In the Dream House

Machado describes the cultural history of the new wave band ‘Til Tuesday’s music video for their 1984 single, “Voice Carry.” In the music video, singer and songwriter Aimee Mann plays a character in a domestically abusive heterosexual relationship. After the music video was released, Mann revealed that she first wrote the song about a woman and used feminine pronouns to designate the abuser. However, the record label company pressured the band to erase any lesbian elements from the song. Decades later, Mann (who had since become a solo artist) released another music video for her 2012 song “Labrador.” The new song essentially remakes “Voices Carry” into the song that Mann originally intended, and it portrays an abusive relationship between two women. Machado feels both songs are catchy and often finds herself singing them.

When Machado was a child, her strategy on tests was to answer a question she didn’t know with whatever relevant information she did know. She claims, “[L]et it never be said I didn’t try” (147). The advice to fill in semi-relevant information comes from her father.

Despite the extreme stress of the environment, Machado experiences a unique creative energy when involved with her partner in the Dream House. She begins to experiment with fragmented narratives in particular and finds the gaps between story fragments to be an exciting creative pursuit. Machado’s newfound narrative style directly reflects her own feelings of fragmentation and brokenness while with her partner.

This chapter’s title uses the German translation for “Dream House” and pairs it with “lipogram,” or a story or word that contains strategic omissions of letters or groups of letters. Machado connects this idea with how, when she told others of her relationship, she always omitted the abuse. She recalls the many times she imagined people asking her why she didn’t simply leave her partner, but now there was another omission: She could never find the words to express why she didn’t leave.

The narrative returns to Machado with her partner. She gives her partner an ultimatum to either go to therapy to treat her blackout-induced rages, or Machado will leave her. The partner begins therapy and the couple enters a brief period of peace, until she announces she will no longer be seeing her therapist. Machado does not act on her ultimatum; their relationship returns to its abusive normalcy.

Machado’s partner continually asks, “Who knows about us?” (152) as a way to gauge which of Machado’s friends she should stay away from in case they confront her on her abuse. However, Machado cannot find the correct answer. If she says no one, her partner assumes she is lying. If she admits that her roommates know, then her partner becomes dangerously angry.

Machado recounts a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which Captain Picard is captured and tortured by the villain Madred. Madred wants Picard to admit to the existence of five lights in the room when there are only four; Picard refuses to lie and is continually tortured for it. Once rescued, Picard admits to his crewmate that while he could have made himself believe there were five lights, he refused to lie to himself.

This chapter examines the idea of “evil” and its quotidian effects on people, especially small acts of evil that result in another person feeling powerless. Machado criticizes the “everyday tyrants” who enact this evil, then connects her disdain for them to those people who believe “queer” and its designations are the embodiment of evil.

During the writing of this book, Machado briefly stays at writer Edna St. Vincent Millay’s house in upstate New York. She finds a pile of morphine and gin bottles in the woods around the house where Edna’s housekeeper hid the evidence of her employer's addiction.

The narrative jumps back again, and Machado and her partner visit New York over the winter. Machado’s partner loves to abandon her in places Machado is unfamiliar with by simply walking away, knowing Machado knows no one whom she can ask for help. When she leaves Machado at a storage container craft fair in Brooklyn, Machado collapses on a nearby bench and begins to sob. Her phone's storage is so full that the phone can’t even function, so she cannot use it to purchase a bus ticket. A stranger notices her and tries to comfort her by giving her a small box containing incense. The stranger explains that the incense is supposed to be burned as a good omen for the coming new year.

Machado begins experiencing pregnancy symptoms despite the fact that there is no logical way she could be pregnant, having only been with her partner. She notes that the trope of mystical pregnancies is common in the television shows she watched as a child. She takes a pregnancy test, tests negative, then throws it out in a neighbor’s trash can so her partner won’t find it.

This chapter uses the narrative structure of a Choose Your Own Adventure story. It begins with a morning scene of Machado and her partner waking up and her partner saying that Machado moved a lot in her sleep. Machado’s movements allegedly kept her partner up all night. The narration’s Choose Your Own Adventure scheme now presents options for how Machado should mollify her partner: She could apologize, she could ask her partner to calm down, and so on. As the scenes proceed and she tries different options, her partner becomes enraged regardless of how Machado handles the situation. The narrative roads keep splitting as different adventure options tell the reader to turn to this-or-that page. These page directions only keep looping back to earlier in the chapter, until one option finally spits the reader out onto the next chapter, which opens, “In the pit of it, you fantasize about dying (177).

This chapter title employs a French expression that translates to “the call to the void.” Machado, still with her partner, is miserable, and a short paragraph conveys a series of ways she fantasizes about dying: tripping on the sidewalk and staggering into oncoming traffic, a gas leak killing her in her sleep, a stranger murdering her on public transit, some drunken-but-painless accident. The paragraph ends, “You have forgotten that leaving is an option” (177).

In an attempt to reclaim her sense of self, Machado considers the legacy of her first name, Carmen, and representations of women named Carmen. She focuses on the film Carmen in which the titular protagonist is killed by her lover.

One evening, Machado joins her roommates John and Laura in watching Flatliners. The film is one of Machado’s favorites, and she falls asleep during the movie. When she wakes up and notices the many missed calls from her partner, she begins to panic. She tries to put John on the phone with her partner to corroborate her story of where she’s been, but she gives up when she sees John’s defeated look.

This chapter title reappears (also seen in Chapters 16 and 57) as Machado’s relationship reaches its final stages: She sometimes thinks that her partner cares for her, but she’s mostly concerned with the way her partner seems to want to tear her apart.

This chapter presents a fictional scenario that resembles a murder mystery board game. In the scenario, Machado is stabbed during a dinner party when the lights unexpectedly go out. No one suspects the beautiful blonde dinner guest. The blonde woman takes the dagger from Machado’s back and returns the dagger to her purse, leaving the house while the other guests continue arguing over who is at fault.