23 - Bound for the Stage #2
Even as she answered the door, she wasn’t sure which one she wanted.
There would be something incredibly satisfying about teaching the control freak Benny the millions of tricks she knew and watching him stumble as he tried to keep them all straight.
On the other hand, who the hell wanted to deal with that?
“Just make him not insufferable, lord,” she prayed in a stage-whisper when she heard him knocking. “For all that’s good and holy, make him bearable for a day.”
She was only half-kidding in her prayer.
Though not particularly religious, speaking hopes into the ether had a way of calming her down.
It was another trick of hers, one she utilized often but tended not to reveal.
Actors and artists were wild varieties of unhinged, yet a single mention of praying, old-fashioned “to the lord” praying, was enough to make most of them give her the side-eye for the rest of their lives.
What she found on the other side of the door was a happy medium.
Benny didn’t look frightened by any means, but he also didn’t have the bored, tired of this, and better-than-it-all expression she had seen so often from him.
Instead, he had a box of pastries in one hand and a cup of coffee extended toward her.
“I kept it black because I didn’t know how you take it,” he explained as she accepted the offerings and let him in.
“Black is fine. But don’t you dare leave those pastries here.”
Benny, a wash of confused hurt flooding his eyes, glanced back at her. The box of pastries in his hand swung by the string, levitating over the table. “Why not?”
“Because I’ll eat them all in one sitting and hate myself. And you, if I’m being honest.”
He replied with a laugh, which was a relief to Paloma.
Control in some areas, absolute hedonism in others was a beam on which she was doing an all right balancing act, but it didn’t take much to push her off.
Sweets were an absolute waterloo for her; she kept them at an arm’s length for her own good.
“I can understand that,” Benny said, resting the box on the table. “I can turn down most food, but I’ve been known to, uh, struggle when it comes to drinking.” He tapped a finger on the top of the box. It made a satisfyingly hollow noise. “I’ll make sure these come home with me.”
“Shall we get to work then?”
Paloma took a sip of her coffee as Benny settled on the couch. The flavor was excellent, and she knew wherever he had stopped wasn’t some insipid, rinky-dink spot, which only made her want the pastries even more.
Paloma settled into the chair across from him, watching as Benny’s eyes swept her living room. She could practically see him cataloguing everything—the stack of scripts on her coffee table, the framed headshots on the bookshelf, the yoga mat rolled up in the corner.
“Nice place,” he said, but his fingers were already straightening the edges of the napkins she’d set out, aligning them with the table’s edge.
“Thanks.” She sipped her coffee, studying him. “So tell me more about what happens when you panic onstage.”
Benny’s hand went to his phone, checking it even though it hadn’t made a sound.
“It’s like... you know how in film, if something goes wrong, you just reset?
Call cut, fix whatever it is, start again?
” He set the phone down, then immediately picked it up to check the time.
“But onstage, if I forget a line or someone misses their cue, I can’t just stop everything. ”
“Right, so you have to—”
“And what if the prop table is wrong? What if someone moved something and it’s not where it’s supposed to be?” His leg started bouncing under the table. “In TV, there’s a whole crew whose job it is to make sure everything is exactly where it should be, every single take.”
Paloma watched him rearrange the sugar packets she’d left on the table, organizing them by brand. “Benny.”
“What?”
“You just lined up my sugar packets.”
He looked down at his hands, startled, as if he hadn’t realized what he was doing. “Sorry, I... force of habit.”
“Do you always need to control your environment like that?”
“I don’t—” He stopped, exhaled slowly. “Yeah. I guess I do. It helps me think.”
“What happens when you can’t control it?”
His jaw tightened. “I panic. My mind goes completely blank and I can’t think of anything except how wrong everything feels.”
Paloma leaned forward, an idea beginning to form. “What if I told you there was a way to be okay with not controlling everything?”
Benny’s laugh had a sharp edge to it. “I’ve tried meditation, therapy, breathing exercises. Trust me, I’ve heard every technique there is.”
“This isn’t about techniques.” Paloma stood up and moved to the window, looking out at the street. “It’s about accepting that control is an illusion anyway.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve been doing this for years.”
She turned back to him. “You think I don’t get scared?
You think I don’t have moments where everything feels like it’s spiraling?
” She watched as he automatically reached for his phone again, then caught himself.
“The difference is, I’ve learned that fighting for control actually makes everything worse. ”
“So what’s the alternative? Just... give up?”
“Not give up. Give in.” She moved closer to him, noting how his shoulders tensed as she approached. “There’s a difference between surrendering and failing, Benny.”
He looked up at her, and she saw something flicker in his eyes—curiosity mixed with desperation. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Most people don’t.” Paloma sat on the edge of the coffee table, close enough that their knees almost touched. “But what if I could show you? What if there was a way to practice letting go completely, so that when you’re onstage and something goes wrong, it doesn’t feel like the end of the world?”
“How?”
She could see his pulse jumping in his throat, could feel the nervous energy radiating off him. He wanted this—needed it—even if he didn’t understand what she was offering yet.
“Do you trust me?”
The question hung between them. Benny’s hands stilled on the table, and for the first time since he’d arrived, he wasn’t fidgeting or checking his phone or trying to organize something.
“I want to,” he said quietly.
“That’s enough to start with.”
“More than running lines or anything like that, I want to … I dunno, learn how to keep myself calm.” Benny held his hands out, palm up, and curled his fingers skyward into claws.
“My anxiety gets such a hold of me that my entire mind goes blank the second something goes wrong. Then I’m stuck. I can’t get out of it.”
“Okay, I know where we should start then.”
Paloma knelt down on the floor next to where Benny was sitting on the couch. He didn’t flinch away from her or give her a strange what-do-you-think-you’re-doing look. That was when Paloma realized he was entirely under her command.
She pushed her hands flush to his face, covering his eyes, until she met with resistance and couldn’t go further. The pressure she was applying worked like a weighted blanket; she felt Benny melt under her touch.
“In order to perform live, you have to understand one thing,” she told him, wishing she could push her hands further, wishing she could grip her nails into his face and feel the muscles moving under the skin.
“What’s that?”
“You have to understand that you can only control your own reactions. You cannot control other people, you cannot control the audience, you cannot control what might go wrong. You can only control yourself.”
Benny started to jerk away, but Paloma extended her pinkies to the sides of his head and held him firmly in place.
“You can only control your own reactions,” she repeated. “Say it back to me.”
“Paloma, I think—”
“Say it back to me.”
“I can only control my own reaction.”
Paloma released him and sat up on her haunches. The deer-in-headlights look was filtering over his features. More work had to be done before he really understood her point.
“Can we do something a little different?” she asked, getting to her feet and heading toward her bedroom where she knew there was a collection of jute ropes tucked beneath her bed. “It might seem a bit unorthodox, but I think it could do you a lot of good.”
“I guess so.”
Paloma fished out the box and returned to the living room. When she placed it in front of him and exposed her collection, Benny balked.
“I have to warn you, this would be my first time with a getting tied up offstage.”
“No, Benny, you misunderstand. This is just an exercise.”
Benny rubbed a hand down his face, elongating his features then releasing them with a snap. “I don’t know.”
“What do you think I’m going to do to you if I tie you up?” Paloma asked. “Have sex with you? Kill you? I’m trying to show you how to control only your reaction. I’m giving you a chance to be powerless so you can find out where your power starts and stops.”
“I know where my power starts and stops.”
“Do you? Does that apply to live performing?” She cocked her head to the side. “How about drinking? Where does your power start and stop with that?”
Benny took a deep breath then nodded.
Paloma instructed him to take off his shirt and turn his back to her with his wrists pulled behind him.
“This is different.” he repeated, but he did as he was told.
Paloma wrapped the jute rope around Benny’s wrists and knotted it. She made sure it was tight but not cutting off his circulation. If this was going to work, he had to be comfortable. She crouched down to remove his shoes then did the same thing with the rope around his ankles.
“This doesn’t really seem like an acting exercise,” Benny said as he watched her, but Paloma noticed he didn’t push back or try to stand up. Whether or not he understood her process, he was willing to go along with it.
“I’m going to blindfold you, okay?”
“Are all stage actors so kinky?”