Actors Anonymous (10 page)

I got my hot chocolate with the redhead. Then, with a glance, we silently decided to go over. Like with the Asians, he didn’t look up right away, but then he did, and slipped off one side of his Bose headpiece. He was smiling. We told him we were actors and that we really admired him. We didn’t ask for a picture, and he kept talking to us. I told him about Stella, our school, and about the different classes we had to take: History of the Theater, Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov, etc. Then
he got my number. He got the redhead’s too, but I figured he was just doing that to look uninterested in me. Just a hunch I had. It was cold out, so we ran all the way back to my dorm. We screeched down Broadway, yelling because we wanted our voices to sew themselves into the night, because it felt like New York had opened up, like a big orifice, a ragged mouth or vagina, and in a deep, unheard voice said,
Here is your wish come true
.

We were liberated cunts and legs in the winter wind, whipping, flapping, and flying. We must fly. We were students and we were sirens. At least I was.

I was so obsessed with Kurt Cobain that I wrote a short story about him. Not exactly about him like a biography, but about a teenage boy who was like him (and like me too, if I was a boy) who was so depressed and artistic he committed suicide. Later I showed this story to James—this was much later, after he had come into my life, when he talked to me about marriage and children, after I had started working with him on his art projects, but before I had traveled the world with him—and he read it in my dorm room, but he didn’t have much response. He said it was good and smiled like he knew something.

After Starbucks, James didn’t call me. Later, when he was in my life, we would talk about that time, back when I was just getting to know him, and I would tell him how upset I had been then, but how I felt like I couldn’t be because what could I have expected? He was James Franco and I was a stupid NYU freshman. I went to my classes and tried not to think too much about him. I focused on Arthur Miller, but James was the only thing alive in me. All I had to hold onto was a crinkly-eyed smile, because we hadn’t really talked much. I tried to warm myself from the impression that was still inside me, to make his
face visible in my mind, the version of it that looked right at me and was conscious of me, and maybe if I made it clear enough in my mind it would send out energy to him and he would know I was thinking about him.

One week after I met James, I got a text message from him at 10 o’clock at night asking me what I was doing. I was reading
The Glass Menagerie
. I wrote back that I was doing homework. He asked if I wanted to come over later, and I said yes.

At 11:30, I went to the address on 13th Street. He buzzed me in, and I walked up a twisting stair to the third floor. His apartment was a three-story place with its own circular stair inside. He offered me water, and we went over to a leather couch in front of a flatscreen television. It was dim in there, but I could see books all over the place. He showed me some pictures on the wall. One of them was an early Warhol, a sketch of a boy’s face that looked like James Dean. We watched a little bit of a weird art film called
Scorpio Rising,
gay guys on motorcycles. Then he kissed me. His tongue was in my mouth. It felt good. I was pretty surprised. I had kissed four guys in my life and none really like this. Then he asked if I wanted to go upstairs. I said sure. We went up the winding stair past pictures of naked girls (later I learned they were photos by Francesca Woodman), and then we were in his room. It was small, with a mattress on the floor next to the window with a view of the street. There were a couple shelves with more books next to the mattress.

It was dark except for the streetlights through the window. I kept thinking of the word
haunted
for no reason. Nothing else was in my head except that I was from Windsor, Canada.

We got into the bed. And pretty soon after we were kissing. Then my shirt came off and then my bra and my good tits came out. And
then my pants were off. He tried to go down on me but I wouldn’t let him. I was too shy about that, so I pulled his head up. Then I went down on him. I wasn’t that confident, but I tried my best and he guided me a little. Then he put on a condom and we were trying to have sex. He was on top of me, pushing, but it really wouldn’t go in. It felt like it wasn’t supposed to fit. I was pulling my torso away in an awkward way while trying not to make a noise because I was so embarrassed. Then it was making its way inside and then it was all the way in. I managed to whisper, “Slow. Go slow,” and he did at first, but then it started moving easier and he went faster.

I really didn’t know that this was going to happen, or if I did, I kept it from myself so that when it did all start happening I just went with it like I was innocent but also because I really wanted it.

I had to stop him in the middle because it hurt, and I was embarrassed about the blood. But then we kept going.

Later that night, I woke and lay there beside him. His arm was over me, and I was naked under the covers except for my panties. I looked out at the lights. We were high up enough that the streetlights were level with us. There was one just outside his window; it was in an old-fashioned style, as if it were from a London fairy tale, even though I’d never been to London. I felt like I was in
Mary Poppins
and I was about to fly out to Never-Never Land.

For a second.

STEP 7

Humbly asked the Great Director to remove our “character’s” shortcomings.

McDonald’s I

I
WAS BORN IN THE
LA and I never left the LA. I lived in the Valley. For about six years, I did heroin all the time. I had two boys, but I never saw them. They lived over the hill with my ex in West Hollywood. I was twenty-seven at the time. And then I stopped using heroin. I moved back in with my parents in North Hollywood. My mom didn’t work and my dad was a priest at a little church on Magnolia. He was happy to tell the church that his son was now clean and was trying to get his life together. He said it right in front of the whole church one morning so that everyone would be happy for me.

After the service I talked to all the people. “Sean, you keep praying and the Lord will deliver.” I shook their hands and smiled. I always had a good smile. The heroin had worked on my face a little, but I was still a good-looking guy. Maybe my hair was going a little in front.

I went to these alcohol and drug meetings, and before I knew it, I had six months without using heroin or any drugs. I liked going to the
alcohol ones because they were more organized than the drug ones. I still had a car, and every morning I went to this men-only meeting on Vineland Boulevard, called the Valley Bucks Meeting. It met in this little burrito place called El Jardin Encantado at 7:15, before the restaurant opened. The guys were there every morning; what a group of characters. The men were all ages. Some were professionals in suits and others wore sweatpants and let their balls show in bulges. Some sat in the booths and others sat at the actual bar. I never talked, I just sat and listened, but they all told jokes and talked about their wives and about God.

I got to know all the guys there because I went there every morning. I got a sponsor named Sonny. Sonny was a washed-up actor. He was a million years old, but he acted like he was twenty. He loved to talk about acting, which was okay with me because a long time ago I had wanted to be an actor. Sonny had been onstage with Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion from
The Wizard of Oz
. They traveled all over the states doing a play about aliens back in the ’60s. Sonny didn’t work anymore. He had turned his daughter into an actress, and when she got on a hit TV show, he used her money to buy a house. She was my age now and was crazy and now that she wasn’t a cute child star anymore she couldn’t get work. But Sonny had his house. So he just went to the alcohol meetings every day and hung out at his big house in the valley. He always wanted me to come over.

I’d go about once a week. He would keep me there for hours. We’d lie on his bed in front of a huge TV and watch old movies. I’d lie on his wife’s side of the bed. She was never there during the day because she worked as an extra. It was great at first. We’d watch Chaplin, and Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers. We’d watch
Dracula
and
Frankenstein,
the
old
versions, with the slicked hairstyles and the
funny monster makeup. They were all old-fashioned and stupid, but also good because of that. And he’d tell me stories as we watched.

“I did
Picnic
in Miami. It was the premiere run in Miami, and William Inge had me over to his house. Funny man with a high voice. So I didn’t know what was up. I mean, I knew some gay guys in the theater, but
this
guy… he went into the bathroom and while he was in there I saw this container of Vaseline on the dresser. The cap was off and when I looked in I saw there was a little bit of brown
shit
in it.”

“Oh, man,” I said. “A fucking faggot! Using Vaseline on assholes!”

“Exactly. But back in the day we called ’em queers. Well, when he came out, I didn’t say anything about the shit, but he wanted to take my picture and I said ‘Oh, yeah?’ And he said ‘Yeah, with your shirt off,’ and that was it for me. I didn’t care if he had written some great plays, I was out of there,
fast
.”

“No shit. I don’t know why you were there in the first place.”

“Well, you’re right. But you know, when he was a young actor, Brando rode his bike out to the beach and fucked Tennessee Williams to get the part of Stanley in
Streetcar Named Desire
.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I did Brando’s voice once. For another Tennessee thing,
The Fugitive Kind
. Sidney Lumet needed some voiceover lines for Brando and Brando wouldn’t do ’em, so I got a call to do Brando’s voice.”

“That’s cool.”

We’d watch the old movies and lie on his bed and then he would talk about getting spiritual. One time, just after I went six months with no heroin, he said, “You need to get a job.”

“But I want to be an actor, like you.”

“I don’t give a shit. You can be an actor all you want, but if you don’t take care of yourself, then you’re shit.”

“But no place will hire me. I’ve never worked anywhere before.”

“I don’t give a shit, Sean, that’s what being
spiritual
is: taking care of yourself. Being responsible.
That’s
spiritual. You’re just a selfish little prick, and you want everyone to serve you.”

I wanted to mention that we were lying on a bed on the second floor of the house his daughter bought him, but I didn’t. Instead, I listened to him, because I wanted to change. I didn’t want to be selfish anymore, and I didn’t want to be a drug addict.

“I want to be good,” I said. “I just know that no place will hire me. I have no experience, and I look like shit.”

“You’ve
never
worked
anywhere?
”

“I worked at a golf course in high school, but I got fired because I fell asleep while driving the ball-fetching cart on the driving range; I was on some drugs, and when I fell asleep, it drove toward the people hitting the balls and then into a person. An old man.”

“That was stupid. I’m an old man, you gonna hit me with your golf cart?”

“No.”

“Damn right, because I’d fuck you up, young buck.” He laughed. That was his joke: that I was young, but he could still fuck me up. And that he called me “young buck.”

Then he said, “Well, what you’re going to do is clean up. You can shave, can’t you? And comb your hair?” I nodded. “Well, do that, and put on a good shirt and go get a job.”

I tried. That night at home, I cleaned myself up. My hair was pretty long, not long like a girl, but long: curly and ’fro-y, so I cut it with some scissors in the bathroom. It was uneven at first and I kept trying to correct my work until it ended up really short. My mom tried to come in but I told her to go away.

“What are you doing in there so long?”

“Nothing, just shitting.” I guess she was worried about me going back to heroin, so she still watched my every move. I lathered my face with hand soap and shaved off my blonde scruff. I looked okay. When I came out my mom started crying. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t ask. She came in to hug me, and I let her.

The next day I wore a white button-down shirt and jeans because they were all I had, and I drove around looking for a job. I had a Ford Fairmont from when I was using. It was very square and brown, like a long box. It had no heat, no AC, and the parking brake didn’t work, and there were spiders and living things all over the inside because I couldn’t close the driver’s side window all the way.

I mostly went to restaurants. The ones I went to in the morning had me take applications because the managers weren’t in yet. An Italian place, a place with a French name, a steak place. After an hour I had a stack of the forms on the passenger seat. The forms asked for prior work experience, and I knew that was going to be a problem, and some of them asked if I had been arrested in the past ten years, and that was going to be a problem too.