There is a Nissan pick-up truck
in front of Noah doing forty in the fast lane. He drives at a safe distance,
staring out the window. I shouldn't be looking out the window and driving at
the same time, I am completely out of control, he thinks. He repeats his
grocery list in his head. It sounds like a song. Watermelon, shitty wine;
watermelon, shitty wine. Once or twice, he drifts into another lane. But the
highway is mostly empty. Orange lights like pumpkins are perched on top of
street lamps in the distance and they make him feel far away and panicked.
Outside he can see Pasadena. He feels confused and has an expression of deep
concern on his face. He makes an out-of-control hand gesture at the city and
then exits the freeway. He thinks about Matthew. Matthew and him, playing video
games. Matthew. Matthew is dead.
The video camera makes a sound
when he turns it on. He fast forwards past the day's filming. His cellphone
buzzes; a text message from Lucy. Noah looks at it for a prolonged amount of
time and in the screen he can kind of see his face and it looks tired. He
responds, "i can't process what you just texted me." He closes the
phone and looks back at his camera.
Lucy sleeps under his covers in fast
forward.
Noah eats cereal in fast forward.
My girlfriend is a bitch, he thinks.
The screen is blue when it finally
reaches the end of the tape and Noah presses 'record.'
Outside, the night is empty and
somehow it is comfortable and warm. It feels perfect, he thinks, to have this
in my movie.
He films people in the store but
there are very few of them. On the tiny screen, they somehow look more real. He
zooms in on faces that hide behind assorted snacks and refrigerator doors. He
smiles at them and, in the awkward moments when their eyes meet the camera, he
feels sad for them--a sadness that, to him, is far more intimate than any kind
of human interaction. The faces he films are constantly moving. Some faces are
sad. Some are serious. The faces become his faces. Sometimes, he tries to
contort his own features into the ones that he sees--at first on purpose, then,
slowly, by some kind of animal instinct.
He turns the camera to the
refrigerator and moves it slowly across the pizza.
Frozen, the things we love, he
thinks.
I am profound, he thinks.
In between pizza box titles, he
feels guilty and turns off the camera. You should be sad, he tells himself,
holding the camera down by his knee. With his back against the refrigerator
door, he slides down. Seated, he closes his eyes and shoves his hands into his
pockets. This is my attempt at feeling sadder, he thinks. It does not work; he
feels okay. I am sad I am sad I am sad I am sad, he tells himself. He closes
his eyes tighter and tighter and clenches his fists. Nothing happens. He opens
his eyes and sees somebody at the other end of the aisle and feels
uncomfortable. "Life," he says out loud, to the person maybe, but in
reality to nobody in particular, "is too well thought out." He feels
slightly ironic. The camera makes a tiny noise as he turns it on again. He
scans the pizza boxes. He runs out of pizza boxes, so he puts his face against
the glass.
He points the camera at his face.
He says, "I am in
Antarctica."
He buys a watermelon and some cheap
wine.
Lucy is a bitch.
It is 11:30.
He falls in love with approximately
three women throughout the whole grocery store experience.
My girlfriend is a bitch.
He forgets about them by the time he
pays for his watermelon and his cheap wine.
Outside in the parking lot there
are very few cars and he feels alone but okay. A vibration almost startles him.
It is his cellphone in his pocket and Lucy is upset with him but he closes it
without responding. This time, he can process the message. But, he says to
himself, I am driving and will die if I text message.
Someone asks, "What were you
doing in there with that camera?"
Her face is small and she looks
at Noah with slight brown eyes. He recognizes her from the tiny screen and
feels incredibly uncomfortable. An image of her reading the back of a bottle of
pear juice with a strand of hair falling onto the tip of her nose comes to
mind.
"I was... buying some
groceries," he says, walking towards his car with his head down, holding
up his bag for emphasis.
She follows him.
He walks a little faster.
Even though Noah is not looking at
her face, he can see it, can recall the wonderfully awkward moment in which her
eyes accidentally met his through the screen.
"No. You had a camera. I think
you filmed me with it--I mean, I know you filmed me with it. I saw you, I
looked at your camera." Her voice is not high, not very feminine, slightly
raspy. She talks very fast.
"Oh. I'm sorry. I'll... delete
you. From my movie."
"Wait," she says. She jogs
up in front of him and stops him. "Movie?"
"Yes." He looks up at her
and she is smiling. "I am an aspiring... filmmaker. I like movies that
make sense, I guess. Movies about things. You're in this one. A lot of people
are in my movies."
"Like The Hills? Because that
is a really bad show. I mean, I'm not saying I don't watch it. But it's a
really bad show. It makes me feel like shit."
"No. You talk very fast,"
he says. Noah hates The Hills, too. He considers telling her, but doesn't. My
girlfriend, he thinks, is a bitch.
"Oh."
The night sits on them. Noah rubs
the white plastic bag with his finger.
"I have to go home," he
says. He puts the bag in his car.
"Yeah," she says, then, as
he climbs into his car, "Wait. Um. You can... keep me in your movie."
She says this and then walks away
and Noah thinks, thank you what's your name and drives home.
On the internet at 3:36 in the
morning, Noah is feeling depressed. He is on Facebook and feeling extremely
depressed. He edits the movie that he has made today. Over and over again he
watches her, pauses when her face appears. He misses her. Greg sends him a
message on Facebook chat. Noah likes Greg--likes his voice and his eyes because
they are both soft. They go to school together. Noah and Greg sometimes go to
movies where they sit and look at the screen sarcastically.
"if it turns into four am i'm
going to commit suicide," he says.
Noah thinks Greg is funny.
"four am is the saddest thing
ever i think," says Noah.
"today i rode the bus for about
four hours because i didn't know what else to do. i was high. thats the saddest
thing ever."
"i'm not sure if four am is
sadder than my brother dying. i don't know."
"your brother died?"
"actually i think i fell in
love 'for real' today at the grocery store and i think that is the saddest
thing."
"i am self conscious. i need to
work out or something. i hate working out."
"yes, he died."
"i'm sorry. i'm not being a
depressed person right now i'm being your friend and telling you that i'm
sorry."
"okay. thanks."
"do you have any pear juice? i
want to come to your apartment and drink pear juice."
"i think i'm going to go to the
grocery store every day this week until i see her."
Greg doesn't reply.
"and then i'm going to watch
her on my movie every night. and then i'm going to go to my dead brother's
funeral. i am going to fill myself completely with sadness. i will kill my tiny
heart. i will do this, do every sad thing in the world and then wait and do
them until i see her again."
"good idea."
"my girlfriend is a bitch. i am
a plant deprived of water. i am desperately clinging to something. to life. i
dont know."
"good night."
"good night," Noah
says.
In bed, Noah does not fall
asleep. He feels like he is on The Hills. He does not like The Hills but he
feels like there is a camera recording every awkward moment of his existence.
Dramatic close-ups. Silences filled with sentimental music. There is a sugary,
caramel-like quality to sleeping that Noah likes. He closes his eyes, looking
forward to the moment when he wakes up--that moment in which dreams and reality
will collide to create a sweet, childish confusion. Tonight, he does not look
forward to this, he does not sleep. Tonight he lies down feeling fucked and
looking up at the ceiling and tonight he sometimes watches her tiny face on his
camera's tiny screen. He thinks about nothing or as much nothing as he can
possibly think about.