A Very Special Coming
of Age:
The Fifteen-Year
Walking home one Friday morning after
a discrete math exam, I heard a “now there’s a sight I haven’t seen in a
while,” seemingly vectored at me. I look
up to see Steve, my flim/theatre director friend that I haven’t seen since I
saw him outside of the Boro Bar last Homecoming. We sat around the whole of freshman year
planning ideas for zombie movies and slasher flicks, daydreaming of the days
when we could afford digital equipment.
“Likewise,” I tell him. We’ve lost touch since sophomore year, though
there was no real reason for it. Nonetheless, we still kept a good rapport and
talked to each other once in a while via instant messenger. I looked him up on the Internet Movie Database
a while back, just from morbid curiosity. He’s made two films in the last five months,
which isn’t surprising with his fare. He
was telling me that he was going to be in town for a few months, making his new
film.
He asked me if I was still in
karate. We used to have battles in the
dorms, he with his katana, and me with the sai. I told him I was, and he was intrigued by
this. He told me he was trying something
new, a martial arts movie a la Kung-Fu Theatre. He could make cheesy horror until the end of
time, but he wanted to diversify, and there’s already too much bottom-shelf
science-fiction in the world, he’d just get lost in the crowd.
Nonetheless, he asked me for my
help.
I don’t
know why he needed me. He had some
martial arts experience, having studied some kung fu and a year of kendo. He’s
done most of his own fight choreography in the past, but his request made sense.
He found a handful of quality actors,
ones that weren’t prima donnas or “people of weight,” as Mike’s bitchy ex-girlfriend
would call them, feigning tact. Although
they were in good physical shape, they required training well beyond fight
choreography. They needed a crash
course, and everyone training actors charged outrageous rates, or were complete
idiots. Just because you sell video
tapes out of a magazine doesn’t mean you can fight -- it just means you can
reach out to people with low self-esteem, and then gouge forty bucks out from
them. He didn’t want to have his people
watch how good somebody else was, he needed quality and he didn’t have lots of
time. It wasn’t going to be an easy
task, but spring break was coming up, and I told him I would make his people my
project. Call it a favor. Maybe he can repay me someday, produce
something I write and maybe send some residual checks my way. I could always go for some random, extra
income.
Once spring
break rolled around, I called up the Goshin-Jutsu Death Squad, and we headed to
our secret underground lair, the disused basement of Dearborn Hall. Steve managed to assemble a really descent
crew. They all listened, which doesn’t
seem like a lot to ask, but it really is. They all wanted to learn, and learn they did.
All were new faces, save one. I didn’t recognize her at first -- she looked so
different without her large, damaged hair. She’d aged since I saw her last,
though the years had been quite kind to her. It must have been rude, not saying anything to
her -- treating her like a stranger -- how could I? Not to her...especially her! This wasn’t anyone we were talking about. This...
this... this was Michelle.
See, in 1989, right when the then-fledging
Fox network was trying to get off the ground, I starred in one of their many
low-budget sitcoms. It was called Coming of Age. We used the Damn Yankees song as our opening
theme, because they were King Shit at the time. Coming of Age was kind
of like Blossom, but only with second-rate plots -- I swear to God we got
the Degrassi Junior High runoff -- and it had low production values that
gave it a campy, cheesy My Two Dads ambiance.
Michelle played Annie Parker, a
down-to-earth high school girl who lived with her overprotective divorced
mother in her
The scripts were fairly
algorithmic. I would get a new job, and
come over and announce it to the neighbors, make a few smart remarks, then
leave. Annie’s mom would then shake her
head, go on about how much she hates me, and then engages in a conversation
with Annie that would set up the central dilemma, typically attracting boys or
trying to fit in, two things that Annie never did well. She spent the episode wallowing about in doubt
and self-pity, afraid of being berated by her domineering mother. She then goes
next door to see down-to-earth Frankie, the only person in whom she can
confide. I’d then cheer her up with my
kooky antics, then give her valuable, though comical advice, which would lead
her to her goals, in a roundabout way. However, there would also be a strange
twist of fate that would cause me to lose my job, returning us to the status quo
for next week. It wasn’t much, but in
the early days of the Fox network experimentation was key, and it was quite possible
for a chinsy show like mine to claw its way up to become the next Charles in
Charge.
The original order was for a
half-season of thirteen episodes, because Fox was in need of a mid-season
replacement. After the initial contractual obligation, Fox decided not to renew
us. Although none of us thought much of
the show, we were all saddened by its cancellation. That role was the best acting job I ever had. You might laugh, but you’ve never stood in
line for three hours to apply for a day’s work in a commercial. I left show
business shortly after that. Michelle
and I wrote and called each other frequently, but time and distance took its
toll. Due to the show’s short run, syndication
was impractical, and I’ve yet to see a residual check. All I was left with was a story that I’d never
own up to and happy memories of time spent with Michelle.
After about
four hours of instruction, we decided to call it a day. They accomplished a lot, be we need to work
harder for the technique to look crisp. That’s
all right though. I have all week. Steve, Michelle and the rest were about to all
go there separate ways before we informed them about the eating component to
martial training.
You just
don’t work out and go home, that’s silliness. The default after-karate eatery is Valerio’s,
a local chain of quaint Italian restaurants. However, Steve’s people already ate there once
today, for lunch. We eventually decided
on Ocean Buffet, the relatively new Chinese restaurant. It seemed appropriate because you can get
copious amounts of high-quality food in a clean atmosphere. Clean is very important in Chinese
restaurants. Not to mention we were
talking about chopsticks as weapons not a half-hour earlier. We had to get some to demonstrate for Steve,
since he found the idea to be novel and wanted to work it into his film.
Most of the female persuasion is
appalled by my grotesque eating habits. Not
Michelle. She was quite accustomed to
this, amused by it, comforted by it. It’s
good to know there are constants in the universe. A popular flaw with humanity is that when you
don’t see someone for a while, you expect them to be the same person they were
back then. It’s impossible. People change with time. Old cells die, and are removed by the body and
replaced by new cells. Whoever I was
back then, is gone, literally shitted away years ago. But somehow, despite physiological and mental changes,
something remains. Some things cannot be
changed, and that’s what leads people to the erroneous conclusion that if these
little things stay, other traits do as well. I knew her well enough to know that she didn’t
mind that I paid exactly as much attention to food as I did to her. In fact, exactly as much, eating with my right
hand, and playing with her hair with the left. For the record, she wasn’t any better, now or
ever, eating with her left hand and wrapping her right arm around me, just like
old times.
“Man, the
food is great here!” comments Michelle.
“Yeah, the
service is great too,” I tell her.
I pick up
the little bell sitting on the table, and ring it daintily. Instantly, the chef, going way out of his way,
kicks the kitchen door open to serve us fresh, hot food. The cook happened to be none other than veteran
character actor Bolo Yeung, dressed head-to-toe in a suit of bloody rabbit
skins, making him look like a Chinese caveman. He holds a wok load of piping hot General
Tso’s Chicken between his forearms. He leers
over me, almost enjoying the pain, as the hot wok slowly burns the image of a
tiger onto one of his forearms, and a dragon onto the other.
“Bah!” shouts Bolo as he dumps the chicken on to my
plate. I took a bite, and then Michelle kept nudging me to get my attention.
“They’re playing our song Ryan...”
We all fell silent for a second, to
hear “Coming of Age,” by Damn Yankees over the Muzak. I turn to her and speak.
“Aww... your
right Michelle...”
“Ok, why on
Earth would this be your song?” inquired
Mike Zielinski.
“Who is this person?” asks a puzzled, confused, and disturbed Joe
Johnson.
“Yeah Coons, are you holdin’ out on
us again?” asked Sensei Otero.
“It was out theme so--” Michelle
tried to explain, but before she had a chance to finish, I stuffed an entire
eggroll into her mouth to keep her quiet. Mike laughed. Joe buried his head in the crook of his elbow,
and rocked himself with laughter. Sensei
just shook his head. We ate, and joked,
and lost track of the time, until the manager came.
“You leave now! You be here four hour! We make no money! You go!” he screamed.
“Hey, the sign said all you can
eat, $7.95... and I’m still eating...” I explain, with a smile. One of my goals in life was to get kick out of
a Chinese restaurant for eating too much, and now I have my wish. Now I just have to get into a swordfight, and
then backflip onto a table and go “Ha-ha!”, own a car just like KITT from Knight
Rider, and to eat a whole goddamn chicken in one sitting. Then my life will be complete. The manager
stopped me from pleading my case.
“It ten! We close! You leave, or we call police!” he shouts, as we waddle to the door, filled to
the gills. After a few minutes of
standing around in the parking lot, figuring out what we wanted to do, Michelle
and I decide to break from the group, and go back to my dorm room. I may have been ditching my friends, but I’d
been too long since I’ve seen Michelle. Besides, I can always play Dynasty
Warriors 3 in Joe’s basement some other time.
Michelle and I spent the rest of
the evening sprawled out on my improvised king-size bed, made from the dual
twin beds that came with my dorm room. There
we lay, clad only in our undergarments, as a vain attempt to escape the
humidity of late spring as it grows into a muggy summer. Michelle laid her head down on my bare chest,
listening to my heart, running her fingers through my wooly chest hair
because... y’know... I don’t know why the hell she did that. She was the only one. We talked softly in the
darkness until the sun rose.
Well,
except for right now. There’s ten
minutes of pause in every conversation. We
enjoyed the silence, without Depeche Mode telling us to do so, even though they
were in the stereo across the room.
“Hey Michelle?”
“Yeah
Ryan?”
“When you
woke up today, did you think your day was goin’ to end like this?”
She chuckles.
“There’s a lot of things that I
never could have imagined about today.”
“Oh?” I ask, even though it’s not much of a
question.
“I dunno. I never could’ve imagined you as being a mathematician.”
she tells me.
“I couldn’t picture myself living
in LA.” I reply confusing her. I elaborate. “I couldn’t find meaningful work.”
“What-ever...” she tells me in her
annoying west-coast tone, before continuing. “How can you even say something like that? You
were on Miami Vice!”
“Michelle, I played a corpse on Miami
Vice.”
“I know! You were on Miami Vice.’
“I laid on the floor, covered in a bloody
sheet. No one saw my face.”
“I was never on
“I was just a nobody with a SAG
card, and though that’s what a lot of people want to be, I didn’t want to spend
my life as a make-believe corpse. I
mean, look at Philip Michael Thomas. No
one gives a fuck about Philip Michael Thomas... and he was one-a the fuckin’
stars of
Michelle tried to hide the fact she
was bothered by what I said, and almost got away with it. She made her living off of acting, and could
hide her feelings from me. We spent too
much time together, both on the set of my bachelor apartment, and in my real
bachelor apartment for that to work. The
set was far nicer, even though it only had three walls and no roof. She always knew Frankie Bubbazanetti was
make-believe, but now she had to come to terms that the Ryan Coons she knew is
a fantasy as well.
Tension filled the room. Tension and silence.
“Blargh-doo-wah-glarg-so-gwa-gwa-gwa
gwa...” said her colon.
“I can’t believe I spent four hours
at a
We chuckled.
“Wait, I thought Ocean Buffet was
only open until
“No... the
manager threw us out at ten,” she states.
This is when I realized it was a
dream. It’s funny though, because I
should have caught on earlier. After
all, I was never a sitcom actor. Also, I
was twenty-three in 1989, and twenty-three in 2004. The show aired in ’89, a year before the band
Damn Yankees released our theme song on their self-titled album. Though I’ve
kicked the idea around, I never actively pursued becoming a mathematician. And the part with Bolo, I guess that was
pretty weird too. But the only thing I
had telling me that it was a dream was that the Chinese restaurant had the
wrong hours.
What does this say about the
author?
I looked at her, and she looks bad
at me with a sad concern. She knows I
realized the truth. Though we were angry
a minute ago, it doesn’t matter. We held
each other tight, because we both knew that she, her films, and her world would
soon cease to exist. All we had was each
other, and the joy, the love, and the memory thereof.
Since I eventually woke, we don’t even have that now.