My first interview with Christian Slater

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My first Interview with Christian Slater

This is my first interview with Christian Slater and I’m nervous.
I’m terrified.
Christian, he’s waiting for me in the other room, I’m here in the bathroom, my photographer hasn’t shown up yet. To be quite frank this is my first interview ever.
I hope he doesn’t realize that.
I don’t take pictures. I know this is a stupid thing to think of now, but I don’t.
Not a click. Never learned. Which is weird because my father is a picture frame maker.
Christian Slater clears his throat, like he’s impatient and I want to go. I have to go, leave get out and runaway. I am not qualified to do this. I lied on my interview.
I made it up.
I never wrote for my high school newspaper. I didn’t even like heathers.
.
He is sitting and he has dark hair that hangs around his pale face. It’s older now, the face more so then I remember from movies. He has wrinkles that line the edge of his mouth and a line of his forehead. Christian Slater stares at me, his eyes dead locked on mine.
Scratch that.
I loved heathers

Me:
Christian how have you been?
CS
Well I’m a little upset
Me
Why are you upset
CS
You’ve kept me here almost an hour

We stare at each other a moment. He reminds me of dreams, the kind where you wake up and think you’ll remember but just fall back asleep and realize in the morning you forgot something life changing. Earth shattering.
There is the smell of Downey drier sheets, Aqua-Velva aftershave. He is summer and that glorious time in the mall with my friends when we all tried to pretend we were so cool and not just dumb teenagers.
He crosses his legs and re-crosses them. I realize as we sit here in this dead air silence sort of thing he must be getting the feeling that I ask deep profound questions.
I realize this is true as well.


Me
Tell me about where you believe the future in Mexican textiles is heading and how that reflects on both Nafta and our current administration as a whole.


CS
Well,
Wait…what?
Me
Chris, may I call you Chris? I feel that your work has had a considerable role in changing people’s lives for the better in very pivotal but at the same kind subconscious ways.
Your opinion?

CS
Well, first I guess I’d like to start out by saying that-
Me
Did you know my ex-girlfriend used to fantasize about you when she was a teenager?
CS
No, I didn’t know that
Me
Yeah, she had a picture of you in a box, and would think about you by herself in the woods
CS
Uh well
Me
What do you say about that
CS
About what
Me
About underage teen age girls manipulating their genitalia in response to your image, in the woods?
CS
Well, I’d say that-
Me
Ha! So you admit it.
CS
Admit what?
Me
Do you have plans to sleep with my ex-girlfriend?
CS
No
Me
Liar!
CS
I don’t even know you-

There is a vibe here, a nervous energy much akin to that awkward pre-teen dating. Of my own sweaty and inexperienced first time in the woods.
Playing dirty truth or dare.
Nervous smiles, clammy hands and under inflated breasts - soft curly pubic hair.
I don’t remember the sounds. I remember the smell. It’s the humid warmth of a Jersey summer, and humidity and perspiration on the tip of the lip, looking at smuggled porn all day psyching ourselves out to do it.
I realize as I relive this Christian Slater is starring at me, looking at me.
Why is he here?
Did he follow me?
Is this my place?
Is he stalking me?
Or am I stalking him?


Me
Switching subjects tell me about your work with Patricia Arquette
CS
Huh?

I realize as we converse that he is obviously on drugs. The stark raving iris of a mad man gives it away. I must stare him down. I can’t let his gaze dominate mine.
I will beat him.

CS
Why are you staring?

Me
I’m casting my eyes deep into the heart of teen cool

CS
Well, when you put it like that

Me
A soul so immaculate, so pure and praiseworthy I must draw you.

CS
What?

Me
Here, You saw titanic.

I sense distrust. Fear. This is the first interview I’ve ever done with Christian Slater and he seems to be nervous around me. Like a lion I must not break his gaze. To retreat now would be sheer madness, suicide. But, if it’s a fight he wants – I will bring it to him.

CS
What magazine do you write for again?

Me
They have a Spanish word for you, it means both beast and crazy –
Pollo Loco

Christian mouths the words and they roll of his tongue in a linguistic waterfall.

CS
What does this mean, this Pollo Loco?

Me
I’m a journalist, not a translator. Keep it together man.

I offer him a cigarette and in the style of all famous authors and journalists we make love.
Afterwards, when we are finished, I hand him a towel and he wipes himself up.

CS
There was this time once; I was on set for this thing with Jack Nicholson and Mimi Van Doren.We had just finished filming a three-some, which for whatever reason didn’t air. Mimi retreats back to her trailer, tired likes, and Jackie and I are just hanging out reverberating in the afterglow. Happy likes, you know?
Chan, that’s our casting director walks in with two bags of thai opium and three teenage prostitues. Now at first I was a little skeeved out, and arguable so, they if anything, were only 14.
And, ugly…
We each dig in, start on the opium and pretty soon were burning through it like freedom fliers on red square. Well, pretty soon were knee deep in Thai hooker and I look over at Jacko and I say, Hey yours got a penis!
They are in some weird reverse lotus position and I can see both faces. The Thai kid, he is young and wild eyed – Jacko of course is puffing his hash and laughing manically.
He replies back to me behind loud guffaws – yours does to.
To my astonishment he did.

This is it, I realize…my moment to strike. His defenses are down. He does not expect me to attack him now. Look at him, calm, relaxed. He has no idea of the danger that awaits the trap that is about to spring.
I smile.

CS
Yeah, you could say they were good times.
Funny follow up.
Jacko gets the clap from this kid and later I find that Chan, got aids that same time around.
Now I’ve never gotten tested, but I figure when I give blood that they would let me know if something was up.
Well, with his culture being different and all he ended up being crucified on the Great wall, head removed and sent to the museum down in Shanghai.
Strange thing, cultures.
That reminds me, once in Jakarta we were taken to a bath house. It was after an all nighter ripped to shreds on triple latte’s, speedballs and a copious amount of amphetamines. Now, I’m not one for drugs. Never have been, never will. But, it was that bastard Chan again. Gets my weakness every time, domino affect and piles them one after another with the music, drinks, sex and then ultimately drugs. The odd thing was after we would screw he would always get that energy, casting fever he would call it and find out something more for us to do.
Something that would push us to some new extreme.
Something that we hadn’t tried yet, or wouldn’t live to try through.
It was a kind of suicide those days – a living with death in it’s freakish occurrences daily type thing. My publicist obviously hated Chan; hated him with a passion. She realized, and correctly so, that if I died in some kinky way that her career was over.
Kaput!
Who wants to manage the guy that had sex with the girl in Hanson?
Come to think about it, she’s the one who probably told the embassy about Chan and his T Cell count.

I strike suddenly, my hand flat out and straight into his throat.
My fingers make contact with the soft throaty flesh and I hear a crack.
He falls back gurgling up spit, kicks his feet for a few moments and lies still.
I stand over him, put my pants back on and straighten my shirt.

We are through here.
I walk over his body and out the door.
This is my first interview with Christian Slater.
I think it went well.