On Doppelgangers

My first doppelganger was in high school. I found out about her from my high school sweetheart and now x-husband (I think he tried to date her). I never met her. She apparently hated me. I don't even remember her name.

It's true, she looked a lot like me. Same shoulder length blonde hair. Quirky hippish dark haired best friend. (My best friend also had dark longer hair.) I saw her picture once and I was taken aback because I didn't remember the picture being taken. Well, of course I wouldn't - it wasn't me - but it looked very much like me.

I've got two current doppelgangers of a sort. I'll start with the easier one, because she's pretty much out of the picture, although I'm absolutely certain of the life she is living. I lived it. I met her about a year ago, sharing the same birthday month. She was solidly in her LA scene. I was new to LA fresh from subversive SF offerings. We slowly started to spin closer and bump into each other a bit. The small bits of information we exchanged excited us. Wow - what another cool person to meet and know and hang out with. It wasn't that surprising for me to find someone like me - what was surprising was to find _how much_ like me she was. Or how much like her I was. I was excited to plan and do all these cool projects with her. She had the same crazy ideas and executed on them. I dreamt of the crazy shit we'd come up with and create.

But then something happened. Burning Man did its magic. She made a suggestion. I recoiled. But the groundwork had already been laid. She left LA and moved north, into my previous life. We basically switched places. (I’m sure she would fight tooth and nail that sentence, and I would too, if I were her.) She's got her gig up north in Oakland. I know the streets she walks her dog on. I could set her up with my x too. And apparently she hates me too. And life could be stranger.

Oh and it is.

Doppelganger #2 is somewhat well known and in the same industry. At a recent party we both attended, I was much amused when someone I had just met pointed to her and said, "You should dye your hair that color." I could only smirk and laugh uproariously. The subversive circles we spin in are similar if not the same. And like my first doppelganger I've never met her, although we have practically brushed shoulder more than once.

At first I thought D#2 sounded like she had similar interests of mine. Perusing her site reminded me of my conversations with Steven Diet Goeddes in 1998 when I had my first Aeon Flux costume made. I was going to fly down to LA to have him photograph me. That never happened as I was deeply entrenched in my San Francisco world, but it was a nice walk down memory lane. Steve’s gone on to get extremely popular in the more mainstream market, I doubt he remembers my excitement in the plans that fell through. I wouldn't have remembered them. In the past year I have learned about more similarities between our interests, and with each unfolding of the lotus leaf, well, another rosebud of the same color.

At first I was irritated. “How dare she be like me?! I’m unique!” The similarities kept pouring in and my thoughts turned to, “this is too weird, she can’t possibly be copying me. And I’m certainly not copying her.” But that’s all high school society and I’m way beyond that. So what is it then? Well, I’ve evolved to who I am because this is who I want to be. I pick and choose the stuff that appeals to me. Cutting edge, subversive, unique, different and pushing the limit in some way. Maybe she's into that stuff too.

Don’t make the mistake. I don’t hate my doppelgangers. How could I? They are merely reflections of myself in this world. And I’m a reflection of them too. I wonder if she has a copy of aUI: the language of space in her bookshelf? And for the same reasons?

The world is full of so many people, how dare I think I be different – even though I have dared to be different my entire life. But I’m a fragile soul and that’s why I carry this sledgehammer.

And that’s where my favorite doppelganger comes in. We’ve known each other for years, back in our previous San Francisco tech start-up lives, but we never really started spinning close until sometime last year. Unlike the previous three doppelgangers described above we are great friends. We’re spinning in a close orbit around and through each other. Feeding off our joint momentum and adding to it. She’s not a best friend, she’s a reflection of myself, and I am of her.

And those other doppelgangers are also reflections, but I’m not looking into those mirrors.

Comments

[Annika]

Nova is a few years older than me. She and I both moved to the same fairly small town as kids. We went to the same middle school. Years later we went to the same college - a school with average enrollment of 400 students. We never met, but I heard about her everywhere I went. Several times people mistook me for her.

Years later we were both at a funeral.

We've been very good friends ever since. That always surprised me a little bit. We have so much in common that with anyone else I'd expect an antagonistic relationship. But not Nova.