Rem-Iseul Kim

The World between us

The houses of Hollywood towered over us, gigantic houses that insist on being the blandest of colors.  Their inhabitants were likely wealthy, willing to pay millions to be minutes away from Griffith Park.  I tried to picture the inhabitants, but couldn’t see more than a blurry mash of plastic surgery and fancy Italian shoes.  Cars swarmed around us, seemingly all of them wanting to get to Costco on a Friday afternoon.  Their inhabitants were probably within the vast range between the rich- enormous black Tesla Model X; and the working class- beige Toyota Camry.  But if you’re in a hurry, they all become idiots.  We weren’t in a hurry though.  The sun had eased its relentless battering since the last time I visited, so we had the top down in my partner’s car.  A cherry red BMW, two seater that made me blush when I saw it pull up at the airport.

“You know what’s crazy about those hyper-realistic 3D humans?” my partner asked,

“What’d you say?” I turned down “Hypnotize” by the Notorious B.I.G.,

“The 3D animated humans, as amazing as they look, there’s something-”

“-that we can never quite achieve,”

“Yeah.  It’s in the eyes, they can never look quite human,”

“It’s wild, I know.  Somehow we can always tell,”

“It’s because there’s no soul, and we can tell.  Nothing can replace what makes us alive,”

We went quiet and watched the cars, and the humans they contained.  Pensive, until some classic rock song called us to scream along like we were the stars of the movie, and the other people around us became merely extras.  

The day before, I was waiting at an airport gate; it was a tiny airport, intimate.  Even still, people always sat as far away from each other as possible, even standing to avoid sitting right next to a stranger.  Sometimes, I would make eye contact with someone and nod, but they most often looked past me, as if sparing both of us an extended acknowledgment.  I wondered if it was always like that, or if that had developed over the past two years.  A middle-aged woman in modest clothes sat a few seats away from me.  She spoke on the phone with an unusual tenderness and patience.  She said, “I love you too,” multiple times, familiar but not worn out.  I smiled to myself, for I did not want her to know I was listening; that would be weird.  After hanging up, the woman who loved someone got up and went into the restroom.  I wish I had had the courage to ask her who she had been talking to.

A teenager, wiry with thick black hair covering his eyes, swaggered by my seat with such a “I’m looking for something” energy he made me look up.  At that moment, he spun on a heel to face me.

“Holy fuck, I love your hair color!”

“Oh!  Uh, thank you,” I sputtered out,

He was already gone.  I wanted to run after him and pull him back to ask, “Why did you speak to me just now?  Why did you breach the invisibility agreement?  The agreement that mandates that strangers stay invisible to each other, that we don’t burden ourselves with care.  Why did you decide to reach out and see me?” But that would be too much to ask of this boy; it would be weird.  So I’ll never know.

On the plane, the woman who loved someone sat next to me.  My heart caught in my chest.  This was my second chance.  I introduced myself and she was polite, but clearly confused.

“I sat next to you at the gate.  You were talking on the phone?” I tried to explain,

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” she shifted away from me a little,

“This, I’m sorry, this may be a strange question, but, may I ask, who were you talking to on the phone?

A smile escaped her eyes.

“Oh!  My husband,”

“Ah, I see!  Thank you… I just have to say, it sounds like you really love him,”

Her smile filled up the cabin.

“Oh my gosh, thank you, I do…”

She took a breath, her shoulders releasing.

“You know, I had felt crummy all day, thinking that everyone was in a bad mood, and you just changed that for me.  Thank you,” she said, looking at me really now.

We talked for an hour about her kids, my school.  It was easy, but slightly unfamiliar to break the wall we always place between ourselves and our fellow passengers.  We parted ways at the end of the flight, and became separate souls again.  We became lost to the masses; I can’t even remember her name.  But I remember her love for her husband.

The traffic was still roaring outside, even at midnight.  It was my last night in Hollywood.  My partner’s apartment was small, square, and there were clothes everywhere.  The kitchen encroached on the bed and the bed spilled into the kitchen.  The lighting was dim, lending the air a certain vulnerability.  We were talking about mental struggle and how human brains tend to deal with it all.  My partner said something not many are willing to admit, something I wasn’t expecting from them.

“Sometimes, I consciously choose to experience an emotion, a negative one even.  Sometimes it only lasts for ten minutes, but I do it, mainly, I guess  to feel more human… Does that make sense?”

I looked at them carefully, seeing someone I’ve never noticed before.  Someone, or something larger than the world between us.  I saw the divide between human and alien dissolve before my eyes.  How strange it all was, to wish to be more human when you could never be anything but.  How alien we all are, by nature, to never acknowledge the life behind our eyes.  Yet, how intrinsically human we are, now matter what happens or how we decide to survive.  How fundamentally monumental it is, that I was sitting right there, they were standing over there, and you’re reading this who knows where, and I am now somewhere else entirely.  How rare it is to stare into someone’s eyes and see what makes them alive.  The recognition of the irreplaceability and the irreversibility of each of us is a realization that can make me cry.  The boy who loved my hair, the woman who loved her husband, and the person who loves me, each of them are stars of their own movie, and each of them will never happen again.

“Yes, yes, that makes absolute sense,” I replied, and my next breath was precious.