Danny Artese - Call Me, Heartbreaker

 

I had already scandalized my entire class the year before on our eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C., when I used my spending money not to buy a souvenir at the Smithsonian, but to buy a MAC eyeshadow. [audience laughter] By the time that I discovered the most magical book I had ever seen, which was full of illusion and transformation, and perfectly sculpted cheekbones, it was called Making Faces by a makeup artist named Kevin Aucoin. [audience cheers] 

 

Inside were pictures of makeup he had done on every 1990s famous woman from Gwyneth Paltrow to Janet Jackson to Martha Stewart as Veronica Lake. I think that because I wasn't trying to rush my mom out of her favorite store, Nordstrom, where I had spotted the book, she bought it for me. And inside, Kevin Aucoin not only gave makeup tips and techniques to create the looks, but also shared personal details about growing up gay in a town that just wasn't quite sure what to do with him, and eventually moving to New York City to pursue his dreams, just like I was going to do. [audience laughter] [chuckles] 

 

And so, I started experimenting on everybody, from my best friend to my grandma, even doing my date's makeup for school dances. [audience laughter] [chuckles] They looked good. [audience laughter] I got to know the woman at the Prescriptives counter at that Nordstrom, who would help me recreate the looks from the book if the store wasn't too busy. And on one such visit, there were signs all over the cosmetics department announcing that “The following Friday, none other than Kevin Aucoin was going to be in the store for a book signing.” 

 

I was already planning my outfit. [audience laughter] And so, the problem was that I didn’t drive, so I had to beg one of my parents to leave work early, so they would take me. And the following Friday, with my dad in his pickup truck in the parking lot, I strode into Nordstrom carrying not only Kevin Aucoin’s book, but also a letter that I had written to him explaining how inspirational I found him, in case the line was so long that we wouldn't have time to talk or I was just too nervous to do so. 

 

It turns out I didn’t really need to worry, because the line was short, which I found surprising. [audience laughter] Because in my world, he was bigger than Madonna and bigger than Cher and bigger than Liza, who, coincidentally, are all women whose makeup he had done. It turns out that when I’m really nervous, I don’t clam up. In fact, I don’t shut up. And so, when I was trying to assure him that I was in fact of sound mind and I blurted, "I know what year it is. I know who the president is." [audience laughter] He cracked up. 

 

And he could not have been more gracious. He posed for pictures. He didn’t just sign his name in my book, he actually wrote a message that I wouldn’t have time to read until I was back in my dad’s truck on the way to our school’s football game that night. [audience laughter] What he wrote was, "I will remember you. You are so fucking cute. Call me, Heartbreaker," and then his phone number. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

I decided that I wasn’t going to hold it against him that he had used the F word, [audience laughter] because he had used it to say something nice about me. [audience laughter] I didn’t take it as flirting, because he called me Heartbreaker, which is the specific term you use to someone you are acknowledging is cute, but you have zero attraction to, like, mostly babies in checkout lines are heartbreakers. [audience laughter] So, to me, it was just a lovely gesture to an admittedly adorable kid, [audience laughter] who had shown up at one of his book signings. 

 

Kevin Aucoin was a very busy man. In addition to his day job doing makeup for everybody, he also wrote a column for Allure, and he was appearing on TV shows like Sex and the City, the fashion roadkill episode. [audience laughter] I didn’t want to bother him by actually calling the number that he had given me. And I didn’t know if he was offering some sort of mentorship or friendship or what, but I did know that I would call him when I moved to New York, where I wasn’t going to know anybody. 

 

On May 7th of my senior year of high school, as I was in the midst of hearing back from all the schools I had applied to, my good friend Jillian approached me one day in theater arts class. It wasn’t drama class. It was theater arts class, [audience laughter] with a very concerned look on her face. And she wanted to see if I was okay. When I didn’t know why she was asking, she expressed her condolences for Kevin Aucoin. I didn’t understand the joke. I just knew that it wasn’t funny and I didn’t know why she was telling it to me. And so, in looking at her trying to figure it out, I saw that she was horrified to realize that she had just broken the news to me. He was 40 years old. 

 

When I finally did move to New York, I did not bring Making Faces with me, not with the phone number that I couldn’t dial. I wrapped it up in paper and I placed it on the top shelf of my childhood closet. I’ve been home often over the past 10 years and I’ve glanced up at it. But never looked at it, never taken it down. But on my most recent trip home, my dad asked me to go through all the things in my closet, because he was going to sell the house. 

 

So, I threw away years’ worth of greeting cards and school projects and photographs, because I had to look at them not for the possibility that they had once represented, but for what they actually meant to me now. When I got to that top shelf, I knew that I needed to do the same. So, I pulled the book down, and I left it in its paper, and I placed it in my suitcase and I brought a little bit of Kevin Aucoin back with me.