You know, it’s funny. All the fake stuff over there where I was Sally looked brighter and shinier and easier to see and easier to touch. Why does make-believe look more real? Why does this fantasy seem to me more reachable than life? Why is life such a slow black leash, unlively and anxious at the same time? Here I am, waiting for change to happen again, to transform into a wild animal simply to stop myself from being myself/Jill. But life is a slow, loose leash, too, and there are places I could go but fear going to; and in the end I think the only way I’d ever enjoy being a wild animal would be in a zoo in a comfortable cage, an artificially-created climate for those born in captivity who never knew wilderness at it is.
If I lived an escapist dream all these years, it only goes to show I want someone telling me who to be; and, while that is running away from things, that is the only way in which this dream pleads for freedom. Ever since I’ve become Jill again, through constant psychological analysis— characteristic of those who, like Jill, simply can’t let it go—I have realized how overwhelming freedom can be, weighing over our shoulders; pointing fingers at our wrong choices.
Being Sally relieved me from these. It carried a symbolic message for me. I was suddenly that Sally in that Oasis song that goes “So Sally can wait/ She knows it’s too late/ And she’s walking on by/ Her soul slides away/ But don’t look back in anger/ I heard you say.”
I never knew who the hell this Sally in “Don’t Look Back in Anger” was. Well, that’s the brilliance of the song, you’ll tell me. Still, it’s just vague to me. Sally is whoever. Sally is no one now, because her soul dissolved to break into song. This song is so very comforting. It’s the “It’s too late” part. In some messed-up way, it’s so nice to know there’s nothing else you can do but let shit happen. It relieves you from greater responsibility.
There were two songs that I am sure were written about me; whichever me that is. The first one is “Don’t Look Back in Anger.” The other is “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. I think they both are about the both of me, because they are both talking about choices and things you can’t take back (So fuck it. Okay, maybe that emotion was only expressed by the Oasis song).
And this is what being Sally represented for me; a certain relief in resignation. That’s the same feeling as when you finish a difficult test you’ve been studying for all week, and when you hand it in you don’t care how well you did, you’re just happy because it’s over.
“You just loved it, didn’t you?” said my/Jill’s mother after I got home. “Playing house. You must have loved being someone of no consequence at all.”
~~~
I had been hanging out at dangerous spots, hoping to witness a crime so I could go back to Sally; Sally from when I was happy. No luck so far. I did get mugged, but they caught the guy. I bailed him out, because I thought maybe he could mug me again, but he chickened out. I was really disappointed in this town’s criminals. They used to be better, in my prime. In my prime they killed girls right there in front some fifty apartment windows, and they got away with it; or at least they did for a long time.
I kept going back there to the place where Ariel died. In daylight, it didn’t look as threatening. There were kids, small kids—I think they were siblings—playing ball some two feet from where the guy stood shooting his gun, or just stood and shot his gun; for there’d only been one gunshot.
One of the times I was hanging out there, I saw my friend through that window; that window through which I saw the whole thing. He looked damp and ugly, and I was happy I wasn’t his friend anymore and did not have to go comfort him. But he was so depressed; for a minute, I thought he would jump out that window, and I think for a minute he thought that, too. But then he flinched and sneezed and went back inside.
This street had already had its share of death for the century. Besides, it started to dawn on me that maybe it wasn’t good to wish for bad things to happen to strangers. It’s just, when I’m Jill, I tend to feed on bad things. And I was Jill, overwhelmingly so. I could not help it; she’d been gaining ground in me.
But I was Jill without her friends, and Jill without her family, and Jill without her reasons and ignorance about how easy it was to live other people’s lives. Jill without her favourite pair of jeans, which had been thrown out. Jill without her room as it used to be before her mother turned it into a gym. Jill without her CD collection and her old radio and her childhood drawings and her look, not the way she looked; but the way she looked at people.
To sum up, she was Jill without her Jill-ness. But she was yet to lose her knack for doing the wrong thing.
~~~
Now I was in the dark side of the moon. That’s where I was, where all those lunatics are, including the one who killed Ariel; the one they thought wanted to kill me. That’s why they turned me into Sally the ice-skater who lived out of fun. Sally is shouting and shouting, trying to break free. I don’t have the energy to control her.
In the dark side of the moon, I went to see the man I spent all those years hiding from. But his name was Jeff. He was 5’2 and was just about the most non-threatening man I’d ever seen. It looked like the FBI had pranked me into witness protection. His nails, however, were all chewed off. They were long, too long, his nails, so he could chew off his bad instincts. He really did try, I guess.
Both sides now: both of me, Sally and Jill. And both of him: the murderer and Jeff who did the nail-biting. I forgive you, we told them; but we need you to break out of prison. See, witness protection is a neat place, and your being here kind of ruins that for us.
But they then said—Jeff and the murderous shadow in his eyes which wouldn’t really exist if only we could see in colour—they said they were happy so very happy there; that he’d spent years on the run, at times not eating or sleeping for days or eating from trash and sleeping in the street, and it was time now to settle down. Here they had food, warm clothing and a bed, so thank you very much, but they were not interested in freedom anymore.
“You shouldn’t have killed her,” we told them. “It messed up my head, and now I think I’m losing my mind.”
“Oh, really? Are you a normal crazy or a crazy crazy?”
“Wouldn’t a crazy crazy be a normal person? The definition of crazy is that of something outside the norm, hence the normal crazy is, as a rule, crazy. A crazy crazy would not be following the rules of crazy, which is not to fit within what society considers normal, thereby fitting within society’s normality standards.”
Jeff was confused: “So you’re a crazy crazy,” he said. “That’s nice.”
“If by that you mean I’m normal, then I’m afraid you’re right.”
This reminded me of this theme party I went to as a kid. We were supposed to dress in “ridiculous” clothing. Everyone was wearing bathing suits over pyjamas and sunglasses at night, but I went wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Everyone was mad at me for doing it, calling me a buzzkill and all that. Truth is, though, if your dress code is telling you to be ridiculous, then you have to think real hard about what that means: Is ridiculousness an inherent quality? Obviously not. That is why different societies in different times and different spaces had different notions of what it was. It’s the kind of thing you cannot settle with an example.
Ten-year-old me thought that, in order to be truly ridiculous, one must stand out in an absurd way; there must be an incoherence; a huge discrepancy. In order to get to the exact definition of it, one must think of those IQ tests that go mango, kiwi, grape, sweater, and ask you to answer which of these words does not belong in the group (evidently, it is kiwi).
And now you’re thinking, you must be fun at parties. Well, that was Jill. Sally is all right at socializing. It doesn’t seem as hard; when I’m being Sally, not Jill. The problem is, there isn’t room for both of them here.
I’d been trying to make compromises to accommodate them both. One day when the Starbucks cashier asked for my name, I told him Sally. I’d stopped acting like Sally around Jill’s friends and family. I’ve been browsing through Sally’s social media accounts and posting old photos of her and Photoshopping her into Norwegian Fiords. I wish I were in Norway. The lakes must be good for skating.
There is no ice in L.A. There is nothing there but swamp and depressed people and drug addicts. I have seen pictures of places, colder places made of wild sea; in those places when it gets colder that wild, wild sea will freeze mid-wave and somehow stop the time. The entire beach and the sea on the beach and around the beach freeze over; and you can walk to the tiny isles by the shore; you can walk through the ocean.
When time comes back, it’s spring. Everyone needs a vacation of sorts: only in spring does it start counting again and the unlucky wave by the shore frozen at winter can finally make its way onto the beach.
~~~
I bought a boat from an old man. I am sure he ripped me off, but it did cost extra to rename the boat. And I wanted to rename the boat, because the boat previously had some Norwegian name I could not pronounce to save a life. So he painted all over it, and we waited for it to dry, which was hard at winter. And I could not think of a name, so we had to wait for that, as well.
When we had it all set, finally; it was spring. But next winter, we are going to be sailing together, Castaway the boat and me; and might hit some hard ice, sure; but when we do we will know there’s land ahoy.
About Beatriz Seelaender
