Free Gulliver Takes Five by Justin Luke Zirilli

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 toget 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