Soap Opera Angel

A brief anecdote from my day:
As I sat in the Actors Equity Center on Times Square at around 3 in the afternoon, having been there since 7:15am, I dozed off. This is hard to avoid on less busy days, as the seats are sublimely cushioned and there's always a mysterious low hum that acts as white noise and encourages sweet, sweet slumber for thespians too jaded to suffer pre-audition nerves. The rest pace the room mumbling and trying out different hand gestures to punctuate their monologues; most settle for smugly flicking their wrists against their thighs for contemporary drama and sawing through the air before them with rigid hands for Shakespeare. The reason I, as a non-union actor, am allowed to idle in the inner equity sanctum is because I achieved union candidacy with a show I understudied at Berkeley Rep. The non-union non-candidates have to sit on narrow wooden benches that line the hallways outside the lobby, getting their feet stepped on by people passing through and looking slightly less pathetic than the urchin cast of Oliver Twist. Neither do they have access to the equity bath and dressingrooms. Should nature call them while they await an audition call that might never come, they must exit the building entirely and visit the begrimed and often understocked bathrooms in the Times Square Tourist Information Bureau around the corner, or to the nearest Starbuck's 3 blocks away, and get stuck in a herd of tourists for ten minutes on the way. It is usually while one is off relieving oneself that one's name is called due to some miracle of equity non-attendance. How many promising careers, I wonder, have been flushed through the sewers beneath the crossroads of the world?
Back to my purportedly brief story: After several hours of fighting sleep with reading Simon Callow's Being an Actor, inwardly mocking all other white actresses in my age range present, and swaggering into the ladies' room whenever the fancy hit me to blot my lipstick or practice scales or even visit a stall, I sat in the cushioned chair and let my head drop to my chest and my eyelids flicker shut. I don't know how long I rested in this state, but somewherein my slumber I felt three delicate fingers on my knee, and a sugary voice inquire, "Pardon me, are you a member of SAG?" Roused, I looked up and squinted at the brightness of an ethereal Morgan Fairchild shining down on me, blonde locks backlit by the flourescent lights on the ceiling.
"...mnn-..no..."
She furrowed her brow and glided away, addressing herself to some other actors lurking by the sign-up sheets. Soon there was a cluster of animated, chattering, apparently SAG-involved actors around the star, beaming as she described the changes she will make to the Screen Actors Guild policies if she is elected president. After half an hour or so, two Equity moderators emerged from their office (which stank of the take-out meals of a decade) and gingerly informed her that campaigning was not permitted in the Equity building, after which she made her adieus, all gleaming teeth and blonde finesse, and left with her two cronies. As she passed me in my sleeping-chair, she brushed my knee again with her fingers(this time I noticed her blood-red manicure) and winked, a faint and wicked smile on her lips.
Such is a day in an actor's life.

The Writer poses. 

Should've started this long ago

Inspired by my friend Martina, who has created "The Unquiet American," an account of her p.h.d. work in Hanoi, I've taken the next step towards becoming a member of modern times, and started a blog. I've always wished I kept a diary, but whenever I mean to start one in earnest, the act of recording the events of my days, no matter how exciting, outrageous, or disgusting (as my days often are), proves too tedious to continue, and I am left with a stack of expensive notebooks wth elegantly-crafted covers, in which pages three through four hundred remain blank. However, as I do like to write, I now wonder if it's the fact that no one will ever (indeed, no one must ever) read my diary that makes keeping one seem so pointless. A "blog" is meant to be read by one's friends, and even strangrs who chance upon it, and perhaps this slightest nod to the world of publishing will provide motivation to bore not only myself but anyone I can harangue into reading my posts.
Of the events in recent months I wish I had recorded in this new literary toy:
*Meeting Benjamin Bratt twice in two days at Dianda's bakery in San Francisco, and dragging out of him a confession of sex-addiction.
*Smoking pot on my fire escape at 2 am on my 25th birthday with several friends (who shall remain nameless should they ever decide to run for office)and my mother.
*Celebrating with Aggie the final night of the Plaza before its conversion to luxury nests for New York's tackiest nouveaux. The Oak bar seemed to be hosting a sugar daddy convention and we couldn't spend a dime. Memory of the event is fuzzy, as, in an effort to get rid of all the liquor the hotel had stocked, the bartender put tripleshots in every drink. Now, that's hospitality.
* Sneaking into the San Francisco Opera House in New Year's Eve with Patrice and staging a two-person folk song/Shakespearean Soliloquy/ancient dirge extravaganza before the echoing, empty house.
These are just a few events thatI wish I had recorded in greater detail and closer to the time of their occurrence. These days, I fear I will be keeping a log of my now months-long search for employment in Manhattan's food and retail industry. Perhaps my next post will be on the virtues of Harry Potter as a mood-elevator to rival the strongest vicodin or richest chocolate, or the multiple times I've applied to work at Starbuck's without luck, or my latest slew of auditions in which I had to hold different yoga poses for eternities on end while improvising a stream of consciousness monologue in the style of Eugene O'Niell's Strange Interlude from the point of view af a struggling Rockette hopeful.
These are the grim activites and reflections which comprise my day-to day existence, or, I should say, existential nausea. Hence the title, Writhing in Apathy, which I lifted fromt the Diary of Kenneth Tynan, one of those prolific writers who seemed to effortlessly pen phrases I wish I had written, and surely would have expended much sweat over had I been able to do so. I include Martin Amis, Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, and John Fowles in this group of luminaries. These diaries chronicle Tynan's decade of decline, the 1970's, during which he reassessed his life as a drama critic and a dramaturg and came to realize that he should have devoted himself to a more creative life such as that of a director or playwright, but now, steadily succumbing to emphysema, he hadn't the time nor the energy necessary to create himself anew. In a moment of particularly acute self-loathing brought on by months of procrastination and languishing crativity, he ended a dreary passage with, "I shall die writhing in apathy."
The chronicle begins.