“Laura—” he started, but I closed the door before he could say anything.
I went back to my room but not before closing all the curtains in the house (close the curtains, stay away from the windows, and do not look toward the light) including in my room. My bed was by the window, so instead of getting back in bed, I made a makeshift one in my closet, and I might have hummed the entire Johnny Cash song “Ring of Fire”[57] to myself.
A little while later, there was a knock on my closet door.
“You want company?” Terrence asked.
He brought his pillow and comforter. He sat opposite me.
“I’m afraid of going to sleep and not waking up. I’m afraid that there won’t be a tomorrow. That sounds really corny. Like something Scarlett O’Hara would say—I won’t go hungry again, because I’ll eat those radioactive radishes,” I said to him.
He laughed. “Frankly, Laura, I don’t give a damn.”
“You had to,” I said.
“Sorry, but yeah, I had to.”
I kicked at his leg and he kicked at mine.
For the rest of the night, or morning, we contemplated whose fault it was—for the nuclear holocaust that would surely come, and for the one that never occurred.
The next morning, they said a transformer had blown, but seriously, I had my doubts.
Maybe that whole fictional life was creeping into my nonfictional life, but I thought we were all going to need psychological counseling after the movie wrapped.
Chapter Twenty-Five
We stayed late after school so we could be extras in the Operation Tat-Type scene. I, with my fellow castmates, would be getting fake tattoos under my arms.
Makeup and hair were done on the stage, and wardrobe was in the gym locker rooms. The gym was where the scene was supposed to take place, but the acoustics were pretty bad (thank you, Kathy’s dad, who donated the gym’s sound system. His name, Peter Baker, was on a plaque that hung over the light switch next to the fire exit doors, but he forgot that insulation was important to soundproofing), so a location change was in order. We moved the whole operation to the cafeteria.
Half the crew came in and moved the tables, the food-serving counters, tray cart, fork-and-spoon dispenser, and milk cooler out into the hall, while the other half moved in the cots, hung the white cloth partitions, and moved in tiny chairs for everyone to wait on.
Kitty went “plain” with the makeup. A lot of beige. And Raymond dressed everyone, at least the girls, in white bras and skirts and Keds. All the male extras and talent would be shirtless with slacks. Boys were instructed by many a production assistant not to gawk, and girls were instructed not to giggle.
There was something to say about how a man could be seduced and manipulated by just a quick show of boobs, even if those were protected by a thin layer of fabric—in the case of my choice of brassiere, lace. Personally, I liked more of a rounded cup, but this bra was more pointy—take-out-an-eye pointy.
“Does there need to be a point with boobs like this?” Astrid asked.
“The nipple. They’re the point on a bare breast,” I said.
“Good one, Laura,” she said.
She knew my name.
What were the ’50s like? I only understood the ’50s from the perspective of Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi.[58]
“I’m getting sick and tired of Hollywood portraying men as nothing but sexual objects. I know Hollywood does that with women, but that’s different,” said Owen.
“You can’t be serious,” Astrid said. “We’re the eye candy.”
“I wasn’t being serious. I was being ironic.”
“Oh, well, my point still remains,” she said, pulling up her bra strap.
“Point,” Freddy said, laughing.
Astrid mocked them by mimicking them.
There’s something about this decade in movies that has a fascination with women’s boobs. They’re not that special. They hurt when you run. They hurt when you sleep.
In May, I went to the movies with Max. We saw Sixteen Candles.[59] When Samantha stared at Caroline while she took a shower, Max was doing the same thing. Revenge of the Nerds[60] was even worse.
Two years ago, Max and I went to Little Rock with my mom for a day of shopping at University Mall. We went over to the movie theater. Mom went to see An Officer and a Gentleman[61] with a friend, and Max and I were supposed to see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial again, but we snuck in to see Fast Times at Ridgemont High,[62] starring Sean Penn, the greatest stoner of all time. When it got to the Phoebe Cates scene, Max had to leave the theater for a while.
They never showed a guy’s you-know-what. All you ever saw from a guy was his ass. Thank you, Footloose.[63]
After the movie, Max was fascinated by Phoebe Cates. I think he was fascinated by Phoebe Cates’s breasts.
“What a wonderfully structured, detailed, and fleshed-out character Linda Barrett is. She has such a huge screen presence. The actress really is a true find. God bless you, Cameron Crowe,” he said, waiting for my mom in the theater lobby.
“I think you mean the structure, details, and flesh of her boobs?” I said.
“Prude,” he said.
“I’m not a prude,” I said.
A lot of parents did not want their children to participate as extras in this scene. Sure, they had no problem with them participating in the death blast. Priorities. Permission slips were sent home, and only the ones who had it signed were allowed to be filmed. Max’s mom did not agree, so he went home after school. Dana and Kathy were here but decided against it when they were ordered to remove their shirts. Terrence was here, and so were Kevin and Rodney. When a man walked in with a clipboard, checking off his to-do list, he took one look at Rodney and dropped his number two yellow pencil to the ground.
“Oh, nononononono,” he said.
That made three.
Isaiah, Derek, Sam, Marcus, and Latitus walked in without their shirts on.
That made eight.
Deidra, Jessica, Andrea, Elise, and Rachel came in wearing nothing but their bras and skirts.
That made thirteen.
Suddenly I could only imagine Mr. Edman’s head exploding. We were in the South, not an all-white region. What was he expecting?
Eve of Destruction became mainstream pretty fast, and I didn’t really know how they, as in the bigwigs in the “industry,” were going to take it.
“I don’t think Hollywood has seen this many black people since Roots,”[64] joked Deidra to Jessica.
The plan was to intermingle, white-black-white-black-white-black. I bet they wanted to do the entire movie in black and white. A strange problem to have, but it was 1984, and life still hadn’t changed.
“We’re good. We’re good. We’re good,” the director repeated to himself. “This will be good. This will work. We will be fine.”
I didn’t see the problem, but if you’d been to the movie theater recently, you would understand. There hadn’t been a lot of black actors in recent major motion pictures.
“Okay, okay, okay,” the director said. “We need to rehearse.”
Which we did. All of us with no speaking parts just stood in lines and whispered nonsense.
“Shut it, extras. The whispering is hurting my ears,” Astrid screamed. “We’ve done enough practice.”
57
“Ring of Fire” was written by June Carter Cash and Merle Kilgore. It was originally recorded by June’s sister Anita Carter. However, it was most known as a Johnny Cash song that was released in April 1963. It’s a mixture of country and rock and roll.
58
59
A major motion picture that premiered on May 4, 1984. It was directed by John Hughes. It starred Molly Ringwald, Michael Schoeffling, and Anthony Michael Hall.
60
A major motion picture that premiered on July 20, 1984. It was directed by Jeff Kanew. It starred Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards.
61
A major motion picture that premiered on August 13, 1982. It was directed by Taylor Hackford. It starred Richard Gere, Debra Winger, and Louis Gossett Jr.
62
A major motion picture that premiered on August 13, 1982. It was directed by Amy Heckerling. It starred Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Backer, Phoebe Cates, Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Robert Romanus, and Ray Walston.
63
A major motion picture that premiered on February 17, 1984. It was directed by Herbert Ross. It starred Lori Singer, Dianne Wiest, Kevin Bacon, and John Lithgow.
64
A 1977 miniseries based on Alex Haley’s book