Watching and Reading Women Wanting

Miranda July's All Fours and Cole Escola's Oh Mary! do more than give me life. They give me hope.

So, I have a new favorite book of all time.

All Fours by Miranda July is one of the most unpredictable, original books I’ve ever read. Every time I thought the story would zig, it zagged, and at no point was I sure how it all would end. July connects threads that seemed trivial so perfectly by the end of the novel that I felt the prickle of envy that springs up whenever I read something utterly genius. I finished the book and felt like I’d witnessed an elaborate magic trick.

The initial plot involves an unnamed artist leaving her child and husband behind to embark on a two-week cross-country road trip from California to New York. Her decision to drive instead of fly is spurred by an off-hand remark a friend makes about people being “parkers” or “drivers,” and her desire to transform from the former to the latter. The trajectory of the story changed so quickly that I initially felt anxious—I essentially sat alone in my room shouting “no, you’re supposed to be doing X, there’s no time to do Y!!!!!” but the payoff was so completely worth it, and daring to cover any part of the plot past part 1 would feel like spoiling.

Early in the book, July offers a realistic but daunting depiction of aging. The narrator is more than a decade my senior, but the same concerns she expresses have plagued me since I became too old to date a certain star of Titanic. I’ll give into cliché and say that women are force fed fear of aging to keep us buying shit we don’t need because nothing aids capitalism quite like cultivating lifelong insecurity. I know this, but I still google before and after photos of deep plane facelifts once or twice a month while wondering if I’ll be able to comfortably afford a good one by the time I actually “need it.” A diagnosis—unfortunately—is not a cure.

Who knows how long the feeling will last, but in this moment after finishing the novel, I’m zero percent terrified of aging, and I haven’t felt that since I was an actual fetus. My other big takeaway is sometimes, you get what you want, and even if it doesn’t work out exactly how you imagine, it ends up being, at the very least, fine, and knowing that you had the courage to go for it is a reward in itself. Allowing your life to evolve leaves room for beautiful things to happen; stagnation is a thief of joy. Just because a path is daunting doesn’t mean it isn’t meant to be explored.

The novel also made me consider how society teaches us to settle on the binary of what’s “good” and “bad,” especially as the terms relate to selfishness. I think being selfish can take many forms. There’s an active way where someone takes action that causes distress or discomfort for someone else, but there’s also a passive way where someone’s allegiance to their own comfort can contribute to another’s suffering.

When I take away all the well-deployed misogyny I’ve absorbed though my ears and eyeballs over three decades, I realize a lot of my fear of aging has more to do with a fear of losing new experiences. It’s a fear of being bored, a fear of settling into complacency. I want life to always feel like life. I love peace and solitude, but I also need wonder and novelty, and July paints a world where all of those gifts roll in as long as you seek them out—as long as you find the courage to name your desire.

Which brings me to Oh, Mary! The entire cast was astonishing, and the show was even more magically ridiculous than I had imagined, but there was so much heart in the play. I saw it back in April, and while I fully spent the eighty minutes squawk-laughing with the rest of the packed house, I also felt incredibly moved by the premise.

Watching Mary shout about her dreams of returning to the cabaret moved me so deeply that I felt like she was directly speaking to me, which is a testament to Cole Escola’s writing as well as their performance. Mary trades a life of peaks and valleys for the calm of doldrums, and in the steady aftermath there’s just paint thinner and pining. We laugh as she throws tantrum after tantrum in her husband’s office, but the brilliant choice to have most of her scenes play out in that room conveys her sense of claustrophobia; even if she lives in a mansion, none of the rooms are really hers. As I watched, I wanted to see her dream realized more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I was completely captivated watching a woman freely state her dreams and stop at absolutely nothing (truly nothing!) to pursue them.

Though very different in scope and medium, both works reckon with chances, choices, and freedom. Women not only admitting what they want, but going after it and getting it, is the only art I’m interested in experiencing at the moment.

…Speaking of women getting what they want, I got what I wanted and had a piece published in Majuscule, a journal that I’ve admired for a very long time. My essay on remix and revision is one of my favorite things I’ve written, and the entire issue is filled with incredible work by super talented writers. Check it out!