Post Adolescent Molestation And Its Ties To Getting Poor Studio Coverage on Kimberly And Valentine...

For two summers, the summers after my sophomore and junior year in college, I traveled half way across the country to live in a small town apartment in Thomasville, North Carolina. It was in the middle of nothing. Actually, the entire state of North Carolina is in the middle of nothing. Nevertheless, I spent two absolutely memorable summers playing baseball with man-children from across the country in the Coastal Plains collegiate summer league.

In my apartment building, there was this old, kind of lurking man who lived below me. He was tall, a lurcher, often odd-bodied and shirtless. Maybe that paints him stranger than he deserves...truth was, he was totally harmless. I suppose I came to know him fairly well. He'd come running out of his apartment as I would run off to practice or to the gym or to a game, always eager to chat. Every now and again, he'd come to watch me pitch. For someone that likes to live in something of a bubble for stretches of life lasting anywhere from one week to one year, I guess you could say he was, at times...a sleight burden.

Anyway, it was sometime during the summer after my junior year...

Right before I was leaving to get fixed my tattered and cracked elbow, he asked me to a goodbye dinner. And let me tell you...if the come around to this story wasn't such a dementedly perfect transition into part two/B/the conclusion of this post, I'd turn to fiction and speak of a brilliant and lonely man who in that last dinner, passed unto me in one magnificent sentence...the story of his life - a sentence that has since defined my every breath. I'd tell you how we've kept in touch over the years, every Sunday...say at 8 o'clock, something we both learned to live by, to count on. Then I'd tell you how last Sunday, he didn't call...didn't answer when I tried to call him. I'd tell you of a package that was delivered to my door with a note from the apartment manager in North Carolina, informing me that my great friend had passed - and that his last wish was that I received said package. Then I'd tell you about how I opened the package and found his old and worn baseball glove, priceless baseball cards from the 40's and 50's...from when he was a little boy - the last time he spoke of knowing pure joy...days at the ballpark with his father, his brothers. I'd cry and say something like I've been moved, I may never move back - and think it to be a powerful and poetic close to the post - thinking to myself, what a powerful and poetic closer I am...

But the truth is...it's, well...it's not fiction. It goes a little something like this...

We hit the early bird at this buffet place where all the senior citzies rolled. I think we talked about baseball, the wars he'd been in, his distant family or lack of...girlfriends of mine, mysteries of his. At some point, he said something strange, something that knocked me on my heels. He mentioned or asked about...and I need some ellipses here...either my loss of virginity or my taking of virginity. I think I gave him something, maybe out of admiration of his asking something so odd so casually, then told him to top off and togo the iced tea he was nursing...we were leaving.

On the way home, we made a park detour to look at some newly built youth baseball fields. We parked, got out, looked around...quick. When we got back in the car, he started talking about the military again. By then, I was kind of shut off, ready to fucking go, to get back on with my life. At some point, something about the whole ordeal had become an extreme chore. Something about it had turned odd...maybe because in my mind of minds, I had a feeling about what was coming. I heard it out the side of my ear, something about showering in the military and this joke they would play and then...

Then the old man grabbed my shit - this glancing swipe, reaching across the center console, straight into my crotch. I looked over to him, speechless and bewildered, not really knowing what to say. Mind you, when this happened, I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now, all power, probably hopped up on what would today be an entire regimen of banned and illegal substances. With a finger, I could have snapped the man...maybe that's why I didn't. I'm not really the passive type, but again, in my mind of minds...if that made his day - a man nearing the end of his days, then that's an after the fact gift I suppose I was willing to give. We drove away, moved on. Forgiven, odd, sad, whatever...

We were close to home, and I was probably talking about the pain in my arm when we stopped at a stop sign. He did it again. This time, there was no mistake. I kept my cool, told him to not do that again with whatever authority you use on a 75 year old man. He was like a fucking infant child reaching for the cookie jar. It was one of the most bizarre and world-humbling things I've ever been a part of.

He dropped me off and I went up to my apartment, locked the door, went to sleep and immediately dreamt of him kicking my door down, chloroform cloth in hand. That was the last time I saw him...a monster in my dreams.

Later, after I had woken up and composed, I made my 20 minute drive to the field. We had a short road trip that day, maybe to Gastonia, so we were taking vans. Once we were going, I think there were 11 of us in the van when I told our coach to turn down the radio - that I had a tale to tell. After two years on the team, aside from pitching, stories were my fame. I'd write fictional player bios on pitching charts during games I wasn't pitching. I'd often fill pages front and back, in my tiny cat scratch...just going on endlessly. When I catch up with players today, some of them tell me they still have their bios framed on their walls. It makes me happy. So anyway, when I had a story to tell, ears were given. All I knew, I had to get this out, had to put what happened out in the world for the world to consume. And I stretched it out and set it up, taking my time, telling with exact poetic justice, what would forever be known as the famed Reilly got molested by and old man story. And we laughed and I felt purged and took welcome shit for the next week before I left and put it all behind me...the good and odd...

...

Last night, I met up with Team Burn to go over some new ideas. The plan was to get something solid together so I could start working again on Monday. I need to start working again. The great and terrible thing about having Team Burn around is that he's like this pit bull, trained to choke, strangle and ultimately kill potentially great ideas the second they show any weakness. Actually, it's great. He reads everything, all the time...sees every path, every talent, every trick...and he might be nearly as obsessed with his side of the business as I am with mine. In the end, it makes it brutally fucking hard to get anything past him. He's exactly what I need...to save my now self from a potentially dangerous later self.

When we were both totally burned out and stopped to take a breath, I asked him about the coverage on Kim and Val. He got it off to one studio and I thought it would be coming back next week. It wasn't. He got it yesterday, on Friday...or maybe before. The first thing he said was something like you're tough, otherwise, I'd tell you I never got it back. It wasn't great. It wasn't good. Actually, I have no concrete idea what it was because I haven't seen it yet. When I do, I'll post the highlights, because depressing as it may be, I'm not going to run from it. Depressing as it may be, today, for the hangover, in the long run, it really doesn't change anything. Team Burn said that the things they picked on were things that he always picked on, choices that I lowered my head and powered through. I don't know what else is on there, but I can't wait to find out, even if it isn't good...especially if it isn't good. I've come to preach this thing through the people I train, through the lives I advise, through my own life that's under constant advisment...that pain and hurt and change and challenge are meant to be grabbed and consumed and owned and cherished. You wanna be built -- when the dark side leans on you, lean back. That's the beauty of the struggle...to force and allow ourselves to feel it all, to let it wash over us, to scald us, to re-make us.

When I recently told one of my friends and mentors (whose movies have grossed in the hundreds of millions of dollars) that I was getting coverage on a script, he told me to take it back. He told me that Steven Speilberg's coverage girl tore one of his greatest scripts to pieces, and then just kicked him around and around and around. And he was affected by it. He said something that is undeniably true, that studio readers are almost without exception exactly one thing...wannabe, bitter writers who will never be what they want to be and in turn, get off by ripping, literally ripping scripts apart. And I could see that. In a lot of cases, that's probably true. The world is all envy, I believe that. But I also believe in the other end, of a reader who loves to read scripts and goes to work every day hoping to find the next gem and to them, I disappointed. And now here I am, sitting in that...and what can I do about it but push on? Nothing.

Someone else is going to read it. Someone else is going to love it. Or not. And whatever happens, you just gotta keep going, you gotta keep playing. This is my game...and my absolute belief hasn't wavered.

I started thinking back to a meeting I took when I first started Kimberly and Valentine. It was with this industry monster and if I'm recalling what he said right now, chances are, I'm never going to forget it. He said exactly you'll succeed in this business when you have no heart left to break.

And I just love that, want to give all my love to that - knowing instead, no matter what comes, that if there's one thing I'll always be...it'll be all heart.