Trust Exercise

by Susan Choi

acting was truthful emotions in false circumstances.

as if he’d shrunk to a speck and been swept out to sea on the flood of her unwanted pleasure.

But actors, poorly educated egomaniacs though they may be, understand about power. They’re the reason the circular verb definition—audition: to perform an audition—has become the most popular one: I’m auditioning this weekend, I auditioned for that, I auditioned for him, etc. “Audition” dramatizes the struggle between subject and object, between doing and being done to.

Obsession is an accidental haunting, by a person not aware she’s a ghost. I knew Sarah was my ghost, but she’d forgotten I even existed.

We never know, when life reunites us with someone, how closely our stories will match.