Chapter 1 – The Bet
“I’ll bet you a $100 I can get into a movie in ten screen tests.”
It was the summer after my Freshman year at Columbia. I rented a room in a fraternity on 113th Street, a few blocks south of campus. For $150 a month I didn’t have to return home, possibly, hopefully, ever again. I was addicted to New York City. Leaving the city was like holding your breath and diving.
My room that summer was a space crafted out of a larger bedroom from two-by-fours and shoddy drywall. It had ten-foot Victorian drapes repurposed for a doorway. I thumbtacked Keith Haring and a Last Waltz movie poster onto the walls. I kept a shoebox stuffed with high school love letters and oversized Valentine’s cards. I had a Bible that hadn’t been opened in nine months and a three-ring binder of Freshman Comp essays savaged in red pen and triple question marks.
The fraternity had been coopted by transfer students. None of them cared about fraternities in the least. They did only enough to keep the chart…
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