That was before solitary confinement became my enforced reality.
As it turns out, all that alone time that’s so nice when it’s a break from social engagements and meetings becomes something like torture without those things to break it up. My house, formerly my sanctuary, has begun to feel like a prison.
The novelty of catching up with friends online has faded. No, I don’t want to play virtual poker with six people from college. No, I do not want to join another online movie club. No, I don’t want to go on a blind date via Zoom.
I want to take meetings, where I can do a stressful song and dance to sell my writerly prowess to producers who don’t care about my craft or singular voice. I want to go on a date, where I can make out with a stranger over craft cocktails. I want to go to a restaurant, where I can eat food served to me by an overly friendly human who keeps interrupting my conversation to ask how everything is tasting. I want to go to a spa with my friends, where we can be naked and oblivious to germs and gossip about mutual acquaintances.
I want to see my mom. I want to stop watching cable news in a fuguestate of anxiety and despair. I want to know less about virology and case positivity rates. I want to stop worrying about the people I love dying.
I want another human being to touch me.
My psychiatrist upped my meds, but there is only so much Lexapro can do for chronic isolation and mass trauma.
It doesn’t help that the film industry has slowed to a standstill. Offers for new projects have dried up. No one’s buying anything.
Which does not stop me from staring at my email all day, hoping for something more promising than recipe chains from my mom, alerts from Facebook, and junk mail from dying clothing retailers. Or bills. Please, God, no more bills.
It’s not that I’m broke. I have savings and I still get residuals, however dwindling, from the movies I wrote. But I’m also not optimistic about my future earning power. I’m truly beginning to circle the drain in my career.
When I “made it” as a screenwriter in my twenties, I thought my success was only the beginning. That my gift very obviously spoke for itself, and that I would become a brand, able to command better and better jobs and make ever more money.
But I’ve never been able to repeat the success of those first movies. My name is not a hot commodity. And with Hollywood at a complete standstill, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to redeem myself coming up anytime soon.
It keeps me up at night.
Today is no different. I wake up and force myself to pour an iced coffee and take a quick walk around the block before opening my laptop and silently repeating my daily mantra:Please let there be an offer. A nibble. Anything other than more silence and rejection.
No dice.
Which means another shift at my new day job of sitting on my couch and watching reruns of Bravo shows while eating cereal directly out of the box.
My phone rings ninety minutes into my busy day of reality television, and I drag my attention away from women pouring wine on each other, wipe crumbs off my hands, and pick it up.
It’s my dad.
Returning my check-in call from three days ago. A quarterly rite in which he discusses his latest placements on the bestseller lists, recaps his most recent vacations, inquires after my career, tacitly deems it pathetic, and offers me money.
It’s a great bonding ritual.
“Hi, Dad,” I say, settling back into the cushions.
“Hey, toots,” he says.
There is a loud screech from somewhere on his end of the call.
“Hear that?” he asks. “Macaw.”
“A macaw? Where are you?”
“The Keys. My pal Kimbo has a private island with a bird sanctuary. Celeste and I are here for a month.”
“Jesus, did you fly? Is that even allowed? Aren’t you worried about Covid?”
“Sailed.”
I shouldn’t have asked.
“Anyway,” he says, “what’s shakin’?”
