My 15 minutes (with Vicki Gunvalson)

At one point during the shoot I would answer a ringing phone and say, “God? Is that you?” Except the phone I picked up wasn’t real. It was one of those plastic phones that toothless babies gnaw on and when I picked it up, I could smell baby spit on the mouthpiece and I slammed it down and started hollering as if the phone were on fire or like I was one of the ape-men at the beginning of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

I must have been standing there for a long time because another of the producers poked his head around the corner and said, “Hello? Whenever you’re ready?”

I walk the line

When I turned the corner I saw the cameras pointing at me from the other end of the hall. They looked about a mile away and for a moment I forgot how to walk. My legs and arms were moving, but I was conscious of them moving instead of letting it happen naturally. I thought of swooning like Fay Wray when she saw King Kong for the first time. With hand to brow, I could stagger my way to Vicki.

Somehow I made it to her office without swooning and positioned myself between Vicki, two cameramen, and a makeup artist. I was about to tell her “the photographer’s ready for you.” Seriously, I was. I’d even decided to punch the word “ready” and thought I had it down pat when she said, “I hear a Southern accent? Where are you from?” That wasn’t in the script. I wasn’t ready to improvise. I shouted out, “Alabama,” even though I’m from Mississippi, as if the first 18 years of my life had been erased with a single question.

The hot, cramped room suddenly got hotter, making me dizzy. I wanted to touch my face to see if it was actually melting or if it only felt that way. I wondered if the cameramen were capturing the vacuous look on my face. I wondered if the people in the room smelled fear. I wondered why Andy Warhol had to get my hopes up. In my mind, I was cursing Warhol and his stupid Campbell’s Soup cans when a producer walked in and told me I’d broken the fourth wall by looking into the camera and that I’d have to start over and walk down the hallway again.

As I began the walk of shame, muttering my crummy line to myself, I realized my 15 minutes were almost up, and I had to admit a sad truth: I wanted to be back in Mississippi, away from the lights, the cameras, the action.