Some Oregon kids had the type of embarrassing parents who still said “groovy.” I had the type of embarrassing parents who still said “neat.”
“It would be neat,” I agreed.
“When are you coming back?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Filming’s supposed to last ten weeks but could go longer. I’ll let you know.”
“London is incredibly expensive,” Dad said. “You’ll want to find something more stable than these acting jobs that only last a couple of months.”
“That’s how acting works, and I’m aware jobs aren’t easy to find and the city’s expensive. I live with that fact every day.”
“Well, this is why we keep telling you—” Mom said.
“Hey, I have some texts coming in,” I interrupted. “I’ve got to go.”
“Let us know when you—” she began.
“I will. Bye, guys.” I stabbed the red hang-up button. The screen darkened.
I expelled a breath, indulged in an eye-roll, then returned to the window with Andy.
Andy: Considering it. I might end up yelling at him though
Sinter: Sorry, my parents just accidental-facetime-called me. God.
Andy: Haha! That’s hilarious
Sinter: They’re hopeless. Right, with mitchell I’d say just email then? Like to check in, nothing intense
Andy: Seems fair. Whew, stressing out thinking about it though
Sinter: Only if you want
Andy: Did your folks like your hair btw?
Sinter: As it happens they did not
Andy: Huh, no accounting for taste
Painted up with sticky layers of makeup and hairspray, I stood among a crowd of extras in a fancy house. An assistant camera operator clapped a slate in front of the lens. Fiona called, “Action!” And we were off.
Hardly any rehearsing. My hair had gotten dyed the day before. Now we were filming a movie. Holy shit.
The day’s scene was from near the end of the film. The order in which they filmed movies was insane, or so it seemed to me, coming from the stage, where you usually started at the beginning and proceeded through to the end. Movies had to take into consideration which locations were available on which days and grab those time slots. So there we were in the ballroom of a mansion in Knightsbridge, which we were using as the house of Jackie the posh girl, because the mansion’s owners were only going to let us in for this particular day.
I, as Taylor, was crashing a party in order to beg Jackie to run away with me. The extras had been gloriously costumed in 1981-style ball gowns and tuxes, everyone sporting fluffy hairdos and excessive blush. I stood out as the poor rebel who didn’t belong: ragged suit jacket (sleeves rolled up), skinny tie, vintage Levis, combat boots, silver dagger earring in just one ear, heavy eyeliner, and a hairdo that would have fit in perfectly in a Duran Duran group shot.
I’d already sent Andy a selfie. He’d sent back:
Andy: Lol yes!!!
Andy: Seriously you look awesome
We ran several takes of the scene, from my drawing Jackie aside, to her shrinking away in fear, to my getting thrown out of the house by her irate father and threatened with police action. I sustained bruises from getting slammed past doorways and tossed onto the ground, though I tried to roll with each tumble to avoid injury.
Fiona helped me up personally after the third crash onto the ground. While the crew adjusted set pieces and lights, she dusted me off. “Any more violent than this, and we’d get you a stunt double.”
“Nah, I like doing it.” I rubbed my throbbing elbow, trying for a cocky smile.
“You’re being such a good sport, I can’t thank you enough. Sure you’re okay for once more?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“You are.” She touched my face lightly with her fingertips so as not to mess up the makeup. “You’re excellent. All right, everyone, back in. Places!”
“That house we filmed in yesterday, it gave me the creeps,” Fiona said. It was dinnertime the next day, and the two of us had secured a corner table in the studio’s break room. “Too much like my dad’s. And my mum’s, actually.”
“Ah, right. Your folks, they’re …”
“Absurdly wealthy and obnoxious, yes.”
We both grinned. She dipped a slice of naan into bright red sauce. Catering was going Indian that night. “This is good,” she commented. “But my grandmother makes it better.”
“You’re lucky. Everything my grandparents cook involves either potatoes or Jell-O.”
She laughed and tore a new slice of naan in half. After another bite, she said, “I lived with my grandparents a short time while my parents were getting divorced. I was thirteen.”
“Jeez. That must have been hard.” I dug into the tikka masala.
“Yeah. I would’ve stayed with my sister, but she’d just started university. Feels as if I saw lawyers more than I saw my parents for a few months there. Asking questions, settling things, working out what would become of us all.”
“God, that sucks.”
“Ended up basic joint custody. Half the month with Mummy, half with Daddy. And they both stayed in London, so it wasn’t as disruptive as it might’ve been.” She took a drink of ice water. “How about your parents? Still together?”
I nodded. “But that mostly means they gang up on me.”
“They’re a bit stuffy, then? Not a fan of your goth look?”
“They’re bankers, and kind of religious, and everything I did was wrong once I became a teenager. The usual.”
“Sounds like me. Two big houses to split my time between, and all I wanted to do was make art films, listen to bands in dodgy clubs, hang out with starving musicians and actors.”
“You’re doing great at all that.” I smiled when the remark made her laugh. “But they’ve got to be proud by now? Your dad being a producer, and your mom—she does studio work too, right?”
“HR at the BBC. But no, I wouldn’t say they’re proud. My films are too eccentric for them. Not ‘commercial’ enough. They keep saying things like, ‘If you’re going to do these historical films, why not write us the next Downton Abbey instead?’”
“I’m sure you could.”
“But I don’t want to. These odd little stories are what I want to film.”
“Then there you go. You’re doing what you love. Screw ’em if they don’t like it.”
She scooped up a cube of paneer cheese. “But it’s strange, isn’t it? Even when your parents are a pain in the arse, you can’t just disregard them. They still mean a lot to you. Their opinion still matters, still hurts. It’s evolutionary or something.”
“Wow. I’ve always felt like that, but didn’t figure anyone else got it. I thought I was just a sucker for punishment.”
“You’re not. Everyone’s that way. Some people just hide it better.”
While we pondered those sober truths, my phone buzzed on the tabletop. I glanced at it in time to see Andy’s name pop up in a message notification.
“Anything you need to get?” she asked.
“Not right this minute. My best friend back home. He’s, uh, going through a breakup, and I’m entertaining him by telling him about the film and stuff.”
“That’s sweet of you. How long were they together? He and the girl.”
“Almost a year, I think. But it was a guy, not a girl.”
“Oh, indeed?” She gazed at the rest of the cast, mingling at other tables. “I wanted to write this screenplay as a gay love story, you know. Taylor falling for some upper-class bloke instead of a girl. But Chelsea and the others, while sympathetic, convinced me it would have a much wider audience as a girl-boy story.”
“Maybe you can write the boy-boy one next.”
“Would you audition for that, though?”
“Of course. I can Brokeback things up as good as the next man.”
She laughed, then sat back with a sigh. “Oh, you’re too perfect. It’s normal for writers to adore their character
s, I suppose. But usually the actors turn out rather different from the characters, whereas you … you’re very like what I pictured. Even willing to go along with my original vision of him.” Her glance roamed down my torso.
I was still in wardrobe and makeup—a torn T-shirt, spiked hair, a chain from a hardware store as a necklace, and a lagoon’s worth of eyeshadow. After shoveling all this tikka masala into my mouth, my face was going to need a touch-up, but still, I must have looked especially Taylor-ish at the moment.
Her gaze was so suffused with admiration that I hardly knew what to feel. Flattery seemed reasonable, even if it came with a whisper of discomfort over the knowledge that I couldn’t live up to an imaginary ideal.
“You’re forgetting the part where I totally can’t play guitar,” I said.
“Contentedly overlooking it, let’s say.” She tapped her shoe against mine.
CHAPTER 8: BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE
Sinter: Hey guess what I got to do today
Andy: What?
Sinter: Snog a model on camera
Andy: Haha, how was it?
Sinter: It was ok. Kissing for film or theater involves so much makeup it’s kind of like chowing down on a lipstick
Andy: Lol. Yum. But Ariel looks like a Victoria’s Secret model. This isn’t hot at all?
Sinter: Not my type. She’s all right but she smells like cigarettes and feels like silicone, and you aren’t going to tell anyone I said all this btw
Andy: Said what? :D Yeah I guess you do tend more toward the geeky cute type. Or at least naturally pretty, not silicone
Geeky cute. That would be you, mate.
Those thoughts had popped up a lot lately. A little unnerving. Also weirdly fun.
Sinter: Btw, did you ever email Mitchell?
Andy: Yeah. He answered yesterday and was … such a dickwad
Andy: Like, “it was always so awkward with each other’s families, and we were both emotionally unavailable, so this was for the best, don’t you agree”
Andy: Just … wtf? I was not the emotionally unavailable one thank you
Sinter: Seriously. What a jackhole. Why would it be awkward with your family? They’re completely nice
Andy: It wasn’t. He’s delusional. So I basically said, “if that’s how you saw things, then we really weren’t on the same page. Goodbye”
Sinter: Good. Did he answer?
Andy: No but I don’t expect him to. Think that’s that. I’m still pissed off, but doing better
Andy: No more crying in the car anyway :)
Sinter: Good riddance then
Andy: Amen
Sinter: Oh btw, Fiona said it could’ve been a guy I was making out with. That was how she wanted to write the script
Andy: Whaaaaat? This movie could’ve been 20 times better you’re saying?
Sinter: Evidently. Would have added some variety to my life
Andy: You ever want that kind of variety, let me know, I can hook you up
Sinter: Lol, I will keep that in mind
I could have said it to him right then: Actually, I’m bi-curious. Why didn’t I? What made that so challenging?
Maybe because Andy was a fully out gay man, rainbow stickers on his car and the whole deal, whereas I was just … curious. It seemed almost disrespectful for me to throw him a remark like that. Also I didn’t want to go claiming something as an identity that I might never back up with action.
Did I want to back it up with action?
I thought about the scene we’d filmed that day, making out with Ariel for the camera, and imagined swapping Andy in instead. How would that feel?
We had already said goodnight in our messaging app. I had another early morning on set the next day. I should be going to bed instead of staying up and pondering stuff like this. Nonetheless, I thumbed in “guys kissing” on the browser on my phone and scrolled through the images it brought up.
Looked about the same as a man and a woman kissing, really. I’d feel some stubble maybe. He might taste different? Likely no lipstick (unless he was made up for acting), which would be on the “pro” side of the pro/con list. Gazing at one pair of dudes snogging after another, I let my mind drift back to our kiss at age fifteen.
What if my parents hadn’t come home till much later? Maybe we’d have kept kissing, started using tongues. I might have lain down all the way onto him, felt his body against mine. We could have figured out how to grind against each other, please each other, the way neither of us had actually done with other people until college. It might have become something we had indulged in regularly after school, our little secret, the teenage experimentation we should have had.
When I realized I was completely turned on by thinking all this, I set my phone aside, closed my eyes, stretched out on my bed, and imagined it some more.
Should I not think of my best friend like this? Was this creepy? Well, no—he had liked me in high school, or at least had strongly hinted at it, so chances were he had already cast me in this mental scenario long ago.
Which was also a turn-on. So I went ahead and pictured it.
And liked it.
A lot.
Of course, there was also that time I had kissed Daniel.
I was nineteen. It was my first trip to London, the summer after my freshman year of college. Daniel, my dorm roommate, had come with me. He was from London, and willing to show me around.
I had hit the jackpot when it came to roommates. Random chance had put us together, and when I approached that dorm the first time, I feared he’d be any number of horrifying things: a serial killer in training, a haughty, rich snob, a jock determined to shove my head in a toilet, a top-40 fan. But instead I got Daniel. Daniel with his London accent, his floppy dark hair, his cologne that made him smell edible, his wandering around shirtless after showers, his tolerating me and treating me as a friend and confiding in me about girls he liked. What was I supposed to do with a gift like that?
We’d both been through recent breakups by the time of our summer trip. I was mostly over Clare, my first girlfriend, but Daniel was still in a deep funk over the latest woman he was besotted with. I let him ramble about it over beers in a pub one night.
We stumbled back to our rented flat in Camden. As we stepped in, he thanked me for liking him even though he was so pathetic.
I slung an arm around him. “I love you for your weaknesses.”
He smirked.
Then, before I realized what I was doing, I hooked my other arm around him and kissed him on the mouth, same way I used to kiss Clare.
I think we were both shocked, but it also cracked us up: we started laughing a second later. Then we stopped, and I just sort of stared at him in fear and confusion and desire.
He smiled a little and punched my arm. “Bloody lunatic.”
I faked a smile too, and shuffled to the kitchen to get a drink of water. “I probably won’t remember this tomorrow,” I said. “Don’t remind me. Okay?” Amnesia: wise policy.
He stood where I’d left him, by the front door. “Okay,” he echoed after a few seconds.
He kept to his word. We’d never spoken of it, though we remained friends. He was even in London, had recently moved back with his girlfriend, Julie, after finishing university in the US. He probably chalked up the experience to my being drunk, if he ever thought of it anymore.
I never told anyone about it, not even Andy. In my own head, my defense—aside from being drunk—was that Daniel’s Britishness had attracted me. Like, I wasn’t gay or bi, just deeply Anglophilic. It wasn’t Daniel I was snogging that night; it was the United Kingdom.
But now …
How deep in denial could you get, Blackwell?
By the time another couple of weeks had passed, I’d become certain I was caught in two different attractions. Flirtations? What to call them?
One was with Fiona, who championed me, supported me in my vulnerable acting moments, and gazed at me with the happy intensity of a fangirl with her favorite
celebrity. I was the character she’d created and loved. A crush was understandable on her part. I found her attractive and appreciated her kindness, so I flirted back, with eye contact and smiles and conversations between scenes.
I’d known temporary bonds like this before, working on stage shows. I always spent big chunks of time and emotion with the people involved, and often formed mini-relationships, “showmances,” which usually dissolved when the production ended.
So my director wanted me a little, and I basked in it a little. Nothing unusual there.
But the attraction to Andy? That was more unprecedented.
And yet not. Hadn’t I kissed him when we were fifteen, remained his closest friend all this time, stayed in touch despite thousands of miles of distance? Hadn’t I thought, Good, now I’m his favorite again, when he and Mitchell broke up? It was like this feeling had been waiting in the wings since adolescence and was finally leaping out onstage.
Why now, though? I came up with no particular reason except that this was the first time we were both single in years—I’d had girlfriends, he’d had boyfriends, we’d had crushes and other distractions. But now we were both available, and in our familiar online conversations, something had clicked for me. Maybe I felt sorry for him because he was hurting, and I was confusing sympathy with attraction. But if so, that only proved I was capable of romantic feelings for other guys, not just physical ones.
In other words, yes, you’re bi, Sinter, so drop the denial already and roll with it.
Roll with it how, though? These feelings still didn’t have to mean anything, nor did I have to take any action. It was only an interesting new development. One I kept obsessively analyzing. Besides, I couldn’t do anything about it yet. The guy I currently wanted was, for one thing, in heavy rebound mode, and, for another, five thousand miles away. Meanwhile, I had a job to attend to, one that kept me busy five to six days a week for eight to twelve hours a day.
So I attended to that. Which meant giving, inadvertently, more attention to my temporary work girlfriend.
One afternoon during a filming break, I sprawled in a folding chair on the studio set, my head tipped back and all four limbs hanging limp around me. I was sweaty and almost shaking with exhaustion.
All the Better Part of Me Page 5