“If I removed all the toxins in my body, there’d be nothing left!” I knew the turban thought that was a joke, even though she didn’t think it funny enough to laugh.
I stared at the chamber that would in fact have become my coffin. I imagined a turbaned woman opening the lid and screaming as she looked at my remains. My body would be dehydrated and my blood extracted as the toxin-fighting machine, on a mission to remove every last toxin, couldn’t target the invasive toxins without removing all the fluid and the blood. My organs would be eaten up by the machine as it tore apart every last bit of tissue leaving behind a deflated sack of skin—and maybe my eyeballs.
28
I WOKE UP with my eyes closed as the dream I awoke from was so disturbing I tried to finish it for several minutes even after I was aware of being fully conscious. In the dream I had found myself standing naked in front of Tom Cruise, who was lying on a bed wearing a raincoat. I was naked and yet the reason for my being naked wasn’t completely obvious; the mood wasn’t sexual, it was friendly with nothing sinister implied. This bizarre scene took place in a big loft with concrete floors and a high ceiling, which I assumed to be one of his houses. It was the middle of the night, two or three o’clock maybe. The room was brightly lit like a department store or a supermarket, and the bed was in the middle of this enormous room. As I stood naked in front of him, I talked about being gay. I bared my soul in the same manner that I bared my body. I showed him all of me, inside and out. As I did so, instead of becoming lighter by unburdening myself from the secret that weighed me down, instead of losing weight, I became heavier. I felt burdened, heavy and dark, panicked that something dreadful was about to happen despite the kindness and acceptance he was showing me. After I talked for what seemed like hours, I began to make out shadowy figures in the walls that I thought were painted black. As the sun started to rise I could see that the walls behind his bed and to the side were not painted black. The “walls” were floor-to-ceiling windows. To my horror, I could see the silhouettes of what seemed like hundreds of people looking in, and I could see that I was in a street-level glass building in Times Square. I was on Good Morning America, and Tom Cruise was conducting an interview.
As I lay awake trying to trick my brain into thinking that I was asleep so I could make it end differently and take away the nervous, sick feeling that carried over from the dream into my reality, I realized that the sick feeling wasn’t only from dreaming about being tricked into exposing myself. The sick feeling was also from drinking and throwing up the bottle of wine I’d snuck into the no-alcohol retreat. (I’d stolen a corkscrew from the mini-bar in the hotel in Toronto and added it to my traveling case of tools and utensils.) I’d had a rough night. The pain in my joints increased to the point that I couldn’t find a position to sit or lie in to make myself comfortable, even briefly. I alternated between sitting, lying down, and walking in an attempt to relieve the pain, but the only thing that seemed to work at all was wine. So I kept drinking it. I had to keep drinking it, as its numbing effect seemed to wear off when I threw it up. But since forcing myself to throw it up gave me a splitting headache, I began to feel nauseous, and so the throwing-up part of the ritual became involuntary by the time I’d drunk my way down to the middle of the label. In between drinking and throwing up, I ran my wrists under the hot water in the bathroom sink, as the room didn’t have a bathtub and hot water seemed to help a little. I felt sorry for myself. I cried a lot. I thought about calling my mother, but I didn’t know what to say. I was in the middle of shooting my first big Hollywood movie. I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do. I knew that if I complained to her at all, she would respond in the same way she did when I cried to her about not being able to eat ordinary food with my family. If I were selfish enough to tell her how sad I was and how much pain I was in, I knew she would respond angrily because being angry was easier than being worried, and so she’d say, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. You wanted to be an actress.”
And I would say, “Yes, Mama. I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be a model, and I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be special, and I wanted people to think I was pretty. What I didn’t know was how hard it was going to be to be thin, to be considered pretty, and to be worthy of attention. I’ve had to work a little bit harder than I first thought, Mama. My journey was a little longer than most girls’. I was born with big legs and small eyes and a round face that’s only pretty from one angle.” Then I would tell her what I’ve always wanted to say to her but because we tend not to talk about heavy and emotional things, I’ve never been able to. “I don’t blame you, Mama. I blame Dad.”I blame you, Dad. I blame you for telling me that I was pretty. I blame you for dying before you had time to change your mind. Because of you I make up stories, have fantasy lives, fill in the missing words. You’re the blank. You’re the “Dear Mum and . . .” letter I had to make up because all the other children at camp had a dad and not a blank where a dad was missing. Being forced to write that letter was the first time I really knew you were missing. And it was a year after you died.April Fool’s Day is a bad day to die for a practical joker. I thought that because you winked only at me, I was the only one that got the joke. Remember when the Easter Bunny came and how you winked at me as you ate the carrot with his bunny teeth marks? We got the jokes, you and I. We were smart and we got the joke.
I didn’t sleep at all until morning. I’d seen the shadowy dawn become the light of day, which no doubt set the scene for my horrific dream that was hard to shake even after I opened my eyes.
As I carefully applied concealer to achieve the perfect no-makeup look before going to makeup, I thought about my subconscious and its lack of imagination. It seemed to me that as I became thinner, I became dumber, as even my subconscious failed to conjure up a decent metaphor. One part of the dream stuck with me, however, and that was my casting of Tom Cruise in the role of sneaky interrogator. My mother had always wanted me to marry Tom Cruise. Not just any famous actor, Tom Cruise in particular. He was the living image of the perfect movie star who seemed to separate his private life from his public life—a man of mystery, a private man. Choosing Tom Cruise as an example was perhaps another way of my mother reinforcing that there was a payoff to being private. “There’s a reason they call it a private life,” I’d often say to interviewers. But there’s a fine line between being private and being ashamed.
The day wasn’t just any day. It was DAY ELEVEN of filming. Day Eleven was a long bike ride to where the only known photograph of my character’s mother was buried in a box under a tree along with the money my character’s father had buried after he robbed the bank and before he was incarcerated. The bike ride began with a race for the treasure between a sweet, caring guy and an emotionally bankrupt girl, climaxed when she told him through her tears that she only wanted the picture of her mother, not the money, and ended with the two of them in love. It was a big day. And although I was prepared—I’d learned my lines and could comfortably fit into my wardrobe—I was not ready. I was in agony. And the day hadn’t even begun.
“Ride as fast as you can past camera. And go as close to camera as you can, too.” The director had to literally cut to the chase to make his day, a term used in movie making that meant that all the shots for all the scenes for that day had to be completed. Today he didn’t have a smile in his eyes; he wasn’t as full of jokes as usual. Directors can get very stressed about making their days.