I found myself in such a state Sunday while on set. We happened to be shooting a night club scene that day, which meant the lights were quite dim, and closing your eyes was quite favorable if you didn't want to become nauseous from the strobe and laser effects going off around you. The first set of shots didn't call for my presence, so it was pretty much the perfect opportunity for a nap. I found a bench with a stack of towels on it in a dark corner to make use of. I set myself up a small make shift bed, much like a dog circles the place it intends to nap on. Switching my phone to vibrate, I slept in the darkness through two hours of takes while my co stars shot their scene at the bar a mere few feet away from me.
With all the craziness going on in my life right now, and all the questions last weekend’s festivities and mishaps had left me with, it wasn't long before my mind had drifted into a deep state of dreaming. My costar's lines became the voice on the loud speaker in Charlie Brown cartoons. The flashes of light became dark blurs of color behind the heavy lids of my eyes. And the music the director had played just before takes to set the mood would merely be undertones, unless it happened to be rap... in which case, the occasional gunshot would jar me back to my "surrealist" wondering... 'why is Plaxico Burress in this scene?' It was one of those weird naps where you had trouble deciphering what was real, and what was dream.
Just then, my phone vibrated... Jarring me from my own imagination. It was my mother, just touching base to see how my day on set was going. Half asleep I returned her text, and then went back to my comatose state. The set was perfectly quiet as everyone else was out to lunch or in the hallway chatting. Just as I was drifting back to my own world, my tired eyes focused on a prop pumpkin that lay near my feet. I watched as the pumpkin emitted a glowing, smoke effect. That's weird I thought. Our set decorator, Fury (who's lovably eccentric) really must have gotten into his work.
As my eyes began to haze over, and I returned to my state of half-awareness... I caught a glimpse of a rather disturbing image: a huge tower of flames rolling up a nearby wall. I shook my head and tried to scream thinking I was still dreaming. But then I felt the temperature in the room begin to rise and the smell change to something downright smokey and putrid. That's when I realized.. I was awake. And those flames were real.
I scrambled off the bench to my feet and went running to the door in search of a fire extinguisher in the otherwise pitch blackness of the club. I found several crew members engrossed in their sandwiches in a debate over whether the Mets would ever make a comeback just outside the hall.
I looked at them, half gasping for air and eyes watering from the smoke.
"Fire!"
That was all I could say.
They stared at me blankly holding their sandwiches as I yanked a nearby fire extinguisher from the wall.
"FI! UR!" I announced in syllables as if I was at a spelling bee in the middle of a motley crew concert.
This time I saw their brains hard at work computing the words that had come from my mouth. The three of them frantically searched for fire extinguishers and came running onto the set at full speed. The fire had spread up the wall, and ignited other props by the time we got to it. This was not good. The four of us pulled the pins from the extinguishers and unleashed them on the rising flames. Within a few minutes, we had contained the blaze, but not before it had claimed part of our set, hours of our time for repair, and the only clean pair of underwear I had brought to set that day.
The rest of that afternoon is still a bit of a blur as I was still coming to grips with what I had witnessed. For all those people that give me hell about how much time I spend texting on my phone, it was really my phone that saved my life. Well, actually the person on the other end of it. What would have happened if my mother hadn't been checking on me and woken me up from my ill-fated nap? How long before I would have realized what was going on.. Or would it have been too late? All these images of the fire crawling towards me and up the walls kept me up and disturbed the rest of the night. So much so that I don't think I slept more than thirty minutes before I headed to LaGuardia to make my 7:30 am flight.
A middle seat and screaming children equals two and a half hours of complete misery for this girl. I touched down in Tampa later that morning and was greeted by my best friend Sara. The drive home from the airport was a long one, but only because I was going on a half hour of sleep and was still upset at the events that have taken place in the past two weeks of my life. I had made an ass out of myself in front of someone who I had come to like spending time with. I had gotten very little sleep, was becoming run down with work stuff and getting the crap kicked out of me figuratively and literally on set. I've been trying to get things organized for moving out of my apartment and into my new place, and we all know the nonsense THAT entails. Oh, and I had gotten left alone on set while the place caught on fire. Off hand, I would say July was a rough month. If anyone could set me on the right path though, it was Sara.
"Do you think I messed things up?"
"No. I just think you think too much."
"Sara, honestly. I don't know what came over me."
"Dude, you're just scared of being burned again. And when you saw something that reminded you of your past and the things other guys have subjected you to, regardless of how wrong your perceptions were… you panicked and pulled the emergency brake on the whole sha-bang."
“Seriously,” I said, “I think he has the totally wrong impression of what kind of girl I am now. He's blaming everything on timing, and obstacles in his life. But I can't help but feel its all some giant cop-out because of Boston."
“Or maybe timing is really the case. Look at all the things you have going on right now… in BOTH of your lives. You’ll be in Austin in a few weeks for your next movie, and he’ll be doing his thing. When are you two supposed to find time to see each other? I think this is just one of those situations you just have to back away from… and see how life unfolds. If you try to push the baby bird from the nest before its ready.. well, all you’re going to get is.. SPLAT. And while waiting may not be your strength and it may not be easy, I think in this case … it’s definitely worth it.”
Maybe Sara had a point. Here I was, in the same city as the Stranger, once again… only this time, we couldn’t find time to steal for one another. It was either my schedule, or his schedule.. or the combination of both. People had warned me all along that this would happen, given his background and my own. They told me they saw no future in it, that we were both far too busy, and that someone would get hurt. They told me I was playing with something unpredictable, ever-changing, and unyielding to anything in its path. I was playing amidst the flames of something with a payoff so awesome, yet so difficult to attain, that everyone wondered how either of us could pull it off. The real answer was… we couldn’t.
I’ve always come from the school of thought, that with a little elbow grease and dedication you can make any situation work. Only this time, it didn’t seem to be the case. There were just too many outside factors coming into play, things neither of us could control. It sucks when you meet someone so driven and seemingly genuine yet have no time to really pursue anything. One of the qualities I admired most about the Stranger was his dedication to his career, and his respect for mine, whether he agreed with my choices or not. But both our careers and the sheer timing of when we met would trump any feelings we had for one another. Or maybe it was the fact that neither of us was willing to put ourselves back into the fire just yet, having both been burned by people and situations who had supposedly cared about us. At least for now anyway.
That's the problem when you play with fire: someone is bound to get burned. For some reason, I just never thought it would be me. So many times I had been pursued in the chase, only to be the one setting the situation ablaze before it had a chance to go anywhere. I’d realize I didn’t have the time or the trust to really give a situation my all so I would just table the opportunity at hand. I was a self saboteur, a fire starter. But this time, the Perfect Stranger had beaten me to the punch. He definitely had a point, though. We had both worked too hard to get to where we were, and were reaching the point in the game to go big or go home. To squander the opportunities we each had in front of us would have just been downright foolish on both our parts. We could’ve just been making excuses, or maybe we had just pulled a couple of grand old Irish exits when things were starting to get too hot for either of us to handle.
Now, I was left standing in the pile of ashes from the weekend before, unsure of what was to happen next. People wonder why I don't open up and take chances too often, well.. this is precisely why. We had spent so much time talking, and so little time doing.. that neither of us was willing to take the chance on an unproven entity at such a crucial point in our lives. While part of me was disappointed with the end result, another part of me almost had to thank the Stranger. So many times before him I had been so willing to make others happy, and be accommodating, that it often went unappreciated, and at the expense of my career. But not this time. I would return to New York ready to take on the world, and stop at nothing until I reached my destination. The road less traveled by is a sometimes a lonely one, but it certainly has the biggest pay off in the end. And while pieces of myself may lay in ashes now, like a true phoenix.. I will rise to meet the occasion in front of me a stronger, re-envisioned self. An entirely new person. The things I have planned in the upcoming months will require me to be at my best. And unfortunately a chance at love may just have to wait. That’s not to say its over, it’s just to say.. to be continued. If not this time around, maybe the next.
After all, I am a phoenix. It is my nature.
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