California Dreaming

I answered an ad that said "sexually adventurous guys needed for experimental new wave production. 1 days work with good pay TBN on the day"

The audition was being held in an old dockside warehouse which seemed like it might also double as a convenient place to dispose of a body or simply somewhere one could go to indulge an overwhelming depression over a leisurely stroll around it's dank, grey corridors. Promising nothing and delivering even less, this was truly the very definition of a shithole.

Entering the door I see a card taped to a wall with a hastily drawn arrow pointing left. Written on it is "audishions", and for some reason this makes me panic and reflect.

I hear voices up ahead of me and snap out of my own mind, out of my personal humiliation greatest hits collection that seems to be stuck on a loop playing in my head these days. Rounding the corner of the shitty corridor I see an equally shitty room filled with about seven guys standing around and muttering to themselves intensely. One of them slaps his own face repeatedly whilst occasionally fist pumping in celebration of something lost on all the rest of us. Fuelling that extra edge he needs to excel in this world of shit, perhaps.

At the back of the room are three guys stuck deep in conversation. One of them has a pony-tail and is waving around a digital cam-corder. He gestures wildly with his hands and points to all corners of the room before getting up with his camera and stomping off like a child scolded. The other two simply laugh and turn their attention to the assorted throng of low-life they see before them. The tallest one stands and coughs just loudly enough so that everyone in the room looks at him.

"Ok guys, make this snappy. I want you all to take off your pants and get hard for me!"

The sudden brutality of this request seems to
catch even fist-pumping guy by surprise. I watch amused as his facade of confident aggression crumbles and dissolves into pools of insecurity you could almost step in. If you're standing ankle deep in shit it provides a ghoulish thrill to see a man up to his neck in it. Detachment, I quickly realise, is the thing here. Be somewhere else. Elevate the soul above the seedy reality of any given situation. Call this my recipe for living just now. Seeing the hesitation on our faces the tall man claps his hands and I start to laugh for some reason he can't quite figure out.

Once we're all where he wants us, he instructs us to maintain our condition for as long as possible through sheer willpower. I am floating now, watching myself and the others scattered like detritus. And I'm thinking that this isn't how I imagined it would be. This, of course, being my life and not this audition which is exactly what I expected. One by one they fall. Woodsmen found wanting. Inadequate and exposed like a crying baby. Have they ever floated, I wondered? Seen themselves from a great distance, removed and unaccountable for their own degradation?

Soon it's just me left. Unwavering and eager for whatever humiliation awaits me. It's my price, I tell myself. My penance for what has passed beyond my own understanding and embedded itself upon my being

I vaguely feel a pat on the back. The tall man is talking to me but I hear nothing except a loud thumping which I assume is in my own head. Pony-tail guy is back now and is gesturing in futility to no-one in particular. A tortured artist, perhaps. A misunderstood genius forced to compromise himself to escape the random cruelty of Fortuna's wheel. Could we fashion our escape together, I wonder? Two men of quality trapped by circumstance.

Even now I cannot help but romanticise. But alchemy is impossible, so they tell me.

I am ecorted to another part of the warehouse to meet my "co-star". I manage to catch this and no more from the tall man as he breaks into a giggle that is almost girlish in it's glee. The joke passed me by again...

I see her from behind at first and my heart sinks. I can tell that this will not be easy...but I need the money so I say nothing. Quiet acquiescence once again the order of my day.

She is receiving instruction from the the guy with the pony-tail. I struggle to hear exactly what is said, but I do catch him insisting that she "make it sexy". My gag reflex being what it is I manage to not throw up. Instead I contemplate my fate as my 87 year old co-star shuffles toward me like the reanimated corpse of someone who once mattered.

I wonder if this might be the occasion I float away forever like some astronaut in deep space destined never to return.