Just A Broadway Baby

I left you again, didn’t I? Yes. I did. Apologies. I have a history of this. Starting things then being so terrified of the “me” within it I run at top speed to the closest clothing store, buy the sleekest, cheapest suit I can find, walk out of the changing room wearing it with the price tag still attached and smooth those wrinkles out as I wink at the lady behind the checkout counter. I hate winking. It is so not me. I moved again. Ha. That is starting to just sound like a cosmic joke, isn’t it? I could go on and on about that, but today it isn’t about moving. It is about cheap suits, running (away), bad decisions, winking or not winking and me. Today it is about me. The real me. Let’s have story time. The cuddle-up kind of story time with blankies and pop-up books and slightly-scary caterpillars awaiting that butterfly transformation and husky, tired parent voices. Let’s have that story time. Come snuggle with me. Shhhh….rest your tired, winking eyes here, my darlings. I want to tell you all about Broadway, baby.

The sky was always so grey and the air smelled like car fumes and desperation. There was no rain yet, but I remember the entire 10 days felt like an impending downpour. I was just a 20-year-old girl from Nebraska alone on the corner of 61^ststreet in the Upper West Side of Manhattan trying to remember the best way to hail a taxi. My giant, overstuffed roller bag was in the way of every single person in the city, apparently, as it kept getting kicked and shoved. Pulling it as closely to myself as I could with one arm, I managed to choke down the tears and tentatively do the “I need a cab, I think, though I might be wrong and please don’t go out of your way if you are busy” motion with my arm. I caught the eye of a taxi driver in a turban who spoke not a word to me as he got out and hefted my bag into his trunk. He pointed at the door meaning:

“Get in, kid, and you don’t even have to tell me where to take you. I can make a good guess.”

I said it anyway.

“Grand Central Station, please,” I whispered before I had to grab a tissue for my running nose. Taxis always make me cry. So does running away. I caught his eye in the rearview mirror, and maybe he had run away, too, once.

It was a scene straight from so many of those good Broadway musicals. A small-town girl with a dream and a bag and a cute hat. That touching opening number that starts under a streetlight with a tiny melody and 12 measures later, she is dancing with the guy from the newsstand and a chorus of locals is welcoming that zippy starlet to the Big Apple. This was that. But the opposite. No one was singing, and I was leaving.

The NYC gig had lasted ten days. I think. Though sometimes I wonder if my subconscious adds a day or five to that. I had left my full ride scholarship to a university in Nebraska, dumped it all and packed my suitcase to go to a performing arts school in the city. I had never been to New York City, but I knew that anyone taking any form of performance seriously should go. I was going to be an actor. A dancer. A singer. Triple threat, baby. Best way to be.

There was an audition in a hotel in Kansas City. My best friend and I snuck away to attend, and she sat outside the conference room with her fingers, legs, ankles and eyebrows crossed while I sang a song and did my favorite monologue for a man who looked like he really did care. I am pretty sure he did. He cared enough to send me a letter a few weeks later with the best words a girl might ever read. We are pleased to inform you……….Amen. Hallelujah. May the saints be praised. Somebody finally saw me. Broadway. New York City. I’m coming for you hard and fast.

Speaking of saints, my parents went with me. Our taxi from La Guardia rolled to a stop in front of my new home. An old building in the not-so-glamorous part of Manhattan with trash piled in front of it. I will never forget my Dad’s whisper of “Oh no, dammit.” He was already panicked. I was near death. I might have died, but instead I jumped out of my cab and a gloriously colorful character named (I don’t joke about people like this because they are my absolute favorite people) Creation swept me up and showed me to my room. “Hi Creation, I see we put our trash on the sidewalk here, correct? And can I be guaranteed a cockroach-free room?” Wink, wink.

It was A Chorus Line, it was everything sweaty and angst-ridden most young performers could ever dream of. We spent the first few days in “orientation”, or we could call it a terrifying ordeal of dancing, singing, and acting in front of the judgiest judgers of all time. I remember my body not working correctly. I was a cardboard cutout of myself- stiff, clumsy and uncoordinated arms and legs replaced my usually graceful dancer’s limbs. We were immediately given the statistics of what it took to make it there. I remember nothing except most didn’t make it. I was mortified. I was horrified. My saintly parents had cashed in everything they could think of to pay my way, and I was already failing. I went to bed every night in my cement-walled room with socks on and my toes curled up under me as tight as they would go. I didn’t get the cockroach-free room.

B was across the hall from me. She was a gorgeous, wide-smiled beauty with the soul of an angel. But even B couldn’t save me. I was done before I ever got there. My parents left me to make my own decision- see? Saints. I whispered good-bye to B, crawled on my bloody hands and knees to the admissions office, ok, I walked, but I might as well have slid on my belly and licked the dirty pavement down Broadway for all I was tossing away. The guy with the black hair, I’ll never remember anything about him except for his black hair, wanted to know my plan, then, if I was actually leaving. “I beg your pardon, sir, I’m fresh out of plans, never really had one to begin with and I believe that’s why I’m cracking in half right now while I sit in your fake leather chair. Let’s just sign the withdrawal paperwork, shall we?”

I took my shame train to go live with my brother and his wife in Washington D.C. Homeless and lost and burnt. I would take a year and “sort myself out”. Oh, NYC, you sure got me, didn’t you? I understand why New Yorkers always seem to speak in clipped tones. There is no time for poetry or the city will swoop down and swallow you whole like a starving monster who has been hiding behind trash piles. Get your game face on, babe, or go home.

Twenty-one years later or 824 years, all pretty much the same, my favorite play of all time was auditioning on Broadway (Burn This by Lanford Wilson). What if I just hopped on a Greyhound for a three-hour bus ride, left my four children in the care of, yep once again big bro to the rescue, their uncle, and went into that audition “Mother of Dragons-style” and let all of my bruised and battered soul pieces shine out? Ok, yes, now that might be the best plan I’ve had in my life. So, I did that. It was not a chippy musical, it was a necessary explosion of well-executed grit that needed to happen. I had an appointment. I was prepared. I was horribly nervous and yet more clear and calm than I was on any opening night ever. Bless your little heart, NYC, I see you lurking behind those trash piles and I’ve spent enough time deep down in rabbit holes far filthier and scarier than any of your nonsense. I walked in like a lady and read my 18 lines and left as if I had just accepted the Tony award.

Nothing came of it. It wasn’t meant to. Most of these types of auditions are, frankly, already cast before a girl exits her bus and gets her heels on. It was just me. Just me needing to put her flag back on the moon. I was here, too. I was somebody who listens to her gut and holds her truth out there for the world to see. I never winked once. I didn’t need to. I told them who I was, very plainly, and left with the swagger of a movie star in my crappy black pants. Bye, babes, good luck with your little show. I have to move my four children to a new country. Thinking of you as you work through those tough casting decisions!

So, my darlings, the moral of our cozy, caterpillar-time story of the day is sometimes you take a leap. It might be whimsical nonsense to the smelly dude next to you on the bus, but you do it anyway. Don’t fight it, just surrender because how delightful is that story to tell to your babies in the nighttime? How lovely to spend 24 hours walking in your absolute self-confidence and truth and knowing. Anna, the female character in Burn This, has a final line of “I don’t want this…….Oh, Lord, I didn’t want this………”

Oh, Anna, we always want this. We always know exactly what we want. It’s why you lean over and snuggle into that guy’s chest in 3….2…..1…..

Night-night, my friends. Rest. Because tomorrow is another chance, another day to burn this.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo