We are taking part in a reality show of sorts, holed up in the wrong side of town where each person has a tiny room with no windows. My teammates consist of 2 girls who are working on our project all hours of the night and will not let me have any part of it. they are secretive and cruel and when I ask the head of this competition how much of this work is allowed to be done on our own time, they shoot daggers from their eyes at me. We hold a meeting on something resembling a porch, elevated, one room over from the living space. It overlooks the parking lot and when we see the owners cherry red sports car pull in we all scatter like pillbugs when the rock’s been pulled away.
I head for my car, this car that is my own contraption, made of cardboard and wire but still functioning somehow, for as long as I don’t give it too much thought. It takes the turns hard.
And the boss spots me, asks me to move his car to the next lot over, which I do and my father sees me parking it there. He is not my real father, but rather the screw up type of man who squanders his children’s hard work with his own repeated mistakes. He wants to borrow the car, he needs to. We are two miles from the center of town and it is a straight shot. I don’t plan on returning so I say alright. Be careful, I warn, and though I do not accompany him, I know that the windshield will end up spiderwebbed. There will be bullet holes from people mistaking the driver and this is the sort of thing that is not necessarily his fault, but will be.
This place is an island and though it is Astoria it looks and feels like northern Long Island, around Huntington, where I have gotten lost so many times. I am meeting with someone on his deck and I am telling him about a story I was writing – something about local Spanish or Italian gangs, people who wear zoot suits.
And a scene in a school gym where I am 10 years old and everyone is pairing up for a dance class I have organized in part because I am in love with my best friend, who is in love with someone else, a wretched girl who preens and pouts all day. I pair them up together anyway, because it is the right thing to do.
And later, I am on the subway, with a camera, fully grown, my shoulders sunburnt doing pull ups on the bars while I talk to my crew about the idea of passing for someone or something other than what you are.
This is what I am talking about in my deck interview. The man I’m speaking to has charcoal skin with gray undertones and a young boy sitting with him. The air is swampy and when I take off my blazer it barely helps things. Don’t dress like that around here, he says, they will confuse you for the cast. In the distance I see the zoot-suit-ed stars. What do you write he wants to know and I tell him everything and he raises an eyebrow, interested not suspicious. And I begin to tell him that there are very few things in this world I care enough about to explore and I am about to start listing them off when a group comes over and starts setting the table.
My father, the real one this time, is at the table. They are serving beignets and I lean next to him and wonder if this is where his friends had come not too long ago. It is the only place I’ve heard of in Astoria that serves these things. But they are blonde and Nordic and would not last long here, as the conversation reveals. I am allowed to stay because I am dark eyed and tanned dark enough to facilitate the illusion that I belong, even if they know better. They ask the countries that compose my heritage and laugh when I tell the truth, announcing their superiority.
It is a strange place.
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