How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life

by Sheila Heti

as Margaux stuffed three oil paintings packed in bubble wrap into her large duffel bag, along with twenty T-shirts. We were only going for three days.

It read as though his life for the past five years had been very well managed, from art school, to his discovery in art school, to his move to Brooklyn and so on, so he was quoted saying of the contemporary art world, “There’s a career track. You get your B.F.A. and then you get your M.F.A. You move to New York, you have a show, and it’s like being a lawyer or something else. And that doesn’t entirely square with the romantic ideal of being an artist, living in isolation and being the avant-garde hero.” When we finished reading

“Be careful,” I told Margaux, since she was so loyal. “Whatever outfit you choose for yourself now, you’ll be wearing for the next three days.”

“That’s amazing!” she said. “God, everyone else is like these automatic windup toys.” “But I feel like other people are seeing and perceiving and synthesizing, and I’m—I’m not doing any of that!” “You’re doing something, boy, let me tell you. I think mainly people have opinions on, Well, what do you think about abortion? Everybody we hang out with is pretty competent at vaguely intelligent party talk, but you say things that help me think better, you know?” I shrugged, but inside was filled with something new, and prayed that what she said was true.

You know, I didn’t realize that you—you can’t really slip on a banana peel unless it’s rotten. Which is what happened to me. SHEILA Was the buttery side down? MARGAUX It was all black, so it was hard to tell.

This is silly and it's my favorite quote

James Joyce He was stupid He didn’t know as much as me I’d rather throw dead batteries at cows Than read him

Margaux and I lay in one of the beds and watched as, on my computer, an heiress gave her boyfriend a hand job.

Then her cell phone rang, and she let go of his dick and threw her body across the bed and answered with a far more convincing show of enthusiasm than she had shown while jiggling his cock. Her boyfriend was scowling now. After fifteen seconds, he said, “Get off your fucking phone.”

Watching her, I felt a kinship; she was just another white girl going through life with her clothes off.

You know, this video totally reminds me of once when I was at a party in Texas. I was about thirteen years old, and there was this girl there who was getting pissed on by these two guys. And she really was the most lost girl.

Then I heard my friend say calmly, “I don’t care about success. I have it in my heart now.”

“So, Margaux,” asked Cappy, chewing, “have any of your paintings sold?” “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so. Maybe. I haven’t asked.”

Returning to Margaux and Cappy, feeling sensitive, I noticed Margaux’s face as she talked to the rich lady. She looked as she always did when she could find no value in a person—an expression so apparent to me, and so painful, for I was sure the rich people could see it, too—a hard, quick look of boredom and dismissal. I felt afraid whenever I saw it, worried that one day she would turn it on me.

“though it’s not like we have zillions of dollars.” As we walked off, Margaux said, “Sure, she has so much money that she has to make up an amount of money that doesn’t exist to say how much money she doesn’t have.”

Fifteen minutes later, tiring of the pool, I beckoned to a man who was sitting nearby. “We need towels!” I cried, and he waved down a hotel man and collected three fluffy towels for us. We swam to the edge, thanking him as we got out. The man smiled and replied, “No problem.” It was Keanu Reeves!

celebrity! I wish we had seen a celebrity I don’t actually defend in public! But I like his work! I seriously have on my profile, like, Werner Herzog, Laurie Anderson, Gertrude Stein, and Keanu Reeves!

Hehe. You have no underpants on. SHEILA I don’t mind. I don’t object. MARGAUX I thought maybe you didn’t know. SHEILA I realize.

He told me, “I

thought about taking those flowers from your desk, just stuffing them in your mouth, and bending you over the desk and fucking you.” They weren’t flowers but mint leaves—a present from Margaux—but I did not say so.

I don’t know why all of you just sit in libraries when you could be fucked by Israel.

beaten up against the headboard—with every jab, your head battered into the headboard. Why are you all reading? I don’t understand this reading business when there is so much fucking to be done.

and fucking your brains right out of your head. I don’t see why you walk down the street so easily, not noticing that you are living half a life—

when there is only one thing in the world to be paying attention to right now, which is that you are not getting your brains fucked out of your skull by Israel, and don’t you think that’s a problem, you stupid, brain-dead slut?

Tuna fish, lady? Do you have no dignity? Is your body a limp half-body?

“You can’t just not email me back after I sent you an email like that!” “I thought you would never want to see me again,” I told her. “Just because I was upset doesn’t mean it’s all over!”

That way, the spider would stay in the bathroom and not crawl into our bed, which would be really disgusting. “Anyway,” she went on, “pretty soon you started to like it. You developed feelings for it. Like, whenever you went to the bathroom, you would look for it, and when you spotted it you’d speak to it. Sometimes it was in the tub, sometimes it was on the ceiling, sometimes it was sitting on the shower curtain. Then, after leaving the bathroom, you would say good-bye and close the door. You ended up becoming pretty affectionate with it.” “It became like a pet,” I offered. “I remember that.”

But keeping it in the bathroom allowed you to love it. Keeping it in there was a sign that you loved it.” “Right.” “Then, on our last night there, we forgot to close the bathroom door—we were so drunk—and in the morning you woke up and it was beside your leg, and without even thinking, you smashed it under your hand.” “I remember,” I said, uneasy. “Well, that’s like you buying the same dress as me. I’m doing a lot, what with letting you tape me, but—boundaries, Sheila. Barriers. We need them. They let you love someone. Otherwise you might kill them.”

A man ran into a bar and began smashing all the beer mugs, throwing them to the floor. The bartender tried to stop him, and so did all the people drinking in the bar, but he was too violent. There was too much rage within him, and it overpowered all the others, who were fearful and afraid.

Would they arrive too soon, before he had a chance to speak? He lifted his head. I want to make an announcement, he said. I have an announcement to make. The man who loves God loves liberty. And as for the rest … license is what they love. Milton! That’s who he had been reading that morning, or the morning before, or before he went on his bender.

A policeman spoke. “Does anyone here know Milton? Has anyone here read Milton?” Ryan said, “I read an introduction to one of his books. I only read the introductions. That’s where all the information is, and that is where it all happens.” I was feeling nauseous.

“Wow,” Ryan said. “I don’t have any traumatic stories like that.”

I will give up pot because it makes me paranoid. But I will stay close to God because he makes me paranoid.

Margaux and I broke from our feelings of austerity with drugs. A good night of drinking and smoking, or a night of doing coke, and the next day, far from being hungover, our brains felt stilled and refreshed. It was like our insides had been set back to 00:00:00. Margaux made the best paintings of her career the morning after we had been drinking for eight hours straight.

She woke at nine and got up, and without thinking or hesitation went straight into her studio and began making paintings.

At one point Ryan tried to talk to us. “No one wants to be friends with you two, and when they see you, they avoid you. Sheila, you

I wanted to take a big pipe and swing it against someone’s throat. I wanted to see their body buckle back and red shoot from their throat like a burst water main. Psychoanalytic drugs.

“We like our drugs for the opposite feeling,” she said, “for the feeling of nullity. Not for the awesome power of the universe.”

I regarded them like deer or any natural phenomena—not designed specifically to please me, but pleasing all the same.

With Anthony, you never knew what you were getting. He was a new man every day.

Yeah! And on the whole it makes you an intellectually more interesting person. The same might be true of sex. It seems very analogous. Like, Oh, it’s really fun to have sex with different people.

Last night, Misha and I were looking at the MacArthur Fellowship website. But I think you have to live in the U.S. to get them. And I think you have to be a genius.

But it was so nice to think that there are these quiet people doing these wonderful things, and that someone tries to notice that. It maybe felt

like a more beautiful illustration of ambition. Or a better kind of ambition. Like not to be a genius, and not to be … 4. Just to do good work … to have potential … to be recognized in your field among other people, as though you’re progressing somewhere collectively, rather than competing.

Sheila’s silver tape recorder and Ben’s silver tape recorder lie opposite each other amid the plates of food like two silver guns.

Just the scale of dependency of women upon men there was shocking. Just to see what it actually means for women to be dependent on men was shocking. And how the men have totally failed— BEN —and how women are doing everything. Everything! SHEILA What do you mean the women are doing everything and the men aren’t doing anything?

I’m interested in meaning, not paintings. Paintings can be pretty meaningless, you know. Like, it’s insane! I want to create complete meaning in art that’s even better than political meaning! And Sholem wants to make the most flawless paintings in the world. And you—you want to be the human ideal! We’re crazy. We all want such big things!

A girl I hardly knew turned to me with a friendly smile, and I grinned widely back.

In the background were cotton balls. Her body was made of shiny porcelain, and jewels and rings crowded her fingers and arms. She sat cross-legged, her peroxide hair falling thinly over her shoulders, and her expression was one of greedy self-satisfaction. It was utterly grotesque. The title, printed on a small card, was Margaux Souvenir. A cold wash ran through my body. Paul laughed, understanding nothing, but I knew how Margaux felt about the world.

turned his back on the suffering of the world to sweeten himself with good feelings—privileged feelings of benevolence and purity, just like her worst fears about what it meant to be a painter.

“I once had a friend in art school, who I shared a studio with. She ran away to become a Buddhist and to live in a Buddhist colony in Colorado. She had been a painter, too, but when I went to visit her, she was just painting pretty colors on the insides of the temples that only the rich people who had reached the highest spiritual plane could see. I always thought that would never be me.”