stage kiss
give me a script and three other people
It’s selfish, it’s all selfish, I see through it. I can’t watch a goddamn movie anymore. I can’t look anyone in the face without squinting. It’s only a paper moon1.
I lightly trespassed one evening when I was fifteen. Making my way to the parking lot, I slipped through an unlocked door and stepped onto the high school theatre stage. I was mouse-quiet, backpack strapped over my parka, easing my way up to the ghost light. I peered into the dark audience, and no one rose from a seat to condemn me. No one flipped the lights on, no police sirens blared. No chorus of five hundred jeerers appeared to laugh at me. I stood center stage, where nobody usually directed me to stand, just to see what it felt like. I spread my arms wide, pretending to be a singer with a big note, and I made no noise.
Ten years out, I write on Substack, arms wide, just to see what it feels like. I have friendships dependent on the practice of regularly excising myself for around a hundred views per post. I am approached IRL and told I am a good writer. Folks say I write in such a way that makes them consider doing it, then doubt whether they can. I am selfish; I want to hear this. I read my own writing back and I think it is hack work. Every mirror floats and I am always sinking, gripping for it, swimming from buoy to buoy. I am tired. I thought I just needed a good night’s sleep, but it’s more than that.2
I moved to L.A. last year to give the acting thing an honest try. In 2025, I have performed in six plays and one film project (which was initially billed as a pilot, though it’s most likely destined to be a web series). This sounds about standard, or even above average for people in my situation: Midwest nobodies that come out here believing we’re special enough to beat the odds.
Two weeks ago, Alec Baldwin stole a muffin from me. It was up to me to charge him for it, manning the till at the coffee shop that pays my bills, and I didn’t. I didn't care enough. I let him munch on it and meander out — though I was still enough of a fame hound to spread the news of his white collar crime as soon as I was off the clock. That evening, I called my mother and confirmed that I would begin officially searching for a 9-5. I’d leave the service industry and use my brain for money, the way she’d always dreamed. Later that evening still, I went to go see a play and tried to watch it as something other than an actor. This wasn’t possible, but I figured it would come with time.
Last week, I didn’t go to my day jobs because I was rehearsing a play. Macbeth. I was playing a Witch. During that prior week’s post-Baldwin phone call, my mom had tentatively tried to cheer me up, asking if I was looking forward to rehearsals. I’d said, “NO!” then, and I’d meant it. Fuck that shit, it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to pay me, and I needed money! Grr!!
By Thursday, of course, I found myself thick as thieves with my three new best friends, sprawled on the floor of the Thai restaurant around the corner. Our waiter, Lonzo, discounted our drinks after we endured the brief company of a homeless man. He gave us Sharpies and encouraged us to graffiti the bathroom walls. He informed us that Quentin Tarantino and Channing Tatum (whom he affectionately called, “Tatum”) were wont to drop in from time to time, and that there was a defunct theatre in the basement. Gracie’s ears perked up when she heard that last bit. “Guys,” she intoned, “we have to start a theatre company!” Diane, Tharun, and I got quieter when she started talking like that.
As our dynamic solidified, I was reminded that this wasn’t my first rodeo. In the theatre, I have often clung to a group of four. In Germany, there was the “Faxe Four” — so termed for our delinquency, skipping out between class and a workshop to drink Faxe beer (10% ABV, 1L in volume). That was Erin, Kyle, Noah, and me. In Door County, we didn’t have a quirky name, but it often came down to Alayna, Chris, Jamey, and I hanging out together. Even working as an usher in Chicago, I found myself in cahoots with Rachel, Julia, and Andy. It had been a while since I’d been grouped as such.
To some extent, the companionship of these ramshackle foursomes is the most honest reason I have for enduring my discomfort. All of the early mornings and late nights, the lack of savings and lack of progress, are worthwhile in such company. I have lofty goals, true: I want to make impactful art, I want to make my income from it, and I want to go down in history. Realistically, though, my chief desire is to be someone that people want around. I want to drink and smoke and talk bullshit with the best of them. Heaven is a place on earth with cluttered walls, alcohol, and three other people.
The fifteen-year-old that trespassed on her high school stage wanted something else, too. There was another kind of attention. I wanted a stage kiss to turn into a real kiss. I wanted a Y2K fantasy, a loser girl’s Cinderella story. I needed a deus ex machina, a mask, a glass slipper. I was turning my pillow lengthwise, pretending to be cradled on a chest.
This past summer, in my second out of these six plays, I finally had my stage kiss. It was stupid. There he was, a lumbering, shirtless Australian with nothing better to do on the daily than scientifically administer to the upkeep of his six-pack. I abhorred him and his tooth-white Tesla. Kissing him felt like ballet class: the production team stared at us in clinical silence, correcting our timing, our motions, making sure we weren’t too into it, but that we seemed enough like we were. This was not the dream.
Bella and Tamia tell me New York would suit me better. Mom reminds me I’ll need my own health insurance before long. I know I need a change, but I’m not sure what it ought to be. Do I prioritize more fulfilling work or a better suited location? What kind of work would that be? At which location?
Is this where I give up the dream? Was this dream ever substantial enough to warrant belief?
The only book I’ve read this month has been Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. In the First Letter, Rilke says:
There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest part of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must,” then build your life upon it.
I got a gummy feeling reading that. Certainly, writing feels reflexive and necessary. I can take it anywhere, practice it in solitude until I die, if that’s how the cookie crumbles. There is an internal thermometer built into me regarding my writing; I know what I must do, I know when I have not yet achieved it, and I know when I have.
In terms of acting, however, I am all mud. It is a showboat calling. It is the masochism of the clown. Look at me, now, while I’m trying my best — and turn me down! It demands all and promises nothing. The business is so coldly divorced from the art of it, speaking numbers instead of poetry. There are brief, shining moments, but who can say if they’re worth the cruelty?
I read White Oleander over the pandemic while I was stuck in Wisconsin, convinced that I’d be better off here. It’s a novel about a foster child, Astrid, who gets shuttled around the greater Los Angeles area. Her favorite foster mother, Claire, is an actress. Astrid can ascertain from old photos and Claire’s general demeanor that she is good at her chosen vocation, but Claire isn’t working by the time Astrid enters her care. She goes on one audition during her tenure in the story, and she doesn’t get the part. She kills herself before long, and Astrid is shuttled off to the next home.
Mom tells me that I’ll find a way to keep acting throughout my life, if that’s what I want to do, even if it isn’t for a living. I picture community theatre when she says that: artistically bankrupt productions of shows nobody really cares for or wants to see. I don’t want to do The Odd Couple in Delafield, WI. (But how much better is doing Macbeth in Hollywood?) How long, how long?
I have no idea what is next. I could do another play. Another three people might ask me to dinner, or another shirtless Australian could plant one on me. I could get paid for my pains, or I could give it up for free. It is highly unlikely that I will make a name for myself this way.
But must I find fame among the masses? Rilke-must I? Must I have another post-rehearsal drink with three of my cast mates, in which we speak of many things (fools and kings)?3
The answer to one of these still feels like a “yes.”
the song, of course, but also Paper Moon (1973) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), my beloved
“Nature Boy” - specifically as heard in Moulin Rouge (2001)