Girl Act (11 page)

“And you?” I asked.

He was in finance, from Washington, just in on business and heading back in the morning. Then I saw it. Damn! Yup, the gold band on the left hand that says, ‘I’m married, get your own.’ I nodded. His eyes shifted to his hand and then up at my face, and in the next five seconds, he rattled off three dirty things he wanted to do to my body. I liked the sound of all three, but even if his wife wasn’t in Indiana, her essence, her shadow (not as in my dog) would be in the bedroom. Yuck!

“Sorry, I have to go make some important business calls,” I said, as I forced myself towards the door.

He touched my arm, and leaned in and kissed me. Just like in those romantic movies, except that those male characters are single and the ‘passion’ has been smoldering for a lengthy amount of time.

Anyway, I used my hotel key card and there was Shadow on the bed, barking at the sight of me.

“Shhhhhhhh,” I said and walked over to pet him. He’s one huge baby dog.

“What a relief, just a kiss and I got out of there. Once again, it’s only you and me and I’m so glad. We’ll find our own compass through life,” I said, as if my dog knew what I was talking about. Then I rummaged in my bag, found a rawhide bone for him. Easy to please. And that felt good.

Chicago, Illinois, was next. I had always wanted to see that city because of
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
, as geeky as that sounds. Okay, so I know it’s a totally dated 80’s film, but it was in the VHS box that I bought at the Burbank yard sale. And it seemed just right for my movie trip across America.

I woke up super energized. I had watched another of my dyslexic TV hero, Stephen J. Cannell’s reruns, an episode of
Baretta
and I dashed Shadow through a brief walk and back into the red BMW. Off we went. It was a speedy drive into Chicago. Okay, I went way over the speed limit, but didn’t get caught.

Hello, Chicago! It’s a great, big city, and in a lot of ways it reminded me of New York City: the architecture, the feel of it, and the population. Okay, so a ton of movies have been filmed in Chicago,
The
Hunter
(a favorite of my father’s)
The Untouchables, Risky Business, Home Alone, Sixteen Candles, When Harry Met Sally, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Soul Food, The Blues Brothers, The Color of Money,
and
High Fidelity
—just to name a few, and (‘un-dork’ myself). So I left Shadow at the dog-friendly Marriott Hotel and started out on my Ferris Bueller movie tour, something I had put together by myself.

The character Ferris Bueller says,
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.
” I guess that’s what I’m most afraid of. Okay, so I’ve officially entered dork-ville, but I had a total blast checking out the garage that Ferris drives the Ferrari out of. I strolled past the Tribune Tower, the Sears Tower, and I took a taxi around Wrigley Field. Wow! It was the special movie-sight-seeing day, followed by really good Italian pizza from Giordano’s, which the taxi guy recommended, when I asked where the best was made. It’s so fun to be a tourist.

Cleveland, Ohio, was my next destination. Some of the movies that were shot there are
The Deer Hunter
(my father’s favorite),
Light of Day, Major League, Antwone Fisher
and
American Splendor.

When my mother left my unemotional father for the Panamanian coffee grower, my father said, “We’ll have to fend for ourselves,” and then he tossed out my mother’s coffee mug. It was a plain ceramic and lightweight; she didn’t like holding anything heavy in her hands. He never yelled, he never threw the things she left behind on the floor, and if he cried at all, he must have done it in the shower, because I never heard a thing. Nothing!

There’s a line in the film
The Deer Hunter
when the character Julien says, “
When a man says no to champagne he says no to life.
” I can’t remember ever seeing my father drink champagne after my mother left him. I forgot about being excited to be in Cleveland, when I checked into the Comfort Inn. Not because I didn’t like it, but because I was suddenly so worried about seeing my over-educated, workaholic ‘forever single’ father, again. SINGLE? Please don’t let me end up like him.

Wow, I was having sex with Ashton Kutcher in my dream. I mean, I actually woke up in my Comfort Inn bed—feeling flushed, exhausted, and well, to be truthful, wet between my legs. Wow, he was good. He was tender, focused, and he had speed. I’m not a star f***er in real life, but in my dream life, I have been a fantastic whore.

Okay, so who have I been to bed with in my dreams? My list is as follows; dead actors first, James Dean, because I believed him in
East of Eden
and
Rebel without a Cause
(and also he seemed moody and a bit intimidated by females and that just turned me on). Next, River Phoenix (from the film
Running on Empty
), but to be totally honest—we were only skinny dipping in my dream. It was still enjoyable, because we were both naked, jumping in and out of a secluded lake, with crystal clear water. Yup, I could see his naked body. I woke up grinning.

Foreign actors: Hugh Grant (UK), because he’s handsome and wildly fun in all the movies he’s acted in that I’ve seen, like
Four Weddings and a Funeral
and
Love Actually,
and okay, the Hollywood Boulevard or Sunset Boulevard “alleged” scandal, that garnered him a mug shot—just made him more desirable. I like the idea of him being lonely and seeking out comfort on the street—I think I’ve felt that same loneliness and horny desperation myself. And then French actor Tcheky Karyo (from the
La Femme Nakita
film), because I replayed the scene over and over where he bangs his hand against the door and kicks it, and he wants so much to go back in and kiss Nakita. And he’s rough, older—and I found him really hot to watch.

FYI, this wasn’t a sexual dream, but I did dream that Alec Baldwin’s brother Stephen Baldwin was trying to give me a religious cleansing (maybe to cure me of my male lust and penis envy). The dream was very short—Stephen Baldwin said, “You’re cleansed. The spirits are free,” and poured water over my head and the dream ended.

I’ve had a threesome in my first and only musician sex dream—I was in bed with Jack Johnson and Ben Harper. Okay, so it wasn’t the typical threesome. I mean, Jack Johnson played his guitar and sang while Ben Harper and I were having sex, and then, when I had sex with Jack Johnson, Ben Harper played guitar and sang. It was really ‘mellow’ sex, and I woke up really, really mellow!

Speaking of sex dreams—one time I dreamt that I was having sex with my former friend Heather’s ex-boyfriend Ryan. Life is stranger than a movie sometimes and you can quote me on that. For the record I had never, ever, ever thought of Ryan as a possibility because he was her mid-western guy and he wasn’t my type at all. So, when their relationship ended and he was just the ex-boyfriend (as in whatever)—I basically forgot about him. But then one morning, I woke up in my Los Feliz bed, having dreamt of him stripping off his carpenter pants and leaping into my bed. Yeah, I did just say leaping. The wacky thing is that the sex seemed real—so I called him. Yup, I just called him and said, “Ryan, this Vivien, I know I haven’t talked to you in a few years, but we were having sex in my dream and it was fantastic.” I was going through a phase of saying whatever I thought without censoring it—that phase didn’t last long.

“Uh, yeah? I like the sound of that dream,” he said.

I was stunned. I mean, I knew he hadn’t thought about me and that he would never have called me up. I was off his radar. He was living in Oakland, California and Heather had moved onto another guy. “Come visit me!” he suggested, and two days later I had booked a South by Southwest flight out of Burbank, all because I had had a fantastic sex dream. Okay, so the question is—can a sex dream actually turn into a reality worth having? It did this time.

To be totally truthful, there was no ‘great romance’ at all. Ryan picked me up at the airport and we both laughed. We didn’t kiss, didn’t even grope each other. Then I spent an hour rearranging his bed, because his lower back had been aching and he hadn’t flipped his mattress over. After that, he cooked us a healthy meal (as in no meat). Yeah, I guess I like guys who can cook. I’m kind of a healthy menu girl (as in I can choose nutritious items off a menu). After we ate, we took off our clothes super-slowly and got into bed and we did ‘it’. He was excellent, and so was I. The other thing I should confess about Ryan is that he’s well-endowed, and he was rather shy about it. How sweet is that? Come on, how adorable is that? Of course I was thrilled. Let’s just say I gave him lots of praise.

I don’t know whether Heather cared about the size of his cock, because we never talked about intimate stuff like that and she never said anything about him as a lover. The surprise was worth it. I’m not the same in bed as any of my friends—no one is the same in bed as their friends. Okay, so in my opinion; most guys who are well-endowed have matching egos. And it can get boring when they wave it in your face and tell you how terrifically fortunate you are. That happened once, not twice, and luckily not with Ryan.

Anyway, it was a weekend-stand, vs. a one-night stand. I called him once trying to get us to do ‘it’ again, not because I was horny (okay, probably I was) but more because I just didn’t want it to be a weekend stand. But it never happened again. Go figure.

Months later Heather dropped me as friend, not because “I did it” with her ex-boyfriend (they had been broken up for three years), but because I didn’t tell her. The idea of me calling her up and telling her that it ‘only’ happened because of a sex dream I had, not because I had ever, ever wanted Ryan—seemed impossible. Friendships end when one person chooses to dump it lock-stock-and-barrel. It ends like a death, non-retrievable, that much I learned from that.

Paloma, on the other hand, is the opposite. She’s so proud of being a Puerto Rican and bred in NYC that if I had slept with one of her ex-boyfriends, she wouldn’t care, nor would she ever take it personally. I know that for sure, because she caught one of her ex-boyfriends eyeing my acting headshot that was nailed to her wall. He asked her to set him up with me, because he was going to be visiting LA and she called me up, saying, “Vivien, if you do him, you better be good, because otherwise, I’ll have to make up for it.” I pretended I was going to be away filming on location. The real reason I don’t like remakes are because the first movie should stand as it is, unless it was terrible. As in life, I act the same. The Ryan sexual weekend ‘mini movie’ was enough!

“Goodbye, Cleveland,” I shouted out of the car window as Shadow and I headed for Pennsylvania. Some of the movies filmed in that state are
Rocky, Boys on the Side, Blue Valentine, I Am Number Four
(I saw it, because the lead actor looked cute) and
The Sixth Sense.
There’s a line in
The Sixth Sense
, where the character Cole Sear says, “
Some magic’s real.
” I guess I like to believe that about my own life.

The road sign read ENTERING HARRISBURG. Hello Pennsylvania!

I had booked us in a room at the Comfort Inn in Harrisburg for three reasons: it was close to Hershey Park, the Hershey chocolate stores, and the Harrisburg State Hospital. After checking into our wonderful room, I took Shadow around the dog-friendly grounds, and then headed off for chocolate. Okay, so probably the Swiss make the best chocolate in the world, but for old fashion, yummy American milk chocolate—hands down it’s Hershey.

The movies that have had ‘chocolate themes’ that I’ve seen so far are,
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, (Como Aqua Para Chocolate) Like Water for Chocolate, Forest Gump, Matilda
and
Blood & Chocolate.
Going to an amusement park is usually more of a ‘couple’ thing to do, but I didn’t care. Milton S. Hershey created the Hershey Park, and the chocolate factory. I mean, he just had to have been a very enjoyable, ‘yummy,’ man.

I bought myself tickets for the amusement rides. I went on my first roller coaster at Coney Island when I was six and now I can never get enough. So I went on the Fahrenheit three times; the Comet once and didn’t throw up. It’s really satisfying to scream at the top of my lungs in mid-air. I think doctors and shrinks should make amusement parks mandatory, once a month, for all people trying to juggle their humanness. And I did it while eating an almond-covered Hershey bar. Chocolate can replace sex, sometimes. Wow, how much fun I had and the sight from above is a bird’s eye view.

Back at the Comfort Inn, I fed Shadow and ate a tofu walnut salad I had bought at a health food store along the way. I rested, and then put on my black jeans with the sewn-on patch ‘LOVE IS’, my black long sleeve shirt, and my Nike sneakers. I was headed to the Harrisburg State Hospital, the location central to the movie
Girl Interrupted
. Okay, so not to get morbid, depressed or suicidal—I’ve only seen the movie five times, and the actress part of me thinks I was supposed to be in it. Go figure! I decided to take Shadow with me; he could sit in the car while I walked around the grounds.

The hospital had opened in 1851 because of the efforts of a female humanitarian named Dorothea Dix, but had since closed. Crazy is crazy, and, well, this was on my movie-location-across America-trip list, and I was about to cross it off. It was a quick drive and I parked near the entrance. Bizarre, it looks just like it did in the movie. I stood there, watching the movie scenes fly past me. I have an auto replay in my mind for films, but not for TV.

In the film
Girl Interrupted,
the character Lisa says,
“If I could have any job in the world I’d be a professional Cinderella.”
I stood there, not caring if one person heard me as I said, “I wish that, too!” Actually no one was around: it was deserted. I think one of the buildings was being used as a government office, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. In a way, I felt as if the mentally ill, the mentally challenged, and the others who had inhabited this complex had left their ‘ghosts’ behind. I stood motionless and silent; I think just maybe I could have heard their pleas. But who knows. I think too much!