The motivation and the drive to commit identity theft

I don’t have a reason for Naomi. The name itself – and that’s the first name I slip in your glass – it was pulled from a Twitter thread, oh no worse: it was this lazy, genteel back and forth with a woman I believe might have been the sister of the man I loved.
Forget about getting over the man if his entire bloodline is baked in what I have become, and, you’re goddamn right I kept the name. Fits me like a ring. It carries this frost within, a Naomi is a Paul Verhoeven lesser work, and it triggers the idea of sex as both a foregone conclusion – of course she wants you, nimrod – and a remote-control kind of entrapment you, the audience, can perform on a demure woman never to be met with the sound of flesh.
Naomi is how I call the person I used to be: some kind of actress. (Do you mean a stripper? A friend from Oklahoma has vouched on the authenticity of that riposte, as if there were any doubt.) We do not disabuse folks from the notion I might have been in porn, and should anyone ask about reality TV we’d bend our credits to the question, why not: Naomi always always knew what she wanted but, she was unable to access the explain yourself part of the brain. She couldn’t at the time. And by letting other people make significant choices about her work, I guess she was trying to join in the disintegration.

Bits and pieces of Naomi they ended up in other people’s work, and that shattering that slow dumb erosion got started long before I/she was a public figure, game; the spurned boy giving your distinctive everything, included the yellow leather jacket you wore to a bar where you danced with strangers, to a number of vile bitches in short stories (usually the vile bitch rejection did kick off a catastrophic chain of decisions for the male protagonist, so, fair?); the starched button-down spring green shirt I was given to wear in a promo tour it got yanked and put on a character quoting the script I used to stick to in that promo tour, a small screen detail to be coveted and maligned at once in clipped narration. (Was I the problem.) Ordinary observations were spirited away by a succession of birds. You can cope with the lack of privacy if you must and you cannot get over your quiet personal reel being filed instantly for future profit. (That still happens, you tell me / how do I pull focus while faceless: I did not send Naomi upstairs to discover the line I had the life you wanted and I gave it up, buried in the middle of some unpublished manuscript; I said that, babe.) And it was a hop hop and a skip from clothes or lines being cribbed to characters loosely based on her, blue blood actress cocaine habit mood swing to sudden vacant stare, until the inevitable touch down to she’s not a person not like we are:

take this woman, a Naomi type,

can you hire the original item, yes/no
have you considered maybe asking Naomi herself, she might be up for a little mind melt

Why was a screenwriter hired to fine tune a Naomi type make her move make her glide call her Nicki because we want the audience to catch on, wink-nod, make her pass out only to wake in a hospital in the middle of a mass death event (haven’t seen the movie myself, I don’t have to do anything here except die) and why did I stay silent when I met the screenwriter, years after the shoot.
Two hours stuck at dinner on a boat they kept bringing appetizers and Naomi did not ask: was it your idea, or were you saddled with the me assignment
were you trying to charm older male company
or
was it a legitimate art project for you it was wasn’t it
had you been thinking about me, was it your way of dealing with it
you mean all this time we could have been friends

Never send anyone off to a private dinner, they have decades of untold history they won’t address, given that we live in fire raining from the sky days, and you’re gonna make us more miserable than you can fathom. Before I left, Naomi was offered the private dinner treatment on the regular – we got you a table we tried the place, just you and a few adult guests – and then every conversation featured someone else on the brink of tears and their waves of regret panic flooding the air like fragmented blades coming for my eyes so then I felt moved by a thread to say nothing of consequence and remain as steady as I could.
For those who don’t know: famous individuals have this in writing on their rider – under no circumstance they are to be asked to have dinner after a work event. They must be taken back to the hotel, where they eat, alone. Zadie Smith does it. A publicist did suggest it to Naomi, for the future: get that in your contracts, and she was quick to add, must be in writing though, have it in writing, the clear implication being, you’ll get hacked otherwise, it can’t be helped.

Naomi drove oceans of men insane brought them to declare war on themselves because she was straight but she might have said she was gay to keep a couple insistent suitors from climbing up her window (she did) and she was available on general principles yet she did not deliver, by which I mean, she did not make a move. You could ask Naomi if she wanted to see you.
I still disagree with the practice to the point I knocked myself into weeks of mild dissociation when I did ask a man out, and I’m positive there was bone deep affection in the mix, hidden under all that drag me back to your cellar desire. It made me so angry I left without checking the answer. Ever. How is
this on me. Why can’t you tell.
And Naomi did carry this breathy damaged other-people nonsense cut down on the skin of her shoulders. Naomi did talk about herself in the first person (good) but she did say she was a mere screen for anyone to project whatever they wanted to see. (She did, also, throw this out totally unprompted, at dinner, it was loud.) But, but, you think talking about yourself in the first person is to be expected, you have not spent meaningful time in the company of professional recognizable brand people.
True story! Old friend of mine not in the habit of telling tales happened to be drinking one table over from Riccardo Scamarcio – yes that would be the final boss from John Wick: Chapter Two, very nice – and he later reported to me: holy fuck Riccardo Scamarcio talks about himself in the third person, in public, he said “Scamarcio must focus on Scamarcio’s next endeavors”. So of course every time the dude is cast in a movie, despite the contained swagger he brings to his choice roles, I smile and go, oh, there he is, third person, you know he talks about himself in the third person, as if he’s someone else.
And that makes me a charming date, see the sights, but you gotta catch me first.
Naomi had entrapment issues because Naomi ended up in a parked car as the driver played off and on with the safety door, click. Naomi was invited to press conferences she wasn’t speaking at, or supposed to add anything to, not even color, it was an excuse; I just wanted to see you, smiley face. (Why are you making her lose a morning she can’t get back? That’s non-famous men for you: if they can’t have you, they can waste you.) Naomi was self-sufficient to a fault – her cash her food – because Naomi had been asked, what do you want from me, by a journalist she had been having lunch with in the summer. It went off like a gun shot. Her ATM card stopped working miles from home. Naomi used to store cereal bars in her purse, because location managers forgot to feed performers, people got so spun by the noise and the riptide during events, people forgot other people had to eat and sleep and take showers. Men, and more than the odd woman, absolutely bodied to learn Naomi did laundry in her spare time, and she watched police procedurals. Men used to call or text after 10:30 PM. You up? Yes. What are you doing? Laundry. Oh. He didn’t even know what to say next. Naomi does laundry, which, you do understand you can’t claim her by touching the screen, she won’t dance on the palm of your hand, it’s not how anything works.

See, this woman I’ve been writing about, in the shape of a crime novel, she happens to be a former actress called Naomi, a minor player who embraced mental dissolution in order to achieve a more dangerous (not to mention: pleasurable) lifestyle once she pressed pause on the acting career, stopped allowing other people to forge their own melted-doll version of her.
Close enough! Twist a tale fast enough, you will blur with the best of them.
And maybe I’ve come to love her since she’s the one trick you cannot pull, doesn’t matter how hard you try, but I find it easier to break into two: she is so removed from me, now, Naomi’s existence hits like an irreversible spider walk dreamt up by an insurance salesman in the mid- to late Seventies, this is how girls live once they’re known, they’re visible. And I didn’t want to look at her getting old on camera, so she won’t. Least I could do for the woman I shared a self with.