{"id":9726,"date":"2011-01-11T13:30:50","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T18:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=9726"},"modified":"2011-01-12T17:01:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T22:01:00","slug":"when-cable-got-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/11\/when-cable-got-me\/","title":{"rendered":"When Cable Got Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part two of a five-part story. Click here<\/a> to read part 1.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Some of the author\u2019s earlier head shots, marking the beginning of his television career.<\/p><\/div>\n

So now I\u2019m a thirteen-year-old boy with a year of cable stuffed into all my brain pockets. I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s helping. I\u2019m too sensitive. After surviving the first fifteen minutes of The Exorcist<\/em> on a channel I\u2019m not supposed to watch, I couldn\u2019t sleep for days. I saw an episode of Gunsmoke<\/em> that made me lock myself in my room and cry. <\/p>\n

I like the simple and hopeful story lines the best. Like Hillbilly\u2019s. He was just a good ol’ boy sitting in the front row at a few WWF events until, spotted in the crowd, he was given the chance to get in the ring. Rowdy Roddy Piper (a bad guy) tried to lure him into his own training camp, but it was ultimately Hulk Hogan (a good guy) who befriended the bearded giant from Mud Lick and trained him to wrestle real human beings (as opposed to pigs and dogs). The Hulk gave Hillbilly his first pair of real wrestling boots. They are friends. I believe. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m in a tractor beam of television. The MTV videos quickly get more racy, the WWF plotlines more outrageous. I soak it all up, let it sink down deep. <\/p>\n

So when friends of my parents suggest that we kids get involved in modeling and acting, maybe even television commercials, I feel, despite my shyness, a funny little tug. My brother, sister, and I have \u201cthat look,\u201d the friends say, that \u201call-American look\u201d sought by catalogues and commercials, and we could make one hundred dollars for an hour-long photo shoot. <\/p>\n

One hundred dollars for an hour of standing in front of a camera is absurd. Having painted houses with our dad, we know exactly what an hour of work feels like and what it pays. We\u2019ve spent enough of them with rollers and brushes and blocks of sandpaper to do the math, and realize that this new equation is remarkable. <\/p>\n

I surrender to the tug, the curiosity. It just happens. Before I know it I\u2019m out in front of a camera, a paid catalogue shoot: my hair swooping off my forehead and secured with gel, on my third outfit, told to look left by the photographer and then right, then to lean my elbow on the shoulder of the kid next to me, who happens to be my brother, whose stiff hair is shooting like stalagmites off his head. Both of us smile as the camera flashes, wondering what the other is thinking, wondering if we\u2019ll really get paid for something so silly. <\/p>\n

The check comes! Weeks later. The rumors were true. I buy a remote-controlled car, a fast one from a specialty store, and my brother starts saving for a motorcycle.
\nWe work and get checks and sometimes help Mom and Dad when they can\u2019t cover their mortgage. They ask and we say yes. Then I start vying for the speaking roles and the national roles, handing out r\u00e9sum\u00e9s on which Dad has written things like Midwestern accent<\/em>, horseback riding<\/em>, expert at video games<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Needed: Caucasian male, blond hair, blue eyes, athletic, articulate.<\/p>\n

And here we are, all of us blond-haired, blue-eyed boys, lined up against a wall, circling each other in some waiting room with our moms and dads reading newspapers and gossiping about upcoming roles, which kid got which part. I\u2019m in a room with a hundred other me<\/em>s, all looking at the same script and mumbling the same lines as we pace around, patting at our hair and pulling at our clothes. Mom calls me over and grips me with her knees as she sticks her thumb in her mouth and scrubs milkshake residue off my cheek with her saliva. I look over to see three other kids in the same vice of their mothers\u2019 thighs. <\/p>\n

I get the part. And then another. Mom says that it\u2019s because the anointing of God is on me, that it is His will, that He\u2019s using me to reach the world.<\/p>\n

I do a commercial for a theme park, ride the roller coaster seventeen times while a camera attached to its nose records me waving my arms and screaming. I do after-school specials<\/a> for local news stations, playing a boy whose parents are too busy to notice him. I pout into the camera until all is well.<\/p>\n