Soraya’ Sebghati’s piece was originally written as a spoken prose piece to be performed at a reading. She was gracious enough to let High Femme adapt her James Spader thirst piece into a more widely accessible space!
I’m not like other girls. I’ve been way worse for way longer. My fascination with the actor James Todd Spader began in 2004, when I was a “wise beyond her years” ten year old, navigating my parents’ second divorce and trying to work up the courage to ask my mom if I could Nair my armpits. If my memory serves, I was sitting cross-legged in my mom’s bed, half-assing my math homework while she had the TV on. We watched a lot of formative prime-time television together in those years, when “appointment viewing” was still a normal concept and not something that makes millennials sound old. The show that was on that fateful evening was fucking Boston Legal. For the uninitiated, Boston Legal is an ABC spinoff of a show called The Practice. Boston Legal stars Candice Bergen, William Shatner, and James Fucking Spader. Spader plays Alan Shore, a lawyer at some Boston firm, but none of that is important. What is important is his rhythmic manner of speaking. He talks like he’s trying to keep a beach ball in the air, sending it spinning upwards with the light touch of one hand. When he’s being secretive (or seductive, but more on this later), his voice is a rumbling baritone—rich and a little gravelly. When he’s putting on a performance (within a performance), he’s loud, powerful, but with all this velvet not present in his lower register.
Have you ever heard James Spader and William Shatner volley? Trade stories of historic levels of tail chasing, and then clink bourbon glasses in their cushy law office? You haven’t lived until you’ve seen these two men, cigars tucked behind their ears, saying “we look good together.” Before anyone accuses me of being “Standard Model Daddy Issues Film Twitter Poisoned Girl #4,” I will remind you that this was 2004 James Spader. This was not gorgeous, 1986 Spader in Pretty In Pink with the perfect hair and dangerous high school yuppy energy. This was alcohol-weight-in-the-face, chin-losing-form, hair-worn-like-your-friend’s-dad James Spader. This is the iteration of Spader that’s an acceptable answer for a “hear me out” query—in fact, I think this might’ve been the beginning of his tenure in “hear me out” territory in general. And there I was, an awkward pre-pubescent girl, feeling a stirring in my body at the sight and sound of this old guy (well, not old, but old To Me). If being unique is a sickness, then I’m terminal, baby.
Have I seen every single thing James has been in? Absolutely not. Do I consider myself to be the arbiter of Spaderdom? Hell yeah. Will I ever be a completist and watch The Office just to see him as a man allegedly named Robert California? 100% no. Why would I, when I can feel safe in the glow of his psychosexual filmography?
When I need to be reminded that I can’t always be an impish and demonic presence to my boyfriend, I watch Secretary. I watch Maggie Gyllenhaal, awkward, girlish, wearing head-to-toe purple for some reason, and learning how to be Spader’s secretary. I take fervent mental notes of the ways in which her typos lead to spankings. I smile ear-to-ear when I see her masturbate in the office bathroom, saying to herself, “I’m your secretary.” God, I wish that was me. James Spader in a suit, circling all my typos in a red Sharpie is a Need, not a Want. I would probably have fewer acid reflux flare-ups if I had to report everything I ate to James Spader on the phone. Most importantly, I would get out of the nasty habit of swallowing my gum when there’s no trash can around, because he’d be there with a hand to spit it into. It’s ok to be reigned in a bit, especially when you know you need it.
When I need to think about how hot surveillance could be in a time before we all carried government surveillance devices in our pockets, I go to Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Even for an allegedly impotent James Spader I’d find myself risking it all. I become Andie McDowell, a lonely housewife in the thick New Orleans air, life upended by my husband’s handsome and mysterious friend who’s decided to breeze into town for a bit. If that man asked me to explain my earliest sexual memory to him so he could record it on VHS, I would do it, no hesitation. It’s a wonder I haven’t been kidnapped, but I genuinely believe that a man matching James Spaders’ aura would not commit harm, especially to women.
When I need to remember the answer to the question “What if the sex scenes are the plot?”, I throw on my Blu-ray copy of David Cronenberg’s Crash. There is simply no better statement on the way the atomization of our society pushes our species to evolve, in this case, sexually. The melding of man and machine has never been so eloquently put as by a merry band of car crash fetishists, who first bump bumpers and then bump uglies, in every sexual configuration our dramatis personae will allow. If you haven’t seen James Spader fuck his hot wife, and then make out in a banged up car with a scarred up Elias Koteas, and then ram his penis into Rosanna Arquette’s leg scar, you need to rectify that immediately (pun intended).
And when I fear the fleeting nature of beauty, I turn to NBC’s The Blacklist to understand that sexiness can be forever. This is the litmus test of the Spader acolyte— if you still find him undeniably hot when he looks like an egg and is on the brink of being able to order off the senior menu, then you’re in it for real. International criminal and infamous party boy Raymond Reddington can absolutely get it, even if he does things like spend an entire episode chasing down Winston Churchill’s hat.
In the morning, James Spader is Jim (probably)… plain Jim, in the morning, when his wife wakes up next to him. Perhaps he’s Jimmy with the guys, and “Dad” to his two sons. He’s James on set, and he’s James Todd Spader on the dotted line. But in my mind, James Spader was always my first love. He’s my litmus test, to let me know if a potential new friend is a fellow freak. He’s the high school bully I have secret feelings for. He’s the unbearably handsome stranger who arrives in town with an air of mystery. He’s the workplace crush you can’t have, he’s the married man in an open relationship with a voice that tells you there’s more than meets the eye. In his later years James Spader is your friend’s dad that isn’t particularly hot now, but you can tell he was quite the looker in his youth, and for that reason you’re drawn to him. And now, in my mind, he’s hopefully sitting in a velvet armchair, drinking a single barrel bourbon from a rocks glass. He is unafraid of what the years to do his face and body, not hiding behind injections, hair plugs, or personal trainers. He is simply James Spader, and all that that encompasses, and for that, he is everything.
