Yes, My Accent Is Real Page 8

  That moment shook my confidence. Suddenly I became worried about whether I was overacting. Is this subtle enough? Do I mean it? Up until that point, when I was rehearsing for Ring Around the Moon, Professor Ed never told me to do less. He always told me to do more. He always told me to go for it. And he loved it! I had so much confidence because he allowed me to be funny. This was better for my evolution as an actor and he knew it; there’s a reason he was chair of the department, and not Mr. Wannabe Famous Actor.

  When I look back at that scolding, I will never forget how small it made me feel, and I’m reminded of a very important lesson that I learned that day. If I were ever fortunate to be in a position where someone needed my advice, I would never make him or her feel stupid or small. I would always give them my time.

  The night of the first dress rehearsal had arrived and there was chaos in my brain. Because in the dressing room EVERYONE WAS WALKING AROUND NAKED. As if boobies and peens didn’t matter. Just like that. Girls and guys running around, bouncy boobs, floppy peens, helping each other into costumes. Obviously, I began to have an anxiety attack; I didn’t want to take off my clothes in front of all these people. It was hard enough trying to be accepted; now I had to show them all my hooded peen?

  “Hurry up! Put it on! Here, I’ll help.” One of the costume girls ran over with my butler costume and began helping me out of my clothes.

  I was so nervous. My hands were shaking as I took off my clothes; I was wearing these stupid gray leopard undies that had a little tear on the right butt cheek. They were my brother’s. I hated that I was wearing those; I hated that I had even accepted them when Mom handed them down to me. I changed very quickly. The costume girl could tell I was nervous, and she thought it was because this was my first play. I gladly used that excuse as she helped me into the suit. I thanked her. I let out a deep sigh. “Cute undies, by the way,” she murmured as she walked away.

  Then, as if my heart weren’t already about to burst, the head of the costume department came around the corner and told me that I had to lather white shoe polish all over my hair.

  “Shoe polish in my hair?” I asked, as we all do—repeat a statement as a question when we think it’s absurd.

  “Yes,” she said. “To age you. You look too young.”

  Of course I look too young, shithead. I’m eighteen and my character is sixty-something.

  She tossed me the tube. “Oh, and take off your suit, because you don’t want any of that stuff on the costume.”

  “You want me to take off my suit?” I asked.

  “Yes, always put on makeup before you get into costume.”

  Stupid shit, dude. That meant that I had to undress, sit there in my gray torn underwear, and apply white shoe polish to my hair.

  Then it was showtime. “Five minutes to curtain!” the stage manager yelled. I began pacing back and forth, reciting my lines over and over in my head. My scalp was getting sweaty and white shoe polish began to seep into my eyes. “Are you crying?” a castmate asked. “Yes,” I lied. “I’m just emotional right now,” I said, hiding the fact that a hole was burning through my iris. “Places!” the stage manager bellowed as we huddled behind the curtain, nervously anticipating for it to rise. I heard a large mechanical noise and the curtains began to lift. At first the stage lights, designed to illuminate the actors’ faces, were blinding. It took me a few seconds to focus on the seated audience. The two leads of the play began the scene effortlessly as I (the butler) puttered around in the background fixing drinks. With every laugh I could feel the energy of the audience on my skin. When it was my time to speak, I was surprised at how naturally all of the instincts came to me. All the time put in rehearsal seemed to have paid off, as I, too, began to fall into a very cathartic rhythm. In the second act, my character was supposed to come onto the stage and catch his boss snogging his mistress. The line on the page was “Oh,” as in a very subtle exclamation of surprise from this very well-mannered butler. I, however, was overcome with the sudden desire to yell my line at the top of my lungs. As I let out a very loud “OH!” the audience erupted in laughter; this made my blood rush, as I, unscripted, let out another loud “Oh” and then another, and another, until the audience erupted in applause. I could see the lead actor did not enjoy this much, but I didn’t give two shits, because something in me had changed. I had the whole audience on my side, and I was hooked on that feeling. After the play ended, high on having successfully finished my first performance, I was strutting around the dressing room when Dr. Ed Bowen poked his head in and asked to speak with me. I figured he was going to give me a pat on the back, but instead he said, “I know you trusted your instinct, and that was fine, but next time, can you tone it down a little, please?” This didn’t hurt my feelings in any way. After all, he was the director and he had put it so gently that I understood not to take too much liberty with my lines. What did hurt me was applying white shoe polish to my hair every night over the entire run of the play and crying my way to the opening curtain.

  In the end it was all worth it. I had made a few friends during the course of the play. Not friends that I considered close at the time, but people friendly enough that I could say hi to them when I ran into them during school hours. The play itself, Ring Around the Moon, apparently was a hit. We got good reviews. And despite the overacting of my geriatric 189-year-old butler, we were accepted into the regional finals of the American College Theater Festival (ACTF), which is essentially the World Cup of college theater. We took the play on the road and headed to the fabled place that every actor dreams about, that star-studded city where so many legendary careers have been launched: Boise, Idaho.

  I’d like to tell you about all the fond memories I have of exploring Idaho. Except that I have zero memories of exploring Idaho. We were stuck in the frickin’ hotel for three days, and I stayed in my room and watched TV while the other actors partied together. It was my first trip outside of my college with people that I didn’t know very well. Mostly it was my fault. I was insecure, and a lot of that was from thinking people did not like me because I was different. Which I later discovered was not true. I think it is common for people to do that, to live in a shell protecting themselves from an imaginary enemy.

  Since the end of the play’s run we had done a few extra rehearsals. I had worked out all the kinks in my performance, perfecting my old-man walk. I even played around with a few of my lines, trying to get them to sound more old, or to get more of a laugh out of people. We felt ready. I felt ready.

  We finally performed the play for the judges at ACTF, and when it was over and we took our bows I felt so proud, so elated, like I had achieved something important. After the performance, once the applause faded and the crowd trickled out of the auditorium, we peeled off our costumes and then came back to the stage to receive our “notes” from the panel of “adjudicators.”

  I still had the white shoe polish in my hair. I could feel the sticky goo on my scalp; it was really beginning to harden under all my sweat. I stood with my castmates, shoulder to shoulder, waiting to hear how the judges would score us. I had only the vaguest sense that for the rest of the cast, this was the biggest deal of their lives. If we made it out of regionals then we would advance to the national finals in Washington, D.C., and the seniors and juniors would have a shot at booking a professional job or, better yet, an agent. This could slingshot them to glory. I was just a freshman who was there for shits and giggles, but for my older castmates, this marked the difference between an acting career and no acting career. This was the first time I realized that the stakes in this business can be so incredibly high. I mean, not “curing cancer” high, or “rescuing children from burning buildings” high, but if your play doesn’t advance, or if your pilot isn’t picked up, or if your movie doesn’t get distribution, then suddenly you can’t pay your mortgage, you can’t afford your children’s education, you can’t keep your health care.

  The doors to the auditorium opened. The judges entered. They were o
ld and crusty, these gargoyle-looking men with thick beards and deep, gravelly voices. They looked like they’d just been pried from the stucco walls of the theater, where they’d been affixed for the past hundred years.

  The first adjudicator cleared his throat. “I’d like to begin by discussing the play’s realism.” He looked down at his notes. “As an example, let’s take the case of the butler. Played by . . . COOONEL?” He looked toward me. “It’s like he’s in an entirely different world. Let’s just take one specific moment where COOONEL is surprised by something, and he makes an Ooooohh sound, and then he turns around and says the same thing to the other side of the stage. No one would ever do that.”

  The second judge spoke up. “I had an issue with the way people were talking to each other. Let’s just take, as an example,” he said, flipping through his notes, “KAANAL. I don’t understand why he’s talking louder than everyone else. It just takes me out of this world.”

  The third judge frowned, glancing down at his notes. “I, too, had a problem with the play’s realism. Just as one example . . . COOONEL. I’m sorry to harp on you, but—”

  And so it continued. The judges ripped the play and they shredded me to pieces. We filed out of the auditorium, and no one talked to me about the comments. No one accused me of botching the play, no one said they were upset with me, no one talked to me about my “realism.” This is because no one talked to me, period. I was left alone. Everyone went out and partied and I returned to my hotel room.

  Was I the reason we didn’t advance to the finals? It’s hard to say. Maybe my performance really was so awful that it handicapped our chances. Or maybe the judges hated pretty much everything about the play and I’m only remembering the notes directed at me.

  Over the years I’ve thought about this a lot, and about how, as an actor, there are so many things out of your control. For example, let’s just say you’re an actor and you book your dream TV role. You’re about to show up for your first day of production, and then the executive producer, after googling you, sees that you’re thirty-two but they have cast you as a twenty-three-year-old. This puts a tiny poisonous thought in his head, and he makes a phone call to the studio head. The studio head says, “Who cares, he looks twenty-three and that’s all that counts.” And then the studio head tells his wife about it at dinner while eating sushi, and the wife says, well, maybe the audience will find out that he really is thirty-two and that could lead to teenage girls finding him too old. That tiny poisonous thought has now worked its way from executive producer to studio head to his wife’s head and back into the studio head’s head. And it is not such a tiny thought any longer. So when the studio head goes to sleep that night, he has a dream that the reviews for his new show—his baby—are mostly positive, except the reviews all said the same thing: the actor is thirty-two, and this led to the audience becoming so outraged that they staged a protest and marched upon the studio, leading to the studio head’s downfall and eventual early demise.

  So the next day . . . you’re fired, even though you really were great in the part and do look twenty-three.

  Things have to align themselves so perfectly in our universe for actors to make a paycheck. Maybe this was how my Ring Around the Moon castmates felt—that I was the wild card that cost them their ticket to the finals, that I was the one variable out of their control. I don’t know.

  What I do know is that once those notes finally sank in, once I internalized what had happened, I didn’t feel bad for myself anymore. I didn’t mope. I knew that a great deal of investment and sacrifice had gone into me coming to this country, and I simply just didn’t have the luxury or the time to feel sorry for myself.

  I accepted I was not a good actor.

  And I resolved one thing: I need to get better.

  A Thought Recorded on an Aeroplane Cocktail Napkin

  The Girl I Went to Mass For

  ALLISON WAS STRONGER THAN ME. A really strong girl. Muscular. A jaw like a linebacker. She had calluses on her hands and feet. She played soccer. She wore a cross. She always smiled. And she had eyes that were a shade I had never seen in my life. Gray. Gray eyes. I loved those eyes. I loved those calluses and those triceps. She was nice to me, too. We would take walks on campus in the evening. Sometimes she would wrap my arms in hers. I would later go home alone and . . . you know . . . I was alone. I asked her to be my date to the college dance. It was on a boat. Why are all college socials on boats? I wonder what they do when schools aren’t near a lake or the coast. Hmmm. I borrowed a black jacket from my brother. It was a nice black jacket, way too big for me. He is a few inches taller with broad shoulders, so all his hand-me-downs were like wearing a blanket.

  On the bus to the college dance, Allison and I were sitting together. She was always a close talker. Always. I never minded. Her breath always smelled like mint. We were close talking, and I was telling her about India, and she was so interested in it all. Not “Do you have camels?” interested, more like, “Wow, how many cousins do you have again?” The more we talked the closer her face got to mine. She asked for a mint. I thought I had some in my left pocket, but I didn’t. What I did have in my left pocket was something that my brother had left there “by mistake.”

  “What’s this?” I said, holding it up. A condom. A ninety-nine-cent condom. She was aghast. My mind racing, I searched for the right thing to say, but I think what came out was one big “Uhhhhhh.”

  “What kind of girl do you think I am, Kunal?” (You know you’re in trouble when they use your name.)

  “Um, it’s my brother’s jacket. I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

  “We’re not even dating! How could you think of me like that?” And then she said those dreaded words, “You’re like a brother to me.”

  A brother? A brother? Was she about to tie a Rakhi band on my wrist? What about the close talking? And the loving-India thing? And the asking for a mint? Of course I said none of this. I just apologized. Truth is, it wasn’t my condom. I didn’t actually think I was going to get laid. I just wanted someone to treat me like I wasn’t this weird skinny Indian guy aimlessly navigating his way through social etiquette. Someone to treat me like a person. I had found that person. And her name was Allison. But I pulled out a condom and showed it to her. She went and sat in an empty seat on the bus. I was surprised how upset she was. I mean, seriously, what’s the big deal? So I thought you were beautiful and loved you and wanted to make sweet love to you (apparently). Why create such a fuss? Just accept the apology and move on.

  I sat on the bus contemplating whether to go on the boat with the rest of the group. I tried making an excuse about getting seasick. But the bus driver wouldn’t allow me to sit on the bus during the dance. Some policy about safety, he said. Plus all the guys and their dates were looking at me weirdly. So I just got on that stupid boat, and I went to that dance alone.

  “Would you be willing to go to Mass with me?” Allison asked me a few weeks later. She said that she had prayed about it and that she was willing to forgive me. I thanked her and apologized again. Yes. Of course I would go to Mass with her. I would have climbed Everest naked for her.

  We went to Mass. It was lovely. I find pretty much all religion lovely. After the service, everyone was asked to speak about something positive in their lives. I spoke about this “angel” in my life. About how she had saved me. I made most of it up on the spot but it felt true in the moment. I was on a spiritual high, plus I really wanted her to like me again—friend, brother, lover, whatever she wanted, I just wanted her back. It was a nice way to encapsulate my long-winded apology. After Mass ended, we were allowed to hug everyone. I specifically stole some hugs from a few people so it would work out that we hugged last. And then we did. We hugged, and for me it was the hug of a lifetime. Then, involuntarily, I whispered breathily in her ear, “Finally.” I meant it. It was creepy, but I meant it.

  Allison transferred colleges a year later. Next time she came to town, she seemed different. Everything was differe
nt. I was more acclimated to the United States, more confident, more myself. I took her out for a couple of drinks to catch up. A few drinks turned into more, and some more after that. We ended up making out.

  It was awful. The entire fantasy I’d imagined for so long was replaced with what seemed like two high school students fumbling in the dark. Something just didn’t feel right. We stopped. I looked away, embarrassed. Confused. Was it me? As she gathered her things to leave, she said she was sorry. “Because,” she said, “truth is, Kunal, I’m a lesbian.”

  Apparently throughout the two years we were friends, she was fighting through the confusion, the pain, the . . . whatever you go through when you realize that what your body is telling you is against everything you’ve ever been taught as a child. I thanked her for her honesty. I told her she could call me anytime she needed someone to talk to. This angel. This prophecy. This goddess on a pedestal. She seemed to be exhausted from wrestling with this perceived “sinful sexual orientation,” her religion versus her desire, and I felt bad for her.

  After she left, I went to eat a bacon cheeseburger. It was a really good burger and it made me think about my own religious beliefs. About religion versus desire. Was it right to eat beef when doing so was so completely against everything I was taught as a child? Did that make me a sinner? And if so, should I too be as morally conflicted as Allison? And then it hit me. I just really liked beef. Allison just really liked women. And if God really gave a damn he would have struck us both down with lightning for our sins. You see, in my opinion, God didn’t care if I ate beef, or if Allison ate . . . was a lesbian. He only cared that I tipped the waiter who brought me my burger and that Allison lived a life that made her happy and let her find love. To this day every time I eat a bacon cheeseburger, I think about Allison the Lesbian.