From an Actor's Point of View: "To Anny In China"
by Gary Swanson

I quit smoking when I was 22, a year after I graduated from college, because I knew that three packs of Lucky Strike unfiltered smokes a day would probably shorten my life. I knew that before the cigarette companies began capitulating their dark power to the force of truth.

When I was in College I wore bell bottoms and in my senior year I lived with Annelle. Annelle was, and is to this day, one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen or known. I have no idea where she is today. I don't even know if she's still walking around the planet, but I was so molecularly, hormonally mad for this poor girl that it consumed most of me, leaving only a small part of my functioning brain for other life tasks; the rest went to the gerbil part, the primal part—the part that women occupy in the male psyche.

Art is very much like a woman to me; alluring, brilliant, blinding, beautiful, dangerous and, of course, sexual in an abstract way. In my first three years at C. W. Post I was an English major drawn to acting. The theater called to me like an other woman vying for my attention from across the room. But in my Sophomore year, I was not ready to put myself up on the stage, afraid to be examined, hurt or praised for something that I could only do on guess work. I longed for it, I dreamed about it but I faltered. (Praise does not create satisfaction if it's given to someone who feels like they have no right to claim the reward.)

It was the middle of my Junior year that I could no longer wait, battling my fear of failure and embarrassment with a drive that was from the center of the universe, like a young boys attraction to girls and the war that life sets up for the young boy to get, have known - one, two or all of them.

When I thought of acting it had the same meteorological energy surge on me that I felt when I was 16 having just gotten my driver's license. Ceil Drolé looked like the then famous model Jean Shrimpton. She worked at the check out register of the King Kullen supermarket on Rt. 110 in Huntington. I used to go in there, wait on her line with single item just to have her look at me when I paid her. One Friday night I sat for an hour outside King Kullen, dizzy with fear, in a ferocious conflict with myself and my courage. I got out of the car and walked into blinding mass of florescent lights, daring myself to make my move in a screaming war with fight or flight.

Friday night the line was packed as I moved closer to Ceil's register, my canoe heading over Niagra Falls, hoping I could stand and speak, worrying about what all those around me would think if I did something bizarre or I stuttered . . .or cried. I put the Original Coke™ bottle on the leather track—it hit the metal and fell over. She looked at it and by then I was standing directly before her, looking at her.

I could see her thoughts, "One Coke?"

As if someone else had commandeered my mouth and my thoughts she looked at me and the world stopped—except for the long line behind me and the woman grabbing her bags in front of me.

"Ya wanna go out?" I said.

It took her a second, she punched in the cost of the single Coke. (Death itself had no punch over the fear I felt at that moment.)

"OK" she said.

"When?" I said in disbelief.

"I'll be off at 7:30" she said moving the items of the next person down to the bag area while the other people looked at me.

"I'll be waiting in my mother's silver Grand Prix."

"Your mother is with you?"

"No, I have my license. I drive myself."

"He drives himself!" the guy waiting patiently said.

She pulled the guy's groceries back with her left hand, one at a time as she rang him up.

"Two hours is a long time to wait." I now noticed that she was chewing gum.

"I know . . . I'll be outside."

It took me as much courage to finally start acting in College as it did for me, at 16, to ask Ceil Drolé to go out with me.

I'm glad I had that battle with myself, that test of courage against the forces of nature that manage to keep men and women of all ages apart from consummation. No one ever wins that one really. We think we do, but it's one of nature's great canards.

To this day, I still think about Annelle. If I'd lost my battle with the King Kullen Queen, I might never have been able to muster up the courage to go after Annelle. And, If I hadn't had the courage to go after Annelle, I surely would never have had the mighty gods behind me to step out onto the stage and the rest of my life.

I love the stage almost as much as I love women!

I don't yet understand either.

http://www.garyswanson.org