Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living (12 page)

If the theater department didn’t see you as a Juliet or Lady Capulet, or even a lady-in-waiting, then the Actors Theatre of Louisville was goddamned unlikely to think so either. Let alone Chicago! “Goddamn it, honey. We tried it your way. We got you the colored contacts. We got you the LeBaron convertible. You won raves as Ado Annie at Glenbard South, and rightly so; you really were just magical. You really were. And I know, everyone says you look like a young Julie from
The Love Boat
. And you do. You could be her sister. Your mother and I bought into it, too. It was intoxicating; I mean, we were all three of us giddy with delight at your prospects. We were drunk, is what we were. On your talent. But you didn’t get cast in
Romeo and Juliet
. In Champaign–Urbana. Nor did you get cast in
Three Sisters
, or
The House of Blue Leaves
, or
Kabuki Achilles
, whatever the hell that is. Forty-seven actors got parts. You did not, Monica. So, NOW you will, by god, get a degree in poli sci, like we always thought you should in the first place!”

You get the idea. I, myself, was very much a newborn baby in acting school, which is to say that I was not very good at acting, which, really, is to say I was bad at acting at this point in my training. So, as this was my own first time through the wringer, I didn’t have high hopes to begin with. I did dream that I might just have a crack at the leading-man role in William Inge’s American classic
Picnic
, just because there weren’t a lot of manly types in the department. William Holden plays Hal in the movie version, a rough-and-tumble drifter in jeans and no shirt. Mumble, brood, mumble, smoke, flex, spit, kiss the girl. Right up my alley. We got into the callbacks, and lo and behold, the director had the same idea, so suddenly I was reading opposite lovely ladies in scenes for Hal and Madge. Everything was cool! A little too cool, turns out.

For right about then this new grad student showed up, a man named David. Nice fella. His main focus had been the ballet (a fact), but now he was leaning toward theater. He was hairless, he was slightly effeminate, and he was ripped. He was sweet as pie. The kind of guy who would never upset you unless he was cast instead of you to portray a virile, swaggering cowboy.

As we continued to pair off in the callback scenes, the director eventually had David try one with his shirt off, and I knew immediately that it was over. The director turned out to be the sort of chap who didn’t necessarily cast the best actor for the part based on ability. He cast the best actor for the part based on tits. There are, sadly,
astonishingly
too many directors in this world who operate similarly, but such is life. Tits are nice; I get it. If I had succeeded in my life thanks to my sweet tits, I imagine I’d be singing a different tune. I’m certain that we’ve all suffered defeat at one time or another, at the hands of a lesser foe who just happened to be brandishing better tits. David was a fine actor, certainly my better in that regard, but he was simply miscast as a manly person in jeans and cowboy boots.

In any case, I was barely given time to foment my sour grapes, because unfortunately, there is more to the story. You see, this director also liked the cut of my particular jib, despite my medium tits, so he turned right around and started reading me in the scenes for Alan. Who is Alan, you ask? Oh, just the milquetoast college boy who is publicly emasculated when Hal poaches his girlfriend Madge and she chooses to acquiesce to her animal desires, succumbing to Hal even though he has trouble written all over him! For Hal is a man, my friends, and Alan is merely a boy. A cuckolded boy, no less. Alan the boy even has a crying scene, downstage center, lamenting the loss of his gal to this bohunk.

So now, not only am I pissed that David the dancer is going to handily unman me by playing Hal, but all the bookish, boyish actors who thought they had Alan sewn up are damning my eyes! Fortune presents gifts not according to the book, friends, a lesson I have learned too many times to mention. The casting was over. The list was mounted upon the hallway board. I was to play Alan. Very well.

I put my shoulder to the wheel and tried as hard as I could to accomplish some semblance of “good” scene work. Boy, howdy, did I try. I never came close that fall, or for a few years beyond it, because what I had to ultimately learn was that I needed to be “trying” less. I’ll save the rest for my acting technique book (coming this never, from E. P. Dutton, an imprint of Penguin!).

The important thing was that I tried my best and I never gave up, and I could even discern that, although I had a lot farther to go in my journey, the audience at least understood the words I was speaking. I’ve always taken my small victories wherever I could find them. Now I’m forty-two, and I am happy to report that I still have even a lot farther to go. But goddamn, folks, I’m a good sight better now than I was during that
Picnic
autumn.

* * *

A
nyway, we were talking about crime. Joe Foust was a year older than me, and he was also more mature in some very practical ways, which I admired. He was not so mature, however, that he wouldn’t join me in our favorite running joke: shoplifting stupid items. It was hilarious. We’d try to outdo each other, with an item’s uselessness being the key value for scoring points toward an intangible victory. A box of panty liners. Granny glasses. A book of Bible verses for dealing with fatal diseases. Hilarious, right? Being nineteen was amazing. I was an unstoppable pilferer. We would exit the chosen establishment, barely containing our mirth until we could pull out whatever dumb trinket we had just heisted. Then we would laugh. Oh, how we would double over and cackle in the glow of the parking-lot lights. What could be more fun than pointless petty larceny? Fracking, maybe?

One day we went to the Kmart so Joe could purchase a microwave for his girlfriend for Christmas. I wandered innocuously about while he selected his oven and paid. Then, as we sauntered out, the security man said, “Excuse me, can I please talk to you?”

“Ulp. Yeah,” I replied, thoroughly AMAZED that they had somehow detected my thievery. He asked to examine the front of my jeans, and, sure enough, there he found not four, not five, not even six, but
eight
Ronnie Milsap cassettes. EIGHT RONNIE MILSAP CASSETTES. Please pause in your reading to calm your exploding heart rate . . . All good? To resume. Eight Ronnie Milsap cassettes. Eight disparate Ronnie Milsap albums. On cassette. You have to admit that was an amazing haul in terms of scoring points in our game. I had apparently shoved them into the front of my jeans standing directly in front of a two-way mirrored security window.

The man took me back to his office to show me where he had been sitting whilst watching me commit my smooth misdemeanor. His chair behind the mirror was about fourteen feet from the display of country greats on sale. I said that I felt pretty stupid, and that it was actually just a hilarious joke, and that I wasn’t actually even familiar with Mr. Milsap’s stylings.

He told me that if I could pay for the tapes right then, he’d let me go. I remember the total being about seventeen dollars and change. I did not have it. He said he was sorry, but he’d have to call the police in, then. I stoically said, “Welp. That’s your call. But I fucking won, bro.” So, puzzled at my bravado, he did. That Kmart bastard had the rectitude to call the fucking cops. Imagine hearing my end of that call: “Hey, Dale. It’s Cleve. . . . Heh, it’s hangin’. . . . I got one for you. . . . Nah, white boy. . . . You ready? Eight Ronnie Milsap tapes. . . . Ronnie Milsap. . . . Eight. . . . Nope, eight. . . . He says it’s hilarious. All right, see ya.” It suddenly dawned on me that this might be not so great, because in about five hours, I was supposed to appear in the opening-night performance of
Picnic
. Oh, my good Jesus.

A deputy came from the sheriff’s office and arrested me and cuffed me and walked me out of the store in front of all the mothers pulling their children in close to them, and my friend Joe, who quickly communicated that he didn’t think the Ronnie Milsap tapes were really that funny in this instance. He was just pissed because I had driven us there in my Subaru BRAT, and he couldn’t drive a stick, so he was stranded. In an attempt to further diminish my ultimate victory, he pointed out that he had written a check, with our address on it, for the microwave, so it wasn’t really the ideal setup for lifting humorously useless objects.

As he spoke, all I heard was, “You are the ultimate champion, forever, of our awesome game.” The deputy said something like, “Okay, let’s move along. Gird yourself—we’re about to pass some Engelbert Humperdinck cassettes.” Then he shoved me past the candy bars and out the door. This whole pageant was meant to cow and shame me, and it worked. Like a charm. It was an intense wake-up call to suddenly be handcuffed in the back of a police car, heading “downtown” at about three o’clock in the afternoon.

My life as I knew it was about to come to a screeching halt, for this was the worst possible night I could have chosen to be unwillingly detained by the law. Visions of Sean Penn and Esai Morales from
Bad Boys
(1983) filled my mind’s eye, and I expected, upon arriving “up the river,” to soon find myself garnished with the hocked-up loogies of my new, jeering fellow inmates.

I was taken into the station and booked, straight up. The sheriff’s deputies told me that, due to my tender years, they would go pretty easy on me. I’d be released that day if I posted bail, then I’d have to return to a sort of lightweight court for sentencing, which would probably be a fine or community service. I started to think I might just find my way clear of this bed I had just shat. Suck on that, Esai Morales. (I have always been such a fan of his that I used to dream of growing up to be called “the white Esai Morales.”)

Shortly after I arrived in the Urbana joint, my friend Goliath, alerted by Joe Foust, showed up with my bail, which I think was about $250. Good man. Seems I was all set to get off easy. And it was here, right here, right at this goddamn point, that I made my second-biggest mistake of the afternoon. It was in the words that I spoke aloud to the fine officers processing me.

“Gentlemen. I want to say to you that I am truly sorry that I committed this grave error this afternoon, and I can assure you that I am and will remain sincerely repentant. I am a jackass of the first order; this is now clear to me. Jack. Ass. Totally. I mean, wow, guys, officers, I have learned a lesson here. A lesson and a half. Has been learned. And. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, um, hustling my paperwork along, expediting it, as they say, for you see, I am a student. Of the theater . . . and tonight is actually the opening night of my play,
Picnic
, on the main stage over at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, so . . . it’s pretty much a big deal, and it’s my first show ever because I’m a sophomore, and they have a whole hierarchy/pecking order kind of thing, where they post the casting on the board, so, anyway, my call time is six thirty for an eight
P.M
. show . . . it’s five o’clock now. So, thanks. For the hustle.”

The officers looked kindly at one another and said to me, “Opening night? You don’t say. That sounds important all right. Don’t you worry, we’ll take care of it. We love the arts around here.” Amazing. I sighed my relief all over them, I made my gratitude very clear to the deputies, and I don’t believe I cried.

I flashed back to my grandpa Ray telling me years earlier, “You made your bed. Now you have to sleep in it.” I briefly hated that beloved man, now gone, for the painfully appropriate timbre of his aphorism. How close had I just come to bringing the curtain of justice down upon the closing night of my whole shebang? This was seriously, seriously bad. Missing the show for such a delinquent reason would certainly see me expelled from school, and so I would not have blamed myself for crying, but I believe I kept it together. I’m one hell of an optimist, is all it is. Such a sunny disposition can make a body powerfully stupid some of the time, but it’s mostly worked out for me so far. “Blissful ignorance,” I believe, is the operative phrase.

The officers had put me relatively at ease, and then they put me in the holding cell right there across from them. I could see them through a large window, but I couldn’t hear. Five thirty
P.M
. Six
P.M
. Everyone seemed pretty calm. Immobile, really. Hold up. I didn’t need to hear. My eyes were all the equipment I required to deduce that the men wearing the uniforms had not lifted a finger since putting me in the cell!

The clock was ticking. Six fifteen. Oh my lord. What? Fucking what, now? The bail had been posted; Goliath was waiting to drive me to the theater, a mere fifteen-minute trip or less; and all that remained was for these sons of bitches to punch my ticket and show me the door! Six thirty. Holy Jesus and Mary and Joseph. My misstep dawned on me slowly as I watched the two deputies look innocently at each other with the very slightest of smirks, then continue reading the newspaper. Feet up on the desk, the whole bit. Hoe. Lee. Shit. Seven o’clock. Mother. Fuck. Finally, the penny dropped. I cottoned to my precise dilemma
just
before I banged on the window to communicate that I was shitting little green apples in there. I saw their game, I comprehended the bit, and so I waited. They were fucking with me. They wanted the idiot in the headband, the one with the Ronnie Milsap tapes (oh, fuck, what if they were huge Milsap fans?!) and the opening night, to at least sweat a little bit. Right?

What a dipshit I must have sounded to them. What a dipshit I was, in fact. I most certainly obliged them, as I did readily sweat some bullets and also some Brazil nuts and a few lumps of rock salt as well. My time in the joint—my stint—had run up to literally
dozens
of minutes by now, plenty of time to think about where I’d go from here, a hardened criminal with a
record
. I supposed I’d go back to framing houses in Minooka, my hometown. My sweet parents would be so disappointed in me. The most decent people I had ever come across, about to be handed back this steaming pile of a son. Shit.