Movieland

Chapter 1

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a movie star.

When I was a normal kid, I did this thing where I'd take a shower, and after cleaning, I'd turn the water incrementally colder, and stand right under it, trying with all my might to look out from that downpour, through slick strands of brown bangs, to declare love for my girl.

"You don't understand," I'd say, blinking, the cold water serving as the rain but also my tears.

The return lines were in my head, like they'd been there since birth, since the advent of film, spoken by whatever actress had starred in the most recent rom-com I'd watched with mom and dad. It didn't matter which movie. What mattered was that we were having our moment. Me and the actress, not mom and dad.

The shower, that was where I could be myself, where it wasn't so taboo, her and me, two girls electric to the touch. Mom had things to say about the hunky guy in the rom-com. Dad not so much about the girl. He preferred to roll popcorn kernels between his fingers like lucky coins.

The actress was a stand-in for Mandy from school, a senior like me. She didn't take drama at school but could've been plucked from the movies. I imagined casting directors looking for an "It" girl, seeing her strut through our hallways with her wavy blonde hair flowing in slow-motion, her green eyes gleaming, her body slender and tight with everything right, and saying, "That's her!"

Then I imagined telling my friend Carolina about how I described Mandy. The first step would be to not tell her how I described her. The second step, if I did what I normally did and said something stupid, like how Mandy was tight with everything right, would be distracting her with a question like, "How would you rank John Hughes' top 5 movies?"

She'd probably say something smart like, "Why only five?"

I'd fight the urge to debate his filmography rather than get our chemistry homework done. Hughes, or any other director for that matter, won out ten times out of ten. Chemistry wasn't for losers, but the only pie I was dissecting was mom's apple.

The shower scene played out in variations of:

"What's not to understand?" The girl squinted through the cold rain. "You shouldn't have done it."

"But I did it..." I turned my face up to the rain showers, shivering like some modern-day gay Lloyd Dobler, gazed at her, and said, "Because I love you."

I had developed an uncanny ability to speak while standing under showers. I'd make an excellent field meteorologist.

I read they make fake rain in movies by rigging long pipes with sprinkler heads. Put them in the foreground and background so it makes a consistent shower. And of course, above the actors.

The trick is making sure everything is wet. Not just your Goslings and your McAdams, or your Tobies and your Kirsten's (my personal favorite; you had me at upside down kiss), or even your Ross and Rachels, but we're talking everything: the benches, the streetlights, the sidewalks, the beat up Chevy the male lead borrowed from his friend to catch up with his lady. Soak it all. Then be sure to light it all properly. Backlight it to make the rain pops with dimension and layers on film.

At this point in my shower scene, she (the actress, or Mandy, they tended to blur), would either toss her jacket off and splash through puddles to kiss me, or she would say, "I need more," which led to an extended dialogue about words versus actions that I hadn't quite figured out how to address.

I woke up late that morning so the puddle splash into kiss had to do. I mimed the kiss based on what I'd seen in movies. This meant an offbeat combo of open and closed mouth kissing. My tongue circled the imaginary tongue like a tetherball around its post. Occasionally I'd pull back and peck at her lips, sizing her up, controlling with a confidence I only displayed when asked to name the members of the Brat Pack (although I always forgot one). Other times I'd hold hands up to her face and feel hers cover mine, and we'd show the world how to ignite the fires of passion. What a sap.