“I want the ‘and’ credit,” someone would start. “You know, at the end of a bunch of credits sometimes there’ll be a ‘with’ or an ‘and.’ Obviously I want to be a lead and get first billing or whatever, but someday I want to be the ‘and’ guy.”
“Oh,” I said, “I want the ‘is a revelation.’ Like in the Brokeback Mountain trailer when they show Michelle Williams and the voiceover guy reads a review like ‘Williams is a revelation.’ I want to be a revelation.”
“That’s a good one. Maybe I want that. No! I want the secret post-credits cameo!”
Most of my friends were not actors. A surprising percentage were just my neighbors. I became close with a group of stunning girls who lived in a duplex down the street. Paige was a model, Amy was an exotic dancer, and Valerie was a former exotic dancer whose wealthy boyfriend paid her bills and rent. They’d met during a lap dance. It was a true LA love story.
The girls were beautiful, hilarious, and tough as steel. On the night we met, Valerie, through her thick Queens accent, said, “You’re smart, right? You know how I know you’re smart? ’Cause I woulda copied offa you in high school.”
I liked hanging out with them. These ladies could PARTY, and being with a group of girls that bombastic made me “the quiet one.” I was their mousy, serious friend, and I happily leaned into the role. Surrounding myself with people who were so much more attractive than me meant I could feel like the substantial one. I wouldn’t call it healthy, but I did it anyway.
They also had a talent for getting into and out of trouble. The cops showed up at their house once because of a noise complaint, and I swear on my life, they turned up the music, ran into the street, got on the cop car, and danced with the officers until they went away. In the rain.
We went to Vegas and Palm Springs. We went to the Spearmint Rhino in downtown LA after eating some especially potent pot brownies and watched Amy do what can only be described as an erotic Cirque du Soleil routine. When Valerie’s boyfriend came into town, he’d rent out a suite at the Chateau Marmont and we’d all get drunk and choreograph fake music videos to every song on my iPod.
They got me out of the house, which was no easy feat. And no matter how hard I struggled, they forced me to occasionally have fun.
I still hadn’t yet had a “boyfriend,” though, and I realized this was unacceptably weird. Nineteen-year-olds had boyfriends, dammit. They had boyfriends, they had ex-boyfriends, most of them had multiple ex-boyfriends. I bought a book called Guide to Getting It On! and prepared to get it over with.
Outside of romance, my “real life” was coming together, slowly but surely. It didn’t look like how I’d once thought it should. I couldn’t afford Crate and Barrel plates (my ultimate idea of status. Related: Did you know that there are fancier places than Crate and Barrel to get plates??). The jobs I was getting were low-budget and almost willfully not mainstream. My friends weren’t polished, but neither was I. It was so much better.
boys and the terror of being near them
I read somewhere that the reason adolescent girls are attracted to androgynous young men is that they seem less threatening. Since their sexuality is not fully realized yet, they feel safer placing attraction on boys with thin frames and delicate features, because it subconsciously reminds them of another girl. They don’t have to confront the implications of being attracted to someone masculine and virile enough to, you know, “do it.” (Okay, I don’t remember exactly what the thing said; I’m just trying to sound smart before I talk about “special feelings.”)
The piece stuck with me, whether it had any merit or not, because I was totally one of those girls. I loved the baby-faced New Kids on the Block but felt wholly creeped out when they changed their name to NKOTB and started growing facial hair. When Jonathan Taylor Thomas cut his hair short enough that it no longer fell in his eyes, it was a betrayal. Zack Morris was far preferable to A. C. Slater. Slater was the one with the rippling muscles, but outside of lifting heavy furniture, what on earth did that have to do with anything?