True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness

by Christine Lahti

  Near Twenty-Fifth Street, the cold breeze stinging my wet face, someone walked by me with a boom box blaring Johnny Mathis: “Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree. . . .” As I dodged the crush of people on the sidewalk, my mind went back to fifth grade. I remembered slow dancing on the shag carpet in Frannie Martin’s basement with my boyfriend, the freckle-faced Steve Mathews. He was only six inches shorter than me. The boys called me the Jolly Green Giant, and I knew one thing for sure: that being tall was bad. Johnny Mathis crooned from the hi-fi while we swayed: “. . . and I feel like I’m clinging to a cloud. I can’t understand—I get misty just holding your hand.”

  I knew this was going to be a boy-girl party, but I had no idea it was actually a make-out party. Steve started leading me toward the pitch-black kissing room. We found the only available chair. He sat me on his bird lap. Everywhere I looked were the shadows of other couples kissing, groping, and moaning. I certainly wasn’t getting misty holding Steve’s hand. As I saw his mouth moving in, closer and closer, I thought, Oh God, what do I do? Saying no just wasn’t an option, so thinking fast, I cupped his hot pink ear and whispered as softly as I could, “Hey, Steve? I’m really sorry, but is it okay if we just sort of make the sounds instead of really kissing? Can we just pretend, is that okay? Please?”

  “Oh, okay, I guess,” answered Steve, surprised and more than a little disappointed.

  So, lips miles apart, we fake made out. Mmmm, smooch, smooch, ahhhhh, ssssmooch, mmmmm.

  I glanced around the dark room to make sure we’d gotten away with it. I leaned in close again. “Okay, thank you, Steve! That wasn’t so bad, right?”

  That freckle-faced fucker broke up with me the next day.

  Horns were now blaring in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. A jackhammer rattled my brain. I passed by a playground. I heard a little girl, about eight years old, yelling. She was on top of a jungle gym, a sea of little boys beneath her. “I’m the king of the castle and you’re the dirty rascals! Na, na, na, na, na!” she sang. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She noticed my staring, so I walked away. She reminded me of when I was that age, a fearless pixie-haired tomboy, before the world tried to suck the sass out of me. I was called bossy growing up, but in my family that meant bratty and selfish. If my brothers were called bossy, that meant they were leaders and should, of course, become president—a double standard that would render me phobic about being a leader later in life, and leave me sans sass when I needed it most, like back in that casting director’s office.

  I started to head even farther west once I hit Eighteenth Street. The wind from the Hudson River whipped around the buildings. A light rain started to fall. Soon I found myself passing through a forest of hookers in impossibly short skirts. One brunette with long curls tried to wave down willing cars. A couple of teenage boys walked past, giggling and pointing at her. She simply sighed and regarded them calmly, her thick lipstick cracking from the cold.

  “Oh, you poor boys, you just ain’t on my agenda today,” she scoffed as she moved on, shoulders back, her head held high. I kept glancing back at her. As I walked, I found myself imitating her proud posture, her long, purposeful strides.

  I finally reached my building in the West Village. I heard “Stop it! No, goddamn it!” A woman was yelling across the street. I saw a man hitting her in front of a bar.

  Without hesitating, I shouted, “Hey! Leave her alone, shithead! Stop it! Get your hands off her, or I’m calling the cops!”

  Startled, the man released her. Then the woman took a few steps toward me and yelled, “Mind your own fucking business, bitch!”

  I fumbled with my keys, trying to unlock my front door. Finally inside, I sprinted up the four flights of stairs, two steps at a time, to my apartment. I threw open my door, bolted it twice behind me, and leaned up against it, trying to catch my breath. As I disassembled my damp Tammy Faye costume, kicking the jacket and vest across the floor, flinging my flats, and wiggling out of my girdle panty hose, I started talking to myself again.

  “I’m done. I am never letting anyone treat me like that again. And fuck anyone who tries, because none of you are going to be on my fucking agenda ever again! And guess what, you casting director prick! I don’t give a shit what you think—” I crushed the girdle stockings into a ball, hurling them into the trash can. “I’m going to be a successful, respected actress, you pathetic loser! And fuck you, Chester Martin! You want me to shed some light? Well, how about the lights on broadway, you pretentious asshole! Hey, you piece-of-shit construction worker, smiling is not . . . my fucking . . . girl-duty!” I seized a tissue from my kitchen counter and rubbed off the remnants of my makeup. “And I’m not stopping, goddamn it, until all women are treated equally!” I bent over and shook out my hair. “ahhhh! so make way for all of us motherfuckers because here we . . .”

  The phone rang. “Hello, who’s this?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as winded as I felt. It was a boy I’d been praying for weeks would call me. He was an artist and he was kind and made me laugh. He said he knew it was last-minute, but would I like to go to a big movie premiere with him that evening? Nearly shrieking with excitement, I said, “Oh my God, I’d love to! Thanks!”

  I tossed the phone onto a chair. Tearing off my slip, I dashed into the bathroom for a quick shower, but as I looked in the broken mirror, I noticed my red, bloated eyes and remembered that super-duper-deluxe high-sodium hot dog I’d just eaten. “Oh shit. Plus look at my fucking stomach. I’ve gained at least five pounds in the last week.” I marched straight back to the phone.

  I stopped mid-march.

  “Wait, Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? You look good enough! What was that seventy-five-block walk for anyway? Did you learn nothing?”

  I glanced back in the mirror again. I picked up the phone.

  “Oh, hi, Bruce, listen, I’m so sorry, but I totally forgot, I made plans with my sister tonight,” I lied.

  I hung up and sank down onto my extra-long twin bed. I wrapped myself in my tattered, patchwork quilt. After a few minutes, I emerged. I slowly stood up, and with my long-legged strides, walked over to my soot-covered window. With all my strength, I pried it open, then gazed up at the brightly lit New York City night sky. I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath.

  I’ll take another walk tomorrow.

  6

  Shit Happens

  Oh my God, where’s the crutch, where’s the crutch? I’m onstage in front of a thousand people and . . . i can’t find the fucking crutch! We’re at the climax of act one in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and I am a consummate professional, so there’s no wiggle room for this kind of fuck-up.

  I’m at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven in 1985, performing my first leading role in one of the classics. As scripted, the actor playing my husband, Brick, throws his crutch across the room at me while I duck behind the bed. I’m supposed to then pick it up off the floor and bring it back to him. But tonight I can’t find the damn thing!

  The dialogue goes something like:

  “Brick, I’m not good . . . but I’m honest! Give me credit for just that, will you please? . . . But Brick? Skipper is dead! I’m alive! Maggie the Cat is alive! I am alive, alive! I am . . .”

  [Brick then hurls the crutch at her, across the bed she took refuge behind, and pitches forward onto the floor as she completes her speech.]

  “—alive!”

  The rest of the scene is entirely dependent on my returning the crutch to him so he can stand up again. As I’m flop-sweating, frantically scanning the entire stage for the crutch, I think . . . Okay, maybe I should just improvise something like “Oh, Brick, I know you just tried to kill me with your crutch, but if you love me, even the tiniest little bit, I know you would help me to find it!”

  But no, I can’t say that. So what should I do? I look out into the audience, and right away see the crutch leaning on a woman’s seat in the front row. Jesus, Brick’s got shitty aim, I think. I have no other options, so I climb down off
the stage—in character—into the dark theater and sashay up to the woman. I reach for the crutch and try to take it, but . . . she’s grabbing it back! Are you kidding me?

  So I pull it again, and she pulls it back. I pull . . . and she pulls it back harder. Please, please, please lady, just give me back my fucking prop! With the entire audience now laughing, I yank it as hard as I can. Suddenly I look down in the dark and notice that the crutch-stealer has a large cast on her extended leg.

  Oh God, this is her freakin’ crutch?! I hand the crutch back to the lady, shrug, and mumble in my Maggie accent something like “Oh, I . . . I didn’t need that anyway.” I climb back onto the stage, only to see Brick’s crutch embedded in some fish netting on the wall behind the bed. The audience is now howling so loudly, the theater might explode. I have no choice but to continue with the dialogue as written, shouting to be heard.

  “Brick, I’ve been to a doctor in Memphis. A—a gynecologist. I’ve been completely examined and there is no reason why we can’t have a child whenever we want to. Are you listening to me? Are you? Are you listening to me!”

  “Yes. I hear you, Maggie. But how the hell on earth do you imagine—that you’re going to have a child by a man who can’t stand you?”

  The laughter builds as my theater career comes to a screeching halt.

  I rescue the camouflaged crutch and hand it back to my costar. He’s finally able to pull himself up from the floor. We finish the scene. The curtain comes down, and the actor playing Brick, who’s been looking away from me this whole time, says “Holy shit! The audience is going crazy! What did I do that was so fucking funny?”

  I just can’t find the words.

  Being raised in a dysfunctional family with six kids, we all had to figure out our own way to stand out from the crowd. I saw an old home video recently where I elbowed my older sister out of the way when we were performing “Honey Bun” from South Pacific for our parents. My mom once told me that if any of my siblings sang too loudly, threatening to drown me out, I’d simply put my hands over their mouths.

  When I was growing up, my dad would dole out his disappointment in us as readily as he handed us our weekly allowances. The fear of engendering this disappointment drove me to shine in all that I did. For instance, Dad would give us the nightly challenge of being members of the “clean plate club” at dinner. We had to eat everything on our plates because there were “starving children in China.” What I was starving for was my dad’s approval, so I not only devoured every morsel, I would lick my plate so clean that it sparkled with my saliva.

  Standing out didn’t stop there. It carried over into adolescence and then adulthood, with awards and trophies becoming important measures of that success. For me, growing up female, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for prizes in sports, so I became obsessed with Girl Scout badges. At summer camp I always coveted the Best Camper ribbons, not only winning “cleanest cabin” but sucking up to every single one of the counselors. In grade school I once got a bad-conduct check mark on my report card for talking too much in class. It felt like I’d been caught setting the school on fire.

  Then I discovered theater. Yes, I cherished being able to play different characters, but what other job validates you with hundreds of people standing, cheering, and applauding when you finish your day’s work? I was hooked! But as I went on to study acting in New York City, whenever my work was criticized at all, I felt like a failure. I remember one teacher asking me, “Why are you taking a class if you’re so afraid of making mistakes?” Even as I began working professionally, I had to be perfect.

  My need for perfection was a drive to be not just a model “artiste” but an ultimate feminist as well. I felt a responsibility to be accountable, to put only positive, three-dimensional images of women out into the world. I became so hard-core about this that my agents started to get worried. Many of the “good” parts in film and on television in those days were demeaning to women. I refused to even have a meeting for the female lead in a movie that went on to become a massive international hit. “I won’t be able to sleep at night if I play that two-dimensional, misogynistic part,” I self-righteously told my bewildered, male agent. God forbid anyone should ever judge me for “selling out.”

  But there came a point when I was getting weary of all the waitressing, and I got a commercial for . . . Joy dishwashing liquid. Oh fuck. There were many sleepless nights over that one. I finally rationalized that it would be okay to do because at least I’d be portraying a housewife who was also the coach for her son’s softball team. I still had to have an orgasm as I stared at a gleaming plate, saying “Hey, I can see myself!” But at least I got to wear sweats and a baseball cap. In the years that followed, I became much more forgiving of myself whenever I had to choose certain roles just to pay the bills.

  In 2008 I was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. On the day of the ceremony, my beauty SWAT team had just departed my bathroom. Dressed in a borrowed Hervé Léger gown that fit like a glamorous girdle, I sat down to put the finishing touches on my speech. I’d been nominated a lot. I’d won once, a long time ago so it was past time for another trophy fix. I knew people made fun of the Golden Globes, but to me they were the equivalent of a Nobel Peace Prize.

  I practiced giving my speech, over and over. It had to be self-deprecating, with just the right amount of gratitude and humility. After a few run-throughs, I folded it neatly into a square and stuffed it into my purse, knowing deep down that the speech would likely end up in my “graveyard drawer,” where all my dried-up lipsticks and unused speeches went to die.

  Once at the Golden Globes, with all of the fancy film people near the front and all of us inferior TV people way back in television Siberia, I perused the lineup in the program. I saw that my category was toward the very end of what I knew was an endless show. It was hard to sit still. I felt too nervous to eat. My dress was already too tight anyway. I didn’t dare take even a sip of wine until after my category. So, sucking in my stomach, I decided to get up to go to the ladies’ room with my girlfriend for a quick touch-up. I reapplied my lip gloss for the fourth time in front of the brightly lit mirror. But while I waited for my friend to pee, an uneasy feeling came over me.

  “Kathy, uh, I’m gonna go back, I’ll see you in there, okay?”

  “Okay, sure, honey!” she yelled out over the sound of the toilets flushing.

  Walking toward the ballroom, I was pulling up my bra straps to even out my cleavage when a woman heading toward the restroom stopped me. “Oh my God, hey, you just won!”

  “Ha ha, yeah, right.” And I’m thinking, What a terrible joke, lady. That’s not even remotely funny!

  “No, really, you did! You just won for Best Actress in a TV Drama.”

  “But that’s impossible! My category is at the very end!”

  “Well, sorry, but you just missed it.”

  Are you fucking kidding me? Goddamn it! I rushed in to see Robin Williams vamping on the stage. Before Robin got onstage, the producer of Chicago Hope had apparently walked up and announced, “Christine, where are you? I know you want this. I knew when I looked over and saw she wasn’t there, it was because she’s in the ladies’ room . . .” Then Robin Williams had climbed up and started improvising to keep the show from moving on.

  I scrambled down through the tables like a madwoman. But during those one hundred or so hurried steps, something changed. I felt like I was floating, lighter somehow, like I was finally loosened from a straitjacket. The worst thing that could have happened, happened. And it was fine. All the years of striving for perfection, all that panic—about lost props, about conduct marks on report cards, about selling out—got left on the bathroom floor of the Century Plaza Hotel.

  Onstage, I noticed that the sea of faces before me all seemed freshly awakened from a snooze—giddy, slap-happy, drunk. I grabbed Robin Williams’s dinner napkin out of his hands. Without thinking, I started wiping my hands with it. I approached the mike and said the first words that came
to me: “Sorry, Mom, but I was in the bathroom.” I tried to read my prepared speech, but I couldn’t. Every planned, scripted word seemed contrived and stale. After waving to a few friends, I thanked a bunch of people and then just started laughing. I even forgot to suck in my stomach.

  When I got back to my table and a giant glass of wine, I picked up my program and finally noticed the asterisk: *Order of Awards to Be Presented—Subject to Motherfucking Change.

  People still stop me a lot in airports and at Starbucks to say, “Wait, don’t I know you from somewhere?” As I’m about to proudly run down the list of my latest films and trophies, they interrupt: “No, wait! I know! You were the woman in the bathroom at that award show!”

  I’m fairly confident that when I die, although I will have left behind a whole body of work as a serious actor and a director, there will be only one thing written on my tombstone:

  Christine Lahti—

  she was in the bathroom

  when she won her Golden Globe

  Hey, shit happens.

  7

  The Wet Towel

  Imagine my horror as I looked down and saw it, splayed across my summer-weight goose-down comforter . . . on my side of the bed. Dumped into a sodden heap, without any regard to the fresh linen beneath it. Indifferent to the person who would now have to sleep on clammy sheets. Long forgotten, it simply waited for someone else to pick it up: his chauvinist pig of a wet towel.