by TJ Klune
“I have no idea. I have friends only because none of you will leave me alone. Whatever you do, though, don’t look it up on the Internet. You’ll see things you’ll never be able to unsee before you get terrible advice from websites that should be illegal. I have to go. Someone just came into the store and asked Casey if we have a copy of Transformers. I need to ban them for life for asking such a ridiculous question. Sir? Excuse me, sir? You stay right there, and I’ll deal with you. Don’t you even think of running out that door. I work out, and my stamina is really high. Josy, I am hanging up now.”
“But you haven’t told me how to fix this!”
“You resemble something close to an adult. Figure it out. And don’t call me about this again. Until next Tuesday. And send me the dog video.”
The phone beeped in Josy’s ear.
Josy put his head on the table. “I’m so screwed.”
“There, there,” Serge said, patting the back of his head. “You’ll figure it out. A yogi gave me some advice when I was in India that I think fits this situation aptly. He said, ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’”
“That wasn’t a yogi in India,” Xander said. “That was Yoda in Star Wars.”
“Oh,” Serge said. “That… changes nothing. It’s still sound advice. The Jedi aren’t that different than those of us who are enlightened.”
Worst. Brunch. Ever.
NOW, IT should be said that Josiah Erickson wasn’t usually in the market to follow advice that came from a tiny green puppet that had a human arm shoved up its backside. It wasn’t that he necessarily thought there was anything wrong with that, it just wasn’t for him.
But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense.
“DO OR do not,” he muttered, staring up at the popcorn ceiling of his apartment. Thick bluish smoke swirled around him. “There is no try.”
“DO OR do not,” he whispered, clapping along while his coworkers sang happy birthday to a screaming six-year-old who was throwing silverware across the restaurant. “There is no try.”
“DO OR do not,” he mumbled as he scrolled through Q-Bert’s blog at three in the morning while sitting on his futon in his underwear. “There is no try.” He ate another Chicken in a Bisket cracker because it reminded him of Thanksgiving and he was blazed out of his mind.
“DO OR do not,” he said. “There is no—”
“Kiddo, what in the actual fuck are you talking about?”
He blinked, startled out of his reverie. Starla sat across from him, a cigarette dangling from her lips. They were in her cluttered office. When he’d arrived, she’d asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee. He’d politely declined, but she’d barked for one anyway. A harried-looking intern had rushed in and set the mugs on the desk on top of papers that were apparently important, if the way she’d yelled at him was any indication. The intern had apologized before running out of the office and closing the door behind him.
“He’s my nephew,” she’d told Josy. “Useless, but I apparently owed my sister a favor. I’m seeing how long it takes before he cries. He started yesterday. I give him two more hours until he breaks.”
“You’re very scary,” Josy said.
She grinned. It was deliciously evil.
Except now he hadn’t realized he’d been talking to himself again. Do or do not. There is no try. It’d become a mantra that he hadn’t known he’d needed in his life.
The problem with having it as a mantra was that Josy had done absolutely nothing about anything. Here he was, a week out from the disaster that had been his first meeting with Q-Bert, and he was no closer to finding an answer to his problems. He’d almost convinced himself to follow Q-Bert back on Instagram but couldn’t bring himself to do it, unsure if it would be seen as an invitation of sorts. He’d posted a few more pictures over the past couple of days, but Q-Bert hadn’t liked any of them.
Josy was terribly vexed over the entire situation.
There was a contact email on Q-Bert’s website. Josy had almost used it to send Q-Bert a message, but he wasn’t sure what to say to convey the depths of his friend-crush while also apologizing for laughing in the face of someone who had anxiety and depression. He quickly learned while reading through Q-Bert’s blog that he didn’t suffer from anxiety and depression, he just had it. He’d written that he didn’t like the word suffering because it implied losing, and he was far from losing. He was fighting. He was locked in battle. Suffering meant weakness, and sure, some days brought setbacks, but he’d pick himself up, sword in hand, and get ready to go again to slay the beast.
Josy was impressed. Because of Q-Bert’s strength, but also with the idea of him having a sword and killing shit.
Which, of course, made things worse. Because Q-Bert had this… he had this whole life. He was so put together, even when he seemed to be falling apart. He used his social media pages not to flaunt himself but to show the world through a different set of eyes. He answered questions from his followers who needed his help with their own mental health. He said he wasn’t an expert by any stretch of the imagination and always pointed people to those who were. And it was all so very overwhelming, because what did Josy have to offer in return? He lived paycheck to paycheck, and his most expensive possessions were his three-foot bong and his flat-screen TV that he bought so he could watch his black-and-white horror movies. He’d had to eat nothing but off-brand dollar store Hamburger Helper called Burger Assistant! for weeks after that, but it’d been worth it to see the creature from the black lagoon rising out of the water on fifty-five inches.
But those were just things. Things that, in the great and grand scheme of things, didn’t matter in the slightest. What mark was he leaving on the world? Was he ever going to be in the Oh My God That One Person from That Thing Died montage at the Oscars?
So instead of figuring out what to do about Q-Bert, he only succeeded in making things worse. He didn’t even know how. One moment he was nervous about emailing Q-Bert, and the next, Josy had convinced himself he was the most narcissistic person who had ever lived.
Do or do not. There is no try.
Do not is exactly what he was apparently doing.
And it was awful.
Which is why when Starla had summoned him to her office, he’d jumped at the chance. Maybe this was the opportunity he was waiting for. Maybe he would get to audition for something amazing that would also change the world. He would get the part and suddenly become the face of saving apes or stopping fracking, whatever that was. The only fracking he knew was from Battlestar Galactica, but he didn’t think that was what the news kept talking about. But if it was, then at least he would know how to defeat those damn Cylons.
But this could be it. His big break. Starla wouldn’t tell him what it was about, no matter how much he begged. He’d even arrived two hours early to her office, and she’d made him wait because apparently appointment times were set for a reason. There were two people waiting ahead of him, one guy Josy recognized from such roles as Guy in Bar #4 in the moderately successful TV show I Got Your Mother Pregnant and Priest in Street #77 in the ill-conceived rom-com called Mansplain, which turned out to be horribly misogynistic and ruined the careers of at least four people. The other person was a woman who was apparently double-jointed and even offered to show Josy. He politely declined and was grateful when Starla called her in before she wrapped her knees around her own neck. Granted, she’d left crying for reasons Josy wasn’t privy to, and he wondered if he was about to be let go.
Do or do not. There is no try.
So when Starla asked him what the fuck he was talking about, he couldn’t be quite sure. There’d been no wake-and-bake this morning since he was a professional. One would think it would help to clear his mind, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Professionalism was hard.
So he gave her his best smile and said, “It’s nice to see you today.”
She stared at him.
He smiled a little wider.
She sucked on he
r cancer stick before blowing smoke out above his head. He’d tried to get her to quit last year, but she’d told him that if he ever tried to take her Virginia Slim 120s away from her again, he would have to go through life explaining to any potential future partner that he only had one testicle due to a woman who was barely above five feet and weighed a buck ten only after a big meal.
He believed her. And not just because he was a pacifist, but also because Starla was terrifying.
But the severe expression on her face softened slightly, as it sometimes did around him. “How you been?”
He shrugged. “Complicated.”
She snorted. “That right.”
“I’ve had a very strange week. It’s this whole… thing. Learned some stuff about myself.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know how to talk to people I don’t know. And also, I’m materialistic.”
“I’ve seen your apartment, kiddo. I don’t think you have enough materials to be called materialistic.”
“Right? That’s what I thought, but then I was watching my gigantic TV that I almost got punched for when I bought it on Black Friday, and I realized that I wasn’t doing things like battling depression or fracking, and I don’t know. It just hit me.”
She ashed the cigarette into a 7-Eleven Big Gulp. “Depression? Kid, you are literally the happiest person I know. It’s honestly disgusting. What’s this about depression?”
“Oh, it’s not me. It’s someone else who I tried to be friends with. But then I messed up, and now I’m stalking him even though I don’t mean to.”
The gaudy ring on her finger flashed in the light overhead as she pointed at him. “You get a restraining order against you, I’m going to kick your ass.”
“Not actually stalking,” he said quickly. “Just… his Instagram. And his blog. And his Tumblr. And Twitter. And Facebook, though he’s not sixty years old and posting photos of his grandchildren or shouting with memes about people taking his guns, so I don’t know why he’s on that one. It’s not even ironic yet.”
“Sounds like a mess.”
“Got any advice?” he asked hopefully.
“Oh sure. Got the best advice. Gonna lay it on you. You ready?”
He was so excited. “Yeah!”
“You gonna listen to me?”
Damn right he was! “Yeah!”
“Okay. Here it is.”
He leaned forward.
She said, “Shut up. I don’t care about any of this.”
He blinked. “That’s… not helpful.”
She reached across the desk and patted the back of his hand. “You’re wonderful. Stop wasting my time. I called you in here for a reason. Do you know who Roger Fuller is?”
“No. Should I?” He frowned. “Wait. Hold up. Roger Fuller. The producer? The guy who made all those terrible horror movies in the seventies and eighties where men tried to fight gigantic radioactive frogs or gigantic radioactive ants or gigantic radioactive aardvarks and somehow always ended up mostly naked?”
“He did like his gigantic radioactive monsters,” Starla agreed. “And cock. The one and the same. Attack of the Frogs and The Ants Are Eating Our Picnic and Our Faces and Aardvark Terror on the Titanic. Shit films with shit budgets that tried to be allegorical takes on the Cold War but instead turned out to be an excuse to have his beefcake du jour pose nude on camera as they snarled at terrible special effects.”
“The aardvark one was actually pretty cool,” Josy said thoughtfully. “I mean, James Cameron probably wouldn’t have gotten to make his version of Titanic without it.”
“Keep telling yourself that, kiddo. Roger Fuller has apparently decided to embrace this weird and stupid world we live in, and crowdfunded his next film.” She started to flip through the many papers on her desk. “Can’t get the funding from a studio or production company? Have the masses pay for it instead while offering producer credits that’ll get them a pointless IMDb page and nothing else.” She paused her search and looked up at him. “You keeping your IMDb page updated?”
“Yes, ma’am. Uploaded another headshot two days ago.”
She resumed flipping through the papers. “Good. It’s important you do that.” She grunted as she found a thin stacked set of pages and set it in front of her. She dropped her cigarette into the Big Gulp, where it hissed in what was most likely three-day-old Dr Pepper filled with other butts. “He was able to raise the budget he needed for his next film. Calls it a prestige picture, though I doubt he barely has a passing acquaintance with the concept. He apparently had some goodwill left, as the project was fully funded in less than a week. Either that or people are idiots and hardwired to choke on nostalgia for movies they barely remember. It’s even worse when it comes to gay men. All that disposable income.”
Josy knew nothing about disposable income. “What does that have to do with me?”
She leaned forward on her desk, folding her hands in front of her. “You don’t know Roger Fuller?”
“Personally? No.”
“You didn’t go to one of his pool parties slash orgies that are supposed to be secret but everyone knows about? Maybe stick your ass in the air and your face in pile of coke?”
“Wow,” Josy breathed. “Is that what people do to get famous? Because if so, I think I’ve been going about this whole thing wrong. I mean, not that I would actually do that, but still. It would have been nice to at least get an invite that I could have politely declined and then regretted not going to.”
“You’re serious.”
“That I wouldn’t go to an orgy and do cocaine? Yeah, man. I don’t like that kind of thing.”
“No, Josy. Not the cocaine orgy. You’ve seriously never met him?”
He thought hard before shaking his head. “Why?”
She tapped her fingers on the stack of papers before she slid it across the desk. “Because he’s asked for you by name to come and audition for a part in the film.”
“What?” he asked, staring down at what appeared to be a script. There were only thirteen words on the top page in bold black ink.
The Stories of My Father
A Roger Fuller Production
Screenplay by
Quincy Moore
“I don’t know what to tell you, kiddo.” Starla lit another cigarette. “This was delivered by courier yesterday. I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement before I could even put my hands on it. And it’s only a few pages, a specific scene. Apparently the entire script is being kept under wraps. And there was a note on the top requesting you specifically audition next week.”
This was it.
This was going to be his moment.
He could barely breathe.
“Do I have to put my ass in the air and/or do cocaine?” he whispered reverently.
“You better not. I will pin you down with my heel in your throat and shave off that ridiculous beard if you do.”
He reached up and traced a finger along the top page. Starla was right; it couldn’t have been the entire script, as it only seemed to be a handful of pages. But still. It was real. And he had been asked for by name.
He’d often thought about what this moment would be like. Late at night, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d stare at the ceiling and think about his phone ringing. He’d pick it up and the voice on the other end would say, “Josiah Erickson, this is Steven Spielberg, and I want you to be in my upcoming war movie,” or “Josiah Erickson, this is Chris Nolan, and I want you to be in my next sixteen-hour masturbatory fantasy with an ending that frustrates the hell out of everyone,” or “Josiah Erickson, Tarantino here. I want to put you in a suit so you can say fuck a lot and shoot people in the face.”
(There were days too, pre-Gustavo Tiberius, when these fantasies also involved “Josiah Erickson, this is Michael Bay, and I want you to star in my next movie, where you run in slow motion as a monster robot alien thing destroys Washington, DC, behind you on a green screen.” Post-Gustavo Tiberius, that one was put on hold.)
>
They were the daydreams of someone who wanted something bigger. Something more. And he’d put in his time, sure. STDs and Applebee’s and infomercials and dead guys on Criminal Bad Guys: Topeka, Kansas.
Of course he dreamed. He had to. Ever since he was that block of cheese in Wooster, Ohio, he’d dreamed of nothing else. He’d barely graduated high school. He hadn’t gone to college, much to the disappointment of his parents. He’d scrimped and saved every single penny he could, packed up his meager belongings into his shitty car, and headed west with only a dream.
And it was finally paying off.
Here. Now. In this moment.
“Are you crying?” Starla demanded.
“No,” he said as he wiped his eyes and sniffled. “It’s just the cigarette smoke.” He looked up at her. He trusted her more than almost anyone else in the world. “You think I should do this, right?”
Starla sighed as she sat back in her leather chair. “Yeah, kiddo. I guess I do.” Her eyes narrowed. “Though if Roger Fuller tries anything on you, you tell me. I won’t have any of my clients being put into a position where they’re made to do something they don’t want to. I believe in you, Josy. You piss me off, and I swear the more you smoke, the dumber you get, but I know you’re going to do big things. I wouldn’t have taken you on if I didn’t think so. Out of everyone I represent, I think you’ve got the best shot here.” She blew out another stream of smoke. “Though if you tell anyone else I said that, I’ll rip out your tongue and shove it down your throat. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Now, I’ve read through the audition scene. It’s absolutely ridiculous and gave me heartburn. Here’s how I think you need to play it.”
Chapter 6
IF JOSIAH Erickson’s life were a musical, the moment he exited the office of his agent, the sun would be shining and he would burst into song about how his whole life had been building to this moment and he was going to make it after all. Men in suits and women in pretty summer dresses would begin to dance around him, and he would belt his heart out, building toward a rousing climax where a chorus would sing behind him, fireworks exploding overhead.