Directing Herbert White (2 page)

2. Please, Please, Please

Now the picture had him in it

Up the red path

To my house

In his coal tux

Slicked like a wet cat.

I did my best in a lime-green dress.

All his gang from school:

Inside they each had some from his flask;

And Sterling smiled a toothy smile, yellow and sharp.

And then we danced.

Not to one song, but ten songs.

It was the scene where the audience came over to my side,

Because I got what I wanted.

I was in love with a cliché.

Boys his age have bodies like knives.

I was holding one by the blade.

3. Ask

I used to think about playing guitar,

Now I just listen.

With girls,

Just push and it gets there.

As soon as you hit puberty, go.

Take what comes, ugly is okay too.

With Erica, you were on someone's brother's bed;

Pothead Mormons—listen—

A flower-covered comforter, blue ground;

A drum kit in the corner of the room,

Bass drum like a bulldog and a couple of sleeping flamingo cymbals.

Gentle,
but you weren't.

Love came—like viscosity filling a tube—

And you killed it with a bunch of thrusts.

Right in the middle she had to leave.

The second time she was better. Boring.

•

In the bathroom I sat naked on the floor.

Blood blooming.

—Science
and
fiction.

This is the rite of passage.

I am the vessel.

He is the instrument.

4. Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before

When I was in seventh grade I put kids in three categories:

Sports kids, smart kids, and social kids.

Some kids played football well and were dumb and ugly;

Some kids got great grades and their only friends were their parents;

There were others that danced among us

And made us all look like the kids we were.

They were big, daring, and sexual.

I wasn't much in any of the categories.

But in high school I met Sterling and I had
something.

At this one party I was drunk and so was everyone else.

The sofas and chairs were floating,

And the people were shifting in their spheres,

I sat on a couch and took a ride.

Through a door to the kitchen, I saw a circus.

Plenty of colors: red and yellow and white.

There were a few ringmasters barking out things

And some lions in green letterman jackets

And this huge black seal, bonking down on this one guy, Ivan.

Bouncing him like he was a ball of air.

Until Ivan was slouched halfway to the linoleum.

One of the others hit him on the crown with a frying pan,

Like a cartoon, Ivan went all the way down and lay flat.

Sterling was on the side of it all.

Pouring foamy, piss-colored beer

Over Ivan's bloody pale face,

Laughing his electric eel grin.

His sharp dogteeth.

On the car ride home,

He drove us drunk through the dark

Like a boat

On a flat, starless sea.

5. Girlfriend in a Coma

Megan McKenna had a skinhead boyfriend,

He crashed his car into a pole.

The paramedics lifted her out of the crumpled car,

And laid her on the cement. They cut away her jeans.

Sterling and I fought all the time,

Driving around in his rotten green Mustang.

I was the sweetest sixteen,

And when we hit the other car

Darkness met me at the windshield.

My father kept Sterling from the room.

I was plastered and sutured and puffed up.

When I go to heaven,

I'll think of Sterling.

I'll think that I loved him.

I'll think that he was human.

That he was a poor little brain in a dangerous body.

III.

Acting Tips

When I played Saul

In
Pineapple Express

I said, fuck it,

Acting should be fun.

No more twisted

Self-centered

James Dean demons.

There was one thing

That was important:

Saul should
love
Dale.

That was the secret

That made Saul

So much more

Than Harold and Kumar.

Then I played Scott Smith,

Harvey Milk's lover.

I'm still surprised

By the response

To that character.

The secret there:

Minimalism.

The film is called
Milk,

Not
Smith,

And that's how I played it:

A supporting lover,

Thus, as a
supporting
actor

To support Sean

Whom I love so much.

In
Howl
I played Ginsberg,

And I was all alone.

My scenes were speeches

Given to an unseen interviewer

Like Shirley Clark's

Portrait of Jason.

All I did was get down Allen's

Cadence by listening to him

Read “Howl,” over and over,

All the versions

Over the course of forty years,

So many recordings.

He wrote the poem

And then the poem wrote him.

In
127 Hours
I knew

The key would be show don't tell,

Because the character just
does.

I knew the audience

Would have an experience

Because I wouldn't be telling

Them how I feel, I'd be
feeling.

And when the character does talk,

He does it to his little video camera;

I look right into the lens,

Ostensibly talking to my family and friends,

But I'm looking right at the audience,

So it's like a Shakespearean aside,

Without breaking the fourth wall.

And I talk about my feelings

In the most intimate way.

It's like I'm talking to the people

In the theater, as if they're all my friends,

And I'm telling them

Everything there is to know

About me.

Seventh Grade

A new school with cement all around

With wires that you can't see but feel,

And there are faces that break in at you,

And fill you with such pressure.

And you run away but the faces are always there,

Huge black ones that you never saw before.

On guys that are like grown men

That have dicks so big they could kill you.

But your dad says not to worry

Because if someone picks on you

You can handle anyone at that school, he says,

But he hasn't seen some of these guys

Because he himself wouldn't be able to handle them.

Jamal and Shaka and Ramone and Reuben,

They are different kinds of people than you have ever known.

The halls are full of these people and talk about pussy and guns

And a girl named Yvon that sucked Shaka's dick.

You try to picture it, and swallow that image whole, because it is new too,

But that world is unwieldy and can hurt you.

Instead, you have a bunch of mice at home

That had started as two, but they fucked,

Then there were twenty little pink mice in the cage.

It smelled, and you sprayed it with Right Guard.

You separated the dad from the mom, so that it wouldn't happen again

But then the mom's belly got big again with more pink things

Because one of the babies fucked her.

Think of that son,

Half her size, with barely any hair,

Riding her from behind,

Not knowing why,

But doing it because he was the strongest of the litter.

James Dean on Havenhurst

After I dropped out of UCLA

I lived on Havenhurst in Sherman Oaks,

A couple years after the earthquake rocked it

And brought the rent down.

I worked at McDonald's to pay the rent.

I stayed in a two-bedroom with two Scotts.

I slept on the couch and they had the rooms.

One Scott was from Michigan

And one was from LA.

We were all actors.

We did scenes in class:

Desire under the Elms,

The Dreamer Examines His Pillow,

American Buffalo,

True West.

One Scott went crazy,

The big one, who was an ex-Mr. Universe,

And before he went back to Grand Rapids for good,

He would lock himself in his little room

And watch four movies over and over:

East of Eden, Lust for Life,

Taxi Driver, A Place in the Sun.

A crazy boy, van Gogh,

And two murderers. It was funny

To think about the sensitive guy

That was under that Mr. Universe shell.

And scary.

The other Scott gave up too.

But he was more of a rich kid,

So, I think he did okay.

I lived there alone for at least a year.

I had so much room to stretch out,

But I didn't know what to do with it.

I put a blow-up mattress in the big bedroom

And piled my books in the dining room.

At the end of my stay

I was cast as James Dean.

I isolated myself, smoked two packs a day,

Sat on the air mattress and watched

All the Dean films, over and over:

East of Eden,

Rebel Without a Cause,

Giant.

And all the TV shows,

When he was young and goofy.

He too had dropped out of UCLA.

We were the same person.

Except, he couldn't stop being Dean,

And I could.

Fifth Grade

It was an annual field trip, for which Mrs. Yount was famous,

That and that she didn't take bullshit.

And that she had cancer, and that she was black,

And that she said often, “Shut your mouth, child,” if you said something stupid.

On the ship trip, everyone was part of a different crew:

The rigging, or the bosun, or the fishing, or the deckhand.

We spent weeks preparing for our night on the ship,

What an amazing trip it would be.

I learned how to tie some knots,

I learned “starboard,” “portside,” “stern” and “bow,”

And the “capstan” and “galley” and “below deck” and all that stuff.

But what I really thought about was the coming night,

Everyone sleeping below deck, in hammocks:

If I could just sneak over to Amy Kush in the dark,

Then everything would be okay.

But her dad was Colonel Kush, a chaperone on the trip,

And what would I do if I did make it to that hammock unobserved

And lay down with her amidst all those other hammocks,

Low slung with bodies, like scrotums, no, like bells ready to clang.

And in the old days, back in 1850, what did all those sailors do,

Out on the sea for months and years?

There must be books on it.

And also many books that were never written,

Think of all the stuff that could have been written in all those books

About what happened on all those ships.

And well, shit, we were just kids,

And just docked in the harbor, for just one night.

Splash Mountain

New Orleans Square is my favorite part of Disneyland.

I spent two New Year's Eves on one of the balconies there

Watching the Mickey Mouse fireworks, sad,

And searching for something good.

Tom Sawyer Island used to be across the way

And now the Swiss Family Robinson Tree is gone.

When I was young

My dad bought us guns

From the pirate shop.

When we were older

We fingered girls in the Haunted House,

And went down Splash Mountain.

We went through Pirates of the Caribbean:

Pirates raping pigs and women, raiding

And ribaldry, men tortured, and gold taken.

Treasure and rape. And the boat floats so

Gently down the way. I want to get out and sit with the old

Man on the cabin porch.

My Place

I have a bucket on wheels and a mop, and sprays

For windows, toilets and desks.

Children write things in all places.

Fuck you Ronny. For a good time call.

I'm supposed to wipe off all the graffiti,

Especially swastikas and racial slurs.

There is a hallway outside the math building

Full of faded brown lockers

Caged in with wire fencing.

Halfway down this hall

Is a door, and inside there, my place.

There is learning happening around me all day.

But sometimes I stay late when there are no more bells

Or voices. An orange frieze above the buildings,

Soon gray and then purple when the school lights turn on.

I can sit in my room all night if I wish.

There is an industrial sink and a chair

And I have papers and notes and receipts.

And a single bare bulb on a chain, so I can see.

Each morning I wash my hands and face

But it does no good.

When kids miss the toilet, I'm the one that cleans.

When it's clogged, I put my snake in there and clear it.

There is a faculty bathroom in the office building

—Called the Tower Building—

The one-unit bathroom is for staff only,

But students sneak in there and do it.

In my place there is complete privacy.

Not many are aware of it.

I keep the door closed.

I don't even look at the girls anymore. I love movies.

I watch them on my little portable.

When the kids are gone the school is a different place.

A shadow place. I'm a shadow.