The irony was that Clarissa in her own affairs made a concerted effort to avoid the Internet, and technology overall, really.  Email, text messages, and instant chat were the bane of her existence.  Her research demonstrated that the uses of all these options were far more nuanced than simply providing impersonal alternatives to face-to-face interaction — but she had grown up in a big family with lots of warm, personal affection, and the clicking away in this large but lonely city just wasn’t doing it for her.

After walking a few blocks, Clarissa swung open the door to the neighborhood coffee shop and took a seat in the corner, laying out all her papers.  “Water,” she said to herself, “Let me first get some water.”  She retrieved a cup from the counter and poured some water for herself, taking a long gulp that included most of the water in the cup before setting it down.  “Food,” she said to herself next.  She went up to the counter with her pen in her hand, and deliriously pointed the pen up to her face while perusing the menu, causing a few stray marks resembling a beard to appear on her chin.  “Healthy, I need to be healthy,” she thought, and she ordered a salad.  She paced up and down the aisle behind the counter until the salad was ready, then paid for it and sat back down.

Clarissa sighed, surveying all the materials that lay in front of her.  The draft of her dissertation was due in less than a week, and she still had a good 30 pages to go.  She retrieved a pencil from her bag to mark up any relevant material and crossed her legs, opening up a periodical about youth and technology.  Occasionally taking bites from her salad, she flipped through the entire periodical within five minutes.  “Useless,” she concluded, setting the periodical on the corner of the table and taking more bites from the salad.

Jisme shaamil tha ek patla sa daag

Chupana kaafi aasan tha

Jab tak koi na aaya chiraag

Ek din tumne mujhe woh dupatta diya

Aur maine pyaar se pehn liya

Magar woh daag seene mein phail gaya

Aakhir utaar kar maine aag mein kaskar daal diya

Woh aag pehla bujhne waali thi

Lekin dupatta ne naya josh jagaaya

Woh sholay kaise kapde ke andar se guzre

Ki tumhari aakhri nishaani ko mitaaya

You used to wear that scarf every day

It had just a little stain

One that was easy to hilde

While shielded from sunrays

One day you gave me that scarf

And I wore it in love’s name

But the stain spread through

Til I ripped it off and through it in the bonfire flame

That fire had been nearly extinguished

But your scarf gave it life afresh

The way the flame tore right through the cloth

Put out the last of your memory’s flesh

I am almost asleep when a brief, mechanical shriek interrupts my reverie. Ah, the godforsaken smoke detector.  It had sounded earlier in the day, too, and somehow stopped arbitrarily.  It just had to make its come-back at this moment, didn’t it?

I turn around and lie on my stomach.  I press one ear into the pillow, and attempt stuffing the other ear with my blanket.  No use.  The chirping is salient, as disconcerting as a pale, blue vulture eye.

I finally click on my lamp and rub my eyes, squinting as they adjust to the light.  I get out of bed and swing my desk chair a few feet over.  I step on the chair and flip open the smoke detector, facing the failing battery head-on.  I ruthlessly snatch it out.

If I am going to get burned, let me do so in oblivion.  I would rather not be cautioned too late and in vain, and I would certainly rather not be kept awake with the shrill reminder of my chamber’s diminishing prowess in smoke detection.

Aapke darwaaze pe khatkhataaye

Khulna namumkin na sahi

Phir bhi kaafi dhoop se chhaaye

Leejiye janaab yeh fizool dastak

Jo bhari mehfil ko bhar paaye

Jo de sake aisa mauka

Us rukaawat se kya ghabraaye

Take it, master, this futile knocking

Which comes rippling at your door

Impossible to budge, though it may be

‘Tis overcast with sunlight galore

Take it, mistress, this futile knocking

A full production of its own

With such opportunity engendered

The barrier is nothing to bemoan

Still, Zaara for some reason just could not use her right hand the same way she could use her left. Her parents tried to teach her to use her right hand, and would sometimes supervise her while she was eating and doing homework to make sure she didn’t sneak in that sinister left hand. Her teacher would gaze at her disapprovingly, and her classmates would snicker as she used the wrong hand.

One time, she accidentally jabbed her elbow very hard into Jill, the girl that was sitting next to her and writing with the “right” hand.

“You freak!” Jill had growled, “Get that nasty hand away from me.” Jill then requested another seat, which the teacher promptly granted.

After that incident, Zaara was determined to learn to be right-handed. However, she was so upset and preoccupied with this goal that she was not able to concentrate on the actual tasks that needed to be performed with the hand. She started turning her homework in late because she was concentrating more on improving the manual dexterity of her awkward right hand than learning the material.

The children in her class were also unreceptive to her renewed efforts. “Dude, check out the freak trying to write with her right hand like us,” Jay muttered under his breath to Serena.

“Oh my God, what a dork,” Serena replied disgustedly, “Look, her hand is all fluttering. No matter what, she’ll always be a freak.”

When Zaara’s next report card came out, she had a C average, whereas when she had been using her left hand, she had mostly A’s and B’s. Zaara was very depressed; her parents were angry at her performance and her inability to adjust the use of her right hand, and she felt completely alone.

Then Takeshi moved to the neighborhood and joined her class. Takeshi also seemed to be inflicted with this left-handed disease, and the children had a new target. “Zaara and Takeshi, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” they would sing to their hearts’ delight.

Zaara was becoming very angry with all this chiding and all this pressure in her own mind to become right-handed. What if there wasn’t something wrong with Takeshi and her? After all, she could do the same things with her left hand that everyone else could do with their right, so why did it really make a difference?

One day she asked Takeshi what he thought of this idea that left-handedness might be different, yet equal to right-handedness.

“But Zaara, it doesn’t matter what you can do,” he replied matter-of-factly, “You have to do it the right way. If you’re not doing it the right way, you’re not really doing the right thing.”

Still, Zaara had had quite enough. Her troubles had only been compounded by Takeshi’s presence, and if he wasn’t going to help her, she was determined to establish her own “right” to use her left hand. Normally she sat on the far left side of the bench in the middle row, and would often get jabbed by the elbow of Takeshi, who had taken Jill’s old seat and would persevere in perfecting the use of his right hand while she used her left. Today, she went and sat on the far left side, where Jill was now used to sitting. When Jill came in, she was astonished to find Zaara there.

“Mr. Rose!” Jill shouted, “Zaara is trying to take my seat!”

Mr. Rose strode to the bench dramatically, looked Zaara up and down for several seconds, and finally asked, “What is this all about, Zaara?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rose,” Zaara mumbled, “But I-I was wondering if I could sit here instead of my old seat so that Takeshi’s elbow doesn’t keep jabbing me.”

Mr. Rose stared blankly at Zaara for a minute, and then burst out laughing. “You’re quite a comedienne, Zaara. Takeshi is making a fine attempt to use the proper hand, and you are not only failing enormously in that regard, but wishing for others to accommodate your insufficiencies?”

Zaara could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. What was she thinking? It would be one thing if she gave up on her effort to use her right hand, but she had no right to expect others to cater to her defect. “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered, making her way back to her seat.

“I can’t believe you did that!” Takeshi gasped in wide-eyed wonder.

“Shut up,” Zaara muttered back curtly.

“I’m sorry,” Takeshi responded, keeping his head down, “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I was just surprised.”

Zaara was wondering what to do. She was absolutely unable to write with her right hand, and she really didn’t enjoy the bitter arm collisions with Takeshi or the scorn from her peers. Did she have a right to be angry? What would she have thought of left-handed people if she were normal and right-handed? Would she have been just as mean as her peers? Was Takeshi right, that it wasn’t just the end result, but the use of the right hand that mattered? She asked herself these questions every day, which increased her guilt, sadness, and hatred of herself and her school. Above all, she hated her left hand, one of the most operational and essential parts of her functioning.

One day during recess, Zaara saw her teacher talking with a girl around her age whom she did not recognize.

“Mr. Rose, who was that?” Zaara inquired meekly as they walked back into the classroom.

“Oh, nobody, Zaara,” Mr. Rose replied quickly. “Nobody you need to know about. It’s a shame the kids at the school across the street have such influences.”

Zaara was very curious to know what this girl was about. For some reason, she had a feeling this girl could help her. Right after school was over, she walked across the street and peered through the various corridors until she saw the girl emerging. The girl saw Zaara looking at her curiously and extended her hand.

“Hi there,” she said, “Do you go to East Gate?”

“Yeah, my name is Zaara.”

“Hi Zaara, I’m Carla.”

“Hey, I was wondering, what were you talking with my teacher about?”

“Oh, that,” Carla smiled. “Well, I’m left-handed, and a few other kids at this school are also, so we wanted to see if anyone at your school was.”

“Yeah, actually I am!” Zaara said, excited but keeping her voice down, for she feared that people at this other school would also know she was a freak.

“Oh really?” Carla asked, confused. “That’s weird, your teacher said no one was. Anyway, at our school we’re having an open forum tomorrow morning, and some of us want to request that we can reserve a row near the middle for left-handed people, so we don’t have to deal with bumping elbows together. I went to your school to see if anyone wanted to join and propose a similar thing.”

“What!” Zaara gasped. “You mean, people are OK with you writing with your left hand?”

“Sure,” Carla laughed. “Some people who are right-handed even do it for fun.”

“Why would they do that when they know the right way!” Zaara asked, astonished. “Don’t they get called freaks?”

“Well, a lot of them were right-handed for a long time and can use their right hands, so people know they’re not really freaks,” Carla winked. “Some of them really think left-handedness fits them better now. I’ve always been left-handed and I used to get called a freak, but four other left-handed people joined this school in the past couple of years and eventually people kinda started thinking it was cool.”

“So now things are OK for you? They’ll even give you the special desks?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Carla sighed. “They do think it’s OK, supposedly, but they don’t want to reserve for us the seats that would really allow us to use our left hand. Even a lot of the kids that use their left hand recreationally don’t like the idea.”

“Well… it’s not like right-handed people get special rows. So why should we, right?”

“That’s what they say,” Carla replied, tired. “Hey, why don’t you come to the rally at my school tomorrow, 8am?”

Zaara was very excited to see what would happen at Carla’s school the next day. She came into the classroom at 8, and was very surprised at what she saw. A large banner hung along the left wall of the room with the words, “Right-Handed Coalition.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” declared Geoff, the president of the newly formed coalition, “We, the Right-Handed Coalition, gather here today to express our devotion to justice and equality. This school has been gracious enough to house people of both handednesses, and we fully espouse that tolerance. Our school not only provides lefties and righties access to the same textbooks and educational facilities, but accepts the use of the wrong hand.

“Today, however, the lefties are trying to take advantage of our kindness and generosity, and transgress into a very hazardous arena. The lefties demand that one full row be devoted exclusively to their use. This is a travesty to the fundamental rights of righty as well as lefty individuals to choose their own seats. The righties are strong advocates of individual rights; we all must be able to sit wherever we please, without any special treatment. I now want to call upon a special speaker, Warner, who will tell us about his own experience as a previous lefty who became a righty by choice. Warner?”

Warner solemnly gathered himself and stood in front of his peers, clearing his throat. “Esteemed colleagues, it is my honor to stand here in front of you all today. As many of you know, I was once a lefty. I had an exceedingly difficult time using my right hand properly. I used to bump my left elbow into my esteemed classmates and inconvenience them regularly.

“But I have learned to overcome my abysmal inferiority — not by demanding special seats, but by working hard to perfect the use of my right hand. I am now fully accepted by the right-handed community, and therefore I speak before you today. Of course, there should be no shame in being left-handed; on the contrary, someone who is left-handed and can also adapt to right-handedness is worthy of extraordinary recognition. If you can adapt to right-handedness, you can sit in any seat you would like and not have to worry about bumping arms. Does this strategy not confer upon us the optimal advantage?

“Let us not subscribe to a victim mentality where we demand special accommodations; rather, let us work our way up on our own merit to show that we can succeed under any circumstances. It is my dream that one day our classroom community will not be classified by ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ ‘lefty’ and ‘righty.’ We are just human beings. Thank you.”

The crowd clapped politely as Geoff resumed his post. “Let us not blind ourselves,” Geoff pronounced firmly, “with the political correctness, A.K.A. reverse handedism, of our era. I believe that we should strive for true equality of the handednesses. This equality consists of not looking to the hands, but to the humanity of each individual.

“There is also a very sound economic basis to my idea: righties are more efficient with our right hands, and can thus get more work done with our right hands, and should must have the freedom to choose our seats for the sake of Gross Domestic Product emerging from and for the use of right hands. I thank you very much for your time.”

Cheers emanated from all corners of the room as Right-Handed Coalition flags waved in the air. “Right! Right! Right! Right!” the entire room seemed to shout in unison.

However, the victorious climate soon went awry. A large hullabaloo erupted after several righties stampeded the row of desks that the lefties had wanted to use, resulting in the cataclysmic injury of Geoff’s right hand. Thereafter, the entire class went into chaos and destroyed the whole school.

School in El Derecho was halted for one month following the destruction of Carla’s old school, Old School, while East Gate underwent expansion to accommodate all the students. During this time, the lefties from both schools would gather frequently to discuss what accommodations they might seek at the newly constructed school.

“I don’t know if we can even make any demands, after this,” Carla sighed, “We’re totally outnumbered, and we won’t have enough people to make any solid platform.”

“Well, maybe we can,” Zaara smiled. “‘Cause now it’s the five of you, plus Takeshi and me.”

“I think it’s definitely worth a try,” piped in Jason, another lefty, “And there’s also eight ambidextrous kids and even three righties I know that would want to help. But we should try to reach a middle ground.”

“Yeah,” Carla smiled knowingly, “Something that the righties would find less burdensome than granting us our own row.”

“What if we ask for some seats in the left column?” Zaara suggested.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Carla said wryly, “But what, so we could be relegated to the margins, and easier for the teachers and other students to identify or ignore? Why can’t we have one row where we’re all left-handed?”

“But seeing as we probably can’t get a row, isn’t a column still better than being awkwardly sandwiched between righties, and then bumping into each other?” Jason pointed out, “I think jerks will always find reason to hate, but the important thing is our ability to make use of our hands.”

“Yeah,” Carla agreed, “I really don’t find this solution ideal, but I think we can get more people to buy into it.”

Takeshi, who had been deep in thought, finally chimed in, “You know, I didn’t like the idea of different seats before because I thought we should just write with our right hands. But now I think this might be a good idea. Because lately I’ve been thinking, it’s OK if you do things a different way.”

“Yeah, we can still do the same things,” Zaara agreed.

Takeshi nodded, pondering further, “We can still do the same things, but we might even not want to, ’cause maybe we just are different. Maybe the different stuff you do is still OK though.”

Zaara nodded. “You’re right, Takeshi, I never really thought about it that way. Why should we be second-class citizens in a space that caters to right-handed people? We’ll never know what we’re about until we get enough space to really use our hands, without having to feel like we’re the odd ones out.”

“You mean like having our own lefty school?” Takeshi inquired.

“Maybe, Takeshi,” Carla replied pensively, “Who knows? When we get a little older, and there’s more of us, maybe we can do it.”

A week before school was set to resume, Zaara and her friends decided to call themselves the Lefty Liberation Front and put together a modest proposal, requesting a column, that they intended to present before the class.

Meanwhile, the righties were cooking up a plan of their own. Geoff, furious over the temporary uselessness of his right hand, now desired to be accommodated in using his left hand. Other righties were also sympathetic to their leader’s plight, and did not think he should have to risk encountering the nuisance of colliding elbows. Hence, they thought it would be appropriate to devise a policy that would provide temporary assistance to people like Geoff, who clearly had the ability and the merit to succeed while using their right hands, but had a limited necessity to use their left.

The righties determined that their desire to have people like Geoff accommodated could be best achieved by reserving exactly three seats along the left-hand column, with three layers of preference.

The first category was for those with “irreversible damage” to their right hands. People whose right hands were physically, permanently incapable of use would automatically be designated a reserved seat.

With any spots remaining, the second category of preference went to those with “temporary injury” to their right hands. Geoff fit into this category, as he needed just a brief period free of collision.

If any seats still remained, one seat would be reserved for a third category that went to those who were “right trainees,” viz., those who had no injuries to their right hands, but who were not yet fully proficient in their use. This category required an application where the applicant trainee would have to approximate the time required for training, and explain the reason for needing temporary assistance. As a condition of the training, the trainee would be required to sit next to a right-handed person two days a week to acquire skills in adjusting to the use of the right hand.

Although there was limited preferential seating for the use of the left hand, the use of the left hand was not going to be prohibited anywhere in the classroom; all students were still formally allowed to use whichever hand they preferred, in whichever seat that they preferred.

When the Lefty Liberation Front approached the administration with their proposal, they were surprised to learn that this new policy had been instituted.

“This is so typical,” Carla sighed, “Geoff now has no choice but to use his left hand, and he can’t even conceive for a moment of having to inconvenience himself by bumping elbows. But we deserve that inconvenience because we are permanently left-handed.”

“But there is one seat available,” Jason pointed out, “And you know what? I just want to get through my work. I’m not hung up on doing it with my left hand; I just use that because I’m better at it. But if there is this training program that will help me adjust to using my right hand, I don’t have a problem with it.”

“But Jason,” Takeshi said, “This makes it seem like there’s something wrong with being left-handed. Why do we even need training? I never really knew that many left-handed people before I met Zaara, and now I know all of you, and you are all really smart, and some of you are really good artists too. Why should our left-handedness be considered such a bad thing that we need a correctional program for it?”

Jason sighed. “I know, Takeshi, the lefties are all great people. But you have to pick your battles. If we are this talented, let’s show that we can succeed with our right hands too. Heck, I’m going to apply for that program.”

“I’m not,” Zaara frowned, “I’m just going to go to class early and sit along the left column. There is nothing wrong with using my left hand, and I want space to use it. Plus, once you go through that program, do you think the righties will really think of you as one of them, as someone who has succeeded on his own? They’ll see you as someone that relied on their stupid program to get anywhere.”

“Probably true, Zaara,” Jason said, tired, “I just don’t want to put in the effort for this right now. I’m sorry.”

Zaara and her lefty friends wondered what type of negotiations, if any, they could request from the administration. They did not appreciate the stigma that accompanied the “training,” but they also felt that if there were more people like Jason who were interested in taking advantage of it, they should be able to without a one-person limit in that category. They thought they could either request that the administration reserve a greater number of seats for that category, or at least that, in the absence of any person with a first or second preference need, third preference students could occupy a larger number of seats.

The administration refused to reconsider its policy, emphasizing the very limited nature of reserved seating available, and the school’s underlying goals to foster both personal responsibility and optimum success. They clarified that students were entirely free to use their left hands part-time and train part-time if they chose to from any seats they were able to get; the fact that only one seat was available for a right trainee, they argued, would add further prestige to the selected applicant, and would motivate students to aspire to that position.

Epilogue

Jason applied for and successfully completed the right trainee position, becoming adept at the use of both his left and right hands. He remained sympathetic to the lefties, perceiving their handedness as a legitimate choice, and grew up to become a teacher at East Gate who, in his classroom, accommodated any requests to use the left-hand column. He emphasized, however, that he was doing this merely to allow the exercise of personal freedom.

Zaara and Carla both arrived at school very early every day in order to get a seat in the left-hand column. They continued holding meetings for the Lefty Liberation Front, and compiled an anthology of first-hand experiences from lefties and ambidextrous people on their classroom struggles. The group expanded as more people of all handednesses gained greater exposure to lefties’ stories, which were sometimes saddening, sometimes infuriating, sometimes even humorous, but always heartfelt. Many people began to respect why the lefties had wanted a column, and deferred to that designation. Zaara remained active in the East Gate community even after graduating and joined the administration, planning to institute fairer policies, such as designating a row for the lefties so they could have full accommodations while still being integrated into the classroom.

Carla started a separate school for lefties, but could not obtain adequate funds or recruit enough students to keep it running. However, she then created an after-school program where the lefties could share stories and feel fully free of stigma in their environment.

Geoff recovered from his injury within a month after school began, but during that period, his performance in school declined precipitously despite all the extra aid and accommodations teachers gave him, as he had to learn how to use his left hand. He would repeatedly highlight that once he recovered from his exasperating condition and was able to return to the natural way, his performance would be stellar. Although this was not the case and his understanding of the material remained as mediocre as ever, he now had an impressive story about this obstacle that he had overcome, which spurred the University of El Derecho to grant him a full scholarship. He went on to law school and became El Derecho’s District Attorney.

Takeshi was very upset with the circumstances after the new policy was implemented, and his attendance dropped. He got very poor grades, and was seen as a disgrace by righties, as well as by a few of the lefties, who thought he was contributing to their stigma. A few years after graduating from East Gate, he settled down and had a child, who also turned out to be left-handed. But instead of trying to convert the child, he sent her to East Gate and Carla’s daycare program, where he could feel comfortable that she would be treated much better than he had been.

My friend and I aren’t particularly cultured in the way of enjoying museums, but we do enjoy film and theater. We spent our late nights catching up on such timeless classics as “The Craft,” and we decided it would be a good idea to see “shows” on at least two days. We saw STOMP together one day, and my friend was interested in seeing Wicked. Considering that I had seen Wicked a few months prior in Los Angeles, and I only had a handful of dollars left to my name, I opted out, and thought I would look for a more affordable form of entertainment on Times Square that afternoon.

I had heard that sometimes you can acquire last-minute tickets to crash a Broadway show at a decent rate, so I inquired about prices at the bustling box office for Mary Poppins. I was crushed to learn that tickets were sold out, and in the event of cancellations, they would be made available for $121.50. I inquired in the box offices for other musicals as well, with similar results.

Assed out by my poverty, I ordered a slice of pizza at Famiglia and read the newspaper. I then went to a neighboring coffee shop and ordered some green tea. I sat with it for a while, but then ventured outside, freezing and restless. I had so wanted to watch something.

After a couple of minutes of strolling, cup in hand, my gaze fell upon a sign for Flash Dancers, a Gentleman’s Club. “Free Admission 12pm-5pm,” it read. I rotated my wrist, and then, remembering that I never wear a watch, reached into my purse for my phone to check the time. It was a few minutes past 3, and my friend wouldn’t be done with Wicked until at least 4:30. The sky was looking ominous with the promise of imminent precipitation, and this establishment was just beckoning me inside. I had been looking for a show, after all, and the price of a drink would sure beat whatever they were charging for Mary Poppins.

I so wanted to finish the green tea though.

“Can I bring this in?” I inquired of the doorman. Looking flummoxed, he said, “Uh, yeah, sure,” opening the door for me.

I merrily trudged down the stairs until I encountered the bouncer. Not much a fan of human interaction, I attempted to just squeeze past him, but he intercepted the effort with the query, “Can I help you?”

“Oh, just getting a drink.”

Eyeing me with a sideways smirk, he asked, “Do you know what sort of place this is?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You can’t bring that in here,” he said, pointing to me green tea as if it were a gun.

“Oh, should I –”

“I’ll take it. Are you sure you want to be here?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Hmm, OK. Corey, could you show her to a table?” he requested of a blonde dancer.

“No, it’s fine,” I insisted, “I’ll just sit at the bar.”

I took a seat at the bar, ordered myself a $14 Malibu Diet Coke, and started unraveling my topmost layers: black gloves, orange woolen cap, black coat, and scarf. I was left with a brown vest over a yellow short-sleeve shirt over a black turtleneck. It felt rather iconoclastic: a young, all-natural, fully-dressed woman staking her claim to this seat at the Gentleman’s Club with a pretty decent view of various silicone goodies.

While seated at the bar, I took it upon myself to gather the life history of the bartender. Originally from Russia, she had once been a dancer at this same bar seven years ago, before moving to Miami, getting married, and becoming a yoga instructor. Seven years later, she found herself divorced and working the bar, and she hoped to get back into yoga. A long-haired male patron then took a seat next to me with a dancer at his side, and jumped into the conversation, saying he hoped to get married some day so that he could later have an ex-wife. I agreed that sometimes it sucked to be left out when people discussed their ex-spouses. The male patron then started massaging his accompanying dancer and seemed to be genuinely sprung.

I am not one to knock escapism; after all, I spend virtually all of my waking hours watching the extravagant sights and airbrushed faces of Bollywood, and relishing in various delusions inspired by the soundtracks. Nonetheless, there was something viscerally saddening about the sight of these grown-ass men and their wistful interactions with the dancers, which held significance broader than the scope of lust — for this place was a bit more higher-end and involved mingling, not so much a place where college boys convene for homosocial masculine bonding. I’m sure many of these men had wives, girlfriends, or would-be’s, and some probably felt a genuine, three-dimensional connection with those women in their lives as well. Yet they derived some sort of validation from the illusion of young women with falsified dimensions truly desiring their company for something other than their wallets; where they did not so much as know the real names of the dancers and could idealize them to be anything they wanted.

Despite my frequent immersions in Bollywood, this quest to be surrounded by untarnished, idealized perfection in real life is not so palatable. Devocalized bodies without a backstory do nothing for me; I find myself constantly drawn to the subtle uncertainties, fears, awkwardness, and blemishes that make people human. I won’t appreciate something only so long as it is young, robust, and plastered with a smile; I’m a ride or die bitch that will see it through all the highs and lows. I chase dreams for fun, but I embrace reality for meaning. I don’t long for things that seem out of my reach; I cherish and explore those within it.

Once I got home, I slid out of my clothes and in front of the mirror, which reflected back a genuine, reliable, three-dimensional spectacle I can call upon at any time, absolutely free of charge.

endowed like a sage

growth casts its spell

stirring timeless regression

wrinkles vanish

youth imbibed

childlike lapses

to the prolonged fate

of a sudden infant death

“The cook” is also a volunteer — an extremely kind, if somewhat frazzled woman in her 50′s with a New York accent and a rather pronounced propensity for clumsiness. For the past several days, when not cooking, she had been running around the set looking quite jittery and muttering to herself about how unhappy she was about the budget constraints for the food, and the wastefulness and ingratitude of crew members. Yesterday, I was asked to help her prepare some pasta for our group of about 20.

She asked me to throw the pasta in the pot while she scurried around serving tea and making preparations for the pasta sauce. I threw the four large bags of pasta into the pot, and it came to a decent boil about 10-12 minutes later. Meanwhile, we chatted about what had brought us to that set. She mentioned that she had experimented with different careers, traveled, met lots of people, but was essentially still broke, unsettled, and searching for the right path, and I welcomed her to the club. But, I pointed out, we were both still approaching life with openness and willing to dabble in new things and encounter new people, and that had to count for something.

For whatever reason, the family in whose home we were shooting didn’t seem to have any appropriately sized strainer, so the cook pondered an alternative method to drain the pasta: she would lift up the pot, and I would slide a plate over it to filter out the water into the sink. That seemed straightforward enough, so I lifted up the plate in preparation for the filtration.

The next thing I knew, the boiling water had scalded my thighs, and the pasta was all over the crusty kitchen floor, and the cook was alternating gaping at both, with her arms still outstretched in flummoxed petrification.

My first instinct is always to laugh, even if my thighs are burning. However, the genuine anguish on the face of this poor woman kept my instinct in check, and I focused my effort on calming her down. “It’s OK,” I reassured her, “Let’s just pick all of this up, and then we can talk to the director about what to do. Maybe we can just order some pizza.” “Do you think we can just reboil it?” she asked anxiously. “No,” I replied, horrified, observing all the dirt, grime, hair, and bugs on the carpeted kitchen floor, “Let’s just talk to the director.”

We picked up some pasta together and began flinging it back into the pot, and then the cook went to grab the director. The director, a flamboyant, gay Pakistani man in his late 30s, took a look at the scene, waved his arms, and said, “Just triple-wash it.”

I stared at him for a moment. Then I offered, “You don’t think we should just order pizza?” “Pizza for so many people will be at least $100.” “Well… I wouldn’t eat this.” “We’ll make something else for you. You can have a turkey sandwich. I’ll eat this. Fruits and vegetables anyway come from all the mud stuff, and they just triple-wash it, and we eat that all the time. It’s fine.” He then turned around and flapped his way back up the stairs.

The cook and I look at each other aghast and continued scraping the pasta off the floor, then proceeded to wash the pasta, practically piece-by-piece in order to excise all the filth associated with it. The poor cook again started in on how she had no idea what she was doing with her life or why she was in this position.

“Well,” I stated seriously, “Maybe we’ve found our niche in scraping shit off the floor and taking hair out of pasta.”

The next thing I knew, the cook was on the floor, wheezing. “Shit,” I thought, “Is she having a breakdown?” But it was in fact a happy laugh attack. My statement apparently injected just the levity she needed to turn her perspective on the situation. She was in a great mood for the rest of the day, wheezing every few minutes about something or other, and making observations about various anecdotes from over the past several days. As I was leaving, the cook could not stop thanking me for being there with her and remaining calm and light-hearted in the face of crisis. She got my phone number, saying she wanted to take me out for dinner, and referred to me as her angel and Godsend, assuring me she would keep me in her prayers.

Sometimes as a social observer and a wry commentator who is quite giving and accommodating by nature, yet thoroughly amused by new-age fluffiness, I forget what a warm feeling it is to be appreciated so genuinely and expressively.  The knowledge of touching the heart of another human being by far trumps any conventional wisdom of “success.” I am grateful that my stint as a Production Assistant has not only allowed me to add pasta-cleaning as an item on my resume, but has reminded me that in addition to being completely bad-ass, I am also completely human, with all the concomitant needs for connection and validation.