42. Nothing to Try to Do

“There is nothing to try to do but try to be purposeless and formless, like water.” —Bruce Lee

Two years later

The invitations lay in ten stacks on the table. They were printed in a simple gray and lavender letterpress style that had cost Jen almost as much as the gluten-free vegan cake she had ordered—three months in advance, as required—from the artisan bakery. They really do look nice, she thought, looking down grudgingly at the cards, even though she had only spent the money on them because Becky made her.

Still, her stomach churned uncomfortably every time her eyes fell on the stacks. She had agreed to put the invitations in envelopes, along with RSVP cards, and affix the address labels that Becky had printed out. It had seemed like an easy job when she had volunteered for it, until she saw them and realized exactly what five hundred invitations looked like. It’s going to take twelve hours, she thought, just as she had for the last six days since the cards had arrived.

She should have started days ago, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to spread out the cards and envelopes and labels and allow them to take over her desk. Becky wanted to send the invitations out before Sunday; that was only three days away now. Jen had a lot of other work she needed to do, and then there was her writing, and she didn’t want to spare a minute on something as frivolous as stuffing envelopes.

With a loud sigh, she moved a stack of papers from the desk top to the floor to make room for her project.

Marie looked up from her play area, where she was stacking blocks. “Wanna play?” she asked. She was having some trouble mastering the letter “l” though, so it sounded more like “pway.”

Jen hesitated for less than three seconds. “Sure,” she said, crossing the office to the play mat.

“Look, Mommy, it’s a castle!” Marie exclaimed when Becky arrived half an hour later. She pointed at the turreted structure they had built out of tiny red blocks that looked like bricks. “For my pwincess doll.”

“Hmph,” said Becky, wrinkling her nose in disapproval at Jen.

“And a stable for the ponies,” said Jen, with a sheepish smile.

“Have you started on those invites yet?” Becky asked.

“I’ll do it,” said Jen. “I was just about to start, and then Marie wanted to play.”

“Start now,” said Becky. “Chase is coming to get Marie in an hour.” She knelt down to survey Jen and Marie’s miniature architecture. “Not bad,” she said, poking her finger at one of the blocks.

While Becky and Marie staged a pony rebellion that, judging from the crashing noises, led to the destruction of both the castle and the stables, Jen split one of the stacks in half and spread the invitations out on the desk. Each one was bordered in a single lavender line, with gray words in the middle, reading:

You are warmly invited to a party
celebrating the first anniversary of
The Jennifer Aniston Center for Collaborative Learning.

Jen couldn’t help it; she sighed again. Every time she looked at the invitations, she sighed.

“What?” said Becky, looking up at Jen. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Jen said, silently chastising herself. “Everything’s fine.”

The truth was, Jen was dreading this party—the stress, all the work that would go into it, all the cheerful socializing that would have to occur during it. Jen was happy that the center had already received so much acclaim during its first ten months, but she would have chosen to celebrate its upcoming anniversary with something more casual, like a dinner party for the center’s small staff of paid employees and teachers. Or maybe even just a nice catered lunch at work. What a radical idea, Jen had thought to herself: celebrate the work we do just by doing it.

“That all sounds nice,” Becky had said, wrinkling up her mouth in a sardonic dismissal. “But it’s wrong. You have to do something big so you can make all the important people who’ve helped us feel appreciated. And it has to get in the newspaper so the important people can see their photos in there.”

It all sounded awfully cynical, a big fancy event just to please a bunch of people who, in Jen’s opinion, couldn’t care less about a party or having their faces in the paper. She personally knew all the big-name experts who had taught at the center, and like herself, they all seemed more interested in getting their work done than on patting themselves on the back for doing it so well, which is why they had agreed to teach at a place like the center in the first place. They’d probably love the idea of celebrating by carrying on with work like it was just another day.

I guess that’s why Becky does the public relations and I don’t, Jen thought.

“I’ll handle the whole thing,” Becky had said, when Jen complained about all the work that would be involved. Jen knew she could do it, too, but she felt too guilty not to help at least a little. And since she had agreed to the party, she was working as hard as she could to think about it positively, no matter how stressful she found the idea.

Anyway, Jen told herself, as she matched up one invitation with one RSVP card and placed them in one envelope, if Becky wants a party, she should have one, because, despite its name, the school belonged half to her. Becky and Jen were co-directors. And while Jen had developed the general concept for the school, the innovative business model that had been praised in several national economics magazines and newspapers was all Becky’s.

As she collated the large and small cards, she looked up at the newspaper clipping stuck with a thumbtack to the wall in front of the desk. She had read it so many times that she probably could have recited it with her eyes closed. Her heart still raced with a little burst of adrenaline every time she looked at it, so much that she had resolved several times to take it down to make her work area more tranquil, but had never quite been able to bring herself to do it.

When Jennifer Aniston disappeared from the public eye three years ago, the tabloids speculated that she was having the routine mental breakdown their readers had come to expect from Hollywood actresses such as herself.

Instead, Aniston returned from a year of introspection in a small Midwestern town inspired by a new vision of what her life’s work would be. And with all the dedication that she used to apply to her acting career, Aniston brought her inspiration to fruition in a remarkably short amount of time, just one year after moving back to Los Angeles.

Blending the course offerings of a community center, the cooperative spirit of a commune, and the ambiance of a yoga studio, the Jennifer Aniston Center for Collaborative Learning provides a non-traditional venue for sharing knowledge and skills.

“I thought about all the talented people I knew,” Aniston said, as she showed us around the building, formerly an unused middle-school. “I know so many talented people, and I have learned so much from them. I thought, what would be the best way for them to share their knowledge with each other, and with anyone else who wants to learn?”

Aniston’s close friend Rebecca Gold developed the center’s business model. “It functions like a cooperative,” said Gold, who teaches yoga at the center in addition to her role as co-director and business manager. “People can pay for their classes with money, or they can volunteer in the bookstore, the tea shop, or on the janitorial staff. The entire building is maintained by volunteers.”

The most unusual feature of the school is that anyone can teach a class. “People can earn volunteer credit by teaching their own classes,” Gold explained. “But once the class becomes popular enough, teachers get paid in money instead of credit.”

This focus on community participation allows the school to offer remarkably diverse and specialized course offerings at highly affordable prices. In its first year, the school has sponsored courses in over sixty subjects ranging from vegan baking to aerial acrobatics to figure drawing.

“Even someone who is not a professional teacher has a lot of knowledge to share,” Aniston said.

The center also provides more academic offerings such as Spanish conversation and bookkeeping. The most surprising and widely-discussed of these has been the Radical Gender course taught by the local artist and activist who goes only by the name of Ex. Both course and teacher have attracted quite a bit of attention in academic circles, and professors have traveled from as far as the University of Chicago, Duke University, and even the University of Sydney in Australia to attend.

“How are those invitations going?” Becky asked. Jen had put the cards and envelopes down on the desk and was staring up at the article.

“They’re going,” she said, beginning her collating again. I need to focus, she told herself, quickening her pace, even though it meant that the RSVP cards lay crooked instead of straight in their envelopes. She wanted to make a good amount of progress so she would not feel guilty when she stopped and headed downstairs for five o’clock taekwondo class.

The class had started four days ago, and though most students were attending once or twice a week, Jen had gone to every single class. She had hoped for a taekwondo class ever since the center had opened, but she hadn’t been able to find a teacher.

“You should teach it,” Becky had told her every time she complained about missing taekwondo, until Jen finally learned not to bring it up anymore. It was true that Jen had taught Olivia, but she didn’t feel ready to teach an entire class of students; she still had so much she wanted to learn.

Now, she had finally recruited a teacher, and the best part was, that teacher was Shane. Two weeks ago, Shane and Brittany had flown in from Ann Arbor, where they had both just graduated from college. Brittany had majored in business and wanted to work as an intern for Becky, and Shane would teach taekwondo. They had only committed to stay for three months, but Jen was hoping to lure them into a permanent move.

“Your form is a mess,” Shane said, as they sat in the school’s tea shop together after the first day of class. “How much have you been training?”

“Not very much,” Jen said, hiding her face behind her teacup. “Not at all.”

“It shows,” said Shane, raising his eyebrows. His? Jen wasn’t sure, actually.

It had been two and a half years since Jen had last seen her old training partner, and she had steeled herself for the new, male version of Shane. She had wondered whether he would be bigger, heavier, whether he would have a beard, what his voice would sound like, whether his Adam’s apple would protrude.

Jen had been shocked when Shane showed up at her office before the first class looking no different than when Jen had last seen him—or her. Same spiky hair, small face, strong jaw, muscular physique under a bulky shirt that masked any telltale clues. Even after watching Shane lead an entire taekwondo class, Jen still couldn’t tell whether he, or she, had actually gone through with the gender reassignment.

“So, the real thing I need to talk to you about,” Shane said, lowering his or her voice to an embarrassed whisper over his or her teacup, “is whether I can get into the Radical Gender class.”

“Of course you can!” Jen said, surprised that Shane would make it sound like a special favor. “Anyone can take that class.”

“But it started two weeks ago,” Shane said. “I’m going to feel horrible joining late. And I know it must be completely full. I wanted to come out earlier just to start the class on time, but I had to take my last set of finals, and Brittany really wanted to walk at graduation. I would wait until the next session, but I’ve been so excited for that class, I don’t think I can stand to wait. Brittany wants to take it, too, but she said she doesn’t mind waiting if I can get in. It’s actually the main reason we came out here, to take that class.”

Shane gulped his or her tea and wiped his or her mouth with the back of his or her hand. “You know, Ex’s work was one of the main influences on my decision not to make my transition.”

“Oh!” said Jen, relieved that she wouldn’t have to worry about what pronoun to use when the inevitable time came that she needed to refer to Shane in the third person. “Right,” she added feebly.

“You didn’t know?” Shane asked, smiling. “Do I look like I’m taking testosterone?”

“Well,” said Jen, not sure of the correct answer.

Shane laughed. Her high-pitched, melodic giggle sounded as incongruously feminine as ever.

“I guess it might be hard to tell with me,” she said, dropping from her laugh back to her lower, gruffer speaking voice. “But I was taking it for a while, and I started to look really masculine.”

“Why did you stop?” Jen asked. “You didn’t like it?”

“I liked how I looked. It felt great to really be a guy, a real guy, not just a sort-of guy or a halfway-guy like I’ve always felt. People started calling me ‘sir’ in stores and stuff like that, and I was getting kind of a mustache. It was great. But I didn’t like how it felt to take medicine all the time, and to know I’d have to take it for the rest of my life. And then there was the taekwondo.”

“You wouldn’t be able to compete,” Jen said. This had occurred to Jen when Shane first announced her intention to become a man. Jen had been in awe that Shane’s commitment to changing her gender would trump her commitment to her sport; she must really, really want this, Jen had thought.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Shane said. “And at first I thought it didn’t matter. But once it was really happening, I realized how sad I was about it. And I started hanging out with all these radical queer activists from the university and the town. All of them are like obsessed with Ex’s work—Ex is like a rock star to them. And they told me how I didn’t have to change my body to change my gender. I mean, a lot of them do change their bodies, and that’s fine, but I realized there are other options. I can be a boy if I want to, and no one can tell me I have to be a girl, or a traditional type of girl, just because I have a girl’s body.”

Oh, no, Jen thought. Now I don’t know what to call her—him. She searched her memory of the last minute to see if she had referred to Shane as a woman yet.

I should just ask, she realized. That would be much simpler. “So do you want me to call you ‘he’?” You’d have think all my interactions with Ex would have trained me better to be direct about this kind of thing, Jen scolded herself.

“Yeah, I guess I like ‘he.’ My genderqueer friends call me by male pronouns, usually,” Shane said. “And Brittany does. But you could call me either one. Or neither. Or you could go back and forth between he and she. I don’t care either way. I’m just going to accept that I’m somewhere between the usual kind of male and female, and everything is fine just the way it is.”

Shane’s explanation reminded Jen of a similar transformation in thinking that she herself had once undergone, long ago, it seemed. But before Jen could mention this, Shane seemed to guess her thoughts.

“Actually, I’ve been studying some Zen philosophy, too, and that’s helped me a lot. I’ve been looking at who I am, and really trying to see myself and learn to accept it. I’ve been reading these books by Thomas Fo. Master Park recommended them.”

Thomas Fo, Jen thought. What she knew now about Thomas Fo, and even about Master Park, flashed into her mind. She wondered if she should tell Shane, if the true identities of these men even mattered. Of course not, she thought.

“So you’ve been in touch with Master Park?” Jen asked.

“Yeah, I started training with him again,” Shane said. “It was a long drive up from Ann Arbor, so I could only go on the weekends, but I found some people to work out with during the week, and I even did a couple of tournaments. When I told him I was coming out here for a while, he told me to send his regards,” Shane said. “I think he misses you a lot.”

“I miss him, too,” Jen said.

Sitting with Shane like this after a taekwondo class, she missed him all the more, more freshly and immediately. But in the rest of her life, as she ran the school and took classes and wrote and talked to the press and helped with Marie, she still often thought of her old teacher and her old school and of how happy she had been to be a student, a devoted student, with nothing more to worry about but showing up to class and doing her exercises and playing her chess games.

You can’t have a life like that forever, she thought. Eventually, you need to become your own teacher and lead yourself.

She had tried repeatedly to convince Master Park to come teach at the academy. Every time she wrote to invite him, he wrote back congratulating her on her success, but he would never agree to come teach. “I’m not able to at this time,” he would say. “Perhaps someday.”

Everyone else who Jen had invited had eventually come to teach. Paula had signed on right away as the first full-time teacher, teaching yoga classes as well as anything else she wanted. Ex had also joined from the beginning, and the Radical Gender class had quickly become so popular that the center now ran ten sections of it. Jen’s mother had flown out to take Ex’s class, paying for it by teaching her own class on occult sexuality, which Ex in turn had taken.

Nicolai Snail had flown out to teach a three day business seminar. He had wanted to teach a workshop on his new passion, crossbow hunting, and Jen had allowed him to. But she had convinced him, by mustering of every last drop of her persuasive energy, that he would appeal to a wider audience if he could give advice from his position as the founder and CEO of a major national corporation. Though he was reluctant, he seemed thrilled when his seminar was attended by a battery of business leaders, business students, and eager newspaper and magazine reporters (the center did not allow television cameras, though several students were in the process of filming a documentary about it).

Even Vanto Hatch had agreed to come teach a class. His course on memoir writing would start in two-and-a-half months, at the beginning of the next session. Jen, who was just finishing the first draft of her own memoir and getting ready to edit it, was actually looking forward to attending.

The only person who had turned down her invitation was the one she would most like to see, her old teacher and mentor. She had a fantasy where she could fix his life and make him happy. He could move to Los Angeles and teach at the center full-time, and go back to using his real name, whatever it was, and mend his relationship with his children and ex-wife. And it would be okay then that she had hurt him by rejecting his offer to open a school together, and it would be almost as though they had, because he would be part of this thing that she had created, this great thing that she had built up out of nothing through the strength of her own determination and focus.

“So,” Shane had said, finishing his last sip of tea and rising from his seat. “Could you ask Ex if I can join the class late, and tell Ex that I’m really sorry I missed the first two weeks? I mean, do you talk to Ex regularly? Would it be a problem to ask?”

“No, not at all,” said Jen, laughing at Shane’s elevation of this person who was one of Jen’s closest friends. In fact, Ex and Paula had their own office in the center, just across the hall from the office Jen shared with Becky. “I see Ex all the time. I’ll make sure Ex knows you and Brittany will be joining the class late, and I’ll send your apologies. And we should all get together for dinner or something this weekend.”

“Dinner with Ex?” Shane repeated, almost bumping into the counter as he placed his teacup into the plastic bin that held dirty dishes.

“Sure, with you and Brittany and Ex’s partner, Paula,” Jen said. “And maybe my friend Becky will come.”

“Oh my god,” Shane had exclaimed, her voice rising to that of a giddy schoolgirl. She wrapped her arms around Jen, who hugged her back, pleased that it was this easy to make at least one person she cared about happy.

“Brittany is going to freak out,” Shane said.

Sitting at her desk, Jen smiled in spite of the stack of invitations in front of her, which was shrinking at a much slower pace than she would like. Having Shane at the center as a teacher and student was one of her most satisfying accomplishments so far. Now she just needed to work on Master Park. She wasn’t going to give up. She would invite him to teach each time the new session started, every three months, for the rest of her life if necessary.

After that, there was only one other thing that she hoped would happen. This was a thing so important that she couldn’t even say it out loud in her head for fear she would jinx it. One thing she wanted so badly, wishing for it hurt her stomach and made it hard to breathe.

“It’s my girls!” said a booming voice from the doorway. Jen turned and saw Chase walking into the office, followed by his new boyfriend, Winston. Despite his rather nerdy name, Winston was a vision of masculine beauty, the tallest Chinese man Jen had ever seen, with smooth skin and biceps that could barely be contained by the sleeves of his t-shirt, a great sense of humor, and an easy, warm smile. Chase adored him; Jen adored him; Becky adored him; Marie adored him. Everyone adored him. Jen was occasionally jealous of how everyone seemed to love him instantly. That’s not my role in life, to be loved instantly by everyone, Jen would remind herself. That’s Winston’s role.

Chase crossed the room and grabbed Marie off the play mat, hoisting her high over his head. Marie shrieked in excitement. “Hey, careful,” Becky said, rising to save her.

Winston was carrying a stack of mail. “We ran into the mailman on the way up,” he said, handing the stack to Jen.

Most of the mail was for Becky, bills and invoices and press correspondence. She put these into the inbox on Becky’s impossibly tidy desk. But the last piece in the stack had Jen’s name on it.

“It’s from a publisher,” Jen said, her fingers shaking as she ripped a sloppy gash in the envelope.

Chase and Winston were too focused on tossing Marie back and forth between them to hear her.

“What’s that?” Becky asked, coming over to Jen. “Did you say a publisher?”

“Look,” said Jen, waiving the envelope numbly.

“What does it say?” Becky asked, shaking Jen’s arm impatiently.

Jen pulled the letter out and read aloud. “We have reviewed the summary and sample chapters you sent from your book, If You Can Hold This Pose for Three Minutes, You Can Do Anything. At this time, we are interested in meeting with you to discuss publication options. Please contact us at…”

“Chase!” Becky was screaming, jumping up and down, still holding onto Jen’s arm as she jumped. “They want to publish Jen’s memoir!”

And then, like the dramatic final shot of a made-for-TV movie, everyone was there hugging Jen. Chase and Winston and Becky and Marie, all surrounding her in a tight ecstatic huddle, jumping and screaming until Ex and Paula came running over from across the hall to see what was going on, and then they were screaming and jumping and hugging Jen, too.

This is my party, Jen thought to herself, looking at her friends with tears running down her face and a smile so wide it hurt her cheeks. In fact, if this really happened, if this publisher really agreed to take her book, she wouldn’t mind having a real party; she would welcome it. Now, she thought, finally, I’m ready for a celebration.

With her famous name, she had known that somebody would publish the book. But she and Becky had decided to only send proposals to literary presses, ones that wouldn’t try to edit out the book’s complexity to sell it to a larger audience. “It's a long shot,” Becky’s book-editor friend had told Jen when she asked for advice. "Publishing houses like these don't usually do celebrity stuff."

Becky ripped the letter out of Jen’s hand to read it herself. “This sounds serious,” Becky said. “They’re talking about an advance, and working out rights. I’d better come with you to the meeting.” She handed the letter back to Jen. “Sorry,” she said. “I mean if you want me to.”

“Of course I do,” Jen said, squeezing Becky’s hand. She had never been so happy to have a partner in everything—a partner in life.

“Now you just need to shorten that title,” Becky said. “It’s way too long.”

“We’ll see,” Jen said, but it was her title, her very favorite part of the book, and she knew she would never, ever change it, not even for Becky, not for anyone.

Chapter 43