TV AUDITION

This morning I bike to an audition for a TV commercial downtown below Houston Street on Varick.
I put on my bankers suit and reading glasses and with my new clipped haircut I look like “a thing”.

I am pleased.

I look like “a thing” to be bought by an ad agency.

“Let’s book the boyish dude with the owl glasses and the brooks brothers suit”.

As I bike there, down the relatively new bicycle path along the west side highway, the sun is clear and sharp. It feels right.

I remind myself to appreciate this beautiful day, because as we all know, you only live once (I guess?) and it’s nice for someone like me to bike down a city bike path on a cool, sunny February day, in a Brooks Brothers tie, to go to a TV audition.
This is a rare experience (right?) and so I try to seize it, observer it, note it.

Before my audition,
I have to buy a cup of coffee at Dunkin Dough Nuts because I’m sleepy and sluggish from this terrible disease I have.

Normally, I'm nervous for auditions which irks me. Now I find that I have lost my nervous side. I shuffle past security and consider that now that I have this terrible disease I will become a rare and relaxed successful actor and then die.

The TV commercial audition is in a skyscraper on Varick Street. The waiting room is crowded with 30- ish men in suits of varying types. We could all be contestants on a certain type of Bachelor show. All the bachelors are hushed and focused like we are all waiting to go into confession. (I’m not catholic, but…I suppose)

I look at the copy and… "shit".

There are lots of lines.

I do better with less lines even before I had this terrible disease.

I study the script and make up little games to help me memorize phrases like, “consumers may realize gains frequently”.

I can tell that my lazy assed tongue won’t be able to say the lines with the needed panache, so I go into the hallway to remind my tongue how to glide from one consonant to another. I remind myself to breath deeply and speak slowly if I need to.

As I stand in the naked hallway, loitering near the Men’s room, I am approached by a red haired man in a green V-neck. He approaches me with irritable, (straining to be generous) purpose. He asks me (though I can sense he already knows since I’ve been mouthing words and holding a script) if I am auditioning for the commercial?
Yes I am, looking guilty,sensing his next sentence.
“Can you practice in the waiting room, we’re not allowed to have actors waiting in this hallway”.

I agree immediately, apologize fast and turn on my heel. Like a hunted bird that has been knocked off by the his first shot, the red haired man’s eyes strain as he realizes his target was too easy and smiles to take some of it back. But my back is already to him.

I sit back down in the quiet wating area and think that what I wanted to say is that “I’ve been an actor my whole life and I’ve just recently suffered symptoms of ALS, and now I find it difficult to speak on cue, so I was merely sounding out the consonants… normally I think rehearsing this dreck is not always worth it… having fun and looking good is the name of the game… but now you see, purposeful red haired man, I’m up against it.”

I nurse my lonely resentment and let it wear off like the sweat and heat from a five minute sprint.

My audition is in a small room with a camera and a pretty blonde woman who acts nice by laughing needlessly. It seems a little pushed but I appreciate her trying to meet me half way.

I lie and tell her I have a cold to cover my bases in case I malfunction saying the lines.
I’m not nervous. I’m just not sure if I can connect the dots or act.

I get through it. My performance lacks spontaneity and professional fluidness but in the end I experience a nice lift for having auditioned. Like Benjamin Button, I like a little adventure.