Then Again - Diane Keaton [36]
Maybe
The miracle of getting over bulimia is almost as strange as being its slave. Nothing remains of my former craving. If anything, I have a borderline mistrust for the whole process of consumption. I haven’t touched meat in twenty-five years. I’m not remotely drawn to the preparation of food. I’m not hungry. I’ve had it all, and I’ve had enough. When I was a bulimic, constantly balancing the extremes of impulsivity and control was sort of like performing. After I stopped throwing up, acting—my lifelong chosen profession—came back into the picture. I started to study with Marilyn Fried, who helped me rediscover the world of expressed feelings. My commitment became more intense than it was when I was too young and too fucked up to take advantage of the opportunity I was given at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Sandy Meisner used to make arcane pronouncements about how much better our acting would be when we got older and had more experience. Now that I’m the age he was when he stressed the necessity of being more mature in order to become a fully realized actor, now that life has become so much more engaging, if unfathomable, it’s hard to believe the accumulated knowledge I’m ready to give isn’t what audiences are always interested in. I guess life is always throwing curveballs. Like bulimia, acting is a paradox. Unlike bulimia, acting is a wild ride, shared in the company of other actors. Even though “living truthfully in the given imaginary moment” is not always what you had in mind, it’s always a great adventure.
These days I’m trying to learn to listen with the hunger I once reserved for my obsession. The talking cure saved me, it’s true, but listening may help me become part of a community. Maybe becoming one of many by doing something as simple as adding my name to a list of bulimics—famous, not so famous, and not famous at all—will give me the courage to cross a threshold that could transform me into the kind of Atticus Finch–type person I always wished I could be. Maybe. Anything’s better than the self-imposed loneliness I endured in secret.
Here’s to the names, all the names, on that long, long, long, long, long list of ordinary women: names like Carolyn Jennings, Stephanie Armstrong, Allison Kreiger Walsh, Kristen Moeller, Lori Henry, Margie Hodgin, Gail Schoenbach, Sharon Pikus, and now Diane Keaton Hall.
6
THE UPHILL CLIMB
VERSUS THE DOWNHILL SLIDE
Grin and Bare It
There was my career. There was Woody. There was Dr. Landau. There was the record of my dreams. There were my obtuse journals with the list of quotations punctuating my concerns. “I used to worry about being like this. Not knowing more. But now, now, I don’t worry anymore.” (Sixty-year-old Coney Island resident) “Please stand a little closer apart.” (Michael Curtiz) “You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.” (Diane Arbus) “I wanted to be many things and greatness besides. It was a hopeless task. I never managed to learn to really love another person; only to make the sound of it.” (A suicide note) “Look, you don’t have that much time.” (Walker Evans)
In New York I started making collages again. There was the series called “Grin and Bare It,” with pictures of rotting teeth overlaid with captions like “I never knew teeth could be so interesting” or “This middle-aged patient was presented at the oral surgery clinic with the most pronounced case of black hairy tongue ever examined at our institution” or “Hutchinson’s Teeth is thought to be an oral manifestation of congenital syphilis.” There was the black sketchbook I called “Death Notices.” On each page I cut out a photograph of a person