Audition Day

Act 1 Scene 1

I went to the house at 36 Upton St. in the South End one sunny afternoon to meet a couple of the roommates to be interviewed to live there.  The experience felt like going to audition for a part - little did I know then how poignant that was to be. Since I was one of those kids always last to be picked for games in gym, I was accustomed to rejection and was mentally preparing myself, expecting a no, that there would be something wrong with me. My heart pounded and my hands were clammy wet with nervousness.  My brain was full of streaming negative thoughts of not being good enough, smart enough, pretty enough...on and on ad nauseam. I remember my knees knocking as I climbed the stairs of the front stoop and realizing that there was no handrail. Oh, yes, it was there - but not for anyone taller than five feet, too far away from my fingers. I waited a long time at the front door before someone came down from upstairs to let me in. No buzzer in this house, it had not been modernized in many years.  A guy about 30 with a full beard opened the door, introduced himself, and invited me to follow him up the stairs. The curving banister from the front entryway was loose and sticky over the many coats of worn paint. Trying hard not to hold onto the sticky banister,  I followed him up the stairs to the third floor and across the landing into the front room with curved bow windows facing the street - the group's kitchen.

There was one other guy and a woman sitting at the table in front of the bare windows. The environment was unlike anything I'd experienced before, like a scene from Maupin's "Tales of the City" but in Boston instead of San Francisco. I was soaking it in like a sponge as it felt strangely foreign and exciting, I wanted to drink it all in at once, slurp it up. This was it, finally somewhere where I could fit it. Suddenly I realized these people were talking to me and I switched from space cadet to attentive in a millisecond. In that moment, I would say anything for their approval of me, I so desperately wanted to be there. The guy with the beard was an actor from New York City, the woman was a ballerina in training at the Boston Ballet in the Cyclorama building across Tremont St., and the other guy was a waiter downtown. They told me about the other people who lived there that were working or out of town at the moment: a guy from Ipswich who was in a mime troupe, another ballerina who was taking the place of the woman who was interviewing, and a gay man who was an artist. The actor was the oldest at 30 and the rest ranged in age lower into their twenties, I would be the youngest at nineteen. They wanted to know what I did to make money, what my daily habits were, had I lived with other people before, could I provide references etc.etc. Amazingly, they seemed to like me. They asked if I wanted to live there? After a tour, despite the disarray of the place, I said yes. I couldn't wait to be a part of this bohemian world. To be with people who had real opinions, who didn't just repeat what other people said,  who wanted to live like this for the freedom of it, the realness and grittiness of life, who didn't just live life to make money but to do what they wanted to do, to be creative, to express, and to become: I said yes. I was a part of this, I got the part.