The Road to Amazing

by Brent Hartinger

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know any of that. And somehow you have to let it not bother you anyway. Wow, that really does sound hard." I thought about what to say. "Oh, hey, what was that great tweet by Gabourey Sidibe last year when people criticized her for looking fat in that dress? 'I cried about it all night on my private jet on my way to my dream job.'"

  Otto nodded once, but didn't say anything.

  "What?" I said.

  He was conspicuously silent.

  "You know Gabourey Sidibe too, don't you?" I said evenly.

  "Well, I mean, I've met her. That's all!"

  "Can I alter what I said a minute ago? Fuck you."

  Otto smiled — his first genuine smile since we'd started talking.

  "For the record," he went on, "celebrities always say that in public, that we're crying over insults all the way to the bank. And I mean, yeah, it's true. I live a good life. But the 'brave face' stuff is a lie too. All this crap people are throwing at me? It's still really, really hard."

  "I bet."

  He thought for a second, then he lowered his voice. "Someone even posted my nude photos."

  So they were of him? Still, I pretended that I hadn't seen them. "Oh, man, Otto, that so sucks."

  "Why do people do stuff like that? Seriously, I don't understand it." Now he sounded like he was going to cry.

  "Because they're mean, ugly, small, petty people who've never done anything important or interesting or successful. And they come upon you, who is important and interesting and successful, and they can't stand it. It drives them crazy that you're everything that they're not. So they lash out. If you're happy and they're not, their solution is to try to make you as unhappy as possible too. Honestly, I think they're like the villain in some Dr. Seuss cartoon — it's exactly that straightforward. They're standing up on a mountain listening to you be joyful and happy, and they're absolutely seething, so they decide they have to dump all over you and be as ugly as possible. But it doesn't work. Oh, sure, they can make other people feel shitty about themselves for a minute or two — you and Gabourey Sidibe and Jennifer fucking Lawrence. But they can't make themselves feel any better. In the end, I think they feel even worse, because they know in their heart of hearts just how small and pathetic they really are."

  When I was done, Otto didn't say anything for a second. Then his face broke into another grin. "Oh, my God, I think that was the best rant I've ever heard!"

  "It's absolutely true!" I said. "Every word."

  "You want to know what hurts me the most about the Internet? It's not the insults — people calling me waxface and freak. I'm used to that. I've heard that my whole damn life."

  Now I was really intrigued. What was worse than somebody calling you a freak, than someone posting naked photos of you?

  "It's other burn survivors," he said, slouching again. "It's all the criticism of the show, all these people saying that I'm hurting the cause. I'm, like, 'What the fuck?' Out of all people, they should understand. They should know how hard it is. They talk like I'm personally responsible for everything in the show, everything about my character. But I don't write the scripts! I'm a total nobody. And I signed a contract: I couldn't leave even if I wanted to, not unless I didn't mind being sued and never wanted to work in Hollywood again."

  "You're right," I said. "It's totally unfair."

  "And, I mean, it's not like the show is that bad. Is it? The writers did their best, but those first few weeks after we got picked up? It was crazy. The pressure was so intense. Besides, what about the good the show has done? What about the fact that the show cast me in the first place? I'm not trying to blow my own horn, but that's revolutionary. The producers took a huge chance, and they're really trying hard to do their best with the character. They deserve so much credit! So why aren't they getting any?"

  "Because people are fucking assholes," I said. "See previous rant. Look, just because someone has scars, that doesn't mean they can't be jerks."

  "But they're so angry about everything."

  Otto was taking this all pretty seriously, so I decided to take it seriously too.

  "Well, first of all," I said, "plenty of burn survivors are supporting you. Don't forget that, okay? It's only some people. Probably a really, really small percentage. I read things online all the time, and I think, 'I don't know anyone who thinks like that.' But people say something shocking and outrageous, and they get all the attention."

  "I know, I know. Why is that so easy to forget? The praise barely even registers, but the criticism sticks with you until the day you die."

  "As for the rest of it," I said, "well, I don't get it either. Then again, I've never understood that kind of stupid rage. How is shitting-all-over-everything a political strategy? I know that's easy for me to say — non-scarred, middle class, cis-gendered, white kid from the suburbs. But if you're going to get angry, it has to be anger with some kind of point. If it's just that stupid, no-perspective, lash-out-at-everything anger, not only does that not change things, I actually think it makes it worse."

  Otto nodded.

  "But you're not doing that," I said. "You're out there, putting yourself on the line and being real and making an actual difference. If you want the whole truth, I don't think I've ever been so proud to be friends with anyone in my life as I am with you."

  Otto wiped his eyes — he was crying for real now (I was a little too). But he was also standing taller, definitely more confident.

  Suddenly he hugged me, holding me tight. Despite not being a hugger, I squeezed him back just as hard.

  "Thanks, Russel," he said. "That really helped."

  "Anytime," I said.

  He pulled back at last, wiped his eyes again, and said, "You know, that was almost as good as the advice Jennifer Lawrence gave me."

  And I whacked him hard on the shoulder and said, "Fuck you!" and then, both of us laughing, we walked arm-in-arm back out into the main room.

  * * *

  I admit I hadn't expected to spend my wedding weekend making everyone else feel better about themselves, but I honestly didn't mind, because it was turning out that I was actually pretty good at it. I was kinda sorta impressed with myself. Anyway, I'd done my good deeds for the day, and now I could finally relax with the others.

  I kept expecting the rain to let up, but it never did. It thrummed on the roof like the whole house was a vibrating bed. But this was fine with Gunnar, who was eager to show us all how the house's rain dispersal system worked in lieu of gutters. (Basically, the rain rolled down into these little trays that somehow sprayed the water out into the yard, all without any power source. I'd explain it more, except I didn't really listen.)

  Before I knew it, it was time to eat again — an assortment of fried and baked chicken from the grocery store, along with baked tofu for Min, who was vegetarian.

  Once we all sat down at the table to eat, I said, "How was it possible to get all this chicken for fifteen bucks? How is anyone making money on that?"

  As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Saying something like this in front of Min was a little like throwing chum to a shark.

  Sure enough, she said, "Because it's factory farmed. In 1920, a chicken cost a person two and a half hours of the average wage. Today, it costs fifteen minutes of wages. But it's only cheap because corporations don't pay the full cost of their product. The rest of us pay in the form of pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and outright subsidies."

  No one said anything for a second. As great as Min was, and as much as I admired her passion, she sometimes did have a way of killing a conversation.

  "That doesn't even get into the question of how chickens are raised," she went on. "It's not what most people think."

  Keep in mind that the rest of us were eating chicken when she said this. We all sort of hesitated, mid-bite. Alas, not only did Min sometimes kill the conversation, she didn't always know she was doing it.

  Vernie dabbed her mouth with her napkin. Then she said, "I wish I'd known we wer
e attending a lecture. I would have brought a pen to take notes."

  There was another silence, this time an extremely awkward one. Chairs creaked. Min could definitely be a bit sanctimonious, and I'd sensed before that Vernie wasn't crazy about it, but I hadn't expected them to directly butt heads like this.

  I felt like I should say something, but I had no idea what. I know I'd somehow taken it upon myself to make everyone feel better this weekend, but how could I possibly take sides between Vernie and Min?

  Then Ruby said, "Oh, hey, we have some friends who keep chickens!" She touched Min on the hand. "Sarah and Meg?" Ruby turned back to the whole table. "Anyway, after all the money they spent on the coop, the feed, and the chickens — including the ones that were eaten by raccoons — they figured out what it cost them. Nine dollars an egg!"

  The table laughed, more in relief than anything, and Min laughed too. I couldn't help but think: This is interesting. Ruby was managing Min's sanctimoniousness the way I'd been trying to manage Kevin's anxieties about the wedding. In this case, Ruby had tried to distract Min.

  It worked, too. Gunnar started talking about raccoons — something about how, like crows, they're so much smarter than anyone thought. It didn't seem like there was any lingering bad blood between Vernie and Min, either.

  And speaking of Kevin's anxieties, if he was still preoccupied, he was hiding it pretty well.

  A few minutes later, Nate looked at Otto. "So what's it like?" he said. "Being famous and everything."

  Otto wiped his fingers. "It's good," he said. "Well, I mean, it's great. It's funny though. Technically, my job is an actor, but sometimes it doesn't seem like I do a whole lot of that. Even after hair and make-up, I mostly just wait around for them to set up lights, and block the scenes, and do everyone else's close-ups first. And I also do a lot of promotion. Acting is, like, fifty percent waiting, forty percent promotion, and ten percent actual acting. But that sounds like I'm complaining, and I'm not."

  Everyone nodded, even though, like me, they probably didn't have any idea what he was talking about.

  "Sounds like a piece of piss," Nate said. "What's it like being on all the talk shows? Kevin said you were on The Tonight Show."

  "Stephen Colbert," Otto said. "And I did Seth Meyers too. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so nervous. At one point, the producer came to me in the green room and said, 'Have you taken your Xanax yet?' like it was just assumed I'd be on some kind of anti-anxiety drug. I wish I had been."

  "You were great," I said. He had seemed a little nervous, at least on Colbert, but he'd also been modest and charming in a way that is absolutely impossible to fake.

  "One guy said I looked like a deer in the headlights," Otto said.

  That's when I realized that Otto probably didn't want to be talking about this — that it was yet another reminder of how people talked about him online.

  "Anyone want more chicken?" I said.

  "What the hell?" Vernie said, raising her plate. "I've always considered myself a moral monster."

  So much for there not being any lingering resentment between Min and Vernie. And also so much for my spending the weekend solving everyone's problems.

  Kevin's face darkened. Then he stood up to get more Squirt, even though his glass was still almost completely full.

  This was too much. I could handle Vernie and Min butting heads, and maybe even Otto's discomfort, but I couldn't handle Kevin being disappointed with our wedding weekend. I'd promised him that everything was going to be okay.

  "Oh, hey!" I said to Vernie. "I just thought of another single-location screenplay idea." I quickly explained to the table what that meant, the kind of ideas I'd been brainstorming lately. Then I said, "So how about a movie called Green Room? The story of this guy waiting to go on this late-night talk show."

  "I wish that was interesting," Otto said, "but it's not. Waiting in a green room, I mean, not your idea."

  "Yeah," I said, sinking lower in my seat. "Probably not."

  "No, wait," Kevin said. "Say it's about a comedian. You know, the person who always goes on last? And the movie is about him and the other celebrities waiting in the green room."

  I looked at him and smiled.

  "Everyone's nervous," Kevin went on. "They're all sort of down on their luck, and they all need a break, so they're jockeying against each other, trying to undercut each other's confidence. Maybe there's an evil producer too, playing them off each other. One by one, they each go out onto the set of the talk show, and the comedian watches them on the monitor — and oh, hey, the only time we ever see the talk show host is on that monitor, we don't ever see him in real life."

  "I like it!" I said. "And there aren't any windows, so the green room is totally claustrophobic. And there's no cellphone coverage either, and maybe he even gets lost on the way to the bathroom. The longer the comedian waits, the more trapped he feels, and the more he comes to realize how important it is that he does well — that this really is his last shot at success. So he's really, really desperate. Finally, the comedian's time comes, and he goes out onto the set, and he's completely nervous, but he ends up killing it! We finally see the host for real at last, and he even invites the comedian over to the chair by his desk."

  I looked over at Vernie for her initial reaction.

  She thought for a second, then said, "It's not terrible. As long as there isn't a final twist at the end where he's really been in hell all along, and the talk show host is Satan, and he has to keep repeating the same night over and over for all eternity."

  I stared at Vernie, because that was almost exactly what I'd just been thinking.

  "What?" she said. "Am I right?"

  "No!" I said. But then I blushed and said, "I'd been thinking the talk show host was really, like, St. Peter, and the studio audience has been judging him to see if he deserves to go to heaven. And maybe the comedian walks out a glowing door at the end."

  She smiled an all-knowing little smile. I felt stupid, but it didn't matter because the whole point of my screenplay idea had been to get the weekend back on track, and it seemed to have worked.

  "Well, you're right," I said. "It's more interesting if it's metaphorical. We create our own heaven and hell — that kind of thing?"

  Before Vernie could answer, Nate said, "You should write about this weekend."

  I clutched a drumstick.

  "You know?" he said. "A bunch of people in a house for a weekend wedding, and how things keep coming up? Will they or won't they get married?"

  Kevin stood up to start clearing the dishes.

  Really? I wanted to say to Nate. What the hell was with him? He was supposed to be Kevin's best friend! Was he really this clueless?

  Frankly, now I was annoyed. I loved my friends, but this was my wedding weekend. I was starting to think Kevin had a point about everything going wrong.

  "Let's all move into the front room," Gunnar said, and everyone else immediately agreed with him, including Vernie.

  You know how you can sometimes sense when people are secretly eyeing each other — when everyone else knows something you don't? That's what was happening now.

  What in the world? I thought.

  It was funny. All through dinner, I'd felt like the only one who had a handle on all the things that were really going on — all the subtext. Suddenly it seemed like everyone there knew something I didn't.

  Everyone except Kevin. He didn't seem to be in on this either. We exchanged curious glances. After all the pointless drama of earlier, I was extremely wary about what might be going on.

  We all cleared the dishes (except for Nate, who had very conveniently disappeared), then gathered in the front room.

  Gunnar hit a switch, knocking out the lights. Meanwhile, Min set this Bluetooth speaker on the coffee table, and punched a couple buttons on her phone. The speaker exploded with both music and this rainbow of shifting lights.

  "What's going on?" I said.

  "What do you think?" Gunnar said. "It's
your bachelor party!"

  Our what? I thought. Between the lights and the music, it really did suddenly feel like a party, even though there were only seven people in the room. It also helped that, except for Kevin, they were all grooving out to the music — even Vernie (surprisingly good).

  "What did you guys plan?" Kevin said, but he was smiling when he said it. So much for our friends ruining our wedding weekend.

  Nate appeared at last, from out of the hallway. He was wearing his green doctor scrubs, and he was dancing too.

  No, not just dancing, I thought.

  Nate, Kevin's annoying straight best friend, was doing a strip tease.

  CHAPTER NINE

  This was crazy! A bachelor party with Nate doing a striptease? But the music blared, and the lights flashed, and somehow Vernie and Ruby had already arranged two of the padded dining room chairs in the middle of the front room, and Min and Gunnar were pushing me and Kevin down onto them.

  Then Nate took charge. He wasn't dancing, exactly — it was more of that straight-boy strut that isn't graceful, and it definitely isn't polished, but it's confident and cocky.

  He stopped right in front of us, striking a sexy pose, then, in time with the music, he yanked open the front of his doctor scrubs, baring his chest and shoulders.

  His pecs bulged, and the hair on his chest — dark blond — was surprisingly well-trimmed, especially for a straight guy. Did he manscape or had he only shaved for this little show of his? Had he rehearsed it? Exactly when had he agreed to do this striptease anyway? Our friends could have been planning this bachelor party for weeks. Needless to say, they were all laughing and totally cheering him on.

  I also wondered: Exactly how far is this "joke" striptease going to go?

  Kevin leaned over, closer to me, and said, "I had nothing to do with this, I swear!"

  "Oh, I believe you," I said, laughing. "'Cause you know I'd totally dump you if you did!"

  But here's the strange thing: neither of us looked at each other when we said this. We couldn't take our eyes off of Nate.