#bax beau

[iamabax]

[iamabax]

Suffice it to say Johnnies a fucking nut and her default speed of sustained terminal velocity made it difficult to decipher whether hers was more talent or effort- like the rest of us she truly longed for genuine connection but unlike the rest of us she was an actor and whatever connection you might make with an actor is presupposed and irrevocably suspect in the least to a mildly sociopathic megalomania held by a revolving door of splendid faces.

Bax Beau

[iamabax]

Super 150′s

Oh, those youthful terrors of the soul that flatten out like paper ghosts once your chosen 60 hour poison hardens you. But we weren’t anywhere near that just yet. So there’s Bax, just now allowing herself to honestly explore said realms, Paxie who was far past it, myself who was delaying and planning on it’s convenient arrival in simultaneous manifestation as my mid life crisis, and then Johnnie, who recovered from her latest nervous breakdown as if it were a punctual weekly sucker punch. Denny of course, was in a sustained nervous breakdown and he wore it as fashionably as if it were super 150’s thread count.

[iamabax]

Stubborn Nut

Bax was a stubborn nut and I had given her more than a little space in this peculiar and unexplained move to Texas and quite frankly I was fed up with this flying under the radar unimpressive existence of hers. I’ve found that talent deferred is less like rotting victuals and more like the symptoms of a disease without any actual sickness. And by symptoms I mean her petty theft, morbid obsessions, and fascination with Stephenie Meyer. I mean, for the love of God, if you’re gonna have dark fascinations at least be classy about it. Anyhow, my whole goal, if I may continue the metaphor, was to realize Bax’s hypochondriac indulgence into actual disease, accelerate said disease straight into stage two cancer, cut out the tumors, blast her with chemo, and then maybe she could move on to live as normal a life as a semi-amputated soul can manage- which is the best an artist should ever hope for.

[iamabax]

Dentists and tax accountants

I myself had an idyllic five months at thirteen when I had an epiphanic shift from naive creation into a realization that I had actual talent and the implications thereof. Sudden destiny beckoned and I was going to create a bespoke New World and I wanted everybody along for the ride. Idealism turned to bewilderment, bewilderment turned to frustration, and after about two years of resistance I realized that not only are some people destined to become dentists and tax accountants but that nearly every artist would be happier if they became a dentist or tax accountant.

[iamabax]

Five Alarm Actress

Bax prickled with intensity being near her, she was a violent throbbing heart. Seagull was merely words and exhortation but this woman was full of sustained existence- his words were necessary, but Johnnie was the reason he spoke at all. She wasn’t a type A, she was a type ‘Fuck You,’ when she was suddenly in wild gesticulation and today she was Brooklyn, the last 150 years, attitude epitomized, personified, gangster at it’s finest articulation, a wealth of offended sensibility suddenly seized in passion, rolled up into a ball, raised to a height and released. At the same moment, at which Bax would demur, which was most moments, Johnnie would turn on a dime, unquiet, carpe diem, and fan a five alarm until there was smoke at all exits. 

“Ah shit, this is not worth my time!” she screamed as she stormed out. Bax followed, exhilarated.

[iamabax]

Johnnie the Actress

“So it’s usually teenagers angst is reserved for although these days anxiety is carpet bombing every age group sans discrimination but I had such toddler angst, a little sidewinder, and they, my parents, knew I’d grow up to be a tom boy but then I saw Pygmalion in the fall and then Swan lake in the winter and I realized I was just an ugly duckling and I’ll be dammed if I didn’t trade my sneakers for ballet flats cause I’d a princess and then spring came and then I was with Marlene, my best friend, and we were both poor and holding hands one day and walking by the lake and she was blonde and her hair glowed in the twilight and I wanted to kiss her but I didn’t because I wasn’t supposed to, Irish Catholic, but then Derrick was chasing me on the playground a week later and I turned and punched him and he fell but he didn’t cry, just sat there on his ass stunned and a single bead of sweat hung from his brow and I took a blade of grass and took it from him and held it there between the two of us, glowing like an amber drop under the wooden jungle gym and he had paused for me, because of me, and he was radiant and then I wanted to kiss him and I did because I was supposed to and he loved me and the next day I didn’t love him anymore- his glow was gone, but we went steady and so I loved the boys but all of these were all true for me.

Then I was eleven and my father’s older friend Charlie would look at me and talk to me, and the way his eyes followed me wasn’t good, I knew, but I liked the attention and I liked his scruff, his grey, but then I was in middle school and the boys voices were dropping with cracks, their hormones firing, and they were awkward and fumbling forward in naiveté with sudden foolish invincible spirits and I saw West Side Story and I was a tomboy again setting trashcans on fire with them.”

Johnnie talked on teeming with life, and Bax realized if she sometimes felt that she had courage then Johnnie had conviction and that Johnnie alone was Canadian Barbie. 

“I never wanted less than all of it and I thought I was going crazy so often and always thinking why can’t I just be like another girl, every other girl that was put in a place and that place she stayed in but then in summer camp I was doing synchronized swimming in the middle of water polo, Tommy Diagle was just gripping onto a wall, couldn’t doggie paddle Tommy, Lord knows why he was there, the others were trying to score a goal but there was music in my head and I had to dance to it and the teacher finally, finally she made us all get out, line up like ducklings, and marched me over still in my swimsuit to the theater unit and I was not ashamed and the theater instructor was unfazed, because he understood, and they were playing pretend so he told everyone to swim and so we all swam and then he told us to become animals and I was a tiger and ferocious and tried to eat the others up and they were afraid but then he gave me lines to memorize- I did, I did memorize them but then I made up my own lines before I knew what extempore was and whatever hadn’t been turned on in me suddenly all the power got turned on at once and the instructor’s jaw just hung open. And that was that. I could be all those things, fully and completely and have no ties to any of them. At the end of camp he molested me and I bit his hand, bit his finger off but they sewed it back on, but I had what I needed.”

“He did what?” Bax asked. 

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Johnnie said, blowing a giant pink bubble which popped, she swallowed it and then she took a swig of her peach Bellini.

[iamabax]

Johnnie Moira

The sudden stillness in the room was poignant. She had them all at attention, as an actor prefers, and glided along the tension as if she were a dainty cable car. She wasn’t blonde as Denny had guessed. She had hazel hair, a thin nose, a bright brow, and sharp jaw. Sharper still was her sound which was clear and leapt to their ears with definition. Her voice had a bit of newscaster, the sort that came with a built in amplifier which was perfect for the theatre. Later, in her first few years as an actress, the microphone men would have a hell of a time getting the boom at a proper distance for her gigantic sound.

Johnnie took off her coat and sat on stage. She had a slight lean to her when she sat, legs crossed and tossed off to one side. Her hair was cut just short enough to dance over a simple perfect line for a collar bone and she had wickedly slender shoulders, as if some of her was merely sketched and unfinished, powdery charcoal lines that shifted with ease. She was talking with effervescence as if they were all old friends and as if they were all old friends the entire cast had stopped and stooped to listen in. Her hands rubbed her knees and calves as if she were polishing up her own form. Bax would learn that Johnnie loved to curl up anywhere, those slight lines fit anywhere, and often her hands could hardly stop touching her legs. A little later Bax would learn this was her tell. When Seagull was nervous he clicked pens, when Johnnie was nervous her hands touched her legs but she always did it in such a way that it made you tangibly aware that not only was she beautiful, her beauty was unfinished.