Transcript

799: The Lives of Others

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Prologue: Prologue

Lilly Sullivan

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Lilly Sullivan, sitting in for Ira Glass. A while back, we got an email from a listener in a small town in Utah. He wrote, "It seems like half the town has a huge elementary-school-style crush on a local veterinarian." And I wanted to know, could this be real? So I flew to Utah. And I went to the place people would a local vet, the dog park.

[DOGS YAPPING]

Lilly Sullivan

Hey. Can I ask you guys a question? I'm working on a radio story about a vet who works here in town, named Dr. Artz.

Person 1

Yeah, like Artz, the Heartz Throb?

Lilly Sullivan

I thought it'd take me a long time to assess this. It didn't.

Person 2

I think different women in town thought he was very attractive. That's what I heard.

Person 3

He's very attractive, yes.

Person 4

Everybody talks about the cute vet in town.

Person 5

Everybody says that about him.

Person 6

I'm not into Dr Artz. But I'd say he's looking pretty good.

Person 7

No, he's-- he's hot. But he's not-- he's totally upstanding. He would never-- but yeah, he's hot, for sure. Sorry.

Lilly Sullivan

Did you just say sorry to your husband?

Person 8

Yeah.

Lilly Sullivan

Ex-husband, he whispers at her.

[LAUGHTER]

Most of these people, he wasn't even their vet, though I did talk to someone who knows him as her vet. I'd tell you her name, but she asked that she and her dogs remain anonymous.

Jim's Wife

Everybody knows Dr. Artz is a hunk. I refer to him as McDreamy. He's just so cute.

Lilly Sullivan

Her husband, Jim, was fine with me using his name because Dr. Artz doesn't know who he is because his wife always volunteers to take their dogs to the vet herself-- alone.

Jim

So where I really realized-- I think this is the moment I realized that it was a serious crush. I guess we were dating. We had been dating long enough that we were already living in a house together. And she was at this work training. And she called me. And I was at home. And she said, I need you to log in to my computer because I need you to send over a file that I need for this training. And-- are you OK with me telling this story? OK.

Lilly Sullivan

His wife nods and squeezes her eyes shut. She puts her face in her hands.

Jim

And it's like, OK, cool. And I ask her, I was like, so-- I got into her computer. And I think I had to log into her email. And I was like, so what's your email password? And she goes, oh, shit. I'm like, what's the deal? And she's just waiting. And she's like-- it goes quiet for a moment. She's like, the password is Dr. Artz for life-- like a teenage girl-- doctor, artz, number 4, L-Y-F-E.

Wife

It was not L-Y-F-E. I spelled that part correctly.

Jim

That's how I remember it. And yeah, I just-- I remember I was like, OK, yeah, wow. This is a real crush. This is a-- he was there before I was.

Wife

That's so embarrassing.

Lilly Sullivan

What's embarrassing about it is the amount of time they spend on this. This woman is on group threads with five other people, men and women, all couples, all straight, in happy relationships. One thread, they told me, is 80% dedicated to either Christmas movies or Dr. Artz. They don't know why they do it. The one sidedness, the degree of it all. It confuses even them.

Alissa

It's not a romantic crush. I don't have a romantic crush on our vet.

Lilly Sullivan

This is someone else on the thread, Alissa.

Alissa

But there is something very vulnerable, I think, about admitting that you think about someone more than they would think about you.

Lilly Sullivan

Nonetheless, at this point, the idea of Dr. Artz has become so omnipresent, they built this whole imagined life for him. Here's Jim again, the guy who found his wife's password, who's never actually met or talked to Dr. Artz.

Jim

I picture that he lives on a ranch somewhere and has a couple of horses. Does he? Didn't you tell me, once, about where he lives? No? No? OK, I guess I made that all up in my head.

Lilly Sullivan

Say more. What else? Fill it out. Because if you're picturing it, there's probably more there. Right?

Jim

Yeah, no. He's got a wife and kids. And he lives on a ranch. And he's got horses. He's wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, living on a ranch. Honestly, that's always what I-- did I just put that together in my head, entirely?

Lilly Sullivan

Your imagined version of him lives--

Jim

Yes, the wife part-- I'm pretty sure he does have a wife. Right?

Wife

He is married. Yes.

Lilly Sullivan

How do you know that?

Wife

I'm pretty sure he has a ring on his finger.

Lilly Sullivan

You've looked?

Wife

Yes. I always look. You always look.

Lilly Sullivan

Max McClorey, the guy who first wrote us about all this, had his own image.

Max McClorey

It's this-- him, tending to a stove-top percolator, and--

Lilly Sullivan

This is so specific.

Max McClorey

Yeah, right? My mind just immediately went to this. And then walking out, to watch the sunrise on his porch in like a flannel jacket kind of thing. And that's probably super off base. He probably has a Keurig. I have no idea.

But yeah, I've got just this image of him in a cabin, basically. It would be out of character for him to not watch the sunrise with a cup of coffee that probably has some coffee grounds in it. You know?

[LAUGHTER]

Like, he rides a motorcycle, which again, is he going to like throw his bag on his motorcycle and ride through the countryside with the wind in his hair to go save a horse or something?

Lilly Sullivan

And this is what I'm here to talk about today. I totally understand this thing they're doing, putting so much thought into someone who's basically a stranger, something I do too, that I think lots of us do, but never really name.

I've never been the most social person on Earth. My natural state seems to be to spend a lot of time alone. But it wasn't until COVID and the prolonged isolation that I started noticing that sometimes random people would walk through my mind, people I had no reason to be thinking about.

And my mind would just perch there, watching them, for a little while. Nothing loaded, it wasn't a crushy feeling. It's weirdly neutral, actually. I just hover in that scene for a moment. For me, it's usually this person who I really don't know very well.

I knew her in college. She doesn't live near me. But sometimes, fairly often, I'll picture her just washing dishes in her house, sunlight pouring onto the sink, which I picture is white, even though I can't remember if that's right. There's warm, running water, suds, a few water glasses.

The images are like a little coffee break from my own life, where I try on hers for size. It feels nice there, peaceful, and rooted, which aren't feelings I feel a ton of in my own life. She does not know that I do this. And I never want her to find out.

Today on our show, we lean into this thing that is so awkward that we usually turn away from it. We're calling it the lives of others. I don't know why I do this. But I think it's something so common. So let's talk about it. First stop, Dr. Artz. Does he have any idea how much he's taken over people's brains? Stay with us.

Act One: So…I Hear You’re Hot

Lilly Sullivan

Act One, So, I Hear You're Hot. I drove out to Dr. Artz's house on a sunny winter day, on what I have to say is probably the most cringey assignment I've ever had. And when my GPS told me to turn left off the highway, I got my first unexpected sign, a literal sign, as I entered the driveway. "Lost River Ranch," it read, carved in metal, mounted between two columns of piled boulders. A ranch, just like Jim had imagined.

I drove down the mountain, past a Jeep Wrangler, an electric blue pickup, past the motorcycles. And then I saw it, cresting atop the hill, a beautiful log cabin. And I met Dr. Artz, or as he calls himself, John.

Lilly Sullivan

Hi.

John Artz

What's happening? You know, you already got that thing rolling, huh?

Lilly Sullivan

Yeah, we were just chatting. It's good to see you.

John Artz

You, as well, you as well.

Lilly Sullivan

Let's just get this out of the way. What does Dr. John Artz look like? There's this Paul Newman thing going on--

John Artz

I mean, we're done--

Lilly Sullivan

--salt-and-pepper hair, hazel eyes that one could accurately characterize as soul piercing. But what you notice most is the way you're hit with a force field of magnetic kindness. And can I just say, there's no normal way to go up to someone and say, professionally, were you aware that everyone has a crush on you?

John Artz

Yeah, yeah.

Lilly Sullivan

I stumbled through it.

Lilly Sullivan

And-- um-- I'm curious. I guess-- so--

I'm doing my best. OK?

Lilly Sullivan

The thing that I said in my email is, everyone really likes you, says you're amazing with animals, amazing with people. And the thing that I haven't said yet is that there's a bit of-- there's a town-wide crush--

[LAUGHTER]

--that people talk about with you.

John Artz

Right.

Lilly Sullivan

But yeah.

Dr. Artz didn't blink an eye. It wasn't news to him.

John Artz

Well, I think I knew somewhat. And again, it wasn't a constant part of my life. But for instance, where my now-wife used to work, when we started dating, I'd go in to see my wife and have a beer.

Lilly Sullivan

His wife worked at a brew pub in town.

John Artz

And the manager would come up and sit next to me, and put her arm around me, jokingly, like, our book club last night turned into a conversation about you. So I would get that occasionally-- or whatever.

Lilly Sullivan

Sometimes clients would leave little notes with his receptionist, things like that.

John Artz

And most of it's just flattering and harmless and innocent, for sure. But I was appreciative and flattered, yeah, certainly. But that was-- a few people would tell me things like that. And I never extrapolated it to being the whole town was talking about me or anything. I didn't let my imagination run wild by any means.

Lilly Sullivan

Oh, no, no. Of course not. Who would ever do something like that? I told him more about how people imagined him.

Lilly Sullivan

And the answer I got was-- this is going to sound crazy, but the picture I have is tending to a stove-top coffee percolator, and taking it out to the porch to like watch the sunrise, in a flannel.

John Artz

If you look behind me, you just described me, actually. And I love percolators. That's funny.

Lilly Sullivan

Are you serious?

John Artz

Oh, my god, that's my favorite. I had my grandmother's four-cup percolator all through vet school. And so my wife and I just bought-- and this is-- we bought a coffee pot. We needed to get new stuff. And I bought a 12-cup percolator. And I just can't master it the way I had that 4-cup.

Lilly Sullivan

So all those things I thought-- ranch, check. Cabin, check. Coffee percolator, check. Flannel, check. Motorcycle-- I'm going to say double check because he goes on long rides alone in the desert. Horses-- OK, no horses. But he has worked as a wrangler in Montana. And watching the sunrise from his porch-- well, his porch face is west, not east.

John Artz

And so not sunrise-- they're close-- but sunset is my big thing. And I have a sunset tune, released by Pearl Jam. Sunsets here are incredible, right over that ridge, right there.

Lilly Sullivan

Oh, my god, yeah, you're pointing--

John Artz

They are absolutely incredible.

Lilly Sullivan

And again, I don't know quite how to say this professionally, but this entire gazing up on the snow-kissed ridge thing-- as a reporter, I can report that is an objectively hot scenario.

Lilly Sullivan

Yeah, I laughed when they said that because I was like, that's not how anyone lives. But as I'm looking out, you're pointing at snow-covered mountains. And this is a log cabin and a porch.

John Artz

Yeah, yeah. And the reservoir's right there. It is absolutely amazing, absolutely amazing.

Lilly Sullivan

I was honestly floored that they got it so close. To me, that had seemed like the least likely possible outcome of all of this. Though to everyone in town, he was a fantasy person. So they invented a life that was perfect enough for this perfect person, which of course, left so much out. For instance, Dr. Artz is funny. And he likes dorky things, like Waiting for Guffman and Monty Python, which he quotes freely and regularly.

John Artz

And we will call him Tim.

Lilly Sullivan

Tim.

[LAUGHTER]

See?

Also, no one in town knew the most important thing in his life right now, which is that he's leaving. When I talked to him, he already had his house almost entirely packed up. He hadn't told many clients yet. But his wife and three dogs were already gone. He's moving back to Pittsburgh, his hometown. His mom's getting older. And he didn't like her being alone so much. In fact, they just had a scare. And he was about to get on a red eye.

John Artz

Luckily-- I thought I was going straight to the hospital. But my mom-- my wife's with her right now. They discharged her. So I'll probably just go over and say, hi, Mom, and fall asleep on her chair-- in her chair or something.

Lilly Sullivan

Are you guys close?

John Artz

Oh, very. Yes. I want to move home as much as possible, as soon as possible, because my mother-- she's 88. So you've got to take every day. I want to be there every day I possibly can.

Lilly Sullivan

Before I left, I asked him the question so many people in town had asked me. Does Dr. Artz have a Dr. Artz? Does he do this too? And he was very polite, and tried so hard to say yes, really tried to put me at ease and say that I wasn't a weirdo, that no one in town was a creep, that it's totally human and that of course he does this. But the only example he could come up with was this.

John Artz

I remember just me and my buddy talking. And we got fixated on some guy's belt. I think he was wearing a belt in a hot tub. And so--

Lilly Sullivan

He was wearing a belt in a hot tub?

John Artz

You know, like shorts. Maybe he didn't have a bathing suit. So he had a belt on with his shorts. And we-- literally, it was a half hour, talking about when he bought that belt and what that belt meant to him. And then the story went way beyond that belt.

Lilly Sullivan

It was a good effort. But I think it's not the same thing. When he's drinking his coffee and staring at the amazing sunset from his cabin, I do not think he's thinking about that guy in the hot tub. Maybe that's the difference between doctor Artz and the rest of us. Some of us spend a lot of time thinking about people we don't know. And some of us are the thought about.

Act Two: Who Is Sarah Blust?

Lilly Sullivan

Act Two, Who is Sarah Blust? So maybe some of us spend a weird amount of energy thinking about people we barely know. But rarely then, do we go up to those same people and get to know them, and test the reality of whatever fantasy we have of them. But in our next story, that's exactly what happens. It comes from producer Alix Spiegel.

Alix Spiegel

This is a little weird. But it's going to be OK.

Sarah Blust

It's going to be OK.

Alix Spiegel

Yeah.

It's never easy for me to interview people I'm close to. So usually I try hard to avoid it. But a little while ago, I sat down with one of my dearest friends, Sarah Blust, to talk about something that happened to her when we were younger. A story that I've recently come to see in a totally new way, as not just a story about a strange thing that happened, but also as a good example of the way stories -- the ones we tell about ourselves and others we imagine -- can bend our lives in odd directions.

Alix Spiegel

I was thinking about how this is such a crazy story. But I never, ever thought of it as a story because I just experienced it as--

Sarah Blust

Our lives.

Alix Spiegel

--our lives. Yes.

I met Sarah my first year of college. We ate at the same place at Oberlin, a small house on campus called Keep. I was immediately drawn to Sarah, I think because I saw her as my opposite. To me, Sarah seemed like a red-headed gush of uncomplicated joy, music, and glitter, a free and easy person who was up for anything.

I saw myself as the mirror opposite. There was nothing free or easy about me. I was hell bent, so on a mission to remake myself that I was oblivious to many of the parts of college life that preoccupied my peers, including, as Sarah was maybe a little quick to point out, hygiene.

Sarah Blust

You wore the same thing every day.

Alix Spiegel

Did I, really?

Sarah Blust

Yeah.

Alix Spiegel

What did I wear?

Sarah Blust

You wore this brownish sweatshirt that had a lot of holes in it. And you always had a backpack that was full of books because you were always going to the library. And apparently I was always the one who was not square. I was hippie, whatever comes-- whatever happens, happens. I'll go with the flow. And then Alix was like, what the hell are you doing?

Alix Spiegel

I could not go with the flow, not even a little, because of violin. The short version is that for a variety of reasons, my mother decided, when I was five, that I would become a world-famous solo violinist. But inconveniently for me, world-famous solo violinist is a field which involves ridiculous amounts of practice, three to six hours a day on top of school and homework.

I quit as soon as I got to college. But the whole violin thing meant that a sizable portion of my childhood was spent alone, in a practice room, with, as my brother likes to joke, nothing but the cinder blocks for friends.

And then there was Sarah. The last of three sisters, she'd grown up surrounded by people, and so had this easy way with them. Sarah was the kind of person who would literally brighten at the sight of someone, almost no matter who that person was, I remember thinking. And it felt like fun just inevitably found her.

For example, there was a brief time, in our 30s, when we both lived in New York City. And I remember one random Tuesday, after work, I happened to meet up with Sarah for dinner. And I asked how her day was. Sarah explained what, for her, had been a fairly typical day.

And though I don't remember the details, I vividly remembered the sentence that went through my head immediately after hearing it. Why do I never end up on a pirate ship in the middle of the Hudson River? During that time period, a sentence like that probably went through my head two out of every five times I talked to Sarah. So I think that's all the Sarah Blust context you need to appreciate the story you're about to hear.

Sarah Blust

This particular story, I guess, starts at my 10-year reunion. Yeah.

Alix Spiegel

In 2004, about 10 years after we graduated, Sarah and a couple of her female friends decided to return to campus for their reunion. They weren't going in an overly-earnest, I miss my college kind of way. I think this was half ironic.

Sarah Blust

And I think somehow, one of us had found out about a party, a party that was being held by actual seniors. And we went.

Alix Spiegel

And you went in the spirit of what? Was: it like, we're clowning, we're crashing?

Sarah Blust

Yeah, I think it was total party crashing. It was also hilarious to be hanging out with, I guess what we thought of as kids, 10 years younger. But it felt so familiar. It's exactly what we wanted because it was like being at Oberlin again. It was that feel.

Alix Spiegel

So they make their way to this off-campus house where music is blaring and a large number of alcohol-drenched college students are littered across the lawn.

Sarah Blust

And I remember we hung out a lot in the backyard because we felt a little bit out of place. And then finally, we met-- I was hanging out in the house proper. And there was this really fun dance floor happening. I feel like-- it was almost like the crowds parted in a certain way. And this kid, this guy, comes over. And from what I remember, he basically ordered me to dance. It was like, dance floor, now.

Alix Spiegel

Now this is Sarah Blust, we're talking about.

Sarah Blust

I was not one to say no. So--

Alix Spiegel

Besides, this guy, whoever he was, was attractive.

Sarah Blust

He was really cute. And he had dark hair and pretty eyes, and little shorter than me. And definitely a senior.

Alix Spiegel

What do you mean, definitely a senior?

Sarah Blust

Well, he was certainly a college student. And I think at that point, I was feeling so different because I'd been living in New York City for 10 years and had charted my own way.

Alix Spiegel

I don't want you to get the wrong idea about Sarah. She's not the kind of person who typically flirts with random college seniors. Today, she's the director of two sexual and reproductive health clinics in New York. And she was well on her way to becoming the director of two reproductive health clinics by the time of the reunion. So she wasn't exactly itching to take a college kid seriously.

Sarah Blust

But wow, he was really super nice. And it's really, really fun. So yeah, so we danced, and danced. And then it was getting to that awkward part of the party, where the beer is gone.

Alix Spiegel

Fortunately Dan-- that was the guy's actual name, Dan-- had the foresight to stow an emergency six pack in his room.

Sarah Blust

And so we ended up going up to his room and hanging out. And--

Alix Spiegel

Discreet fade to black.

[LAUGHTER]

Alix Spiegel

OK, so then what happened?

Sarah Blust

So then the morning came. It was brutal. I was totally hung over. And we couldn't dally because his parents were about to arrive because it was his graduation. So we're getting it all together preparing to get out the house.

And yeah, and then at a certain point he said, so Sarah, what's your last name, which was kind of funny because we had spent all this time together. But right, he was Dan. I was Sarah. We didn't know anything else, really, about each other.

And so I said Blust. Sarah Blust. And he like completely flips. He completely flips out. And I just remember him-- he did this thing when he jumped out of bed. And he was like, oh, my god, oh, my god, oh, my god.

I thought, did I just sleep with my brother?

[LAUGHS]

I'm like, am I related because he hears my last name and he freaks out. So I'm like, what is going on?

Dan

It felt like the room had tilted, like just the world had just tilted all of a sudden.

Alix Spiegel

This, of course, is Dan, the cute, kind senior who lured my friend, Sarah, to his room with promises of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He confirms that when he first heard the name Sarah Blust, he pretty much lost his mind and started screaming at the top of his lungs.

Dan

And I'm like, Sarah, you're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe this. I have to tell you this story, the story within the story.

Alix Spiegel

Dan's story starts at Keep Cottage, the same place I met Sarah my first year at Oberlin. Dan, as a freshman, had lived there too. And he says one day, he was hanging out in the lounge, on the ground floor.

Dan

And there were bookshelves. And on the bookshelves were old photo albums, old books, old textbooks that people had left behind.

Alix Spiegel

So Dan picks up one of the photo albums.

Dan

These were all people who had lived in Keep before, some time in the distant past. And I was just flipping through and just looking at them, and just started to wonder what their lives were like. Did they do the same thing that I was doing then, like sitting in the lounge and waiting for people to come and distract them?

Alix Spiegel

All those other lives-- what were those other people like?

Dan

There was one photograph that stuck out to me. And I can't say-- I never really could put my finger on why that particular photo stuck out to me. But it was a girl, looking a little bit, maybe, dazed, in the foreground, and a guy, sitting on a bed, not looking at the camera, in the background. And I said, I want to know who this person is. I wonder what her life was like.

Alix Spiegel

Luckily, the photo contained additional information. There was a name on the back.

Dan

Sarah Blust.

So I pulled the photograph out of the photo album. I brought it upstairs. And I sat down at my computer. And instead of doing my homework, I wrote a brief, short story, a one-page story, about the person in the photograph.

Alix Spiegel

I know this sounds a little unusual. It is a little unusual. But Dan made up a whole fictional story about a redhead named Sarah Blust, someone with two sisters, like the real Sarah Blust, who, like the real Sarah, goes to college and maybe smokes a little too much weed.

Now Dan hadn't seen this story since graduation. But we were actually able to retrieve a copy from the carcass of his 20-year-old candy-blue Apple computer, due to the superhuman efforts of a San Francisco-based computer expert named Mitch. Thanks, Mitch.

Anyway, the main focus of Dan's story is Sarah's involvement with this fictional guy named Matt. Throughout the story, Sarah and Matt circle each other, drawn, but not quite sure what to make of the strange connection they feel. And in the end, they don't end up together. In Dan's imagination, it's this made-up character, Matt, who takes the photo that he found. Here's the last paragraph.

Dan

"Two weeks before the school year broke into summer vacation, Matt came and knocked on Sarah's door in Keep. He brought with him this picture, and gave it to her. That day, he told her that he really cared about her and wanted to see her more often. She held on to the picture all summer, keeping it as a memento of Matt and her tragic love. She did not realize this picture was in storage when she moved out. She now and then thinks of Matt on her way to work or when playing with the kids. She wonders where this picture is. Little does she know, it is on the wall of Keep Cottage."

[LAUGHS]

Oh, my god. That is insane.

Alix Spiegel

Had you ever done anything like that before? Or was there something in this person, in this photo?

Dan

Hmm. At the time, it really felt like a random act, like I was just doing something to amuse myself at random.

Alix Spiegel

And Dan didn't just write a story about Sarah Blust. He also posted said story, of Sara Blust, with her photo, on the door of his room, where it stayed until the end of the school year, at which point, Dan says, it went into a trash can. And he never, ever thought of it again.

Dan

At all, until commencement week, when I met Sarah Blust, who was standing in my room.

Sarah Blust

I was like, you are fucking kidding me.

[LAUGHS]

I did not believe a word he was saying. But--

Alix Spiegel

Did you actually not believe a word he was saying?

Sarah Blust

I could believe it but it just-- I wasn't believing it. I was believing it and not at the same time, if that's possible. And he said no, it's real. And he pulls out his laptop. And he opens it up. And he points to this file that has my name on it.

And I almost lost my mind. How is it possible that you meet someone for the first time, and they have a story about you, a file with your name on it?

Alix Spiegel

On their computer.

Sarah Blust

On their computer. What is that?

Alix Spiegel

Now I want to pause for a second because what I'm interested in is the stories people tell themselves. So I want to map their stories at each stage. For Dan, what had happened between him and Sarah the night before his graduation was very unambiguous. This was solid, one-night-stand territory. Yes, he had asked for Sarah's last name. But it wasn't for particularly sentimental reasons.

Alix Spiegel

Was it just like, I have to be a gentleman, I should know both of the names of the women I sleep with? Or was it, I'm going to stalk her so last names would be helpful.

Dan

I thought, maybe we can hang out again and--

Alix Spiegel

Maybe you can get lucky twice.

Dan

Exactly.

Alix Spiegel

Sarah felt the exact same way. She thought, very reasonably, that Dan was incredibly young and had a lot of growing to do. So thank you, no thank you.

Dan had post-graduation plans. The kind of post-graduation plans parents approve of, about maybe going to medical school and becoming a doctor, and-- oh, yeah, that's right. He had a gig starting in the fall.

Dan

Well, I was going to go into the Peace Corps and do public-health work. I had been assigned to go to Central Asia.

Alix Spiegel

Were you excited about that plan?

Dan

I was. I was very excited about that plan.

Alix Spiegel

But on the car ride home, Dan started thinking about what had happened. Objectively, it was just crazy. Dan only had scraps of information about this person, Sarah Blust, this person he had first imagined when he was a freshman, staring at her photo.

He knew that she was in public health, as was he, she was a good dancer, as was he. And he took these scraps, and as we inevitably do, started weaving them into a story, a new story, one with an impressive series of coincidences that, when you stepped back, did look a lot like fate.

Dan

I remember there was this-- I remember that the sun was setting. And I was driving into the sunset. And the thought just entered-- occurred to me. I was like, I'm going the wrong way. I need to drop out of the Peace Corps and move to New York.

Alix Spiegel

I have to go and see this woman?

Dan

Yeah.

Alix Spiegel

Now I don't want to seem like I'm judging Dan for changing the whole course of his life based on what was really pretty slim evidence plus one coincidence. I understand the lure of the story he was taken with. And I, myself, obsessively tell stories as a way to navigate the world. I'm the queen of hopeful projection.

This strange, feverish storytelling started when I was young, a habit I picked up in the practice room as a way to escape. I would walk in little circles and make up stories about myself and other people. In college, I did this almost every day. I'd walk in little circles for hours, usually until my legs ached.

Like Dan, I was extrapolating from what really happened to what I hoped would happen in the future. Say I'd have some small encounter. Maybe a teacher would offer a kind word. Maybe a boy would nod in my direction. And my imagination would take it from there, build a whole life on those scraps. In my mind, I'd visualize the look of the teacher as they offered me the selective internship that would lead to a dazzling career in public policy or law or, for a very brief period during my senior year, silk screening.

Of course, I always kept this little-circles habit secret from everyone. I was aware it was not normal behavior. The one person who knew about it was Sarah. When we lived together in college, she accidentally discovered it.

Sarah Blust

I was probably reading a book or doing some homework. And I heard this creak, creak, creak. And it was just over and over and over and over again. And it took me a while to realize what it was. And then I realized it was you.

Alix Spiegel

But Sarah didn't seem to mind, didn't seem to think I was a freak at all. In fact, the opposite.

Sarah Blust

I don't know, personally, I found it really endearing. Yeah.

Alix Spiegel

Thing is, as I've gotten older, I've grown more wary of this kind of storytelling, conscious of how often the stories we tell ourselves lead us down the wrong path.

Dan

I remember that the sun was setting. And I was driving into the sunset. And the thought just entered-- occurred to me. I was like, I'm going the wrong way.

Alix Spiegel

What happened with Dan and Sarah, the wild serendipity of it, gave it the silhouette of one of the most popular stories in American life, the fated love story. I think the fated love story, and the idea that romantic love is the one relationship that can fulfill you, has a unique weight and primacy. It's the kind of story that displaces other stories, easily sweeps them aside, which is what happened with Dan.

He dropped out of the Peace Corps, drove to New York, and instead of working in public health, got a job at the Stereo Exchange in Manhattan. On his way to this unglamorous new life, he wrote Sarah an email, framing his new plan in the most casual, non-threatening, just happened to be dropping everything and moving to your city way possible.

Sarah responded with, whoa, that's a lot. Not sure about that. Dan then responded, understand. Seems reasonable. I'm aware I don't really know you. All I'm saying is that we should go on some dates. See what happens.

Sarah told me about all of this at the time. And honestly, I was pro. She'd had a string of boyfriends who didn't seem like good partner material. And I could tell right away that Dan was solid, which from the perspective of the anxious friend, was a relief. Sarah also saw that Dan was a good guy with good values. And she thought he was fun. But she obviously had real reservations.

Sarah Blust

I liked him a lot. I felt like there was this really incredible connection. But I was also terrified that I had this responsibility for changing someone's life so drastically.

Alix Spiegel

Did it feel like he was actually seeing you? Or did you feel like, you don't even know who I-- this is just a projection?

Sarah Blust

I think it was both. I think it was both. Yeah, I think I thought that he didn't really know what he was getting into.

Alix Spiegel

Particularly, what he was getting into in one significant way. Sarah was past 30 and was very clear she wanted children.

Sarah Blust

I was in this moment of thinking about kids, I suppose. And so I had-- I couldn't believe that I could enter into a relationship with someone just coming out of college. But there was a real understanding that the two of us had with each other.

Alix Spiegel

Dan hadn't been planning on having kids so early. But he had been planning on having kids. And he felt like the most important thing was to find the right partner. And if that turned out to be Sarah, he was game. So they decided to go on some dates.

Their first was a bar in Red Hook that Sarah picked. Then there was the date at the roller rink, where Dan broke out what they both agree were truly killer moves. They had this comfortable vibe. And it was really easy to talk. Really, there was just one problem with this whole situation for Dan.

You see, Sarah Blust, like the rest of us, was nursing her own romantic story. And the other person she was imagining didn't look anything like Dan because her hopes centered so squarely on music.

Music has always been critical to Sarah. She plays the drums, but also guitar, and sings. In fact, music is what brought us together. Our first year of college, we founded an alternative girl band called Succubus, which played all four years. After college, Sarah went on to other bands, many, because music just lights Sarah up.

Alix Spiegel

In your mind, at that time, what was the romantic fantasy that you were imagining?

Sarah Blust

Oh, it was so sparkly. Being in a band with someone that I loved and play amazing music, and that we would just have this incredible, creative life together.

Alix Spiegel

This, of course, is a common romantic fantasy which, like Dan's, "we are fated for each other" fantasy, doesn't always work out well. Unfortunately, for Dan's version of the fantasy, one day, several months after his arrival, Sarah Blust went to a concert, the show of a moderately famous indie band she'd long admired. And the drummer became quite smitten with Sarah, as she was with him.

Sarah Blust

And he pulled me in to a community that I was in awe of, I guess. I was really starstruck.

Alix Spiegel

Poor Dan didn't stand a chance. He was science, not music. And the new guy, the drummer, in addition to being closer in age to Sarah, he was just as enthusiastic about their coming future.

Sarah Blust

He was very much like, we're going to make this happen. He lived in Philadelphia at the time.

Alix Spiegel

Did he moved to New York to be with you too?

Sarah Blust

Yes.

Alix Spiegel

Oh, my god. Are you fucking kidding me?

Sarah Blust

No. He moved to New York. And he moved in with me.

Alix Spiegel

Oh, shit. I totally somehow missed that. Wait a second. So you had two people moved to New York for you?

Sarah Blust

I guess so.

Alix Spiegel

How come nobody ever moves to New York for me?

[LAUGHTER]

Put it another way, why do I never end up on a pirate ship in the middle of the Hudson River?

In the interest of journalistic transparency, I will tell you that I was extremely and correctly anti drummer from the beginning. I was firmly team Dan. I made this case to Sarah repeatedly, as is my practice. But in that moment, she was too taken by the story that she carried in her head.

Sarah Blust

--kind of musician partner that I was supposed to be with, that was just getting in the way of me appreciating Dan. Yeah. I guess I just wasn't feeling it. I guess I just wasn't feeling it.

Dan

I just remember there was a fading out. I think she had a boy-- she got a-- had a boyfriend. That made it pretty clear.

Alix Spiegel

After about a year of hanging out on the sidelines, Dan gave up and moved on. Eventually he did become a doctor. Today he's a professor of medicine. He specializes in HIV and AIDS.

20 years on, it's clear that the story he constructed on his ride home from college wasn't true. But he says, in that story, he discovered a useful lesson that he carried forward, and that shaped, he says, his behavior when he finally met his wife.

Dan

I think part of what I had learned from my experience with Sarah was that you can build this whole fantasy world about someone, have these romantic ideas. And then reality can be very different. And I think that was something I had learned, and learned to be cautious of in myself.

Alix Spiegel

Do you have any regrets?

Dan

No.

Alix Spiegel

Do you ever think of Sarah? Do you ever think, oh, maybe that could have worked under slightly different circumstances?

Dan

Not really, not since I met my wife.

Alix Spiegel

As for Sarah, like Dan, she's married and has a beautiful kid, with the same red hair and joy as his mother. But she'll tell you, straight up, that there were moments during her single life when she really regretted that she didn't see the great person standing in front of her.

She says she saw Dan as this 23-year-old kid, but now feels like he was actually probably more mature than she was. In fact, she's kind of like the Sarah Blust in the story that Dan wrote before they met. That Sarah Blust didn't end up with the guy from Keep, but every once in a while, remembers him.

Alix Spiegel

What's the thing that you learned from this? Or what is the-- yeah.

[LAUGHTER]

Sarah Blust

Well, I think that when you're presented, in life, with something that seems like a gift, even if you have other preconceived notions, maybe you're wrong. The story that I was telling myself about who my perfect partner should be or would be, that wasn't really a story that was helpful to me.

Alix Spiegel

I guess that's the cue for sad music to play. But on the other hand, isn't that also a story that might not be true? Maybe if Sarah had chosen Dan, I'd be here telling you a different version, one where Dan, confronted with the reality of actual babies in his 20s, bolts the scene. That's the whole damn thing about stories though, isn't it? You can never tell if one is true or not. And there's always a new one beckoning.

But here's the thing. I am the one who is telling this story. So I can tell it however I want. And I don't want to end it with a sad soundtrack because as Sarah would tell you, she doesn't feel sad. Sarah's soundtrack is punk and pop and marching bands and lullabies and sure, some sad core. But every life has some sad core.

Speaking of music, I'll leave you with this, a song from the back catalog of Succubus, the band Sarah and I started our freshman year. She played the drums with her eyes closed. I played a green electric guitar. Together, we blazed a trail of punk-rock glory across North Central Ohio.

Lilly Sullivan

Alix Spiegel, she's a producer on our show.

Coming up, strangers come into your house, look at all your stuff, size you up. They think they know you. How close can they get? That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Act Three: If These Dogs Could Talk

Lilly Sullivan

It's This American Life. I'm Lilly Sullivan, sitting in for Ira Glass. Our show today, The Lives of Others, stories about when you find yourself thinking about people you barely know or don't know at all.

In putting together this week's show, I was thinking a lot about the film, The Lives of Others, a movie about East Berlin before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's about a Stasi agent, whose job it is to spy on a playwright.

Agent

[SPEAKING GERMAN].

Lilly Sullivan

For most of it, you watch the Stasi agent, whose life is bare, austere, alone, as he listens in on the life of this playwright, whose life is full of art, beauty, sadness. You watch the agent, in headphones, eavesdropping on the apartment he's bugged. He reads the book the playwright reads, listens to the most personal conversations with his girlfriend. And he starts to become moved by the playwright's life.

The agent, who you always see listening in alone, in a dark room, comes to care for the writer, to the point where he eventually tries to protect him. What I remember most about the film is the ache, the sense of longing, and the distances there always are between people. But then there are these moments where there can be this portal of emotion from your life to someone else's.

There are other jobs where thinking about someone else's life is just built into it. We're wondering what that's like in jobs with much lower stakes than being a government spy, like pet sitting That's what act Three's about. One of our other producers here, Aviva DeKornfeld, realized pet sitting is a job just like that. She talked to a dozen pet sitters, who confirmed it, and has this story about two of them. We're calling this act, If These Dogs Could Talk. Here's Aviva.

Aviva DeKornfeld

With most jobs, you have some sort of relationship with the person you work for. You see them in the office or wherever it is you work. But pet sitting is one of the few jobs where you're only there if the other person isn't there. The job is to cosplay as the pet owner.

L

Yeah, most of them have me sleep in their beds because they want the routine of, wherever the dogs sleep, they want me to sleep with them. So I'm sleeping in their beds, in their bedroom. I'm cooking in their kitchen. I'm messing with all the algorithms on their streaming services.

Aviva DeKornfeld

This is L. She started pet sitting a couple of years ago. And she made a point to tell me she never snoops. In fact, she asks people to leave everything she'll need out on the counter so she doesn't have to go looking for anything. But even without snooping, so much of the pet owners private life is so nakedly on display, what they watch on Netflix, what they have on their fridge. You can't help but glean bits of information about the person you're standing in for.

L

There's a young couple. And I think they want to read. They always have the book on both nightstands. But I've never seen either bookmark move. And sometimes the stack of books get higher. But they never go lower.

Aviva DeKornfeld

L ambiently wonders about all her clients. Mostly she's in it for the dogs. But there was one client, in particular, that she found herself thinking about because her house felt different than the others.

L

There were two huge gaming setups so it looked like they either gamed next to each other or with each other. It just felt very copacetic. It felt like they really were suited for each other.

Aviva DeKornfeld

This togetherness, side-by-side gaming, is not typical. L sat for another couple, where the guy had his music room, the woman, and her crafting table, very separate hobbies. That's way more common, she says. L also like how much this couple seemed to prioritize comfort.

L

Their sofa was basically just giant pillows, down pillows. So it was just like basically a giant bed. And for me, I was like, oh, that just felt really romantic. They couldn't help but melt into each other.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Just to be clear, L's never met the husband, never seen the two of them together. She has no idea what they're like as a couple. But she'd like to imagine them sitting on their big, comfy couch, chatting agreeably, deciding what they wanted to do that day. In L's imagination, arriving at a decision was always easy for them.

L

I don't know. It just felt like they agreed on things a lot. And again, I have no proof of that whatsoever. But for me, that's what-- it just seemed like they would look at each other and be like, hey, do you want to do this? And it's like, yes. And it was just known by both parties.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Did you ever feel jealous of their relationship?

L

Oh, definitely. But this was also right after my divorce. And my ex-husband and I had very different interests. (LAUGHING) My ex left me for a Pilates instructor.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Oh, god.

L

And I'm not a Pilates gal. So I think for me, it was seeing this couple-- and to be honest, they kind of looked more like me, plus sized. And when she had met with me, and she told me about how they'd been together for like 15 years and met in college-- and so for me, it was just, oh, these people found their person.

Aviva DeKornfeld

L started dog sitting for this couple about a month after her marriage fell apart. Her ex-husband was a real plastic-on-the-furniture kind of person, definitely not into comfort. She said he never relaxed.

L

And for me, the idea of lounging and just relaxing and melting into someone-- yeah, that was definitely something I really craved, especially coming out of that relationship.

Aviva DeKornfeld

L would spend days alone in this couple's house, on her own for the first time in over 10 years, like she was in some strange, on-set audition for a life she hoped to have for herself one day. One day, just as L was about to head over to the couple's house to dog sit, she got a text.

L

And it was from an unknown number-- because I had never dealt with the husband. And it just said, we no longer need you. We'll still pay you for the week. And that was it. And it was weird to me because he had never-- he and I had never spoken. It was always me and the wife. So to hear from him was odd in general. But then I was just so curt and done.

Aviva DeKornfeld

So what did you think when you got his text?

L

My mind started racing because I was like, well, is this-- did someone end up in a car accident? Did something really bad happen? And again, I wasn't going to press because again, it's none of my business. I'm just the help.

But I definitely was wondering if-- what happened to make them stop this vacation? Because she was on a work trip. She was at a conference. And he was going to meet her in that city. I forget what city it was. So my gut tells me this that it was an affair. But that was just me, completely making that up. Part of me wanted to reach out to her. But I was like, that's really inappropriate. I don't know her.

Aviva DeKornfeld

L, of course, recognizes that when big things happen in your life, the dog sitter is not at the top of the list of people to fill in. This couple barely knew her. In fact, if she was doing her job right, when the couple came back home, there'd be no trace of her at all.

Months passed. And she didn't hear from them. When Christmas rolled around, she sent the a holiday card, like she does with all her clients. The card was returned to sender.

L

I'm not going to say I was hurt by it because that's too far. But it made me a little sad. And I'd really love them to still be together. I want the whole family to be intact.

Aviva DeKornfeld

I wanted to reach out to the couple to find out if L was right, if they really did get divorced. But L, reasonably, didn't want me to reach out. It felt like too much of an invasion of their privacy. And I realized not knowing the real answer, that's actually truer to how these things go. You wonder about people. You try to imagine their lives. And mostly, you don't get to know.

For so many of the pet sitters I talked to, the things from the pet owners lives that got to them and stuck with them were things they wanted for themselves. That was true for L. It's also the case for this other pet sitter I talked to, Peri, in a very different way.

Here are some things to know about Peri. She's 29. She's an acupuncture student. And a few months ago, she started pet sitting for a grieving family. The dad of the family had just died.

Peri

I literally met and went over things with their family about their pugs and their parrot a few days after their funeral. So I'm filling in for him in the grieving period.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Peri's lost three close family members over the past few years. So in a way, she felt like the exact right person to pet sit for this family. She knew how to be there for them while they were in the thick of it.

The family had been a family of four, a mom and dad in their 50s and two grown kids in their 20's, one at college, the other still living at home. The mom and dad had always walked the two pugs together. After he died, the mom had tried taking the dogs out herself, but told Peri she felt a stabbing pain whenever she did. So Peri started walking the pugs five days a week, which meant she was always in and out of their house.

Peri

I haven't met the dad, but I'm seeing a negative of him in his own life, his house and his yard that-- apparently he designed the whole thing-- and animals and the kids and all the pictures and stuff. And--

Aviva DeKornfeld

Like you can almost see the shape of him because the absence is so clear?

Peri

Exactly. He's there even if he's not there.

Aviva DeKornfeld

Peri started noticing that she would think about the dad while she worked. When she'd take the pugs for a walk, she'd think, what was it like for him to walk the pugs? How did he react when they barked at all the other dogs? When she'd greet neighbors, who clearly recognized the pugs, she'd think, they must know why I'm here, walking them. It must be strange to see the wrong person holding the leash.

One afternoon, Peri couldn't make it over to walk the dogs. She'd misplaced her phone. So she hopped on Facebook to find the mom's profile, to send her a message there, to let her know.

Peri

On Facebook was, obviously, pictures of her and the family. And there's a picture of him in their front yard, with the dogs, leashed up, like they're about to go on a walk together. And it's something that you know but you don't-- if you imagine something, it's not the same as seeing it.

And so it makes it more real. And it feels like oh, that must have been an important part of his life. He was smiling and-- ooh, that's the dogs that I walk every day. And that's the person who used to walk them.

Aviva DeKornfeld

It's weird how something you see in someone else's life can totally turn you around. About a month ago, Peri had a moment like this, that she still thinks about.

Peri

They were all making crawfish in the kitchen. And I was letting the dogs back in. And I was like-- it was just this perfect little family scene. And then the dad's not there. But you picture how he would have fit into that little scene because you just get this little snippet of their life like that. And--

Aviva DeKornfeld

How do you picture he might have fit in?

Peri

I don't know. I feel emotional thinking about that. (CRYING) I don't-- I don't know.

Aviva DeKornfeld

How come it makes you emotional, you think?

Peri

Well, my grandpa died last month.

Aviva DeKornfeld

For the fourth time in four years, Peri lost someone close to her. She was thrown back into that awful, early phase of grief, when everything feels hazy. The night of the crawfish dinner was right after her grandpa died. And Peri said she felt like she was floating, dissociated, just trying to get through it and get back for her grandpa's funeral the next day.

Peri

I think the reason that it stands out in my memory is because just seeing them as a family there, and just having fun together after the other times that I'd seen them all together, they were a little bit more somber. And it's just-- when you go through a grief period, and then when you come out of it, you don't realize it when you're coming out of it.

Aviva DeKornfeld

For Peri, who was just starting to grieve her grandfather, it was comforting to see the family begin to emerge out the other side. It wasn't within reach for her just yet. But it was nice to know it was there.

Lilly Sullivan

Aviva DeKornfeld is one of the producers of our show.

Credits

Lilly Sullivan

Our program today was produced by Aviva DeKornfeld and me. The people who put our show together today include Phia Benin, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Bethel Habte, Cassie Howley, Chana Joffe-Walt, Seth Lind, Tobin Low, Alaa Mostafa, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Alissa Shipp, Laura Starcheski, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, and Diane Wu.

Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. Today is the last day for our office coordinator, Charlotte Sleeper. She is off to New Zealand. And I'll miss her. Special thanks today to Ben Calhoun, Mary Fuller, Mitch Harris, John Paul Brammer, Levi Vonk, and Kasia Thomas.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 700 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thank you to our show's regular host, Mr. Ira Glass. If I've told him once, I've told him 100 times. Do not help me with my crossword.

Today, I was trying to figure out a clue, '90s dram-com with James Van Der Beek. It was driving me crazy. What was it, Dawson's something? Dawson's Landing? And I heard him.

Creek. Creek. Creek.

I'm Lilly Sullivan. We'll be back next week with more stories of This American Life.