17. Now Feral FX Part 2

Yeah, they all see me.

I sit on a low-backed stool and Janelle instructs me to raise my arms up and through the top of the garbage-bag poncho. They pull and adjust the covering so my chest, a few inches above the nipple line, is exposed. They glance at my chest, my face, and away. Sometimes I can't bear to look at myself either.

Janelle steps back to take in the totality of me. Yes, I know, I'm a lot.

I say, "I've probably cut too much weight for the role. It's hell being an over-fifty-year-old teenager."

Janelle says, "Losing weight under the care and supervision of a doctor, I hope."

"Nah. Doctors are judgy and are always so disappointed when I can't produce a health insurance card."

Janelle says, "In case you're not joking, before you leave, I'll give you the name and number of a friend who helps new, struggling actors with health insurance stuff."

"Am I new or struggling?"

"Clearly both."

"Fair."

They point at my chest, swirl a pointer finger around, and ask, "Probably a dumb question, but are those scales, like, tattoos?"

I answer in the affirmative without saying yes. "It covered up the cigarette-burn mark first and I liked how it looked, so they multiplied over old acne scars." Scales polka-dot my chest, and really the whole torso and parts of my thighs, too, so I'm maybe 75 percent man, 25 percent monster. Don't double-check my math on that. I add, "Though I kind of regret it now."

I don't know if anyone in the room registers how honest I'm being with my not-fully-honest answer about the "tattoos." But hey, I can't give away the whole story. Sometimes you must work for it, earn it.

The legend of what happened to me and my pinky on-set and my role in Cleo's death combined with my body visuals now laid bare makes for a complicated if not disturbing vista, one they were not expecting. One might think that given my experiences, I would not choose to have done to my body what has been done. One might jump to conclusions about why I made those decisions. Hey, you do you doesn't quite cut it as a response in this case. My case.

Janelle says, "They look, wow. I mean, they look like real scales. Like little, hard, ridged scales. The color and shading really makes them pop. 3-D almost. Amazing. Who is your artist?"

I give them a fake name from a place I never lived in. Remember, I'm supposed to be mysterious.

Janelle wants to ask if they can touch one of the scales (why not the cigarette-burn one, right?) thinking they might be able to feel the bumps and ridges. Given they have tattoos as well, they know the etiquette of never asking to touch someone else's ink.

My bald cap goes on first, which is glued at my hairline. I joke that if I lose any of my luscious locks, there will be hell to pay. Janelle quips, "And a hell toupee." With the work started, the mood in the studio returns to its prior breezy chattiness. I like Janelle and the other Feral FX artists. Unlike so many other people in Hollywood, they're not constantly on the make, not scheming how they can use me. They don't ask me questions about meeting Actor X or Director Y. They ask me superficial questions about myself that are easy to answer. I ask them questions too. I've become better at small talk. We briefly chat about music and live shows we've seen until it's time to slather me up. They remind me that I won't be able to see or speak for about ninety minutes. They tell me the emergency hand signal to use if I'm having trouble breathing or if I am about to freak out: two held-up "stop" hands. Another artist gives me a palm-sized spiral notebook with the cover torn off and a green marker, in case I want to write messages, like "Hey, my lower back is itchy" or "The void never blinks and is always hungry."

Janelle and two other artists coat my head and chest with a quick layer of Vaseline, which leaves me feeling all squishy. Then they apply the first of three silicone layers. Janelle shaping and sculpting around my nostrils is a strange sensation, and I fight an urge to mash the back of my hand against my nose and rub it. Each moment of discomfort passes reasonably quickly, and the artists distract me with questions I can answer with a grunt or a thumbs-up. They also describe what they are doing and what is coming next. The weight and pressure in and around my eyes as they apply the silicone is disconcerting, though. I hate eye stuff. But I can handle it, I think. The temperature of the silicone is neither as warm nor as cold as I thought it would be. Most of the time I am surprisingly comfortable. Light filters through the applications and my eyelids so I'm not completely in the dark. The second and third layers are applied, and the silicone hardens, tightens around my throat, pushes against my eyes, and the light, or my closed-eyes sensation of light, dims. Concentrating on their chatter helps me remain composed, and so does writing random messages and fake parking tickets on the notebook paper. Janelle compliments my no-look swooping cursive. I write a follow-up joke: "But I don't know how to write cursive." When they add the plaster wraps over the silicone layers, things go full dark. My head, neck, and shoulders ache with the added weight, and I actively concentrate on breathing through my nostrils while not thinking about how small those two breathing holes are. The plaster smells warm and damp, like a living classroom might smell. Not the dead classroom I spent weeks in. What if they leave me inside the cocoon overnight in what could be an added early scene for the new version of Horror Movie? I think about scribbling a picture on the notebook; an attempt to replicate the random drawing of the openmouthed bird (I think it was a bird, maybe it was something else) emerging from a cocoon that I made when I was eight. Maybe the artists sense my tension and unease because they increase their chatter, pat my arm, and tell me I'm doing great. I give a thumbs-up, but I don't feel like I'll ever emerge from this cocoon. Maybe that's for the best. I'm a bug in amber, to be kept in stasis for eons. Or I'm safely buried in the ice of a glacier, but it'll melt because everything is melting, and once I'm set free... watch out. I try to arch a lip or twitch an eyelid and I can't. I wonder if there is a way to make the cast with eyeholes as well as nostril-holes. Too late now, obviously. If my eyes were open, then this would've been like wearing another mask. I am used to wearing masks. The plaster hardens and the trapped feeling intensifies. I promise myself that when this and the movie are done and finished, I will escape and roam and cross distances and fill spaces. I promise myself that I will be free.

As I'm about to flash my emergency hands, they tell me they're going to start the process of breaking me out of the cast in three minutes. Someone shouts, "Start the timer!" The artists also tell me it's tradition that they draw on the plaster as they wait the final minutes for it to fully harden. Who am I to get in the way of tradition? I don't quite feel their Sharpies and Magic Markers against my skin, but from down below the strata, I hear the felt tips scratch and scritch the craggy surface. I bet you know what I imagine they're drawing. Someone's phone alarm goes off and finally it's time to excavate me. They start cutting in the back, between my shoulder blades. The scissors chew up and through the plaster seam that splits the middle of my head. After some tugging and wrestling, the plaster pops off. I still can't see, but light returns. Next, it's the silicone's turn to be cut, and this part goes quicker, and I move my face and as I wriggle and peel the silicone away it stretches my skin and takes some stray body hairs with it. Leaving pieces of myself behind is part of the bargain, has always been part of the bargain.

I'm given a towel for a cursory wipe-down and there's a shower on the premises that I'll be able to use before I leave. I linger in the chair though.

Janelle peers into the mold and doesn't say anything. Neither do the other artists, one of whom sends a hand inside and quickly retracts it.

I ask, "What is it?"

Janelle says, "It came out great, but, um, the chest part isn't smooth. Your scale tattoos are there, indented, outlined in the mold. That never happens."

They bring the mold over, my newly shed skin. I could say something like, Well, things changed in the cocoon. What did you expect? But that would sound goofy. A clunky line from a bad horror movie.

I could make up some bullshit about my fake-named tattoo artist doing some subtle scarification to make those scales bubble up, make them pop, as Janelle said earlier.

But I don't.