Bill Dawes - November 30, 2006

You ever have one of those events in your life where the tortured reminiscence of it sends you into a mini-cardiac arrest? Where just a millisecond of the memory instantaneously makes you contemplate guzzling Drano?

Sometimes, these latent recollections surprise attack me like id ninjas. I'll be having a pleasant conversation with a friend about a random subject (say, the deliciousness of butternut squash soup), and something my friend says will set off a fission reaction of sensory cells that will unlock some Vietnam-style PTSD flashback of embarrassment which will, in turn, make me spasm and shout "OH MY FUCKING GOD!" like a tourettes victim. My startled friend will look up from his tablespoon of creamy puree and say, "What the fuck happened?"

I will timidly respond, "Oh...nothing."

I want to blame my ADD, since it contributes to my inability to pay attention to people when they aren't talking specifically about me. Unless I hear my name in the conversation, I tend to stare intently at the most obvious flaw in the speaker's face and subsequently zone out. Quite often, this leads to a never-ending game of free association inside my head. Seemingly unrelated thoughts bounce off each other and end up inadvertently burrowing their way into the tunnel where the tortured memory resides; the hibernating recollection roars into my consciousness; and a pained "Why the fuck did I do that!!" might erupt from my mouth, surprising both me and the weirdie-face I'm pretending to listen to.

Unfortunately, I don't think ADD is the real culprit. I think I just happen to say and do a lot of dumb shit in my life and my brain thinks it's funny to remind me of that fact. Constantly. While I've stuffed most of my personal archive of embarrassment so far back into the dark folds of my cerebellum that I can traipse through life tricking myself into believing I'm not an insufferable idiot, these PTSD outbreaks happen often enough that I know the real truth.

They're like a herpes virus, in that they break out roughly once a month and they will never, ever, go away. Unfortunately, Valtrex doesn't work on memory. If it did, I would take it SOLELY to erase this one...

My first professional play was a Broadway show called Sex and Longing, starring Sigourney Weaver (yes, in order for you to appreciate the depths of my shame, I'm dropping names and risking defamation suits). I got the part because Sigourney saw me in a show directed by her husband, Jim Simpson, and liked my performance. She approached me backstage afterwards and basically said, "Wanna do my show on Broadway?"

Excited, I told a girl from the cast what Sigourney said after she'd left. The evil bitch surreptitiously cautioned me that she noticed Sigourney "checking (me) out during the play." Evil Bitch then joked that Sigourney spent a lot of time digging on my tight, striped pantaloons (hey, it was Comedia del Arte - pantaloons and codpieces are par for the course). I told the girl she was "retarded," BUT, in the recesses of my skull, the tiny seed germinated that Sigourney Weaver wanted to make sweet love to me.

"Sex and Longing" was a comedy/tragedy/epic/political satire clusterfuck that aspired to be "Angels in America," but ended up being closer to "Abortions in a Clinic." It was deepthroatingly ™ terrible: the themes were all over the place, it was more than 3 ½ hours long, Sigourney hadn't been on a stage in 15 years, and the director died of cancer during the run. It was not the kind of Broadway premiere anyone involved was hoping for, to say the least.

Sigourney played a nymphomaniac, which doesn't MEAN anything, per se, except that it added another layer to my building confusion about Sigourney's motives for bringing me in. All these elements created an atmosphere surrounding the production that was a weird combination of charged sexual energy and morbid depression. It was like being in a strip club before noon.

If there was anything positive to be taken from this debacle, it should have been the opportunity I had to work along side Sigourney and learn from her; maybe get to know her. Of course we never hung out after work, and I never pushed it. I was far too shy and starstruck to even approach her or say an audible "hey" while passing in the Cort Theatre stairwell.

I was 23 years old then and, like most guys my age, I'd jerked off to her in Alien at least three dozen times since its release to VHS. Come on! That scene where the droolly Alien mouths come after her and she's in her skimpy cheese cloth tank top and pristine white panties, supinated against the back of the closet!? Oops, I just nutted.

One night in October, I walked out of the stage door after a show and Sigourney popped her head out of her car window, "Hey Bill, you wanna grab a bite to eat?"

Gulp!

I got in the limo and the driver happened to be a guy from my acting class. I happened to like him so I was unable to derive any puerile joy from sitting on the other side of the privacy glass, which sucked. His name is Steve Ramshur and he's a mensch - wife, children, "worked" for his money, you know, all that stupid shit people do in the real world.

I talked to Steve while he drove us. I was polite but brief. After all, one musn't get too friendly with the "help."
Steve drove us to a little secluded French bistro tucked away somewhere on the Upper East Side.

This bistro would soon be my doom.

I was nervous as shit when we sat down at the tiny, candlelit table in the back of the nearly empty restaurant. I had no idea what to say. I think I even mentioned how uncharacteristically warm the weather was for Fall. I was clueless. So I did what I had always done when stuck in these situations -- I drank like a good Irishman, the way me poor mudder taught me.

For the record, I'm not an alcoholic, but I do rely on alcohol's lubricant properties whenever I'm uncomfortable or want to speak to someone.

At some point, the Chablis started getting good to me and the nervousness melted away. As the veil of self-doubt and unease correspondingly lifted, I started entertaining the previously forgotten notion that Sigourney Weaver wanted to get into my striped pantaloons. .

One little devil sat on my left shoulder and whispered: "Dude, she asked you 'Do you wanna grab a bite to eat?' She wants it!" On my right shoulder, another little devil agreed: "Dude, that devil's right! She may as well have grabbed your cock and demanded that you cornhole her in the town car!"

Just then an angel appeared over my head and said, "Guys, WHENEVER a woman speaks to Bill, it means she wants to fuck him, right?"

On second thought, that was also probably a devil.

My angels always seem to bail out at the most inopportune times.

Yes, she was married! No, she never insinuated a thing! But, in my deluded and
didn't-get-enough-attention-as-a-child psyche, I became convinced that Sigourney Weaver was making a move. Listen: I had always heard that famous people chronically cheated or had "open relationships." Plus I was, like, a young stud or something! Why wouldn't she want some of my creamy deliciousness?

In essence, I was beer-goggling MYSELF.

Now you're probably sitting there wondering: Why, Bill, why?

Good question. Answer: I need therapy.

I started thinking that an opportunity like this doesn't come along very often so I needed a plan. My plan? My plan was to have another caraffe or two of the ol' beeno and get my flirt on.

Through the fog of crappy table wine, I noticed that Sigourney was talking to me about her daughter, Charlotte. Apparently, some teachers at Charlotte's school wanted to put her on ADD medication and Sigourney, as an extremely diligent mother, was weighing her options. I told her that I had ADD as a kid and that my parents were strongly urged to put me on ritalin but decided against it, and "hey, look how well I turned out!" Ironically, I was only half paying attention to her very real "life" problems because I was obsessing on her jaw, and how her right jawbone was bigger than her left one. I was also wondering how I could best get her pants off.

At one point, Sigourney started talking about relationships. She mentioned something about how her husband "wasn't the same man" she married. (That's a fucking exact quote -- try to sue me!) Now I didn't know what the fuck that shit meant, but I figured that was my "in." I decided to get all Freshman-year-in-college-stoned-on-a-couch philosophical with her.

With my head cocked back and the wine swirling lazy circles in my glass, I said:

"Yeah, I admire you, though... getting married... How are you able to handle staying monogamous?"

OH MY FUCKING GOD!

That ALREADY makes me want to vomit in embarrassment. What the fuck was I doing? What a retarded thing to ask a rich, famous, married woman!!!

Sigourney stiffened and clearly wanted to flee the room. Fragments of that image float around in my mind like shards of glass as I type this. With that one sentence, I lost a friend. This talented woman wanted to mentor me and help my career and take me under her wing WITH her husband! And I asked her, "How can you be monogamous?" What a dick!

Very gracefully, she answered: "I've always been very monogamous."

Well played, O Alien Defeater! I tested the waters and she made her position crystal clear. Time to stop, retreat, and go back to talking about her retard offspring, whatever her name was. I had already made a fool of myself.

But guess what, kids? I'm not done.

Somehow oblivious to the fact that Sigourney was now crawling out of her skin, I pushed on:

"Yeah... It's hard for me... monogamy... I've recently been into the idea of "sexual potential?".... Heard of it?"

Sigourney shook her head, mortified.

"Yeah... it's this philosophy that Jack Nicholson follows... about achieving happiness through reaching your sexual potential."

Now, I didn't have a tape recorder, so I can't say that was what I said VERBATIM, but that's pretty fucking close. I know this because my stomach is in my throat and I hate myself right now.

The phrase "sexual potential" actually came out of my mouth and I name-dropped "Jack Nicholson" to Sigourney Weaver while she was trying to talk to me about the health and welfare of her one and only child. What the smelly balls of St. Peter was I even talking about????

If someone has said something dumber in their lifetime, I will eat a crispy bucket of shit. Okay, it may not be Michael Richards "nigger-thon" bad, but it's pretty fucking bad.

Sigourney's next words sum up both the entire evening and my first "date" with a celebrity: "Could I have the check, please?"

I stumbled out of there, drunk out of my slobbering gourd. I guess I was going to have to reach my "sexual potential" with somebody else (my hand, more likely).

We shared a cold and quiet ride back to Sigourney's apartment building. She got out of the limo and told Steve to take me anywhere I wanted to go in the city.

As we drove down 2nd avenue to my rented room in the East Village, the true impact of the night and my words attacked my wine-addled conscience in staccato stabs of self-hatred. I had just ruined a potentially great mentorship because some conniving slut persuaded me that Sigourney Weaver wanted to get down my clown suit. Even worse, I did it by extolling the virtues of the "sexual potential" philosophy so artfully practiced by my buddy "Jack Nicholson." Re-reading this makes me want to get a labotomy STAT!

Needless to say, Sigourney distanced herself from me after that night. I don't know if she deliberately avoided me in the theater, but she never asked me out for a "bite to eat" again, and she didn't keep in touch like she promised. Although she'd previously mentioned on more than one occasion during the short run of that goofy play about being my "mentor" and trying to help my career, I never even got a mass email from her after it was all over.

Somewhere in my mind, I always entertained the hope that Sigourney didn't really hear me or that she forgave me because she knew I was a babbling drunk at the time.

However, a few years later, I saw Sigourney with her husband, Jim, and some friends walking past Lincoln Center. Jim was lagging behind, so I went up to him and offered a warm "hello." His look told me, instantaneously, all that I needed to know. Being a consummate professional, he smiled and acted gracious, but deep down, I could see an amalgam of pity and hatred seeping through his steely blue eyes. It wasn't lost on me that he made no effort to alert Sigourney to my presence a mere ten feet behind her.

Jim cut the stilted conversation short and firmly shook my hand goodbye. I clumsily muttered, "Say hi to Sigourney for me." He responded silently with a bemused look that seemed to say, "That'll do, pig. That'll do." I hung my head, turned, and shuffled away into the humid New York night.

POSTSCRIPT
It is my hope that, after writing this, I can now talk to a friend about movies starring Jack Nicholson without randomly shouting out, "Oh my fucking God!" At the very least, when those words do spring from my head, I hope they relate to the fact that he looks like an over-stuffed taxidermied corpse in all his new movies and not that his philosophy of sexual potential submarined what could have been a very meaningful and platonic relationship. Thanks a lot Jack. I hope Kobe blows out his knee again! GO CLIPPERS!

Posted by Bill Dawes at 10:59 PM