Halsted's entry about the SAG commercial actors' strike reminds me of an incident from my past that used to be part of my memoir but is one of those bits that has ended up on the cutting-room floor—not because it was a bad bit of writing, but just because it turned out not to fit. I thought I'd rescue that bit from eternal obscurity and reuse it here:
I have a close friend in Utah named Scott. He's a writer and an actor, and for the past several years he's supplemented his sometimes lean income with guest appearances in television series and made-for-cable movies. He's also a devout Mormon, and more clear-headed about it than just about anyone I know.
One Sunday in 1994, Scott had asked me to drive him the forty miles to Salt Lake so he could attend the callbacks on a movie role he was auditioning for. His car had given up the ghost again, as it did every full moon or so. I readily agreed.
That summer was the last time I attended church on anything like a regular basis. It was my last-ditch effort—or so I thought—to get my life together and back on the right track. I was attending a student ward at BYU—a congregation made of entirely of eighteen- to thirty-year-olds, not all of them college students, but all looking for that certain special someone, that magic mate, that bright twin spirit from our premortal existence whose eyes you would meet with a shock of recognition, and you both would know you had found your foreordained eternal companion at last.
Sacrament meeting ended in the early afternoon, and as I was gathering up my notebook and my scriptures—the same oversized set from my mission—a girl named Monica sidled over to me. Monica was attractive, with her light brown hair and long patterned skirts, but she didn't make my heart turn over in my chest. You could already see the suburban housewife inside her, struggling to emerge. Still, I thought she might be fun to make out with.
"Hey, there," she said, smiling, not quite meeting my eye, swaying forward and back on her feet with her hands behind her back.
"Hey."
She turned her head so one eye looked up at me through a veil of shiny hair. "So, are you going to stay after today and join us for choir practice? We could really use that nice baritone . . ."
I grimaced. Like the lacrosse player in American Pie, I did want to show her what a sensitive, expressive guy I could be, but the timing just wasn't working out. "I'm sorry, Monica, I'm not going to be able make it today."
She pouted. "What—not Sunday dinner with your family again?"
"No, not this week. It's just—I have this friend, his car doesn't work, he needs to go to a movie audition in Salt Lake. These are callbacks. He's made the first cut."
"On a Sunday?"
"Hey, that's when they do it."
"Doesn't sound like a very uplifting Sabbath activity," she said with a sniff. "What movie is it?"
"Halloween 6."
The way her lip curled, you would have thought I'd just waved a beaker of vomit under her nose. "Oh, my heck! That's awful! I hope he doesn't get it!"
My mouth fell open. When I found my tongue, this is what I said: "Why in the world would you hope that? Why would you hope that my friend, who works in a nursing home, would miss out on the opportunity to earn five hundred dollars a day for a week or two? Why would you hope his wife can't afford to buy the kids new clothes for back-to-school, or that she has to keep using food stamps to buy groceries? Is that what you hope?"
It was one of those rare moments where the perfect thing to say pops out right on cue, rather than waltzing into your head that night just in time to make you crazy as you're trying to fall asleep. I couldn't believe I was saying it. It felt good, and Monica couldn't offer much in the way of a response.
I stopped going to church altogether a few weeks after that. I never did make out with Monica. A guy's got to have standards, after all.
