Impossible

We were huddled there together, not really sure what to do.

Of course we were sad. This was, as they say, the end of an era. Our era, of gritting teeth, shouting it out through manic episodes, financial disasters, temporary estrangements, ecstatic embraces, apologia, ups, downs, arounds and the hard-fought, unconditional love of the dysfunctional but ever-triumphant family. I mean, is it really dysfunction if it always works out in the end?

So we toasted the era, fucked up on the couch riding it out together on the last real night. Liz and Jon melting into each other. Don quietly managing himself, meditating, always made of stone. Me shaking from nicotine. Paul, disheveled and leaning with two fingers on his temple, his eyes dreamy and lost in thought. Sophia present but calmly, responsibly processing her emotions through the lens of social media, having them reflected back to her in a way somehow more distilled and comprehensible. 

And at the end of the couch the man himself, JJ Abrams— writer, director, producer, erector, sitting cross legged, resting his chin on interlaced fingers. 

Off into the hazy sunset, a cavalcade of motorcycles, Harleys, going comfortably fast, just enough to really whip our tassels around, teary eyed but hopeful. Jon quoted Shakespeare about it earlier. After this who knows what could happen. After the real release, at least. Hopefully anything, maybe. 

I looked over to Sophia, her pink nose, absorbed in her phone. Did she really care? Of course she cared. We all did. It was such a long time. There wasn’t anything to say— anything you could say really. We didn’t need to say anything though, and that was the beauty of it. A family comfortable in silence. An acoustic guitar was strumming out from the speakers, and I felt myself dozing off to the calming sounds of conclusion.

We had been drinking, had been smoking, had been celebrating. A long day of feeling, thinking, sitting and talking. These things exhaust you eventually. But the feeling of completion— no, accomplishment, and the wistful freedom of our blurry ending-beginning was too much to consciously bear, especially mixed with gin. 

I was in a sort of half-dreaming state. The kind where you have some sense of control over what happens, can shift your perspective around, do what you want and defy all but the most fundamental logic. I ducked under a tripwire, the suits chasing behind me charging right through, setting off the bombs, their own bombs, hot air at my back and labyrinth hallways of blinking server farms ahead of me. Jab the leatherman into one, another, another, purge the data, all the data, fuck the data. We, they had too much of it. Wait this is my data. 

The incoherence threw me awake. 

I stumbled into the hallway, running my fingertips over the velvety raised pattern of the wallpaper, taking big strides to stretch my legs. Intrusive thoughts, something about the cloud, lattice data, all my unstructured data, bombarding me. I turned the corner and there was JJ, rockin and rollin the way he does, by the bathroom with his arm above his head and leaning hard against the molding. The gaudy chandelier, some glossy metallic material and LEDs spilling bluish light onto him. A movie scene, of course.

‘Hey,’ I said. My voice came out scratchy.  

He craned his neck to look up at me. 

‘Hey.’

I could see that he was sober, but he was still a wreck.

‘Listen…’ I started, but he shook his head. 

‘You don’t get it do you?’ I said, after a few seconds. ‘Do you understand what you’ve done, JJ?’

He half-froze like a low-voltage shock, and his eyes concentrated slightly downwards, sightless.

‘This was you JJ,’ I said. ‘This was your vision, your story to tell. We played it out according to you, what you wanted. I know that’s why you invited us here— just us. We did all we could for you, laid it all on the line. I want you to know that. You know that.’

I could hear him sigh, barely. 

‘Remember, the greatest of all time?’ I said.

‘Yes… it is,’ he said, trailing off. He looked back up at me. Condensation was forming on his lenses. 

‘It is,’ he repeated more forcefully and punched a hole in the wall. He cupped a hand around his mouth. 

‘Avatar is the greatest cinematic achievement of all time,’ he said through parted fingers.

‘Oh… ’ I said. He curled his hand to a fist pressed up against his lips. ‘No, no JJ.’

He knelt, lowered his body to the floor, silent and motionless.

‘JJ you… I mean, listen JJ,’ I shifted and weighed the words carefully in my head. ‘This.. this is Mission Impossible 12.’

Motionless, still. 

‘We did it. We finished the quad-trilogy. It’s you, Woo and De Palma. It’s history, JJ.’

But he was closed off, completely. Maybe he could still hear me. 

‘Come on man,’ I started, bending down and sliding my hands beneath his shoulders.

‘Let go of me!’ he snarled. ‘Leave me here to die.’

‘JJ…’

‘It’s nothing. It’s fucking nothing. The Avatar pentalogy is the greatest of all time. This shit, this fucking Transformers shit, ass…’ he trailed off.

‘JJ please.’

‘Bullshit! JJ? Bullshit!’

‘JJ…’ but he was inconsolable. I knelt there with my hand on his back for a long time.

My vision was getting blurry, but I felt him shift, could see him looking up at me, see that his face was wrought with anxiety. I blinked hard and saw eyes wide with cosmic fear, a mouth wrenched by Sartrean nausea, a chin trembling with the secondary waves of crumbling foundations. He looked at me, looked into me, as if searching for something to hold on to. I still wonder, during endless insomniac nights, rainy afternoons when there isn’t anything in the world to do, aimless fall drives through winding country roads, if he found what he was looking for. 

‘Thank you JJ… thank you,’ I said through barely moving lips.

I’d never seen tears well up so quickly. I still haven’t.

We gripped each other, trying and failing to steady ourselves in a shuddering embrace.