We were just saying we would volunteer to be fluffers for this scene,” says Bob. He and the art director are standing in the kitchen drinking Cokes.
“I don’t think it would make a bit of difference,” I say. “This has to be the most un-erotic environment possible. I could never do a porn.” I choose to deflect the implied compliment, moving over to the counter where three delivery pizzas lie waiting. It’s nine-thirty p.m., we’ve been filming the sex scene since five-thirty and we’re nowhere near done. The guys on the crew are coming down the stairs behind me. I grab a slice and head out onto the back deck, into the cool night air. All weekend I’ve been looking out over the amazing view of the city from the deck, during quiet times between scenes. I never get tired of looking at this city.
The cameraman takes his slice halfway down the stairs leading to the backyard, where he can be alone. He calls someone on his cell phone. His quiet words drift up to me. “Hey, I’m going to be late…I don’t know…okay…bye.” The director and the rest of the crew have joined me on the deck. We all stand silently with our slices of Marcello’s, all of us facing the view of downtown, the Bay Bridge extending beyond the skyline into the night, towards the dark hills of Oakland. There is only the quiet noise of men eating. From the houses on the hills above the Castro there is the sound of traffic and Saturday night parties. Music echoing over the hills, voices, laughter. Hearing them reinforces the sense of dissociation I’ve carried since the filming started; caught up in a strange little world outside my normal customs; the normal hours of my day job, my usual AA meetings at night, dinners with friends; everything has fallen away as I go about the work of pretending to be someone else in this house on 19th street.
I’ve been at the house since 10 am. The lead actor, the kid, sits behind me on the deck, munching his pizza. Both of us are introverted and we’ve had only the briefest of conversations. There are other actors and crew members I’ve known for awhile, from plays we’ve done together. Their presence is comforting. The director seems to believe in me, and has given me the role despite my complete lack of on-camera experience. I’m learning as I go along.
“Let’s get back,” the director says.
I eat a banana to clear some of the pizza taste from my mouth, out of respect for the kid, whom I have to kiss repeatedly during the scene. I keep my tongue in my mouth. Besides, he’s a smoker. I chew a piece of gum as I walk back upstairs.
Upstairs the bedroom is lit up like a ballpark at night. They’ve positioned three floodlights outside on the upper deck. They shine through the windows, across the bed. The bedroom still reads as dimly-lit on camera, where it counts. As the crew settles on the other side of the room, I perch on the edge of the mattress. I look at the floor, away from the harsh lights. The kid lies on the other side of the bed. We’ve removed our clothes six or seven times by now. Fortunately they’re only shooting us from the waists up. We can keep our underwear on. I look over at the others. I can’t help but notice there are more people watching than usual. The director, the cameraman, the lighting man, the sound man, the art director, the continuity girl, the director’s boyfriend, and the owner of the house we’re using.
“Nice sheets,” I tell the art director.
“Yeah, just don’t get anything on them, I have to return them.”
I laugh.
“I’m not kidding,” he says.
During the filming I open six or seven condom wrappers with my teeth. The first couple of wrappers take at least two or three bites. One small corner gets trapped under my tongue. I am feeling very un-smooth, a failed Lothario captured on camera for all eternity spitting tiny pieces of foil condom wrappers onto the floor, doing my best to avoid the sheets at all times. The director is kind enough not to yell “CUT!” in the middle of my fumbling. The kid lies patiently beneath me. I’d say he has the easier acting job at the moment. After one or two takes my fingers are coated with a slight film of lube, which only aggravates the problem. Somehow I manage a couple of good takes. By now I’ve accepted that whatever the mostly straight crew thinks of all this is totally beside the point.
Later, after our attempt at fucking fails, the script calls for me to roll over, sigh, and light a cigarette. Being an ex-smoker and someone who can become addicted to anything, anywhere, I’ve asked for some herbal cigarettes without nicotine. It’s my only high-maintenance movie star request. Somehow I only get two of them, so for the six or seven takes of me lighting a cigarette, I have to re-light each about three times. They certainly smell just like cigarettes. I don’t think the owner of the house is too happy with the air quality of his bedroom by now, but again that is beside the point.
Despite the lights and the quiet audience and the new sheets and the camera and my Midwestern modesty, the sex scene is my favorite, if only because my character, a morally ambiguous asshole, gets a second or two where the real guy underneath all the crap is revealed. And that’s why I love acting.
The director is happy. He comes over to my side of the bed, lies down next to me and puts his head on my chest. “That was amazing. That’s gonna be the most beautiful scene in the movie.” I can only take his word for it. He gets back to his feet. “Go home,” he says.
I put my clothes back on for the last time. The crew is out on the deck smoking. The director’s boyfriend is bringing beers up from the kitchen for everyone. A beer sounds so amazingly delicious right now, but I don’t do that anymore. Now that the scene is behind me I am exhausted, all the tension leading up to tonight is spent. I can barely manage a wave good-bye to everyone, but that hardly matters. I have to be back in the morning.
He’s fearless. He’s rich, made himself rich. He’s the kind that walks into a room and he’s all you can see,” the director says.
I stand with my script in hand in another actor’s living room. I’ve been in this room many times, have spent hours, weeks here, rehearsing for plays. Tonight I’m rehearsing for a film. In 36 hours I’ll report to a house in the Castro, where for the next three days I will work 12 hours a day, pretending to be someone else.
I nod so the director knows I’m listening. I stare at the floor near his feet, imagining what fearlessness looks like, what fearless people have I known? A man I dated awhile back, Mr. Type A from that night at the Stud a couple of weekends ago. The way his chest led the rest of him as he entered a room. His unwavering eye contact.
“He knows the game, he’ll play the game if that’s what it takes, but he doesn’t really care.”
I really need to get these lines down. I won’t own them till I know them. And until then, it’s all fumbling.
“Let’s take a break.”
In the kitchen Scott fills a bowl with the soup he’s made. White beans and carrots and slivers of ham. It’s a little too hot, I lift spoonfulls to the surface of the soup, turn them over as the steam rises. The director and the kid are out front smoking. All I’m thinking about is the next half hour, the scene waiting.
The director and the kid are back. “I want to show you guys a scene from Querelle,” the director says.
Somehow I know which scene he’ll show. We gather in the back bedroom, he has it on DVD. I make a mental note to get a copy. I sit in a chair next to the bed. The kid stands next to me. The director presses a few buttons on the remote, cues the scene. Sure enough, it’s that one. Brad Davis the sailor losing a bet to Nono. The sailor getting fucked on a table. I wonder if the kid is straight, and what he thinks of all this. The scene makes me sweat, every time. I kind of wish everyone would just leave the room.
The director points the remote, the TV darkens. “No nudity,” he says. “All that heat, no nudity, just the connection between them.”
The kid hasn’t said anything. Then again, neither have I. I check his profile, his bright blue eyes blinking behind his glasses. We clutch our scripts in our hands. I’ve taken off my shoes.
I sit with my back resting against the railing at the foot of the bed. The kid sits on the edge of the mattress while the director pages through the script. He settles into the chair. “I’m still trying to figure out how this is going to work,” he says. This makes me a little nervous. I thought he had this all story-boarded or something. “For the purposes of rehearsal, when the script says “kiss’, just touch your cheek to his, Michael.”
“Okay” I relax a little.
We try a few positions on the bed. Sitting side by side on the edge of the mattress. Sitting, one of my legs curled around him. Lying side by side.
“That works,” the director says. Okay, so you kiss him, he resists. It’s too much for him, too intimate. You get him to roll over on his stomach.” He pauses. “Now, how do we get his pants off?”
We try a few maneuvers; settle on one that’s a little more fluid than the others. I pretend to take my shirt off, back to the camera. I reach over and pretend to take his pants off. I climb on top of him.
“Here we’ll frame you as you grab a condom from the nightstand, waist up. Tear it open with your teeth and spit it out.”
Then the failed fuck. He turns over.
I sigh, roll over, grab a cigarette from the nightstand. I motion and the kid settles against me, my arm wrapped around him.
“Okay,” the director says. “Let’s save the rest for the camera. Unless you guys want to run it again?”
Nope, we’re fine. Let’s call it a night.
The night air is cool, the lights of the restaurants on 16th street washing over the sidewalks. I roll the script up in my fist as I walk to the car.
the neurotic artistic type
I really should have picked the piece about the go-go boy I think, all day Saturday I should just entertain, that’s all they’ll want. But it’s too late, I’ve already told my instructor what I’ll read, and the class has expressed their opinion; read the piece about your mother and the restaurant, the piece with the box cutter and the fucked-up therapy session. Oh yeah, they’ll love that piece. Just call me Killjoy.
After the gym I have a few hours alone, to read it through, to clean it up. I resist. I open the lap-top, walk away. I come back, read it once, walk away. Come back, tinker a bit. Open a book. Compared to her I suck I think. Mine’s so simple, where’s the rich descriptive language that she has?. I put the book down. Back to the lap-top. I read it again, clean up a few sentences, tighten a flow of words. I think back to the night I read the piece to the class, searching for the questions the instructor asked. “Why is he so scared to come out of the closet if both his parents are gay?” she wanted to know. I type a few more lines here and there. I open another book, scan a few pages, put it back. Take another. He’s so intelligent, I think, so literary. I can’t catch half his references. I put it aside. I come back, read it again, clean it up a little more. The sentence I added is clunky, tighten it up, delete a few words. Read the section over and over till it flows right. Then read the whole thing. I walk away, draw a bath. Let the dog outside. It’s a beautiful day, sun on the warm wooden deck just out the backdoor, but I need to stay in here and get it right. I take the first book with me to the bathtub, but I only read three pages. Time is slipping past. I flip the drainswitch with my toe. Too early to get dressed for the reading, so I put my sweats on, back to the glowing screen. Read it aloud for the first time, timing myself. I’m reading fast and I’m three minutes over. Read it again, forget I’m timing myself and tinker with another sentence. Stop, start over. You get the idea.
I’m twenty minutes early to the bookstore. I’m always early, to everything. I walk among the broad tables with piles of books facing up. I scan them, marvelling at their colors and their clever designs, all the stories everyone has. I pick up a few, scan the back covers, set them back. Try to remember the author of that book about the middlesexed charater. Too stubborn to ask the guy behind the counter, I play a little game, I’ll just wander and try to find the book myself and kill some time. I stand by the new hardcover fiction shelf, my head tilted to the right, scanning the spines of the books. Oh, she has a new one. And there’s the one that one the Pulitzer. I pull it out, open the book and read a few words. That’s so clever, I wish I were that clever. Maybe I should exchange earnest for clever. I imagine myself a published author, what it would be like to see my book among the others; would there be a sense of satisfaction, or would I worry it’ll end up on the sale table in a few weeks? I never find the middlesex book. I wander to the back of the store where they’ve set up about twenty-five chairs in front of a microphone. The store is so quiet, won’t it be obnoxious once we get up there and start reading? Luckily Bearbait is there, browsing as well, so I can escape my head for a bit.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he says.
Back to my brain. I stake out two chairs in the third row. Bearbait seems tired. What if he doesn’t really want to be here? He blinks slowly, tells me about his day. Other students come, bearing wine and bags of chips, eyes shinging, laughing a little too high and loud. Everyone looks nicer than they did on Wednesday nights. Bearbait heads for the refreshments while I stay seated. Then a voice at my shoulder.
“Is this seat taken?” It’s Richard. We hug and I move in another chair. I feel so flattered people are here. And nervous.
“I should have picked the go-go boy story,” I tell Richard. He lets me babble nervously, nodding patiently at my ten-minute long disclaimer about how I don’t want to be too heavy and bring everybody down by reading a piece about cutting up my hand with a box cutter.
My instructor stops by, “You’re reading sixth,” she says. A little more than half-way through. How did she decide that? I wonder. Is there some sort of hierarchy here? I let that rattle around inside my head along with everything else. A lot of people are showing up; more chairs are pulled from a back room. I look behind me at all the unfamilar faces.
“This looks like a Marina crowd,” I tell Richard. He agrees. Bearbait comes back. “This is Richard, he keeps a website, too.” Bearbait smiles. “And this is ____. I call him Bearbait on dogpoet.” They smile patiently at my clever nickname. I tell Bearbait to start his own weblog, as a way of luring more bears. He smiles patiently at me and sips his Pepsi.
The reading starts. The woman’s head in front of me blocks my view of the podium. So I listen, staring at her neck or at the bright colors of the children’s book section behind the podium. There is a clock cut out of construction paper hanging on the wall, its hands stuck eternally at seven o’clock. It’s very disorienting. As the fifth student walks to the podium Bearbait leans over and tells me to breathe. Apparently I had stopped. I lean back and take a couple of deep breaths, test my eyesight by reading the titles of books several feet away. I was expecting the intermission but the instructor calls my name. I reach under my chair, grab the four sheets of paper waiting there. Richard moves his legs and I squeeze by, hoping my jeans look good as I walk up to the podium.
“’Michael McAllister used to write a lot of poetry,” the instructor reads from my hastily-written bio. “Lately he’s been writing little stories from his life.’” She pauses and looks at me. “Maybe not that little,” she says. Everyone laughs. “’He lives in San Francisco and keeps a website.’ She looks at me again. “Should I tell them the website?” I shake my head. They’ll ask if they want.
The reader before me was short. I pull the microphone up a bit, set the pages down, take another breath to calm my nerves.
“My mother has a good arm,” I read.
They’re laughing by the end of the first paragraph, laughing at all the appropriate jokes. They’re quiet in the other parts. As I read I remember this feeling, the feeling I used to get when I’d read my poetry in Minneapolis. The feeling of a room full of people listening intently to the words I’ve strung together. I remember how I loved it. What was I so worried about? I wonder. It’s a good story. When I finish there is warm applause that carries me back to my chair between Richard and Bearbait. I sit, my adrenaline pumping, as the intermission is announced. The women in front of me turn around “that was great,” they say. I smile and say thanks. The instructor stops by. “Bravo,” she says, “that revision is wonderful, it brought it all together.” She shakes my hand. “I tried to remember the feedback,” I tell her.
A woman with bright red hair and a commanding presence comes up to me. “You have a website?” she asks. I nod. “Is it a blog?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“We have blogs too!” she says, indicating her boyfriend. As she searches through her purse for a pen, a familiar face walks up.
“I recognize you,” I say. It’s Chad. He introduces himself briefly, then slips away, late for a dinner party. I exchange URL’s with the couple.
The rest of the reading is great, everybody sounds so good. There is another student who I love, someone who’s lived a rough life and is writing about it in a vivid, humorous, heartbreaking way. I think she’s the best writer in the class. She was so nervous about reading, didn’t want to do it. “You have to read,” I told her at the last class. “You’re too good.” She reads and everyone eats it up, they adore her. I want to write as good as she does.
Later Richard, Bearbait and I grab dinner at Max’s Opera Café. A waitress sings “Killing Me Softly” over by the piano. Richard orders a “BIG! BOLD! SALAD!” and we order cheeseburgers. We talk about art and life, and living the lives we want. It’s a good night with good people. The anxiety is behind me. I dip my fries in ketchup and horseradish.
