The Chronicles Of Jessica

Aloha! It's been a while since my last update so allow me to just tuck right in. Sorry for the wait but I'm feeling like it's always better to leave them wanting more. A theory that Paris Hilton is clearly unfamiliar with. That rich waif is everywhere! She'd probably come to a party at my apartment if I had a couple of photographers and some Red Bull.

By the way the comments thing is up and running, so comment away, if you are moved to do so.

Last week I had a callback for an all-girl sketch/improv group, and the auditions were being conducted at this space downtown, by the producer, we'll call him - I don't know - Byron. (You don't really meet a lot of Byrons these days. Shame, really.)

I had met with Byron and a couple of his cohorts the week before but I didn't get to actually audition for them; I had to see a guy about a bridesmaid's dress and I took off after waiting for about an hour, but I left my picture with them and I suppose it was sufficiently impressive to them to garner me another meeting. Either that or Byron is really hard up for funny girls with experience, or he's using this whole audition front as a way to meet chicks. (It's been done!) But for now we'll roll with the idea that my resume was impressive; just so my self-esteem doesn't suffer.

I just didn't get a good vibe from the guy, though. He seemed really kind of aggressive and petulant, like he was getting off on having all these people there that he could boss around. I was half expecting him to send one of us out for a latte and some high-end biscotti. I really dislike guys like this. It's a variation on the theme of guy who I always seem to wind up temping for, you know, just oozing with entitlement and self-importance. They can't expend the time or energy to be polite, it's just too depleting for them. And talk about helpless! I actually had one guy who wanted me to remind him to eat lunch. You know, I'm hoping for a degree of success in my life, too, but I guaran-freakin'-tee you that I will never need to be reminded to take meals. I take meals liberally and often and without provocation.

But I digress. He calls me, and I frankly have nothing better to do on Saturday so I figure what the hell. Of course, that decision was made before I made the decision to let Nora Cassidy experiment on me Friday night with her Apple Martinis of Death. We wound up lurching around midtown like a couple of drunk sorority girls, in a desperate search for this Chips Ahoy sandwich cookie which I'm still not convinced actually exists. (It is now my white whale.) When I woke up Saturday I wasn't too sure where I actually was, or why someone had been mixing paper mache in my mouth all night. I realllllly considered cancelling on Byron. The ninth avenue street fair beckoned to me (meat on sticks!) but like a responsible little actress, I decided to keep the appointment. I head down to the theatre and there are only a handful of other women there, but they all seem cool; we mess around for a while with some ideas that he gives us and we try to get something funny going. After a relatively short period of time, Byron (who frankly does not seem all that interested in our acting, for whatever reason) wraps things up and tells us he just wants to have a brief one-on-one conversation with us before we take off.

And that's when he fondled me.

Kidding! You thought that's where this was headed, didntcha? Dirty readers, all of you.

I go in and I'm sort of standing there gabbing with him and the other two guys there, sort of talking about what I've been doing for the past year, and so on, when Byron leans forward in his chair really purposefully and says to me, "What's going on with you right now? You're obviously very nervous."

Well, I really wasn't. I mean it was becoming more obvious by the minute that Byron was a complete dinkus; if I didn't have the opportunity to work with him that really would be very all right with me. But he startled me! I seemed nervous? Why did I seem nervous? I didn't feel nervous. What was going on with me? Anything?

I said, "No, I'm fine." And he says, "You're really projecting a lot of nervousness right now."

Yikes! Why was I projecting so much nervousness? What could this mean? I really was flummoxed. Something must be going on with me if Byron was so clearly picking up on it. Maybe I had to pee! That could be it! Sometimes if you have to pee you sort of seem like you're nervous. So I said, "Well, I sort of have to pee?" And the moment I said it, I knew it was a lie. I didn't have to pee at all. This guy was trying to do some kind of psuedo-producer mind-meld thing on me. He was the one projecting! I was fine! But having said that I had to pee, I couldn't very well go backsies on it. Byron said, "Well, go (points finger towards hall) and come back!" So I went to the bathroom, locked the door and I sort of stood there feeling like an idiot, approximating the amount of time that it would take me to actually pee. Then I went back. And as I'm sort of resuming the conversation, talking about, you know, ACTING, he leans forward in his chair again:

"Clearly you're still very nervous."

Now I was just annoyed. I mean, for one thing, if I was nervous, how would this be helping? Would being accused of being nervous make me less nervous? Is that some well-known property of nervousness physics that I missed in school? Again, I said, "No, really, I'm fine."

Then he really gets going. "Look," he said, "I'm a producer. And I can stand across the street and tell you what's going on with people. Across the street."

Clearly Byron has fascinating powers of perception. But has he ever been wrong? What if he thought that someone was flirting with him, for example, but really they just wanted some ham? Maybe these powers of perception were all fantasy, a figment of his bald imagination? It seemed to me then that he couldn't pick up on the most important emotion I was experiencing - a desperate urge to bitch-slap him.

"Well," I said. "I'm not really sure what it is you're picking up on, but it isn't nerves." He seemed satisfied with that, I guess; I was dismissed and I left and that was the end of that. I haven't heard from him which, as you can imagine, is the source of some serious disappointment for me.*

*this is a lie.

Later on that day, I met up again with Nora at the Old Navy on 6th Ave. We found cardigan shangri-la, and then we went over to Cosi to get a sandwich. Well as I'm coming back to our table I see Nora rushing out the front door and when I looked out the window, I could see that she was standing over this woman crumpled up on the sidewalk. I went out there, and Nora said that the lady had just sort of collapsed and nearly hit her head on this concrete planter. We got her to her feet and into this chair; she could hardly stand up. Nora thinks we should call an ambulance, so she calls on her cell phone and we wait with the lady, whose name is Mary. Nora is trying to figure out if maybe she's having a stroke or some kind of episode; she's an older lady but not really elderly. And she didn't seem homeless or vagrant, though she was in need of a serious manicure. (What?)Well I go inside to get us some drinks and when I come back Mary is puffing on a Parlaiment. WTF? Nora and I exchanged some loaded looks. Mine said, "Why are you letting her smoke a cigarette, she could be having a heart attack!" Nora's look said, "I know but what could I do, she's a stranger and whyistheambulancetakingsodamnlong????!!!"

Later on Nora would hesitantly confess that while I was inside getting the beverages, it dawned on her that the problem with Mary was that she had had a few beverages already. Perhaps, more than a few. Nora realized abruptly, despite lacking the high powered perceptive abilities with which Byron is so keenly in tune, that Mary was trashed.

Well, after she finishes the butt, Mary decides she's had enough of...whatever it was we were doing and she gets up. Only she's still really out of it and she almost falls again, right into the table of this woman selling these awesome anti-Bush buttons. (I bought five.) We kept saying, Wait, Mary, don't you think you should just wait for the ambulance to come and check you out? But she was off like a shot. Well, not a shot, exactly, more like jelly out of a water gun. Our good intentions had come to naught. Nora pulled out her cell phone and told the 911 dispatch to cancel the ambulance.

But as we watched Mary disappear out of sight, we were reminded of ourselves, of the apple martinis, and of the philosophical truth that is so easy to forget, and yet is so consistently shown - we are all connected.

j.d.

Confidential to JKS: I'm proud of who you are, and I'm proud to call you my friend. You're gonna rock the district and love this new life phase, I know it. Mwah!