Gulliver Takes Five (8 page)

It’s over.

Happy anniversary.

Now that Christian is gone, I feel alone, even though the sex around me is doing its best to suck me back in. Someone howls as he shoots a load down the throat of a guy he’ll never talk to again. Four guys surround me, all jerking off, looking down so the shadows overtake most of their faces.

Disgusting. And this time, I’m talking about me. Because I belong here, and the events of today—tonight—have only served to send me where I was headed all along. Hands take hold of my ass, grab my cock, pluck my nipple ring, caress the scar on my stomach. Instinctively, I want to yank them all off and run for the door to stop Christian. It’s not too late to apologize and forget all about this fucked-up hell of a night.

I could do that, right? Just a few small lies and happiness is mine again. I could learn to trust him over time. Actually trust him—no phone checking, no e-mail invading. For fuck’s sake, he spun at a sex party fully clothed, then tried to leave early just to win me back!

I could maybe tell him the truth—the whole truth and nothing but. Explain what the hell I was thinking, feeling, while I was laying waste to the city on my way here. Grant. The other Christian. The drag queen. Everything. But how would I explain it? In hindsight, it sounds—well, just as crazy as it actually WAS. Who’d come back to that? Who’d want to be with me now? I can barely stomach what I’ve done myself, and I’ve had over two decades to get used to my antics. No one who didn’t have to be near me would ever choose to be.

Tonight I’ve earned these strange hands. These mystery mouths. The wrapped, lube-slimy dick slowly easing its way inside me as I continue staring at the exit like a paralyzed stroke victim.

This is where I belong now. Home at last.

Christian will need half an hour to get to my place. Another thirty minutes to clear his things out and leave the keys. Meanwhile, I’m going to have sex with however many men I can. It’s all fading into the back of my mind, every detail of this day just a hazy memory as the immediacy of the here and now finally overtakes me.

Run, Christian. Run as fast as you can. I can’t promise I won’t chase you, but at least you’ve got a head start.

All I can think of is
A Chorus Line
. The cast of thirteen men and women standing in different frozen poses across the stage, facing the audience.

God, I hope I get it. I hope I get it. How many people does he need? How many people does he need?!

Except, instead of thirteen of us, there’s thirteen
hundred
. All guys. All identical to each other. Light-brown hair, around six feet tall, boyish. We’re a line of clones plugged into the wall of this hallway in the Equity Building in Midtown Manhattan. I have no idea how anyone ever gets a date at one of these things, though many of my actor friends do. Yes, we’re gay and mostly single, but to date someone here is the ultimate feat of egotism.
Hey there, you look just like me! Wanna grab a drink?

They call these “cattle calls” for a reason. Hundreds of actors crammed into a long hallway not at all unlike a yard full of cows. All of us mooing (or practicing scales—what’s the difference?), chewing cud, and swatting flies with our tails. Waiting for the slaughter.

I shouldn’t be so negative. It’s just that there are only so many of these things that you can take before you begin to wonder,
Am I
any good? Are they really considering us?
Every once in a while, Stanford, my recently acquired agent, lands me a private audition. Just me, the casting director, and a piano, plus maybe a few assistants. There aren’t hundreds of my long-lost twins just beyond the door, bragging about recent close calls. Nobody mooing but me.

Unfortunately, I’ve blown most of those private auditions too. So here I sit. And wait. And warm up. Just like the rest of the herd.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, do you hear that? Who the fuck sings ‘Lost in the Wilderness’?” one of my twins snorts.

I listen carefully. Shit. The boy in the audition room IS singing “Lost in the Wilderness.” The catty trio of doppelgangers breaks down into a loud fit of snorts and giggles, pulling their legs up to their chests as if they’re trying to keep themselves from peeing.

“Stephen Schwartz?” says triplet number two. “Really? Someone better tell her Stephen Schwartz hasn’t been a smart audition move since Rosie O’Donnell was hosting the Tonys!”

“And still using Tom Cruise as her beard!” closes out the third triplet. “What’s next? A one-man rendition of ‘Seasons of Love’?”

Now they’ve had it. This is the funniest thing they’ve experienced all year! They don’t even try to hold back the giggling. All bets are off, and they’re rolling around on the floor, kicking their legs up in the air, catching the attention of all my other twins lined up behind me. (I know no one actually laughs like this, but remember, we’re dealing with actors here; every action must be performed, otherwise it might go unappreciated.)

“‘Lost in the Wilderness’! He’s going to be ‘Lost in the Slush Pile’!”

More giggling. More uproarious laughter. Meanwhile, my face is burning up.

I shift around on the floor, making sure MY sheet music for Stephen Schwartz’s “Lost in the Wilderness” stays out of view. This is the peril of picking a popular and well-known male solo. One, it’s been played to death. Two, lots of guys still continue to sing it. Since Hunter Foster first belted it at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey in the late nineties, every tenor has given “Lost in the Wilderness” a go at least once.

I’ve stuck with it for five years. Or it’s stuck to me. I connected with the song on so many levels: the music somewhat, but mostly the message. I was kicked out of my house when my parents found a copy of
Out
magazine in the back of my desk drawer; I felt just like Cain in this song, exiled from everything he knew and loved. My older sister proved to be my savior, letting me live out the remainder of my high school years with her in her tiny house in New Jersey. She had a piano that she never played—until I moved in with her. Then, every night before bed, she’d settle down at the upright and play “Lost in the Wilderness.” Naturally, I provided the vocals.

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” another twin says. “There’s no chance any of us will get this stupid part. I heard Grant Majors already got called in for a private audition last night.”

“You serious? I turned down a backup dance gig in a music video shoot this morning for this audition!”

Grant Majors? Jesus. I didn’t know he was going for this part! He’s a shoo-in for the role—he’s already understudying one of the lead male dancers in
Mamma Mia!
, which is something every one of the guys on this line would dream of doing. He’s basically my role model, exactly who I want to be in a couple years, and he’s the best thing young gay Broadway has going for it at the moment. Grant Majors hosts gay fundraisers, makes appearances at every nightlife event in the city. He’s the happy, smiling, family-friendly face of the gay community, and if he’s not exactly a gay household name yet, everyone operates under the understanding that he will be soon. This part is as good as his, especially if he got seen before this cattle call. Not only did he get a chance to audition for the role, he’s also probably still sleeping, while I had to wake up at 5 in the morning to get a good spot in line at this slaughterhouse.

I should just go home. I have a date in a few hours—a first date, one I need time to prep for. In hindsight, it was probably dumb to schedule two events that involve me being judged and measured up by separate parties in a single twenty-four-hour period. But what can I say? Go big or go home.

“Grant Majors isn’t auditioning for anything,” another twin scoffs. “He’s staying in
Mamma Mia!
until at least next season. Why would anyone go on tour when they can live in Hell’s Kitchen and have a five-minute walk to a fat paycheck in the theater capital of the world?”

No one responds, but to me, the answer is obvious: to be on stage, in the spotlight, every single night. Not just waiting in the wings for someone to twist an ankle or suffer food poisoning so you can get your chance. Like Grant Majors, I worked damn hard to
get where I am. I graduated two months ago, and I already have a tireless agent who works around the clock on my behalf. A stroke of luck may have brought him to me, but I paved the way for that good fortune with years of vocal lessons. Thousands of dance classes. Staying up late back in high school, committing every cast recording from 1950 to the present day to memory. And I mean
every
single one of the songs, from the company numbers in
Titanic
and
The Sound of Music
to Sutton’s eleven o’clock numbers in
Jane Eyre
and
The Drowsy Chaperone
. I worked for this, that’s for damn sure. I won’t say I was the most talented senior to graduate from the theater program at Millersberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, this year. But nobody worked harder. They’d admit it too. When my peers were out getting trashed on fraternity row, I’d be home practicing the same bars from “All I Care About Is Love” over and over again, experimenting with where I could go off the beaten path of written notes to throw in my own flavor. Everyone I graduated with is serving burgers at Times Square chain restaurants or filing receipts at accounting firms, unable to even find time off to attend these cattle calls—if they’re fortunate to have found work at all, that is.

But it wasn’t all dedication and hard work. I got lucky too. It all happened because of—

NO.

I can’t think about him now. Won’t think about him. No.

Quick, Marty. Think of something else. Anything else. Songs.
American Idol
. Sutton Foster. Pizza. Your sister. Giraffes. Grant Majors.
Glee
. SHIT. Nothing’s working.

I wish for ANYTHING to fill my brain, no matter how sad or maddening or painful. Baby kittens being drowned. Osama bin Laden. Catherine Zeta-Jones winning a Tony for
A Little Night Music
. Because thinking of
him
still hurts too much, and I need to be cool and collected when they—

“Marty Perry?” the exhausted hall monitor calls out from her desk in the far corner.

Dammit.

Cool and collected go out the window. Still here with me? Panic and dread and a sudden onset of perspiration. On the plus side, pangs of heartbreaks past are replaced by the threat of a far more immediate catastrophe.

No, it’s not a big shocker that someone else sang “Lost in the Wilderness” in this throng of pretty boys. But right before me? Seriously? I didn’t bring a backup, because Stanford insists that I sing this and only this at every audition. It’s my musical sucker punch, he swears. Well, it’s about to sucker punch ME right back in my own face!

There’s no asking the hall monitor to bump me back a few spots. All that will do is dock me points when the producers and casting people meet later to go over the results; hallway etiquette is as important in an audition as anything else.

So here goes everything. I hide my music under my T-shirt as I make my way across the hall to the door.

Ah, the audition room. Always with the squeaky floor, the clanging, banging pipes that snake this way and that inches beneath peeling ceilings. Either sweltering or freezing, so flip a coin and expect the worst. And the walk to the center of the room always takes far too long. This audition has five people sitting at a busted folding table behind a stack of résumés that doesn’t yet include mine.

“Come in, Mark,” says the balding man in small circular eyeglasses in the center of the panel.

“It’s Marty, actually,” I say, smiling and apologetic. Because I’d rather it be MY fault he doesn’t know my name than have him think I’m copping an attitude. The two women and two men on either side of him nod approvingly. I’m grinning my shit-eatingest grin.

Hand him the résumé. Walk another mile to the piano player to give him my sheet music. Don’t look him in the face because I know it’ll show annoyance that he JUST finished playing this song. God save me. Turn me into smoke and blow me out the window. (The same window that’s refusing to bring a single breath of air into this sweaty hellhole.)

The casting director wipes his face with a handkerchief and exhales dramatically. “We’re breaking after this, okay?” More silent nodding from his compatriots. “
Marty
, thank you for coming in today.”

“Thank you for seeing me,” I say, like they care who shows up at these things. “I’m going to be singing from Stephen Schwartz’s ‘Lost in the Wilderness.’ Perhaps you’ve heard it before.”

No courtesy chuckles. Great. Excellent. Hooray! I can already hear Stanford’s consolation:
You’ll get one in time, baby. Just keep making that magic happen
. That’s Stanford’s chosen refrain after auditions. I know he has faith in me—for now. But after each and every disappointing call from a disappointed casting director, I wonder when (not if) he’s going to drop me.

“We’ll go with eight bars,” the director says.

“Eight bars, it is!” I say, probably too eagerly. No matter. I’m about to place my lips on each of their butts and switch my setting to sunshine. At this, by now, I’m a pro.