It Chooses You - Miranda July [0]
Edinburgh • London • New York • Melbourne
Published in Great Britain in 2012 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
www.canongate.tv
Copyright © Miranda July, 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the USA in 2011 by McSweeney’s, San Francisco
Photographs on page 209 are by Aaron Beckum.
The interviews and sequences within have been edited for length, coherence, and clarity.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85786 254 9
eISBN 978 0 85786 283 9
This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2011
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#itchoosesyou or follow Miranda July on @Miranda_July
FOR JOE AND CAROLYN PUTTERLIK
CONTENTS
MICHAEL
PRIMILA
PAULINE & RAYMOND
ANDREW
BEVERLY
PAM
RON
MATILDA & DOMINGO
DINA
JOE
SHOOTING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I slept at my boyfriend’s house every night for the first two years we dated, but I didn’t move a single piece of my clothing, a single sock or pair of underwear, over to his place. Which meant I would wear the same clothes for many days, until I found a moment to go back to my squalid little cave, a few blocks away. After I changed into clean clothes I’d walk around in a trance, mesmerized by this time capsule of my life before him. Everything was just as I’d left it. Certain lotions and shampoos had separated into waxy layers, but in the bathroom drawer there were still the extra-extra-large condoms from the previous boyfriend, with whom intercourse had been painful. I had thrown away some foods, but the nonperishables, the great northern beans and the cinnamon and the rice, all waited for the day when I would remember who I really was, a woman alone, and come home and soak some beans. When I finally put my clothes in black plastic bags and drove them over to his house, it was with a sort of daredevil spirit – the same way I had cut off all my hair in high school, or dropped out of college. It was impetuous, sure to end in disaster, but fuck it.
I’ve now lived in the boyfriend’s house for four years (not including the two years I lived there without my clothes), and we’re married, so I’ve come to think of it as my house. Almost. I still pay rent on the little cave and almost everything I own is still there, just as it was. I only threw out the extra-extra-large condoms last month, after trying hard to think of a scenario in which I could safely give them to a large-penised homeless person. I kept the house because the rent is cheap and I write there; it’s become my office. And the great northern beans, the cinnamon, and the rice keep the light on for me, should anything go horribly wrong, or should I come to my senses and reclaim my position as the most alone person who ever existed.
This story takes place in 2009, right after our wedding. I was writing a screenplay in the little house. I wrote it at the kitchen table, or in my old bed with its thrift-store sheets. Or, as anyone who has tried to write anything recently knows, these are the places where I set the stage for writing but instead looked things up online. Some of this could be justified because one of the characters in my screenplay was also trying to make something, a dance, but instead of dancing she looked up dances on YouTube. So, in a way, this procrastination was research. As if I didn’t already know how it felt: like watching myself drift out to sea, too captivated by the waves to call for help. I was jealous of older writers who had gotten more of a toehold on their discipline before the web came. I had gotten to write only one script and one book before this happened.
The funny thing about my procrastination was that I was almost done with the screenplay. I was like a person who had fought dragons and lost limbs and crawled through swamps and now, finally, the castle was visible. I could see tiny children waving flags on the balcony; all I had to do was walk across a field to get to them. But all of