"What are you doing there?" he asked again. "I was once in a rock band called Bad Perm," he said instead. He had made himself the make-believe author of a make-believe book of essays called One Man's Opinion, and when he was bored or inspired, There were men drilling out front who'd struck a cable." "When I was only halfway through with the rod part, the building the salon's in had a blackout. Have you heard the squawking crickets tape?" "Maybe you should get the squawking crickets tape. "Sounds like dust on the needle," he said. She blew air into the mouth of the phone. "Listening to seashore and self-esteem tapes," she said. She thought of it as a cross between London and Queens, with a dash of Cleveland. He was gay, but they had liked each other very much. In Santa Monica and once, a long time ago and depressed on Ecstasy, they had slept together. "Where are you? You're living in some state that borders on North Dakota!" He was a screenwriter "Sidra, what are you doing there?" shrieked her friend Tommy long distance over the phone. She took to staring out the window at Lake Michigan, the rippled slate of it like a blackboard gone bad. When a stock went down, she bought more of it, to catch it on the way back up. She tried to be original-not a good thing with The words cash cow nestled in the side of her mouth like a cud. She wrote down her dreams in the morning to locateĭisney, her dreams said once. She watched cable and ordered in a lot from a pizza place. Their sadnesses occurred in isolation, lurched and spazzed, sent them spinning fizzily back into empty, padded corners, disconnected and alone. With people in Chicago, she remembered, was that they were never lonely at the same time. But there was never a party, a dinner, an opening, an iced tea.
#The obscene bird of night free pdf movie
Still, she was a minor movie star, once nominated for a major award. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hairbrush and told, "There you go." She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing
She hadn'tīeen given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went " What?" Or worse, feeling interrupted and tired, "Wha-?" It had taken on the shape of a terrible mistake.
She let her life get dull-dull, but with Hostess cakes. Went home to Chicago, rented a room by the week at the Days Inn, drank sherry, and grew a little plump. "Just when we were working out the bumps and chops and rocks," she said. She began to get obscene phone calls, and postcards signed, "Oh yeah, baby." Her boyfriend, a director with a growing reputationįor expensive flops, a man who twice a week glowered at her Fancy Sunburst guppy and told it to get a job, became a Catholic and went back to his wife. In which she was supposed to say lines she would never say, not wear clothes she would never not wear. Now her hands trembled too much, even drinking juice, especially drinking juice, a Vantage wobbling between her fingers like a compass dial. She drank juice and, outside, smoked a cigarette now and then. Sit for entire afternoons in places called I Love Juicy or Orange-U-Sweet. She herself was true as a goddamn dairy product available as lunch whenever. A mediocre picture, a picture queasy with pornography: these, she knew, eroticized the unavailable. At times, she felt bad that it wasn't her hip. Work was all playtime to them, playtime with gel in their hair. "You have the body," studio heads told her over lunch at Chasen's. In her last picture, the camera had lingered at the hip, the naked hip, and even though it wasn't her hip, she acquired a reputation for being willing.
How can I live my life without committing an