Pageboy, page 4
I was into having an older brother. Scott was a jock, an excellent athlete, who went on to play Junior A hockey for years. A lot of my youth was spent in hockey rinks. I’d eat french fries and watch the brawls, transfixed by the bizarre, sanctioned fighting. When his friends came over I stayed close, that annoying kid brother who tags along. I loved how they dressed, how they smelled. The way they removed their T-shirts, reaching back over their shoulders, grabbing the fabric and pulling it up over their heads, revealing a torso, a dangling chain. I’d slink into Scott’s room and dig out his cologne, not understanding the difference between a dab and a dollop. Is this a magic potion? I wondered. Perhaps this would do it. I snuck back out of his bedroom, the stench of a horny teenager trailing, as if I had plunged into an ocean of Old Spice.
Scott was very physical with me, as a lot of older brothers are. We both were obsessed with wrestling, formally known as the WWF (World Wrestling Federation). Power slams and clotheslines took up an abundance of our television time. We’d wrestle, he would try moves on me, mostly with my consent. He’d perform “power bombs,” which were relatively safe and fun; he’d thrust me up into the air, flipping me, and I would land hard on my back, slamming into Dennis and Linda’s bed. Once, however, there was no soft landing, he did it on the floor between the bed and the dresser. I didn’t rotate the necessary degrees and landed headfirst, the top of my skull smashing into the floor, my neck wrenching. I lay on the floor stiff, I could not move, I could not talk, and I could barely breathe. Staring at the ceiling, Scott panicked above me, kept hushed and whispering, petrified he’d get in trouble. He got me to my room and I waited until the pain lessened.
Like any sibling, he could get too rough, whether wrenching my arm until I screamed or putting me in a sleeper hold, making me slip under for a moment, blurred stars dancing in front of a black backdrop. Or hurting me emotionally, throwing my stuffed animals around the room, punching them, beating them, my pleas only hyping him up more. Whether emotional or physical, when it was all too much I would cry, begging him to stop, to leave.
As a kid it was complicated, looking up to him as much as I did, while also experiencing another side, which felt harsh and remorseless. But none of this was Scott’s fault, he was a kid, too. Kids can be mean, kids can be rough. It was his mother’s encouragement that stung.
“You’re such a brat, shut up, you brat,” Linda shouted at me from the hall. She looked satisfied, as if having unearthed another perfectly discreet way to induce pain, shrouded in the guise of sibling tension.
Linda’s snicker came out when Scott and she would tease me, sometimes evolving into a full cackle. It seemed she’d dig to find anything to pick at, whatever helped her feel better. In retrospect, I think it was compulsive. I am sure Linda didn’t want to be cruel, but I believe she held an impulse in her depths to habitually come for me.
Private play in my bedroom offered solace. A different bunk bed challenged my architectural capabilities. Sometimes I’d include the desk adjacent to the bed, a tiny nook where one could hide. I adored Playmobil. I craved narrative, drama, relationships, and otherworldly challenges. At my mom’s I had a pirate ship and at my father’s a Playmobil gas station.
I escaped to my room, eager to go on a journey, an adventure of the imagination, which I found no less thrilling than a “real” adventure, if not more so. I had put on my blue Adidas tracksuit, a prized possession. It was zipped up to the very top that day, ready to go to a space where I could be exactly who I was. Nothing between me and the moment, no expectations, no performing, no eviscerating self-doubt. I slipped my arms into the loops of my backpack, which I’d stuffed full of the objects I might require on my adventure—a small wallet with a couple loonies and Canadian Tire money, a plastic sword. I knelt on the bed, making final adjustments to my pack, lost in my imaginary world. I was mentally preparing for my expedition when the door opened and in walked Linda.
She burst into laughter and called for Scott to come see. I heard him scramble out of his room, and he appeared in the doorway next to her. They stood there, looming, just staring in and mocking me, speaking of me as if I was not there. What looked like delight spread across their faces as they teased me. The three of us, alone in the house. Though I’m not sure that my father would have done much had he been there.
He was different when it was just the two of us versus when it was the whole family.
“If Linda and you were drowning, I would save you,” he would say in private. “Linda is not the love of my life, you are the love of my life.” This was a secret. I knew it was one without him directly saying so, because around Linda the energy was not the same. We had a song, Ruth Brown’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business.” Dennis would blare it, singing along, while driving me to school.
Around Linda that “love” evaporated. A transformation in the tone, the body, the face. A coldness, as if they’d conspired and teamed up, a frigid demeanor that made my eyes fall to the floor. She could be mean to me around the others but was worse to me when we were alone. I’ve kept these stories close; it’s hard even to share fragments of them here. My father did nothing, no protection.
I yearned for time with my father, away from Linda. “You’re manipulating your father,” she spat once. The words, searing and sharp, they singed, a flash fry leaving a mark. Linda did not like us spending time alone together, every time, without fail, it created friction.
They married when I was ten in our living room in front of the fireplace. I wore a little dress and I sobbed. Linda hugged me as if I was crying tears of joy. As if she loved me. As if we loved each other. I wept more and more. I put on an act, just like I did in all those cards I wrote expressing appreciation and adoration. As if it was a duty. I was an emotional, messy jumble of never wanting to see her again and desperately needing her to love me, the autopilot taking over—stuck on a moving sidewalk.
When I was older and the boys at school were no longer interested in being friends and the girls had distanced themselves or, worse, turned mean, she focused her teasing on my lack of a social life. “Why aren’t you more social? Do you just have no friends?” she’d say. There was something in her that liquidated any confidence I had left. My system would malfunction, an invisible force pressing on my limbs. Less a freeze, more a flop.
Scott was assistant captain of his hockey team, which was the best in the league. He was handsome, a ruling jock of the halls. It’s difficult to imagine he was not a bully at times, but he did grow up to be a very sensitive man. I have a lot of love for my brother. He bawled his eyes out after the premiere of my film Freeheld. Ashley was pretty, smart, and feminine. The ideal popular 1990s girl. Scott and Ashley were social butterflies. Always in and out, always on the phone, making this plan and that plan.
When they were not home I would answer the phone and write down messages for them. Ashley, Tom called at 4:15 says give him a call back or Scott, Kelly called and says she will meet you at Nick’s later. I’d leave the Post-it notes stuck on the side of the island, they’d be waiting for them when they entered the kitchen. Yellow dance cards on display.
Linda’s subtext echoed louder than the gulls. Pounding her fists on the evidence, hammering in my loneliness. Why aren’t you like them?
6
JUMP SCARE
The first time the voice said to me that can’t go in your body I was sixteen, in an Italian restaurant on Queen West in Toronto. A friend, Wiebke, was letting me live with her just around the corner on Claremont Street. She had taken me to dinner to cheer me up after a difficult day.
I met Wiebke not long before I turned fifteen. She’d cast me in her first full-length film, Marion Bridge. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2002, where Wiebke was awarded Best First Feature. It was a brilliant film that was originally a play by the legendary Cape Bretoner Daniel MacIvor.
Agnes, played by Molly Parker, returns to her hometown to care for her dying mother, having fled a decade earlier to escape a household that was shrouded in vicious abuse. She reunites with her sisters, Theresa and Louise, their wounds half scabbed, the blood seeping out in their own unique ways—that mysterious little goblin named trauma, scuttling through the flesh. I played the object of Agnes’s perplexing obsession, a teenager named Joanie working at a gift shop in Marion Bridge, a rural community just twenty minutes from Sydney.
Sitting behind the steering wheel in the gravel parking lot, Agnes sits and stares, eventually mustering up the courage to go inside. Joanie is her biological child, whom she gave away for adoption when she was a teenager. Joanie knows nothing of this. Suspicion grows as Agnes makes recurring visits. Worlds collide, secrets surface, truth laid bare.
The waiter placed our food on the table, snapping me out of a stupor. I stared down at my margherita pizza. Wiebke sat opposite me, lifting the knife provided to cut hers, it had pears and ham. I zoomed out, departing from my body.
Nope. The voice spoke with a sinister tone. That can’t go inside of you.
I’d had to call the police hours before. I had my first stalker.
It did not begin like that. At first, he became a friend, albeit a secret one. A covert pen pal for the previous two years or so. He had seen me on the CBC family drama Pit Pony, which first aired in early February 1999, when I was eleven years old and he was in his early twenties.
Pit Pony was my first professional acting job. My work up until that point was comprised of a couple plays with the drama club in elementary school. For the first role, I was a dove, and I screwed up my one line, leaving a short pause before saying “oops.” The audience laughed. The following year, I landed Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and had a more successful run. The thrill of playing a character so iconic to me, the thrill of playing a boy, organic and free. My bunk bed fort but onstage. Perhaps people would see me?
In 1996, a local actor and casting director named John Dunsworth came to my school. I was nine years old. He was looking to cast the CBC movie of the week, Pit Pony, which was based on a young adult book of the same name. I remember him interrupting music class with my favorite teacher, Mr. Ellis, who had once jokingly said I needed to stop “roughing up the boys at recess” to my delight.
We all stood in the class while Mr. Dunsworth had us do little exercises, testing us. I was selected to audition.
I showed up on the day, excited yet not old enough to fully understand the significance. “Could you act like you are lost in the forest?” the casting director prompted. I turned my head swiftly, abruptly from the left to the right, spinning my body around, terrified at the night creeping in, abandoned in the cold dark. A game of imagination.
“That was great. Now could we try it with you being still? Can you show me that feeling with just your emotions?”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but I played along. I must have done something right because I got the part. I couldn’t believe it. Another chance to get lost in a pretend world that felt more like reality than my own. It was assumed to be an anomaly, a delightful little surprise. But then the movie of the week turned into a television show, and my acting career began.
I played the little sister, Maggie MacLean. She wore dresses with long sleeves that hung below the knee. Over them, a smock. I was puzzled by the dress over the dress. Black tights covered my legs. My hair had grown out from when we shot the movie of the week, in which I wore a wig. Relentlessly itchy, it resembled a dead raccoon. I didn’t want long hair, but I didn’t want to wear that wig again. Around my shoulders, sometimes in braids, potentially a small bow. I can only imagine my mother’s relief.
Becoming a professional actor coincided with the end of me getting the “thanks, bud” at the mall. Growing my hair out for roles, body on the precipice of change, I would stare at the cis boys on set. Collared shirts, suspenders, knickers, and no tights. Instead of bows, newsboy hats.
How is that not me? I move like them; I play like them.
A gnawing feeling from toddlerhood, stored in the spine, like shingles, striking at a moment’s notice, spreading across my body, nerves exposed.
While making Pit Pony, my gender dysphoria was rife. The way the tights glued to my body, the way my dresses flowed. Those fucking bows, like the barrettes my mom would snap in my hair, provoking an unresolved, internalized tantrum.
Getting ready for school, solo in the bathroom, I’d smash my head with my hairbrush. Who is that in the mirror? Squinting my eyes shut, bracing for it, slam slam slam. My mother’s queen bed had a frame that included tall wooden posts on the corners, the tops of them resembling upside-down ice-cream cones. When I was alone, able to keep my secret, I would climb up onto the bed. I’d stare at the post, aligning my torso so the spike would drill directly into my stomach. I’d hoist my body up, conspiring with gravity to impale myself. It hurt but also didn’t hurt. I loved having an outlet for my self-disdain, the nausea, I wanted it scooped out.
Sitting in the den at my father’s, I’d turn on the family computer, looking for an escape, another pretend world. I had made a silly website in junior high school when we were learning about HTML in computer science class. The man who had seen me on CBC found the website and reached out through it. Over the course of a few emails, a connection began to grow, a companionship. We wrote of our grievances, our loneliness, our incongruence with our surroundings and with ourselves. Kid drama for me, something else for him.
Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, my heart palpitated upon hearing that Apple start-up sound. I’d close my eyes, visualizing a new email, jonesing for the serotonin bump. The dial-up internet screeched and scratched and hissed, those irksome noises.
As he started to express deeper feelings for me, my stomach churned. Repressing the gurgles, I stayed on track, I didn’t want to lose this, an actual connection with weight, with promise. Even around my friends my panic fluttered. I could not speak to my parents about my emotions, not the true ones at least. Lost in the desert, the barren landscape abundant with life, I just couldn’t see it. It felt like he was all I had.
He lived an hour or so outside of Toronto. He wrote that he would be coming to Halifax. The drive from Toronto to Halifax is two days. I had done it many times with my mother to visit my aunts. A small red cooler always sat at my feet on the floor of my mother’s red VW Golf, full of snacks and Pepsi, my tiny legs hovered above. I’d crack one open, salivating at that click/ah/hiss. Gulping and digging into a bag of ketchup chips, I would stare out the window and count the passing cows. I especially loved the Guernseys. I could spot them by their tan color, their reddish-brown blotches. I would make my poor mother listen to the Lion King soundtrack on loop. How many times she was forced to listen to “Hakuna Matata” I don’t know. Me waving my greasy, ketchup chip–stained hands in the air, belting it out. We would spend the night near the Quebec and New Brunswick border. I loved listening to her speak French.
Staring at the glowing computer, I read his words ad nauseam, hoping they would change. My body solid, skin tight, bricks on the chest. I began to perspire, dampness on the neck. Despite sweating, I shook, cold but burning, ears ringing. My first panic attack, in retrospect. I did my best to dodge, intuiting that a clear no would not suffice, that something had changed. Ultimately, I managed to get him not to come and began the process of extracting myself. Responding less, disappearing for long periods. I could breathe, it seemed like that episode of Degrassi had ended.
Not long after I moved to Toronto, he resurfaced, having known my plan to move there in the fall. The emails amped up. He would attach pictures of me with my eyes closed, and photoshop himself with massive angel wings above me, glaring down. They must have been stills he took on his television, they were not images I could remember.
I’m going to cum on you in the clouds of heaven, he wrote.
He’d send me links to missing children websites.
By then I was sixteen years old.
And worst of all, Creed lyrics.
Above all the others we’ll fly
This brings tears to my eyes
My sacrifice
He made it increasingly clear that he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone get in his way.
Wiebke was the first person I told about him, the emails had reached a sizzling point. The oil leaping from the pan.
“You should really eat, you need to eat,” Wiebke said, with a look of concern I appreciated.
That can’t go inside of you. That minacious voice again.
“I know, Wiebke, I’m not sure I can.”
That can’t go inside of you. Insisting.
My stomach felt like a dirty old cloth getting wrung out over the sink, hands choking it, bit by bit.
I tried to eat a bite of the pizza. No matter how much I chomped and gnawed, swallowing was out of the question.
That can’t go inside of you. Again, that sardonic inflection.
The flavor had altered, my taste buds spoiled. Leaning over, elbow on table, hand on forehead, I drank some water.
It isn’t as if I had no food thoughts before. They had started to pop up when puberty launched. I was filling out, growing breasts, all my discomfort heightened as boys and girls disentangled. Watching myself on-screen had not been a problem for me really, but as my body morphed, that changed. The more visible I became, the more I waned.
My pizza still untouched, we headed home. I couldn’t shake the events that had happened earlier that day.
* * *
“Ellen!” Wiebke yelled.
I was sitting in my room doing homework. I loved that room, it was small, just enough space for a bed and a little dresser. The room had been painted close to canary yellow, my Cat Power and my Peaches posters tacked up. It had one big old window. At night, I would awake to eyes glowing, peering in, the raccoons examining me. There was a whole family in the attic at some point. Over a hundred thousand raccoons live in Toronto, it’s been called the Raccoon Capital of the World. The population began to skyrocket when Toronto introduced the “green bin,” a municipal compost program, in 2002. Feasts upon feasts.
