Page 22 of Fresh Start
Still tall, but scrawny and fashioning those nineties haircuts that made the youth of today— and me— cringe at the sight of them. Too much gel and not enough styling. Even the face of the boy I used to be didn’t look the same.
He was full of secrets and pain, and no one ever knew. No one would ever know. I’d done a great deal of erasing to get the shit show of my early career out of my mind, and I wasn’t ever going to let anyone know the truth.
I’d been full of ambition, yes, but that ambition, the passion even, had been squashed by one monster. It was a miracle I was still standing, stronger than ever despite what my first agent put me through.
“Come on, let’s get your dad and go out to town,” Mom said and pulled me to the bathroom where Dad was lying on the floor under the bathroom sink with a myriad of tools I was sure he didn’t need to fix the problem.
“Jeff, come on. We’re going for lunch with your son,” she said.
Dad looked up with a confused look.
“Who? What son?” he said and cracked up at his own Dad joke. “Let me tighten this fucking thing, and I’ll get ready. Where should we go? Andy’s or Linda’s?”
“Linda’s. The food at Andy’s is so bad these days. I don’t think my stomach can take it. As much as I love the guy,” Mom told him, and I hated that I didn’t know what they were talking about. That I wasn’t involved in their little sphere that would have sounded so boring any other time but sounded so interesting to me right now.
“All righty then. Linda’s it is,” Dad said and got back to his feet.
And so it was decided, and no more than half an hour later, we were sitting in a teal diner with teal napkins and teal cushions, and I was certain this place was a tearoom and not a restaurant. Until, of course, we got the huge menus that were half the size of the table we were sitting at.
“Oh, God. So many options. I don’t think I’ve had this many options in the last decade,” I said, and Mom stared right at me.
“What on Earth do you eat back home?” she asked.
“It depends. If we’re filming, protein, protein, and a whole lotta protein. If we’re not, I usually eat a balanced diet of burgers, salads, and milkshakes,” I said.
Would I ever admit that in an interview? That was a resounding no.
As members of the studio franchise, we were supposed to promote healthy living. Which was an entire contradiction to my diet prior to and after filming. All the protein and supplements in the world with the least amount of water possible. Gotta make those muscles show, baby.
“Well, that’s not a healthy way to live, now is it?” Mom said.
“Leave him alone, Christine. Dawson is a grown man. He can do what he wants,” Dad snapped at her playfully, but resolutely.
Could I do what I wanted? Most of my life was spent doing what others wanted me to do. Whether that was my agent, my publicist, or the studio, every moment of my life was controlled by someone.
And that was part of the reason why staying with the franchise and doing another dozen movies didn’t appeal to me anymore. I wanted to be free to pick my projects, free to make mistakes and maybe even go behind the cameras on a producer role. Maybe even try directing. I’d picked up more than enough skills from working with all the directors throughout my career.
But I missed doing the indie stuff that was never going to make millions, or billions, at the box office. Doing roles that didn’t involve bulking up and changing my diet to a dangerous level so I could meet someone’s standards on what is considered an attractive level degree of toned.
“What are you doing next, son? What’s on the horizon?” Dad asked.
I shrugged. Wasn’t that the question of the century.
“Not sure yet. The studio wants me to sign on for another eight films, and my agent wants me to do it,” I said.
“What about your personal life? Don’t you want to settle down with a nice girl, have a family?”
Every other time our conversation went to my personal life, it’d been easy to lie and dismiss the question as not something on my mind.
But now, there was an urge inside to tell them who I was and how much I wanted to have a family. With a man. Even if said man was elusive as was my coming out, personal or public.
“Maybe,” was all I managed to say to appease both opposing sides in my head.
My mom put her hand on top of mine on the table and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“You’ll figure it out, baby. You always do,” she said, and before I could answer or ask her for help figuring this shit out, the waitress came over to our table with a teal pen and notebook and took our order.
Thank God.
