Finding Charlie

Charlie, we'll call her Charlie for now, is a character. She is, or was, the main character. The protagonist. The person around which the whole story pivoted. She was a person who hangs around waiting rooms, watching people wait and unaware that she's in the same boat. That she is in limbo as much as everyone else.

When I vomited out the first 20 pages of this script, it was a quirky love story between Charlie and some accident prone dude I just called 'Guy'. Charlie was smart-assed, intimacy-phobic and marginally suicidal. She was a version of me three years ago. Not the suicidal part...that was six years ago. Regardless.

She was, for lack of a better word, a cartoon. A roughly sketched out cliché heroine from your run-of-the-mill "offbeat romantic comedy". That was back in the 'Look how smart I am for writing 20 pages in my first week in Paris' days. Back before little things like subtlety and nuance and authenticity smacked me upside the head. Little things that scoffed at my Hollywood tripe and told me I could do better.

It's been an intense week. I have had really deep, really fast-moving relationships with three of my characters. Yesterday was hard because Claire, dear Claire of the cancer, self-destructed in a really uncomfortable way. I was anxious all day, sick to my stomach at what she was putting herself through all for the sake of her denial.

I left Charlie to the end. I don't know why. Perhaps because she is most like me and I, like most of us, struggle to see myself clearly. I couldn't sleep last night. I tossed and turned and I know that my subconscious was working overtime, trying to figure her out.

You see, I'm making all my characters choose. Life or death. Authenticity or denial. Connection or isolation. And, also like most people, my characters wait until the last possible second to choose. They twist and turn in the purgatory of indecision, making life really, really hard on themselves and then finally, when they have no choice, they choose. No choice but to choose. A nice slogan and a human reality.

So, Charlie kept me up last night with her writhing about in my subconscious. I woke up exhausted and I tried to figure her out in my Morning Pages (see yesterday's missive), but she refused to come clear. I read for awhile. Drank nine giant cups of tea. Peed for two hours and decided to get the f*ck outta Dodge.

Because when one is stuck in the shit, one should move one's hiney. So I planned an elegant journey to the street market on Rue Montorgueil, where Dana the Artist bought those dreamy, sacred scallops from the other day. As I was sitting at my computer I casually happened to open up my screenplay and poke around.

Ugh.

I had a shower, which sometimes helps, especially if one plans on leaving the house, and the steam from the shower brought more oxygen to my brain and I had an idea. I ran to my computer (after drying off and enduring the absolutely critical agony of blow drying my hair...what a colossal waste of time) and wrote a scene, which I liked. And it was a good scene in that it brought Charlie to the point where she, at the very least, knows she has to choose.

I spoke on the phone with Dana the Artist, who had wonderful questions like, 'Does Charlie go to church? Should she?' and 'Why don't you give her some air and let her take you to the catacombs?' Dana could tell there was serious creative tension going on. She hung up to plan a trip to Arcadia, Greece based on a dream she had last night.

I got dressed. I had a realization. I didn't want it. I put on my thinking cap, a.k.a. beret and left the house.

I walked down Boulevard de Magenta and started to cry. I'd been avoiding it for days, but the truth finally, finally came clear. And it's a horrible truth and a heart-breaking one. But the truth is the truth and here it is: Charlie must die.

Oh, God. No.

And I think: I can't do it. I can't kill someone I really, really love...someone who is creepily similar to how I see myself. I mean what does that say about me and how I see the world? I'm an optimist for Christ's sake! I can't just let her die like that...all alone. I can't. And my brain starts huffing and chugging, trying to find an alternative, a different route to take. An ending where she doesn't have to go. And I imagine this is what people who lose other people think about. What if he took this road instead of that road...would he still be alive?

But the truth of it is, I asked them to choose. I gathered these four people around me and I backed each and every one of them into a corner and pointed a gun to their heads and said, 'Choose.'

I am such a bitch. And I did this to myself.

This is why falling in love hurts so much. Because you can't control someone else and they go and make decisions that are so viscerally painful to you that you end up stumbling down the streets of Paris with mascara streaming down your face.

I went to Rue Montogeuil. I bought the scared, glorious scallops. I bought some special cheese. And some wine. I bought two desserts from a bakery that opened in 1730. It's going to be a long night. It's going to be a hard night. A good, necessary, holy night, but a difficult one. A person needs sustenance for grisly errands like this. Good food, good wine, good lighting.

Wish me luck.