Back in 2019, when I was still in the planning stages for Alice Luck, I rationalized a lot of “research.” The great thing about being a writer is that when something seems really fun and interesting, you can dive deep into it, buying books, paying for classes, watching movies about it, and it’s all tax deductible, so long as you write about it later.
I needed ideas for jokes, so I bought a stack of books by Brian Greene, Sean Carroll, Stephen Hawking, and Michael Talbot (and yes, I read them all), and grabbed a couple tickets to see Neil DeGrasse Tyson speak.
When John and I showed up to the Bass Concert Hall and found our seats in the balcony (I’m not made of money, y’all), I tried to settle in with my drink, but something was nagging at me.
We were right in the center of the balcony. As Americans will know instinctively, this is the farthest point from any emergency exit.
It’s a mental process that has become all too familiar: Is this show or gathering inflammatory to any groups? Would this be a good place for an extremist to send a message? What’s the fastest route to the exit? Would I make a break for it or try to hide?
I ran this by John, who has training in handling active shooter situations. He said he wouldn’t be running, which was silly, because he’d had to leave his gun behind when entering the theater. He would stick around and help make sure everyone else got out.
“No, you would not,” I told him, “because I would be dragging your ass out of here.”
In my defense, a person gets a little tired of everyone labeling their husband a hero. Not only because it’s a weird thing to hear from your dermatologist as they’re treating a poison ivy rash on your inner thigh, but because it’s so frequently code for “we’re cool with him dying.” I’m not cool with that. If I were, I’d have front-row seat kinda money, because he’s got a great life insurance policy!
(This is also why it’s crucial that he never die under mysterious circumstances, but I digress.)
But then the pandemic swooped in, and we all got a long break from hearing about mass shootings in public places, and wasn’t that splendid??? I loved it. I thought that, once our brains recalibrated to the healthier normal of no mass shootings, we would have much less of a tolerance for doing nothing once they picked back up again.
Obviously, I was wrong about that, but I think it’s cute that I dared hope for it.
It wasn’t like nobody died during the pandemic. I mean, that was kinda the problem. People were just dying en masse, but in a novel way. Over a million Americans have died from Covid-19, named after the year when I went to see Neil DeGrasse Tyson live and thought my biggest threat was gun violence.
I should’ve known better. Pandemics were not something we were numb to as a population, but boy did we get there fast! And then the death rate slowed, everyone lost their tolerance for solitude (those who even gave a shit enough to try it, that is), and everything went back to the way it was. The water around Venice got murky again. Traffic fatalities rose. The flu came back, and men showed up to public places with guns and a corrosive sense of entitlement.
I’m a recovering perfectionist, so I have a tendency to assume that just because something seems obviously “bad” to me that it “shouldn’t” be that way.
But the unfortunate thing is that everything is exactly the way it “should” be, otherwise it would be another way. I’m not talking spiritually here, but you can take it like that if you want and promise not to use it as an invite to send me a weird email explaining your niche religious perspectives in detail. I’m talking logically. Cause and effect. Every moment in history has led up to the present. Therefore, the present is exactly as it should be.
And maybe that’s perfection. I’d like to think so. Maybe something can be horrifying but still perfect. That doesn’t mean we don’t make decisions in the moment that will effect a less horrifying future, but it does imply that in every single moment we experience, we can shut our eyes, breathe deeply, and remember that everything is perfect, and only our ability to perceive that perfection varies.
I wish I’d realized that in 2019. I might’ve been able to focus more on the astronomy stuff and less on every person who stood up from their seat just a little too quickly… to use the restroom.