Don't Ask Me Why

Don’t ask me why Billy sent me on my journey to Staten Island, because Joel knows that it wasn’t exactly a spiritual journey.

A few weeks ago I read about an audition for a “book trailer.” Look em' up on youtube.

A job’s a job.

And it paid.

Anyway, it was for a young adult sci-fi series that is part wanna-be Lord of the Flies and part Steven King. Anyway, they needed a blond for a character between 15 and 17 years old. I’m not particularly old looking. In fact, there isn’t a person who has met me who assumes I could be out of college already.

I sent them my cover letter, resume and head shot. Sure enough, they agreed that I looked the right age and set up the audition. The great thing was they're holding the audition at a college campus on Staten Island! Oh, and if I wanted a head start on knowing the character there are already two 400 paged books out in the series. Hurrah!

The next three days I attempted to live my normal life going to babysitting jobs, eating dinner with friends, running errands ect., while also trying to conceal the fact that I had two huge books with cover pictures that scream, “ I am a very strange book meant for very strange 12 year olds.” Sometime’s you can judge a book by its cover…

I digress; the day of the audition came.

I walked to the subway and, right away, the train comes. HUZZAH! Except not, “huzzah,” because this means I wasn’t standing around reading the signs posted by the MTA telling me that all the trains running from my station until a few stops into Brooklyn were closed for renovations. Once in Brooklyn, I learned that I had to transfer to two different trains and then walk a bit to get to the ferry.

I eventually got on the ferry, got off the ferry, and successfully found the bus that took me into the middle of the Island. I rode the bus for a very long half hour and, finally, got to the campus, but not before having this lovely conversation:

Woman: You look lost
Me: Oh, this is my first time on Staten Island.
Woman: Where are you heading to?
Me: (College name)
Woman: You came all this way just for a booty call?!
Me: Um, no.

She then went on to tell me how the boys at said college were going to eat me up, so I had better be careful on my way to my audition. Thanks bus lady.

Once on the campus, and it’s the ugliest campus I’ve ever seen, it’s a twenty minute walk to the actual building that the audition is in. There is no campus map around, or at least none with anything more helpful with a bunch of buildings with random letter assignments, so I had to depend on the kindness of the random boys that passed by. This was awkward, considering that while they were giving me directions, the woman’s advice was still playing in my ears.

I get there though. I look around and I realize that all the other girls are ACTUALLY 15 to 17. How did I know this? Well, for one, they were all either wearing sneakers or tacky wedges, but, also, they all had their parents with them.

It would seem I was the only person at the audition who wasn’t a minor and also who wasn’t either from Staten Island or New Jersey.

To be fair, I don’t actually know that ALL of the girls were from Staten Island or New Jersey, but it’s the only reasonable explanation I could give for their parent’s accents, obviously Italian 15 year old girls with badly highlighted hair, interesting clothes, and the fact that they all had cars that their parents used to get to the audition.

My name finally got called and I went in for the audition. I did a baller job. Then the producer asks if he could talk to my parent. I informed him, quite pleasantly, that I’m out of high school. The entire panel of people in the room’s face's fell. They then asked me how old I am. I had just handed them a resume telling them how I was in college last year, so I knew I couldn't get away with saying I’m 18. I said “19.”

I don’t think I’ll be getting a phone call from them any time soon.

I then had to travel through the campus, wait 30 minutes for a but that doesn’t stop at the campus on weekend afternoons, find another bus that I had to pay extra money for, take said special bus around Staten Island, through Brooklyn, and into Manhattan where the bus dropped me off at a subway stop that I already knew was closed for the weekend.

That’s 6 ½ hours of a Saturday that I want back. The lesson learned from this experience? There’s a reason why Billy never sang about this dreadful borough; it’s just not worth going to Staten Island.

The ferry is cool though.

Oh, and now I'm actually invested in that stupid young adult series, so when the next book does come out in May I'll be hounding the library for it.

I wish I was joking.