post- 09/20/19

In This Issue

Поезд 337ЖА Jennifer Osborne 4

To All the Dishes I've Washed Before

Naomi Kim 4

What Happened in Yueyang

Belinda Hu 2 Robert Capron 5

Twice Upon a Time in Hollywood

postCover by Katie Fliegel

SEPT 20 —

VOL 24

— ISSUE 2

FEATURE

What Happened in Yueyang

A Tale of Baijiu, Disaster, and Beautiful Things

By Belinda Hu Illustrated by Aya Alghanmeh

F

Content warning: Death

or as long as I can remember, I’ve been haunted by the prospect of my parents’ death. It usually comes when they’re running late: school pickups, after-school pickups, various other pickups. But the fear is really always there, waiting. It gripped me two weeks ago, the day after my move-in to Brown when I knew they were making the 13-hour drive back to North Carolina on very little sleep. It grips me now as I think of my mom walking obliviously through busy streets in the city where she’s visiting her parents, and my dad alone at home, bicycling to work next to trucks that could crumple him like paper.

I used to wish on every fallen eyelash that I would die before my parents would—I didn’t want to live through their deaths. I recently told my mom this, and she laughed. Then she said, very seriously, “That’s not going to happen.”

According to Healthline, obsessive fear of your death or other people's deaths is called thanatophobia, though the term isn’t officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. Verywell Mind declares that fearing the deaths of others “does not constitute thanatophobia” (the italics are theirs); Medical News Today agrees. Either way, I haven’t come across any literature, medical or otherwise, that makes it easier for me to breathe when three

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, I’m convinced we’ve slipped into a parallel universe. Sure, I lack scientific proof, but I did corner a theoretical physicist in Barus and Holley recently, and she agreed it was a possibility. The universe and, more importantly, this university are tilted slightly off their axes. The salads at Jo’s are no longer chopped. Shiru Cafe and Tealuxe are soon to be distant memories.

There’s an ominous, gaping hole in front of Granoff Center.

I know some may consider these changes natural for a dynamic campus and might scoff at my theory, claiming that I am simply a bitter senior clinging to the constants of my soon-toend undergraduate career. To these doubters I say, fine—I also watched Avengers: Endgame, and will cede to this reality being merely a fractured timeline. Regardless, I wonder what

Things We Want to Replace Shiru With

else has changed without my notice, and what will be noticed only to be shrugged off as personal fault in memory (I swear there used to be another n in Friedman Hall).

Our post- issue this week, in this timeline, features an exploration of a student’s fear of her parents’ deaths. The Narrative section boasts two reflections: one on the hidden beauty of the mundane tasks of life, and the other one a conversation with a stranger while studying abroad. Finally, Arts & Culture spotlights an examination of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the writer’s own adventures in film.

It’s nice to see that post- is always full of wonderful articles regardless of which universe we’re in.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Sincerely,

Sydney

Managing Editor of Feature 2 post–

hours have passed since my parents should’ve come home and I’m still alone in the house.

No one close to me has died, and I think that’s partly why death has always seemed so incomprehensible to me. My parents immigrated to the United States from China in the 1980s. All of our relatives live in China, and I only see them for a few weeks of stilted conversation every few years. So after my paternal grandmother died when I was in middle school, I didn’t know how to feel. I felt very bad for my dad, but I barely knew anything about her, and the sadness of it passed.

My dad didn’t talk to me about it; I didn’t even know there’d been a funeral until I stumbled upon

Yet another Baja’s Tealuxe :( One more dorm so ResLife doesn’t have to struggle as much An NSA office so we can keep getting our data mined A McDonald’s to embody the capitalist spirit that keeps our economy afloat A shrine to Blueno so he lives on forever A McKinsey office so APMA-Econ students can live on campus their entire lives A support group location for students who didn’t make it into capped classes Dunkin’ Donuts because it’s a cultural phenomenon, and you know it A 24-hour diner! Make it happen!

pictures of it years later. No one else I’ve met more than twice has died.

So let’s talk about this past summer.

My mom, my dad, and I were staying in Yueyang, a city in southern China. My dad was working at a university there. My mom grew up in the area, so she was reuniting with old friends. One night, the three of us went out to dinner with a group of said friends.

One of them had brought baijiu, translated literally as “white liquor.” Brands sold in stores often hover around an alcohol content of 50 percent. My mom’s classmate, however, had not bought his baijiu at a store. It was in a gallon jug labeled “Mangos” which, he announced to great fanfare, he’d gotten straight from the countryside. My dad had a shot-and-ahalf, and I watched his face turn a deep red.

After dinner, my mom wanted a picture of us all together. We emerged onto the cobblestone sidewalk outside the restaurant, cars zooming by a few feet away. We assembled in a row. My dad and I stood on opposite ends. My mom approached a passerby and asked him to take our picture. She has a fancy-ish camera, so she had to explain the buttons. The passerby didn’t understand. My dad called to my mom that I should just take the picture; I agreed. My mom waved us off. She was still demonstrating, looking through the viewfinder, when she jerked her head up and screamed, sharp and scared, “胡新华, 你怎么回事!”

I can’t give my mom English words here. Her horror could only be expressed in the language she grew up with—the language she first used with my dad. But I’ll say this roughly translates to, “Hu Xinhua, what’s going on with you?!”

I whirled around to see my dad, still red-faced and several feet behind us, almost fall into the street. He was in a precarious sort of squat. Veering, arms out. My mom and I were there immediately to grab him. I’d never seen him like this, but he was laughing, looking down. It’s nothing, nothing’s going on, I’m fine. He lurched back into a standing position. The men on either side of him made to brace him, but he shook them off. It’s nothing, it’s nothing.

It seemed like the passerby finally understood how to use the camera. My mom moved back to stand beside us. The passerby hesitated. And then I heard someone yell, and I turned, and I watched my dad fall straight back onto the sidewalk like some kind of wooden board, his elbows barely cushioning the fall. The sound of his head hitting the cobblestones.

All I could think was I can’t believe this is happening now. I can’t believe this is happening now, in summer, in China, on a busy day—ever— there’s so much I haven’t done and there’s so much we haven’t done and this is happening now. I somehow ended up on the ground next to him, unable to do anything but hold his head: hair and skull and skin.

It was wrong, it was all wrong, he never lies down on the sidewalk, he never falls straight back onto the sidewalk. I couldn’t believe death was coming the way I knew it eventually would.

My mom was saying his name, 胡新华, 胡新 华, then she stopped. He was breathing, was he breathing? He was breathing. Someone was calling whatever 911 is in China. I kept saying, both aloud and in my head, trying to tell him: Daddy. Daddy.

Daddy. My entire body seemed to be vibrating, and I had to press my hand over my mouth and nose so people wouldn’t see how much I wanted to cry.

And then his eyes slid open and closed a few times. They were dull, gray, red. He didn’t seem to see anything. His face didn’t look like his face, his skin didn’t look like skin, bunched up and drawn and wrong all over: nose, lips, chin. Was this what he looked like before?

Then he regained some consciousness and asked me what happened. I told him he fell. He tried to get up, move with his usual abruptness, and everyone rushed over and pushed him down and told him not to try to get up. The ambulance arrived.

He tried to get onto the stretcher himself but was pushed down and scolded again. He closed his eyes as the medics lifted him into the ambulance. I’d never been in one before, and felt a melancholic kind of thrill.

We got to the hospital. It seemed my dad’s moment of lucidity had passed. His eyes stayed closed and his body was still. He was scanned and prodded and wheeled around. In the elevators and hallways, people—other sick people, other families and friends of sick people—made way for him so quickly that I realized I wasn’t the only one who thought he looked like he was about to disappear.

But he began to come back again. He started to keep his eyes open. He told us not to worry. He vomited into a small plastic trash can. He squeezed my hand and glared at me, at the tears I had to keep wiping away, the shaky mouth I had to press a hand over.

He had to be moved to the 10th floor of another hospital. The doctors there said he had a concussion from the fall and would have to stay for at least a week. The alcohol had been extremely strong. But he would be fine.

Some of my dad’s colleagues came, and I left the hospital room and wandered through the dark, empty hallways. It was hot—no air conditioning. I followed a faint breeze and came to a huge window, completely open, no screen. And with total silence, I let my face contort in all the ways I’d held back since the fall. A fraction of the crying I needed, but it was finally something. I breathed in the air of the city below and ahead of me, a city I felt I now knew.

I returned to the hospital room, and my mom told me she was staying the night. There wasn’t enough space for me, so I’d spend the night alone in our townhouse on the university campus. One of my dad’s colleagues drove me back. He kept telling me not to worry, my dad was stable now. But I kept thinking—one day, my dad wouldn’t end up stable, and I didn’t know what I’d do then. He dropped me off, and I unlocked the door to this house that I’d only ever been in with my parents.

I stepped in quickly without turning the light on, so no mosquitoes could sneak in, the way my dad taught me. I closed the door softly, thinking of how my mom hates when people slam things when they are upset. I turned on the light and stepped out of my shoes, and then, with one hand still gripping the door handle, keeping it perfectly shut, I let out an awful, strangled scream.

I screamed through all three stories of the townhouse and all its stone floors and stairs. I screamed and sobbed and placed my things on the living room counter and stalked upstairs to take a shower. All night I’d kept quiet around my parents, the doctors, all the other adults I barely knew—and now I could finally let loose this strange almostgrief, a grief for something that had been so close to happening, a grief for something that I knew would one day happen. And it felt incredibly right. It felt like the only thing I could do. I wailed through my shower, and I marveled at the continued existence of shampoo and conditioner, of warm water, of dry towels.

And then my shower was over, and I was in front of the sink, clean and tired. Almost exactly like the night before. How could such a peace still exist? I swept a hand across the fogged bathroom mirror and studied my face. The same skin I’d been born with, the same skin as my mother and father. Really, the same skin as everyone I knew and everyone I didn’t. My father was alive; my mother was alive. But suddenly, I knew that even if they weren’t, I could still live—wash my hair and change my clothes and crawl into bed at the end of the night. Nearly all my life, I’d been unable to comprehend the point of a life without the two people who loved me the most, the two people I loved the most.

I don’t believe in love that continues after death. At some point in the future, my parents and I won’t be able to love each other anymore; I’ll have memories, they’ll be gone. But I’ll still have all that they’ll have given me, and it will always be beautiful. Their hope, real and exquisite and visceral, that I’ll make a good life for myself. Violin lessons and bike rides, multiplication tables and bedtime stories, spaghetti and dumplings, a garage door opening and a warm kitchen. When the time comes, I’ll just have to remember to accept it all again. And I’ll hope that I gave them something beautiful, too.

A few days after the fall, when my dad was still in the hospital, I asked him, haltingly, how he’d dealt with his own mother’s death. He told me you just have to deal with it.

I think I finally know how.

In the meantime, though, I’ll be trying not to think about it so much. There’s no use mourning the living. We have to bring them close—however we can, however far away they may be—and love them.

“She wants the D...and by D, I mean dinner.”

“Who needs TaskRabbit when there’s Tinder? I just get my matches to help me lift stuff every time I have to move.”

september 20, 2019 3

NARRATIVE

To All the Dishes I've Washed Before

An Apology Letter and a Thank You Note

by Naomi Kim Illustrated by Caroline Hu

The first order of business is an apology. To the spoon I used to eat Chobani yogurt with in my dorm room: I’m sorry.

I know I threw out the empty yogurt container before leaving you sitting on my desk to wash later.

And then a couple—or maybe it was more than a couple—stray papers piled up on top of you. And then...I forgot about you. It was a while, I admit, before I moved the papers, unearthed you, and hurried to clean you off, mortified at how I’d left you like that. (And then I repeated such missteps, more than once.)

You remind me of my bad habits and weaknesses. My incorrigibly messy desk (or rather, my incorrigible messiness). My tendency to procrastinate even on small tasks like walking the 10 or so steps from my room to the bathroom, carrying nothing heavier than a spoon and a bottle of dish detergent. You leave me questioning my standards of cleanliness and perpetually embarrassed about my housekeeping abilities.

Can you ever forgive me? *** There is photographic evidence of me as a toddler helping my mom with the dishes. In the photograph, I’m wearing one of my mother’s aprons—far too big for me—around my neck. In one hand I’m holding a plastic container; in the other, a sponge. Peeking out from under the oversized apron is part of an orange plastic bag. My mom tells me that I always got soaked while trying to wash dishes, and that she had hoped the plastic bag would keep me from getting wet.

I guess that was the last time I was enthusiastic about doing the dishes. Now it’s drudgery to pull on the rubber gloves, scrub off the bits of food clinging to the plates, load up our kitchen dishwasher at home. I complain about how endless the process seems.

Since coming to Brown, I’ve done the dishes in questionable communal kitchens and in equally questionable communal bathrooms, arranging my newly cleaned silverware on paper towels spread over stained and splattered countertops. I’ve rinsed out my water bottle with more impatience than the brief task warrants, all because of some essay I needed to get back to writing.

Dear dishes, please don’t take it personally— after all, it’s only natural for passions to fade. *** The thing is, though, I sort of owe you all a thank you. To every plate, spoon, chopstick, and bowl I’ve 4 post–

ever washed, to every fork and knife I’ve loaded into the dishwasher, I offer my gratitude. (Accept it now, before I change my mind.)

The truth is you’ve taught me patience, and if patience is a virtue, you’ve made me more virtuous.

You’ve taught me to respect and appreciate those essential, easily overlooked tasks that go on in the background of a busy life. You’ve forced me to trade in studying and essay-writing for something concrete and hands-on—a much-needed break that grounds me again.

Most of all, you’ve given me small, lovely moments that glisten quietly like soap bubbles, moments that could just as easily go unnoticed and unrecognized.

I’ve stood at the sink at home—feet resting on the wooden footstool that my father built for my 5’1” mother—and felt the warmth of hot water through the rubber gloves. I’ve smiled to myself over the way my mother flipped a left-handed glove inside out to make a right-handed one while she related some interesting story or another. I’ve found fragments of old hymns rising unbidden to my lips as I squeezed dish soap onto the sponge, caught myself singing “Be thou my vision” one moment before unexpectedly transitioning into jumbled lines from Taylor Swift songs that I didn’t even know I remembered.

I’ve washed forks and plates with friends at Brown, sometimes as a matter of spring break survival, sometimes to say thank you to someone who cooked for me. I’ve stood in the Caswell basement kitchen, all alone in the late afternoon light—a lazy warm gold streaming in through the window. I remember seeing the leaves of the bushes outside waving and dancing in the wind, a swirl of shadows and light that swayed to the sound of a running faucet and splashing water. A small thing, but enough to make me marvel. I've thought of the writer Annie Dillard and her book Teaching a Stone to Talk—how I’d like to be able to notice little, ordinary things, too, and spin wonder out of them.

I may complain, but the truth is that I won’t abandon you, dear dishes. (I can’t, in the name of cleanliness, but I assure you my devotion runs deeper.) In different cities, different kitchens, with different people or alone, I’ll return again and again to the sink. I’ll return to rubber gloves and sponges, detergent and hot water. I’ll w ash chopsticks and line up plates in the dishwasher. I’ll keep my eyes and ears and heart open. Little by little, you, dear dishes, teach me to mine magic out of the mundane, to see the incandescent colors shining in soap suds.

Поезд 337ЖА A Meeting of Souls on the Midnight Express

By Jennifer Osborne Illustrated by Ashley Hernandez Thanks to the staggering devaluation of the ruble in the last 10 years, almost everything in Russia is dirt cheap. An illustration of this fact: A highspeed train ticket from St. Petersburg to Yaroslavl, home of my study abroad program, can be purchased for the low, low price of $34 USD. For this sum, you may obtain a 20-square-foot bunk space (linens and pillowcase included) in a train car shared with 59 fellow travelers, at least one of whom is guaranteed to snore. Russian travelers have no problem with this, bunking down as soon as the train starts moving and the lights go out. To facilitate sleep if you’re not used to such a cramped and public environment, vodka is strongly recommended. However, alcohol

is prohibited outside the dining car, so sojourn there, but beware of the feet hanging off of the too-short top bunks and the frigid outside air when crossing through the cars separating you from the promised land.

The dining car is a great place to meet and talk with locals as my study abroad friends and I found out. The man closest to the door, overhearing our English chatter, immediately introduced himself as Vasya and invited us to join him at his table.

For a time he entertained us with his impressive knowledge of English swear words, and we humored him by calling his wife and explaining that, yes, her husband really was speaking to some Americans.

Then things took a turn for the worse. After he began pouring wine only for the girls and insisting we take a walk in the woods with him at the next station stop, we fled back to our bunks, only to realize an hour later that we had effectively dined and dashed. Three of us returned bashfully to the dining car to pay our dues and were relieved to find a much more subdued vibe, sans creepy man. We ordered tea, paid the reproachful waitress, and settled in to do our cultural linguistics homework. That is, until a graying man with a distinguished walrus mustache turned to us from the booth behind us.

“Everything good?” he asked seriously— referring, no doubt, to the uncomfortable interactions from the hour before.

“Yes, thank you,” we all chimed, touched that this grandfatherly man had kept an eye on us over his whiskey.

“Liva good?” he asked in the same tone.

“Ur… yeah, Liva good,” we repeated. None of us with our third-year Russian language skills had any idea what Liva was, but study abroad had taught us that da was the most appropriate answer to most questions. Not in this case. The man’s face darkened, and he lurched out of his booth and into the seat next to me. “Liva not good.” he spat.

“Yes, yes, Liva bad,” we agreed nervously. We weren’t going to get out of this one just by agreeing though. The man fiddled with his phone, swearing under his breath, before turning the screen towards us.

Liva, as it turns out, is the Russian word for Libya, where Russia had recently begun heavily intervening in a civil war. We found this out not via a quick Google translate, but by watching a grainy video of a group of Libyan mercenaries chopping a Russian soldier into tiny little pieces. No wonder this man was livid about our answer.

“War is very bad. Not good.”

The guys with me had turned quite green, either in response to the video or the threat of this man’s wrath. I threw a nervous glance in his direction and was surprised to see, in place of fury, a sad expression on his face.

Suddenly, I understood why this man had randomly plopped down with some American college students to chat about a distant Middle Eastern conflict and watch X-rated YouTube videos. In fact, he was not talking about Libya at all. He wasn’t enraged, he was afraid—not of the Libyan conflict, but of the perceived threat of one with the U.S. I asked him if I was right. “...yes. Yes!” He seemed delighted that I had caught his drift. He paused the video and pulled up a picture of a young woman and a child. “This is my daughter. We went to the beach. Every family has a black sheep. Doesn’t mean anything! War bad.” He repeated a variation of this several times.

I puzzled over the black sheep, conjuring up all the dysfunctional relatives he might have until I remembered the idea of the “national family,” and

ARTS & CULTURE discussing it further: There are too many closeups of bare feet. But that’s a lazy joke; we’re talking Tarantino, after all, and what he managed to accomplish here beyond satiating his foot fetish is more difficult to describe. I speak not only of his technical craft, pacing, story structure, or any of his specific creative choices. The film is greater than the sum of these parts, evoking nostalgia (my greatest weakness) for my own experiences in the City of Angels. I see I’m falling into my own head again. Since we’re already on the Tarantino train, why don’t we structure this like Pulp Fiction? Fuck linear chronology!

I.ROBERT CAPRON JEFFERSON’S INHABITOR

it clicked: The sheep was Vasya, and this man did not want us to judge the behavior of all Russians by that of one drunk on the night train. I told him I understood this, and he slapped a hand on the table in satisfaction.

“That’s it, that’s it! We Russians…we good, we bad. But your president think we all bad. You like Russia?” We nod. “You go home and tell them you like it here, you meet good people. You tell them no war.” He launched into a story of his own military career, from which he’d recently retired, interrupting the narrative to go on a thousand tangents, each as seemingly random as the one about sheep. He would stop every so often and ask if I understood; I always said I thought so, even when I wasn’t sure. But what I said didn’t matter—he knew when I didn’t get it and would repeat his idea until it clicked, when he sensed that some mutual understanding had been reached and he could move on. To my shock and growing awe, he was right every time. This man knew how I felt and thought, sensed my hesitancies and anxieties, and the reverse was true as well; we just got each other.

“When I was in the army, I learned how to do interrogations…I asked what they wanted me to ask, learned what they wanted me to learn. I don’t do that anymore. Instead I say, “Hyello. My name—Pavel.

What your name?”

We told him.

“Good names. You see? There are better questions.” He sat, silent. “I am an old man, and I am tired.” He seized my homework, and with a great flourish wrote his name and phone number. “If you need anything, call me.” With a firm handshake for all, he departed, leaving our lives as abruptly as he had entered them. *** I have thought for a long time about Pavel. Six months later, one thing remains clear in my mind: I have never understood anyone as well as I understood this man, and no one has ever understood me as well as he did in so short a time. My description can never do our conversation justice, because it cannot capture the sudden flash of insight I experienced, the sense that I was one of two souls communing. I say souls intentionally, even though I did not believe in souls and am still not sure I do. I do believe, however, that Pavel was and is confident of his own soul; it’s his belief that made his soul visible to me, made it possible to experience a sense of my own. Because of my bond with this man I will never meet again, I feel obliged to tell this story of Vasyas and Pavels, of a midnight train ride in a faraway country. That way I

will have gone home and told someone that I liked it there, that I met good people, and that I want no war.

Twice Upon a Time in Hollywood

With Help from Quentin and Leo, a Former Child Actor Finds His Star on the Walk of Fame

By Robert Capron Illustrated by Vienna Mercedes Gambol Leonardo DiCaprio is punching himself in the face, and I’ve never felt more understood.

Before you reprimand me for failing to intervene (presumably by reminding him that in 2016 he, in fact, won his long-awaited Oscar), I should clarify that poor Leo isn’t really hitting himself. He’s acting in Quentin Tarantino’s latest release—a 1969 period piece called Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood. Leo’s character, Rick Dalton—the washed-up former star of the fictional 1950s Western television series Bounty Law, now reduced to playing bit parts—has just flubbed his lines in a major scene and retreated to his trailer with his tail between his legs for some good oldfashioned self-reflection. Brad Pitt, playing Dalton’s impossibly badass stuntman/best buddy Cliff Booth, is nowhere to be seen.

Like Leo (the real Leo), I’ve been an actor since I was a little kid. To say I’ve been there— locked in my head, convinced I’m a schmuck with no possible means of recourse—would be dead-on.

So here I am, an actor, actually watching a scene of an actor portraying an actor’s breakdown on the set of a television show, which is actually the set of a movie. Did I mention I was watching this movie at a theater in Hollywood? I know life imitates art, but come on.

The oddly specific circumstances of my viewing experience rendered me particularly empathetic towards this pathetic fictional hasbeen’s temper tantrum. Unsurprisingly, the movie proceeded to give me all the feels, and not just because of its crazy finale. A disclaimer before

AND

ROWLEY

His handshake was a lot firmer the second time. So, too, was my conviction that I did not belong within a 500-mile radius of Hollywood, let alone this party. Context does that to a person. I’ve always heard that you ought to judge someone for how they treat those they believe to be below them.

Well, this studio executive had just left me by the figurative punch bowl with a dismissive shake of the hand, only to circle back around and give me a second chance at a first impression. Either there had been a remarkably fast, admittedly impressive Face/Off-style transplant, or he knew my secret identity as the cheese eater. I wish he’d told me the former. Gullibility has always been a fatal flaw of mine.

I’ll be honest: I always dread the interval between when I meet a person and when they discover my secret identity. The reveal that I’m a former child star, famous for the chubby best friend role in the immensely popular children’s series Diary of a Wimpy Kid, tends to elicit some sort of reaction from people even if they’re unfamiliar with the source material. That little rush of adrenaline when the truth is revealed never gets old. How are they gonna react? Awe? Indifference? Backhanded compliments on my current reduced-fat look? Whether rude or polite, there’s one unifying thread that connects every single reaction: There’s a before and after.

For years I tried downplaying my career’s role in my identity, paranoid that people only liked me for what I’d done and for what knowing me could provide. And yet here I was today, at a BrownConnect alumni meeting, mawkishly deploying my past as the defining aspect of who I was—and getting much more vibrant reactions as a result.

But, of course, we can’t forget the follow-up questions. I curate my answers to make it appear as though I have remained a relevant presence within this industry. My lack of work in film and television? Focusing on my education! What are my future plans? Writing, which I’ve totally started! Do you keep in touch with the cast?

Despite my incessant Wimpy-Kid-related social media posts, I haven’t seen them in years! That’s right, Instagram followers—I’ve created a false narrative! Okay, maybe I leave that last part out, but you get the idea. The executive and I exchange pleasantries; I pray they’ll actually remember this conversation and have the decency to read even 10 pages of a script that I have yet to write. I return to my humble UCLA housing and, amidst a lovely soundscape of agitated toddlers, congratulate myself on a proper and productive night that will absolutely, positively, one hundred and ten percent prove beneficial to my future.

This isn’t the Hollywood I remember. september 20, 2019 5

ARTS&CULTURE

II. THE GOLDEN ROAD Resting in a booth of a California Pizza Kitchen, I felt that I’d finally made it in life. I mean, this was something else: Before I’d been lucky if my parents took me to our local pizza parlor, which even then they considered too expensive half the time. But now? At the California Pizza Kitchen? Feasting on however many slices—entire friggin’ pizzas—I wanted, all paid for by the studio? I am a preteen god, I thought. Bow before me, Disney Channel groupies.

And it was only gonna get better from there.

They’d decided to put us up in a hotel on Hollywood and Highland; the world-renowned boulevard was my backyard for the week. And, besides the oddly dirty Barney the Dinosaur roaming up and down the street, everything I could see was the stuff of dreams. Ripley’s Believe it Or Not! That weird cult building Mom says never to go into! Spider-Man costumes of staggeringly different quality! And most of all, the Pearly Gates for any aspiring actor: the TCL Chinese Theater, where the handprints and footprints of Hollywood legends—my patron saints of old—faithfully guard a palace of dreams.

I begged my mother to head there immediately.

Only the promise of pizza was capable of slowing me down.

As we surged through gaggles of clamorous characters, my eyes were consumed by the cemented markings of mythological figures.

Once intangible gods, they were now tethered to

reality in the form of personalized concrete slabs, the portals to a newly guaranteed future where I would rest among them. I shimmied through the nooks and crannies of the haphazard crowd of pedestrians, their sweaty, intrusive bodies small obstacles to my personal manna. And then I saw it: a humble pair of hands and feet, embalmed forever.

I stood frozen by the hands of fate. A signature— JAMES STEWART—awakened in my eyes the morning dew of promise: a sense of connection he will never know of but one I have been blessed to wield ever since.

It was true. I’d made it. And why should I have thought otherwise? The stars lay beneath my feet.

III. THE LIVING SITUATION It is 11 years later. The stars now encircle me.

And yet, I do not belong amongst them. I’m not sure I ever did. This whole thing was a mistake. This summer is one long told you so from the film gods.

Humphrey Bogart could be blowing figurative cigar smoke in my face, and that’d be the closest I’d ever get to having influence in this town.

A tap on the shoulder startles me out of my trance. It’s AJ. The one who got me into this event in the first place—a charity function someone he knew got him access to. At this point, I’ve become the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. Sigh. He asks if I want to leave, and as I’ve gained virtually no career capital whatsoever at this event, I nod and follow. I’m convinced nodding and following

“I wanted him to see me sacrificing my strength and health to instant gratification.”

- Julian Towers, “thank god I have a future” 09.21.19

“I want to go to the parallel universe where Taylor Swift’s grand comeback was notable not for its petty, vindictive nature, but for her acknowledgement of her past faults.”

- Kay Liang, “character assassination” 09.14.17

6 post–

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Anita Sheih a FEATURE Managing Editor Sydney Lo Section Editor Sara Shapiro ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Julian Towers Section Editors Nicole Fegan Griffin Plaag Staff Writer Rob Capron NARRATIVE Managing Editor Celina Sun Section Editors Liza Edwards-Levin

is the only thing I’m good for when he tells me he’s been thinking, and he’s realized I’m his Cliff Booth.

We’d flown into LA together—he twelve rows in front of me, naturally befriending the successful author randomly assigned to sit at his left while I leaned as far away from the ungodly stench to my right as humanly possible. For dinner, he made the “Chef Alexandre Special,” a mixture of pasta, olive oil, and obscene amounts of butter that exchanged bland nutrients for delectable heartburn; I made undercooked noodles, which he made sure to remind me of on a daily basis.

He networked with directors and writers and all but guaranteed himself a future working for highranking professionals; I cowered by the figurative punch bowl. And yet, here was AJ Davis, my best friend, confidante, and, frankly, my all-aroundcooler double, telling me that after seeing the film the week prior, I was the Brad Pitt/Cliff Booth of our little duo.

In what universe? AJ had it all: the drive, the talent, the dedication, the charisma. While I went out with friends for catch-up coffee dates, he was developing three different projects at the same time. I’d barely written 10 pages of our joint pilot project before he had outlined, researched, and drafted what is soon to be a brilliant thesis film.

And while I was hammering away at a keyboard, screaming, “DOY DOY IDIOT!” at my incessant revisions, he was there for me every step of the way, feverishly reminding me that I had the ability to do this; I just needed to learn that for myself.

And amidst the screaming toddlers, hopelessly inefficient networking events, frantic self-deprecation, and bland-ass pasta, I began to realize that maybe, just maybe, he was right. My 10 pages became 12, then 20, then 36. That sense of hope, that sense of promise this near-purgatory once seemed to offer me, began to return, first in embers and then in a raging fire that’s remained with me even after returning to good old Providence.

It wasn’t until he told me that I helped do the same for him that I began to see what he truly meant. Maybe everybody’s got a little Brad Pitt in them. Everyone’s definitely got a little selfflagellating Leo; the trick is to have that buddy at your side. And when you’re staring out at the night sky from the Griffith Observatory with a buddy who’s more than a brother and just a little less than a spouse, something deep inside you says maybe, just maybe, things will be alright. My Hollywood dream, it turns out, was having someone to share the ride with.

Jasmine Ngai Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Kahini Mehta COPY Copy Chief Amanda Ngo Copy Editors Jennifer Osborne Mohima Sattar

HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Rémy Poisson LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche

SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Camila Pavon Want to be involved?

Email: anita_sheih@brown.edu!