Chapter 1
The day before I was scheduled to fly to Los Angeles to see Andy Warhol Never Gets Old, my publicist, Ellen, asked to meet me at a cafe for lunch.
Ellen, along with Juniper and Studio Todd, was in New York for a media lunch launching the movie.
I wasn’t invited to the lunch because I hadn’t yet gotten my media training, and apparently Hollywood does not trust an unvetted actor.
The cafe, three stops on the C train from my apartment in Brooklyn, was mostly empty except for a few people wearing AirPods and hunched over laptops.
As I ordered my coffee and a croissant, I noticed Ellen was already there, seated in the back corner beneath a painting of the night sky.
I pulled up a chair. “You realize I’m not your publicist, right? ” she said by way of introduction.
I did not realize this. “Okay?” I said.
“I am your publicist for this project, but I work for the studio. Like if I were a lawyer, I wouldn’t be your lawyer.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Right, so the studio is considering you for the junket,” she said. “This would be a big deal. If I were your publicist, I’d be very excited about it.”
“Which you are not.”
“Which I am not. You’d be paired in interviews with Juniper, and you’d talk to a variety of media outlets in a variety of settings.
Televised interviews with local morning shows around the country.
Maybe some national talk show hits if we’re lucky.
And also some proper junketing, where every seven minutes for several hours, a reporter comes into a windowless hotel conference room and asks you questions on camera.
It’s a tedious process. No one particularly enjoys it.
But you must concentrate, because any mistake can be catastrophic.
You’ll recall, for instance, when Charles Oldham said the R-word. ”
“I feel like it’s pretty easy not to use slurs,” I said.
“Great, that actually makes you better than most movie stars. So, right, then you’ll also do roundtable interviews with reporters from print and online.
Seven or eight people with tape recorders gathered at a table, and they’ll ask you questions and you’ll answer.
And then we’ll do some photo shoots and hopefully one or two big profiles, if we can get them, where a reporter spends a day or two with you and writes about what a genius you are, unless you’re not careful and say something stupid or act like an asshole.
So. Tell me about how you prepared for this role. ”
“I met with Kathryn and we talked about—”
“No. Did you even read the talking points?” I nodded unconvincingly, and Ellen rolled her eyes as she continued.
“I don’t know who Kathryn is. I’m not a film person.
I’m a thirty-seven-year-old divorced father of two living in the suburbs of Chicago.
What you did was dive headfirst into the life of Andy Warhol, beginning by reading his diaries. ”
“Well, I listened to the audiobook.”
“That’s reading, Kai. So yes, you start there. With your immense research. What’s your acting process?”
“Well, someone said once that you read the script two hundred and fifty times and then give yourself over to the imagined circumstances, so that’s what I did.” This was something of a lie, but I did not feel like telling Ellen anything personal.
“That’s good but you need to attribute it.” She was on her iPad. “Anthony Hopkins said that. So attribute it.”
“Got it,” I said.
“How did you prepare for the role?”
“I began by reading Warhol’s diaries and then reading every book about Warhol I could find so that I could fathom the characters in this film.”
“Great, but don’t say this film. Say Andy Warhol Never Gets Old.
” It went on like that—for an hour. Ellen would ask questions: What was it like to work with Matthew?
How do you and Juniper achieve such chemistry in your on-screen time together?
Why do you think this film is important?
She’d analyze my stupid answers and recraft them, and then she’d circle back to other questions before throwing in something random.
If you could say one thing to the president, what would it be?
Your first celebrity crush? I hear you’re dating Juniper; is that true?
“No, of course not,” I said. “Juniper is married to the sea.”
Ellen laughed, and made a note on her iPad. “That’s so good I’m going to make one of these jackasses ask it.”
“I mean it, though.”
“Yeah, that’s what makes it fucking hilarious. Is it true she’s doing Gods of Andromeda?”
“Yeah, she got the lead.”
“No no no no, Jesus, Kai. No. You say, ‘I’ve read the book and it’s great, but I don’t know what Juniper’s doing next.’ ”
“Right, but I wasn’t talking to a journalist. I was talking to you.”
“For the next twenty-four days, assume that literally everything you say out loud is going to be printed in a magazine that your grandparents will read.”
“That’s a bit dystopian.”
She just shrugged. “On to personal shit that will get dug up about you. Here’s the thing, Kai. If there’s something—say, a vertical video of you punching a woman, a racist tweet you wrote when you were a twelve-year-old edgelord, or whatever, just tell me. It’s so much easier not to be surprised.”
“I don’t tweet,” I answered.
“Are we going to have sexual harassment or assault issues?”
“No.”
“You ever been arrested?”
I shook my head.
“What’s your number? Is it in the double digits? Triple digits?”
“My number?”
“Of sexual partners.”
“Single digits.”
“You need to get out more,” she deadpanned. “So it’s all smooth sailing from you. Where’s the iceberg? Your dad’s in a weird militia? You’re a flat-earther? Everybody’s got something, Kai.”
“What’s your something?” I asked her.
“If I wanted to discuss my somethings, I would’ve become an actor.” I knew what she was asking about, but I couldn’t tell if she knew what she was asking about. “You ever been sued?”
“No.”
“Ever sued someone?”
I reached into my pocket and got a piece of gum.
I like chewing gum—the old-fashioned stick kind.
There’s this flavor called Fresh Mint I’ve chewed since I was a kid, and it smells like a forest in summertime.
I unwrapped the gum from its silver foil and started chewing.
Ellen asked again if I’d ever sued anyone, and I said no, which was true, but I was pretty sure she knew.
I could feel the electricity of it in the air. My chest felt tight.
I leaned backward, hands across my chest. Among the many things I recommend about Fresh Mint gum is that when you’re chewing it, you can’t smell anything else.
“Ever been a witness in a trial?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” I said, and she didn’t respond. I thought about whether he’d done it to me or with me. Always hated prepositions. To me, I guess. For me, he would say.
“Yeah, I’ve been a witness in a trial,” I said finally. “A teacher molested me or whatever.”
This is part of you, he often said. Part of you we need to bring out.
“Don’t say or whatever. Or molested. Say assaulted.”
“I’m not saying any of those words, because I’m not talking about it.”
“Okay,” Ellen said. “You’re not talking about it, and I will make it clear if someone digs it up that you’re not talking about it. We can keep it out of the press. But I can’t keep it from leaking if I don’t know about it.”
“Well, you know about it,” I said.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Ellen said. “It’s not bad for us.”
“Well, it wasn’t great for me.”
“I mean it’s not bad for the movie. Anyway, you need to tell me these things so that I won’t be surprised. I know this part of it sucks, but it comes with the territory. Is there anything else I need to know?”
“I don’t know. Did anything else come up when you called my friends from high school?”
“Your friends didn’t say anything, if that makes you feel any better. I found out from one of your teachers. Nobody had a bad thing to say about you, Kai. They saw the same sweet, sensitive kid I see.”
He always told me it was only me, that no other student had or could ever tempt him.
That was a lie, of course. It turned out there were many of us.
But I was chosen to testify at the trial, because I was the all-American, straight-presenting athlete.
They kept my name sealed, but that doesn’t mean much in a high school.
The gum was starting to lose its flavor. I could smell the coffee in the air again. “We done?” I asked.
“You can’t be pissed at me for doing my job, Kai. You know how many movies have tanked in the last ten years because it came out that the actors were fuckwads? Studios have to be careful now. I’m sure you get it.”
“I do get it. I’m just asking if we’re done.”
“If you want my advice, you should get out in front of it and put it behind you. We get you a sympathetic profiler—someone at the Times or maybe The New Yorker—and you acknowledge it and move on. You’ve got to remember, you’re a victim here. You didn’t do anything wrong. But if you hide it—”
“If that’s it, I’m going to go home and pack,” I said. “I hope I passed the test.”
_____
On the train home, I wondered if I should tell Juniper.
In the four months since we’d wrapped on Andy Warhol Never Gets Old, Juniper and I had met up maybe five or six times.
I was in Canada for a couple weeks playing Kevin the Intern in a spectacularly unfunny comedy, and Juniper was obsessively prepping for Gods of Andromeda in LA.
Telling her would feel weird, but also not telling her felt weird. I should’ve told her in Pittsburgh, but I was scared. I am always scared. Part of me will never not feel the fear that boiled up when the defense counsel began her cross-examination.
The hardest thing in life is to be small, to not have any say over what happens to you or who does it.
To be at other people’s mercy. I required mercy.
I always would. And I hated that. You couldn’t get out in front of that, not ever.
You can’t put it behind you. I was twenty-one years old and he was dead and he still had his goddamned hands all over me.