When I'm Calling You-oo-oo-oo
Another crush, another cat
In 1979, I’d abandoned my recently completed degree in ceramics and painting to pursue acting—what I then felt was my one true calling, despite the even longer odds of artistic recognition. And, of course, I also had an enormous crush on the guy I was partnered with in my scene study class. I believe our scene was from Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey, my unreturned library copy still gathering dust on a bookshelf in my mom’s sunporch.
Of medium height and build, the subject of my crush was good looking in a working class way and had a quiet charisma. Which is to say he rarely said a word, but there was something about him. Like every young male actor of his day, he fancied himself the next Marlon Brando—and had little interest in the likes of me. We had one awkward rehearsal before he dropped out of the class, feeling well on his way to his destined stardom because he’d landed some extra work in Walter Hill’s Warriors.
Despite his treating me like a requisite nuisance, I remained impressed, and felt the thrill of a brush with fame when I saw the film—the camera seeming to pause on his face for an infinitesimal moment in its pan of a crowd of hundreds of young men cast as gang members from across the five boroughs of New York. I’d go on to do extra work in several movies myself, which was sometimes fun, but mostly tedious, and never led to anything more.
I doubt I could pick him out now. But seeing his face on the screen, in that wishful era of my early adulthood, had made success seem within my reach. Not as the star, but maybe the funny sidekick. I was determined to get good, while he was determined to get work, and he might’ve had the smarter idea, though I never saw him around, or in anything else, and I certainly don’t remember his name.
The movie, on the other hand, has stuck with me over the years—especially the gang that dresses like zombie baseball players, and the creepy way David Patrick Kelly clinks bottles together and calls out, “Warriors . . . Come out to play-ay-ay.”
My cat, Poppy, likes a good game of pounce and chase, and in the evening, after I’ve settled my mom in bed, I’ll slip into the porch, scratch the cardboard boxes of wet wipes and other caregiving supplies, and softly call, “Warriors . . .” until she sneaks up close. Then I toss her a toy, or pop out myself, making her jump and dash back into her hiding place behind a giant defunct TV in the living room. So, with a jokey reference I’m the sole insider to, I often find myself at dusk, calling out a movie title to my cat, wondering what happened to that guy and if ever made it as an actor.
I wandered around those streets of dreams, terrified of exactly this subway in this movie trailer, walking to my babysitting gigs in SoHo, passing improv classes running scenes outside, keeping my head down between my divorced artist parents houses; my mother so hungry for a place in the arts and struggling with her health while my father grew increasingly worshipped at Brooklyn College. NYC was a place to escape.. from. It’s taken decades to embrace my own creativity. My other reaction to that movie trailer… not a lot of parts for women!
My world was dance (which you already know), auditioning, always with hope of that one break through, but then chosing another path, or more like, paths, "dancing" through the ups and downs of many interesting choices.