by James Franco
“Oh, man,” I said. “A fucking faggot! Using Vaseline on assholes!”
“Exactly. But back in the day we called ’em queers. Well, when he came out, I didn’t say anything about the shit, but he wanted to take my picture and I said ‘Oh, yeah?’ And he said ‘Yeah, with your shirt off,’ and that was it for me. I didn’t care if he had written some great plays, I was out of there, fast.”
“No shit. I don’t know why you were there in the first place.”
“Well, you’re right. But you know, when he was a young actor, Brando rode his bike out to the beach and fucked Tennessee Williams to get the part of Stanley in Streetcar Named Desire.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I did Brando’s voice once. For another Tennessee thing, The Fugitive Kind. Sidney Lumet needed some voiceover lines for Brando and Brando wouldn’t do ’em, so I got a call to do Brando’s voice.”
“That’s cool.”
We’d watch the old movies and lie on his bed and then he would talk about getting spiritual. One time, just after I went six months with no heroin, he said, “You need to get a job.”
“But I want to be an actor, like you.”
“I don’t give a shit. You can be an actor all you want, but if you don’t take care of yourself, then you’re shit.”
“But no place will hire me. I’ve never worked anywhere before.”
“I don’t give a shit, Sean, that’s what being spiritual is: taking care of yourself. Being responsible. That’s spiritual. You’re just a selfish little prick, and you want everyone to serve you.”
I wanted to mention that we were lying on a bed on the second floor of the house his daughter bought him, but I didn’t. Instead, I listened to him, because I wanted to change. I didn’t want to be selfish anymore, and I didn’t want to be a drug addict.
“I want to be good,” I said. “I just know that no place will hire me. I have no experience, and I look like shit.”
“You’ve never worked anywhere?”
“I worked at a golf course in high school, but I got fired because I fell asleep while driving the ball-fetching cart on the driving range; I was on some drugs, and when I fell asleep, it drove toward the people hitting the balls and then into a person. An old man.”
“That was stupid. I’m an old man, you gonna hit me with your golf cart?”
“No.”
“Damn right, because I’d fuck you up, young buck.” He laughed. That was his joke: that I was young, but he could still fuck me up. And that he called me “young buck.”
Then he said, “Well, what you’re going to do is clean up. You can shave, can’t you? And comb your hair?” I nodded. “Well, do that, and put on a good shirt and go get a job.”
I tried. That night at home, I cleaned myself up. My hair was pretty long, not long like a girl, but long: curly and ’fro-y, so I cut it with some scissors in the bathroom. It was uneven at first and I kept trying to correct my work until it ended up really short. My mom tried to come in but I told her to go away.
“What are you doing in there so long?”
“Nothing, just shitting.” I guess she was worried about me going back to heroin, so she still watched my every move. I lathered my face with hand soap and shaved off my blonde scruff. I looked okay. When I came out my mom started crying. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t ask. She came in to hug me, and I let her.
The next day I wore a white button-down shirt and jeans because they were all I had, and I drove around looking for a job. I had a Ford Fairmont from when I was using. It was very square and brown, like a long box. It had no heat, no AC, and the parking brake didn’t work, and there were spiders and living things all over the inside because I couldn’t close the driver’s side window all the way.
I mostly went to restaurants. The ones I went to in the morning had me take applications because the managers weren’t in yet. An Italian place, a place with a French name, a steak place. After an hour I had a stack of the forms on the passenger seat. The forms asked for prior work experience, and I knew that was going to be a problem, and some of them asked if I had been arrested in the past ten years, and that was going to be a problem too.
Around 12:30, the sun got hot through the windshield, and there were wet circles under my arms. I needed something to drink. I went into this Italian place not far from my parents’ house, which is off Riverside on Tujunga. It was called Isabel’s. It wasn’t a bad place, but it also wasn’t gourmet. The manager was there. He was a medium-size Italian guy with dark hair and a square head. All the lights were on, and the place was empty except for a couple Mexican-looking guys that were setting the tables with candles in red honeycomb glass and another Chinese one was putting out silverware. I asked the manager for a glass of water. He brought one with ice, and when I told him I was there for a job we sat at one of the tables. The other guys worked in the background.
“Why do you want to work here?”
“What do you mean? Because I want a job. I mean, right?” The water tasted really good, almost blue.
“I know, but why do you want to work at Isabel’s?”
“Because I want to work really hard.”
“Yeah, yeah, but I mean, why here?”
“Because I love Italian food?”
“You do? What’s your favorite dish?”
“…Spaghetti?”
He considered my answer like it was a good one.
“You know?” he said, like it was a follow-up to something that hadn’t been said. “Do you know what this place is? Isabel’s?”
“A restaurant?”
“This place is a shrine. To my mother.” Then he stared at me.
“Okay,” I said. “A shrine. Cool. I thought it was an Italian restaurant.”
“It is an Italian restaurant, but it’s dedicated to my mother. That’s what Isabel’s means; it’s her place, a place dedicated to her. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. You love your mother.”
“Yes, I love my mother, may she rest in peace.” He crossed himself, then said nothing. He was kinda nodding, but not really looking at me.
“That’s great,” I said to fill the silence.
“Damn right it’s great. It means this place is important to me. It means that my mother will never die as long as I am serving food in her honor.”
“Cool,” I said. His shirt was open at the collar and there was sweat in the black hairs curling there.
“Look, Eminem,” he said, referring to my short blond hair. “Do you see what I’m saying? I run this place because I love my mother. And anyone that works here needs to love my mother too.”
“Do all those guys love your mother?” I pointed to the guys setting the tables.
“Love, love, love her. They all do. Do you get it?”
“I think?”
“Okay, check it out, it’s like this, do you love your mother?”
“No,” I said, and when he heard me, he caught himself about to say something because he didn’t expect me to say that. “Well, I do,” I said. “But she doesn’t love me.”
I had been doing heroin for so many years I didn’t know how normal people talked. I was being too honest.
“Your mother doesn’t love you?”
“Well, no. I stole a bunch of crap from her and my dad… and yeah, I did bad stuff.”
Then he was looking at me funny. I didn’t like looking him in the eyes, so I was looking at the sweat on his chest and thinking about how those black hairs must be all in his ass crack too.
“What stuff did you do?” he said.
“Hungh? Oh, I just got arrested a bunch, and I almost killed a guy. But I’m getting better now. My sponsor Sonny says that I’m a selfish prick, but he also says I’m getting better. I don’t do drugs anymore, you know?”
“No, I don’t know. What are you asking like it’s a question for?”
“No, I wasn’t… what? Oh no, I wasn’t, I was just asking it like, you know, like do you understand that I�
��m not like that anymore. That I’m clean and I don’t drink and stuff. I mean, I did. I used to do it a lot. Like, before these past six months all I would do is heroin and shit, and it was all fucked up, but then I don’t know, I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Well, I hit a dog with my bike, and it died.”
“You hit a dog with your motorcycle?”
“No, just a bike, like a bicycle. But yeah, I was high, and it was a little dog. A little white dog. I didn’t see it walking behind its master, this lady, and I rode off the sidewalk curb right on its head.”
“What did the lady do?”
“Oh, she turned back and screamed. That’s when I realized that I had done something. I probably would have kept going, but she screamed, and oh shit, it was pretty sick. Half the face was smashed, like flat on the cement, but the rest of the body was still twitching, especially this one front paw that was pawing the air pretty fast. I got off the bike and walked back over and she was kneeling down at the dog and the little paw was still going, but slowing down. And when I looked at her there, kneeling and all religious looking, I realized that life was precious. I didn’t want to do my thing anymore. I mean I didn’t want to do drugs anymore.”
I looked up from the chest hair and he was studying me again. I had laid a lot on him, but I thought maybe this is how job interviews go. I thought I might have a shot the way he was looking at me. He wasn’t smiling, but it looked like he was about to smile, so then I started smiling, but then he definitely wasn’t smiling.
He said, “So, you better get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.” His voice was calm, but his eyes weren’t.
“Wait, cops? For what? What’s going on? I thought I was going to get the job.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind? You thought a scumbag junkie like you was going to get the job? Really?”
“Well, that way you were smiling at me, and I was so honest with you, and I did say that I love your mother.”
He stood up. “You have five seconds to get the fuck out of here before I break your faggot face.”
“Faggot?”
He started counting. I got up and walked out. The Mexican guys had stopped setting the tables and everyone was watching me. The Chinese guy looked stoned standing there with a bunch of knives and forks.
I went around to all the restaurants in the area, but no one wanted me. Even when I kept the heroin stuff to myself, they still didn’t want me.
One morning at the meeting, I told Sonny about everything that happened. I couldn’t even look at him. I stared at the wall painting. The section next to our booth had a little Mexican man in a sombrero hunched over carrying something.
“That’s bullshit,” said Sonny.
“Some guy almost killed me.”
“Bullshit! You’re a selfish prick and you don’t want to work. What a selfish prick.” He was getting loud and disturbing the meeting. The guy that was sharing about raging at his wife at his kid’s birthday party stopped talking for a second and looked over. I nodded an apology and he continued. I whispered to Sonny and he whispered back hotly.
“What do you mean? I do want to work. I’d sell my ass for work if it meant I didn’t have to do drugs anymore.”
“Bullshit, I don’t believe you. You’re just a selfish asshole prick. I bet you want to go get fucked up, don’t you.”
“No! What am I supposed to do? These nice restaurants don’t want ex-junkies, I look like crap.”
“What? Nice restaurants? Are you too good to work at McDonald’s?” I didn’t understand, but then I understood. I told him I wasn’t too good for anything.
“Then go apply at McDonald’s, motherfucker.”
“Sonny, keep it down,” said one of the other old-timers.
“Why don’t you keep my cock down your throat?” All the guys laughed.
So I applied at McDonald’s. It was near my place in Sherman Oaks on Ventura. There was a plastic play structure out front and a drive-thru. I went inside and I met the manager, Pat. She was white and had short hair and a wide middle. We sat at one of the plastic tables inside.
“Why do you want to work at McDonald’s?”
“I think this place is fucking great.”
“Why?”
“I like the fucking cheeseburgers. Great cheeseburgers. Better than Burger King. Burger King is shit. Their shit tastes burnt. Some people like burnt-tasting shit, but I like your shit. And I like your fries.”
“Yes, we have good fries. And don’t swear like that… Why do you want this job? I mean you’d be one of the only white guys I have, you know that, right?”
“That’s cool. I hate white people.”
“But, no, shut up, kid. What I’m saying is that we don’t get guys like you in here, I mean ever. The only other white guy I have behind the counter is Dylan and he has some mental problems. I mean, he can sweep and clean the hot fudge sundae machine, but that’s it. So what I’m asking is, why?”
“I just love your food. I love this place. I might not be the most educated person here, but I can work hard.” I didn’t mention the heroin this time.
“Don’t worry, you’re educated enough,” she said, and shook my hand. I got the job right there. They needed someone for the drive-thru from 9 p.m. until 2 in the morning, five nights a week. I was the only white guy; everyone else was Mexican or South American. The ones that didn’t speak English worked in the back and cooked the burgers. The ones that could speak English worked the registers. The nicest one was Marcia; she was tall and had a bunch of gold teeth like caramels. Juan worked the grill. He was shaped like a soft triangle with a huge bulging groin area and a super small head. His face was compact and smoothed over like a baby’s. He spoke no English but I could tell from his little squeaks in Spanish that he was very stupid. He worked in the back, cooking the meat with all the smoke, and he was always smiling. Something was always pleasing his little dinosaur brain.
The drive-thru wasn’t so bad. I just had to take orders on a little headset and then take the cash when the customers drove around. After 10 p.m., most people were quiet and just passed me the cash without a lot of talk. They were tucked in their cars waiting for their warm food. After the first week I got comfortable with everything, and I started talking to the customers. I would ask them how they were doing and try to draw them out a little; most didn’t respond, but some talked to me.
“What the hell are you doing in there?”
“Just working,” I’d say.
“You’re the first white dude I’ve ever seen working in a McDonald’s.”
“Yup, that’s me.”
“Well, at least you can speak English.”
“I try,” I said.
But then I got into this thing of not being myself; I pretended to be people from different places, using different accents. I did this partly because I was warming to the actor idea. I had never taken an acting class, but I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. But I partly did the accents because I was tired of being me.
“Hey, where you from kid? You from New York?”
“Yeah, Bensonhurst.” I had never even been there; I just remembered it from Do the Right Thing.
“Hey, no shit, me too, which part?” This was a skinny black guy with a friendly face. He had ordered two Big Macs.
“Um, near the bridge.”
“The bridge? The Narrows?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Oh, that’s Fort Greene.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“All right kid, you hang in there.”
It felt good when people believed my act, like I was accomplishing something. I would do Italian too. It was really bad, but maybe my ragged good looks helped people believe it. This blond girl came through and immediately started smiling when I talked to her with the Italian thing. She had a high laugh that sounded forced, but maybe it was real. She was really digging the Italian guy I was doing.
“You are so-a beautiful, sooooo-a
beautiful-a! In all of Italy I never saw-a such-a beautiful girl-a. Oh mio, I love-a the beautiful girls like-a you.”
She drove off laughing the high tingle, which felt good and lonely. But then five minutes later she came back, and over the speaker I knew it was her, because I heard the high laugh through the headset.
“Hi, teeeeheeeee, it’s me, teeeeheeeee, the ‘beautiful-a girl-a’ from before.”
“Oh, hi-a,” I said through the intercom.
“Hi, I forgot something. I uhhh, I needed a… strawberry milkshake. Small.”
“O-kay, one-a strawberry milkshake-shake-a, small-a.”
When she drove back around to my window she was smiling and her face was splotchy with pink spots because she was embarrassed, but I could tell she was also pushing herself to be forward. One great thing about the accents is they helped me be more outgoing.
“So, you’re from Italy? Why are you so blond?”
“There are tons of blond-a men in Italia.”
“Oh, I’ve never been. Which part are you from?”
“I’m-a from Pisa.”
“Like the leaning tower?”
“Yes-a, that was-a near my house-a.”
“Do you teach lessons? Italian lessons. I studied it a little, but I would really love to learn it. I mean, if you speak it.”
“Of course-a I speak it. I would love-a to give you lessons.” She quickly wrote down her number because there were cars behind her and they started honking and another customer was yelling “hello” over and over in my headset.
The blond girl was pretty cute, but I could never call her because I could never give her Italian lessons.
One night there was a black guy in his thirties driving a car full of other good-looking thirty-year-olds, white and black, women and men.
“What the hell is that accent?” said the black dude.
“It’s-a Italiano.”