a greatest fear, realized

whenever i get scared about the witch from sleeping beauty visiting me in my dreams i remember that in my dreams i have a gun and that's way more effective than dark magic or anything

When I was a kid, one of my biggest fears was home invasions. I had nightmares about people with complex motives coming from the woods, sneaking up the walls of my childhood house, getting past the doors or the windows or even the chimney, and invading my universe. I pictured them faceless, wearing masks probably? These intruders are public health kings I guess. 

Not sure where this fear came from. Probably from one of those scary email chain messages everyone was sending from like fourth through eighth grade. I thought that creepypasta about the clown statue was horrifying. The intruders in these dreams never did anything specifically terrible. It wasn’t an assault or murder kind of fear, just an entrance thing. I bet Dr. Jennifer Melfi would have something to say about it, but that’s really not the point rn.

I stayed in this weekend because I had a lot of work to do, between prepping an audition and writing new material for our monthly standup show. These are the activities I cling to because, although cliche for an LA-based theatre graduate, they make me feel vindicated in not having found a job just yet. While I was sitting in my room, I realized my neighbors were totally having a party

We’ve never talked to these neighbors. We live in an apartment mostly filled with people way older than us, none of whom we have spoken to at all. I assume we’re the annoying youths of the building and not considered for general companionship. I swear we’ve tried a little. We, being myself and my roommate, Elijah. 

Elijah and I met in acting class at Northwestern and moved out here to do film. I’ve always assumed the city housed 50 million occupant pairs of our exact demographic, but at some point we realized the duo next door were literally our carbon copies. These two guys are a year older, went to NYU, one of them does music and one of them writes or something. We’ve talked like once, and Elijah and I completely arbitrarily decided to not befriend them. Something about it felt way too eerie, and I think as a rule men shouldn’t congregate anyway. These neighbors leave their screen door open constantly; they’re one of only two apartments to do that, which is annoying. The other apartment is ours obviously.

Anyway, they’re having a party, and the music is cool, which sucks because obviously I’m doing nothing right now. Like I’m doing stuff, rehearsing, chasing my dreams or whatever, but they’re having a party. Elijah and I have stipulated that they have more friends than we do. Though maybe it just seems that way because we’re only able to hear them when we’re home, alone, and not doing anything more interesting than listening to our neighbors through concrete and plaster or whatever the buildings in Los Angeles are made of. 

The doors to each of our apartments open up to each other. If anyone wants to get into their apartment, they have to be right by our apartment. As a result, until there’s a knock on either door, it’s often hard to tell if voices from outside the door are meant for our apartment or theirs. And I guess the directions they gave their friends to get into their party weren’t bulletproof, because at one point, some random dude tried to get into our place. He jiggled the doorknob and made some overfamiliar remark in an odd, high-pitched voice. The kind of odd, high-pitched voice you only use when you assume you’re about to walk into your good friends’ apartment, instead of the apartment of me, Rishi Mahesh, the most judgemental 23 year old in the county probably. 

Upon finding that our door knob could withstand even the heartiest of jiggles, he put his face into the window, we made eye contact, and the weird voice he was using died down, turning into a masculine grunt of “Ohsosorry.”

Before this moment, I felt self conscious about sitting alone in my apartment, with no plans on a Saturday night. However, when this random, whimsical dude tried to get into my place, that feeling vanished. I was immediately struck with the memory of my childhood fears, of people defying the borders that I kept up for my safety. Not that I was scared of this guy, I knew it was just some random dude, another carbon copy of myself and my roommate, trying to get into a party that I wasn’t invited to. I know that ultimately, when we made eye contact, the fear I had of being perceived alone on a Saturday night traveled from my eyes into his, and manifested itself in his mind as the equally humiliating notion of just having tried to enter some random guy’s apartment, all while using a quirky voice usually saved for his closest companions. And suddenly, I thank god I’m not that guy. 

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I think the fears I had as a child were more reasonable. Intruders, clown statues, and the evil witch from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty are all genuinely pretty scary. Definitely scarier than not getting invited to a random 24 year old NYU kid’s party. If anything, it would be pretty scary to be 6 years old and TO get invited to some random 24 year old NYU kid’s party. Now that I think about it, they’re super weird and fucked up for trying to invite 6 year old me to their party in my imagination. Another totally valid reason to dislike them that isn’t based on projection or anything. 

If the guy who accidentally tried to get into our apartment while using a weird voice is anything like me, I bet he would’ve taken a moment at the party to diffuse his anxiety, and remind himself that making eye contact with a random stranger who looks on you with disgust as you use a weird voice while trying to enter his apartment was just another blip of cosmic chaos. As distressing yet ultimately inconsequential as a flare on the sun, or the death of a beetle. It didn’t matter to me, and thus shouldn’t matter to him. It definitely would not be important enough to spark eleven paragraphs on Substack. Alas, it’s a scary world.