You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(83)
But I have a hunch that I’m about to make some friends. Literally.
30
Here’s a story I would’ve probably told you this week if you didn’t need “space,” if you knew the definition of the word soon. Once I saw Spike Lee in a Key Foods. I was in eighth grade, old enough to know that you’re not supposed to say hi to famous people, but young enough to realize that the city is an equalizer, a boss that sends us all underground and then up into places like Key Fucking Foods. Anyway, I followed him around for a bit. I watched him pick up a box of linguini and I tried to decide how to play it. Did I tell him my name? Did I ask him to adopt me?
And then he turned around. I froze. Did he know I was following him? Was he freaking the fuck out? And then I blurted.
“I like the way you call it a Spike Lee joint.”
He laughed, and I thought I had this whole new life where Spike Lee was gonna teach me how to go fishing. “Thanks,” he said. “But I got bad news, little man. I’m not Spike Lee. I just look like him.”
I’ll never know if that was him, but it doesn’t matter, because the best part was the lead-up to the meetup, the part where I believed I met Spike Fucking Lee. You’ve made it clear that you want to believe that I have a life. I do have a life. I’m a slave 4 U because nothing compares 2 U. But your heart wants what it wants, so here I am set up in a midtown fucking Starbucks. I am here to produce A Joe Goldberg Joint. As in I am producing my fucking life, the one you want me to have, the one you need me to have.
My first step is to build Jeremy’s blog. The first entry is easy. Jeremy complains about his system crashing, how he lost his entire archive of his work. The second entry is about the guilt that comes with leaving New York so soon after 9/11, and the third entry is about his heroes, the kings of September 11, as he calls them, David Letterman and Rudolph Giuliani.
My Coldmail heats up ten minutes after I send you the link: I loooove Jeremy and I can’t wait to meet him and you can relax, Cusack. Rudy G is too old for me, I like em young, as you know. Miss you.
I don’t fall for that. I don’t tell you I miss you, and I don’t nag you about getting together. But I do tell you that my boy Jeremy and his girlfriend are getting here on Thursday.
I’m a cool cat, I really am.
My next step is to write an open letter, a casting call:
WANTED: Male, early twenties. Jeremy Piven type. Good sense of humor. Solid and sober type to play “the best friend.” Woman, early twenties. Girl-next-door type. More Molly Shannon sidekick aura. Less Kate Beckinsale beauty queen. One day. Non-Union. Meals covered. A JG Joint production.
* * *
—
It’s Day One of casting and I am camped out in a midtown Starbucks. I didn’t give out my full name. Actors scare me a little. I’m a private person. I can’t imagine wanting everyone on the planet to know who I am, but here comes my first potential Jeremy, and he’s…a bit of a letdown. The Alan Schweib in the headshot looked young and short, and this guy is a thirty-five-year-old beanpole. I take his photo and résumé. Dinner theater in Delaware. A Tide commercial two fucking years ago.
“All right,” he says, once he gets his Americano. “What are you shooting on?”
“Well, I’m not actually shooting.”
“So, it’s performance art?”
“You’ll be playing my buddy Jeremy.”
“Do you have a script?”
Stay in your lane, Alan. “It’s pretty simple. I’m the John Cusack, and you’d be the Jeremy Piven.”
Alan sighs like he’s the Cusack. “What’s the setup? Meaning what’s my motivation?”
“Well, my girlfriend wants to meet my buddy Jeremy, but he…” DOES NOT FUCKING EXIST. “He’s out of town and you’re, like, stepping in to play him.”
“And you’ve already cast your girlfriend?”
“No, my girlfriend is my girlfriend.”
“Meaning your girlfriend is playing your girlfriend….”
“Meaning my girlfriend in real life wants to meet Jeremy in the flesh. So you’ll, you know, you’ll be the Jeremy….” I save the best for last. “And you can pick your Sarah.”
He’s too snide to sell Tide, and he sneers. “Meaning this is not acting…. This is fraud.”
“Buddy, I’m just trying to make my girlfriend’s dream come true.”
“By lying.”
He snatches his headshot and goes off about his professionalism and tells me I’m gonna wind up behind bars. I resist the urge to make a dig about dinner theater in Delaware, and Carrie Bradshaw was right, Vail. It really is the end of love in Manhattan. My next potential Jeremy is from South Jersey. Too pretty, too tall, and, once again, too cynical. I thought actors were short. I thought they were in the business of dreams, but after four rounds of You need help…This is fraud…Will there be an orgy? I’m starting to panic. I told you that Jeremy and Sarah arrive today and my buddy Craig is letting me down. New York is letting me down. The fucking judgment.
A businesswoman in business attire glares at me. “Do you need that chair?”
Starbucks brings out the worst in people with a menu that encourages people to be really fucking picky and I should’ve done this downtown.