On Making Off: Misadventures Off-Off Broadway (2 page)

“
Sure, why not?” I said, thinking maybe I’d unlocked some secret door to success.

“
You want to be identified as a normal-looking guy?”

“
If there are more roles for normal-looking guys, YES!” I said entirely too loudly.

Patty pulled a Diet Coke from its plastic noose and placed it in front of me. I dug into my pockets and pulled out a cigarette. I was breathing the shit anyway. I might as well mainline it.

“
Listen, until you start booking some work, your type is going to be a little fluid. Let’s take a look at the auditions you’ve gone on.” She scanned the curling yellow squares placed over my lips, eyes, and forehead. “How did the Subway sandwich commercial go?”

“
They were looking for a skinny white guy to get sand kicked in his face by a couple of Mapplethorpe models.”

“
You too good to get a little sand kicked in your face?” she asked.

“
No,” I replied quickly.

“
So what happened?”

“
Aren’t you my agent? Shouldn’t you know this?”

“
I can’t know everything about all my clients, Randy. I’m only one person.” I wasn’t going to argue. She was only one person and, clearly, that was a problem for both of us. “So why do you suppose you didn’t get the part?”

“
They told me I was too skinny.” I looked directly at her while I took a long drag off my cigarette. “They wanted someone with a little more meat on his bones.”

“
I remember that now.”

“
It’s amazing what one person is capable of.” Patty ignored my sarcasm.

“
I remember because that was when I had the idea to send you out for the holocaust victim in that Nazi film.” Patty seemed genuinely pleased with herself. She had not only read two yellow squares on my “face file,” she had also managed to connect them.

“
That’s right,” I said. “The naked Jew being hauled into the gas chamber.”

“
You’re circumcised, right?” Patty asked.

“
I am.”

“
So, what was the problem?” I allowed an uncomfortably long silence so the image of my liberated foreskin could linger with the smoke in the air.

“
It turns out I’m too fat to be a dying concentration-camp victim.”

“
Oh, well. There you go.”

Everything was so simple for Patty. She saw only black or white, never the vast spectrum of grays. She was an archetype.

Suddenly, it hit me. I was undefined: too skinny for sandwiches, too fat for the gas chambers, too ugly to be attractive, too attractive to be normal, and too fucking pale for Los Angeles. Of course! I needed to tap into my true identity.

What type of person was I? This deep metaphysical quandary spoke to the very core of my being. But this was Hollywood, and Hollywood doesn’t give a shit about the core of anyone’s being. My mind now in a full sprint, I could feel some terrible drama welling up inside of me.

“
Why don’t you do a little monologue?” Patty suggested delicately. She obviously noticed my rapidly shifting facial contortions, a trait that garnered me accolades from theater audiences and motion sickness from those who saw me on film.

“
Right now?” I asked, being pulled from my profound personal explorations.

“
Sure, why not? But make it funny. Last time, you depressed the GOD-DAMNED FUCKING SHIT out of me.”

Whenever Patty cursed, she sounded like a 10-year-old performing a David Mamet monologue. Her emphasis on the dirty words made them seem awkward among the clean ones.

“
I don’t have…”

I realized that I was about to say the worst five-word sentence an actor can utter. “I don’t have anything prepared” is “the dog ate my homework” excuse for the performer, immediately recognized as a cover for laziness.

“…
time today,” I finished with force and launched out of my chair. “I don’t have time today.” Patty seemed surprised by my abrupt declaration. “I have to get to work. But thanks for the talk. This has been really helpful.”

“
OK, then. We’ll talk soon,” she said, moving papers around her desk for no apparent reason. The conversation had an awkward beginning and an awkward conclusion, but somewhere in the middle was a diamond, smashed into existence by the immense pressure of all the bullshit.

As I walked out into the sun-baked parking lot, I sipped my Diet Coke and remembered too late I had already flicked my ashes in it. I immediately threw the can to the ground, sending soda flying across the pavement, and I headed toward my car. But, in the middle of the steaming hot asphalt, something stopped me. I was at a crossroads of some kind. Completely paralyzed, I literally didn’t know which direction to walk. Hollywood may not care about the core of my being, but I did. My problem was that I didn’t even recognize the core of my being. Was I nice-looking or normal-looking? What if I discovered I was attractive? Why is that important? And then I felt my core—or what I perceived to be my core—begin to rumble. It was talking to me.

Still unable to move, I focused my energy on my perceived core. A car drove onto the grass to get around me. Apparently, I was blocking the entrance to the parking lot, and my core didn’t hear him honk.

Come on, core. Speak! Speak! Sweat broke out along my hairline. My nemesis, the afternoon sun, sprinkled cancer on my exposed scalp, where my hair had abandoned me. Another car entered the parking lot, and I considered moving to the side but decided against it. This watershed moment would not take place upstage right. These moments belong downstage center, fueled by the full power of the set from behind and the audience from the front. Here, the vast parking lot was my set, and the entering cars were now my audience.

My thoughts began accelerating due, no doubt, to the brilliant staging. What was my core saying? I need to be doing more theater! Yes! I quickly put that into my mental pocket. I have to find opportunities to express myself. OK, vague, but into the pocket. I don’t want to be an attractive person. Wait, who doesn’t want to be an attractive person? That’s stupid. What a dumb thing to think. Don’t call yourself dumb. That’s not productive. Stay focused, Randy! What is my identity? Do I need an identity? Do you really want to sell sandwiches? I need a sandwich.

By now, my shirt stuck to my body, and sweat dripped off my nose. With cars lined up in front of me, four, maybe five deep, I was officially blocking traffic. Who were these people anyway? Why were they driving to this dive in the middle of the day? I tried to move my legs, but vertigo suddenly struck me. My core had something to tell me, and it wasn’t going to let me go until I got the message. I could hear the cars honking. I looked up and saw Patty standing in the building’s shade, alternately calling my name and taking a drag off her cigarette. Then, my core seized up, my eyes began to water, my cheek glands puckered and, as if I was sucker-punched, I doubled over and violently vomited in one continuous stream.

I stayed there for a moment, bent over, with bile dripping from my lips. The cars stopped honking. Everything had fallen silent. I gazed down at my sick, glistening in the sunlight. A long strand of spaghetti, just released by my throat, had fallen onto the pavement. Vomiting spaghetti feels terribly childish. I had to get out. I wasn’t happy. My core had spoken, and I had to listen.

With tears clearing my eyes, I inhaled, stood up, and looked around. Sound returned. The motorists, now out of their cars, looked at me with concern but had not yet engaged. It was a drama after all, so the applause would be slow to come. A low-flying helicopter passed overhead. Patty walked back into the building, promising to return with water. I wiped my lips with my shirtsleeve. My future suddenly became clear. I had to get out of Los Angeles. I had to live the adventures I’d played out in my mind. I had to at least try and make my life everything I’d imagined it could be. I needed to begin again. And I needed to begin immediately. Every journey begins with the first step, right? Step one, step over the puke. Step two, move to New York. Step three, start living.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

The enormity of the midtown towers had me transfixed. Jutting my head out the cab window, I looked to see if they stopped in any direction, but they didn’t. It was an endless cavern of buildings, and I loved it. Light was coming from all directions, thanks to the spring fog and the freshly washed pavement. The cool moisture against my wine-warmed face invigorated me as if I were getting a high-speed tour through heaven. Earth slapped me in the face when I saw the cab’s meter had just passed eight dollars.

“
Excuse me. You can just let me out at the next corner,” I said with as much authority as I could muster in my drunken state.

“
You don’t want to go to 78
^th
?” the cabbie calls back in a thick Middle-Eastern accent.

“
No. Just let me off here.”

I scooted toward the right side door. You always exit a cab on the curbside, as I’d learned the hard way once when I barely escaped the wrath of a bicycle delivery man. I handed the cabbie my last 10-dollar bill and stepped out into the cool, misty night. I would have made it all the way home had I not insisted on that last glass of wine. But I had made it to 57
^th
Street…in New York! It had only been two weeks since my friend Bobby and I made the 10-day trip across the country, but I already felt like a New Yorker.

I lit a cigarette and began strolling up First Avenue. Navigation is crucial in New York, as it’s easy to get hypnotized by the endless energy around you. So I schooled myself quickly. In the Manhattan grid, north and south are the avenues. The street numbers get higher as you move north, smaller as you go south. East and west are the cross streets. And, as most crosstown streets are one way, once you know that traffic moves east on even-numbered streets and west on the odd numbers, your urban compass is complete.

Tonight, I had to walk due north 21 blocks, a little more than a mile. At 11 o’clock on a Tuesday evening, the East Side bars were crowded with recent college grads talking about their favorite subjects—money and marriage. At this moment in time, money outweighed marriage. This was May 1998. The country was enjoying a growth spurt like we’d never seen, and New York was bathing in money. Unfortunately, I wasn’t. I had exactly $240 in my wallet and 100 times that amount in student loans and credit-card debt. One week out of work would have been devastating both to my diet and to my credit rating, which, as fucked up as it sounds, I prized more than my stomach. My timing couldn’t have been better. In 1998, securing a job for a college graduate was as easy as showing up for the interview with a clean shirt and a good attitude.

The day after I arrived in New York, I reported to a temp agency for testing and placement. Within 24 hours, I was getting fingerprinted and pissing in a cup so I could report for work as a temporary assistant at Blah-Blah Big Bank. I found it odd they gave me a drug test to work at a bank. I thought all banker types were cocaine-snorting crooks. That’s certainly the impression I got from the movies. But maybe that was just Hollywood or the ’80s. Maybe bankers in the new millennium were going to be honest, drug-free citizens who would usher in a more responsible capitalism. Youthful idealism is an intoxicating tonic that can only be counteracted with a cynicism that grows like moss on the aged.

But I couldn’t be concerned with whom I worked for or what I did. All I cared about was good pay, consistent hours, and the fact that, because it was a temp job, I could quit whenever I wanted. As it turned out, the consistency of a day job served as an invaluable anchor. New York is an overwhelmingly large place with an unlimited number of distractions for a 23-year-old. So, having a constant flow of cash to enjoy said distractions was important, as long as there was a commitment in the morning to prevent overindulgence. I wanted adventures, but I didn’t want to get lost.

At first, the prospect of putting on a shirt and tie and reporting to “the man” gave me the willies. Scanning for stock footage was bad, but working at a bank sounded much worse, a whole new level of selling out. After a few short stints with some uninteresting people in some uninteresting cubicles, I began working with people I connected to more. That made all the difference.

“
Randy, love!” Gabby would shout. “I can’t read your writin’. What’s this little snowman here?” More than half the people in this group were Caribbean, so the rhythm of the office conversation alone kept things interesting.

“
That’s an eight,” I’d say to great laughter. Our area was so loud, you’d think it was a trading floor, but the difference was, we were laughing and joking, not screaming and shouting.

“
Jesus, Randy,” said my buddy Chris when he called me at work. “It always sounds like fucking happy hour over there.”

“
That’s because it is,” I said. “It is.”

To this day, I truly believe you can be shoveling shit and not mind the smell, as long as you’re in good company. The people in that group made working for “the man” a joy.

Finally, I arrived at the corner of First Avenue and 78
^th
Street and plunged my key into the rusting metal door of my building. Bobby and I had sublet a one-bedroom apartment from a college friend who had moved to Queens with six months left on her lease. This gave us just enough time to find a more permanent abode. For the bargain price of $1,250 per month, we shared a 500-square-foot space on the fourth floor of a dilapidated walk-up building. As small as it was, it had all the character I wanted in a New York dwelling. The living room and bedroom each had a small window that looked out onto the brick wall of another building five feet away. The bathroom window, though, overlooked a small courtyard, across which you could see into the windows of a few dozen other apartments. And I discovered the wonderful world of voyeurism, a favorite New York pastime.