Cut
I had no business going to the audition anyway. But the thing is this: You always need your good good good friends to get you together with the realness when it's necessary. Brian Brooks (that tramp) is the one who does it on the East Coast while Ryan Walker (hooker) does it when I'm in LA. Since we're dealing with dance, this one was Brian's domain.
"Well what happened?"
"I was cut," I told him, mustering up as much disappointment as I could feign.
"Really? Congratulations." The shade was mandatory - he often accuses me of never being cut from auditions.
"I've been cut before, we've had this conversation. This is not my first time. Besides, we both know that you're not going to let me qualify this in conversations because it was a type-cut and I didn't get to to dance."
"Yes bitch, exactly," he said. "You didn't have to dance for hours and hours so that they could waste your time and tell you at the end what they could have told you right away which is 'thanks, goodbye.'"
"True." I didn't mention that I was going to partake of the 9th Avenue street festival since the weather was so nice and I had time. "We did have to do a double pirouette at the beginning and you know it could have been that I was off my leg."
"I have no sympathy for you at all, bitch. None."
I had to laugh. He wasn't concerned at all because he knows without my having to tell him that I only went to the open call (where you're herded like cattle throughout) to avoid having to come to Manhattan on my day off from work, operative word in that sentence being "work." He also knows that the prospect of my "look" working as a teenager in a film musical version of "Hairspray" is wishful thinking - I don't look sixteen period.
"Dana felt badly for me," I tried, "and worried even."
"For maybe a moment. She had a momentary brush with sympathy because she lives with you. But that's it. Name someone who cares."
I couldn't come up with a compelling answer. So I continued walking down 9th Avenue browsing some cotton sateen 300 thread-count sheet sets for 10 bucks. Then I remembered an audition that I flew to New York for in college. I called back.
"You know I got cut from the audition for Fosse back when I was in my senior year."
Exasperated sigh. "Okay so we're at two times you've been cut. I feel nothing for you."
"I've twirled and been cut on other occasions to. I just haven't been to as many auditions."
"That's because you never have to audition you bitch! I'm hanging up the phone."
He was right. I couldn't pass this off as my good friend honestly offering no support for my traumatic morning. Because you see I had no business soliciting any support, especially when I had a matinee only hours away. And had I gotten past the type-cut and been able to actually dance I might have booked the gig and would have had to ask for a leave of absence for six months so that my job could tell me no. Hell no, in fact. That's the lyric. Hell no.
Clearly I'm supposed to be in the area though because the sheets are necessary and so are the t-shirts. And the vases. And the dried Himalayan flowers petrified in their various stages...
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