The Road to Amazing (15 page)

He was conspicuously
silent.

"You
know Gabourey Sidibe too, don't you?" I said
evenly.

"Well, I mean, I've
met
her. That's
all!"

"Can I alter what I said a
minute ago? Fuck
you
."

Otto smiled — his first genuine smile
since we'd started talking.

"For the record," he went on,
"celebrities always say that in public, that we're crying over
insults all the way to the bank. And I mean, yeah, it's true. I
live a good life. But the 'brave face' stuff is a lie too. All this
crap people are throwing at me? It's still really, really
hard."

"I bet."

He thought for a second,
then he lowered his voice. "Someone even posted
my
nude photos."

So they
were
of him?
Still, I pretended that I hadn't seen them. "Oh,
man, Otto, that so sucks."

"Why do people do stuff like that?
Seriously, I don't understand it." Now he sounded like he was going
to cry.

"Because they're mean,
ugly, small, petty people who've never done anything important or
interesting or successful. And they come upon you, who
is
important and
interesting and successful, and they can't stand it. It drives them
crazy that you're everything that they're not. So they lash out. If
you're happy and they're not, their solution is to try to make you
as unhappy as possible too. Honestly, I think they're like the
villain in some Dr. Seuss cartoon — it's exactly that
straightforward. They're standing up on a mountain listening to you
be joyful and happy, and they're absolutely seething, so they
decide they have to dump all over you and be as ugly as possible.
But it doesn't work. Oh, sure, they can make other people feel
shitty about themselves for a minute or two — you and Gabourey
Sidibe and
Jennifer fucking
Lawrence
. But they can't make themselves
feel any better. In the end, I think they feel even worse, because
they know in their heart of hearts just how small and pathetic they
really are."

When I was done, Otto didn't say
anything for a second. Then his face broke into another grin. "Oh,
my God, I think that was the best rant I've ever heard!"

"It's absolutely true!" I said. "Every
word."

"You want to know what hurts me the
most about the Internet? It's not the insults — people calling me
waxface and freak. I'm used to that. I've heard that my whole damn
life."

Now I was really intrigued. What was
worse than somebody calling you a freak, than someone posting naked
photos of you?

"It's other burn survivors," he said,
slouching again. "It's all the criticism of the show, all these
people saying that I'm hurting the cause. I'm, like, 'What the
fuck?' Out of all people, they should understand. They should know
how hard it is. They talk like I'm personally responsible for
everything in the show, everything about my character. But I don't
write the scripts! I'm a total nobody. And I signed a contract: I
couldn't leave even if I wanted to, not unless I didn't mind being
sued and never wanted to work in Hollywood again."

"You're right," I said. "It's totally
unfair."

"And, I mean, it's not
like the show is that bad. Is it? The writers did their best, but
those first few weeks after we got picked up? It was
crazy
. The pressure was
so intense. Besides, what about the good the show has done? What
about the fact that the show cast me in the first place? I'm not
trying to blow my own horn, but that's revolutionary. The producers
took a
huge
chance, and they're really trying hard to do their best with
the character. They deserve so much credit! So why aren't they
getting any?"

"Because people are fucking assholes,"
I said. "See previous rant. Look, just because someone has scars,
that doesn't mean they can't be jerks."

"But they're so
angry
about
everything."

Otto was taking this all pretty
seriously, so I decided to take it seriously too.

"Well, first of all," I
said, "plenty of burn survivors
are
supporting you. Don't forget that, okay? It's
only
some
people.
Probably a really, really small percentage. I read things online
all the time, and I think, 'I don't know anyone who thinks like
that.' But people say something shocking and outrageous, and they
get all the attention."

"I know, I know. Why is that so easy
to forget? The praise barely even registers, but the criticism
sticks with you until the day you die."

"As for the rest of it," I
said, "well, I don't get it either. Then again, I've never
understood that kind of stupid rage. How is
shitting-all-over-everything a political strategy? I know that's
easy for me to say — non-scarred, middle class, cis-gendered, white
kid from the suburbs. But if you're going to get angry, it has to
be anger with some kind of
point
. If it's just that stupid,
no-perspective, lash-out-at-everything anger, not only does that
not change things, I actually think it makes it worse."

Otto nodded.

"But you're not doing that," I said.
"You're out there, putting yourself on the line and being real and
making an actual difference. If you want the whole truth, I don't
think I've ever been so proud to be friends with anyone in my life
as I am with you."

Otto wiped his eyes — he was crying
for real now (I was a little too). But he was also standing taller,
definitely more confident.

Suddenly he hugged me, holding me
tight. Despite not being a hugger, I squeezed him back just as
hard.

"Thanks, Russel," he said. "That
really helped."

"Anytime," I said.

He pulled back at last, wiped his eyes
again, and said, "You know, that was almost as good as the advice
Jennifer Lawrence gave me."

And I whacked him hard on the shoulder
and said, "Fuck you!" and then, both of us laughing, we walked
arm-in-arm back out into the main room.

* * *

I admit I hadn't expected to spend my
wedding weekend making everyone else feel better about themselves,
but I honestly didn't mind, because it was turning out that I was
actually pretty good at it. I was kinda sorta impressed with
myself. Anyway, I'd done my good deeds for the day, and now I could
finally relax with the others.

I kept expecting the rain to let up,
but it never did. It thrummed on the roof like the whole house was
a vibrating bed. But this was fine with Gunnar, who was eager to
show us all how the house's rain dispersal system worked in lieu of
gutters. (Basically, the rain rolled down into these little trays
that somehow sprayed the water out into the yard, all without any
power source. I'd explain it more, except I didn't really
listen.)

Before I knew it, it was time to eat
again — an assortment of fried and baked chicken from the grocery
store, along with baked tofu for Min, who was
vegetarian.

Once we all sat down at the table to
eat, I said, "How was it possible to get all this chicken for
fifteen bucks? How is anyone making money on that?"

As soon as I said it, I regretted it.
Saying something like this in front of Min was a little like
throwing chum to a shark.

Sure enough, she said, "Because it's
factory farmed. In 1920, a chicken cost a person two and a half
hours of the average wage. Today, it costs fifteen minutes of
wages. But it's only cheap because corporations don't pay the full
cost of their product. The rest of us pay in the form of pollution,
greenhouse gas emissions, and outright subsidies."

No one said anything for a second. As
great as Min was, and as much as I admired her passion, she
sometimes did have a way of killing a conversation.

"That doesn't even get into the
question of how chickens are raised," she went on. "It's not what
most people think."

Keep in mind that the rest of us were
eating chicken when she said this. We all sort of hesitated,
mid-bite. Alas, not only did Min sometimes kill the conversation,
she didn't always know she was doing it.

Vernie dabbed her mouth with her
napkin. Then she said, "I wish I'd known we were attending a
lecture. I would have brought a pen to take notes."

There was another silence, this time
an extremely awkward one. Chairs creaked. Min could definitely be a
bit sanctimonious, and I'd sensed before that Vernie wasn't crazy
about it, but I hadn't expected them to directly butt heads like
this.

I felt like I should say something,
but I had no idea what. I know I'd somehow taken it upon myself to
make everyone feel better this weekend, but how could I possibly
take sides between Vernie and Min?

Then Ruby said, "Oh, hey, we have some
friends who keep chickens!" She touched Min on the hand. "Sarah and
Meg?" Ruby turned back to the whole table. "Anyway, after all the
money they spent on the coop, the feed, and the chickens —
including the ones that were eaten by raccoons — they figured out
what it cost them. Nine dollars an egg!"

The table laughed, more in
relief than anything, and Min laughed too. I couldn't help but
think:
This is
interesting
. Ruby was managing Min's
sanctimoniousness the way I'd been trying to manage Kevin's
anxieties about the wedding. In this case, Ruby had tried to
distract Min.

It worked, too. Gunnar started talking
about raccoons — something about how, like crows, they're so much
smarter than anyone thought. It didn't seem like there was any
lingering bad blood between Vernie and Min, either.

And speaking of Kevin's anxieties, if
he was still preoccupied, he was hiding it pretty well.

A few minutes later, Nate looked at
Otto. "So what's it like?" he said. "Being famous and
everything."

Otto wiped his fingers. "It's good,"
he said. "Well, I mean, it's great. It's funny though. Technically,
my job is an actor, but sometimes it doesn't seem like I do a whole
lot of that. Even after hair and make-up, I mostly just wait around
for them to set up lights, and block the scenes, and do everyone
else's close-ups first. And I also do a lot of promotion. Acting
is, like, fifty percent waiting, forty percent promotion, and ten
percent actual acting. But that sounds like I'm complaining, and
I'm not."

Everyone nodded, even though, like me,
they probably didn't have any idea what he was talking
about.

"Sounds like a piece of
piss," Nate said. "What's it like being on all the talk shows?
Kevin said you were on
The Tonight
Show
."

"
Stephen Colbert
," Otto said. "And I
did
Seth Meyers
too. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so nervous. At
one point, the producer came to me in the green room and said,
'Have you taken your Xanax yet?' like it was just assumed I'd be on
some kind of anti-anxiety drug. I wish I
had
been."

"You were great," I said.
He had seemed a little nervous, at least on
Colbert
, but he'd also been modest
and charming in a way that is absolutely impossible to
fake.

"One guy said I looked like a deer in
the headlights," Otto said.

That's when I realized that Otto
probably didn't want to be talking about this — that it was yet
another reminder of how people talked about him online.

"Anyone want more chicken?" I
said.

"What the hell?" Vernie said, raising
her plate. "I've always considered myself a moral
monster."

So much for there not being any
lingering resentment between Min and Vernie. And also so much for
my spending the weekend solving everyone's problems.

Kevin's face darkened. Then he stood
up to get more Squirt, even though his glass was still almost
completely full.

This was too much. I could handle
Vernie and Min butting heads, and maybe even Otto's discomfort, but
I couldn't handle Kevin being disappointed with our wedding
weekend. I'd promised him that everything was going to be
okay.

"Oh, hey!" I said to
Vernie. "I just thought of another single-location screenplay
idea." I quickly explained to the table what that meant, the kind
of ideas I'd been brainstorming lately. Then I said, "So how about
a movie called
Green
Room
? The story of this guy waiting to go
on this late-night talk show."

"I wish that was interesting," Otto
said, "but it's not. Waiting in a green room, I mean, not your
idea."

"Yeah," I said, sinking lower in my
seat. "Probably not."

"No, wait," Kevin said. "Say it's
about a comedian. You know, the person who always goes on last? And
the movie is about him and the other celebrities waiting in the
green room."

I looked at him and smiled.