I’m sitting in the makeshift audience of a small theater space nestled somewhere in the thick of Hollywood near Melrose. The audience is comprised of me, Rudy, my friend Mimi— who’d invited us to join her in this mysterious shindig— and an Australian tourist. There are also two assistants in the theater, and a bored documentarian. Incidentally, I had met one of the assistants, Shauna, half a year earlier when we’d played the prom king and queen on the climatic prom night/school shooting episode of Noggin channel teen soap South of Nowhere.

The room is darkened, and we’ve been waiting about half an hour, unsure of what to expect. Briskly, without warning, Miranda July walks straight into the room. She seems pre-occupied, staring off at a distant spot on the floor. Suddenly, she faces the small audience, and says to no one in particular, “Did you know you can wash your mouth with soap?” Everyone laughs, and I can’t tell if this is the beginning of the performance or a genuine question. “No, really,” she says, “You don’t swallow the soap, you just swish it around in your mouth and spit it out. It works just as well as mouthwash or gum.”

“Wouldn’t that make your mouth feel dry?” asks my friend Mimi.
“Oh, you’re right,” says Miranda, “I didn’t think about that…”
“When my sister was a child,” I offer, “My dad was washing out her mouth with a bar of soap— because she’d said a bad word— and he broke one of her teeth.”
“God, that’s awful,” says Miranda, appalled, “I… hope that was the extent of his child abuse.”

It’s exciting to be here. I fell in love with her after seeing her film Me and You and Everyone We Know. I saw it at the Tower Theater in Sacramento with Alexa Shapiro, right after high school ended. That was the same day we thought we saw Zelda Rubinstein driving home on I-80, carrying a flock of caged doves around in a pickup truck. I went off to a lonely and strange year at CalArts that fall. My friend Herrie, who’d gone to school in New York, sent me a letter in October that came in a big yellow envelope, with a slew of magazine clippings. One of the clippings was a photograph of Miranda July, and it spent the year adorning my imposing dormitory walls with a little bit of familiarity and warmth.

In the spring of that strange freshman year, Miranda was supposed to come screen her movie and give a speech. I was giddy with anticipation, but my mentor, the world’s most illustrious French film theorist of Chinese cinema— Berenice Reynaud— rolled her eyes skeptically about the whole proceeding. “Miranda July,” she said with her formidable accent, “is notoriously flaky.”

Still, I brought my copy of Me and You and my Nikon D50 down to the screening room on the scheduled day, only to find that she had in fact failed to show up. But in her stead a small phone was being passed around the room on speaker mode, and she was hosting a Q+A through the magic of cellular technology. It was a strange scene, to be sure— the attention of everyone in this packed theater focused on one little cell phone and the tinny sounds of a distant voice that were emanating from within it. I wasn’t disheartened, though. I had a feeling we would run in to each other sooner or later.

Mimi had found out about the rehearsal through a friend who’d heard about it on Myspace. It was for a new multimedia show she was putting on that required audience participation, so she needed volunteers to help her rehearse. She said they were looking for couples, so I asked Rudy to come with us. Rudy had long been a fan of her performance art and video work, but he hadn’t been amused by the whole ))<>(( thing in Me and You. Different strokes for different folks, is what I always say. Regardless, he agreed to come with me, and we met up with Mimi outside the theater on a sunny Monday in Hollywood.

Before the performance, we shared some more strange and hilarious banter, this time about the different footwear in the room. Miranda seemed surprised as she pointed out that Rudy and I were wearing almost identical pairs of Vans, and asked if we had planned it.

“Ugh, you’re right,” she says to Mimi, “my mouth is so dry. Hold on, I have to get some water.” Before the performance began, she chose Rudy and I— the only couple in the tiny audience— to be the on-stage couple throughout the show, and this is the point where if you really hate spoilers and plan on seeing the performance, you won’t want to keep reading.

Basically, the play, which is called Things We Don’t Understand And Are Definitely Not Going To Talk About, is centered around the relationship of this couple named Fiona and Donnie, and at each performance Miranda chooses a couple from the audience to play the characters on stage. The rest of the audience plays along by reading out lines projected on the screen, and there’s a somewhat tangential and extremely heartbreaking story going on about a stray cat that crosses paths with Fiona and Donnie. The whole thing is out-of-control emotional, simultaneously sad and hilarious.

Rudy and I were whisked backstage, and an kind assistant lady gave us detailed instructions about what to say and do. I played Fiona, donning a red and white diagonally striped blouse, and Rudy played Donnie, wearing a yellow polo shirt. Sometimes Miranda would put on one of these shirts to briefly take over the role of Fiona or Donnie. Most of the time we stayed backstage, laying on a bed underneath a video camera, while the audience watched us act out Miranda’s narration on the screen.

“Sometimes Fiona would put her head underneath Donnie’s shirt and threaten to stay there forever,” she said, as I maneuvered myself between Rudy’s belly and the shirt. At one point we had to make out for what seemed like forever, and Miranda gave us a big thumbs up when we were finally allowed to breathe. The experience was surreal and amazing. What she was saying, as she delved deeper into this relationship, felt like the ghosts of so many thoughts that you might ordinarily dismiss, come back to haunt you with their transient beauty and undeniable wisdom. Rudy said that it made him think a lot about relationships in general, and it’s true. She somehow managed to dissect so many layers of love in such an effortless, entertaining production. By the end, I felt like I was on the verge of tears. Being a part of the production amplified its impact exponentially— I don’t think I’ll experience anything like it ever again.

After the show, the documentarian interviewed us briefly, Mimi helped the traveling Australian take a picture of himself with Miranda, and I thanked her for everything (and gave her a flier for my blog). Out on the bright street, it seemed hard to believe what we had just been part of. We hugged Mimi goodbye and returned to the real world of palm trees and concrete.

If you live in New York, you should check out Things We Don’t Understand And Are Definitely Not Going To Talk About. She’s putting on a performance of it at The Kitchen March 1st - March 4th. Here’s more info.