#TBT You Make a Grown Girl Cry

Memory Lane Preamble

When I first moved to Chicago, I got cast in a show the first week I was there. I had no professional head shots, but I wangled an audition anyway and booked it. I needed to get photos taken as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I had moved to Chicago with two suitcases and about $100. This sounds like it’s the plot of a Busby Berkeley musical, but it’s true. I was crashing on a friend’s couch until I could find a place. I signed up with a temp agency and started working immediately. I barely knew the L system, but I figured it out. At night, I would go rehearse Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy. Everything was fresh and new and slightly scary. After a couple of weeks I had enough to put down a deposit on an apartment (one tiny room in a dank building that smelled of roach motels and had an old-fashioned elevator with a gate you had to yank open). I had a mattress on the floor (No box springs, no frame), and a pot to cook pasta in. THAT WAS IT. I think I bought a dish rack and a towel at the nearby dollar store. I pulled a picture of Tori Amos out of a magazine and tacked it up on the wall. I lived like that for MONTHS. It was GLORIOUS. I had just come from a relationship that was very possessions-heavy. That boyfriend was older than I was and liked to buy art and consider futon couches and comparison-shop espresso makers and I was into none of that stuff. I’m still not into it. Second-hand bookstores? I’m in. But I just don’t care about THINGS. So it was WONDERFUL to walk into a room that had NOTHING in it.

The first guy I took home with me – since this is not only TBT but TMI – didn’t say a word about the fact that I lived in an empty freaking room with a mattress on the floor. And I was young and wild enough that it didn’t even occur to me to be embarrassed. Or, maybe it was more like: I was so HAPPY I was out of that stifling relationship that was not right for me, that was damaging to me, that it was wonderful to just NOT CARE. I wanted this guy. BAD. So here we are in my empty room. This is me, pal. Let’s get to it. That guy, by the way, ended up being this guy (and this guy, and one last post about him – I’ve written about him a lot) – a HUGELY important person to me. He fucking saved my life. I’m not exaggerating. Our thing went on for years and years and years. Over a decade. It started as a one-night hookup. I know how to pick ’em. The second time he came back to my place was maybe 2 or 3 months later. I still had no furniture. A mattress on the floor. Nothing on the walls. No blinds on the windows. He looked around and said, “I love what you’ve done with the place.” Which, honestly, still makes me laugh.

Meanwhile, though, after TMI comes TBT. I asked my fellow cast members who they recommended for headshots. I got some names. I looked at their pictures. One actor’s headshot was beautiful, I thought. I loved the lighting. The style of headshots now is very natural. People standing outside, laughing. Color photos, too. When I was coming up, it was strictly black and white only, and I remember when suddenly it was “okay” to get color headshots. It felt WRONG. Daring! But anyway, I liked the look of these particular photographs so I called up the photographer. We booked a time. I was told to bring a bunch of outfits and show up at his studio space which was in a warehouse south of the Loop. Which sounds super sketchy, but I was already in an acting class that took place in a warehouse in that area. Lots of art studios and dance studios in these big echoing old buildings.

I showed up with the few clothes I had for the photo shoot. A nice blazer. Black pants. A fitted shirt. He had his makeup girl there who did me up, and then we had our photo session. We took a bunch of pictures, of me in my nice little actress outfits I had brought.

I had walked into the studio though wearing black jeans, big chunky Doc Martens, and my leather motorcycle jacket. Which I still have. My hair was flaming red and long and wild. That was what I looked like when I introduced myself to the photographer.

After the session I was putting my stuff together and he said, “Would you be open to experimenting a little bit?” (I realize that this could have been my “Coco from Fame” story, but no it didn’t turn out that way. I did have one of those the following year! And when I told that guy up above – the one who said “I love what you’ve done with the place” – that I answered an ad and then found myself in a sketchy situation and couldn’t get out of it – he was so upset that he got MAD at me for my poor judgment. And he was right. I walked out of there like, “Holy shit, how did I let myself get into that? You’re smarter than this, Sheila!!”)

Anyway, the photographer went on to say that there was something about me in the biker’s jacket and the big hair he wanted to explore. I said, “Sure!” without even thinking. I’m lucky I wasn’t sold into a sex ring. Because I woulda gone.

What he wanted me to do, it turns out, was roll around on the floor, sobbing, mascara streaking down my face. I don’t know why he wanted me to do this. Maybe it was the contrast with the biker-girl exterior. I have since wondered – considering all of my problems later – if he sensed something … underneath all that armor, and the professional nice-girl actress smile I had been giving him. Maybe not. Who knows. I asked no questions. It sounded like it would be a blast and also like it would look really cool.

He had the lights turned down really low, and created a pool of hot light for me to roll around in. His makeup girl dripped liquid on my lashes so the mascara started to streak. (We had to do that repeatedly since the tears dried immediately under the hot lights.) I can’t remember what music he played. Something rocking. Black Sabbath or Nirvana or something like that. And I started crying and he started shooting. Sometimes the fake crying would become real crying – you try fake crying for an hour and a half and not have it turn into real crying at least once. Your muscles remember! He LOVED it when that happened, when the real sobs started coming. He didn’t want gentle dripping sentimental actress tears. He wanted me out of my MIND.

He’d yell: “CRY! Really sob now!” And I’d burst into huge “Wahhhh” sobs and he’d shout, “That’s right! Yes!” (It seems, in retrospect, that it can’t have gone down this way. But it did.) He was crawling all over me, crouching over me pointing the camera down, shouting, “GOOD! THAT’S IT!” as I wailed.

It feels like at any moment this story could have gone so so wrong. But it didn’t. Nobody was drinking.

A week or so later, I went to pick up my headshot contact sheets at his studio and he had blown up one of the crying shots (the first one below) HUGE, it took up a wall, and hung it in his receptionist’s area. I was kind of proud of that. I had been in Chicago two months.

He could have wanted me to take off my clothes. And honestly, I probably would have done it. And never felt bad about it. He could have wanted to put me in a ballgown and smoke a cigarette. Or put on a French maid’s costume. Whatever. There are so many ideas. But for whatever reason …

He just wanted to see the red headed girl in leather cry. So I did what he asked.

Sorry for the pixellated images.