Pageboy, page 9
I had this idea that something had happened to my vagina during the Rollerblade incident, causing my body to refuse entry. Everyone was talking about “doing it” and “hooking up” and “virginity” and “cum,” and I didn’t get it. Was everyone also pretending?
I avoided sex with guys and suppressed my real, unrequited crushes. My brain could not comprehend that I simply wasn’t interested, that I just didn’t want to go through with it, which would be a completely appropriate feeling and response.
When I walked into a gynecologist’s office for the first time and recapped the situation, the doctor thought it best to give me my first examination and Pap smear. A med student in residence flanked her, shadowing and observing the process. Legs up, spread wide, the cold metal speculum stretched me open, separating the inside of my vagina. The feeling sent sparks through me, up my pelvis, into my gut, fear mixed with exhilaration. Not pain, just a new discomfort for an unaccustomed body. She dug around in there, the newfangled sensation causing me to fidget. Squirm then stiff, squirm then stiff.
She assured me there was nothing wrong with my vagina. All clear. The response was frustrating at the time—now I had nothing to blame. I sat up and covered my vagina, thinking, Perhaps if I have sex enough I’ll convince myself I enjoy it?
As my inaugural gynecologist visit was coming to a close, the med student looked at me.
“I really liked you in Hard Candy,” she said.
I squeezed a smile through a cringe, said thank you and goodbye, and left.
12
ROLLER DERBY
When I went to my first Oscars in 2008 for Juno, I could feel how close I was. Not to winning the award, but to the end of the months-long process of campaigning for it. All the parties to attend, the interviews where I smiled, altered my body language and voice, playing along with the role that had been chosen for me. I wanted it to be over, and not just this chapter, but acting altogether.
After awards season concluded, I was supposed to make a film in England. It was based on a famous book, and I was attached as the main character, a sought-after role. Every time the project came up, my agents excitedly spoke of the opportunity, sharing updates and new casting ideas. I would imagine myself in a woman’s costume from the mid-nineteenth century. The dress, the shoes, the hair, flashed before my eyes. It was too much after having put on the mask for awards season. I understood that if I were to do it, I would want to kill myself.
It wasn’t easy to explain to my reps that I couldn’t take on a role because of clothing. A face would scrunch up and tilt sideways, but you’re an actor? Wardrobe fittings for films ripped at my insides, talons gashing my organs. Fittings for photo shoots and premieres … I would nosedive, spiraling into a deep depression, anxiety boisterous. The writhing that ensued surpassed language, and the negligible amount that I was able to communicate only reinforced the gaslighting, that tone of voice. Was it pity?
Clothes leeched to my thighs, my chest, latching fast like a slap bracelet from the 1990s. I cringed at the way people lit up when seeing me in feminine clothing, as if I had accomplished a miraculous feat. I will never forget the faces of glee when I donned a tight gold dress in Cannes for the premiere of X-Men 3.
“But you look so beautiful.”
“Just play the game.”
It was too much to play a role on-screen when the role I played in my personal life was suffocating me already. I pushed myself to dispel the truth for fear of banishment, but I was despondent, trapped in a dismal disguise. An empty, aimless shell. And as usual, I would take it out on myself, obsessing about food, striking my head with my fist. As if pounding my skull would knock it out, the invisible force that stalked me.
I ended up backing out of the film.
Instead, I nabbed the role of Bliss Cavendar in Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It, about a seventeen-year-old from a small town in Texas who falls in love with Roller Derby. Ill fit for the expectations of her mother—played by genius Marcia Gay Harden—and forced to be in beauty pageants her entire childhood, Bliss dreams of getting out. She lies to her parents and joins a Roller Derby team. The Derby world embraces her, supports her, and encourages Babe Ruthless, Bliss’s Derby name, to be herself, to be her own hero, as Maggie Mayhem, played by the brilliant Kristen Wiig, suggests.
I identified with Bliss, and my aversion to the gloss of Hollywood was no match for the affinity between a closeted queer and the chance to learn Roller Derby. Not being on camera or in a makeup trailer for months and getting to learn a new, dynamic sport was a lifeline. I’d always been an athlete but had lost a lot of that strength. I wanted that again, that physicality, I missed it from my life.
Learning Roller Derby was no joke though. My Derby coach, Axles of Evil—Alex Cohen, famed NPR host—was warm and encouraging, but she was tough as nails. We trained in the former location of the LA Derby Dolls. A large old factory, with a white-brick exterior. The sound of our falls would ricochet around the cavernous inside. I’d done my share of obligatory ice-skating growing up in Canada, and I hoped it, mixed with my Rollerblade years, would translate. It did, at least for the most part. The track was banked, and even getting on and off it was a challenge at first. I buzzed as I pictured us soaring down and around and up and back while being hip checked, or tripped, or barreled to the ground. I was in for it.
I was still dating Paula at the time, and the thought of being apart for such an extended period was agonizing. I would spend the spring learning Roller Derby and then travel to Michigan to make the film throughout the summer. Paula was living in Nova Scotia, not able to come visit me such a long distance away on a whim. I’d be going nonstop in Los Angeles, working with a physical trainer five days a week and with Axles for three days of the week. Quick trips home wouldn’t be a reality. Traveling extensively for short visits only ever seemed to increase my loneliness, stress, and sadness.
Los Angeles was still a fairly new landscape, and I felt perpetually stuck. The aloneness I experienced during those Juno award months haunted me, a smidgen of the feeling could stir panic. I went from a person who craved being on my own to someone petrified of it. It was humiliating. I’d made it so far and now here I was, incomplete and unable to function.
Paula and I decided she should come live in LA while I trained. We had been in a relationship for a year, lived together in Halifax, and did not want to manage the distance of it all over again. She would work as my assistant so she wasn’t losing income, driving me to training in the day, picking me up after. She’d return to Nova Scotia at the end of the summer. We had a dog named Patti at the time, a brown-and-white Chihuahua that Paula would take on reluctant walks while I trained. Patti was not a fan of this world, wanting nothing to do with anyone other than Paula or me. She was content to live life snuggled on our laps in perpetuity, snarling at anyone who drew near. We loved her, but she clearly had a past. With Paula as my assistant we’d operate in the world with no one being the wiser.
We can keep it a secret and still be together. We’ll make it work. I tried to convince myself.
We stayed in a ridiculous house on a hill just north of Hollywood near the 101. It was like nowhere either of us had lived. It was an architectural folly, all risks and shapes—bold and modern with that sheeny look, a Dwell magazine spread. A movie about a closeted couple coming to Hollywood and the location was impeccable, now the drama just needed to unfold.
I went from flying around the Derby track to struggling to motivate at home. A paragraph in a book was difficult to get through. Nothing I had enjoyed before stimulated me. I’d pretend, but, in reality, I felt dead inside. I was overwhelmed at being known overnight, recognized constantly. I hated it. People coming up, chipper and pumped to meet Juno, me wanting to hide in a hole and never come out. Paparazzi were outside the vet when we were leaving with Patti, who had gotten very sick. They’d follow us into Whole Foods. Another time, a woman in a white Honda trailed us for almost the whole day taking photos. It always left that lingering, anxious thought, Can they tell we are together? I never wanted to leave the house, and Paula was stuck with me, she didn’t know anyone in LA.
Paula resented me for being so closeted here. And during our fights I couldn’t help but get defensive and bring up that she wasn’t out to her family. It didn’t seem fair, me having to deal with the bulk of the blame. I was at least trying to make things work, figure out a way for us to be together. In Nova Scotia, even though we were living in the same one-bedroom apartment, her parents did not think we were a couple. And it wasn’t like we weren’t around them. I was over there all the time. Her mom and dad were very nice, but they were also very homophobic. They were religious, and things don’t evolve overnight, especially when the Bible comes into play. And yes, my mom knew, but she was disappointed, and that sorrow sprang from the same holy source. But eventually my mom started to change, her old narratives began to crumble, creating space for new ones. When I came out as gay, Paula showed her parents my speech at the Human Rights Campaign conference. Her father got up and left the room and Paula’s mother looked to her and asked, “Did you know Ellen was gay?”
In LA, we fought about who was closeting who the most. But, the truth is, it was worse for Paula. I was in denial, desperate to make it work. The family thing was somewhat manageable, albeit hurtful. The Hollywood ball game was a whole other story, riddled with confusing rules that constantly changed. And I had changed. I was different here, she wasn’t. I was being told to lie and hide. It puzzled me to watch cis straight actors play queer and trans characters and be revered. Nominations, wins, people exclaiming, “How brave!”
“Keep your personal life private, that is what I tell all my clients,” my manager would instruct me, while the same clients walked the red carpet with a spouse or came out as heterosexual in an interview. Being arm in arm walking down the street in paparazzi photos was a natural phenomenon, even encouraged for publicity. There was always the pressure to appear more feminine—dresses to events, high heels, “take off your hat.” This was my manager’s attempt at helping me build my career. In her heart she was caring for me, coaching me to morph into part of the club, making sure I still had all opportunities available to me. I got lost in the part, unable to fully lean into the character but still losing track of myself. Stuck in the liminal space.
Hollywood is built on leveraging queerness. Tucking it away when needed, pulling it out when beneficial, while patting themselves on the back. Hollywood doesn’t lead the way, it responds, it follows, slowly and far behind. The depth of that closet, the trove of secrets buried, indifferent to the consequences. I was punished for being queer while I watched others be protected and celebrated, who gleefully abused people in the wide open.
“The system is twisted so that the cruelty looks normative and regular and the desire to address and overturn it looks strange,” Sarah Schulman writes in her required read, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences.
Paula’s and my relationship was caught in the cross fire, and I was losing track of how to make it work.
Being closeted while learning Roller Derby has a special type of irony to it, given how intertwined queerness is with the sport, but throwing myself into learning this new skill still opened up a much-needed pocket of joy in my life at the time.
Drew was also learning to Roller Derby when she wasn’t in preproduction for the film, and we had a blast together. More people had joined, the sensational Zoë Bell, who learned to Roller Derby in what felt like five minutes. She was fearless and full of fun, her energy always joyous and generous. We sped around the track, racing and bumping and laughing and falling and getting back up. It was actually the falling that eased the trepidation. You have a few big crashes, realize it is not a big deal, the pads work, you got this.
Juliette Lewis came aboard, Eve and Kristen Wiig soon after. Everyone worked hard. All of us equally focused and supportive. Learning something new together, especially something as challenging as Derby, allowed us to bond quickly. It created a palpable chemistry, clear in the film. It was such an awesome group. I am grateful for those times.
When we were capable enough, actual Derby Dolls would join our sessions, adding more bodies to experience the sensation of an actual jam. Scrimmaging with them was terrifying. The first time real-life Derby stars came to practice with us, my hands trembled as I tied my skates. Making my way around that track had been hard enough, and now women twice my size were coming at me with their hip bones. I hoped my helmet and mouth guard were doing enough to hide my terror. There was no time to think. We swerved and smashed and as the nerves dissipated, exhilaration took the reins. Playing with them improved my abilities dramatically. The moment when you commit to trust your feet, no more looking down, head up, that is when you really start flowing. Shifting from thought to instinct. What a special opportunity to tackle fears alongside others—something I wasn’t so familiar with at the time—witnessing the work pay off and the camaraderie form. But despite that closeness and the trust, it would be a while before I shared that Paula was more than my friend and assistant. Not that they couldn’t already tell.
We moved to Michigan at the start of the summer to make the film. It took place in Texas but was shot predominantly in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Frankenmuth, with just a day or two in Austin, Texas.
More people were cast, and the training continued. The days would begin with alternating yoga and calisthenics classes. It was intimate, all of us fully committed, laughing, tired, but having fun. However, I did feel inherently dissimilar, perhaps reminding me of the high school soccer days? Not just mismatched physically, but also energetically. Despite always being invited in, I buzzed around the fringes, unable to wholly connect.
When we’d been filming on skates all day and losing our heads from exhaustion, Kristen and I would work between takes on a musical we had spontaneously created called The Unidentified Beast. It was based on an article we saw online about an unknown creature that had washed ashore in Montauk. It was referred to as “the unidentified beast.” We’d gesture dramatically as we skated, choreography revealing itself through our emotion. We’d improvise songs as we looped around, delusional with fatigue. Our main go-to line was pretty straightforward: “The Unidentified Beaaaaassssssttttttt!” we’d belt, arms raised. It didn’t get old. At least for us, perhaps the surrounding cast and crew felt different.
* * *
We haven’t always kept in touch, but at certain, significant moments, when I really needed someone, Kristen was always there. She lights everything up. The first time I began communicating how I wasn’t okay to LA pals was to Kristen and Alia Shawkat, who plays Bliss’s best friend, Pash. It came out accidentally, the words just jumped out. I was huddled with them at a party at Drew’s house in Hollywood, many months after we had wrapped the film.
We stood chatting. They were speaking excitedly. I felt lost in space, disassociated. It was a period where I almost never left my apartment, and even in the apartment I could not operate. The TV would be on, I’d lie on the couch, but not watching it. I’d fixate on food. I felt too afraid to text a friend to make a plan, as if my presence was an endless burden. I was sinking in slow motion, like a nightmare where you go to scream but nothing comes out. Mouth wide, lips parting, wanting it, you try again … silence. And down you go.
I looked at these two wonderful people. I’d met Alia when I read off camera for her audition. Already a major fan, having watched all of Arrested Development, I was even more blown away by her in person. Sincere, risk-taking, and naturally comical, she made it seem effortless. Our chemistry sparked, immediately playful and free. Alia became one of my best friends in real life, too.
“I’m miserable.” It was as if someone else had said it. A new guest over my shoulder.
“What?” they said, attention shifting to me.
And it came out. I was hurting, the closet too much, my relationship crumbling, I couldn’t leave my home. I believed it unattainable to ever be out. Unthinkable the idea I could be where I am now. I would have laughed and dismissed the suggestion altogether, that this would be a feasible future for me. I’m not precisely sure why my feelings emerged in that moment. I do know I trusted them, felt cared for and protected, I knew they’d never judge me. Kristen and Alia were people I could be myself around, or at least work toward it with. They supported my truth, helping me shovel out the bullshit that covered it, wanting me to feel free. But despite people’s desire to help, it would all take me so long. False ends and false starts, me fooling myself, justifying suppression and self-harm. Rewarded for lying and punished for sharing the secret.
“You can make a choice and go or stay. But this is my reality, my life, I’ll never be able to be out. I don’t know what else to say,” I said to Paula in my studio apartment in Hancock Park, my first place in Los Angeles after making the official move.
I really believed this. And a couple years later, I still felt the same.
The anxiety never stopped. Pounds were dropping, panic attacks were preventing me from leaving the house. Many days I felt myself unsafe to drive. My lack of motivation alarming, my desire for nothing too big. It was my manager who got me to my first real therapist, a lifesaving introduction.
“We need to get you to a place where you can come out,” a new therapist said to me when I was twenty-three.
“No, that is impossible,” I replied without thought. It moved through my lips as organically as my queer walk.
When the topic of gender came up, I could not speak, I would just weep. It was too hot to touch. It would take another decade before I properly addressed it, until I was able to sit with myself long enough to listen. Until I was pushed so far that I didn’t have a choice. The last fork in the road.
13
