Greenlights

by Matthew McConaughey

  No fries with that—Like the above, this can be a tough duty. “I’ll have the Big Mac and a large Coke, but cut the fries, I’m on a diet.”

  One less beer—“I only had eighteen beers today, honey, I usually drink a case. I’m watchin my weight.”

  Steam—The nonactive way to generate a sweat from without.

  Substitute the fork with chopsticks—You eat smaller bites of food, which is better for digestion and makes you feel full sooner.

  Sex—The original exercise. It generates a sweat from within and improves relationships, making our companion see us in a more flattering light, which psychologically makes us feel like we look better.

  Butt darts and plyos—Why go to the gym when you can just take some steroids and do plyometrics on your steering wheel while you drive to and from work?*7

  Babysit the kids—You never sit down, you’re always corralling, especially if you have two or more.

  Take the stairs—No more elevators for you.

  Dance—Probably my favorite one on the list. Cardio, flexibility, and fun. I wish more people were doing more of it.

  Walk—Don’t ride.

  Pilates—Low intensity, excellent for flexibility and core strength.

  Yoga—Intense and relaxing. A mental meditation as well.

  Jog—Low heart rate but a good fat burner with some distance.

  Run—High intensity, high heart rate.

  The gym—Our one-stop shop for our entire body, plus it’s usually got those skinny mirrors.

  A trainer—Now you’re getting serious. Got someone cracking the whip so you can’t procrastinate.

  Marathon—High intensity, long distance, a serious amount of your day spent doing it.

  Triathlon—Run, bike, swim. For strength, speed, and agility, this is the all-around workout.

  * * *

  I was never too bothered by the consistent critical write-offs of me and my work. I enjoyed making romantic comedies, and their paychecks rented the houses on the beaches I ran shirtless on. Getting relative with this inevitability, no way was this working-class country boy going to be condescending about the opportunities they gave me, no matter how categorized they were.

  That said, as much as I was enjoying the self-engineered ease of my life, I was becoming uneasy with a couple of things. One, the romantic comedies stopped presenting a challenge for me. I felt like I could read the script today and play the part tomorrow. Two, I was beginning to feel like an entertainer, not an actor. And what is wrong with that? I asked myself. I had good comedic timing, I had branded affirmative humor and delusional optimism, I had kept as much masculinity in the neutered rom-com male as you could, and I had succeeded in giving the audience what they wanted.

  Still, I felt like I was posturing instead of behaving, playing a part instead of being more of myself. What started off fifteen summers before as a highly personal creative expression was nourishing my spirit less and less. Acting was feeling like a means to an end that I had no address for, and if this was all acting was for me, then I wasn’t sure I wanted to act.

  * * *

  I was getting much more inner growth from my travels than from my career. I loved sales, education, music, and sports. I considered changing professions, maybe start writing short stories and travelogues, going into advertising, or becoming a teacher, a musician, or a football coach. I didn’t know.

  the grifter

  called yurself an artist

  I call yu a grifter

  if yu were Picasso

  yu coulda stole from me

  but yu showed yur hand

  and yu didn’t know it

  a bullshitter woulda got away with it

  but a liar like yu can’t

  my dog coulda sniffed your royal scam

  yur sleight of hand ain’t too slight boy

  yu thought you’d meditate me to sleep but when yu pulled the trigger yu wet yourself

  cus yu never cocked yur gun.

  * * *

  Restless again, I needed some evolution. I needed to head upriver, change lanes, feel some ascension in my grade. But how? Once more, I changed addresses. I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills with a yard big enough to get my hands back in the soil and enough bedrooms for a family of five.

  The late and great University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal was a friend of mine and a good friend to many. A lot of people looked up to him. One was a musician, whom I’ll call Larry. Larry was in the prime of his country music career, had number one hits, and his life was rolling. He had picked up a habit snorting “the white stuff” somewhere along the line and at one particular party after a bathroom break, Larry strode up to his mentor Darrell and started telling Coach a story. Coach listened, as always, and when Larry finished his story and was about to walk away, Coach Royal put a gentle hand on his shoulder and discreetly said, “Larry, you got something on your nose there, bud.” Larry immediately hurried to the bathroom mirror where he saw some white powder he hadn’t cleaned off. He was ashamed, embarrassed. Partly because he felt so disrespectful to Coach Royal, but mainly because he’d obviously gotten too comfortable with the drug to even hide it as well as he should.

  Well, the next day Larry went to Coach’s house and rang the doorbell. Coach answered and Larry said, “Coach, I need to talk to you.” Darrell welcomed him in.

  Larry confessed. He purged his sins to Coach. He told him how embarrassed he was, and how he’d lost his way in the midst of all the fame and fortune. Toward the end of an hour, Larry, now in tears, asked Coach, “What do you think I should do?”

  Now, Coach, being a man of few words, said simply, “Larry, I have never had any trouble turning the page in the book of my life.” Larry got sober that day and he has been for the last forty-six years.

  You ever get in a rut? Stuck on the merry-go-round of a bad habit? I have. We are going to make mistakes — own them, make amends, and move on. Guilt and regret kill many a man before their time. Get off the ride. You are the author of the book of your life. Turn the page.

  *1 After an aboriginal handshake with a friend that guarantees what two people agree on will happen if they both believe it and two years of diligently applying Regenix to my scalp daily, my hairline returned better than ever, and it all started with a good head shave.

  *2 One night the ranch manager, a seventy-year-old man from Mexico, heard a herd of cows get spooked and came out of his cabin to see why. That’s when he saw my naked ass in the middle of them. That’s how the ranch got the name LocaPelotas, meaning “crazy balls” in Spanish.

  *3 In the Muslim religion, the left hand is the one you wipe your backside with.

  *4 The Boston Crab is a professional wrestling hold where the wrestler has his opponent facedown and pulls his opponent’s legs upward so that his opponent’s back and legs are bent back toward his own head. In my instance, I pulled Michel’s head upward so that his back and head were bent back toward his own legs. A Boston Crab, in reverse, as in the picture above.

  *5 In 2015, Issa came to America for the first time and stayed with us for three weeks. We vacationed together in Greece last year.

  *6 Until September 27, 2015, when Emerie James McConaughey was born. Now Pat has a daughter, and someone to love as much as Lori.

  *7 A friend of mine and chemical engineer, James K., is always jacked up but he never goes to the gym or lifts weights. Instead, he concocts his own juice, injects himself with it, and does plyos on the steering wheel while driving to and from work daily. He told me, “That’s why I live thirty miles from my office, make sure I get a good workout.”

  MARCH 2006

  I had met, spent time with, and seriously dated some wonderful women in my life, many of whom I am still friends with today, but ultimately they were all stops, no stays. In my midthirties, I was
looking for a lifetime lover, a best friend, and a mother to be. I was looking for more, I was looking for the one, I was looking for her.

  Then I had another dream. Yes, a wet one.

  No, not that wet dream, a new one.

  Again, I was at peace, this time sitting on the front porch of my one-story, wood-paneled country home in a rocking chair. There was a curbless, horseshoe-shaped dirt driveway that rounded at the three front steps to the elevated ramada I was swaying on. The two-acre green St. Augustine lawn was healthy and uncut. Through the trees in the distance, near the driveway’s entrance, Suburbans, Range Rovers, Navigators, and station wagons began to approach the house in a ceremonial procession. Behind the wheel of each automobile was a woman, in the back of each were four young children, all excitedly waving to me as they parked, two tires in the St. Augustine, two on the dirt. Each woman was serene and satisfied. Every child was smiling, laughing, and healthy. We all knew one another very well.

  Twenty-two vehicles.

  Twenty-two women.

  Eighty-eight children.

  The women were not there to see a man they had ever married, they were there to see a man they loved and the father of their children. The children were there to see their dad.

  Me.

  All there to celebrate my eighty-eighth birthday, one child for each year of my life.

  Everyone was filled with joy, eager to commemorate my birth, and to see one another. Each mother and I shared an idyllic memory, the children roosted upon my lap. We hugged, we kissed, we laughed and joked, we cried tears of happiness. They all gathered around me on the porch for a family photograph, and we looked toward a large-format box camera on a tripod at the top of the driveway. Three! Two! One!

  Then I came.

  In that dream, I had never married. I was an eighty-eight-year-old bachelor. And that notion, for all of my life at that point, would have been a nightmare.

  But not in this dream. No, this was a beautiful dream. This dream told me it was okay. It told me I was okay.

  This dream reminded me that all I ever knew I wanted to be in life was a father. The dream also let me know that if I never met the one for me and got married, that was okay too.

  I could have children.

  I could become a father.

  I could become an eighty-eight-year-old bachelor, surrounded by twenty-two smiling mothers and eighty-eight happy, waving, healthy, and excited children—all of whom I loved, all of whom loved me.

  The red light vision of being a lifelong bachelor had come to me in a greenlight wet dream. It was a spiritual sign, a message to surrender, to quit trying so intentionally to find the perfect woman for me, and rather, concede to the natural selection process of finding her, her finding me, or not.

  So I quit looking for her.

  Then, she came.

  the arrow doesn’t seek the target, the target draws the arrow

  We must be aware of what we attract in life because it is no accident or coincidence.

  The spider waits in his web for dinner to come.

  Yes, we must chase what we want, seek it out, cast our lines in the water,

  but sometimes we don’t need to make things happen.

  Our souls are infinitely magnetic.

  * * *

  It was late 2006 and I was holding court at the head of the table at the Hyde Club on Sunset Boulevard, handmaking the best margaritas on the planet when I saw her.

  A thin, soft, silk turquoise dress draped over caramel-colored shoulders floating right to left across the hazy, low-lit neon room.

  She wasn’t delivering anything.

  She wasn’t leaving anywhere.

  She was defying gravity in the direction she wanted to go, and I wanted to be where she was headed. Her head had no bob. Were her feet even touching the ground? I couldn’t be sure. Like I said, the room was low lit and hazy.

  She made an impression and a definition:

  Naughty and fundamental.

  Young with a past.

  Homegrown and worldly.

  Innocent and cunning.

  Springtime and salty.

  A squaw and a queen.

  She was no virgin but she wasn’t for rent.

  A mother to be.

  She wasn’t selling nothing. Didn’t need to. She knew what she was, who she was, and she owned it. Her own element. A natural law. A proper noun. Inevitable.

  What…is…that? I said to myself as I rose from my seat, her gravity pulling me. I locked in as she settled on a red velvet chaise longue next to two other women. Unable to catch her eye, I raised my right arm and began to wave, trying to get her attention, when I heard a voice in my left ear.

  This is not the type of woman you wave over from across a bar, son. Get your ass up, young man, and go introduce yourself. It was my mom’s voice. Time to get relative.

  I walked over to the long chair where this woman was midconversation. She looked up.

  “Hi, I’m Matthew,” I said, as I extended my hand for an honorable shake.

  I could tell she recognized me but she remained seated, again, not for sale or easily impressed.

  “Camila,” she replied as she extended her right arm up and gave an assured yet casual handshake.

  I caught my breath.

  “Would you…and your two friends like to come over to our table? I’ll make you a great margarita.”

  She glanced at her friends.

  “Excuse me,” she said, then stood up alone and let me escort her over. Even though she left her friends, I could immediately tell that there was no chance she would have come to the table unless I had done the gentlemanly thing and invited them over as well.

  I mixed the best margarita I’ve ever made. I spoke Spanish better than I’d ever spoken it before.

  She spoke Portuguese. I’ve never understood Portuguese as well as I did that night, and haven’t since.

  The rhythms of the Latin languages seemed to fit the meter. Twenty minutes had passed as we huddled mouth to ear at the end of the table, having our first conversation when—

  “McConaughey! Car’s out front, let’s roll!” my buddy screamed over the music. It was closing time, 2:00 a.m.

  “Gimme five minutes!” I said, holding an open palm in front of his face without averting my gaze from hers.

  “You wanna come back to my house for a drink?” I asked her. “Me and the boys are going there for a nightcap.”

  “No, no thanks, not tonight, thanks though,” she kindly said.

  Shit.

  I walked her to her car, which, to her surprise, was not where she had parked it.

  “It was right here?!” she said, standing in the vacant parking lot at the gas station next to the club.

  “You lookin for a white Aviator?” the gas station attendant who overheard us asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “That got towed, this spot is for the gas station only,” he said.

  “C’mon, one drink at my house,” I said. “Then I’ll have the chauffeur take you home.”

  “Okay, sure,” she said at last.

  We loaded the waiting SUV, my two buddies moved to the third row.

  * * *

  3:30 a.m. My house.

  “Well, thanks for the drink, I better go now,” she said.

  I walked her out to the waiting chauffeur in the driveway, but, for some reason, there was no chauffeur waiting in the driveway.

  I feigned concern.

  “What? Where the heck did he go?” I said. “Unbelievable, I’ll call you a cab, sorry.”

  There was little to no cell service in this part of the Hollywood Hills, but I had a land line so I called three cab companies and guess what? None of them either answered or had a driver available.

  “You’re welcome to take
the guest bedroom upstairs.”

  Now well after four in the morning with no transportation available, she acquiesced.

  I snuck down to that guest bedroom twice that night to check on her.

  I got kicked out both times.

  The next morning, I woke up around eleven. As I walked down the spiral staircase to the foyer that led to the kitchen I heard people talking and laughing. The kind of overlapping speech and humor that only people who are extremely comfortable with each other can have. It sounded like old friends.

  As I approached the kitchen, there she was, with her back to me, sitting on the center barstool at the cooking area’s island, wearing the same turquoise dress over the same caramel shoulders. She was holding court. My housekeeper dished out pancakes to her and my two shirtless friends, who were cackling at the innuendo of a story she’d told less than an hour ago.

  It not only sounded like old friends, it looked like old friends. No juvenile next-morning-walk-of-shame false modesty, no rush to get out of a house she never intended on staying at overnight, no, just good-humored grace and confidence.

  I called the gas station where her car was towed and found out where it had been taken. It was an hour’s drive to the impoundment lot. I insisted on driving her there. On the way, I put one of my favorite CDs in the slot, a reggae artist named Mishka, whose album I was producing at the time.*1

  I drove. We listened. Two, three songs in a row would play without either of us uttering a word. Neither of us feeling like we needed to say a thing. Neither of us anxious to fill the quiet gaps. The silence wasn’t awkward, it was golden.

  We arrived at the impound, both wishing it were in Florida instead. Before parting I asked for her phone number. She reached into her purse, pulled out a crumpled piece of spiral notebook paper, and wrote it down.