"She Gets Nowhere"

Sketch by katymcclellan.substack.com of the author at work during a CT visit, 2023.

I’m not consciously eavesdropping, but this apartment is an intimate venue, so to hear is to listen.

My roommate, Camille, paces the apartment yelling emphatically into the phone at her mother.

She’s speaking Swiss German, as is her mother in a muffled, tinny voice a few pitches lower and slower than hers.

Camille is switching to English rarely and briefly, for emphasis, a pattern I’ve noticed in their periodic mother-daughter overseas phone calls.

I guess my roommate forgets she’s speaking English (the only language I speak, amid all the options) when she yells, “Being an actor isn’t easy, Mama. I’m trying.”

(A pause as her mother speaks muffled Swiss German on the other end.) Camille claps back at mom with, “I am working hard!”

I’m sitting in the living room on a faded, navy blue Ikea love seat that can, when needed, unfurl itself into a bed. When I moved in, I chose this Brooklyn apartment for the price and the high windows, not for the privacy, of which there is none.

A bit of Swiss German between them. An attempt to cool the conversation and then an offering of evidence. Laying out an argument, I assume, by the tone and cadence of Camille’s urgent gibberish. Then, a response from mom that displeases Camille mightily.

Frustration mounting. A burst of, and return to, English:

“You should see my roommate, Mama. All she does is work hard. All day and night. Works her ass off writing, auditioning, producing and gets nowhere. Hours of trying hard and SHE GETS NOWHERE. Because… it’s impossible here.”

My eyes go wide as I jolt back from my computer screen, where I’m organizing my 12th sketch comedy video shoot in a series. A massive project that has consumed me for months. Emailing our DP a reconfigured shot list at this very moment, thinking over what might be funniest for my newly-revised script, most expedient for the tiny crew, most budget-friendly with the money we’ve crowdfunded, and which angles will need coverage at which time of day. A range of skill sets which I’ve taught myself, hastily, for this project.

Camille switches (just out of my visual scope, but plainly in earshot) nimbly back to Swiss German and the heated mother-daughter argument presses on in a barrage of consonants.

The ambient sound-soup of a language I don’t speak whooshes through me like silence.

I’m… so… hurt.
She… gets nowhere?

Camille is not a confrontational person, in my experience. She is polite, tidy, and blessedly normal, as roommates go. She must have just… thought she said all this in a language I can’t understand.

My face stings with rising, hot shame. I feel like I’ve had sand thrown in my eye on the playground.

But also. And this surprises me….

I’m feeling validated?

Because, it’s true. And she can see it, too?

Camille has never before this outburst offered a single thought on my career, no praise nor damning feedback. Mostly we are civil and try to pretend we each live alone, which we very much do not. But now I know her true thoughts and incredibly, she does not know she has revealed them to me.

Did she think I’d been wearing headphones?

She didn’t think, she just spoke. Yelled. In her own anger, not at all dissimilar to mine, the truth. And I finally release my held breath.

Emptied out, I can inhale deeper than usual. I feel my feet on the floor. I feel my heart, sinking and grounded. I’m sitting with my actual reality for the first time since I graduated from theatre school, 4 years ago.

The score has come back from the judges. And it is this. My work ethic: admirable, my results: pitiable. And in the torpor of my shock as Camille rambles on in her Swiss German tirade, trodding our wooden floor heavily to and fro, I feel, paradoxically, …flattered? And seen.

She sees me: trying. She understands what must be my, reasonable, frustration, though I’d never confide a word of it to her.

I never tell her I heard her — in English — and I don’t think it ever dawns on her.

She soon leaves New York, which is commendable! And I mean that sincerely. To be realistic, and multilingual (I think she also spoke French)!, is a notable thing. I never knew if she was a talented actor, or even an interesting person. It never seemed relevant. She was always, through no fault of her own, just in the way of my peace.

I have kept “trying” (problem-solving, learning, creating, forging relationships) in the 13 years since this overheard Swiss German (but actually very English) phone call.

By way of progress, I can confidently say this:
I now send my collaborative emails from a slightly nicer couch.

I have watched many beloved friends achieve terrific success and sail on away from me. And I’m still here. I haven’t given up.

I’ve had moments of absolute triumph (often accompanied by overpowering and unexpected agita), moments that threatened to blossom, and might have, but didn’t. I continue to experience tremendous personal pride in being a creative, and the accompanying mortification of being pressed to answer, either outrightly or tacitly, the multitudinous versions of the questions, “Have I seen you in anything?”; “Can you make a living at that?”; And, most egregiously (but with sterling intent), “Will you speak to my daughter and tell her not to do that? I mean, just tell her how hard it is?”

The price, though, in my experience, of being sorta perpetually mortified (by my own bravado, self-promotion, failure), is worth it. Living in alignment with the dictates of my creative spirit soundly trumps the alternative lifestyles I see on offer before me.

So that’s what Camille can yell at her mom now, in bright, crisp English, when she wanders, ghostlike through my memory, passing through my (current) living room:

“My former roommate, Mama! She’s still here! MAKING STUFF. Isn’t that insane, Mama!?”