When Mac and I broke up four years ago, we figured that even if the romantic relationship was ending, the friendship didn’t need to. We’d been together (off and on) for about four years. The last three of those years had been spent trying to break up because breaking up with your best friend sucks. Out of all your friends, they’re the one you want to talk to about it. You miss them and think, why should I lose a boyfriend AND a friend in this deal? Since we were both intelligent, emotionally mature people, Mac and I decided there was no need to sacrifice a perfectly good friendship. It was, in fact, the only reason we had stayed together so long in the first place. So, we broke up on a Friday night and went to breakfast Saturday morning. As friends. I know what you’re thinking, but this didn’t turn into a friends with benefits situation. Who wants benefits from someone you’ve been giving half-hearted hand jobs to during Friends reruns for the last few years, insisting that you be positioned so as to face the tv while pumping away? Nobody. Nobody wants that. But we did end up spending a lot of time together, even more time than when we were dating. It was great! We could finally enjoy each other’s friendship without the pressure of a relationship neither of us wanted to be in anymore. We hung out so much our friends gave up trying to figure it out and invited us everywhere as a couple. We were a walking urban legend: boyfriend/girlfriend turned best friends with no turn around time!
Oddly, during this time, neither of us dated anyone. When friends would question whether it might be due to our unusual closeness we would call each other later and gripe about how close minded they were. We just happened not to be interested in anyone. So what? We weren’t hooking up or pining for each other or breaking any other break up taboos. My guilty admission, though, is that I knew I would be the one to date first when the time came. It had really been me who had orchestrated the beginning of the end and sadly, Mac would probably always be in love with me on some unconscious level. I was a little more social and bounced back a little faster. For Mac, sensitive and a bit sullen, I knew it could take years.
Mac called one day in January to say the shark attack movie he was shooting needed a stand in for the lead actress – meaning a person to stand still and be lit for an hour and then move out of the way when it was time to roll. They also needed a stunt double for her, but it would just be a shot of legs kicking under water, he assured me. I was broke and trying to avoid the loneliness of a depressing apartment so I showed up at 6 AM the next day ready to get in the 50 degree water. I could see why he called me to double Carrie. We were the same height, same coloring. She was thinner with bigger breasts of course, but that’s something you get used to in Hollywood. She was incredibly sweet to me, offering to get me coffee when I was the one in the cold water. And she and Mac were close, too. Like, really really close laughing at everything the other said whispering intimate secrets close. That’s the other worst thing about breaking up with your best friend. You know exactly what it looks like when he’s in love because you’ve seen him look at you that way. It’s how he was looking at her.
While Carrie was bundled in a robe, being fussed over by Hair and Makeup, I was submerged in icy water, my feet weighted down so I wouldn’t keep bobbing up, peeing in my wet suit to keep warm. By the end of the day, having watched Mac and Carrie make goo goo eyes for nine hours and shivering in wet clothes, I was ready to go home. It turned out it wasn’t the end of the day for me. “I think it was just supposed to be my legs kicking underwater,” I explained to the stunt coordinator as he attached a pulley system to my ankle. “Are you a good swimmer?” He asked. “No.” “That’s ok, you need to hold your breath more than swim, anyway.”
The stunt worked like this: Clad in clothes doubling the character’s which in this case were a leopard print mini skirt and a now waterlogged padded bra I hung onto the shoulders of a male stunt double. On the count of three I was to take a giant breath and then the pulley attached to my ankle would yank me first down then all the way across the Olympic size pool underwater as if dragged by a shark (to be added later in post). As I bobbed in my bra and mini, teeth chattering, clinging to a guy named Rex who was actually trained for this kind of thing, I realized what had happened. I had been traded in for an upgrade. Mac had chosen someone with a couple of similar characteristics (actress, brown hair) but he had opted for the G4 model: thinner, prettier, more successful and let’s face it: way nicer. I figured at this point if the pulley didn’t pop my leg off Mac would most likely find me floating face down in the pool, a muddied, duller version of the girl he now loved.
My leg didn’t pop off and I didn’t drown. I surfaced on one end of the pool and looked over at Mac far on the opposite side. He was checking the footage, talking with someone. From where I tread water in the dark, he looked distant but familiar, like someone I used to know. All this time, in the throws of social maturity, I had been hanging on and Mac had let go. And now I’d been dragged away from him. It wasn’t that I still loved him, not like that. I just hadn’t thought about him not loving me. He looked up then and waved to me across the water, like a friend would across a crowded party. I lifted an arm and waved back. Like a friend would.
Photo via flordiamemory
