Chas

*** Editor's note: Today's guest post comes in from Louise. Thanks Louise! ***

Met Chas one summer in Moab, when I worked as a seasonal ranger in Canyonlands National Park. Ran into him at the Laundromat in town, exchanged stories, contact info. His claim to fame was that he had served as the body double for Brad Pitt during the filming of Thelma and Louise many years before. Now he was in his late thirties and beginning to show wear and tear at the edges. I was much younger.


He did in fact look remarkably like Brad Pitt in profile. Even from the front, except when he smiled - his face crinkled all the wrong ways. The weathered face and neck of someone who had stayed too long on the windy high plateau.


Soon after, he turned up at the Park just as I was getting off work. What I remember most was his cringe-inducing comment as we hiked the river path. "The park is so “sensual,” he enthused, "can't you just feel it." Later in the evening, more memorable moments. First, he assured me that he had recently been tested, undergone a health exam. Just a week ago as luck would have it, and he was STD free. Then he whipped out the paper work to confirm it. Just happened to have it on him. All the markings of a clinic certificate generated on a home computer.


Months later, curiosity kicked in. Rented Thelma and Louise CD to check out the Brad body-double bit parts to see if it was Chas. Only definitive shot was a headless camera sweep of Brad’s abdominal area in the motel scene with Thelma. Awesome abs, but prolly not Chas.