Rocking the Pink by Laura Roppé Page A

him on those nights as we lay, just the two of us, holding each other in the dark.
    â€œI’m gonna be fine,” I reassured him, stroking his tear-stained cheeks. I was amazed at how calm and assured my voice sounded.
    â€œDo you promise?” His voice was shaky.
    â€œYes, Buddy. I promise.”
    If that promise turned out to be a lie, I reasoned, and if survival just wasn’t in the cards for me after all, Brad would simply have to forgive me.

Chapter 10
    When we’d both graduated from college, Brad moved to L.A. to live with me while I pursued my big Hollywood dreams, even though he didn’t fully understand them.
    â€œYou’re so smart,” he said. “You should be inventing the cure for cancer.”
    But I didn’t want to invent the cure for cancer. I wanted to be a star.
    We got an airy apartment that allowed pets, for Crazy Buster. Our next-door neighbor was a perpetually harried woman with six snorting pugs, and the guy upstairs had a loud (goddamned) bird. Brad got a job in the copy department of a law firm while he figured out his next move. And I, presumably, set out to “make it.”
    I managed to book an audition with a reputable talent agent in the Valley. A successful audition could be a life-changing opportunity. A theater friend of mine named Rob agreed to perform a dramatic scene
with me, and we rehearsed and rehearsed. Finally, the big day arrived and we performed our scene for the agent in his Burbank office.
    â€œCompelling,” he complimented Rob first. “You’re understated and believable.”
    And then he turned to me. “You’re good,” he said. “But . . . we’ve already got one of you.”
    Before I could ask him what “having one of me” meant, he elaborated: “We already represent Martha Plimpton.”
    What? I was the poor man’s Martha Plimpton?
    Surely, someone out there would be able to appreciate my special Laura-ness. I was unique! Unlike anyone else! I was not some shoddy Martha Plimpton mimeograph, thank you very much.
    I got a head shot made, and I mailed it out to every reputable talent agent in the greater Los Angeles area. I’d show that guy!
    And then, by God, I waited . . . and waited.
    But I didn’t get a single response to my head shot mailings.
    â€œI think I’ll go to law school,” Brad declared eight weeks later, having long since abandoned all inquiries about the progress of my talent-agency mailing.
    And I, the former star of The Doors, the girl once destined to become the next Judy Garland, the purveyor of a unique brand of Laura-ness not heretofore seen anywhere else in the world, shrugged my deflated shoulders and said, “Me, too.”
    So much for polishing my Oscar-acceptance speech.
    Why the change of heart? Because the rubber had finally hit the road on an internal wrestling match I’d been waging my whole life: In one corner, there was my heart—my creativity and dreams—looking
sort of like a headband-clad Ralph Macchio in the original Karate Kid . In the other corner, there was my head, looking surprisingly like Ralph Macchio’s blond nemesis in that same movie, standing with a combative expression on his (its) face. I’m superior to you, my head taunted my heart. I’m analytical, pragmatic, and far more respected by society . . . and by your family, too. And with that, my head landed a roundhouse kick on my heart.
    I’d been told from a young age by my family and teachers that I was off-the-charts smart, and I took their opinions in this regard to be unquestionable fact. If it was true that I was a brainiac, as the adults said, then I supposed I’d better not waste my big, fat brains on pursuits for dummies—even though most of the left brain–centered classes, like algebra and chemistry, were torturous. To do otherwise would be such a waste, and a disappointment to everyone, wouldn’t it? And yet if I