Born to Be Brad (9 page)
Authors: Brad Goreski
7. Beware of prom hair.
It doesn’t have to be overdone. For hair and makeup inspiration, look at magazines. If you’re going for a sixties look and you want to do a cat eye and a red lip, I get it. But look at references. Don’t be overdone.
“I wasn’t going to wear a tuxedo to the prom…. I had a vision, and it involved a purple Fun Fur jacket.”
As for my own wardrobe, I wasn’t going to wear a tuxedo to the prom. That much was clear. I had a vision, and it involved a purple Fun Fur jacket. My mom agreed to make this for me, using a men’s suit pattern she found in a book and some fake fur she bought at Fabric Land. I’d pair this jacket with a silver lamé ladies’ mock turtleneck I found at a used clothing store and a pair of black stretch cigarette pants that looked like they were made from neoprene but were probably acrylic. My shoes were the pièce de résistance: They were DIY two-tone platforms I made in my mom’s kitchen by gluing different-colored dime-store flip-flops together and affixing them to the bottom of a pair of patent-leather Converse sneakers. I looked like Michael Alig meets Max Headroom, riding Rainbow Brite. I had to laugh years later when Miuccia Prada did basically the same thing with a line of platform wing tips for men. Some things never go out of style. I bought five pairs of them.
My mom came home and had a fit. Not because I was wearing homemade platform shoes, but because I’d ruined her kitchen to make them. The residue from the glue gun was burned into her brand-new kitchen island—a white ceramic countertop she’d just paid to have installed—and she started to cry. I sensed danger and ran out the back door, my weird platform flip-flops clacking below me.
“You ruined my kitchen!” she shouted after me.
I shouted back, “You ruined my prom! You ruin everything!”
“I was no longer asking these people to accept me but rather I was announcing myself as someone worth loving.”
The prom was an epic race to the finish. We worked fourteen-hour days, but surveying the work I felt it was time well spent. My father and I didn’t talk much about my two-tone platforms or my silver top, but we did talk about the prom decorations. He agreed to help make some of our elaborate concepts happen. And I appreciated that he recognized this night was important to me and that he volunteered to see it through. The week of the prom, I think he was at the school more than I was. His handiwork was genius. The students would enter the gymnasium through an Egyptian pyramid and there were hieroglyphics on the walls and you could sign your name. There was a spice market where you could get a drink. In another gymnasium down the hall there was a fifteen-foot-tall replica of the Eiffel Tower strung up with Christmas lights (long before Rose Byrne did the same in
Bridesmaids
but after Goldie Hawn did it in
Overboard
). We hung two hundred stars from the ceiling, illuminated by black lights. And when the stars didn’t glow exactly as planned, we spent $100 on orange and yellow fluorescent spray paint.
But the night wasn’t really about the Eiffel Tower. Tracy and I joked about how no one would care what the decorations looked like. That they’d be too drunk to appreciate the craftsmanship. In the end, I was the one who was too drunk. As the head of the prom committee, I had to stand on the front steps of the school greeting my classmates as they entered. I was scared out of my mind. But also proud that I’d made it this far, despite them. I wanted to stare down these people as they entered the prom. I wanted to announce my independence from them, from the long arm of their small-minded bullying. I was no longer asking these people to accept me but rather I was announcing myself as someone worth loving. No one could touch me that night. No one could disrespect me. Flanked by the school principal and vice principal, trying to hide the fact that I was drunk on lemon gin and Sprite, I stood my ground. Rorschach tests and gender-identity quizzes? I wish Dr. Zucker had just taught me to have a little confidence. I would have been much better off.
It was time to leave. I was headed to university in the fall. I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know who I was. And that was OK. I saw my name in lights—the lights of a Broadway marquee. And I was going to theater school to play dress-up, to try that life on for size.
In so many ways, this was only the beginning.
HAVE YOU SEEN
A Chorus Line?
Maybe I should start there. You know the character Diana Morales, the Puerto Rican girl? The one so terribly underestimated by all of her teachers? Well, she sings this song called “Nothing,” about this improvisation class where her teacher says to the students, “You’re a bobsled. It’s snowing out. And it’s cold. Okay! GO!” They’re told to be a table, be a sports car. Be an ice cream cone.
Well, I soon found out, that’s
exactly
what theater school is really like. And I loved it. I was nineteen years old and living on my own for the first time, studying at the conservatory of musical theater training at George Brown College. While it wasn’t exactly Juilliard, George Brown promised to prepare a generation of actors for a life in the theater. We were in workshops eight hours a day, six days a week, and the instructors were not shy about weeding out those of us who didn’t have a future onstage. There were thirty of us in my class and less than half of us would graduate. The program was that intense.
And there I was, feeling exactly like Diana Morales in
A Chorus Line,
when my teacher said, “You are an egg. Pretend you are an egg and you are about to hatch. Go!”
It was not glamorous. The school was housed in a nondescript 1950s building in the Casa Loma neighborhood of Toronto. George Brown was a technical college, and our classes were held in the basement, in the same rooms where aspiring plumbers and refrigerator maintenance students convened. We shared one classroom with the upholstery department, and we were regularly asked to move out half-built, torn-apart furniture to make room for our dance classes. The school has since hooked up with a local theater company, the Soulpepper Theatre, and the George Brown drama students now study in a state-of-the-art facility with beautiful dance studios and black box theaters. But us? We just had upholstery. There were some kids who took it way too seriously. We’d walk into vocal class, and they would have been there for forty-five minutes, getting their bodies warm. These are the people who were rehearsing lines in the hallway, mumbling to themselves. The ones who looked down on us for being silly. But some of it was silly! The boys would be in the bathroom, changing into their dance belts and tights for ballet class. I loved the juxtaposition of these guys jamming their junk into a pair of tights next to the plumber taking a pee. And then there I was, running down the halls doing leaps in my tights.
My first headshots! I wanted to be a professional actor, and so I had these photos taken and then sent them to all of the big agencies I could find in Toronto. I got one response from a major agency. It wasn’t the response I was hoping for. The woman wrote to say that the agency wasn’t taking on any new clients, but she had a few suggestions for me. First, I should put less product in my hair. Second, I should wear more makeup. How dare she!
Photograph by Diane Lackie
And it was fantasy land, an extension of theater camp and those late-night raves and the community theater troupe back in Port Perry. Here, I took voice lessons and Shakespeare classes. I was still playing dress-up, only now the clothes fit. I’d lost twenty-five pounds since high school, thanks in part to cutting meat and pepperoni sticks and deep-fried Oreos out of my diet, and I was feeling good. I was a serious student, and I was determined to be one of the success stories. I was thrilled when the school felt the same way. My first written report card offered a hint of promise. It read, “You are the embryo for a fine actor.” Me! An embryo!
Lighten Up
HOW I LOST TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS—AND KEPT IT OFF
As a kid, I was overweight and creative—a terrible combination, because I had a habit of turning snacking into an elaborate art project. For a special treat, I’d sometimes scrape the icing from the inside of a dozen Oreo cookies; roll the white, sugary goodness into a ball of confectionery joy; and freeze it for later. My mom says when I was a baby, one of the first things she noticed about me was that I growled for food. I scared her the first time she heard it. I was eight months old, sitting in a high chair at a restaurant, growling at the staff as they walked by. And so my mom resorted to bringing crackers with her everywhere we went just to keep me quiet—the crackers acted like some carbohydrate pacifier. I love food. Always have and always will. But for me, everything is about balance and moderation. Here are a few things I do to keep my weight down.
1. Eat well!
Eating well starts with a high-protein, low-carb, low-sugar diet. Steel-cut oats, nonfat Greek yogurt, fruit, vegetables, lean proteins, not too much added salt or oils. It doesn’t sound fun, but it tastes great and keeps my energy up.
2. Get moving.
Exercise: I know, not a revolutionary concept. But not only does it keep the weight off, but it also helps you clear your mind. I don’t work out for hours either. Forty-five minutes to one hour is more than enough time to get the endorphins pumping.
3. Go ahead and cheat.
If I want a cupcake or French fries from time to time, I indulge. At my house, we have pizza every Sunday. It’s a tradition! But try to eat cheat foods earlier in the day. It makes a difference.
4. Walk it off.
I travel a lot. If I can’t work out at the hotel gym, I’ll try to walk instead of taking a cab. Or I’ll take the stairs instead of the elevator (within reason). I also go out dancing a lot. I consider that cardio.
Onstage, I was experimenting with form and style. Offstage, I was experimenting with my sense of self, which seems to be what college is all about. I took my studies seriously. I was barely even drinking. Until one night when I was on the way back from a weekend away in Montreal with some school friends. There was a horrific ice storm, and I actually thought we were going to die. The ice was coming down in sheets. When we got into Toronto, I was just happy to be alive. It was a Friday night and to celebrate our return we went out dancing. But I was still so shaken that when a friend offered me a line of cocaine, I thought, What the hell.
It’s funny. Back in high school, I’d made the mistake of telling my sister about the first time I smoked pot. She looked at me and shook her head, saying, “Bradley, this is just the beginning.” At the time, I laughed. I mean, it was so Afterschool Special of her. But that night I heard those words ringing in my head and I thought, Maybe she was right.
Freshman year passed in a blur and I stayed in Toronto for the summer. I couldn’t imagine returning to Port Perry, not when I’d tasted city life. To pay my bills, I got a summer job working in retail. “Hi, welcome to the Gap.” The door greeter? Yeah, that was me, in the summer of 1997 in Toronto. I liked my coworkers well enough but I hated the job. I hated the fluorescent lighting. I always made my sales quota but let’s face it, this was a summer job. I knew my heart wasn’t in it. One day, I called my boss to say I wasn’t coming in.
