There was this whole cultural discussion a decade or so ago, maybe longer. People were asked, “If you had the option, which superpower would you choose, the ability to fly, or invisibility?”
Jane immediately thought: invisibility. There was really no question. She didn’t like being in the spotlight. Getting up in front of people to do presentations for work was stuttering, sweaty torture, and even parties were generally un-fun, unless she had a lot to drink. A lot. And now that she was getting older, that was becoming less and less of an option, unless she accepted that she was going to be completely hungover and non-functional the next day, which she could never do with three kids, or at least their three kids. And, while of course she adored her children, that was another reason: it might be nice sometimes to just put in her earplugs, call in sick, go back to bed and literally, for once, disappear. Let her husband have to figure out how to get everyone out the door for once. What a blissful day that would be, one that was never going to happen otherwise, that was for sure. And while she was not that woman who said that she wanted invisibility because she’d be able to go and steal clothes from Dior…well, was that really so awful? The prices were so absurd, and wealth inequality was so unfair, and she worked her ass off. Didn’t she deserve just a few nice things more than they deserved that twenty thousand dollars? They would be absolutely fine, and she would have just a little bit of glamour in her life.
When it turned out that the discussion was not just theoretical but market testing, Jane decided to get the invisibility chip instead of the flight implant, and for a while, she did enjoy it. She could listen in on her husband’s conversations and look over his shoulder on the computer, which reassured her that he wasn’t doing anything untoward, which was honestly a relief, now that their sex life had kind of gone underwater. She could eavesdrop on her boss and find out what he really thought of her, which ended up improving her situation at work quite a bit. At first, she was able to seriously improve in the areas that he complained about, and then, when she realized that wasn’t working out and she was never going to get that promotion with him as her team leader, she saw all the porn he had on his computer and anonymously called in someone from IT. And she got the promotion — in fact, she got his job. She could never bring herself to steal anything — let’s face it, she wasn’t cut out for crime, and her husband would have had too many questions about where the fancy clothes she didn’t need for anything in their life, truly, came from — but it was nice to be able to go browse in that sex and lingerie shop she’d always been too embarrassed to be seen in, to not have to worry about making eye contact on the train, to walk past construction workers on the street without getting catcalled, to be able to just take a breather at an event or a party without having to hide in the bathroom.
But then something happened around the time she turned 40. It had been a while at that point, and the novelty of the thing had worn off, and suddenly being invisible started to make her feel shitty. Like consciously, she knew that people were looking right through her because she was invisible, but on some level, it still made her feel like she wasn’t there. She was still there, she was right there, and yet, she might as well not have been, because nobody saw her. Sometimes she felt like they must have seen that shimmer in the air when she walked through a space, or the curtain move when she brushed past it, surely, or the canapé disappearing from the tray, or the door fucking opening for fuck’s sake, they had to be able to see that! And yet, somehow, it really was like Poof! She was gone. You might say that, well, duh! She’d known that was going to happen, right? Everyone realized that that was what turning invisible was like. But she hadn’t really expected how it was going to actually make her feel so…less than. She’d always thought of herself as a pretty confident person, who didn’t care all that much about her looks, about how people saw her. But whether they saw her? That was turning out to mean something. That was turning out to be a blow to her self-esteem that she had never anticipated.
And then Jane started to notice that it was happening even when she was pretty sure she wasn’t doing it, or at least she didn’t know she was doing it, at least not on purpose. She would look around sometimes and wonder, Wait, am I invisible? Her memory had gotten a little worse in perimenopause, sure, but she was pretty sure that she hadn’t switched it on. And then someone would say hello to her, and she’d be reassured, Okay, phew, it was all in my head. But then it started to happen more and more. Mostly not at home, although there were definitely times when Eli and Tessa seemed to not be able to see or hear her, like when she asked her where the cookies had gone, or told him to put the Gameboy away. Even Mike, occasionally, like when she reminded him pick up O.J. on the way home. And she knew that the chip was not supposed to go active on its own, that absolutely was not how the marketing materials said it was supposed to work! But Jane could let that stuff go as a rare instance of buggy software. Then it started to happen all the time, in public. People shoved brusquely past her in a way that felt new. When she went out at a bar with friends, the bartender clearly could not see her, and neither men nor women were checking her out the way she definitely remembered they had been last time she’d been at a bar, whenever that had been (Before Hannah was born? Really?). Her former-boss’s-boss-now-her-boss would say an idea in a meeting that she had just said as if he had come up with it himself — and everyone else would act like he had!
She tried calling the manufacturer, but that just led to literally hours on hold — and then when a customer representative did pick up, the connection was bad and they couldn’t hear her, and then the system cut her off. She wrote emails and got automated responses thanking her for her feedback, and offering her a $50 Amazon gift card. She even tried talking to her doctor, the one who had put in the chip, but he just looked at her with that patronizing smile of his.
“Anxiety and stress can cause all kinds of symptoms, Jane. Remember, with the acid reflux?”
“Remember? I still have it, it never went away!”
“Oh, well, so there you go. Have you considered going up a little on the Zoloft? Just 25 mg.”
Finally, she just accepted it, like with the acid reflux, and the back pain, and the bags under her eyes that used to only show up when she’d had a poor night’s sleep but now appeared to be permanent: this was how it was going to be from now on. She supposed she should have chosen flying, but was that ever really a choice, given who she was, when she was born, her parents, where she grew up, and everything that had ever happened to her since? Sometimes now she’d fantasize about what it might have been like, soaring through the sky, feeling the wind rush past her, soaking in the admiration of the people around her as she swooped and did loop-de-loops, as if she had been born to all that confidence and daring.
And then she would go steal a latte from Starbucks, and that would make her feel better, until it gave her a stomach ache.
I've been thinking about this ever since hearing John Hodgemen's take on This American Life, but I didn't think to turn it into fiction. Inspired and relatable. I have written about invisible middle-aged women, so that's close. Wonder why this tickles our brains. No I don't, unfortunately -- I totally know why.