, statues of zebras, and sculptures of faces made to look like they’re floating in midair. All the items were priced as if they were tasteful. The main showroom featured a band of accordions, pianos and horns that lit up and played “Day Tripper” on their own. Our freedom to sip wine while discovering the mansion’s treasures classed up the place a bit, except for Mary, who had downed her glass the moment it was poured.
“Did you like the wine, Mary?” Mike asked.
“No.” She said.
I admired the landscape on the way home, the flat plains of the central valley making real the images I’d conjured while reading Steinbeck or listening to Joni Mitchell. Almond trees and cotton fields, rosebushes growing at the ends of rows of grape vines, red alarm bells to warn farmers of disease. I felt serene in California. “I always knew I was a west coast gal,” I thought.
That afternoon, we’d decided to lounge poolside in the backyard before a birthday barbecue. Mike’s step dad, Jerry, made a chill playlist featuring Enya, Simon and Garfunkel, and Charlotte Church. Morgan wore her floaties and harassed Uncle Mike, we drank beers out of inflatable koozies and goofed in the sun. I was feeling pretty loose.
Then, I had a vision about a funny way to get into the pool. My vision was that Mike would hold the oversized beach ball steady while in the pool, and I would climb on top of it from outside of the pool. Once I was on, he’d let go of the ball. My arms and legs would drape over it like a rug as I floated around. How hysterical I’d look marooned on a beach ball.
‘They’ll think I’m funny!’ I thought. ‘I’ll fit in here.’
“It’s working!” I laughed as I climbed on top of it. “Let go!” I said. And he did.
The ball shot out in front of me, throwing my legs up behind me towards the sky. Which would have been a great twist to my already hilarious vision, but instead I felt a pop in my quadricep and the lights turned off in my brain. I don’t remember getting out of the pool but I do remember yelling “I don’t want to throw up!” over and over, sure that someone had shot me in the leg. My feet had gone numb and my hands curled up towards my wrists into little claws when all the blood drained from them, like a crow that’s been dead for awhile.
Mike carried me to what Sam referred to as “the Paris Room,” which is the guest room decorated with many iterations of the eiffel tower and frenchy type cursive writing on the wallpaper. I know the French theme is meant to convey fanciness and class, and it made me wonder if older women in France ever decorate their guest rooms American style whenever they want to treat their houseguests to something a little wild in an otherwise fancy french home, with hamburger lamps and framed pictures of hamburgers and hamburgers on the wallpaper, accented with cowboy hats to add complexity to the room. Similar, in a way, to the decor of the house I grew up in, where the only piece of artwork in the whole place was a framed print of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” which hung above our fireplace. My parents had visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and my mother’s main takeaway from that excursion was that I was the spitting image of that fully naked woman in a shell.
As Mike put me on the bed, my leg filled with fluid and began to swell. It occurred to me that Mike would be in charge of putting me in different places for a while. Sam did everything she could to make me feel I wasn’t being a big hassle. She even made sure I’d be entertained in my misery, and sat at the end of the bed, searching for a show we just had to watch because it was the funniest show on television.
“Here it is.” Sam said, “You’re gonna love this, it’s just hysterical.”
Before leaving, she turned the volume up on a British mockumentary style program which featured one white man interviewing characters he dressed up as and played himself, which all just happened to be Asian teens and black men around the airport. I sobbed and sobbed.
Any type of self care when I need it most seems like an overreaction to me. In my world, the problem is never that bad so I ignore it till it goes away; injuries, medical bills, debt. There’s a whole host of reasons I’m that dysfunctional, but nevertheless it’s true. I broke my big toe at the beach on the first day of senior week after highschool and my entire foot and ankle turned black, but I still sauntered down the Ocean City boardwalk in a mini skirt for hours leaning on a shopping cart I stole from a grocery store parking lot. Instead of icing it and staying home, I just didn’t wear a shoe on that foot. If Mike hadn’t been around when I got hurt, I would have done exactly nothing to help myself except figure that enough complaining would heal me. So, Mike’s rest, ice, compression and elevation regimen, aka the right thing to do, felt to me like complete overkill. As I revealed my true colors, Mike revealed his and became snippy with me for the first time in our nine months together. I was hoping for all the sympathy and attention of being injured without the inconvenience of taking care of it. And he delivered just the opposite. He was extremely professional and unemotional, like a trainer on a football field. Exactly the bedside manner you want in a good firefighter, but not what you’re looking for in a hot nurse. Sure I had ruined his birthday and the rest of our twelve day trip but still, couldn’t a gal get at least a couple sympathetic pouts?
Mike brought me a plate of tri-tip and mac and cheese and set me up with a tray to eat his birthday dinner alone while he sat with his family in the dining room. I knew it was time for cake when I heard everyone singing so I shouted the birthday song from the Paris Room, like a ghost in time-out, wondering what he wished for as he blew out his candles.