Adelphia, Alive (Sketch Five)

I stepped out of the airplane to one of the smallest terminals I’d ever seen. Despite my consternation, I knew my exact purpose; why I was there, so to speak. To put it mildly, my dreams were in the dwindling hours from beginning their road to fruition. I breathed in the hope that smog brings with it and did my best not to cough. My shoes were shined, my eyes bleary but excited. I’d discovered the promise of the metropolis; the lure was finally apparent to me. After the frantic promulgating of my intentions, after the scheduling and rescheduling and shattering and repair of my ambition, I had finally arrived in New York City.

To recap from my earlier post, I’d been met with antipathy and even outright hostility when my flight to NYC had been cancelled earlier in the month. I don’t know if I mentioned it but the airline attendant had called me “kid” when I’d tried to get on another flight that night. But I was never one to rest on my laurels and take my circumstances for granted. The second my feet were back in Texas, I signed up for another audition time. And this time, we checked the weather.

Touchdown, take my black leather bag the size of a large cat onto the street, into the taxi line. Take the taxi with the Middle-Eastern stereotype over the bridge and into Manhattan. Marvel at the bridges, the billboards, the buildings, the vast gray. Get out at my hotel, let my jaw drop as I see how close it is to Times Square. Walk around as my room is prepared, take photos of anything I can see that accurately portrays the grit and the organic quality of the city around me. I can feel the structures breathe. I hear the streetlights sigh. This is a city in love with its own status without being egotistical. It’s like life – it’s the Universe experiencing itself.

I get in my room. It strikes me at first – all this for $100 a night? – but then the true squalor (or as my mom would put it, coziness) revealed itself. It was a radiator, not a thermostat. No mirror in the bathroom. The grandiose view of a nudist old woman across the alleyway. The TV that had no channels except static. The chipping of paint on the wall. Most aggravatingly, the pillow with “Wanna?” written on it in lipstick that the hotel staff had only flipped over instead of cleaned. Thank God there were two beds, because there was no way I was using that one. I wondered if there was a place that offered a Lysol bath. I would have bought the works right then.

But time was running short. I whipped out my iPhone, looked up Eleanor of Aquitaine, the legends surrounding Charlemagne, the genealogy of First Ladies, Latin root words, broadcasting legends. Nothing too permanent. Only the transitory.

After a quick shower and three coats of deodorant I walked out onto the street at 5:00 EST to hail a cab. I was showered, I was dressed like a young professional – by God, I was ready.

It was then that I learned the impossibility of hailing a cab in the middle of rush hour in Times Square. I knew the audition was at 5:45 and they wanted us to be there 15 minutes early to cut down on time. The minutes dragged on; it was 5:15. I was sweating bullets. My deodorant was somehow starting to fail me already. In my panicked state I found a pedicab – a bicycle with a seat attached to the back of it – told the driver the address I had to get to, and hoped he’d get me there in one piece.

The next 15 minutes were some of the most terrifying of my life. He weaved in and out through traffic, he ran red lights, he missed cars by inches. We were almost hit twice. In fact he got the wrong address three times. To his credit, he biked all the way across Central Park in two minutes flat. By the time I got there I was just happy to be alive. I gave him the money numbly (later I realized just how badly he’d ripped me off) and got in line.

Surrounded by game-show enthusiasts, we quickly fell to chatting. I learned in seconds how much of a novice I was – everyone around me was on their fourth or fifth audition, and the woman standing next to me had won $30,000 on Jeopardy! once. I became a shrinking violet, the color of my lavender shirt. What was I thinking, coming here? What was I doing?

They ushered us into the room, with all of the fanfare of their daily routine. They gave us each beige folders, every one with a Sharpied number on the corner. They told us that the folders contained our audition tests. “It’s thirty questions and you have ten minutes.”

WHAT.
            “Good luck, your test starts now.” Beep. And just like that the nerves I’d been gulping down as though they were bile exploded out of my pencil. I tore into that test like a diabetic third-grader lunging for a Snickers bar.

The buffalo was on what coin for four years? The quarter, why not.

Negeta catania, commonly known as catnip, is what kind of plant? …fuckin’ …lettuce, I have no idea.

What was the occupation of the protagonist in the Fountainhead? This was perhaps my proudest moment. I’d never read Ayn Rand’s trilogy, but I knew enough to know that she’d be more obtuse than to make her allegories obvious. With that I ruled out B. Judge and C. Politician. That left A. Surgeon and D. Architect. Torn between one and the other I knew it was a guess, so I went for the more left-field choice of Surgeon and found out later from the philosophy professor sitting across the table from me that I was right.

As they processed our tests, everyone around me told me they were rooting for my number to be called, almost more than their own (the fact that I was Texan slipped out in line). They called out the numbers that had passed the audition test. My number was not among them.

And just like that I had a magnet and a pencil for my troubles. Was I disappointed? Yes. For about five seconds. And then I said to myself, “Y’know what? I’m in New York City tonight. The greatest city in the world. I have no excuse to not have a fantastic time this evening.” And by God did I fulfill that promise. I walked from ABC Studios back to Times Square, 20 blocks. The sky had opened up floodgates that I’d forgotten existed during the drought from earlier in the year, and I was covered in rain by the time I’d gotten my ticket for a Broadway play. After that I stepped out into Times Square and spent midnight until 2:00 that morning talking with an Australian guy named Corgan. I’ll never forget that night.

The next morning I hopped on a plane and flew back to Dallas. My journey was over. But if I ever forget a second of that trip, someone should shoot me dead because I clearly will have become so happy with life that I don’t need its remembrance, or so senile that it’s become lost from my memory. I don’t think either of those things will ever happen.

And I won’t have any reason to forget, either.

Unless my audition this summer goes better.