Fire in the Hole: A Year in the Life of the World's Sorriest Stuntwoman

For my buddy pal and all those

adventurers called actors

Contents

The Audition

My Sister Laurie

The Funeral

You Can Call Me Superman

The Interview

The Co-Workers

Fire In The Hole

Chryslers, Clowns, And Cadillacs

The Medicine Show

The New Guy And The Spy

The Colleen

A Lesbian In The Temple Of Rednecks

Family Lineage

Feelings, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Feelings

Dropping Like Flies

The Really Big Show

The Ark

The Apple Dumpling Gang

I Love American Breasts

A Little Bit Of Magic

Bless The Beasts And The Children

GhoSts

The Show Must Go On

Loafing On The Job

Ma-Don-Na

Not Human

Harrassments

Enthusiasm

The Love Doctor

The Battle Of The Medicine Shows

Festus-Speak

The Darwin Awards

The Great Brownie Caper

Gunsmoke Gulch—The Musical!

Nickles And Dimes And Fucking Pennies

Out

The Gazebo Of Love

The Showdown

‘Tis The Season To Be Pissy

Simple Folk

Dysfunction Junction

The Big Jump

Moving On

Author’s Note: Some of the events described happened as related; others were changed. Some of the individuals portrayed are composites of more than one person and many names and identifying characteristics have also been changed.

THE AUDITION

FIFTY-THREE DEATHS AND ONE BILLION DOLLARS IN

damage from the racially incendiary Rodney King riots. One-hundred and forty thousand acres burned in the arson-induced Station Fire. Three million dollars spent on Michael Jackson’s funeral while the state economy issues IOUs to creditors.

Los Angeles.

City of Angels, my ass.

Try smog-infested, gang-ridden, over-populated landfill where beautiful mountains are ravished to build ugly houses on stilts, and ugly people are lipo-ed and lifted, sucked and tucked to build ravishing beauties. The whole town is faker than a West Texas jackalope.

I can’t wait to get the hell outta Dodge.

My foot rests out the passenger-side window of my decade-old Honda Civic. My girlfriend drives. We are breaking up. Me and my girlfriend. Not me and my car. I am certain I will be with the car until death do us part. I only pray it is the car’s death and not mine.

My girlfriend—my lesbian partner, my live-in lover, my Pickle (my nickname for her, she calls me Pea)—and I have been together for the last eight and a half years. But now we are on a break. On a break—it’s like relationship purgatory: we are free to date others, yet we talk every day like we are still together.

Pickle is the one driving me—and my car—to Albuquerque. Albuquerque is a liberal, artsy-fartsy, small town in New Mexico where I have chosen to live. Pickle has chosen to remain in Los Angeles. My reason for moving is simple. I want new in my life. Not boring. I’ve had boring for far too long. Boring to the point of numbness.

I’m moving to Albuquerque, I say to Pickle in what turns out to be one time too many.

Fine, Pickle says one day, calling my bluff. Pickle and I have spent over eight years together and yet...and yet...I’m not ready to commit. Not that I cheated on her, or didn’t love her. But committing to spend the rest of my life with her? And yet...and yet...I long for commitment. I always have. What, for the love of God, is wrong with me?

I want new. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I want to live somewhere over the rainbow. I envision Albuquerque as a magical desert city where muses await to guide my creativity. When the spirits move me, I will take writing classes at the university. Perhaps one day I will teach. I will write the Great American Novel as I sip Chardonnay in my sunroom and watch summer monsoons.

Part of me wants desperately for Pickle to join me in Albuquerque. It is not the longest of shots. Albuquerque is not only fairly close to L.A. but it is the home of her cousins, Donna and David, and their daughter, Dominique, all of whom Pickle loves very much. I have come to very much love them as well; in fact, they consider me to be family even as I am separated from their blood relative. They open their home and make me their housemate. Who could not love them for that?

My flip side knows I must put distance between me and Pickle if I am to reach my true goal, my real reason for moving: to get myself back. I gave myself to someone else for so long I wonder if it is possible. Can I get me back?

The shell of me is still here. In fact, my friends and family have probably not noticed I have gone anywhere; it’s been such a slow and gradual process. But I have left. Colleen has left the building. I have become co-dependent, lacking in self-esteem, and anxious. Very anxious. Anxious to the point of becoming agoraphobic. I do not like who I have become. Who I have let myself become. I must get myself back now...or lose me forever.

Thank God Pickle called my bluff.

So she is driving me to Albuquerque as my leg rests out the window. Two days ago I cracked open my knee when, while walking our dog, Lucky, I slipped and landed on the sharp edge of a gutter. The deep gash immediately doused my sock and shoe in a river of red and warranted five emergency room stitches. Technically, it was an accident, yet I consider it a subliminal non-accident. An accident I created to distract my mind from the move, the non-break-up break-up. I am afraid, greatly afraid, of the pending changes in my life. Of the new. Suddenly, I remember why I’m so comfortable with boring...

So my leg, stiff from gauze and pain, has provided a perfect made-to-order diversion from my fear. I know that fear reminds us we’re alive. It’s just that lately my adrenaline flow is nearly toxic.

Pickle stays in Albuquerque for the long Memorial Day weekend. But on Sunday night when she leaves and flies back to L.A., it tears at my heart. I am staying with Donna and David and Dominique, and they are family, and yet I am alone. I am separated. I am staring into the stark face of new. I am trying to get me back.

I am also trying not to be a burden as a housemate. After dinner I clean the kitchen. As I am washing the dishes, I start to cry. The problem? Donna and David don’t use a dish sponge with a handle. Pickle and I used a sponge with a handle to wash dishes. I’ll never find anybody else who uses a sponge with a handle. Everyone is different from me. I am different from everyone. I am alone. My life is over.

I may have to crack open my other knee to distract my thoughts.

Instead I decide to seek out an adventure. A fun job. Something I never would have done while working in L.A.

I have been in Albuquerque for a week. I am enrolled in two undergraduate and one graduate class at the University of New Mexico in the school of creative writing. The graduate class is a coup because it is being taught by a hero of mine, best-selling novelist Barbara Kingsolver. I am not supposed to be in this class as many legitimate grad students have been turned away, but I have the balls to show up to the first class and Barbara admires my gumption so she lets me stay. Later she is reprimanded for this by the creative writing powers at the school, but she sticks to her guns and lets me audit the class. I love her. I don’t love my fellow classmates. They are grad students with attitude. I wonder if even mentioning grad students and attitude in the same sentence is redundant.

These classes are a ladder to my goal: to get a second degree, then a master’s, and teach. This is the first step in my quest for a new life. Steps number two and three for a new life: 2) a job and 3) a place of my own.

I have done a little acting work in Hollywood—equity-waiver plays, small speaking parts on TV—so I search the audition notices of The Albuquerque Weekly. I peruse all five notices in 40 seconds flat, discovering that Albuquerque isn’t exactly the casting hub that Tinsel town is. The one ad that sticks out is for a place called Gunsmoke Gulch.

Gunsmoke Gulch is auditioning for continually running action-oriented Western theater. A head shot, resume and prepared monologue are required. Call Judd at 555-4551 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday for information.

How funny would it be for me of all people to work in a Western town? Now that would be something to tell my friends about back in Los Angeles. Other than my few paid acting gigs, I’ve spent my professional life behind a desk typing and answering phones. And it shows. My body type is far less supermodel and way more Rubenesque. A vigorous 30-minute walk is, to me, a bruising day of exercise.

Yet, keeping in mind my quest for adventure, I follow the instructions in the classified and leave a message with Judd.

A day later, my call is returned by Doyle, who identifies himself as the stunt coordinator at Gunsmoke Gulch.

Stunt coordinator? I repeat.

Yeah, he says, this is a stunt show.

But I just want to be a saloon girl, I explain. I’m not very athletic. The closest I’ve ever come to performing stunts was plopping onto the couch to watch an afternoon of syndicated sitcoms.

We don’t have saloon girls, he replies. Our actresses play cowgirls and bank robbers. They’re stuntwomen just like the guys.

But this is the Old West, I almost say, aren’t you supposed to be sexist? Instead I say, I don’t want to get the crap beaten out of me on an equal opportunity basis.

Don’t worry, he says, during the audition you’ll only be expected to roll around on the ground a couple of times.

Like somersaults? I ask, my voice cracking with hope.

Not exactly like somersaults, he says. I detect the threat in his tenor.

It’s time to straighten this matter out. Just so you know my background, I say to Doyle, I am an actress, not a stuntwoman, and I recently moved here from L.A. I’m not a star, but still I feel my credentials are impressive enough to preclude me from this rolling-on-the-ground nonsense.

This is a stunt show, Doyle reiterates. And you’ll have to prove you can perform minor stunts.

I am stricken. You see, like any actress, at the bottom of it all I’m merely a silo of insecurity. Sure, I say, I can do a couple of somersaults on the ground.

I have to roll on the ground, I whine to Cousin Donna.

Donna, a progressive woman who doesn’t mince words, says, You need to learn how to fall. I can hear her underlying, You big baby in the subtext.

I’ll teach you, she offers.

The next thing I know we are standing on her king-sized bed and she keeps poking my shoulder, trying to tip me over. If you can’t fall onto a soft mattress, you’ll never be able to fall onto the hard ground, Donna reasons. Just bend your knees, bring your butt down and sit.

It sounds easy, yet I am terrified. I’m not big into movement; I never had much opportunity. I grew up in West Texas where dancing was banned from our high school prom because the Baptists considered it vertical sex. So we had a dance-free prom, otherwise known as dinner theatre. The junior and senior classes would travel to a big city, like Big Spring or Snyder, and be treated to warmed-over fried chicken and a mostly local production of The Sound of Music starring some television character actor from a forgotten sitcom whose star had faded to the point of landing him in dinner theatre in Big Spring or Snyder.

Will you sit already, you big baby, Donna says, her judgments no longer hidden by subtext.

And plop! I sit. Not too different than the couch except for the lack of Brady Bunch reruns.

A few more prods from Donna and I get into the flow: bending my knees, lowering my butt, and sitting. It’s time to move to the floor. Soon, I am flicking across the floor with the ease of an albacore flying through the water. Yet, I must keep in mind: Hours later and this gentle creature could be a delicacy served up with a side of wasabi.

Which brings me to my audition.

Possessing the naiveté of one who’s been isolated in the theatre, I arrive expecting the auditions to be held inside on a proscenium stage with maybe some coffee served on the side. But Gunsmoke Gulch is aptly named. It’s a makeshift Western town made up of retail stores and restaurants and of course the stunt show set, all of which surrounds an actual dusty trail. And it is in the dirt of the stunt show set where the auditions are to be held this blindingly bright desert morning. The gesture of free coffee would be nice, but impossible to drink as the heat is 100-plus degrees and climbing, a typical Fahrenheit in New Mexico summers.

I arrive early and am greeted by Marshal Dillon. He is a jolly fellow, and he and I chat easily about life at Gunsmoke Gulch and at its sole competitor in town, Old Albuquerque Studios. Dillon worked at Old Albuquerque for many years as, he points out, did many of the employees of Gunsmoke Gulch.

My fellow auditioners meander in slowly, sporadically interrupting Dillon’s tales of the New Old West in Albuquerque. Among the others auditioning is a man I call Elvis because he sports not only the King’s pompadour from the 1950’s, but also his gut from the 70’s. Then there’s Tae Bo Girl and Soccer Girl. Both girls acknowledge being into their relative sports. They are barely out of high school with the rock hard bodies to prove it. I am less than fond of them. And, finally, there’s Jungle Boy. Jungle Boy moves like a chimpanzee and looks as if he’s been raised by wolves. He is so frenetic to perform stunts that bits of foam ooze from the corners of his mouth. I don’t get too close to Jungle Boy in case he’s not up to date on his rabies shot.

It is forty-five minutes past our call time when our potential future boss, Stunt Coordinator Doyle, hurries onto the dusty trail waving the reason for his delay: our freshly Xeroxed job applications.

We each take an application to fill out. One of the questions asks us to Write a little story about yourself and why you want to work here. The word optional follows in parentheses. I take the option and write, Once upon a time there was a girl who worked in Hollywood. She was happy there until the big, bad Hollywood bosses clasped the chains on her ankles and said, ‘Give us your life, your liberty, your first born; in other words, we own you 24/7 forever and ever, amen.’ That’s when she decided to make a move to Albuquerque, where the air is particulate-free. She saw an ad in the Weekly for paid acting work. It was a dream come true and, hopefully, she will live happily ever after.

I finish writing and realize everyone is staring at me; I am the last one done. I hand in my application, and we are all given monologues from which to do a cold reading. Mine is Sally Bowles, a character most folks know from the movie musical Cabaret, only my monologue is from the non-musical stage play, I Am a Camera. Sally Bowles? Shouldn’t I be reading Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke? Barbara Stanwyck from Big Valley? What does Nazi-era Sally Bowles have to do with a Western town? To top it off, Sally Bowles is described in the preface to the monologue as girlish. I am thirty-six years old and trying not to trip in the dunes of these dusty trails.

I perform the monologue, recalling my words to Doyle, Just so you know my background, I am an actress, not a stuntwoman, and I recently moved here from L.A. That’s Los Angeles to you, little man, Hollywood, the big time. Yuck. How arrogant. Sometimes I make myself want to puke. Right now, for one. Because as I perform my monologue, I cannot finesse the movements of my body in this sand trap. I over-exaggerate; I am quite bad by Hollywood standards. No, that’s too kind. I stink. I haven’t been this