I was a child star in the 90s. Nobody remembers my name, but I was everywhere. I starred in 8 feature films ranging from family-comedy to horror and landed a handful of guest roles on TV shows. I got to do a Pizza Hut commercial with Shaq, an Olivia Newton-John music video. I even hung out with Eddie Furlong at the arcade. I was everywhere until I wasn't. When my last few films bombed critically and financially, my sister was quickly ushered in to take my place as the family's child of the screen. We used to rollerblade to the ice cream stand. Now she's in movies with Jamie Lee Curtis. Many, including myself, would agree she is truly a wonderful actress. In one of her roles, she wore a blonde wig and it made me think of the time I poured a bottle of hydrogen peroxide on her head. I don't know why I did that, but I remember being angry about something that day and took it out on her, because she was the closest person in proximity to where I was storming around the house.

I still feel terrible about that, but I'm too scared to call her and apologize for our entire childhood, because for me to do that, I'd have to bring it up at all. I wrestle between wondering if it's better to go through life acting like nothing happened, or if things should be a point of conversation at a certain time? I figure we have a decent enough relationship, I don't want to risk destroying it by reminding her,

“I used to torment you. I'm the reason you're anorexic, because I called you a fatass so often when we were kids. I'm the reason they talk about you in celebrity gossip magazines, wondering, ‘Is she a cocaine addict? Does she struggle with an eating disorder?’ When dad would throw me in a corner and beat me after I failed an audition, whose room did I walk into for the sole purpose of transferring our father's rage into broken Barbies?”

Kids envied me and tried to emulate my mannerisms back then. I wish other kids could have known me as myself, rather than the characters I played, including the one who possessed my body in interviews. But I was also afraid they would think I'm nothing short of a monster, if they saw the way I'd react to the abuse by taking it out on others. So maybe it was best that they didn't know me at all. Those were the unhappiest times of my life. I was adored, but there's such a vast difference between adoration and love, and I desperately wanted to be loved.

When a man bought the house just down the street from where we lived, everybody was talking about it. They were saying he was a pedophile. I asked my father what that meant. He told me,

“It’s a man who loves children and has sex with them. Stay away from that house.”

A month later, I was at the man's door. His house had a broken window in the kitchen, the result of a neighbor hitting a rock with a lawnmower, and I wondered if that was on purpose. A Christmas wreath hung on the door all year-round. I looked through the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of him. The broken window replayed its demise in my head. I swore I could see a shadow moving in the living room. It was the biggest human shadow I had ever seen. I was too young to completely understand the gravity of the situation, and there was even a part of me that knew it was wrong, but I just wanted to feel that somebody loved me.

When he answered the door, I froze and thought maybe he recognized me from one of the movies I was in. He asked,

“Can I help you?”

I nervously strangled the words,

“Are you the man who loves kids?”

He told me to go back home, before shutting the door and locking it. I felt disappointed and confused as I walked home, imagining him watching me from his roof like Santa Claus.

When I got back home, I entered my bedroom and locked my own door. The sun produced a spotlight through my window. Dust particles floated in the beam like glitter. I took my clothes off and stood in the rays with my eyes closed, imagining the man had not rebuffed me and took me in to hold me and say,

“I love you. I love all kids, but I love you the most. Not a character, not an idealized version that I'm projecting onto you, just you.”

I learned the man committed suicide 3 days later and I daydreamed a scenario where the police found a stack of photographs in his bedside table. In the middle of dozens of children, there were pictures of me, as if he were my biggest fan, but he was the only one who knew me beyond a superficial level.

When the man's son began dating a girl I saw riding a blue BMX bike on occasion, the girl's parents tried to put a stop to it. They wondered if he had the pedophile gene and saw his father's eyes whenever they looked at him. When he wasn't invited to a family BBQ, he waited by the edge of the road for the girl to come out and talk to him from the front lawn, as if an invisible fence separated them. She brought him a paper plate with hot dogs, potato salad, macaroni salad, BBQ chips, and a beer she snuck from the cooler when nobody was watching. Her brother watched not far behind her like a guard dog.

The two ended their relationship after a month and a half. They couldn't handle it anymore. After their breakup, nobody ever saw the man's son again and all quietly pretended he never existed. I felt awful for him and wondered if I was destined to become like my father, and if I was, would I even know I was a copy when I got to that point, or could I see it coming and turn the wheel fast enough to prevent it? I didn't know and I didn't like not knowing.

Not long before it all ended, I saw my agent molest another actor my age on his living room couch while the TV played a rerun of the televised Academy Awards. I was nominated for my performance in a film I no longer remember acting in and I won. I watched myself smile at the world.

My agent told me,

“You have a gift like no other,”

but as I watched him with my co-star, I thought,

“Then why does he get all the love?”

Alex Osman is a writer, musician, and photographer from Texas. He is the mind behind the power-electronics/death-industrial project, A Need to Be Shot. Written works include Problem Child (ExPat Press) and Scandals (Filthy Loot/Talented Perverts).
Instagram: @magkneesiumm