I love the smell of a theater.
The deep thumping echo of the floorboards — tired feet attached to ankles of genius, grazed countless times before — and now there you stand. Toes and paws and perfectly pointed claws insisting on your admission into the pantheon of the worthy and the sluberdegullion theater patrons alike.
And then what happens?
You pour your heart out during every single rehearsal you arrived for on time. The stuff between your legs slick and perfectly sliding as you catch your breath, while “Raul” the director — who does things with the ninety-seven year old playwright who only shows up once — catches his foggy eye looking at you ONCE from the back of the house. And you know you’re in.
But does Raul care?
NO!!
Instead you have to deal with some twig with dark, deep socketed eyes who smells like the toilet in a vegan household. Her once-blonde, now-yellow whispy bun curled like the hay of an errant scarecrow come to life — she holds your future in her hands, in her weird bag. Filled with thingys she won’t ever let anyone see. It hangs like a sack of fish, taunting me.
Her walkie talkie beeps. A man named Rolf speaks. “Like this, miss?”
The light on my X — perfect, narrow focused. She fumbles with her bony knuckles. “NO, lighting, I said WIDE.”
He beeps back. “Very well miss, but you risk losing the focus on the lead when the curtain goes up.”
That bitch is trying to sabotage me!
“Ethank you Rolf — Jes, keep the lite efocoosed,” Raul fixes it.
Now she’s furious. I want to invite her to smoke a cigarette but I don’t.
Now her eye twitches while I smile at her and begin to walk away. Her eyes say green but only they read “burning manure,” and she scoffs at a body for taking it’s legally allotted break to go smoke a cigarette or drink from a bottle of whiskey — surrounded by the cute supers who want to hang out with you no matter WHAT you look like.
I finally answer her phone call — fifteen minutes before curtain.
“WHERE ARE YOU?!” she whisper-screams.
I hang up. “I’m right behind you.”
She gasps and turns around.
A girl named Jenny polishes my golden batton and makes sure it’s dry and hands it to me. “Ready for your debut Harold?”
I was.
We were a hit — and later?
Later me and some of the cute supers ate strawberries in a candle lit tree-house.
It was perfect.