White Box

Robbie wanted me to ride the wave after it was released. Said I should start an account, so I could be a part of it, be more easily found.

“Could be major,” one other said, pounding and pouting into theirs between every take.

“Nah, I just wanna dance. All of that would be an unhealthy distraction for me.” Bad for my anxiety.

Those are moves I couldn’t master. Refreshing for more. Posing and calculating for them. Strangers who keep finding me, needing me, needing to tell me they see me, get me. Refreshing for another hit. Liking it, loving it, getting sick sick sick with the supervirus ain’t nobody washing hands, covering mouths to avoid.

Demand characteristics would be making me perform, then tap dancing in my head while holding all the rocks they left for me about how I blew it, what the audience really thought. Refreshing more, getting weighed down by it all. When all I really wanna do is just dance? Nah.

Straight talk. They don’t get it. I’m perfectly fine in the background.

“I mean, don’t mind me, I’ve gone this long.”

Stuck in a loop for a whole eight count of spinning, chasing their own tales and tails, if you ask me.

“You do you,” another @ in the background said to me, red-faced, crazy-haired, chest still heaving. “But you’ll get hired to dance more if they can find you boooo.”

I didn’t feel like arguing. I got hired for this. They didn’t ask why they couldn’t see pics of me on vacation, moisturizing my face, tasting food in my car – nodding and chewing, eyes bulging in pantomimed reactions – to know I could dance.

When they hired red face, not like they knew their realities, a background body that would send so much blood to its skin, overheating in over-exertion.

Nope. Just needed to see me dance.

***

“I hated it,” my dad never said. “And I hated it more because of how it blew up. It became bigger than us. Everyone knew about me, but didn’t know me at all.”

He wouldn’t talk about it. But that’s how I imagined he would, if he ever did.

Ever since the tree book came out — more specifically, became more popular after winning the prize and making some lists — people have remembered again. Memories refreshed. Been asking about it. Double-checking if the reference was based on him.

“Weren’t you one of the guards?!” They all ask.

“Weren’t you THE guard?” Some double down, dying to tag him.

They wanted @theDuke. Except not really. Because he was a monster. The buckets in the cells were his idea.

He’s not famous or reached for comment enough to say things like no comment. So he does nothing. Just keeps himself in his little black box, wrapped up with shame, tattoos, a dad bod. A banged-up ship bobbing in his garage, extension cords anchoring one project or another to his work station’s dock.

Everyone has a little black box. His just blew up. Now he carries the interior monologue that made him earn the nickname. John Wayne.

Asshole.

They never asked us, but he really is a very kind, gentle, loving father. He always calls me after an audition to see how it went. Would leave me post-its on my car door when I lived at home. Good guy. Bad candidate for basement experiments. Or a great one; depends who you ask.

The sicker, the better, it seems. Still is the case. But I’m no expert.

Yes, it has been torture watching him relive it. And I feel badly for him, I do. Demand characteristics made him perform, when all he really wanted was to get paid.

That’s my dad. But yeah, it was a long time ago.

***

Rehearsing on the sound stage, I felt like water. Can’t explain, but it’s feeling more alive than usual.

When they first gave us the wardrobe, one of the @s who worked his way from the back to the front asked if we could wash them a couple times first. To break them in?

Didn’t even say please.

It was awkward, given the nature of the shoot. The high-ups had to ask higher-ups. Optics. Marketing. Freedom of Speech and hitting record buttons. Everything these days matters too much, feels so loaded. The curious @ just shrugged. “They can’t expect us to dance in fresh crunchy-ass denim like this, right?”

People do expect a lot of us actually, yes.

But lots of these @s feel comfortable talking about their comfort. Overthinking is critical to avoid missing a mark. A real no comment is only so safe. There needs to be a statement. Intentions, if not pure, need to at least be likeable.

I didn’t wash mine. They were fine.

I said thank you.

Also, to be clear, I’m glad to have been a part of this ad. I like that it course-corrected, gave people something to celebrate. I don’t love that some of its viral-loadedness was at the expense of an error someone else made; because people are flawed.

But I am, to be clear, firmly in support of the good side of history. And marketing campaigns.

Or wait a second. No, I’m not?

***

I got my anxiety from him. He apologized to me. But I told him apologizing was only exacerbating his anxiety. I used dance, books. He used zoloft, allen wrenches.

***

I told Robbie I loved the last music video he did, the one that sampled the sample of baa baa black sheep on a xylophone.

“The part where she tries to put out a fire, as a fireman sits by and ignores the flames? While singing about anxiety? That totally resonated with me.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t my idea though–”

“No I know, of course, of course. It was just a really beautiful piece. Your choreo was spectacular. You have a hand in some really important work, in my humble opinion. But don’t mind me.” Told him I was honored to get to be a part of this project with him. Then I nonstop rehashed the conversation in my head, pointing out to myself all my fumbles and missteps. Like the old ballet teacher from the USSR who would get up from her folding chair to smack me as a reminder to stand straighter; that’s how I treat myself on replay.

Dancing makes my mind get quiet. Gentle even.

Why would I get out of this water to slog around in a ball pit filled with stones?

It’s not just elbow, elbow, dip and roll. It’s living art. And therapy. It’s lightness.

***

On the day of the shoot, it was hard to recognize everyone under all their hair and makeup, the brightest of lights. I think a few biceps were contoured, but again, I’m not a professional. I could tell who was who when they moved, when they hit their mark. Never mind everyone else watching, counting down for us to get the shot. Nice, nice, yes, work. To take it from the top. The moves stayed the same. And ba da da roll ting! A few new facial expressions, maybe practiced the nights before in a mirror. But I was just focused on myself. Didn’t notice much of these little details until I saw it back.

I mostly had eyes for the girl in the middle in the denim bralette. But I’m not the only one.

Me? My real hair and unwashed jeans just blended into the background.

Between shots and mumblecoring around Robbie, I kept to myself. Stretching in the hall while reading my doorstop of a book. Made of 100% recycled paper. Not the one about the trees. One of his other ones, about the people.

Everyone, so conscientious now.

***

When the ad was released, one of the dancers started a WhatsApp to reshare it: our unique, bonding experience of being a part of this. Just thirty of us, mostly unknown except for the six in the group. I think, in the spirit of everything, they did that – created the whatsapp – to include me too.

But maybe they were also sharing with others. Maybe they didn’t have enough places to keep it alive, to keep engaging and rewatching themselves, so they concocted more group texts on more platforms.

It really was a big sick. Refreshing, watching again.

Contagious people shared it like something spellbinding. Like a big fat tree, getting chopped down at the trunk, thrashing the floor, rattling the understory. Or a yummy disease they let in with mouths agog, tongues out.

Boom. Watch it again.

Boom. Again.

You can only watch the real thing so many times; if you’re in it, you’re not actually watching at all. Just living it out in your own head, from your own body. Can’t get sick with the same bug twice.

But if caught on video, if edited just so, well then. Every felled tree is heard and gets to live (or die) forever when someone says “roll tape.” Doesn’t even have to be a higher-up shot calling anymore. Could be a bug in the jungle. A janitor at the university.

Action.

Timber.

I get why it infected so many. Virus virus virus.

Personally, I’m proud of the choreo we did. Yeah, we killed it. Robbie crushed it.

Made us all wanna go buy some pants. Or rewatch. Or, I don’t know, just dance.

***

“Everyone is telling me you should have an account or something, so they can link to you, say they know you,” my dad told me on the phone. I was outside a tryout waiting to see if I got a callback for the final round.

“They can still say that they know me,” I said, extending my calves on the curb of a parking lot.

Up, down. Up, down.

“I guess it’s different.” He said.

***

I never asked him if he was a guard. The guard. The information came to me. Luckily not when I was in school, some cruel twist that would’ve been. But it came out from my aunt once, bragging to a friend in someone’s kitchen about fame versus infamy; I’d been sneaking ruffles from the pantry, my presence unknown. She said her brother knows all about torturing people, just ask him what he did in that basement. Said she always knew he had it in him.

She’s the type to like my dad, love my dad, say nice things to his face, to us about him. But then when you get her alone, she says what she really feels, or what she thinks you’ll be titillated to hear.

She quit her job after she had the babies, tried to make her @ a career or something. Overdecorating her parties, filming her outfits before meeting us for dinner. Even had a nip and tuck that didn’t help. Repainted their walls a brighter, more flattering white.

Honestly, what’s the appeal of becoming more like her, less like him?

Suppose she’d consider herself famous. I don’t know though, I find her presence pretty torturous.

She’s been asking me about my time in the white box a lot lately.

***

The thing is. At least my dad did what they wanted, and took the fall when it went the way it did, accepted his blame. He didn’t hold anything back. Or so I imagine.

That’s kind of how I feel dancing. I’m just in it. No distractions.

***.

They say it may be the best ad ever, but I think the buzz will die down. It’s just giving people something to look @, feel refreshed about. Like always.

I’ll wait for everything to blow over, keep my anxiety in check. Keep doing it like no one is watching. Never asked to be part of the overstory, just want to lay low back here. Keep understudying, keep being the background dancer. Extra extra. Keep to my own box.

Unless, that is, I need to eat, get paid, or socialize again.

Then I’ll return to the white box. Do the dance again.