Muted Fantasies
Molly Cameron
We all like to spy. We’re not supposed to admit it, but we like seeing a part of someone we’re not meant to see. And I don’t mean sexual things (but sure, yes, also sexual things). I mean those things we all do when we’re comfortable and alone and we think no one’s watching. Sing loudly. Braid and unbraid our hair over and over. Pour the bottom bits from the bag of chips directly into our mouth. We like to catch real life when it’s happening. That’s why Zoom is growing on me.
Sure, on one hand, nothing is “real” right now. Our gatherings are two-dimensional, we’re all wearing elastic waist pants or no pants at all, and our brains are constantly simmering with the stress of this life we’re supposed to rebrand as “normal.” But in this unreal, we have pockets of real.
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I love seeing inside the homes of my coworkers. Or the homes of their parents or in-laws or fancy Airbnb or wherever they’ve landed. (My workplace uses Google Meet instead of Zoom, but same idea.) We all carefully frame ourselves in front of backgrounds that accidentally give small hints of our personal lives.
One of my coworkers, N, always has a big wall-mounted shelf full of nail polish behind him. He says they belong to his girlfriend, and I wonder about this every time I have a meeting with N. How long did it take her to carefully arrange all of those by color? How often does she paint her nails? Or, do they not belong to her at all? Does N maybe not even have a girlfriend, but a deep secret love of nail polish, and arranging them by color brings him comfort? They bring me comfort, at least, and indulge the dream of someday going back to a nail salon.
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This is all a digital extrapolation of my favorite, more pure form of spying, which is staring into people’s windows. Preferably at night, when interiors are lit up with lights. Also preferably into a brownstone in Park Slope or Fort Greene. I’m not a full-on creep about it. I stay on the sidewalk, and I try to peek while still walking at a decent pace. Sometimes, if the home is worth it, I’ll stop and blatantly stare. I am always a little bit worried about being caught, and having someone yell out their very nice window at me to go away. But even if that did happen, my instant rebuttal would be “You can buy curtains!” It’s less about staring at people, anyway. It’s more about seeing the stuff, and piecing together what the stuff might mean about the inhabitants.
A very clean, white, open space tells me no children live there. Or maybe they do, but the owners are meticulous cleaners and/or have a housekeeper. A big, well-lit piece of abstract art makes me assume someone is living off of inherited money. A prominent bookshelf makes me imagine an influencer (if the books are arranged by color) or a medical professional (if they are stacked in many different directions). These assumptions don’t always make sense, but I indulge them anyway.
The next natural step is imagining myself in those spaces. Not so much how I would decorate it, since I’m terrible at interior decorating, but what kind of person I would be if I lived there. What kind of windfall would I have come across in my life to have those floor-to-ceiling windows that show off a whole other lofted level? Would I suddenly have a green thumb if I put plants on that balcony? What kind of epic cooking projects would I get into with that big kitchen island and the full set of pots and pans dangling above? Eventually, I have to keep walking. I can’t be a full-on creep. But I enjoy the chance to imagine myself as someone else for those brief seconds.
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In December 2019, that naively blissful pre-pandemic time, I went to Colorado with my boyfriend to visit his family for Christmas. His sister is a realtor and at one point in between errands we stopped at her open house. It was in a new development of what I have always called “McMansions,” but what I think is now called “the average aspirational suburban home.” She invited us to slip little protective slippers over our shoes and take a look around. I stretched them over my shoes and let myself fully slide into the fantasy role of a prospective buyer.
I walked into every possible space I could walk into. The half bathroom by the entrance. The walk-in closet upstairs, right next to the master bathroom with its luxuriously deep bathtub. The finished basement with a bar. I imagined converting the smaller upstairs room that faced the highway into an office. I imagined cooking grand feasts in the kitchen and laying out all the ingredients on the island (an island!). I imagined pulling a car into the garage, even though I barely drive.
Who would I be in this house? Would I still be a writer? To live in this kind of house seemed to require becoming a whole different person, like a chief financial officer or a pediatric surgeon. Maybe this kind of house will never be for me.
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I still can’t help indulging in the fantasy. In a time where even a weekend at a nice hotel or an Airbnb would come with some level of germ anxiety, the safest vacations are still the virtual ones. I am so lucky to still be fully employed at a time when much of the world is in crisis, but I still yearn for my past life where I got to be multiple people at different points during the day: a technical writer at work, a performer at an open mic, an athlete at the spin class.
So now I escape through my screen. I scour the background details of each little square and drift off into those worlds. I stare into kitchens and yards and so many bedrooms. It makes sense: I’m mostly looking at people in New York, where everyone has limited space and most people can only have meetings in their bedrooms. But it’s still strange how accustomed we are to having corporate conversations in an intimate space. When I see our department head in meetings, with his perfectly made queen size bed behind him, I can only think of how hours later he’ll be in that bed in his underwear. And again, not even in a sexual way. Just unabashedly REAL. I wonder if he first saw that room at an open house, shuffling through it wearing strange slippers that looked like little shower caps. Did he walk into that room and clearly see where he would put his furniture? Was he already planning to have all those decorative pillows? Or did moving into that home turn him into a decorative pillow person?
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I know that all of these little squares on my screen are just hints. I can’t know the full reality. Just like my coworkers don’t know everything about me when they see my yellow kitchen walls or the painting that I made in college for a scene design class. But I’m sure I still represent something to them. Am I also an escape for someone? Do they see a small detail over my shoulder and imagine themselves as a whole new person? I hope so.
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Molly cameron
Molly Cameron is a writer and performer and her true stories have been featured on The Moth and RISK! podcasts and the Mortified live show. Her solo show, "Cupcakes & Morphine," was a SOLOCOM Solo Show Festival selection at the Peoples Improv Theater in 2018. She's currently working on a memoir with the same title, about getting hit by an SUV and moving back in with her parents. She lives in New York City and shares her thoughts at anothermolly.com.