Fantasy Life

Last night, Girlfriend and I watched the Tom Cruise/Cameron Crowe team-up known as Vanilla Sky. The movie it's self is only so-so; it's way longer than it needs to be and Cruise allows himself to be upstaged by Jason Lee, Kurt Russell, a few of the extras, a lamp in the background, a parked car and, most egregiously, Cameron Diaz. However, while the movie as a whole was only slightly preferable to a night spent watching our cat lick himself, it did present me with an interesting question:

If I could choose to live out a fantasy life in my brain while my body remained frozen in cryostasis, what fantasy life would I choose?

Now, in Vanilla Sky, The Tomster chooses his fantasy life to be, basically, Penelope Cruz. I... guess that's okay. I mean, everybody has got their own ideas of what makes them happy. Personally, I'm not into elfin women, but that's me. Beyond that, though, he constructs his fantasy life using bits of pop culture that were important to him in his waking reality. Now this I like. Maybe I wouldn't choose the cover of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" as my jumping off point, but I like where he's coming from.

Here's what I came up with so far.

My Fantasy Life For When I'm Frozen

NOTE: I'm going to try to not to take the obvious, all-girls-are-naked-and-I'm-a-millionaire route, but please forgive me one or two excesses. I am but a man.

SECOND NOTE: We're getting into some seriously self-indulgent territory here. You've been warned.

It's set in New York, of course. Where else would it be? Austin, maybe, but... no, if you're going to have a fantasy life, you're pretty much bound to New York by virtue of the fact that it's a city barely contained by reality anyway. The New York I'm in is Woody Allen's from Manhattan; it's everything good about this city and everything that's bad as well, but covered in a black and white, Gershwin-scored gloss.

No, not Gershwin. That's not me. The music of Tom Waits. That's not really me either, but it's the misguidedly romantic way I'd like to be and, hey, this is my fantasy.

I live in the East Village and I'm a semi-famous author. Not, like, Stephen King famous. More like Paul Auster or Ayun Halliday. Known enough, but not mobbed. I spend my days writing in my comfortable apartment, stopping every so often to refill my glass with fine, rich bourbon. I live over a bar that's always filled (but not too filled) with salty old drunks, characters all, who used to populate the bleachers of Ebbets Field and have a million stories between them about how one of them nailed Marylin Monroe or how another once told Lyndon Johnson to go fuck himself. I go to the bar around quitting time and I drink and drink and never seem to pay, though I do tip well.

I've got season tickets to see the Mets play and baseball season never seems to end. When I walk into Shea, I'm given a choice of seats right along the first base line or seats in the Upper Deck and I choose each about half the time because I like the different perspectives on the game. The Mets don't win all the time, of course, because that's not fun. But they play well and make rooting for them a pleasure.

I've got a girl who looks, on a rotating basis, like all the female cast members from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and who's in a rock band that's widely regarded as the next big thing. And at one of her gigs, when she says, "This song's for that someone special," I raise my glass to her and she rips off some monster chords because my girl fucking rocks!!!

And it will go on and on, this fantasy life.

Until I realize how unbelievably boring it all is and I give the signal for the docs to thaw my ass out. Perfection, getting exactly what you want all the time, no matter what, with no consequences, is great... at first. Then you realize that it's all just a fake, a sham, a thing you've bought. I'm pretty sure that's the conclusion Tom Cruise came to at the end of the movie (not 100% positive, though; the movie's mad confusing). Not that I particularly relish being in agreeance on anything with Tom Cruise.

In the end, fantasy lives are bullshit. Fun bullshit to think about, now and again, yes. But bullshit all the same.