Nine months after Searching
Post Production, Los Angeles
I did not believe that I could put my movie together myself, so I handed it over to a man. He’s a flamboyant gay man, so I figure that he has just the right combination of masculine and feminine qualities. I met him through my soundman, Giovanni. I think he’s perfect to put my movie together for me. I handed all one hundred and twenty-seven tapes that we shot on the road over to him and washed my hands of the trip, the movie, and my dad. My living room is filled with a huge editing system that I rented on a promise of funds to come. The Angela Shelton binder lays open on the table. All the pages are dog-eared, wrinkled, and full of Polaroids. You can’t really be in my house without being faced with this movie, so I leave as much as I can. I go on acting auditions to try and make more money to keep my editor paid. I write a TV show. I hike with my dog.
As I pass the editing system on my way out again, my editor stops me. “Honey-bunny,” he says as he twirls the chair around to face me. “I know that you said you want this movie to focus on all the other Angela Sheltons, but this movie is about you.” I look at him like he has lost his mind. I had instructed him to do a montage of all the Angelas and their stories. I want to show what they do for a living, whether they’re married or single, if they have kids, if they went to school, and then cut to what they’ve been through in their lives. I want to bring up that most of them have been victims, but I want the majority of the movie filled with them saying really inspirational things to women. That seems simple enough. I want to inspire women. I don’t see why I have to include my story to do that.
“There’s no way to cut around you, honey bunny. It has to be about you. We want to know more about you. The other Angelas are great, but we care about you, how you are, what happens to you.”
I need to lie down. I feel like I did when I found out that the Angela Shelton in my dad’s town was tracking sexual predators. This strange numbness moves across my chest. I just nod to my editor. I know he’s right and I hate it. I want to be lazy and ignore my story and continue to hide. I feel like I have so much more work to do on myself that I want to accelerate my healing. I know that involves finishing this movie. I can hear the Angelas in my heads saying that everything happens for a reason and I want to poke my eyes out to make them shut up. My editor gets back to work, and I head into my bedroom. I climb onto my bed and lay there staring at the ceiling. I’m a wreck. I want to escape. I want this to go faster. I want to be done already. The phone rings and it is Anonymous.
“Jesus Christ, can’t you leave me alone?” I say to the ceiling. I pick up the phone anyway. Angela provides a great distraction from my own pain.
“Hey,” she says and continues with, “I’m drunk,” before I can respond.
“Really? I thought you got sober. I thought you went to rehab.” I sit up in bed. Angela kind of huffs like that was a crackpot idea.
“Yeah, well,” she mumbles.
I’m not in the mood for this. I’m feeling lower than a dog myself at the moment. Just hearing her voice makes me want a cigarette. I get up with my cordless phone and grab the pack that I have hidden from myself. I head outside. “One day we’ll have to be nice to ourselves, Angela,” I suggest as I light up.
“I know I’m abusing myself.”
“At least you admit it.”
“But there’s no way out.” I exhale and think about my movie. “My dad’s getting ready to die,” Anonymous lets slip out and I realize why she’s drinking again.
“Really? Do you think that sort of lets him off the hook?” She isn’t listening. She has run off down memory lane.
“I’m doing his laundry,” she says softly.
“Yeah, that’s for sure, his dirty laundry. It’s amazing how we have to pick up the pieces when someone else shatters the glass.” That was good, I think. I should write that down. I should write another TV show. My mind starts to drift to all the things I can work on besides my movie.
“No, I’m really doing his laundry,” Angela says after a long pause.
“You still see him?”
“Of course. That’s just perfect, huh?”
“Have you ever mentioned anything to him? Have you ever confronted him?” I can’t understand how she could be near that man. I want to punch him and I’ve never even met him.
“Oh no. I could never,” she says and I have a flash of me sitting right next to my dad. There are even pictures of him hugging me. Gross.
“What would you say to him if you could?”
“What would I say to my father?” It sounds like she never thought of that before. “Oh gosh. That I wish . . .” she trails off as if stepping onto the train that passes her house periodically. “Don’t hurt me, okay? Don’t hurt me,” she peeps out in a little girl voice.
“Angela, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m too busy hurting myself.” I light a cigarette off the one I have in my hand. I listen to her pause and sip her beer.
“What did you really think of me when you met me?” She changes the subject.
“I thought you were adorable.”
“You are so full of it.”
“It’s true. You are adorable. You’re so cute and you have the cutest way about you. It’s amazing how we beat ourselves up because of what someone else did to us.”
“It’s the only way I know.”
“I do the same thing. There are so many ways of hiding it too,” I look into the window of my house and see my editor at work in my living room. “It’s like we’re hiding from ourselves. I mean I’m outside smoking when I have asthma and know it’s killing me. And my editor is in there cutting this movie and I know in my gut that I am going to have to cut it myself but I’m too scared to admit it.”
“You should.”
“I can’t. I don’t know how to work the machine.” Angela is quiet. I listen to her take a few swigs and drags.
“I guess that’s what my alcoholism is, it’s the total blanket I’m hiding under.” She pops open a new can.
“Wow, you phrase that so well. You should write that one down.”
“I wish I was a writer like you.”
“Just write then. You can do it. Why do you hide under the blanket of alcoholism?”
“Because when I’m drunk I can speak.”
“You don’t have to use alcohol,” I say but already know that is easier said than done. I’m a hypocrite. Angela has her beer, I chain smoke and I beat myself up and tend to go after men who don’t like me. They are all secrets we hide so well.
“I have to be drunk. I’m not pretty or intelligent or artistic. That’s why I’m attracted to people like you, Angela Shelton.” She sighs quietly like she’s letting our name sink in for the first time. “I’m so ugly. And stupid. I’m just lower than a dog.“ That’s exactly how I feel right now but I don’t tell her that.
“Good grief, Angela. I wish you’d shut up about that. I’m so sick of hearing about the lower than a dog syndrome. You are adorable and you can do anything you want. You’re just stopping yourself.” I should say all of that into a mirror a hundred times.
“But you’re so pretty, Angela.”
“Oh please. You always say that, but you know what, when I walk by the mirror my first thought is ewww,” I confess.
“Really? Me too.”
“That is just sad. I wish you could see yourself. We need to get those negative voices out of our heads.” I take a drag on my cigarette.
“I wish I could get better,” Angela says quietly.
“I know, me to.” We sit there and smoke for a while in silence. I wonder what number beer she’s on. I just want to go to sleep while the man in my living room cuts my movie together. I realize something while sitting here in my backyard, holding the phone, and talking to myself makes. “You know what? Beating ourselves up and not loving ourselves only perpetuates what our abusers did to us. It’s like we’re letting them win over and over again. It’s like we’re spinning on some wheel of pain.”
“I know. I just don’t know how to stop it.”
“Yeah, me neither.” I smash out my cigarette and light another one.
Excerpted from Finding Angela Shelton by Angela Shelton, Meredith Books, 2008.
To read an excerpt from Angela Shelton’s Dream Journal, click here.
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