Swimming to Cambodia

by Spalding Gray

  “Bangkok.”

  “Oh. Well I don’t know about that. You never know how those guys will put something together.”

  So as soon as I arrived in Venice I took my suit to the cleaners and rushed right down to see the boardwalk. I was so excited to be in a large city that was so close to a major ocean—I couldn’t wait to see and breathe that ocean. I couldn’t wait to see and walk on that boardwalk I’d heard so much about. I thought, the agent can wait for a day. I’m going to see that Pacific Ocean.

  When I got down to the boardwalk I was a little disappointed to find that there were no boards. It turned out to be an asphalt walk. But still, I was excited to be by the ocean, and as I was walking along that asphalt boardwalk with a bounce, breathing deep, an unmarked car pulled up behind me and two unmarked guys jumped out. Holding chrome-plated forty-fives with both hands, they braced themselves on the top of the open car doors and almost blew away two winos. I thought I was in a movie or at least on Hill Street Blues, and I ducked behind a pizza counter. I watched these two unmarked men run up and press the barrels of their guns right to the winos’ heads, handcuff their arms behind them, knee them in the back and then throw them into the unmarked car. I thought, Lordy, Lordy, this is dangerous territory. I better go get my magic John Malkovich suit on. But the suit wasn’t ready yet, and soon cocktail hour rolled around.

  I decided to ride out on my borrowed ten-speed bike in search of beer. I found a little beer store on a side road and went in and bought a king-size can of Rainier Ale, and I just couldn’t wait to get home—I opened it right outside the store. I was brown-bagging and chug-a-lugging just like I would in New York, when this L.A.P.D. cruiser came full speed down the little side-street and did a U-turn. And something about the way the car turned made me think that maybe they were after me. Like they had beer radar. And I wondered, can it be that they would take time out of their busy schedule to bust me for drinking one king-size can of Rainier Ale?

  Not wanting to take any chances, I chucked it into a cardboard box beside me which was filled with empty beer cans. The police pulled up and shined the spotlight attached to the side of their car right on that box, and the two of them got out of the car and went over and pulled out the very can from which I’d been drinking. Somehow they were able to pick that can out from all the others. And they pushed me up against the wall of the beer store and made me put my hands over my head while they searched me with a club.

  “What’s your name? Where’s your I.D.?”

  “I don’t have my wallet. I left it back at the house where I’m staying—and my name is Spalding Gray.”

  “Oh, yeah? What do they call you?”

  “They call me Spalding Gray. I swear it.”

  And one of the cops said, “Okay, get in the car,” while the other one put my bike in the trunk. And just as I was getting into the cruiser the cop who was handling my bike demanded to search me.

  “Okay, I know my partner’s searched you but we like to do double searches around here just to make sure.”

  So I got searched again and then they put me in the back of the cruiser and said, “What’s the address of the house you’re staying at?” And for a moment I blanked out. Then I remembered six days in a Las Vegas jail in 1977 for refusing to give my name to an officer when first asked, and I remembered 9227 Boccaccio. It just came to me like that—and I thought, oh my God, I’m getting good. I’m getting healthier. I’m on my way to success.

  They drove me there. It was a very short trip and when we got there one cop stayed in the car to guard me while the other went into 9227 Boccaccio to find out if anyone knew one Spalding Gray. And luckily, someone there knew me that day and the cop came right back out and said, “Okay, get your bike out of the trunk and consider yourself lucky for getting a free ride home.”

  I would rather have ridden my bike home, I thought, but I didn’t tell them that. What I did say was, “Look, I don’t want to sound ungrateful or testy, but I just flew in from New York City and people brown-bag all the time in New York, so I didn’t know.”

  The cop replied in a very stern voice, like a voice I remembered from boarding school, “I think if you check your New York City laws you’ll find that it’s against the law to drink in the streets. We just happen to enforce our laws here in L.A.”

  Right to bed! The next day I got up bright and early, feeling like a new man, and I went and got my suit out of the cleaners and got my friends to drive me to Ugly Duckling Car Rental, which was the cheapest I could find. I rented an Ugly Duckling Toyota. The only problem with the car that I could see was that the seat was broken so that it was at the angle of a lounge chair, and I could barely see over the windshield.

  By that time I had boiled it all down to two agencies. If both were interested I would have to make the choice between them. One was Writers and Artists and the other was Smith Freedman Associates. First, I visited Writers and Artists and they were very nice—I think they wanted to sign me. The only problem, as I saw it, was that they were not “other” enough. They were too much like My People. They were very WASPy and I could see them all wearing topsiders and vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard. Also, I wasn’t sure if it would be such a good idea to be represented under the title “Writers and Artists” in this day and age if, in fact, I wanted to make enough money to buy a house in the Hamptons.

  So I decided to drive over and see Susan Smith at Smith Freedman Associates, and if she wanted to sign me I’d do it. As soon as I walked into her office she said, “We want you. We want to sign you right now.”

  Well, I was kind of sober about all this because it was all so smiley, all going so fast. I responded in my very serious and rather ponderous East Coast way, “Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? Now let me think about it.”

  And Susan said, “Would you have smiled if we said we didn’t want you?” Then she said, “Let’s go, we don’t have time for this. You’ve got one day left out here and we want to send you out to all the casting agents in town just to say, ‘Hi. I’m a new face in town and I’m with Smith Freedman.’ ”

  They gave me a map of all the studios and I headed out to the first stop, Warner Brothers, to audition for The Karate Kid. They had me read for the role of the tough guy, the kind of karate killer who teaches all the neighborhood kids his aggressive, evil ways. Well, you can imagine how that went.

  The next stop was Hill Street Blues, which went a little better. Gerri Windsor, the casting director, was very nice and she told me that if I moved out there she could almost guarantee me some work on the show. I asked her how she could say that when she hadn’t even auditioned me, and she said, “New faces. We’re always looking for new faces and you’re a new face. With a good agent. So I think we’re pretty safe in saying that if you move out here we can get you work—but you have to live out here because we really can’t afford to fly you out.”

  So I left Hill Street and continued to follow my little map to ABC, NBC and CBS. All was going fine, but by noon I understood why all actors out there have air-conditioned cars. My Ugly Duckling wasn’t air-conditioned and I was beginning to leak through my shirt. Also, that hot, dry air was turning my hair into an insane frizzball. I was coming unglued. And by the time I reached Twentieth Century-Fox I looked like a madman.

  I parked the Ugly Duckling, being careful not to park it within eye-view of the casting director’s office because I’d heard that they look out to see what you’re driving, and the Ugly Duckling was not looking good in comparison to the other cars in that lot. I went into the office and was happy and surprised to find that the receptionist recognized me from my monologues—and she was excited to see me.

  “Oh, Spalding Gray, what are you doing here looking for work? You should be working all the time. You could play a lawyer, you could play a doctor, you could play a psychiatrist . . .”

  I went inside the casting director’s office and quickly realized that she had no idea who I was, beyond being a “new face.” There was something both co
mforting and discomforting about being there. The comforting part was the physical office itself, the fantastic white couch and the way in which it received me as I sank in and slowly gave up all thoughts of ever moving again. Also, the clean view out the window of lush palms and pines, coupled with the secure feeling of being in that oh-so-clean, solid room. And most of all, the way the corners of the ceiling and walls came together at perfect, solid, white, right angles. But the discomforting part of the experience came when she told me that she just called me in to see me, “have a look,” I think she meant. But she said, “We’ve heard all about you and now we’d like to see you.”

  And we made small talk while she looked and I could feel my imperfect jawline sagging, my face puffing and my bald spot shining. I could see all those things and I suddenly and clearly realized what it feels like to be a woman scrutinized by a man. I’ve hardly ever had that feeling before. Only in Morocco.

  But that big, soft couch had made me feel secure, and I found that I had made it on time, without getting lost or arrested, to all my interviews and I felt a kind of Triumph of the Will as I sped along the freeways in my little Ugly Duckling.

  The only problem was that the front seat had fallen all the way back and was now resting on the back seat. I was using this as a positive experience by holding myself erect by the wheel and giving my stomach muscles a good isometric workout. It was wonderful to be out on the open freeway again and feeling that I had willed it all, and also feeling, isn’t it funny that after you’ve willed something you wonder why you wanted to will it in the first place? But it felt good anyway.

  Think of it, I considered, way back on the beaches of Thailand I wanted an agent and now I’ve got one. I’ve willed it and I got it and isn’t that what everyone out here wants?

  An agent. Even my friends the Cambodian refugees from Long Beach wanted to know how they could get an agent. They had suddenly found that they were in a very good feature film and were sure that the next logical step in the progression was to get a Hollywood agent. When I went to visit them they asked me if I could help them get one. An agent. An agent. “Can you help us get an agent?” I wanted to help but I couldn’t imagine where Cambodians would find steady work in the Industry. Then a very perverse idea occurred to me. Norman Lear had just produced a sitcom called A.K.A. Pablo that had given a lot of Chicanos steady work. Perhaps the new sitcom of the eighties could be A.K.A. Pol Pot—which would give all my Cambodian friends a lot of work.

  It wasn’t all that far-fetched. I got the idea from a very poignant film I had seen at the Margaret Mead Festival a few years earlier. The film was about the relocation of the Laotian Hmong tribes. After the CIA lost the war in Laos all the Hmongs had to get out fast because they sided with “the American military effort in Laos.” The film was about their relocation from Thai refugee camps to immigrant condos in Washington State.

  They all arrived at these furnitureless condominiums that had wall-to-wall shag carpeting as long as your fingers. I guess they saw the shag as a kind of organic growth so they began by washing it down with a garden hose and then sweeping the water into a heating duct, thinking it was a drain. After that they tried to cook chicken breasts in the toaster. It was all very sad and very funny at the same time.

  The supermarket confused them totally. Thinking it was a bar of soap, they bought a big, yellow block of Velveeta cheese. This is how I picture the opening shot of the sitcom: a Cambodian singing “Do You Want to Funk?” in the shower as he washes under his arms with a large yellow block of Velveeta, which is breaking into chunks from the hot water and washing down the drain in yellow streams.

  So I had gotten an agent by willing it and I was home-free on the freeway, and didn’t it feel oh-so-good to put the pedal to the metal and spin. Turn up the radio and blast. And, yes, I could do it, we could do it. Renée and I could move out here and have a little house in a canyon. A little bungalow which all came together in solid, clean, white, right angles. We could do it. I could get some work on Hill Street, St. Elsewhere or Knots Landing and we could do it.

  I would come home exhausted after a day’s work at the studio and instead of having cocktail hour, I’d go jogging around the reservoir while Renée arranged sun-dried tomatoes and smoked mozzarella and tossed a big bowl of sprouts and leafy greens. We could do it. And I’d come in all sinewy and tired, just wanting to eat and rest and be with, and sleep with, my little Renée. My little sweetie. And soon the beautiful children would come along and there’d be fun with them on weekends out in the high desert, or downwind, surfing off Venice. And we’d make it. The kids would grow up and we’d have enough money to send them to good schools. Renée and I would grow old together and we’d make it. We’d make it through.

  Then the freeway would grind down into an impossible gridlock situation and clog with smog. And the Ugly Duckling would come almost to a dead stop, and the image of MX missiles flying low over pine trees would flash in my mind. I needed to get back. I had to get back to the East Coast to save the world and stop the war.

  And wasn’t life about service? Didn’t I have enough pleasure in my life and wasn’t it now time to help ease the pain of others? And the Bodhisatva’s vow came to me: If all people can’t reside in a state of pleasure in Southern California, then no one can until all can. And I could see the State of California collapsing, not from earthquakes, but from the weight of the world as all the wretched of the earth clamored toward the sun that broke through bare lemon trees and devoured fruit bushes. How could I think of my pleasure when the world still suffered so? How? How? How? Oh, the shame of it!

  I needed to get back to give my old sweaters away to the Cambodian refugees in Far Rockaway. And the death image of Jean Donovan—chopped to death in El Salvador—came to me. And the Cocktail Party voice of Celia Coplestone from her anthill crucifixion played in my ears:But first I must tell

  you

  That I should really LIKE to think there’s something

  wrong with me—

  Because, if there isn’t then there’s something wrong,

  Or at least, very different from what it seemed to

  be,

  With the world itself—and that’s much more

  frightening!

  That would be terrible. So I’d rather believe

  There is something wrong with me, that could be

  put right.

  And I thought, I’ve got to get back where it all counts. I’ve got to get back.

  Then the traffic would pick up and everything would feel clear, as the not-so-long-dead voice of Alan Watts floated up from his Sausalito houseboat saying, “Relax, Spalding, relax. Enjoy. You’re in California now. What is there to feel guilty about? Relax. Enjoy. Life’s a party. So what if you came in at the end of it? Relax. Enjoy.”

  I made it back to Venice and had a couple of good-sized shots of tequila and went to bed. And I had this dream.

  I was babysitting for a boy in a cabin in the woods. There was this huge fireplace, and the boy kept playing a game with me where he would run into the fireplace and get partially consumed by the flames and then run out—just before he was completely consumed—and reconstitute himself. I was very nervous. I was watching him out of the corner of my eye and all of a sudden he ran in and I saw that he was completely in flames. There was no torso left and the flames were in the shape of legs, flame-legs. And I grabbed the fire-poker to try to pull him out and ... nothing. It just went right through the flames; there was no substance. And the flames burned down and left this pile of gray ash on the hearth.

  I turned to see, in the corner of the cabin, a straw boy, an effigy of the real boy. And I took the gray ash in my hands and went over and blew it into the straw boy’s side. Slowly, the effigy came alive. And his face had this great, ear-to-ear, joyous, all-knowing, friendly smile as he shook his head. And I realized that he hadn’t wanted to come back, that he had chosen to be consumed by the flames—and then the spirit went out of the straw boy and I was left holdin
g this empty, straw effigy in my arms. I thought, how am I ever going to tell this story to his mother? No one will believe me. And I went searching for someone to tell the story to. I found that I was wandering through the streets of Hollywood.

  The first person I came across was Ron Vawter, an actor friend from a theatre company called The Wooster Group, and I told Ron the story. He said, “You should have called the police right away. You need a witness with authority. There’s no way you’re going to prove that this happened and there’s no way you can reenact it.”

  I left Ron and continued my search for the straw boy’s mother, and came upon Elizabeth LeCompte, the director of The Wooster Group. She was sitting, drinking orangeade with the boy’s mother by a Hollywood pool. I started to tell them the story but I couldn’t articulate it and instead of telling the Straw Boy Story, in a very loud, theatrical voice I said, “THE REASON I’M UPSET IS THAT I WAS JUST IN A NEW PECKINPAH MOVIE OF CHEKHOV’S SEAGULL . . .”

  And I had played the role of Konstantin Gavrilovich, the writer who shoots himself in the head at the end of the play . . .

  “AND WHAT I’M UPSET ABOUT—IS THAT I SAW THE FILM, I LIKED IT, BUT I CAN’T REMEMBER DOING IT. I can’t remember acting in it. All I saw was an image with no memory attached.”

  And I knew all the time I was telling this story that it was a cover for the real story, the Straw Boy Story, which, for some reason, I found impossible to tell.

  Afterword

  James Leverett

  This is a recording. Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia, that is. It is a record as history is a record. Dare I say that it is a new form as well, or really an old one reasserting itself in a new way? Call it an “epic monologue,” remembering what “epic” has meant during the several millenia of its history: a text performed first, written down later; a vessel for great themes expressed through mighty events extending past earthbound reality up into the splendor of paradise and down into the devastation of hell; a canvas of life forever on the move between the individual and universal, and always beset by the irony of mortality; a confluence of history and myth.