When I started the Convent, I entered it with one man at my side: the inexplicably adorable Steve Zahn. I have always been susceptible to the odd and seemingly out-of-character infatuations throughout my life and Steve is still an old favorite. No, his resume isn't nearly as flashy as most of my other husbands, and he's mostly known for B-rated screwball comedies, but there were a few roles in there that genuinely bemuse me in a the best way and make me still want more of him to this day.
The first thing that caught my eye was his role in Sahara--that guilty pleasure of a high adventure with Matthew McConaughey as Clive Cussler's infamously over-masculinized old-boy-club-alpha-male that would usually send me packing. But Steve's glorified flunky Giordino managed to float my boat somehow. His turn as Christian Bale's tortured POW buddy in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn (which was an incredible dramatization of Herzog's earlier documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly) was unexpectedly nuanced and deep, and I totally cried watching it. Of course, his young Gus McCrae in the Lonesome Dove prequel Comanche Moon melted my western-loving heart. Then there's Davis McAlary--the dudebro bohemian DJ/musician of HBO's Treme who is just so real and messed up that I wanna hug him until he gets his shit together.
Look how unexpectedly sexy we are.
Steve's also fun to see pop up as the sidekick/comic relief, don't get me wrong. He's perfect in those roles and always makes me smile. Especially his voice work, which is way underrated.
I suppose what made him the long-running "first husband" of my imaginary manse was his ability to surprise me with his egoless talent. And he's so un-Hollywood, living his off-set life on a farm in New Jersey with his family and fainting goats. I can imagine the day in the far future when the Oscars runs that "In Memorium" footage and Steve Zahn pops up... I think he'll get more applause than most people will expect.
So anyway, here's a simple scene from my earliest attempts at imagining life with him. It represents my ideal domestic situation on any given weeknight.
"Literature," September 8, 2005
Bedtime. Conan does his string dance on the TV. It's one of those plasma screen deals that hides in a slot in the ceiling above the bed until I press a remote control button and it slides down so it seems to float inside our bed's canopy. Steve and I are sitting up, perusing our respective periodicals. I look up from my free issue of Vitals Man (with Ewan McGregor and his impossibly cheeky smile on the cover) and I stare at the TV. "I dunno," I say. "This set up really makes me feel like Mason Verger." Steve glances up from his Cosmo and wrinkles his forehead. "You may have a point there, babe." I sigh and return to my article. "What do you know that I don't?" I ask him. He doesn't blink. "That you're more attracted to manly men while ovulating and more attracted to gentle ones while you're not," he answers. "What about you?" "That everyone from Steve McQueen to Andre 3000 wears cardigans and it's considered cool. Now smell this." I hold the flap of a fragrance sample page open and Steve gives it a whiff. "That's what Ralph Lauren's locker room towel smells like." "Mmmm, not bad. Try this one." I lean over and stick my nose in a flap of a Victoria's Secret scent. "Yes, I have that one, actually." Steve grins. "Martha Stewart's embroidered napkins." I nod. "Absolutely."
P.S. Check out the impossibly geeky Knights of Badassdom (which stars fellow HBO actors Ryan Kwanten and Peter Dinklage) sometime. LARPing has never been so interesting.
