The Family Law (16 page)

‘Do you know,' he asked, almost whispering, ‘what would happen if I
sat
on you?'

Trembling, the student said he did not.

‘YOU WOULD DIE!'

The students ran away, terrified. Moments like these made us adore and fear him in equal measure.

For one of our first drama lessons, we wore neutral masks and black robes, before being herded out into the green area near the sound shell, the school's disused outdoor amphitheatre. We started by lying on the ground, before Mr Mallory told us to rise, slowly, as though emerging from a deep hibernation. Soon, we were told to explore one another's spaces, touching one another's bodies, as though it was the first time we'd encountered another human being. We were like black slugs slithering and squirming slowly towards and onto one another.

By the time we were pretending to fly make-believe kites, I could see through my mask's eye-slits that the woodwork jocks were staring at us from their studio, laughing and making masturbating gestures.
Wankers
, they were saying to each other.

What a bunch of wankers.

‘Now you are in the wind!' Mr Mallory told us. ‘You
are
the kite! Become one with the kite!'

The jocks laughed even harder.

‘Fly!' Mr Mallory told us. ‘Fly in the breeze! Stretch out those kite-arms and give yourself to the
wind
.'

Through my neutral mask, I could see that the woodwork guys were almost helpless now, slapping each other on the back and impersonating our exercises.
You'll see
, I thought to myself, my black robe flapping and dancing in the wind.
When I'm
famous, you'll all be sorry.

 

*

 

Shortly after my fourteenth birthday, I came across an advertisement for a local modelling and acting agency. ‘INTERESTED IN AN ACTING CAREER? SERIOUS ABOUT MODELLING? Our talent agency was established in
1980
! We represent talent of all ages! If you're serious about your career, see us today!' When I rang their offices, they told me a fee was involved if I wanted to be represented by them – or to ‘be on their books,' as they called it. I gathered up my pocket money, then lobbied my dad for the rest.

‘I don't really understand what this money's for,' he said, counting out the fifty-dollar notes carefully in his study.

‘You have to hand over money to
make
money,' I explained. ‘Aren't you a businessman? Remember when you paid for my gymnastics lessons? Or my clarinet classes? This is the same thing, except this will be my
job
. There will be
returns
.'

He looked at me sceptically. Perhaps it was that my orthodontic plate made me look like a duck, or the blossoming acne that was spreading over my cheeks like a rash. But something probably told him his child wasn't going to be an actor. Or at least, not a successful one.

Still, Dad drove me to the talent agency a few days later, where we were greeted by the agency's founder, a pert, powder-puff of a woman called Faye. In her office, black and white photos of young, handsome Caucasian teenagers smiled at us.

‘Well!' Faye said, smiling broadly. ‘I'm just so glad you contacted us! It's so rare to have
Orientals
in our catalogue. You're all just so hard to find!'

The way she spoke about it, Faye made me feel that she'd been waiting to find me her entire career – some rare, ethnic treasure. And here I was! Right inside her office! How about that!

‘You know, it'd be such a thrill to have you on our books, Benjamin. A real
thrill
. Having diversity on the screen is so important, don't you think?' And while I hadn't given it a thought before, I realised that I absolutely agreed. Suddenly, this wasn't just about me; this was about the future of diversity in television. What we were doing in this room was important.

At the end of our meeting, she gave us directions to a photo studio, where they'd take my photos for a few hundred dollars. In the studio, posing in front of the lights, my orthodontic plate made it difficult for me to smile properly. When I collected the photos a few days later, I winced slightly at the results: blotchy skin, weird mouth, hair like a toilet brush, only one eye with an actual eyelid. Even the receptionist seemed to notice. ‘Don't worry,' she said consolingly. ‘People in casting don't look at the photos
that
closely. They only want a
rough
idea of what you look like.'

 

*

 

I'd collected several brochures from Faye's office, one of which was for private acting classes. The academy was based in Brisbane, but they also ran satellite classes on the Sunshine Coast, where I lived. At my first, free introductory lesson, all the other students sat on the stairwell's railings, gossiping and waiting for the doors to open. Everyone wore the same thing: a dark blue polo top, onto which the academy's logo was embossed: the letter ‘A,' bordered by twisting film reels to form a classy and timeless emblem. I kept my distance from everyone else until an overwhelmingly friendly girl approached me, eating biscuits from the box.

‘Hi!' she said. ‘You go to my school. I'm Julie!'

‘Oh, hey. I'm Ben.'

Julie and I shook hands. A car pulled up and two adults – a man and a young woman – got out, carrying props and folders.

‘That's Anthony, and that's Natalya,' Julie said, pointing.

‘They're so awesome. You'll love them.'

Anthony, the academy's founder, was a sturdily handsome man with rugged features. With his square chin and wavy brown hair, he was like the missing Baldwin brother. As well as teaching, he'd already featured in several television commercials, and in a community theatre productions of
The Boys
, in which he'd played a rapist. Teaching alongside him was Natalya, a much younger woman whose black hair, large head, bug eyes and striped stockings made her look like she'd wandered off a Tim Burton set.

At the start of the class, we formed a circle. ‘Everyone, I'd like you all to welcome our newest student over here,' Anthony said, smiling with fantastically straight teeth that made me want to keep my mouth shut. ‘Do you prefer Benjamin or Ben?'

I mumbled my standard response: whatever was easier.

‘Now, before we start, we should introduce Ben to the academy's ground rules. Would someone like to explain to Ben what the Safety Net is?'

Everyone put up their hands, but Anthony chose Stefan, a skinny blond boy with hair so conditioned it formed a permanent halo over his head. Before the class began, he had performed solos from
Les Misérables
, shoulders raised, hands by his side, moist eyes looking to the horizon, just to warm up.

‘The Safety Net,' Stefan said theatrically, ‘means that in the academy, there's never any paying out or putting down, no matter what you think.'

Homo
, I thought to myself.

‘There's only just total support!' he said.

Sounds gay
.

‘So no one says anything unless it's
encouraging
,' Natalya added, as though she could read my mind. She looked directly at me, stern but smiling. I looked at my feet.

‘Whatever exercises we do, don't be afraid to take a risk and really go for it,' Anthony added. ‘Everything that works in drama is about taking a risk, you know.'

Every week from then on, our starry-eyed group of twenty would file into the old church hall and start breathing exercises and trust games. As I became more involved in the classes, the group became bigger and bigger. Remembering what it was like to be the new guy in the room, I'd greet the new members warmly. Like Clyde, a boy with home-cut hair and the hurt brown eyes of an abused dog.

‘I've come here because my mother says I have low self-esteem,' Clyde told us at his first lesson. ‘She thought this could be good for me … but whatever.'

In class, Clyde was riveting to watch. ‘Well, why don't you go fuck yourself,' he'd say in improvisation exercises. Other times, he'd launch into even darker characters. ‘I could fucking
kill you
if I wanted to,' he'd say, grabbing Stefan's collar during a theatre-sports exercise. Sometimes, in the middle of an improvisational skit, he'd violently lash out at the props, destroying them, screaming, ‘This is all fucking shit, this is fucked and I hate it!'

‘Whoa,' we'd say. ‘Time out, time out!'

Clyde would look around, bewildered. ‘That was okay, wasn't it?' he'd ask. ‘It was my character. You understand, right?'

 

*

 

Academy showcases were held in Brisbane, and industry professionals – producers, directors, casting agents – were invited along every year as VIPs. After performing in a subversive rewrite of
Snow White
, I was signed up by a Brisbane agent, absolutely hand-picked. I'd come home from acting classes elated, another new skill-set under my belt, pick up my pet mouse, Humphrey, from his outdoor cage and tour the garden, pretending we were explorers in a television show: me and my anthropomorphic rodent. Together, we'd venture into dangerous and dramatic situations, for which I'd win both Emmys and Golden Globes.

‘Things are looking up,' I told Humphrey. ‘Things are looking
okay
.'

Through my Brisbane agent, I was called to an audition – three hours away – at Warner Brothers Movie World, a theme park on the Gold Coast that also functioned as a Hollywood movie studio.
A real audition.
All I knew was that it was a kung-fu film set in Singapore, and that although it was a small role, it was a speaking part – the big time. My brother agreed to drive me there, three hours out of his way, and I was jittery the whole trip.

As I stood in line for the auditions, theme-park rides thundered above my head. Standing in the beating sun and fanning myself with a photocopied script, I watched the rollercoasters, partly wishing I was spending the day on them, before reminding myself that all actors made sacrifices for their art. Reading over the script again, I knew the lines off by heart, but they still made no sense to me whatsoever.

When I finally got to the front of the audition line, I was directed into a dark, air-conditioned room, where a producer and director had positioned a video camera to record our screen tests.

‘Hey, yo trip,' I recited, in front of the casting crew. ‘Checkin' dis out and lookin' at da skematic, I can't tell you fo' sure!' I fumbled, forgetting my lines. ‘Uhm …'

‘Why don't you start again?' the director said.

I tried again, only to forget my lines in the same place. Partly, I was distracted by my own face, blown up in the monitor. At that moment, I had the strangest feeling that the person up there didn't have the same star-quality I saw in my mind, or when I posed in front of my darkened bathroom mirror.

‘I'm really sorry,' I mumbled.

‘That's okay. Perhaps try it again,' the producer said. ‘But this time, do it with a stronger Asian accent.'

‘Asian accent?'

‘Well, the character's Asian, right? And you sound … well, normal.'

I never heard back from them after that.

 

*

 

Storms arrived in the week that followed and the rain never let up. Outside, wind howled like a constant scream. Because Humphrey wasn't allowed indoors, I set his cage on a moat-ringed island of bricks so he wouldn't drown. As the rain pelted down, I became lazy and tried to avoid going out in the wet to feed him every day. Eventually, I just left some pieces of bread in his cage, which I figured would sustain him for at least a week.

At the acting academy, all the students were tense and anxious, and we'd arrive to class soaking wet. Showcase auditions were taking place again, and there were far fewer monologue spaces up for grabs. Scoring a monologue slot was one of the most important things you could do in the academy. It meant you'd get more face-time with the VIPs and a greater chance of being cast in a TV show or commercial. Competition was going to be fierce, since enrolments all over the state were at record highs. We sat in rows, watching one another's performances, auditioning for academy staff we'd never encountered to ensure there wasn't any bias. I'd prepared a monologue from the movie
Twelve
Monkeys
, a role for which Brad Pitt had been recently nominated for an Oscar. It was about germs.

‘Eighteenth century, no such thing,' I announced, my eye twitching. ‘Nada. Nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No sane person. Ah-uh-huh.' I leapt off the stage and leered at the audition panel. One of them arched an eyebrow at me before scrawling notes. ‘Along comes this doctor – ah-ah-ah – Semmelweiss, Semmelweiss. He's trying to convince people, well doctors mainly, that there's teeny, tiny invisible bad things called
germs
that get into your body – and, uh-huh-uh – make you sick.'

Anthony came to class the following week and announced the names of the two students who had scored monologue performances at the showcase. I wasn't one of them. As everyone else started celebrating and commiserating, Anthony gave me a look. During the break, he asked me to join him outside, away from the other students.

‘What's going on?' he asked. ‘Out of everyone who auditioned, I thought you would have been a shoo-in. The auditioner said you'd botched your lines.'

I suddenly felt very small.

‘I didn't botch my lines,' I said. ‘The character's a paranoid schizophrenic.'

‘Well, maybe that didn't come across,' Anthony said. ‘Whatever happened, I'm disappointed. Not disappointed in you; just disappointed in what's happened.'

When I got home that night, I felt like I was going to spew. Mum greeted me at the door, biting her lip.

‘Mum?'

‘I've got some bad news,' she said.