Part 2 (1/2)

”Body powder?” he said. ”Get to know it well. It's totally your new best friend.”

”Oh! That actually makes sense. Okay, next question: what about the wardrobe? Everywhere I go, I feel like someone's tag-along little brother. But then I look at what people are wearing, and it doesn't look that different from me. I mean, most people just wear shorts and a s.h.i.+rt. I'm wearing shorts and a s.h.i.+rt, but I feel like I'm doing something wrong. So what am I doing wrong?”

”Your shoes,” he said immediately, without even looking me up and down, which was actually sort of revealing. He'd already noticed I was wearing the wrong shoes?

I stuck a foot out. ”What about 'em?”

”What are you, a thirteen-year-old girl?”

It's true, they were Onitsuka Tigers, which I'd bought solely because they were on sale (and comfortable).

”Maybe I'm being ironic,” I said, my mouth full.

”You're not. Besides, that excuse stopped working three years ago.”

I swallowed. ”Okay, so I need new shoes.”

”Not just that,” Otto said. ”You need to fully understand the function of shoes in Los Angeles.”

”To cover your feet?”

”Not even close. In this town, everyone dresses incredibly casually. That just makes the shoes so much more important. They tell people who you are.”

I glanced down at Otto's shoes - some kind of well-worn leather loafer. They looked nice, but I didn't know anything about shoes, so I didn't know how impressed to be.

”You want your shoes to say you're rich and successful,” Otto went on, ”except you can't be too obvious about it or it'll look fake. It's all part of the Bulls.h.i.+t Factor.”

”The what?”

”It's the way this town works. Everyone overstates their accomplishments by a factor of three. So if, say, someone says, 'I have this horror project in development with Guillermo del Toro,' what they really mean is, 'I have a pitch meeting with Eli Roth.' Basically, you take the truth and make it three times more impressive. But you never want to lie outright, or even overdo it. You don't want to say, 'I'm really good friends with Tina Fey,' because that kind of thing always comes back to haunt you.”

”And this has what to do with shoes?” I said.

Otto looked slightly exasperated with me. ”It's all part of the image you present to the world. That you're incredibly successful and everyone wants to work with you. Just not quite so successful that everyone should have heard of you, so it's obvious you're lying.”

”Maybe I'll just go barefoot.”

Otto kept glaring at me.

”Okay, okay,” I said. ”So I need to buy expensive new shoes.”

He thought for a second. ”Wait a minute, hold the phone. I just realized you fall under the Screenwriter Loophole.”

My head was officially spinning. ”The what?”

”Well, I said before that everyone in this town is a former dork, which is totally true. But screenwriters are the one group of people in town who don't ever seem to make the leap from 'dork' to 'ex-dork'.”

”What do you mean?” I said.

”Most of you stay dorks.”

I didn't know very many writers, but this didn't surprise me in the least. ”Okay, well, how is that a good thing?”

”It's a good thing because everyone expects screenwriters to be dorky and unfas.h.i.+onable. So you show up wearing anything better than a burlap sack, and you're already ahead of the compet.i.tion. And if you're actually capable of making eye contact, h.e.l.l, you're halfway to an Oscar right there.”

I know I should have been offended, but I couldn't help but smile. ”You're making screenwriters sound like total social rejects.”

”Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that,” Otto said. ”I meant all writers. You know, TV writers and novelists and playwrights too?”

I cracked up. I loved the irony of this, the guy with the scar on his face instructing the non-scarred guy on how to not be a social pariah. But then I realized I was still obsessing about the scar on Otto's face, and that made me feel guilty.

”It's different for actors,” Otto said. ”Well, it's not that different. Everyone expects actors to be narcissistic and crazy, which, if I'm totally honest, we basically are. But when it comes to the way we look, that is different. We're expected to look a certain way.”

In college, Otto had gotten into acting and ended up a theater major - although, depressingly, his biggest role in school really had been the Elephant Man. Once he graduated, he'd set his sights on making it as a TV and movie actor. He'd gotten an agent and had a few roles, mostly in indie movies. But (also very depressingly), he'd played a lot of zombies.

He'd sighed when he'd said that, how actors were supposed to look a certain way.

”How's it going with that?” I said gently. ”The acting, I mean.”

He sort of shrugged and rolled his eyes. ”It's going. Still no SAG card, but I'm not sure that would be a good move for me right now anyway.” I knew enough to know that getting a SAG card - becoming a member of the Screen Actors Guild - meant more money per acting job, but it also meant that you couldn't ever do non-union acting jobs, like small indie films, and that was most of the work for actors like Otto.

I looked at him, encouraging him on.

”My agent says we're in a strange time,” Otto said. ”There's pressure on writers and producers to be more inclusive, to, like, include disabled characters, and not just the usual 'pity' roles, or the teach-the-able-bodied-person-a-lesson roles. But most people still think of 'disability' as a thing that happens to you, not an actual ident.i.ty. You know? They just don't get it.”

Otto and I really had fallen out of contact: I hadn't even known that he thought of himself as ”disabled.” Or had I? I guess he posted links to stuff like this, and I sometimes ”liked” them, but I hadn't really read them. But I nodded along. What he was saying made sense.

”Plus, there isn't really a pool of acting talent yet,” Otto went on. ”So casting directors can legitimately say, 'We couldn't find anyone disabled for the part.' But how could there be a pool of talent? There aren't enough roles for any of us to make a living! But the greater problem is that no one even thinks twice about casting an able-bodied actor in a disabled role. It was one thing when it was Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, or even Kevin McHale on Glee. Those were cast a long time ago. But Ansel Elgort in The Fault in Our Stars? Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything? Come on! My agent says that someday that's going to be looked on like casting a white actor in an Asian role - like they used to do all the time, but they don't anymore. But we're not there yet. So yeah, it's a struggle.”

”I'm sorry,” I said. ”That really sucks.”

”Whatever,” Otto said. ”Acting's a tough life. I knew that going in. It's tough for all actors, not just me. Only in different ways.”

”Still.” It was breaking my heart to see Otto so down like this.

He shrugged. ”Things are changing. My agent says that all the time too. Say what you will about Ryan Murphy, but who else is casting actors with Down Syndrome? Oh, and look at Miles Teller. He's Mr. Fantastic in The Fantastic Four.”

I stared at Otto. Why should I be looking at Miles Teller?

”He has facial scars?” Otto said. ”He was in a car accident in 2007. He's got scars all over his face and body.”

He does? I thought.

”Oh, wow,” I said. ”Yeah, you're right.”

”I know,” Otto said. ”His scars are a lot less obvious than mine. But they're still visible. My agent says that ten years ago, there's no way he could've had a career as a leading man, no matter how talented he was. But now he's the real deal. We're living in a whole new world where the whole definition of 'beauty' is changing.”

”That's great,” I said. And even if Otto was maybe being a bit optimistic about how quickly things were changing, I did think what he was saying was great.