Hope Jeans Eternal

The boys are alright

Up on the stoop

Earlier today, when I walked out onto the stoop, a young man, skinny with complicated jeans and a shirt with a sprinkle of tiny rhinestones, was walking through my gate.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

He looked up and smiled. Amazon drivers, food delivery guys, guests with bottles of wine in their hands always find themselves at my house by mistake.

“Oh hi. I’m canvassing.” He clutched a handful of colorful pamphlets to his chest. “Can I talk to you about Zohran Mamdani?”

He looked young. Teenage young, and I knew it because I had two of these guys right behind me in the house. They were doing homework and coughing, home sick on a beautiful Sunday while I puttered around and watered the plants and chatted with the neighbors.

I had work to do inside, work that I was avoiding. I had just watched the episode Lord John Marbury, for the third time, and needed to get some writing done. But have been having difficulty lately making sense of the chasm, the lay-down-and-sob-yourself-silly difference– between the honest hopefulness of then, the norms we took for granted, and the upside-down world of today. I felt neutralized.

“Oh my God,” he said, snapping his fingers, his face all lit up. “Are you… wait. Are you in… you’re in a show…”

I put my bag of recycling in the green bin while the wheels of his young mind turned. Usually, people recognize me from The West Wing but occasionally, especially young men on subways for some reason, from another excellent series in which I barely spoke and rarely sat upright. When this happens, as it was about to, I resist the urge to say, “Young man, may I instead direct you to a little, multiple award-winning series you may have heard of, called THE WEST WING. I WALK!! I TALK!!!” But I don’t, and I smile, as graciously as I can muster, and confirm that I was indeed in the show he remembers. He was jazzed. He pumped his fist.

“I knew it.”

I asked him how old he was. Normally I wouldn’t ask anyone their age, if my boys were there they would have collapsed in embarrassment. But this kid had an easy energy and I was always curious what the young men were up to. Especially one canvassing for a good guy, an optimistic dreamer in this rabbit hole of a world.

“I’m sixteen,” he said.

“Wow, so you’re in eleventh?”

“No. I’m a senior. But I’m young for my grade.”

He told me he went to LaGuardia High School in Manhattan. I remember growing up in the Valley learning about the celebrated school for the arts from the movie Fame and wanting to go there in a way that hurt so good. I fantasized for three solid years about smoking cigarettes and carrying my oversized tote bag and dancing on the cafeteria table. Irene Cara’s song “Out Here On My Own” was my go-to audition ballad and I sang it often and badly.

“So you like Zohran,” I asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Me too,” I said. I wasn’t sure about the mayor’s race, wasn’t sure the young optimist could manage such a complicated city in such a complicated time. I wasn’t sure at all. But like my teenage sons, and apparently this young man, I understood the appeal. Weren’t we supposed to want optimists as our leaders? Wasn’t idealism a good thing?

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Jasper.”

“So you’re here canvassing for mayor and you can’t even vote. I’m impressed.” He said he thought it made sense. Especially since he wouldn’t be sixteen forever.

He asked me if I still acted and I said sometimes but mostly I was a mom and he said that’s cool and kicked at the ground. He wasn’t in a hurry. In LA I once had a ten-year-old ask me who my agent was so this was a refreshing upgrade. He seemed much more interested in talking to me than my own children were these days, but I was careful not to take advantage, knowing we both had work to do.

“What’s your thing at LaGuardia?” I asked.

“I’m a vocal major. And an actor. I like musical theatre.”

“Wow, good for you.” I didn’t want to tell this sweet kid to run screaming from show business, the building is coming down, because it has been so good to me. Who’s to say where his life will go?

“So what other things have you been in?” he said.

Um… ok, he asked me– like, I mean, he came right out and asked me, right?

I played it cool. “Have you… seen… maybe… seen The West Wing?”

“No!!” he said, excited. “Are you in that?”

Ahem, Child. Am I in it?

At dinner the previous evening I talked to another young man, my friend’s son who had just started his first job in DC as a journalist. He was a massive West Wing fan and sat next to me as we ate his dad’s excellent chicken with 40 cloves talking about how hopeful the show was, how stunning and sad it is to see that now. Together, we wondered if anyone in the real White House watched. We decided it sure didn’t seem like it—but that you never know.

I told him about the time the cast and I were invited to the Bush White House. Shocked at being asked, sure we were being punked but knowing that when invited to the White House for tea you go, we entered the Rose Garden with careful smiles. The President wasn’t there as we expected, but his staff was waiting, all in their suits and ties, their sweater sets and silk with hands outstretched. I noticed right away that many of the people wore name tags, Hello My Name Is with their name and, oh my goodness, below it the character whose position corresponded with their own. Jenny Harmon/ Donna Moss. Andrew Card/Leo McGarry. I think we, the cast, all realized at the same moment, the delight and disbelief rippling between us. And while we disagreed vehemently with their politics, it seemed we were united in the belief that Donna or Leo, Toby or Charlie, were worth identifying with. Certain ideals, certain values were all of ours, uncontroversial–we could wear them on adhesive stickers written in Sharpie, affixed against our hearts.

I asked the boy on my stoop if he had his college stuff sorted yet and he said no. He told me he was nervous, afraid to pursue musical theatre and not something more practical. In the best of times, my ability to advise my own children feels hobbled by my Gen X, latchkey kid parenting and by the fact that I had a single passion that I pursued since I was small. Nobody could tell me shit. Practicality was never a factor.

“I love musical theatre,” he asked like a question, like maybe he wasn’t allowed.

“Then do it!!” I said. I could see his dreams rolling across his face like ticker tape. He wanted this. “Literally NO ONE will tell you that pursuing musical theatre is a good idea. So don’t wait for that! And the world is on its head so maybe musical theatre makes as much sense as anything. At least a robot can’t take your job.”

“Yet!” We said in unison and laughed.

I looked behind to make sure no one could hear me and leaned in. “Listen,” I said. “I was just like you. And I pursued acting my whole life like nothing else mattered and I made more money than I deserved, had dinner with presidents and had a life beyond my wildest dreams. If I can do it, so can you.”

There was a pause. Was this boy with the jeans of many buckles ready to run? Was I creepy AF? My sons would have me arrested, evaporated and erased from their memory had they witnessed this conversation.

He blinked and looked out into the street. I think he needed a minute. I could see him considering it, batting around the possibility of his own success. Maybe he could do it, maybe hope, was actually an excellent idea.

He then turned back to me, laughing a little, shaking his head like isn’t life grand and said, “And...this is why I canvass.”

And because, after acting for all these years a girl knows her cue when she hears it, I replied, “And this is why I sit on my stoop.”