The Remote Island by Bryan Christian NBC discovers Facebook, what happened on Gossip Girl and Terminator and our obsession with Mario Lopez continues apace.
I once had a therapist who told me that the people we dream about are us. They're enacting unresolved issues on our behalf, she explained. So when I woke a few weeks ago clenched in the chest by a deep kind of grief, it was unsettling when I shook off the vestiges of sleep to realize I dreamt I was Jennifer Aniston. Nothing much happened in my dream about being Jennifer Aniston, though my hair was like Jennifer Aniston's, the lank, blondish streaks peripherally visible on either side of my face. My thighs were thin too, and bent like a praying mantis' beneath me on the ratty couch I was sitting on. Brad and Angelina were busy with children in my dream, corralling and cajoling them, more children than they have in real life, at last count. Different ones, too. In the dream, I had the feeling that I was supposed to be there, was supposed to keep a game face in these small rooms of an apartment I don't recognize from my life. My role was to be a good sport, to pretend nothing was wrong. Brad and Angelina were giving off a palpable sense of embarrassed happiness to be together, and a bit of irritating pity for me as well. I, as Jennifer, was trying not to sob on the couch; I was desperately quieting the sounds of sadness coming from my chest. That's how I woke up feeling.
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The thing is, in waking life, I don't care about Jennifer Aniston. And beyond scoping the stupid covers of ubiquitous tabloids, I don't read the updates on the latest betrayal committed by the happy, spawning couple Jennifer Aniston's divorce seems to have unhappily spawned. Fact is, I don't really like her. I have seen one or two of her movies, reluctantly, and maybe twelve episodes of Friends, accidentally, which is a feat considering it was on the air for ten seasons and has been flooding my dial in syndication since. But in my dream, I cared a great deal about Jennifer Aniston and her unbridled grief.
The other part of my dream that was pathetic was that I, as Jennifer Aniston, was anxiously trying to conceal a vibrator that rested on the back of the couch, the sad talisman of the lonely woman. I had the feeling that I didn't want Angelina to see it. Especially Angelina. Brad, I didn't care about, but Angelina didn't need to know that I had been masturbating.
It wasn't difficult for me to parse out why my dream avatar was Jennifer Aniston. I had recently broken up with someone whom I discovered had been in secret contact with this own recent ex, a younger, hotter woman, who had dumped him, and with whom he had been obsessed — that is, until he met me. He had lots of ex-girlfriends as friends, women who oftencalled him when they were in a crisis. I didn't mind these relationships, though I pouted when he took the calls during our intimate time. But I had no reason to be uneasy about them. This relationship with the recent ex, however, was secret, and their contact was constant and prolific.
I confronted him. He was devastated. We fought. He told me they were just friends. (Friends?) He told me he talked to her about how much he loved me (lovely), though made no apologies about their relationship, and no promises to cut off contact. He was just sorry he got caught and even suggested we all get together to discuss their relationship's utter benignity. But it felt too late. He had
Jennifer Aniston plays the same chick-flick version of J. Alfred Prufrock, over and over again.
proved himself a liar and capable of consistent deceit. Mostly, I couldn't shake the fact that he guarded me from her, going so far as to cancel plans to meet me when she showed up at our rendezvous first, accidentally. He sent me home that night with promises to be home in an hour, only to show up three hours later and drunk. (That was what sent me cursing through his BlackBerry.) I kicked him out that night, something that at first made me feel strong and victorious, then utterly bereft.
Analyzing the dream, comparing it to my breakup is easy, which is why it isn't interesting or significant. You can see the parallels, I guess, if you know an inordinate amount of information about the Jen/Brad breakup and the Angie/Brad courtship, as you now do my own breakup. But what mostly saddens me is that I picked Jennifer Aniston out of my bag of handy mental avatars to represent me; boring, unmysterious, uninteresting Jennifer Aniston. (In another era, she might have been Debbie Reynolds, famously cuckolded by her friend Elizabeth Taylor who handily plucked Eddie Fisher out of her tiny, clenched fingertips. The weird thing is, my ex looks a lot like Jennifer Aniston's reported current beau, Vince Vaughn, boozy eyes and all minus the hair plugs and fat wallet.)
To be fair, in real life, I'm sure Jennifer Aniston is as complicated, compelling and confident as I so arrogantly like to imagine myself being sometimes. But, with a few exceptions (The Good Girl wasn't that bad), all I know of Jennifer Aniston is her ditzy romantic-comedy persona. Whether it's on TV or the big screen, she hasn't moved beyond the role of goofy screw-up, the girl who shrugs and mugs, who slaps herself on the forehead after it's too late. When Ross marries another lesbian or some ethnic chick, when her movie boyfriend's about to leave her for a hotter, cooler woman, you can see her thinking, this is not it at all, this is not what I meant, at
Like Jennifer Aniston's Vanity Fair article, this article is my passive-aggressive way of exposing my pain.
all. Jennifer Aniston plays the same chick-flick version of J. Alfred Prufrock, over and over again, always rolling up her pants, scuttling across the silent scenery, careful against chewing it, never playing those juicy roles that Angelina hungrily bites into, warm sticky juice dripping all over those lips and tits. Jennifer Aniston won't dare eat a peach, while Angelina swallows peaches whole.
And like Jennifer Aniston's Vanity Fair article, this article is my passive-aggressive way of exposing my pain. It's also my way of saying, "See? I'm fine. I will go on. The bastard's out of my life. She's welcome to him. I'm strong. I'll go to yoga more. My girlfriends will get me through this with a lot of Chardonnay and sharing. But, if you're picking sides, which I don't endorse, because I'm a super nice person always trying to do the right thing, then, you know, be on my side, if you wish. Because poor me, I was, like, totally done wrong."
But fuck that. My Jennifer Aniston dream was a wake-up call. So I want to thank Jennifer Aniston for helping me to see what a whiny asshole I've become and will no longer be. Frankly, if I had any balls, if I wasn't Jennifer Aniston in my dream, but the me I want to be, I would have ushered Brad and the brood into a separate room and slammed the door behind me. Then I would have taken that vibrator and used it on myself, right in front of Angelina, which would have turned Angelina on so much that she would have taken the vibrator on herself, which would have turned me on so much that I would have taken her beautiful lips and pressed my own on them, hard and heavy, transferring a deep, hot wish into her quivering, open mouth, one that goes like this: "Good luck with that boy, my dear, you're going to need it. When things end, and they will . . . gimme a call." Also I would have felt her up on my way out, just to see if they were real. n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa Gabriele is the author of Tempting Faith DiNapoli. Her second novel, The Almost Archer Sisters, will be published in the fall 2008. She lives in Toronto.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
