Bex O’Brian

Word Count 789

The smoldering stare, the red lipstick, the man, taller, sweeping the woman up into his arms. The movie kiss. I can’t remember how old I was the first time I saw that embrace but knew one day I had to be kissed like that. After making-out with enough fumbling adolescent boys, I reasoned that if I was going to get my kiss, I should become an actress and find myself a movie star.  As soon as I could, I went to New York and enrolled in acting school. There was nothing glamorous about the grubby rooms at the HB studio acting school on Bank Street in the Village. Nothing romantic. Only earnest students talking about motivation, about the importance of listening (who wants to do that!), and how their bodies were their instruments. I was fine with that one. Okay, I thought, play me. But all my scene partners were decidedly not movie stars. I did, however, find myself a handsome French lover, who was great until he learned to speak English and told me that I embarrassed him when I ran down the street crying, “Phillippe, Phillippe, come to me, lover.”

Sitting with my fellow actresses at lunch, the conversation often swirled around how unethical it was to sleep with a co-star, not that any of us had had a co-star, and even worse was to sleep with the director. I remember I caught the eye of Tracy Pollan, who was my friend at the time, and we exchanged a conspiratorial smile. I can’t speak for her, but I was certainly thinking, ‘Then what’s the point?’ Tracy, who went on to marry Michael J Fox, would be there for me when I discovered Phillippe in bed, in my apartment, with another woman. It was by far my best performance as I, very Barbara Stanwyck, asked them to stop soiling my sheets and please leave. I fell apart only after they left, and Tracy was kind enough to ask me up to her parent’s place, where the two of us, unsure of the etiquette of finding another woman in your bed, emptied out her family’s pantry, sending me home with enough comfort food to last a month.

Eventually, I had to come to terms with the fact that my notion of acting bore no relation to reality. It wasn’t all fucking and romance. It was hard work and study. There went my dream of a temporary fake life, one that lasted the length of a movie shoot, in which time, in some exotic locale, every single man fell in love with me. Give up the heated quick fuck seconds before I was due on set, give up the movie kiss, the walking off triumphant, only to tear off my costume and screw again. Give up what I wanted most, which was, in a span of a few weeks, nonstop, emotionally untethered sex. No, that’s not quite right. What I had wanted was sex so emotionally charged that we both knew it couldn’t possibly be sustained. So there I would be at the end of the shoot, as my lover begged me to stay, sadly shaking my head, saying, “I can’t,” just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Women says to Richard Gere when he so desperately wants her to stay free of charge. 

Dropping out of acting school didn’t kill the desire for movie sex, but taken out of context, no doubt a few men thought me bats. I probably fell in love with my husband because he was a good sport about kissing me according to some script in my head. “Kiss me like it’s the last time.” “I’ll swoon. You catch me’’ “Kiss me until I can’t breathe.” “Kiss me like Cary Grant.” (Lingering pecks). “Kiss me like Matt Damon.” (Hand on cradling cheek). Come to think of it; it’s my husband who should have gone to acting school. He never failed in the recreation. 

In my head, I have a collection of moments that I know would be the perfect seduction. The look of desire? Ewan McGregor, drinking in Nicole Kidman on the elephant bedroom in Moulin Rouge. The first kiss? Clive Owen moving in on Angelina Jolie in Beyond Borders. Not such a hot film, so I’ve gotten good at fast-forwarding to the moment in a dingy hotel room. The slight tip of Owen’s tongue gets me every time. Then, finally, the penetration. Viggo Mortensen and Diane Lane in Walk On the Moon on the floor of his truck while man takes one giant step. God damn, if I haven’t done that sharp intake of breath in homage more than a few times. And what, you may wonder, of me? The climax, of course. No faking that.

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Bex lives mostly in France with her husband and their dog. She’s been scribbling around on various projects for the better part of thirty years and made very little money as a result. Thus conditioned, she is thrilled with the advent of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. She is the author of the novels (Under Bex Brian) Promiscuous Unbound and Radius, also available here. At present, she’s working on a new novel entitled, The Last Lover.