Todd Solondz : one for the school reporter in"Heathers"

By 1999 I was at a community college and doing a great job at English. On one occassion (for a lit class) I took the play "mother courage and her children " and wrote an essay comparing that to Godzilla (metaphor for the time) and it prompted the professor to call me up front and give me a talk on how people like me should be English instructors. Then my mom was fired and needed me to help out. At first I took a part time job that required me traveling from Whittier to downtown Los Angeles. For a good year I worked in a small office with only one other person, a supervisor named Vina. Often she was out of the office so I was alone manning phones. The office was a non profit which investigated allegations of police misconduct
one time a guy called me and told me undercover cops at Griffith park arrested him falsely for soliciting sex
an actor from star trek voyager told me a cop sexually harassed his girlfriend
a guy said officers came into his home and took photos with his stuffed teletubbies collection
and then there was Jeremy Applegate

"you've never seen heathers? Oh...i was in that " he said as he recited lines about getting bumped from the school paper. His story had to do with getting stopped by a cop. We talked though. There was this sense of desperation in him. He told me about heathers and about this girl who was his friend. See I still work for non profits to this day and often...very often it's not about the actual issues...it's about relatives on drugs, dead parents, failed dreams...people just want to vent to you (one lady told me she goes out at nights looking for a daughter who ran away and is addicted to meth..this little middle aged Hispanic woman)
Jeremy really needed a friend
and you know we talked way longer than we should have but he needed it . That was the first time I heard about Todd solondz, Jeremy was shocked I had never heard of "welcome to the dollhouse" (told me it was his favorite movie) There was nothing we could do but I didn't want to leave him alone like that so I told him a supervisor would call him back.
"but it's not something we handle so why would I call him back?" vina replied the next day
"I just think he needs to talk to someone" I replied
"well he can get a therapist"
And that was it. Jeremy called a few times and left a voicemail a few times but I didn't know what to tell him " my supervisor doesn't want to talk to you?" so I never called back.
eventually he stopped calling and I rectified my sin of never having seen"heathers" or "welcome to the dollhouse" (both have become dear to me over the years). I grew on my Todd solondz education and moved on to "happiness" eventually I cried during "Palindromes" and one day I looked up Jeremy Applegate on MySpace...that actor who needed a friend that one cloudy Los Angeles day and I found a tribute page for him.
he took his own life 03/23/2000
around the time we had talked
around the time his calls stopped
I had let him down
I messaged the tribute page and I got a reply back with Jeremy's pic profile...told the guy who wrote back that was too odd for me...he wrote me back from his personal profile and I started a brief exchange with a gay friend of his who helped fill in a lot of missing pieces of Jeremy's life. He told me he had an unrequited love in Jeremy. Eventually I told him of my phone encounter with Jeremy. His friend told me not to be too upset "Jeremy had a lot of problems..he smoked a lot of marijuana"
07/18/10
I'm at the Egyptian theater
double bill of "happiness" and "life during wartime" Todd is there and I am trying to convince him to sign my arm as various people wait to get stuff signed
"I don't want to contribute to your pain and.."
"no...it's cool..really"
he signs my arm and smiles. There's a lot I could tell him but telling him "it's for Jeremy" just wouldn't make a lot of sense.
see I have this feeling as life progresses, that I'll keep letting people down here and there. Jeremy was the first "could I have done something to..." scenario I encountered in life. Maybe I could have made a difference.
you see "welcome to the dollhouse" and I think I get it. I remember talking to Jeremy about Dawn and how bad he felt for her and how he could relate to her. Dawn wiener wasn't a bad person she was the victim of circumstances. Someone that everyone walked over, someone who was bright and creative but just a little socially awkward. In group therapy once in elementary the group leader told me I "was just like a puppy that needed to be loved"
I remember crying in her arms after she said that because that was me
that was dawn wiener
that was Jeremy.