Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living (18 page)

Additionally, we have somehow determined that men need to shave their faces every day, and now apparently their torsos require denuding as well? How far have we fallen? A hairy chest used to be the actual measure by which a man’s virility was determined, and now we are requiring of our “men” a nubile, naked set of pecs, like some prepubescent teenager? If indeed a shot of rotgut “puts hair on your chest,” why then you’ll be required by modern fashion to have it waxed! Whiskers grow as designed by nature, so how can that be bad? They come standard on every model! They’re like the weeds of the face, and as we all know, there are some very charismatic weeds in the world of flora, like asparagus. Also, “weed” is a weed with a pretty solid fan following. Perhaps, as our modern civilization slowly learns to accept the inevitable goodness of ganja, we can also return to the custom of honoring flocculent men. Look, you can shave all you want. Do as you please, I say, but if some of us want to look a little more woolly, then I would also ask you to let us be. I want to forevermore take “unkempt” as a compliment.

Speaking of the pudenda neighborhood, for glory’s sake, everybody, what about all this waxing going on down south?! Of all the lovingly crafted details sported by Mother Nature’s masterpiece, the human form, the pubic bush is easily the cherry on the, well, the pie, I suppose. That curly forest acts as a flag, signaling to the weary traveler, “Here is a feathery love-tick upon which you may rest your weary pikestaff or love-clutch.” Caressing a mink-like crotch epaulette is one of the most comforting stages in any self-respecting seven-step foreplay strategy. Not to mention, the pubes act as an effective catcher to keep crumbs out of the more sensitive areas when consuming one’s postcoital Scotch egg. For the love of Mike, bring back the bush.

Speaking of—ladies. Ah, beautiful ladies. In order to comply with the implied social regulations, women are required to submit to a much more rigorous program of hygiene than the gents. They shave their legs and armpits and wear meticulously applied paints and powders on their faces in order to appear more “attractive.” It’s a racket. When I see a person without makeup, I think she appears real, like nature made her, which to me is purely beautiful. When a person has applied, even expertly, a full face of makeup, then she appears to me to resemble someone on the cover of a magazine or something manufactured, like a doll. Therein lies the rub, methinks, that we as a people have been made to believe that we need to look like these “foxy” people on billboards and bus posters in order to appear “beautiful” and thereby find happiness. I am saddened to inform you that this sickness has penetrated our psyches so nefariously that some of the afflicted have taken to BLEACHING THEIR ASSHOLES. If you are worried about what your visitors will think of the window dressing around the orifice where ordure exits your body, then I’m going to go ahead and suggest you turn around. The stuff you want to pay attention to is on the front side. Men and women alike, if you think that altering the tip of your nose with surgery will make you happier, I would suggest you alter something much more malleable than your flesh, like your priorities, or your friends. Quit looking in the mirror so much. My two cents.

I know this is a clodlike “guy” opinion—I mean, look at me—but by and large, fashion seems like a huge waste of time and money. A good pair of jeans should last for several years. I don’t really give a shit how they hang. They should not pass from favor because their shade of blue is no longer acceptable at the mall, or they don’t hug your buns as tightly as they are required to by the cover shots of
Caboose
magazine.

Here is all a jackass like you or me needs to get by, fashion-wise:

Underwear
is a great idea. Nothing is
required
, but the clever thing about drawers is that they can act as a repository for accidental (or on-purpose) discharges from the body, and the subsequent stains, without ruining the outer pantslike garment.

A pantslike garment.
Jeans, shorts, overalls, dungarees. Pockets are a must, for the storing of your necessaries. Knife, money, tobacco, frogs, string, marbles, bullets. Read your Twain for suggested pocket wares. Pants keep the chiggers from your shins. Pants cloak the stained underdrawers from the world’s prying glance.

Obviously, carry a
handkerchief.

Work boots.

A good
hat
.

Subaru Leavings

I
n my life, I have left my parents’ home in Minooka, Illinois, twice, following that grand old American tradition on both occasions, by taking my leave in shitty used Subarus, once for college and once to move from Illinois to California. In 1988 I purchased a used Subaru
B
RAT
from my friend Joe Stachula, who was in
Oklahoma!
with me at Minooka High School, for $350. I test-drove it in a field near his house, where we did a lot of donuts and drove through the creek. Kick-ass action? Check. The
B
RAT
is a tiny pickup truck that has four-wheel drive and a roll bar. There are two seats in the tiny bed behind the cab, facing the rear, that have airplane controller/joysticklike handles for the passengers to hold on to when traversing terrain like, well, the creek. It’s built for fun, the
B
RAT
, but it’s also practical. A person can fit a full four-by-eight-foot sheet of plywood in the bed (by simply cutting it into eight conveniently sized smaller pieces).

During my freshman year we once drove it from Champaign to the nearby town of Decatur, Illinois, where Millikin University sits, to see some friends in a production of “the Scottish Play” (
Macbeth
). We had two guys in the front in the tiny little two-seater cab and two guys riding in the back action seats. On the highway, apparently bored, we began to execute a rotation—everybody moved one seat counterclockwise, with one guy coming in the passenger window, one guy going out by way of the driver’s window, etc.—just for fun. At seventy miles per hour on the freeway, it was pretty big goddamn fun.

The
BRAT
was a constant location of tomfoolery. In one of Robin McFarquhar’s classes we’d do an exercise where we’d split into pairs with one person blindfolded and the other guiding him/her around campus. It was called a trust exercise, for obvious reasons. Connected at the hip by this point, Joe Foust and I dutifully tottered to the
BRAT
, whereupon I drove around the quad blindfolded based on Joe’s instruction. We got an A in that class.

That rusty and fantastic Subaru
BRAT
ended up being very instrumental in the mischief that Joe Foust and I would wreak among the polite communities of Champaign and Urbana. Sometimes Joe and I would just drive up alongside some pedestrians and shower them with Silly String or water balloons, and then drive away, leaving the slightly inconvenienced strangers puzzled at the identities of these hilarious (in their own minds) street clowns.

The
BRAT
was the final tool in the kit this young man needed to set off into the big, wide world on his own. I’ll never forget my mom’s reaction to my exit, standing in the driveway. As much as my dad is a heroic, Atticus Finch–type figure of the Minooka countryside and my life in general, my mom is his equal lady-Atticus counterpart. They’re very Ma and Pa Ingalls, raising a family and a garden while maintaining and beautifying a household. She was quietly sweet as honey, and she was the more nurturing or “mothering” of the two, as mothers often are. She heroically made some of our clothes from scratch while producing meals with such frugality and acumen in the kitchen. For a few dollars a week she would feed all six of us like kings, all with an air of gentleness and competence. I’ve never met anyone nicer than my mom, and I’ve met Donny and Marie.

It’s because her own family, the Roberts clan, is so affable, and they all share that same sense of competence. By mastering the implements in their immediate surroundings with determination and humor, they have created a dependability within themselves that then provides us all with the room to breathe and laugh. My mom’s mother, Eloise Roberts—or “Grandma El,” or best of all, on the CB radio, “the Gambler”—had a lot to do with my own mom turning out to be such a champion of life and family rearing. With a bit of misbehavior in her own childhood, Grandma El let me know that she generally appreciated a wiseass, encouraging a lot of the silliness that thrived in her grandchildren. Growing up amongst these rock-solid Americans was more valuable to my development and my disposition than any school into which I could have set my muddy boot.

My mom, as a result, has such a great sense of humor. I may be romanticizing, but I feel like this vein of humor that has traveled down the years via her farming forebears is a product of the Depression, wherein one could watch an entire year’s profits be wiped out with one heavy rainfall. In such an instance, you have the option of either blowing your brains out or making a wisecrack. This family was always looking for the light, for any jape they could find in any unpleasant circumstance, and that sensibility really helped me develop my own sense of humor. I (eventually) learned that one doesn’t want to jack around too much, as you are then regarded as a hindrance (also known as a “jack-around”) to getting the work done. Bring just enough wit to any given situation to lighten the load with a grin.

Our family’s humor made the emotional moments that much more poignant then, as I remember my mom in the driveway, crying at seeing one of her little ones go traipsing off to a school two hours south. Mom and Dad had already gone through this with my sister Laurie, a year my senior, but I think that Laurie would agree that since I got so much attention (because I demanded so much attention), and because I was the oldest male child, it would leave a different sort of a hole in the household (although she would argue that it was actually the “hole” who was leaving). Although Laurie could still beat the snot out of me, I was the strongest of the kids in areas like pushing the lawn mower and carrying luggage, not to mention my possessing the most obnoxious voice at the dinner table. Whether one was a fan of my stylings or no, there was no question that family meals would be conducted henceforth in greater silence. It was a very emotional parting for all of us, but my portion was pairing my grief with an excitement at my impending adventure far from the cozy nest. I knew very powerfully then that I needed to set off into the world and try to puzzle out how to become a man.

That particular departure took place in the fall of 1988. Some years later, after I had graduated from the U of I and subsequently served my years in the graduate program of Chicago storefront theater, it was time for a strikingly similar leaving on a blustery Christmas Day in 1996. Having planned for some months to move to Los Angeles, I had found in the newspaper a used 1990 Subaru station wagon for about $750. Rusted out and originally maroon, just like the
BRAT
had been, it was jammed with my worldly goods, which consisted of some boots, some jeans, a shitload of cassette tapes, and my tool kit. That was my dowry, I guess, should I ever find a willing rancher to take me to his marriage bed. Traveling with a good set of tools is a great comfort to the carpenter, because he/she knows that no matter where the wind blows him/her, somebody’s going to need a gazebo, and that means he/she can purchase a sandwich and a pair of Levi’s.

I had a large burrito-pack of goods tied down on top of the wagon as well, wrapped up in ratty old scenic canvas with a papier-mâché boar’s head from
Ubu Raw
strapped on the front. With the portion of gumption I had been served by my mom and dad, I, like so many fools before me, simply thought, “Well, I reckon I’m driving this thing to California. What the hell. Let’s do this.”

When I had first gone away to college, I knew that the ultimate pinnacle of my career would be to arrive in Chicago and get paid American dollars to act in a play. That seemed, at the time, the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest. Even in Chicago, having summited that particular peak of making a living as a theater professional, during the first three years or so I had no thoughts of ever leaving. At Defiant, we had heard legends of people transplanting a play to LA or New York, but such a quest had not been undertaken by anyone in my immediate circle of acquaintance. Eventually, however, a certain wanderlust had crept into my psyche, and I wondered if a jackass like myself might investigate the treasures of the nation’s coastal cities.

I knew that New York was a town to which an aspiring theater lad might emigrate, but I think I would have been equally as lost in New York as anyplace else, if not more so. Meanwhile, Los Angeles had been batting her eyelashes at me more and more during my last couple of years in Chicago, like a late-night lady in a bar, seeming more and more attractive with every beer I drank. The harsh difference between New York and Hollywood, in hindsight, was that no one moves to LA to get work in the theater.

During my last year in Chicago I did
Ubu Raw
,
The Kentucky Cycle
, and
The Questioning of Nick
, some of the best play productions I’ve ever been a part of. Little did I realize what a wealthy community I was leaving behind, where I habitually did five or six plays a year, built sets for eight others, and choreographed fights for another three or four. I used to love making a list on New Year’s Eve of all the shows I’d worked on that year. If a person was willing to live on a slim income, that person could be rich as Croesus in terms of satisfying theater jobs. Only by leaving that time of financial poverty behind me did I realize just how wealthy I had been artistically.

I’d also logged my first couple of legit film jobs in my final year. In one of them, a Morgan Freeman/Keanu film called
Chain Reaction
, directed by Andy Davis, I was cast in two scenes as Keanu’s building super, but I never even got to meet Mr. Freeman. It was batshit crazy to me at the time—I was suddenly in a movie, for real! I was going to be on the screen at the movie theater! My education continued as I later learned from the film’s premiere that both of my scenes were totally cut out, which is but one of the many harsh lessons we show folk are constantly dealt in this business. I still got my SAG card out of the job, which is a seemingly elusive necessity to finding further opportunities in the film business.

I got paid what was then two months of carpenter’s wages, for two days of acting work. Literally. It wasn’t an avenue I was actively pursuing, film work, but all of a sudden I realized that this avenue had some very attractive features to it. Shortly thereafter, I was cast in this Sundance movie directed by Mark Pellington and produced by Tom Gorai called
Going All the Way
, from Dan Wakefield’s excellent novel of the same name, with some youngsters like Ben Affleck, Rachel Weisz, Jeremy Davies, and Rose McGowan, all of whom were babies at the time. Toddlers, anyway. At lunch one day, to give you a sense of where we were chronologically, Ben was talking about how he and a buddy had a “script that might get made” (which turned out to be
Good Will Hunting
). In
Going All the Way
, I played “Wilks” Wilkerson, an antagonistic high school buddy of Ben’s character with a big mouth. There were more lessons in store for me: Out of my seven scenes, maybe four or five were cut from the final film, mainly because Ben had a prosthetic beard in most of the scenes that ended up not looking quite right, so they cut the whole beard story. Yet another class in the school of hard knocks, which I continue to attend even now.

The film was shot in Indianapolis, and all of the leads had been cast in LA, but fortunately my part was small enough to cast out of Chicago. I drove with another “day player” to Indianapolis for our few days of filming. This other fellow, Jeff, had done a couple of commercials on location before this, so he taught me about per diem shortly before he cottoned me to what filet mignon was all about, a blessed calling indeed. Wherever you are today, Jeff, I offer you my reverential thanks.

This was the first time I had ever heard about, let alone received, a per diem and I just thought, “Are you fucking kidding me? I get this great job acting in scenes with amazing actors for this crazily cool director for a very healthy salary, and you also give me extra money? You’re worried about if I’m going to eat?” I don’t recall what the amount was on that film, but the current MINIMUM amounts for a SAG union shoot on location are: breakfast, $12; lunch, $18; and dinner, $30!!! Some generous productions have just made a clean job of it by giving us $100 a day. Many times on location I have simply been handed a stack of Ben Franklins upon landing in town. In 1998 I did a movie in New Orleans, and it was early enough in my career that I was pleasantly surprised when they gave me a rental car. I showed up and they said, “Here’s your car, and here’s a stack of hundred-dollar bills. Your per diem is one hundred dollars per working day and you’re here for three weeks, so here’s $2,100 in CASH.” Jazz Fest was in town, and . . . oh, it was New Orleans. They tell me I had a very good time. Nice work if you can get it.

The Keanu movie was amazing in its own right; I was walking amongst the giant playground of a big-budget action film set around downtown Chicago (although I was “local hire,” so no per diem). Seeing how a movie was shot, through the fresh eyes of a new employee of said film, went a long way toward making me think about that side of the business. These thoughts were further bolstered on
Going All the Way
, where everybody was super friendly and very encouraging. “You should totally move to LA,” they said, “you have a great mug. You’ll work like crazy.” In California, months later, struggling to find my ass with both hands, I was fortunate enough, at least, to find those same people, remind them of their goddamn encouragement, and then shake them down for a sandwich or a couple of tacos, to which they really had no choice but to “generously” acquiesce.