I Don't Have a Happy Place (9 page)

The highlight of the theater season happens while you both are in the wings, waiting for your cues. Sometimes, you make out. He may or may not have a girlfriend but you don't care. You make yourself available any time he is ready. He makes up some stuff about how kissing each other will help you get into character. Or how this is how real actors are, loose and free. You don't care about the reasons, only that you are back on the other side of his make-out. You love the theater. Now you are jazzed about life. You even sign up to be on the yearbook committee (although you ultimately get fired . . . something about not doing any work). Eventually, you meet another guy who doesn't go to your school and you will love him, but deep down you furiously, rabidly, dementedly love Robbie Levine for almost longer than I should tell you. He goes off to college and has a swell time. And you go off to college and—well, maybe I'll just leave that alone for right now.

So, there you have it! The
Reader's Digest
account of your high school career. Hilarious, right?

Write soon,

Me

Dear You,

Does anything good ever happen to me?

Sigh,

Me/You

My Darling (ha-ha) Kim,

That's the thing! All kinds of good things happen to you—you just can't see the bright side of anything. You don't know how. Your insides feel like a hollowed-out canoe but nothing is actually really wrong. You have friends who write things in your yearbook like,
You're a great kid!
And
I never would have survived Mr. V's math class without you!
You waste all kinds of years pining for Robert Levine, but you actually end up having a decent array of boyfriends. You are relatively healthy, no one you know dies for years to come, and you don't even have to get a job until you're out of college!

Don't let the turkeys get you down,

Me

Dear You,

I just want to ask one last thing. I read once in my mother's
Cosmo
magazine that a lot of people have a rough time in high school but you shouldn't worry if that's the case because it all gets better. Is that true? Does it get better?

Me

Dear Kim,

Nah, they don't know what they're talking about. It doesn't get better. It gets worse. You're not going to see the light of day until
your forties. You live in your head too much and you're going to take just about everything personally and feel sad most of the time. Don't worry, though, you're not going to become an alcoholic or anything. You have a Jewish constitution and booze doesn't really agree with you. Instead you'll sort of become addicted to sadness and negativity. Sometimes, while still living under our parents' roof, you'll feed the malaise with Doritos and water it with Diet Pepsi. You'll not be able to identify what's wrong, or talk about it with anyone in your family, so you'll keep it to yourself, hide it in the back of your brain somewhere, but it will ooze out all the time like that toy slime you wanted when you were nine, the one that came in the little lime garbage pail but our mother said we couldn't have because it would stain the rug. Eventually you'll go to a few colleges, then move to New York and get jobs you think you aren't very good at and make lots of friends you are convinced don't really like you and spend much time not wanting to go to parties you are invited to and get morose because no one asks you to be in a book club even though the last thing you want to do is be in a book club but would it kill them to ask?

I know I said that thing in my first letter about not changing the course of history, but I think they should make an exception for you, because if we're being honest, you're kind of a sad sack. People say to enjoy yourself because life is short. Sorry, kid. Full disclosure here, but life is long. Really, really long.

Love,

Me

Dear Kim,

Maybe you shouldn't write me anymore. You're depressing. And kind of a downer.

Kim

Dear Kim,

You don't know the half of it.

Be well,

Me

There's No Business

• • • • • •

M
y favorite records, when I was nine, featured
ORIGINAL BROADWAY C
AST RECORDING
across the front of their cardboard covers. I could identify the eleven o'clock number of any musical, owned a satin show jacket, and knew the entire
Liza with a “Z”
concert album by heart. If I was a middle-aged gay man in my youth, no one said a thing. It's possible you heard my rendition of “The Ladies Who
Lunch” from Stephen Sondheim's
Company
during my nana's Passover seder, at which I'd performed regularly. Zaida Max had requested the Four Questions, but I knew he'd rather hear my interpretation of a drunken toast to the rich ladies who wasted their days at luncheons instead of finding meaning in their lives. My family would prod their gefilte fish as I, third grader, finished strong with

Does anyone. Still wear. A hat?

I'll drink to that.

I could barely ride a bike but was expert at mimicking Elaine Stritch's tone. I already came assembled with most of the cynicism
required for the number, everything else I'd picked up from the droll musings of my favorite TV show,
Maude
. Squirreled away in my room memorizing lyrics, belting them into my mic-shaped soap-on-a-rope, was how I spent many a childhood afternoon.

Riding the city bus to school each morning, I'd pretend to practice piano on my green vinyl book bag. We didn't have a piano at home, nor did I play a single musical instrument (minus the kazoo and one song on the push-button telephone), but still I slouched over the phantom ivories, doing my best Schroeder, hoping someone would notice. At recess I'd walk around with my feet positioned in duck formation so that I might be mistaken for a dancer. I was saving up my allowance to buy one of those silk piano-key scarves and a pair of Capezio dance shoes to go with the burgundy Danskin wrap skirt I'd forced my mother to buy. These were the accessories I was sure every last one of those orphans in
Annie
owned and were probably the reasons they were chosen to be on Broadway.

When I was ten, I wanted to go blind. What, didn't you see
Ice
Castles
? Somewhere between Tom Skerritt's turtlenecks and the scrappy rasp of Colleen Dewhurst's voice, I wanted in. I dreamed of being Lexie, with her curled blond bangs and polyester skating costumes. Mind you, I didn't have a lick of athletic ability, but somehow I knew, deep down in my weak ankles, that if I'd ever bothered to apply myself, I, too, could do a triple axel. So what I wasn't thrilled with the whole catastrophic-fall-amid-the-metal-tables-and-chairs-causing-the-life-altering-blood-clot part, I'd still take it. Because, oh, how I wanted flowers thrown at my blind self while Robby Benson stared deep into my unseeing eyes, Melissa Manchester's voice in the background begging the world not to let this feeling end.

I wanted all those things. Who didn't? But what I wanted most was for that big-city coach—the one with the cowl neck
sweaters and all the hair—to waltz into my rinky-dink rink, see something special in me, and pluck me.

I'd learned from studying countless television shows and movies that if you believed in yourself and didn't give up, anything you wanted—fame, wealth, love—would come to you, even if you were disfigured. But apparently I hadn't paid enough attention to the montage portions of movies, because I missed the parts where the work actually transpired. It seems life didn't actually track you down. It didn't just show up at your house, call you
kid
, and escort you to greatness. This was a giant letdown. I didn't like feeling duped, especially not by the television, which I then blamed for my piss-poor attitude in high school and college. Apathy was my ethos throughout high school; I was not very good at college. I scraped by in both arenas, doing less than nothing, yet showing up just enough to get my respective diplomas.

At my college commencement, I listened to Tom Brokaw address thousands of kids I swore I'd never seen before. He stood before us with that hair and dazzling speech impediment, pleading for us to go out there and make something of our lives. Bracing the lectern, he geared up for his closing sentence, the zinger that would propel us out onto Tremont Street to start our business as full-fledged adults.

“Remember,” Tom said, “anyone can make a buck. But not everyone can make a difference.”

Entry Level, Boston

To kick off my job search, I looked to the classifieds, just as Harry Dean Stanton had always done when he was a loser dad and needed to clean up real good or else lose the love of his only daughter forever.
What fun real life is
, I thought, scanning the
want ads. I decided to put a temporary pin in my hopes of being discovered. I was a college graduate now and it was time to focus on making bucks and differences, like Brokaw said.

My new plan was to be a casting director. I chose this vocation not only because I could always pinpoint what actors would be fitting choices for roles but also because a friend in college said I looked exactly like a casting director, due to the glasses I wore on a chain around my neck.

The newspaper scouted for paralegals and construction workers and dental hygienists. I checked a few times but not once did I see any small paragraphs saying anything remotely like

Do you like Broadway, movies, and television? Like, really, really like them? Can you sing the entire score of
Pippin
? Spot a Fosse shoulder from the back of the mezzanine? Can you list all the Huxtable kids in birth order? Do you know who Miles Drentell is? What street Archie Bunker lives on? If this sounds like you, don't even bother with a resume. Stop looking, we've found you! You're hired!

Obviously I didn't really expect this ad to be in the paper, except I did. Alas, if my new career in the arts would not be found in the newspaper I'd go to the next best source: the Yellow Pages. I opened the book to a random page, for starters.
Pest Control
. I flipped to another.
Mold Inspection. Private Investigators. Farm Equipment. Golf Course. Tree-
Stump Removal. Garage-Door Openers. Funeral Flowers
. No wonder these things were always left stacked in the lobby. These giant books were unusable.

Dejected, I took a break from the harrowing job search by making up a game wherein I'd imagine needing to do something important, like fix my pencil sharpener or buy a pig, then try
finding the heading it would be under. This proved fun for half an hour until the reality of my lack of employment, and employability, sank in. I wanted to shout out my window,
Why is this all so hard?
But I turned on reruns of
The Cosby Show
instead.

My luck changed the next morning, when half the street was barricaded because they were shooting a movie. A parking notice stapled to an electrical pole gave me my first lead in show business. I ran home to make the call.

“Casting,” said a woman's voice.

“Oh, hi,” I said, going for winsome-yet-professional, someone you'd really enjoy having around your water cooler. “I would like to be a casting director, please.”

“Oh, well, yeah, we're not hiring right now,” said the voice, sounding rather impolite. Right before hanging up, she added, “But feel free to check in again some other time.”

How rude
, I thought. I spent the rest of the day watching television and imitating the woman's voice out loud during commercials.

The next morning, something came over me. I decided to call back. The same woman answered, sounding equally rude and busy and, quite honestly, annoyed at my calling. She did the same two-step about not hiring and I wondered how businesses such as these stayed afloat.

I'd like to say I called every morning for the next two weeks because I was scrappy, but really I kept at it just to bug her. On the fifteenth day, another woman answered the phone. Her voice sounded deep and clipped and, if possible, even more uncivil. I told her why I was calling.

“You know,” she said, sighing, “Bettina called in sick today.” Bettina, I assumed, was the unsavory character who usually answered. I prayed she had shingles. “Why don't you come on in today?”

“
Today
?” I was wearing a robe and
ALF
was just starting.

“Sure. I guess we could use the extra hand, so why not?”

I spent the next two years working at Casting & Co., convinced I was doing them a favor by taking the job.

JOB DESCRIPTION (AS THEY EXPLAINED IT)

Maintain headshots and resumes:
Make sure we have at least ten of each actor on file. If they are loose, staple. Keep the files neat. If new headshots come in mail, and they look interesting, place them in my in-box and await further instruction.

Answer phones:
Screen calls for us. Job calls from producers, always patch through. Actors will call often, try answering what they need first. If you can't, patch through.

Set up audition times for actors:
When we get hired for a job, I will hand you a stack of headshots and an appointment sheet. You call all actors and fill in those slots.

Light office duties:
General office stuff, as directed.

JOB DESCRIPTION (AS I EXECUTED IT)

Maintain headshots and resumes:
Wait, how many more of these do I have to put away?
Uch
, alphabetically? Hmmm . . . this guy didn't staple his. Put it in trash. She has a typo under her Special Skills section, wrote “Cokney accent.” And who cares if she has a driver's license and a ferret? Put in trash. Don't we already have, like, forty of this person? Trash. Fine, I'll put this stack away, was going to the water cooler anyway. I'm hungry. Are we allowed to smoke in here? I'm exhausted.

Answer phones:
No, there are no movies coming to town soon. Yes, just mail it in and they'll look at it. No, I won't be able to come and see you in
Shear Madness
. 318 Mt. Auburn Street, 2nd floor. 318 Mt. Auburn Street, 2nd floor. 318 Mt. Auburn Street, 2nd floor. Good lord, don't these people have anything else to do but call me all day? I'm exhausted.

Set up audition times for actors:
Please dress upscale casual. You're hosting a dinner party featuring a new cookie called Dunkaroos. It's for Massachusetts Lottery, business casual. This is a commercial about how iced coffee cools you down, so you're going to have to sit in a chair and look really hot. Wear pants. Navy pencil skirt is fine for the pharmaceutical industrial film. Sure, the gray pants. Any kind of mom-wear will do. Yup, floral dress totally says SunnyD. Wear something fun, be fun, you'll be dancing to Michael Jackson's “Black or White” all day. I think it's for Bay Bank—I don't really know. How's 9:15? 10:45? What do you mean, you don't audition before noon? Exhausted.

Light office duties:
Really? Walk to get your Middle Eastern platter for lunch again?

I used to think newly minted college students were the worst. They hammer you with all their ideas, ask you if you've heard of a book called
Lolita
, make a big deal about their new, stretched brains. They're annoying.

Worse, perhaps, are the recent college graduates, who enter the first rung of their career shocked that they have to fetch tabouli salad for their boss or walk her springer spaniel in the rain instead of being consulted on how to run the company. Paying dues is not glamorous work. I knew absolutely nothing about
anything and yet I was in a constant state of outrage at the menial nature of my job. Plus I was really tired. The agency, as I saw it, played the role of my parents, and I, their eye-rolling teenager—it was all well and good that the place existed, but there was no way, when I grew up, that my life would be as dull and tedious as theirs. Industrial films and commercials paid my salary but wasn't I destined for some real show business?

Every so often, though, a real live Hollywood picture would roll into town. Scripts, call sheets, messages from producers you've actually heard of—this was the real stuff I'd waited for. The agency would be hired to cast a handful of day-player roles (small speaking parts) as well as what we used to call
extras
but are now referred to as
background actors
. The latter were typically a colorful group of actors hoping to get a foot in the door, mixed with some old people looking for free coffee and something to do.

Best of all, we got to spend the day somewhere other than the office, which was as delightful as your English teacher announcing that class would be held outside. Granted, wrangling actors was akin to herding birds, but no matter—I got to carry around a clipboard. I also stood right next to Tom Cruise while he was shooting
The Firm,
and waited on the same block as Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin while they were filming
Housesitter
, and went to my first wrap party, for the film
School Ties,
where I hid in the corner waiting to be noticed by its lead, Brendan Fraser, who ended up hightailing it out of the restaurant with a pretty production assistant.

The day I got laid off from the casting agency, I packed up my cardboard box, as I'd seen so many television characters do before me. The company was in financial straits and one of us needed to go. They claimed that since I was the last to be hired, it was only fair I be the first fired. Sounded like a lot of hooey to me. Instead of taking my usual bus home, I thought it more effective to stomp
the entire way to my apartment. It was on this route that I was stopped by a homeless fellow in a Davy Crockett hat.

“You got any change in that box?” he said, fiddling with the tail on his head.

“No,” I said, using the rude tone I'd mastered in my brief tenure in show business. I held on to my office box, the one filled with the pens and Post-its and rage of my fellow shit-canned employees around the world. The man just stood still, giving me the once-over. Then he leaned in and said, “You should smile more.”