Chapter 6
The next day includes a long photo shoot with Juniper, and then another round of interviews in the afternoon. They’re all normal and predictable and not too stressful except for one guy who comes in and asks, “What was the meaning of life to Andy Warhol?”
I let Juniper handle that one. Then the interviewer says, “What’s the meaning of life to you, Kai?”
I don’t know the meaning of life. The meaning of life is to avoid answering questions about the meaning of life.
The meaning of life is to sit next to someone you’re sometimes in love with and definitely love.
The meaning of life is that we are monstrous to each other, and tender to each other, and that the monstrosity and tenderness are inseparable.
The meaning of life is chocolate ice cream.
I don’t know. So I freeze up and Juniper jumps in.
I feel so stupid in that moment. I hate feeling stupid.
It’s not unlike the smallness I felt with him, the powerlessness.
Maybe the meaning of life is to have enough power that people can’t hurt you, can’t assert their power over you, and I’m thinking all this while Juniper says, “I think to Kai the meaning of life is to be generous toward other people. That’s how he acts, at least.” I lock back in and say, “Yeah, that’s so kind of you, Juniper.
And to Juniper the meaning of life is doing good work with good people,” and she looks at me in that way she has, the way that is both genuine and for the camera, that is entirely performed and entirely authentic, and she says, “Gosh, you’re a sweet boy. ”
It isn’t even a big deal—Ellen doesn’t say anything to me afterward—but I spend the rest of the afternoon hyperaware that I’m in an overlit room with a camera operator, a sound guy, two publicists, Juniper, and a rotating cast of interviewers.
It’s exhausting. I want to go home. I don’t even know precisely what constitutes home at the moment, but I want to go wherever it is.
We do another best friend quiz with one of the interviewers, and they ask about our favorite animals, and together we say, “The rhinoceros that escaped the Prague Zoo,” and we laugh, but I actually do think it’s become my favorite animal.
During a break, Ellen tells me, “They just announced a Paris premiere. Matthew is huge in Europe. This is big, Kai. I’ve never gotten a European premiere before. So on the first you’ll be in Paris, then back here on the second for the New York premiere.”
“You’ll be with me?”
“I should be employed at least until that New Yorker profile comes out.”
_____
We’re back in photo shoots from four until six, and then it’s time to go to Matthew’s apartment.
I realize I don’t actually know where he lives, so I text him, and he writes back immediately with an address on the Upper East Side.
Juniper and I get in an Uber. When we settle in, she says, “What’s the meaning of life to you, Kai? ” and I laugh.
Juniper is wearing perfectly distressed jeans and a cozy sweater. I want to reach out and put my arm around her, but I’m not sure if that would be excessive flirting and also I’m not sure I’m allowed to want what I want.
“In my interview with Vogue this morning, they asked if you were a good kisser and I said that you were very gentle, and Katie got mad at me because apparently gentle isn’t sexy.”
“Would Katie prefer me to be an aggressive kisser?”
“I guess so. She said men have to be seen as alphas, and I was like, not my men.”
We talk about prep for Gods of Andromeda, how we’ll have trainers to get us ripped enough to look hot wearing body armor.
We leave for Vancouver two weeks after Andy Warhol Never Gets Old comes out, and we talk about what we might do during those two weeks.
I tell her I might go back to Indianapolis and she says she wants to go with me, see all the corn, and I tell her, There’s no corn in Indianapolis; it’s a proper city, and she laughs.
_____
New York traffic is terrible, and we should’ve just taken the subway, but I get recognized almost every time I’m on the subway now, and it’s a little tiring.
The question people ask me most often is why I’m on the subway, as if there’s some secret transport system for C-list celebrities.
At last we get to Matthew’s building, across the street from the park at 85th Street.
We tell the doorman our names, and he calls up to Matthew then tells us the apartment is on the fourteenth floor.
Instead of the elevator opening into a hallway, it opens right into Matthew’s ridiculous apartment, with floor-to-ceiling window views of the Central Park Reservoir and the Upper West Side in the distance.
He has minimalist furniture including a black Eames chair, and a huge kitchen where a team of people are working.
He’s watching TV when we come in but jumps off his immaculate leather couch and envelops both of us in a hug.
“God, I’m a little envious of you two. Just a couple of great young artists bumming around the city, everything still in front of you. I love to see it. What can I get you to drink?”
Juniper asks for a club soda and I order an old-fashioned, and someone in the kitchen gets to work on our drinks.
Matthew walks us over to a Warhol painting of a dollar sign—green and blue on a yellow background—and says, “I gave this to myself after we shot our movie. Warhol said once, ‘I like money on the wall.’ So this is my way of hanging money on the wall.”
Juniper tells us that Warhol was beguiled by money, and then she searches on her phone for a quote she remembers from her research.
“ ‘American money is very well-designed,’ ” she reads.
“ ‘I like it better than any other kind of money. I’ve thrown it in the East River down by the Staten Island Ferry just to see it float.’ ”
“I love that we got to make such a beautiful movie about such a beautiful weirdo,” Matthew says. “And the tracking. Have you seen the tracking?”
I don’t want to confess that I’m not actually sure what tracking is, so I just say no.
Matthew ushers us down to the couch, and Juniper sits with her feet tucked underneath her.
“We’re tracking for twenty million–plus on opening weekend,” he says.
“With a movie about Andy Warhol. Incredible. How’s the press been for y’all? ”
“Hard,” I say. “But it’s fun to be with Juniper.”
“He’s good at it, too,” she says. “You’d never know he hates being famous.”
“There’s upsides and downsides,” Matthew says. “Most careers involve trade-offs. But it’s hard to complain when you look down at Central Park.”
“And your original Warhol,” I say.
“Yes, and that. You’ll get here, both of you. You’re both so ambitious and smart and ready for this.”
“Thanks,” Juniper says, although I’m not sure it’s a compliment.
_____
Over dinner—vegan ravioli with mushroom filling—Matthew regales us with stories of other famous actors, his favorite people to work with, and some of his least favorites.
He tells us that when he was young and still did his own stunts, one time he was in a car that flipped over four times and the shot was perfect but he got sick to his stomach while the car was flipping and vomited, and then the car kept rolling, and his own vomit kept flying into his face as the car overturned.
He tells us that his team wants him to be the villain in a new Spider-Man movie but he only likes villains who can make a strong and straightforward case for their worldview, and Mysterio is what he calls “more of an Iago type.”
Juniper asks him to explain, and Matthew gives us an introduction to Othello—he says that in the play, the villain Iago acts sinisterly in his own interest, but it’s so malevolent and dishonest that it’s more repulsive than the villains Matthew likes to portray, the ones who are fighting for a cause greater than themselves but in a deplorable manner.
“There needs to be a fatal flaw,” he says.
“Something noble the villain wants too much.”
Matthew shifts back into Hollywood storytelling mode. As if it’s an amusing anecdote, he tells us about the time a major Hollywood star pulled a gun on him, and how he thought about pressing charges but didn’t want to ruin his costar’s reputation.
I think of what my teacher used to say to me, quoting Auden.
If we ever got caught, he told me, he’d be “punished under a foreign code of conscience.” Weaponizing poetry against me.
I think about how everyone knows now, that people see me and think, That guy got abused as a kid.
Maybe it doesn’t matter who leaked it. Maybe it’s like one of those Chinese dragons where a lot of people are under the dragon costume, some in the tail and some in the head and some in the middle.
Maybe I don’t need to know which person inside the dragon told the world, because really, the dragon did it.