JOI's father delivers the garage monologue (p. 168)
so that even years later at USC I never got to wave my hankie at anything beyond the near- and almost-great and would-have-been-great-if, and later could never even hope to audition for those swim-trunk and Brylcreem beach movies that snake Avalon is making his mint on.
Context
The film career's terminus, priced out in envy: ruined knees ended not just the tennis but the screen-acting, down to the beach-movie auditions. Between the "two vitally urgent auditions" he skipped rehearsal for (p. 161) and this, the scene gives the father's celluloid arc a full rise and fall.