Free Gulliver Takes Five by Justin Luke Zirilli Page A

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.
    I snap a few times to give the pianist the tempo and off he goes. Off I go too. I don’t know what singing is like for anyone else, but here’s what it is for me: an out-of-body experience. It starts in my stomach, a distinct tingling heat that spreads rapidly like liquid from a punctured water balloon. Before I know it, the warmth is flying out of every pore on my body, except I’m not even there anymore. My voice sounds like it’s miles away—a speaker in a car thumping four blocks from here. Trancelike. I give myself over to the notes, the words. I am a slave to the syllables and syncopation. It’s better than an orgasm. It’s better than a full-body massage. If I could sing every minute of every day, I would do it. There is nothing better in this world.
    “Stop!” says the casting director.
    I am back in my body. Disoriented. Blinking. It’s always a system shock to return to my own skin.
    “Thank you, Marty,” he says.
    I nod and whisper, “You’re welcome.”
    I turn to go, determined to hold my head high.
    “Wait. Come back. Can you start from the beginning and take us all the way through, please?”
    Now my smile is genuine. All of them, including the pianist, are sharing in my emotional high. “Are we okay with postponing lunch for four more minutes?” he asks his tablemates.
    “Absolutely,” one of the women says.
    I snap. The pianist starts. And once again, I exit my body.

    I can’t stop smiling on my