Free Half Empty by David Rakoff

respected actors, and a fearsome producer with a talent for hits and a reputation as the devil incarnate. Not a room in which to be seen eating. My presence there would have been the classic Cinderella story if instead of being delivered from her grimy scullery to the carefree life of the palace, our dainty-footed heroine was a thirty-something guy who had left his evil stepsisters to go off and play a mincing fairy interior decorator. The Stepin Fetchit aspects of my part extended beyond the sexual to the ethnic. My part was that of an ersatz food-court Latin of indeterminate national origin. Even his name, Duarto, does not exist in Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese, a testament to the deep research for which our author was known. Snippy ectomorphs like Duarto have been a staple of the movies since the early talkies. You have seen us, I am sure. Generally, we are slim, our hair is often brilliantined and pasted down like a phonograph record molded directly to the skull. We have been known to sport the occasional eyebrow-pencil mustache. Our jobs tend toward the mildly creative and powerless—tango instructor, wedding consultant, Hays Office–approved neutered gigolo. Also, traditionallywe exhibit two modes of behavior, both of them manifestations of displeasure. There is our comically outraged ethnic or sexual pride, the former eliciting from us a fiery Chiquita Banana “
You een-solt my cohn-tree?
” (which, as we have established, with a name like Duarto, does not actually exist and is therefore not really insultable), and the latter a dubiously macho defense of the molested honor of our woman, our own interest in whom would have to increase tenfold to reach the level of repelled. The far more common state of a Duarto, however, is one of peevish boredom and affronted aesthetics (“
Dios mío
, where did you get that
agonizing
side table?”). This makes us speak in a kind of enervated drawl that broadcasts to all the world that we would much rather be anywhere else than here, preferably somewhere holding a teacup poodle while being the willing recipient of vigorous anal sex.
    And all of it with an accent. I based mine on that of a fellow with whom I went to college. It was 1982, and as best as I can remember, he majored in Peppermint Lounge, with a minor in Pyramid Club. If you asked him where he was from, he responded with, “I am from Europe. Okay, fuck you, Venezuela,” which wasn’t even true. He was Israeli.
    The screenplay reading went well. In addition to Duarto, I was pinch-hitting for three small parts. People were extremely nice to me. I made Diane Keaton giggle at one point; Bette Midler and I talked about her daughter’s school. Sarah Jessica Parker, Victor Garber, and J. Smith-Cameron took me for a post-traumatic drink at the Waldorf bar, and I walked home through the rain, tipsy and thrilled.
    I had been granted admittance into a club I’d no right to be in. Somehow, despite my lack of formal training and my decidedly slim and exclusively off-off-off-Broadway résumé, the dues I’d paid in other realms—a bout of illness here, years logged in dayjobs I didn’t enjoy there (can
you imagine such suffering?)
—could be converted somehow and cashed in for a flight to this new and coveted realm. This role would lead to others and I would never have to go back to the publishing house. Certainly the folks on the movie made me think so. The director took me out for a drink one evening and, like new lovers who endlessly narrate the thoroughly unremarkable details of their early meeting that happened just three weeks prior, he and I fondly recapitulated the out-of-nowhere story of my being cast. My part was at best a cameo and they made me feel like the lead. I was drunk on potential fame. For the next few weeks, I led a double life that was cinematic itself, spending my days at the office but dashing off during lunch hours and evenings after work for rehearsal, makeup and hair tests, and wardrobe