My marketers were two fun young women in their late twenties who thought everything I was doing was amazing. I mean, not to toot my own Clueless-doll horn here, but they did basically win the fucking lottery with me. My impression was spot-on and really funny. Plus, I have an insane ability to memorize anything. Great big hunks of dialogue have never been an issue for me. (I sometimes thought the writers on Cougar Town were trying to fuck with me just to see if I would be stumped, but nope. I always got it. Even when I was handed new half-page monologues while I was sitting in the makeup chair.)
By the time the pre-toy fair opened, I was beyond ready. I loved the different groups of businesspeople coming in to listen to my spiel, and I felt so proud when one of the more experienced Barbie girls said to me, “Wait. You do your whole thing every time? Normally the buyers just cut you off and start talking with each other about the doll. You must be really good.”
The day the CEO of Mattel, Jill Barad, came through was especially exciting because she brought SHARON STONE with her. The Sharon Stone. This was 1996. This was PEAK SHARON STONE. The two impeccably dressed women watched me with bemused expressions as I gave my little performance, and then Jill raised her hand to stop me and they both clapped. Sharon swept her scarf over her shoulder and as she was walking out turned back to me and said, in her very best Sharon Stone, “You’re very talented and I think you’re going to be a big star someday.”
When the doors closed behind them, my marketing reps and I almost died. If Sharon Stone said it, it must be true. I could barely contain my excitement.
I felt so grown up, getting to work at six-thirty in the morning, grabbing coffee and a cheese Danish from the catering they had for everyone working the fair, chatting with the other actresses as we got dressed in our Barbie outfits and then making it to the showroom floor by 7 a.m. sharp to go over the schedule for the day. I was finished at 6 p.m. and would drive home, windows rolled down, air-conditioning blasting (it was summer in Arizona, after all), smoking cigarettes and listening to music with the volume turned up all the way.
The two weeks flew by, and before I knew it, the toy fair had packed up and left town. How was I supposed to just go back to my job at CPK and then to my senior year of high school? I was a real working actress now!
As senior year started, I began working at another restaurant, an upscale Mexican place that was in the same strip mall as CPK. Kate and I both moved over there together. I can’t exactly remember why. Maybe we were offered more money. Maybe we were tired of BBQ chicken pizza. Maybe we were sick of the low-grade sexual harassment we were subjected to at CPK by one of the managers. WHO KNOWS? What I do know is this: I was seriously done with being in school and I couldn’t wait to graduate and get the fuck out of Arizona.
I had to figure out what colleges to apply to that I had a shot of getting into and that—even more important—were in Los Angeles. There wasn’t a chance for UCLA or USC, which I didn’t have the grades for and which were also prohibitively expensive if you were applying from out of state. So that left only a few places. CalArts, which had a conservatory program that I had to audition for, and Loyola Marymount University. I had a few older guy friends who were all attending LMU, so I decided to apply there. Also, since it was Jesuit, I knew my parents would be into it.
“The Jesuits love to drink, but they are the best at education!” my mom would always say.
I started spending a lot of time with my friends Brett and Craig, who were friends from theater. Brett was also in my French class and we would sit together and make fun of our crazy French teacher and pass nonsensical notes back and forth. Craig was tall and skinny with floppy curly hair. The two of them were fairly nerdy; they mostly just hung out with each other, making weird movies on Brett’s parents’ video camera or recording slightly offensive comedy songs on Craig’s boombox. Still, I liked both of them a lot and occasionally would drive us all off campus for lunch. Sometimes I thought I must seem like an alien to sweet Craig, with his art-house movie theater job and his love of Charlie Chaplin. He was the lead in the school play that fall, and I had volunteered to be the assistant director. I actually ended up having to replace one of the girls in the cast when she basically refused to memorize her lines and kept ditching rehearsal. Also, she was pretty terrible, and I think our theater teacher was happy to have a reason to get rid of her and have me step in a week and half before the show went up.
After rehearsal one day, I was talking with Craig in the school parking lot and sort of apologizing for being a crazy mess the year before, when he revealed that his mom had been diagnosed with cancer again and this time they thought it was terminal. Maybe six months to a year. I was so devastated for him, standing there as the sun was setting behind the mountains and turning the sky pink and purple and orange. I remember his face so clearly, and I remember just having an overwhelming feeling like I needed to be in his life. That I needed to take care of him. I committed to myself in that moment that I would.
There was something so sweet and innocent about Craig’s crush on me. We were the same age, but you know how it is with boys and girls when you’re a teenager. I was seventeen, but I seemed like I was twenty-five. My girlfriends and I would get served alcohol in restaurants. Shawn’s sister Britney taught me that if you just ask for a pinot noir, they assume you’re old enough because you know what you’re talking about, and she was almost always right. On the rare occasion that we got carded, it was embarrassing but not the end of the world. We weren’t trying to get into bars. We were ordering wine in Italian restaurants. They were always happy to make a wine sale.
I was still dating random guys who were older, and occasionally going down to Tempe and fucking Shawn Harris in his dorm room. Lord knows why. I guess it was just something to do. So while I knew Craig liked me, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about it. I loved hanging out with him, and as we worked on the play I found him more and more attractive. He was really cute and really talented and so funny and smart, which was probably more attractive to me than anything else. And he thought I was so funny. I loved making him laugh, and I loved watching him watch me tell stories. And I loved the fact that I could tell he was so into me but wouldn’t do anything about it. And I loved him. I just loved him.
I was really into raves that year, and Brett started coming with me more and doing drugs, which drove Craig crazy. He thought we were so dumb for wasting our time like that. I mean, he wasn’t wrong. But it was fun as fuck, and what else were we supposed to do in Arizona but waste time? But as the school year went on, I started to like staying in and making popcorn on the stove with Craig and watching movies that his older brother Jeff, who was already studying screenwriting at NYU, would recommend. To my surprise, I liked it just as much as I liked getting high on E and staying out until the sun came up.
One night, after watching Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming for the millionth time, Craig walked me out to my car. It was freezing, and while I was wearing my fuzzy black coat from Delia’s, he was just wearing a sweatshirt. We were leaning against the car as we talked, and I said something that made him double over laughing, which I always loved. (You might be sensing a theme here: I love a good audience, especially one-on-one.) And then I felt that thing. All of a sudden, I wanted him to kiss me more than anything. But I knew he wouldn’t. So I looked at him and narrowed my eyes.
“Do you want to kiss me?”
He glanced at me and then up at the sky. He shivered, and I couldn’t tell whether it was because of what I’d just said or because it was freezing. I didn’t need to ask. I knew the answer. But I wanted him to say it. He didn’t. He just looked back at me. And then I moved in front of him and put my hands on his face and kissed him against my car.
He would tell me later that after I left he went inside and wrote a note for himself that said “THAT REALLY HAPPENED” and placed it on his nightstand, in case he woke up in the morning and thought he had dreamed it.
I wish I could tell you that he be
came my boyfriend and everything worked out, but that wasn’t exactly what happened. We kept hooking up, off and on, with everything being a first for him. And then I would get annoyed that he didn’t seemingly want to be my boyfriend, even though he said he did. I mean, he wouldn’t hold my hand in public, at school he didn’t want people to know we were dating, and we didn’t really go “out” places. We mostly just hung out at one of our houses. It was really confusing, and it also felt like I was always trying to convince him it was okay for me to like, give him a hand job or whatever. I know. When has a seventeen-year-old boy ever needed to be convinced of that? But he did. He was very inexperienced and nervous about it all. So I kept dating older guys, including stupid Shawn Harris.
In the winter, my agent called and said that Mattel wanted to hire me for the huge toy fair in New York! They would fly me and my mom out and put us up at a nice hotel, and I would work for two weeks. It was the start of the second semester of my senior year. The only catch was that I had to convince all of my teachers to excuse me for that long, and I also had to convince Mrs. Carrick, my drama teacher, to still allow me to star in the spring musical even though I would miss two weeks of rehearsal. Guys and Dolls was only one of my FAVORITE MUSICALS of all time, and I’d been waiting my WHOLE LIFE to play Adelaide (or at least since eighth grade, when I had seen the touring production).
Most of my teachers said it was okay, that they would just send my work with me and I could turn it in when I got back. Except my asshole Republican sexist Government teacher. He flat-out refused, which put me in a real tough spot since I wouldn’t be able to graduate without completing Government. I asked my mom to help me, and she called the vice principal, who agreed to meet with me to discuss my options. She was a humorless older woman who had been in administration for so long that I’m sure she’d forgotten what it was like to deal with kids who actually had dreams that extended beyond just going to ASU and becoming a CPA or something.
She looked at me flatly. “I don’t understand why you have to do this.”
“Well, I don’t have to do anything. But, you know, I want to be an actor and this is experience working as an actor, so—”
“You do understand that you’re not going to be an actress, right? That’s not a viable career. You’d better start thinking about what you actually could do, because college will go by quickly and you’ll need to declare a major.”
I looked at her and wished my mom was there. Barbara Philipps would have put this lady right in her place.
“Okay. Well, I just need you to sign this paper saying I can leave school for two weeks and get paid to DO THIS ACTING JOB.”
“Fine. When you get back you’ll have to sign up for the online computer course, where you can finish Government on the computer. It won’t be easy for you.”
“That’s okay. I can do that. Thank you, Mrs. Weber.”
Of course I could fucking do that. This woman had greatly underestimated me. My conversation with Mrs. Carrick, however, did not go the way I thought it would.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “Of course I know you would make a fantastic Adelaide. That’s not the issue. You just can’t miss two weeks of rehearsal when we only have four, which is barely enough time to put this show up anyway.”
I was devastated. But I didn’t want to miss my chance to go to New York City. I’d never been there! Plus, I was told that the BIG NEW YORK toy fair was even cooler, and the other actors who worked it were all REAL BROADWAY ACTORS, people who were living the dream. My dream! So I decided it was worth it to miss out on the last musical production of my high school career and go to New York.
My mom and I flew into the freezing cold New York winter on a Saturday night. After we checked into the hotel and I got the package with my updated script and call time for the morning, I went downstairs to try to sneak a cigarette outside without my mom knowing. I stood against the stone wall and looked up. All the buildings seemed to be caving in on me and the ground felt like it was swirling beneath my feet. I took a deep breath and put my hand against the wall behind me to steady myself. It was vertigo, just for a moment. I was totally overwhelmed by the enormousness of it all. I put the cigarette out, bummed to be wasting it, and went back upstairs.
I started work super early the next morning, not really prepared for the jet lag. The Barbie girls from Arizona were right: this toy fair was way bigger and more impressive. It was so much fun to be in the dressing room with the actresses from New York, talking about what Broadway workshops they were doing next and who had gotten offered what part. There were a few of the girls who would always sing in the dressing room in the morning as we were getting ready. One of the Barbie girls I knew from the Arizona toy fair, who had been flown in from L.A., turned to me and gestured toward one of the singers. “You see that girl? I heard she turned down the part of Maureen in Rent because of her religious beliefs. Can you believe it???”
I shook my head. No. I certainly could not imagine turning down the role of Maureen in Rent because of religious beliefs!! I’ve tried to figure it out for years and I haven’t been able to confirm this, but I feel like there’s a really good chance the petite singing religious girl was Kristin Chenoweth, two years before the revival of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, for which she won her first Tony Award. Though it also could’ve been someone who never worked again after TURNING DOWN A ROLE IN RENT!
My mom would wander around the city during the day while I worked, occasionally getting tickets for matinees in the cheap-ticket line. I was off work every night at six and would meet her back at the hotel for dinner. A few times, I went across the street with the other toy fair actors to have a drink after work. I didn’t really know what to order, since I mostly just drank red wine in Arizona with my friends. My Barbie friend, Lisa, smiled at me and said, “Let me get you a cosmo; you’ll love it!” This was at least a year before Sex and the City made cosmos something I would’ve known about, and I remember my mind was JUST ABOUT BLOWN at how amazing that drink was. In fact, I’m not kidding, can we bring them back? They were so delicious! I was careful not to overdo it, though. Even though I was fairly reckless in Arizona, when I was working, I had my shit under control. It was hard work and I had to wake up early, so it was better to just have one and say good night.
I didn’t know many people in New York, obviously. But one night Emily took the train in from Connecticut, where she was in college at Wesleyan, and we went to the Harley-Davidson Cafe for dinner and took pictures in front of the billboards for Crunch gym because we thought they were funny, I guess. She took the late train back, because she had class in the morning and I had to work. But it was fun to see a friendly face.
Craig’s older brother Jeff was in school at NYU, so my mom and I took him out to dinner one night. Then he met just me for dinner another night after work. The toy fair was closed on Sundays, so I asked Jeff if he could take me out to some clubs or something Saturday night. I was dying to go dancing. My mom had no problem with me going out with Craig’s older brother; why would she? I was going out in Arizona on the weekends until 6 a.m. Even though this was New York, I know she felt comfortable with Jeff and told us to have fun. We went to a bar near NYU that he knew wouldn’t card me and had some drinks (I ordered my new favorite: a COSMO), and then we went to a club that was eighteen-and-older to dance. I got in easily, even without a fake ID (this was the late ’90s, things were easier).
When we came out of the club, it was super late and starting to rain. Freezing rain. We hopped into a cab, and before I could really think about it, I was making out with him. I know, I know. You hate it. I get it. It was a shitty thing to do to Craig. Not just on my part. Jeff knew how his little brother felt about me. But you know, I was in NEW YORK. Starting to LIVE THE DREAM. And Jeff was super cute. And it was raining and we were in a cab and we were mostly drunk and for sure young and maybe Craig wouldn’t have to ever know? It wasn’t like he was my boyfriend. He wouldn’t commit to that, remember? It made him
uncomfortable. He was basically just like my best friend. You know, a best friend who I was in love with and who was in love with me, except we didn’t say that probably because we didn’t really know it yet. And who wouldn’t fuck me, even though I wanted to. So I would fuck other people (not that I particularly enjoyed it). And now here I was making out with his brother in the back of a cab in New York City. Ugh. Busy. Get your shit together, girl.
We went back to Jeff’s dorm and made out some more but didn’t take it much further, mainly because as we both started to sober up, I think it dawned on us how truly fucked up this was, what we were doing to Craig. We promised we would never tell him—this was a what-happens-in-New-York-stays-in-New-York situation.
I finished the toy fair and went sadly back to Arizona with my mom. My Mattel toy reps told me that I would be joining them at the E3 expo in a few months to help them with the Clueless CD-ROM that was going with the doll. And the pre-toy fair would happen again in the summer, before I went to college.
When I got back to Arizona, I was really excited to see Craig and Brett and get back to school. I had to do that weird government class online, but it was so insanely easy that I finished it in ten days, which apparently had never happened before, since the only ones who had to take the online class were usually burnouts and kids who had been kicked out of regular class for behavioral issues. I was called back to Mrs. Weber’s office.
“Well, clearly you cheated on this,” she said, giving me a disapproving look over her glasses. “You couldn’t have done it in this short of a time. It’s a whole semester of work.”
This Will Only Hurt a Little Page 10
