Papier-mâché Giants

“I actually just get the director coffee or whatever he wants.”

“What?” I asked looking up from my computer.

“Yeah, that’s all I really do. Get drinks, run errands, stuff like that,” Rakesha leaned back on the futon in our living room and passed the joint to Silvana who took a long drag.

I couldn’t believe that Rakesha was saying this. She must be so stoned out of her mind that she didn’t know what she was talking about.

“But you do other stuff too, right?” I tried to clarify.

“Nope,” she took a swig of beer, “just get him stuff, like a lackey.”

This made my heart drop. Rakesha was always coming to our apartment bragging to us that she is the assistant director on a film, but it turns out that she is the assistant to the director. I mean, I never believed even half of the crap that she’s been spewing over the past two months that I’ve been here, but it just seemed sad and strangely pathetic to lie about this.

But this seems to be pandemic in New York—everyone lies or “overinflates” what they do to epic proportions. Because of this everyone is a fabulous actor in a hit Broadway play, is having their script sold for millions, or has a painting that the MoMA is going to include in an upcoming show. The egos here are absolutely astounding, and if I could steal even a sliver of this self-confidence I might just feel a little bit better in my own artistic skin.

As it stands, I always feel uneasy describing me as a writer, preferring instead to call myself “a person that writes.” Maybe if I could actually sell a short story or an article, I could call myself a writer, but until then, I’ll just stick to “unemployed.”

In the gamut of gargantuan egos, Rakesha’s in particular has always annoyed me. She usually comes into our house and right away starts telling us how she is going to use her Columbia Film Degree to direct a film which will “enlighten the ignorant hicks that populate most of this country.” God-- she just bugs me! So when she lay on the futon, drunk and stoned and finally admitted to being a fraud in the chuckling stoner laugh that meant that she would forget everything the next day, I should have been happy. Right? My feelings toward Rakesha were like the ugly girl that hates, envies, and obsesses over the perfect high school cheerleader. But now I that had just watched this “cheerleader” break her neck during a throw at a homecoming game, my heart dropped. It’s one of those things you see over and over in your mind, wishing it to happen—but when it actually does, you don’t feel relief or happiness, or really anything at first, just sadness and disgust. I felt like I was like watching a papier-mâché giant fall and crumble to the ground.

A lot of this is narcissistic though, because I think I secretly thought that if a person like Rakesha could make it then there was a chance that I could too. But she hasn’t made it, and she’s been lying about what she’s done, and it depresses me profoundly.

“I’m going to go to live in LA in a week, and where I will finally be directing a film,” she told me yesterday.

Later, I learned that she is simply following the director she’s working with to be his go-fer in a new location as he raps up production.

“It’ll be great there,” she said. “I just hope I can keep my artistic edge. People in Los Angeles are so fake. It’s not like the people out here in New York at all.”

I couldn’t even smirk at the irony on this one. It just depressed the shit out of me and I went into my room, drew the blinds, and tried to take a nap.

I try not to stay inside too much these days because it just makes my inertia more apparent, because days are turning to weeks, and nothing seems to be happening. I’m struggling in a big city, and I don’t even know if I can do what I’ve set out to do. In fact, I don’t even really know what I’ve set out to do.

I listen day after day to artists and their egos, and I no longer wish them ill will. I don’t want the cheerleader to fall and break her neck because, sad and pathetic as it may be, even ugly kids like me get a little happiness by proxy when she becomes prom queen.

Rakesha leaves for LA on Friday, and she’s going out tonight to celebrate with one of my roommates. I didn’t go. I just can’t take it. Not because of the grating irritation that I used to feel, but because of the completely pathetic irony that I absorb in a more personal sense when I'm around her.

“I’m going to have my own place near Santa Monica! It’s going to be really great because I have some ideas for things I would like to direct. Everything’s really going to be better for me out on the West Coast.”

I hope she makes it. I really do. But as my throat tightens against me and my stomach churns, I contemplate that we may be on the same sinking ship-- only she can’t see the holes in her reality.

-Mark Jordan