Life Will Be the Death of Me Read online

  I’ve never woken up feeling in danger. I’ve never woken up feeling like I didn’t belong. I’ve woken up every day of my life thinking, I’ve got the upper hand—that I always had an avenue. I didn’t know that was called privilege. I was too consumed with the things I still didn’t have to think about what other people were missing.

  Someone explained to me that for someone who’s lived with privilege their whole life, equality feels like a loss. That made sense.

  What would I be willing to give away in the name of equality? My house? My car? My career? What is my contribution?

  No one likes to lose anything they’ve gotten comfortable with. Some people are more gracious, and some people have more experience with loss—and those people are usually either poor, of color, or marginalized because of their sexual preference or gender identity. If you’re afraid of loss, you’ll do anything to identify a variant; you’ll seize on any reason to exclude an “other.”

  I was sitting in Dan’s office one October morning telling him about the documentary I had started filming for Netflix on the subject of white privilege. I told him how on the very first day of shooting, I had already managed to offend a black girl by tapping her on the ass.

  “So now Netflix is making me take racial-sensitivity classes,” I said.

  “Why did you tap a girl’s ass?” Dan asked, with a furrowed brow.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “As a sign of affection? That’s how I was intending it anyway. Like a girl thing. Like sisterhood.” I moved my shoulders to demonstrate a shoulder bump, except no one was there to bump with.

  “Okay,” he said, sighing. “Isn’t that what this documentary is all about, though? Pointing out to white people what they’re doing wrong?”

  “Or pointing out to me what I’m doing wrong. Jesus, do I feel stupid. Here I am, thinking I’m going to enlighten white people, and my lightbulb is out. Way out. I don’t even know if I have a lightbulb. I’ve been grabbing people’s asses for years. White and black. It’s total privilege. Why do I think I can touch other people’s bodies?”

  “You’ve said yourself you have a lack of boundaries,” Dan reminded me, and then he added for good measure, “Personally, I don’t think it’s normal to touch other people’s bodies.”

  “Yeah, I got it,” I said, throwing one hand up in the form of a stop sign. “I think that just because I’m a girl, I expect other girls to know I’m not a threat and that I’m not trying to sexually assault anyone—but I’ve never taken into account what it means if you don’t like to be touched, or you’ve been assaulted, or that many black women don’t want to be defined by their hair or their asses. I have to retrain my brain. Just this morning I grabbed my cleaning lady’s ass when she bent over to rub faces with Bert.”

  Dan was confused. “Who’s Bert?”

  “Ugh, it’s not important,” I told him. I wasn’t going to sit there and talk to my therapist about the pangs of jealousy I had toward my cleaning lady and her relationship with my dog. Talk about privilege.

  “It’s the same thing with the #MeToo movement. I had no idea that one in three women have been sexually assaulted. How is it that I didn’t know how rampant that was in the very industry I work in? How rampant it is in every industry. I feel like a member of the Catholic Church who just found out how prevalent child rape is among priests. Why did I assume my privileged experience was the typical experience and not the other way around?”

  “I don’t think you should beat yourself up for asking these questions. You should be grateful that you’re now asking them.”

  “In my world there is no such thing as an invasion of privacy. Nothing’s off-limits. I guess that speaks to my lack of empathy. Maybe I should think for a second about what other people’s limits might be instead of assuming they have the same limits I do.” I looked up. “This song is getting very old. Every time I feel like I’m getting a handle on this empathy thing, it keeps rearing its head.”

  “Well, before, you didn’t even know you were missing it. You’re thinking about it now, so that’s progress. Identification. Awareness. Modification.”

  Feeling spoiled was a good head space for me to live in for a while. But it was also time to turn that feeling into something else.

  “My question, though, is: Am I really interested in helping fight the good fight for the right reasons, or is it because misogyny and racism represent boundaries, and I resent boundaries? What are my motives? Am I really fighting for others, or am I fighting for myself?”

  “Did you apologize to the girl whose ass you grabbed?”

  “Yes!” I exclaimed.

  “How did that feel?” he asked.

  “Awesome,” I told him. “I felt defensive at first, like I hadn’t done anything worth apologizing for, but I recognized that it wasn’t about my intention; it was about how my action was received. That my action was unwelcome. I get that now, and it didn’t take long for it to click this time.”

  “That’s empathy—”

  “Oh!” I blurted out, interrupting Dan.

  “What?”

  “My dad died.” I put down my iced tea and threw up my hands. “I’m sorry. I totally forgot to tell you.”

  Dan very uncharacteristically jolted forward in his chair, with his hands folded, nonplussed. I use the word “nonplussed” because it means two things: very surprised or not surprised at all—almost as if a vet came up with its two definitions. Dan was surprised.

  To be fair, it was quite a predictable reaction for anyone to have, which is probably the reason I forgot to tell him. My plan was to tell no one about my dad dying—except maybe Mary.

  “When did this happen?” he asked, alarmed.

  “Sunday. I was on my way back from canvassing in Orange County.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Dan’s face was filled with so much sympathy, I felt as if I would end up comforting him.

  “It’s okay. I’m okay.” I stared at him. Nothing was going to come out in the way of tears. I felt devoid of feelings, nothing even closely related to grief.

  “I don’t really feel anything,” I told Dan. “I mean, we’re halfway through our session and I just remembered, so…” I looked at him, searching for an answer—preferably from him. He was still leaning forward in his chair, but had relaxed a little.

  “Well, your brain is used to wrapping up death and putting it away.”

  “But after all this work we’ve done, am I just repeating the only way I know? What if I’m not growing at all?” I sat in my chair across from Dan, wondering what to say next.

  “Honestly, I was more upset when Chunk died. That seems fucked-up.”

  “Well, dogs are pretty good at not disappointing you, and loving you unconditionally.”

  “Not Bert.”

  “Who is this Bert?” he asked for the second time, slightly irritated.

  “He’s a stuffed animal I have at home,” I told him, dismissively, and got back to business. “Do you think I’m in denial, because it doesn’t feel that way, but I want to know if this is going to be another case of delayed grief. It feels like I’ve already mourned my father while he was alive. I haven’t told anyone yet. I mean, Molly, Karen, and Brandon know because they know all things, but I haven’t even told Mary.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want that kind of attention.”

  “You may not want it, but what if you are ready to receive it?”

  “I’m not going to use my father’s death to mourn my brother, if that’s what you’re asking.” I felt like I had finally grieved my brother too, and although I felt sad at the finality of my father’s death, I wasn’t sad he was gone. I was relieved.

  * * *

  • • •

  Glen and I had driven to see my dad in Pennsylvania a month before he died, and my dad was a shell of himself—it was