by James Franco
We had our first rehearsal over at her house near Pico Boulevard, all the way over the hill and on the other side of Hollywood, which meant that I had to drive a ways. She was married but didn’t have any children. Her husband was a musician and a nice guy; he did the music for television shows. But I got the sense, just from the way she dressed and behaved, that one of the things Jeanette probably liked about acting was all the pretend romance and the excuse to kiss other guys. She did have a pretty good body, tall. At her house we decided to do an improvisation where we did the scene in our own words.
“Where have you been?”
“I was out,” I mumbled.
“Out where?” She was doing the impoverished, pregnant wife thing.
“Just out.”
“That’s bullshit, Johnny! Fucking bullshit! You were with her, right? Right? Fucking answer me!”
“Yeah.” I was supposed to pretend that I was having an affair because I didn’t want her to know about my drug addiction.
“Okay. Well, I just can’t do this anymore.” She started crying, really working it. I let her go on for a bit because she seemed to relish it. Then I started in with my story, but in my own words.
“I don’t know, babe. I just don’t know about anything. I don’t know what home is. Is this my home? I’ve had so many homes in all my life that I just don’t know what to do anymore. I just roam these streets and I think of my childhood and I don’t know who I am anymore.” She had stopped sobbing to listen to my speech. I kept going and she started walking toward me, slowly. “I was just a kid playing marbles, trying to get by, just trying to be a kid, and then bam, I’m in the war and all my friends are being blown to bits, and then I’m in the war of life and I’m being blown to bits…” She was upon me.
“I think you’re a fucking hero. Come home, Johnny. This is your home, come home.” Then she kissed me, hard. Her tongue swished around on my teeth. I pulled her to me and tried to feel her good body against my body to make up for her bad face. It worked a little—her body felt great—so I forgot about what I was kissing up top for a second. But then I remembered that her husband was in the other room and we were just doing a scene. I pulled away and we ended the improvisation. Then we sat on the couch and talked about it.
“That was interesting,” I said.
“I thought we got a lot out of that,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Well, I think maybe we cemented something solid about the relationship, so when things don’t go well because of your drugs in the scene, we can feed on that.”
“Cool.” If she thought so, it was fine with me.
“Do you agree?”
“Sure,” I said. And then, “Yeah, it reminds me of my wife and my kids.”
“You’re married?”
“Well, sort of. Not really, divorced. I don’t see the kids much.”
“Oh, why not?”
“Because I was a drug addict and then I left them and moved back in with my parents.”
“You have two kids? You were young when you had them.”
“Yeah, like twenty-one.”
She didn’t have much more to say to me after that.
On Friday night I was taking orders in the drive-thru. A girl’s voice ordered a small french fries and a child-size Diet Coke, which wasn’t much. When the car drove around to the window it was a black Jetta, and then I realized it was the blond girl that had come through before, Karen. It had been almost three weeks since I saw her. She looked good, but it looked like she had a bunch of makeup on. I took my headset and hat off so I didn’t look like such an ass.
She handed me two dollars.
“Hey,” I said. “You look great.”
“What happened to your accent?” I forgot that she thought I was from Brooklyn because I had been doing the accent with her before. I put on the accent again.
“Wadda you mean?” I said, overdoing it.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I’m just shy, I guess.”
“Bullshit, Jim, you should have called me.” Then I remembered that she called me Jim. I gave her the change, which was like twenty-five cents.
“You didn’t order much,” I said.
“Because I didn’t come for the food, I came here to see you, you goof.”
“Oh, okay, that’s nice.”
“Yeah, because I am nice.”
“Cool, me too. What would you like to do?”
“I want to see a movie with you.”
“Fine, I’m off on Tuesday night, we could go then.”
Then from the front, Marcia yelled back at me, “Sean, did you take your headset off?” I didn’t want to answer because she said, Sean. “Sean!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll put it on.” Then to Karen, I said, “Well, I guess it’s back to work.”
“Is your name Sean?”
“Huh, oh, yeah, Jim-Sean, that’s my full name. Well, whatever, I’ll see you Tuesday?”
“Yes, give me your number because I don’t trust your calling skills.”
She was pretty and I was glad that she was so forward with me. I wrote my number on a napkin and I remembered to write “Jim” because that’s what she thought my name was. Next to it I drew a little smiley face with a big nose. There was some soda on the part of the window ledge where I was drawing, so the face got wet.
At 2 a.m., when everyone else was cleaning up, Juan and I eyed each other and then met in the bathroom a few minutes later. We went into the stall and locked the door. He handed me the money and it was all there. I started unzipping his pants but he put his hand on mine. He couldn’t speak English so he started gesturing. He pointed toward his mouth and then my mouth, then in English he said “blowjob.”
“You want me to give you a blowjob?”
He nodded. He was so ugly when he was happy with his sharp teeth and his baby face on a fat man’s body.
“Are you kidding? You want me to suck you?” I was pointing and gesturing so that he understood.
He understood and nodded energetically.
“No way, man, that will cost you like a hundred dollars.”
He didn’t understand, so I took the little wad out of my pocket and explained that it would cost him a lot more than he gave me.
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a twenty. I didn’t take it. He held it there. Thirty-five plus twenty, it was a lot and also too little.
Then I took the twenty and put it on top of the rest and put the wad in my pants pocket. Then I undid his pants. I knew what his dick felt like from the handjobs, not very big, but I had never looked at it. It looked like a small tree root, a little torqued to the side.
I sunk down. I didn’t want to go on my knees, so I squatted. And then I put it in my mouth all at once. I had tried to give myself blowjobs when I was a teenager, on my back in bed, my asshole toward the ceiling; I had gotten as far as licking the tip, so I knew what that smooth feeling of the head was like. But now I had the whole thing in my mouth. I started working, just trying to get it done. I kept my eyes open and stared at his patchy black pubic hair coming in and out. Then I closed my eyes.
After a bit, the squat position wore me out so I went down on my knees. The ground was wet through my pants where the knees touched the tiles. I tried to keep a steady rhythm with my mouth while trying not to think about what I was doing. Then I tried to pretend I was doing it to someone else. It was tricky because I couldn’t think about giving Karen a blowjob, so I thought about her giving me one. As if I was Karen, blowing myself. That worked for a little while, but I kept feeling the bumps on Juan’s dick rubbing my bottom lip and I would be reminded of what I was doing. Then he came. Three big pulses. I kept it all in, I guess to be nice. Then I spit it all in the toilet. There was a turd in there.
The next day was Saturday. I went to the meeting at El Jardin. The meeting was always bigger and rowdier on the weekends. I usually didn’t talk, especially when there were so many people. But I did that day. I
said that I was so happy that I didn’t have to do drugs anymore because of all the shit I had to go through when I was using. Then I told this story about having to suck dick when I was using, but really I was telling the story of Juan in the bathroom the night before.
“And I would go into bathrooms and get on my knees on the cold tile floor, and there was toilet paper all over the place and sometimes shit all over the place, and I would do it, I would suck dick, I would actually do that, just so I could get the hundred bucks, just so I could get some more shit.”
All the guys in the meeting were quiet. Some of the guys had been through tough experiences. One of them had killed some people when he was younger, and one had been in the Mexican Mafia, but most were businessmen and film people. None of them had ever told a story like that. After I told that story, Sonny spoke to the meeting.
“It’s crazy, the depths that we go to get our fix or a drink. A hundred bucks. That you would sell yourself for so little, on that cold floor with a dick in your mouth, and still not realizing the depths of your disease. It’s incredible. But what is also incredible is the amount of your recovery. To go from that to become the responsible member of society that you are now, it’s a fucking miracle. Finally paying for your kids, paying off your debt, and hell, you’re even taking acting lessons. For me, there is no better example of God’s grace.”
After the meeting, guys came up to me and thanked me for being so honest. It felt good. I felt like I was more a part of the group, which was great.
Karen called my parents’ house and my mom called me in from the garage where I was lifting weights, making myself look good. I took the phone into the bathroom and whispered the Brooklyn accent. Karen confirmed that we would meet the next night to see a movie. We decided to meet at the McDonald’s parking lot at 7:30. That morning at the meeting, I told Sonny that I was going on my first date since I had been married. He told me to be myself. I tried to get together with Jeanette to rehearse A Hatful of Rain, but she couldn’t because of some bullshit. She wanted to rehearse at night but I told her I couldn’t until late, so she made me agree to a midnight rehearsal. I agreed because we were going to perform it in class the next day and I wanted it to be good.
At 6:30 I drove into the McDonald’s parking lot and waited in my Ford Fairmont. I was an hour early because I didn’t have anything else to do. While I waited, I threw all the papers and crap that was in the front seat into the backseat. There was even more crap back there, clothes and shit. Then I read over my scene from A Hatful of Rain, the one about feeling lost, about not feeling connected to the things I love, and then I waited. I had backed the car into the spot so that I was facing the McDonald’s building. They made it so attractive with its slanted red eaves and bright yellow lettering. I thought of Juan’s slanted dick, the smoothness of the head plugging into my tight mouth hole. Then I blocked it out and I just saw the building. Everybody I worked with was inside. In the drive-thru window I could see Jorge, my replacement. He was taking orders and making change like I did most nights. He was a young Mexican guy and I liked him because he would tell jokes. Some that I remember:
I knew a guy, he was so fat, when he steps on a scale it reads, “One at a time, please!” (I thought that was a good one for McDonald’s.)
I tell you my wife’s a lousy cook. After dinner I don’t brush my teeth, I count them. (Hilarious.)
The driver’s side window of the Fairmont didn’t close all the way, and hot air trickled in through the space and over my forehead. At 7:30, Karen pulled up next to me in her black Jetta. I reminded myself to use the fake Brooklyn accent and then I got out of the car. The air was so warm it made me float.
“Hey, wadda ya know? Karen, good to see ya.” I was being cute.
“No, let’s take your car,” she said. So I walked around and opened the door for her. We drove to the theater, which was just around the corner. She called me Jimmy the whole time, but it helped me believe I was someone else and not just shitty old me. On the way to the theater, I told her about my childhood. It was mostly truthful, but I pretended it all took place in Brooklyn.
“Yeah, so my dad was a priest out in Bensonhurst, which is something I take pretty seriously now, but when I was younger the whole church thing was a real drag.” I tried not to swear. “I was more into playing basketball, and boy was I fucking good. I mean really good. I got on the team at college and I actually played for a bit. But then some bad things happened.” She asked what the bad things were, but I didn’t tell her. The drugs, and the kids and the ex-wife, and her fucking all those dudes, and all the money I owed, and sucking Juan’s dick.
I offered to buy Karen whatever she wanted at the snack stand, but she didn’t want anything. The movie started, Titanic. Leonardo DiCaprio was cool. I always liked him. Ever since The Basketball Diaries. I mean that was my story, heroin and basketball. He was good in Titanic, but I couldn’t get into the movie itself. Lots of rich fuckers doing nothing. Halfway through, I reached over and held Karen’s hand; it was sweaty but delicate. Then I got into the movie a little more. I thought about myself on that ship and I tried to think about which people in my life I would sacrifice myself for. My kids, definitely. I guess my parents. I held Karen’s hand tighter and she squeezed back and I thought that maybe I’d do it for Karen too.
On the drive back to McDonald’s, I asked Karen what she thought of the movie.
“I thought it was a shitty script,” she said.
“Wadda you mean?” I was still doing the accent.
“Oh it’s just James Cameron jerking off all over the place. There is that scene where Kate Winslet has some Picassos and her fiancé says they’re trash? It’s like James Cameron’s saying he is the misunderstood artist, like Picasso! And then when the old lady throws the gem over-board at the end, it’s like Cameron is saying he doesn’t care about commercial success, that all he cares about is art. Art! Fucking bull. If that’s his art, that bloated piece of shit that probably cost two hundred million dollars, he’s in trouble.”
“Wow. I didn’t get any of that.”
“It’s just stuff I picked up.”
I turned into the McDonald’s parking lot and parked in the same spot, next to her Jetta, but this time I faced the car toward the street. She didn’t get out. It was 11 p.m.
“I’d like to see you again,” I said.
“It depends,” she said.
“On what?”
“On if you kiss me.”
She used a lot of tongue so I used a lot of tongue. At first it was violent and then she calmed down and just moved it around slowly in my mouth and it was really soft.
“You don’t mind that I work at McDonald’s?” I said close to her face.
“No. I love that you work at McDonald’s. Obviously you’re smarter than that place. You’ve got something else going on, Jimmy, I can tell. You don’t have to tell me about it now, but I’m intrigued.”
We kissed some more and then she got out. She kissed her fingers and then slapped them on the dirty window to say good-bye. I felt good. After her Jetta left, I drove around to the drive-thru. At the speaker I ordered a cheeseburger and a Diet Coke and then I drove up to the pay window. It was funny seeing it from that perspective. When I was working I had a whole world going on inside that little window, but I could only see a sliver of it from my car. Jorge was in there. I handed him a five and he didn’t notice it was me.
“Hey, Hor,” I said. He turned from the cash register and looked at me closely. He didn’t like that nickname but when he saw it was me, he laughed.
“What’s up, Sean? Your night off? Why don’t you get the fuck out of here?”
“I was the fuck out of here. I went on a date.”
“A good one? Well maybe not, you’re here.” He laughed at his joke.
“Funny, fucker. No, it was good. She’s smart as fuck and she likes me.”
“Why does she like you?”
“Because I’m fucking handsome and because I work at
McDonald’s.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, that’s what she said.”
“Sounds like she’s crazy, bro.” He laughed again.
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Okay, okay, I got one,” he said. “It’s crazy, my wife likes to talk on the phone during sex. Really. She called me last night from Chicago.”
“Ha, good one.” I drove on to the next window and got my cheeseburger and drink. Marcia didn’t notice it was me and I didn’t say hi. Her gold teeth glinted as I drove off. I turned out of the lot onto Ventura Boulevard and unwrapped the burger as I drove. When I held the unwrapped burger I realized that Juan had made it. His baby-size hands had put that thing together. It tasted really good as I drove. I was driving toward Jeanette’s house to rehearse A Hatful of Rain. I chewed and sipped from the soda. McDonald’s burgers are really slim, but I like that. They’re almost like eating air. Kind of like kissing Karen, it was there but also it wasn’t. She thought I was a guy named Jim, from Brooklyn. Maybe I was. The streetlights on Ventura reflected off my windshield and made the burger taste like candy.
STEP 12
After our “character” has had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other actors and to practice these principles in all our scenes.
The Sass Account
The following is an annotated fragment of an unpublished article about The Actor. The beginning of the article is extant but the rest is lost, although the annotations have been retained. Make what sense of it that you can.
I am staring at a photo of The Actor’s backside. It’s a nice backside, one that has been used with varying degrees of success in his films; sometimes it reveals character, sometimes it’s just too much ass in the face. And, now that I mention it, it is an ass that has been speculated about more than most, the big question: Is it a gay ass or a straight ass? That’s the funny thing about asses; they can be so ambiguous, a good ass is a good ass, straight or gay. Or as they say, “a hole is a hole.” So, speaking of this ass, so often pondered, as I stare at it, I wonder why it is there. The editor in chief (EIC) wanted an arty spread, so we brought The Actor into the fold, into the cozy realms of the Sass office to discuss options, to make him a part. And this is what we get, his part. I feel that his ass has a brain, that it has been contemplating me as much as I contemplate it, that in fact it wants to fart in my face.1
