It's the Real Thing
So, I’m writing this late Sunday night, and the LA Rams just won the Super Bowl. In LA. And (not coincidentally), I just watched (1) the first Super Bowl I’ve sat through in several years, (2) the first entire NFL game I’ve watched all season, and (3) the first sporting event of any kind I’ve watched with my two roommates. They are both Southern California natives, and I’ve been here now for nearly a decade. It was good night for LA.
Earlier this week, I had a different kind of “very LA” night. In an instance of pure dumb luck — I misread a press release and RSVP’d for something I wasn’t invited to, thereby getting myself on the waitlist and, lo and behold, the guest list — I got to go to the “drive-in premiere” of a new romantic comedy from Amazon Studios, I WANT YOU BACK. The drive-in part was a concession to the ongoing pandemic and the uncertain safety of movie theaters, but still, the premiere had a red carpet with bright lights and a lengthy step-and-repeat1 . Anyone who saw those photos would never know that, instead of glamorously dressed glitterati in velvet-lined stadium seats, this premiere was viewed from the front seats of several hundred sedans, filled with pairs of people dressed in athleisurewear.
I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but during it, my mind kept drifting to the strangest place: what would I do for my upcoming birthday? Did I need to plan a party or something? What would that even look like? I found myself thinking that many of the friends I invited to my last birthday now lived in different time zones, or even different countries. And do I have a few people over? Wouldn’t I rather leave the house? But we probably need to be outside. So what does that leave me with? What do I even like to do? Should I just wait until next year, when maybe I can really celebrate the way I’d like?
After the movie ended, attendees were invited to an outdoor party — outdoors felt okay for the same reason doing a birthday gathering outside seemed okay. We all left our cars where they were parked and walked over to find a hip corridor between buildings flanked with food trucks and minibars and even a cotton candy sculptor (whatever you’re imagining, you can’t be far off). Everything was free. My guest (one of the aforementioned roommates) and I couldn’t believe our good fortune. And then we started noticing the stars of the film, hanging out, enjoying the same party that we were enjoying. Except they were dressed up.
It shouldn’t have surprised me that the stars of the film were there: Charlie Day, Jenny Slate, Manny Jacinto, Scott Eastwood, Gina Rodriguez. Of course they were there. This was their movie premiere. It was their party. That said, it wasn’t until we saw them that I even realized the trick my brain had been playing on me: I had not been thinking of this as “the real thing.” This was the “drive-in” premiere. Somewhere in my subconscious, I had created a non-drive-in premiere. Whatever, wherever, and whenever that was, surely it must be the real thing.
It’s been such a long, strange pandemic. How many things have we done to tide ourselves over, until the opportunity for the “real thing” came along? As we’ve emerged from our respective lockdowns in fits and starts, it’s no use pretending that there’s some kind of lifestyle binary. It’s not “pandemic” or “no pandemic.” It’s not “lockdown” vs. “free for all.” And (here’s the good news) it’s not “all” or “nothing.” Good news or no, I for one have been struggling to embrace the truth I’m finding around every corner: all of these last couple years? They’ve all been the “real thing.”
I have friends that I didn’t know last time I was able to have a birthday party2. Those people aren’t “from the before times,” but they’re still the real thing.
I ran into a new coworker on the street the other day; we’ve been working together for hours each week, but we’d never met in person. That work is done in a new, remote way, but it is definitely the real thing.
After a month long break during the Omicron spike, my choir had rehearsal this past Thursday; I was trying to figure out why a certain brand-new piece felt so familiar. Turns out, we’d gone over it on Zoom during the long months when even the church wasn’t gathering in person. Those rehearsals (in which we could not hear each other, but rather sang along with a recording, a limitation of Zoom that has yet to be addressed) had often felt as though they were for morale alone. Turns out, they had been the real thing, too.
When the game was over tonight, my roommates and I huddled onto our back porch, which overlooks our valley of a street. We looked and listened for shouts and music and fireworks; we half expected a repeat of the night of the Dodgers’ World Series win, when a neighbor walked down the middle of the road and beckoned anyone who could hear the sound of his voice to come out and celebrate. That night was one of many experiences I’ve had in the past two years of porchside unity with my block — banging pots and pans for doctors and nurses for months in 2020; election news elation one sunny Saturday in November; the night of the Lakers championship win. (Gee, it’s been a good stretch of sports years for LA.) But the point is: all of those experiences were a strange side effect of everybody being stuck at home, and they were also indelibly real.
As I write, though the game ended hours ago, random fireworks are still booming nearby; strains of drunken singing occasionally slip past the barrier of my closed bedroom window (our A/C is on; it was in the 80s here today). Overall though, it was a more subdued night on our street than I expected. And maybe that means that not as many people are at home tonight as they’ve been of late. Wherever they are, I hope they’re safe. But the three of us were home — me and my two roommates (and the cats of one of the roommates). In those fabled “before times,” the three of us3 had never even met.
In order for tonight to count, it all has to count — all the tide-overs and morale boosters and concessions and make-dos that have colored these past two years. There is no waiting room for real life. It’s all the real thing. Does that make sense? I’m trying to make sense of it myself.
this is a term of art for the backdrop that red carpet photos are taken in front of, usually printed with the name of the event and/or its sponsor
no knock on my old friends and faraway friends: I love you, you just don’t help me make my point right now!
five, if you count the cats
It totally makes sense! :)