Actors Anonymous (8 page)

“Okay, you little cardboard fucker, fuck me. Do it, fuck me.”

When we were doing it, she got really into it. I was on top, and she grabbed me around the ass with both hands and pulled me down into her with fast, hard jerking motions. Then she flipped me down on my back and got on top. She put her hands on the wall above me and made weird quick motions with her pelvis that whipped her vagina back and forth really fast. She started breathing huffily and heavy, and she wasn’t looking at me; she was looking at the wall above me, then the ceiling, and then her eyes were closed and she was moaning like she was chanting. I looked up and knew that all those spiders were just above her head like a crown of thorns.

After she had her orgasm I flipped her onto her back and I got back on top. I reached under and grabbed her ass so I could control her and keep her from doing those quick movements. I held her ass and pulled myself into her again and again as hard as I could. I wanted her to know that it was
me
inside her. But I guess she liked the hard stuff, because she held my ass, and my back, and helped me thrust into her really hard. I tried to go harder, I wanted it to be so hard that it would hurt, but it wasn’t working, she just got more excited the harder I did it.

She whispered in my ear, “Fuck me, little guy, fuck me.”

It made me want to go harder, but I was already going so hard I was panting. My hip sockets felt like air from all the motion. I looked
down at her flat white face.
Fuck you,
I said, but not out loud. Then I got into a rhythm: With each thrust I said
fuck you,
but only in my head. I was going really hard and fast and I was looking right in her half-closed evil eyes, like a snake’s eyes, and I was screaming in my head
fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
. But I couldn’t come. After a bit, I was really tired and lightheaded. I stopped moving.

I lay on top of her and didn’t pull out. I put my face on the pillow next to hers and tried not to pant. I was so tired and pissed, but mainly I was pissed because I knew this woman was so hollow and lonely and she had pulled me into that hollow space with her. Whenever I imagine the dark back rooms of the world, the cold corners full of lonely people, I think of that storage room with that flat-faced, evil woman.

I lay there, and my breathing started to slow down. Down below, I moved my pelvis only, going in and out very slowly so that I would stay hard. She was gently stroking my back with her fingertips.

“You have such soft skin,” she said. I guess she was being nice.

I turned my head and spoke into her ear, and I was so close my lips brushed the shell shapes inside. I whispered, “I want to eat a meal off your face.”

After a second, she stopped stroking my back. Then she pushed me off, quickly pulled her dress over her head, and left. I lay in the bed naked, my wet dick sticking to the fibers of the orange blanket.

Nothing happened to me for months after that. One winter night it was raining outside, and the place was pretty empty. I had read all the acting books by then, and I was restless. I sat in the bar and drank a little in secret and stared at the few pointless people that were in there. This girl Pam came into the bar. Pam was a little older than me and she used to go to my high school. She was ugly, but she tried to look pretty. She sat and had a drink, and then after a bit she said she
was supposed to meet some friends, but they had ditched her. So we started talking. She had been in Los Angeles for a couple years but now she was back. She told me about an acting school in LA.

“LA is fucked,” she said out of her bulldog face. “But if you go, I recommend Valley Playhouse. It’s great because it’s very intense, not like a lot of the bullshit schools out there. The teacher, Mr. Smithson, is amazing. So smart.”

“But you left?” I said.

“Listen, LA is a shit pit. There are five million people out there trying to be actors, and only a handful of them make it and the ones that don’t just hang around and rot. It’s depressing. That’s why I left. I mean, I worked a little, some TV shows and stuff, but it was soul-crushing. Everyone is a vampire there.”

I worked in the bar for six more months. Then, in the summer, I drove to Los Angeles.

It took me five days to get to LA. I had my dead grandpa’s Nissan Stanza. My grandma had given it to me after I crashed my first car. I loved my grandfather. He was an oral surgeon, but he loved literature, and we talked about books together. The car still had his smell, which was like aftershave. And his hair was under the seats. If I dropped something in the car, like a pen or some money, when I reached down I would come up with clumps of his soft white hair.

I drove through deserts and on long boring freeways. I passed a ton of cows. It was so hot that summer. There were McDonalds and Burger Kings all the way across the country. I ate a lot of beef jerky too.

I arrived in LA on June 16, 1996. It was night. I exited the 405 and drove up Sunset Boulevard. First I drove through all the residential areas with the huge mansions all lit up: Brentwood, Westwood,
Bel Air. I passed UCLA and went through Beverly Hills. It was dark, but the mansions were blasting their lights, so the windows were like square fires. And then I got to the strip and then there were tons of lights. It felt like an important moment, like an entry into something. I drove slowly and took everything in. There were people standing in lines outside the clubs and punks walking in the street. I passed the the Roxy, Whisky a Go Go, the Viper Room, and Tower Records. Then there were a bunch of restaurants with outdoor seating and a red Ferrari and a yellow Lamborghini and some other fancy cars parked by the valet in front. Driving past, I saw a bunch of backs in backless dresses, and legs, and some asshole-looking guys. I said
fuck you
in my head to those people and drove on. There were billboards and big lights, but everything was a little dirty. I took Laurel Canyon through the Hollywood hills to get to the Valley because the acting school was over there.

The first night I stayed in a Best Western on Ventura Boulevard, near Universal Studios. It was a hot night and I laid on top of the green and white paisley duvet. The bed was stiff. I laid there and let the night soak into me as I sweated. It was all starting.

At 1 a.m., there was a fight in the room behind my head. The man told the woman she was an asshole.

“Don’t be such an asshole!” he said.

“Richard, it’s true. I don’t care what you say. It’s
true
.”

“Of all the assholes in all the world,
you,
I gotta be here with
you
.”

It was great. It was great to be in LA and to have people screaming.

The man kept saying she was an asshole. It was weird to hear a woman called an
asshole
.

“I swear to God,” Richard said. “I just… I just want to beat the fuck out of you, you fucking
asshole
.”

“Shit, didn’t stop you at Disneyland did it? Fucking shit.”

“Motherfucker! Motherfucking
asshole!
”

Then there was some stuff thrown and more shouts. There was something heavy that made a hollow sound on the floor and then something broke.

The screams continued. I turned my head toward the window. In the middle of the cement courtyard, there was a kidney-shaped pool. On the surface of the water, there was a bit of yellow and pink neon reflected from the hotel sign above. The yellow and pink danced with each other and went in and out of each other, and the people screamed next door, and I knew that everything was good in the universe.

The next day at noon, I drove down Lankershim Boulevard to the acting school that Pam had told me about called Valley Playhouse.

It had a plain brown front that you would miss except for the sign. I parked and walked in. I was a little late for the noon class; I have a problem being on time for anything, even things I care about. There was a lobby area with a bunch of movie posters and clippings. No one was there. Everyone was inside the theatre; I could hear voices. I opened the door as quietly as I could. The place was dark except for the little stage at the front. I saw a few faces in the audience turn back at me. I closed the door and discreetly walked to the back row and sat. I was next to a woman in her forties; she looked at me briefly and then back to the stage. She thought she was something.

It was a fifty-seat theater with a few raking levels that descended toward the plain gray rehearsal stage. There were students in most of the other cloth-backed chairs, about thirty of them. Everyone was looking at the stage. Onstage, there was a couch against the wall, a circular table in the center, and some folding chairs.

There was also a guy and a girl up there, both in their twenties. They were screaming at each other. The girl was seated at the circular table knitting something and the guy was standing over her. The guy looked like a model that had been doing drugs for a few years and the girl looked like a stripper. It didn’t seem like there was a script, they were just yelling and cussing and saying whatever. They sounded just like the people back at the motel. There were tears on both their faces but neither of them stopped yelling.

“Oh, you’re just going to keep knitting, hungh?” the guy said.

“Yeah, I’m going to keep fucking knitting,” she said.

“Oh, so what? I’m going to stand here and you’re going to fucking knit a… a little fucking
thing?
”

“Yeah, I’m just knitting a fucking
little thing!
”

“Oh, that’s great! That’s fucking great! You’re going to knit, while I’m fucking standing here.”

“Yes, I’m going to fucking knit! I’m fucking
knitting!
”

“You’re knitting. You
fucking
bitch. You’re fucking knitting, while I’m standing here and it is so upsetting! I want to cry!”

“You’re standing there? You’re standing there and you want to cry? Well
don’t
stand there, asshole!”

“I’m
standing
here,
bitch,
and you’re making me cry!”

“Don’t call me a
bitch, fucker!
Fucking pussy, go cry, you fucking pussy motherfucker.”

The guy got on his knees in front of her.

“Don’t you understand? I’m going to
die!
I need the money! They’re going to kill her! They’re going to fucking shoot her if I don’t give them the money!” The guy stood up and was now holding the girl’s shoulders and shaking her.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” she screamed, and stood up.

Then the guy grabbed the little square thing that she was knitting
and pulled at it violently. It didn’t quite come apart, so he kept pulling. The girl screamed and snatched for it, but he threw it on the ground and ran out of the door at the back of the stage and slammed it behind him. The girl collapsed on to her knees and picked up the little destroyed knitted thing. She blubbered out deep sobs and everyone watched for a full minute. Then someone started talking.

“All right, Sean, come on out.”

At the foot of the little stage there was a tall man in a large chair. He had gray curly hair combed back in a bouffant. This was the teacher.

Sean came back in through the stage door.

“Don’t slam our doors,” the teacher said. He had a slow resonant voice. But when he accentuated anything, his voice went up into his nose and sounded high and nasally.

“Sorry, Mr. Smithson, I was just so into it, the situation.” said Sean.

“Shut up.” Mr. Smithson turned to the girl and said in a deep voice, “That was good, Tiffany.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“What did you
feel?
” said Mr. Smithson. He was playing with a rubber band in one hand. He wrapped it around his index finger and stretched it with his thumb.

“I felt angry…” said Tiffany.

“Yes,
and
…” The rubber band stretched.

“Well, I felt angry and upset and I felt like I really had to get this knitting done and Sean was really pissing me off and upsetting me because he was so needy and he didn’t understand that I needed to get this done.”

“That’s
good,
” said Mr. Smithson. “Good, you were really feeling the situation. You were connected to the imaginary circumstances. Good. Now why did you have to get that knitting done?”

“Because my baby died. And I needed to knit him a shawl before the funeral started.” As she said this she started crying again.

Mr. Smithson let her cry, and then when she was done, he said, “That’s very good, Tiffany, very good. Obviously you had a connection to those circumstances.”

“Well, if anything ever happened to my son I would just die, so yeah, it meant something to me.”

“Very good. Now, Sean, why did you come to her door? What were you after?”

“Well, I needed money from her because I was tangled up with the mob and I had made a bad bet at the races and if I didn’t pay them fifty thousand dollars they were going to murder my girlfriend.”

“Sean. No, that is not real.”

“But I know someone that that happened to.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“I did! He was this guy…”

“
Sean.
I don’t care!” Mr. Smithson was using the nasal voice again. The woman in her forties sitting next to me was whispering to herself. “What an idiot,” she said.

“Listen to me,” Mr. Smithson said to Sean.

“
Listen
to him,” the lady in her forties whispered to herself.

“I don’t care if that happened to you or someone you know,” said Mr. Smithson. “It has no resonance with you. And I highly doubt it ever happened. It’s false. It’s a made-up story. Didn’t you see how upset Tiffany was?”

“Yes, but…”

“No, shut up! Did you see how upset she was while she was doing her activity?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you work off that? Why didn’t you take that in? You were so wrapped up in telling your false gangster story that you didn’t connect with her. You could have taken her in and experienced a connection with her, but instead you were wrapped up in gangster land.”

The class laughed at this. Even Sean laughed a little.