“That’s you?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re different in this.I mean, from how you are now.”
“It’s called acting.”
“I know, but it’s like I’m watching a completely different person who happens to look like you.”
“Again, acting.”
“Your hair’s longer in this.”
“Director’s orders.”
In the movie, his hair hung in his face, and he was peering through it, and he had that smile, the same one he’d given me at Tim Hortons when he’d told me I had five minutes to finish my bagel.
“Your hair looks...good longer.”Geez.How did that sound when I said it out loud?
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
His character and the drug dealer guy were flirting with each other.Drug dealer guy was a lot slicker than I was.Then all of a sudden the drug dealer kissed him against the crisscross railing of the Queen Street Bridge.I felt super uncomfortable.
“How old were you?”I said.
“Nineteen.”
Which, I guess, made it legal, but it still bothered me.
Then, not too much further into the film, I found out why it was rated NC-17.They were in a warehouse where his character had a sleeping bag spread out, and it was dimly lit, and they weren’t naked, but it was pretty obvious what they were doing.
When you see another aspect of someone you know, an aspect they haven’t let you see but maybe will...It was scary but exciting.I felt like I should look away out of respect, but I couldn’t.I untucked my T-shirt and tugged it down over my lap, trying to seem casual about it.
It was super awkward.I didn’t know what to say.
When the film ended, he took the disk out of the machine and put it back in its case.I still didn’t know what to say, so I suggested we work on the model Avro Vulcan I got for my birthday.He had steady hands, so I figured he might be good at model building.We sat on opposite sides of my dining table.When I started focusing on gluing the pieces in, I calmed down because I had something I could control.
Hewasgood at it.He was so careful that I let him put the pilot into the cockpit.
“I felt bad for you,” I said.
“About what?”He was still holding the tweezers, positioning the tiny pilot.
“You were being exploited.”
“How?”
“What they made you do on camera.Sure, you didn’t take your clothes off.But what you did was private.”
“It was work.I got paid.”
“That makes it worse.”
“How?”He put down the tweezers.
“It’s like being a sex worker, isn’t it?”I was angry with the director but also, kind of, with Eddie.Maybe that awkward feeling earlier was me getting angry.
“The character I played wasn’t a sex worker.He was a kid living on the street.”
