You Saw Me In My Old Movie

Back when I was an actor.

Granted, I was typecast early as a monster.  But I told myself, "Monsters are like the romantic leads of monster movies."  & everyone wanted at least one tooth of mine, & I could grow them back, so I gave them away.

"You gave away all your teeth?" you asked me.  I would've smiled at you, but they hadn't grown back yet.  & my grin is, well, monstrous.

Let me tell you about the movie you saw: it was filmed not in a lake, but on a movie set.  There was a giant pool, about twenty feet deep, which was filled with very cold water.  One of the production assistants warned me that many, many famous actors who had done movies there had quite possibly urinated in that pool.  "Don't they change the water?" I asked & she laughed at me.

In those days I had an almost religious aversion to swimming.  Swimming & advertisements.  Somehow they went together in my head, like asthma & smoking, or corduroys & tattoos.  In my monster wetsuit, I almost drowned so many times the insurance people yelled at the producers who in turn fired the director, who called me later that night in drunken tears telling me he no longer had the will to live.

Could I have fought for a better film?  You said you were mildly amused by it, & people can't say that about every film.  This was in the days before CGI, mind you.  Possibly in the days before make-up, although don't quote me on that.  Was there a green screen?  I remember everyone getting gift bags with squeaky rubber duckies in them, as if the giant pool where many actors (myself, now, included) went "number one" in was actually a mammoth bathtub.  The gift bag did not, unfortunately, contain soap & a scrub brush.

Were you interviewing me for a magazine article?  Or for a job?  These days I am not entirely sure where I am, where I'm going, & nor why I'm there.  It's like my mother used to say, "The teeth will one day get slower in the growing back, & may one day never grow back at all."  One cold winter evening I spent on the internet once seeing where my teeth had ended up.  Some - it turns out - didn't even seem to come from a monster at all!

Anyway, I occasionally go to those shows where I sign pictures of myself for a few bucks & get my picture taken with people who claim to be my fans.  They sometimes dress up as me from some movie or another.  Some of them seem to be versions of me I lost along the way, or have emerged from an alternate reality by falling through a hole in the universe.  Some seem like friends, others like nurses carrying me from one giant white machine to another - "more tests!" they say cheerfully.  I sign whatever they put in front of me.

One more thing about the movie you saw: I don't believe I was actually in it.  It's hard to tell, because of the mask the monster wore, but you'd think I'd recognize my own body, even covered in a monster wetsuit.  It just doesn't seem like my body, you know?  & I've lived with that for my entire life.

You didn't stay long, which is fine.  I was actually just about ready to smile wide - a mouth full of new teeth! - when you left.  I saw you take a bus to an airplane which flew to a boat.  Did the harbor look like a giant pool in a movie studio with water unchanged for decades?  Naw, it was too small.  The world, it turns out, is much smaller than a movie studio, which, truth be told, goes on forever.

They've invited me to a retrospective of my works, & I'm ashamed to admit I'm not in any of them.  There's free food, & a hotel room, & perhaps a panel I must sit on with other old people like myself.  I have started to lie - did I tell you? - I've started to just say the first thing that pops into my head about the movies they think I've made.  A story here about a helicopter which refused to sing.  A story there about the ingenue who chewed tobacco (she's no longer with us, she can't complain or disagree).  Another story about getting rabies from rabbits while in a massive meadow.  Or were they extras dressed up as rabbits?  The audience laughs & laughs.

There was also that one time I thought I saw you in the back of one of these film festivals.  My eyesight is not so good, & earlier that day I'd given away my very last tooth to a fan who was a quarter my age.  I would have wanted to give it to you, had I known you were there.  Then I would've confessed to being a fraud, but I suspect you already knew.

Anyway, that wasn't me in the monster movie.  I was just the monster the movie reminded you of.