6. Then The Hotel

I was the only cast/crew member from the movie banished to a tired Howard Johnson's on the outskirts of Providence. The others, if they weren't simply commuting from home, stayed at the downtown Biltmore, a seventy-year-old high-rise upscale hotel featuring dusty, dimly lit luxury rooms and dreams. Valentina wanted to prevent me from socializing, to keep me mysterious to everyone else working on the movie. As she'd explained it, remaining somewhat isolated would also help me to focus on my character and performance.

The night before our first day of filming I read the sides five times, which ended with the teens gathered outside the abandoned elementary school. Of course, I didn't know then how far we'd go.

I wasn't given any acting instruction with the pages, but it was easy to imagine myself as this Thin Kid, so I did. I gave him my high school background. I briefly itemized my least pleasant experiences, memories flickering in a movie montage; the chaotic flashes of casual cruelties upon which schools and their tween and teen societies are built, the personal failings and longings that had become encoded within my DNA. While those wounds still stung when I prodded at them, I spent more mental energy rebuilding the smoglike indifference and dullness of my prior teenage life. I believed that was where I would find the Thin Kid; the countless hours spent watching television by myself or wordlessly with my siblings, their own struggles and social strata as distant and alien as other galaxies; or listening to music in my room while lying in bed, staring at the yellowed ceiling, Walkman headphones barnacled over my ears; or shooting the basketball alone in the backyard, navigating a craggy, undulating square of blacktop, dreaming basketball dreams despite having tried out for the freshman team and not making it and then never trying out again. While I didn't think Valentina and Cleo were banking on the existential horrors of boredom and angst to inform their movie, with the opening scene of the teens walking down the middle of the street all but ignoring my character, I thought it could help. In this mundane way, I would inhabit the Thin Kid until he could inhabit me.

Between each script reading I paced the hotel room. It was more than probable that this movie wouldn't amount to anything, would be a minor blip in the film world and in my life. Yet I was convinced that the next day would be a personal inflection point. How many of those are we presented with? How often are we aware of an inflection point before it happens? I was both eager and terrified.

Two nights later, Cleo handed me the pages for the classroom scene, the one in which I don the mask and am left behind in the closet. I did not dwell on how uncomfortable the mask would be nor how long I would have to endure wearing it. Instead, the thought of removing my shirt and pants in front of everyone, in front of the camera, shriveled my insides into a Big Crunch particle at the center of my being. Having to take my clothes off in a classroom, abandoned or not, would be one of my worst nightmares come to life.

I called Valentina's hotel room and she didn't answer. I called Cleo next. She answered, and she sounded blurred, distant, like I'd woken her up despite the relatively early hour. She didn't rush me off the phone, though. Anticipating why I was calling she asked if I had a question about the script. I said not exactly, and then I danced around my discomfort at having to disrobe on-camera. "Disrobe" was the word I used, and it sounded ludicrous, but I said it multiple times. Cleo, to her credit, understood what I was and wasn't saying. She was patient and kind, but unreachable in her uniquely Cleo way. That's not to say she was emotionless or didn't care about what I was saying. To the contrary, she cared, perhaps too much. Her unreachableness registered more as resignation; no matter what any of us said or did, the outcome—one that she could clearly see—had been predetermined. Cleo said that she sympathized with my discomfort and assured me that my state of undress was necessary for the story, otherwise the script wouldn't require it. She phrased it as though the script were making the exposed-flesh demand, not its author. When I didn't respond, she sounded as uncomfortable as I felt, stammering through promises that no one on-set would be judging or commenting upon my appearance, that we would all be professionals about it, and as an afterthought, she said that my body was beautiful and there was nothing to be ashamed of and that she'd be happy to talk me through it tomorrow in person. I thanked her, although I felt even more panicked. I'd hoped after hearing my poorly worded objection Cleo would allow me to wear more clothing. Shorts and a tank top, perhaps? I knew I had some leverage, at least in theory, as I could've threatened to walk off the movie, and they would've been screwed. But that threat was never a real possibility, and I think Valentina and Cleo realized I wouldn't quit, no matter what, and that was another reason why I had the part. How they knew that about me, I didn't know. Maybe it was written on my face. I think most of us have our personality, our character, plainly etched in a wordless language on the skins of our faces, as obvious as a bleeding heart on a sleeve. I told Cleo that I had already agreed to perform in the film while keeping the remainder of the script secret from me, but I needed assurances that I wouldn't have to disrobe beyond the blue boxers. I sighed at myself as I'd given in so quickly, so easily, and was now begging for no further indignities. Cleo promised that the underwear would remain on for the entirety of the movie, although Valentina might want the Thin Kid to wear tighty-whities instead of the boxers because they'd make my character look more pathetic. She didn't pause (and I imagined her on the other end of the phone not blinking either) at the word "pathetic." I didn't agree to the wardrobe change, but I also didn't not agree to it.

With the wardrobe problem solved/not solved, we waded through a few minutes of stilted chitchat with the hope our call would end in a better place. Valentina and I were the ones with a past, as small and compartmentalized as it was; there wasn't any shared experience for Cleo and me to fall back on.

Cleo asked if I liked acting so far. I said "Yeah" in a way that meant not right this second.

I asked her the same question. She said, "I don't know. I haven't started acting yet."

Upon hanging up, I paced the room again, then I took off my clothes. I happened to be wearing tighty-whities, and I imagined the next morning, my beating Valentina to the punch by suggesting I wear these, as they were already worn and saggy; a lot less tighty and whitey.

I stood in front of the hotel bathroom mirror, the bright, cruel yellow lights flashed on my hairless chest, the stubborn clusters of blemishes, underdeveloped musculature, sloped shoulders. I raised and bent my arms randomly, mechanically, twisted and torqued my torso, hoping the body parts might appear like they belonged to some other body and not my own. It didn't work, and I met my own shame-filled eyes in the mirror as I had countless times before. I was seeing who I always saw and who everyone else would see. Though maybe this time, that wasn't quite true.

I stalked into the hotel room proper and read the scene again. The shirt and pants would not come off the Thin Kid until after the mask covered his head. I returned to the bathroom and the unforgiving mirror, held my hands over my face so my fingers were a mesh over my eyes, and I observed and I breathed, and I imagined.

Well, seeing my body with my face obscured changed everything. With the mask on, people wouldn't see my face as the rest of me was being seen. It wasn't so much altering my identity as covering it, shrouding it, making myself into a blank, but not a blank the observer could fill with their judgments.

With the mask I could be inscrutable, maybe even implacable.