One Slug To End It

I like movies. Old ones especially.

I used to only listen to people’s advice if it suited perfectly the image I had for myself. So, advice escaped me.

Friends would tell me, “ You should be an actor. You look like James Dean, and you’re weird!” I enjoyed hearing it, even the weird part. I connected it to art.

I didn’t want anything else for my future, but to somehow be artistic. At

nineteen I saw ahead of me all the paths of mundane careers. Professions of 

boredom, an entire life of boredom. I wanted a creative career. I signed up for 

acting class at my local community college and read James Dean’s biography. 

Every Tuesday and Thursday, before class, I smoked three cigarettes and 

fantasized of the roles I might land. 

Every class, for a warm up, we did the actors bark- “Pretend you’re a chicken in outer space and you’ve just laid three eggs,” our instructor would order. It was embarrassing, these exercises. 

“You’ve just dropped your fiancés engagement ring down your pants 

no right before you pop the question.” These exercises were below me. I wanted to brood and then snap in anger, I wanted to confront the villain. “These warm-ups will help you prepare fo the unexpected, and loosen your body so you have that body under control and can deliver what needs delivering.”

Outside, while I smoked my cigarettes and tugged at my pea-coat, glaring at the horizon, one of my classmates, Trisha, who knew not how to tell a 

lie, approached me and said, “You should be in there practicing. That is, if you 

want to get any better.” I took that as jealousy, and smoked another cigarette so as to rebel against good advice.

“You’re on a roller coaster with a cup of hot coffee,” more silly warm-ups 

that I could not get silly for. 

“Kit,” My instructor would say, “You have to be involved in every emotion 

and reaction. Turn yourself into a sponge and let yourself go, then nothing will surprise you onstage.” But I knew better. I had the look, so the chicken dance and all the silly flailing around was unimportant for a would-be actor of my 

talent. I would play it cool, not the fool.

Over the course of the term we did many things that I thought were 

betted suited for a classroom of third graders who needed to purge their energy, not early adults with serious ideas in mind. So I was very slow and aloof as we held hands and danced in circles, or huddled together to make an elephant 

marching through the planes. However, the mid-term was coming, and that’s 

were I would shine and brood like James Dean. That’s were I would avenge 

myself agains all of Trisha’s eye rolling whenever she saw me.

The mid-term was to be a dialogue between me and one other classmate. The scene was set in a car, and I would be the front seat passenger. 

It started great. I stared out the window of the imaginary car, scowling. In 

character, my scene partner said “ I will need just three more weeks and you’ll 

have the other twenty-grand.”

“And If I say no? What If I deny you and give you only three day’s?” I leaned 

over my chair, and began to carve patterns into the wooden arm for effect. I 

hunched like James Dean as I glared at the driver.

“Please, you know I’m good for it.” And this was where I was supposed 

to laugh. Do a sarcastic, sharp, snap of a laugh was my plan for the next line. 

And I did it, to horrific authenticity.

When I went “Ha!” My nose released its ammunition that I apparently 

was clueless off. It took a quarter of a second, and all the sudden there was a 

green slug on my face, down over my lips, to my chin. Real snot, and too much 

of it. Much too much to forgive, and by forgive I mean let slide. We’ve all seen 

great movies with great acting, and sometime the actors unintentionally spit on 

each other as they scream their lines in passion. Their noses are wet and their eyes are wet, but its nothing the audience cannot stomach. Mine was excessive. The audience is fickle pickings, but it wasn’t there fault this time, this time they a right to throw up.

There is no director, were my scene to be in a film, who wouldn’t demand a re-shoot, no matter the actor or performance. Ida been fired. And rockets couldn’t get me away quick enough. No blanket thick enough to keep me flushed and my red head hidden.

I did not hear gasps, or laughs, but I was the central burning ember of the collective embarrassment in the room. Trisha got up and left the building. I wish I had been quicker in concealing the slug, but I was sharing in the shock of it’s arrival. Once I did command my hand, I pulled the slug off and held it tight for the rest of the performance. My mouth worked, my auto pilot was 

successful, though I doubt it was just me who forgot the second half of the show. Bless all the audience members(classmates) who didn’t mention it afterword. Or curse them, for denying an elephant that big, and that gross. Although that 

doesn’t matter either, because my mid-term became my final, and that snail 

became my last performance, and my acting legacy. And I should’ve waved.

I did see Trisha again. We shared a cigarette. 

“That was pretty rough,” she said.

“I know, but worse for who? Me or the audience?”

“You, for sure.”

“I guess just because you look like James Dean doesn’t mean you’re his clone.”

“Kit, you don’t look like James Dean.”

“I don’t?”

“No. James Dean was attractive.”

And so, I vanished after that. Said good night, good bye forever; the next James Dean would die unseen. He’d go out quietly, no glass shattered and no films made to inspire; nothing would come of the new one, the new one burned out before he reeeved the engine. A little slug ended him.