Talent Agency
I actually have no idea what this is about. The advert just asked for ‘Talent’ and said something about training you to go to New York for some big ‘talent’ expo. The audition is in San Diego and inexplicably I’m early. Twenty whole minutes early. I am a Londoner and I’m never early. It’s rude. The first time I had a party in San Diego I said come at 7pm and people actually did; I hadn’t even started cooking.
A nice lady puts a video on that explains everything about the big New York talent expo in June which is called something and was how Ashton Kutchner and some actress got picked up. On the screen are young, beautiful people. All around me are young, beautiful people. I am completely in the wrong place, I have no right to be here, I do not fit into any of their categories, and I walk out to ask if they really want a 39-year old with a face scar even in their building. “Oh yes, they have more and more older women there each year”. Hmm, still not convinced, but fuck it, I may as well stay. Older! How very dare you.
Next to me is sitting one of those tall beautiful women I am so extremely jealous of that it crushes me sometimes. I do really, really, want to be beautiful and I don’t give a fuck that aged nearly 40 with a PhD, a husband, great friends, and many other talents, that I really should have completely gotten over the hurt of growing up with a scar on my lip—a tiny, little, very well sewn scar—but I haven’t, so fuck off.
Beautiful woman is, of course, haughty. Well she looks like she would be. She’s sitting very upright and not talking to anyone. It actually turns out that she is a really, really sweet 19 year old, intelligent and chatty and only 5 days off the plane from Guadalajara, here to go to University for a semester, a bit scared so very quiet. She has it all, including amazing long, curly, titian hair and the sense to audition in a sexy little dress and killer heels, and then change into jeans and trainers for travelling. She is everything a human would want to be and I bear no malice as she is just so darn cute and clever. One day I’ll say, “hey, I knew Marguerite before she was famous”, because if she can’t make it what hell hope do any of us have.
The first part of the audition is so painful I try to bow out. A catwalk strut in front of everybody. I want to be a performer but I have to excuse myself and go to the loo so I don’t have to do it. I’m prepared to stand on a stage and improvise, sing, make a fool of myself, act my little organs out, but this… Sneaking back in I am grabbed and shown to the end of the line with an “it’s compulsory. Go on, it’ll be fun.” I am a fully grown woman who first walked aged 9 months. That skill left me for those hideous seconds I walked forward, paused, smiled a grimace, turned, walked back. I am a show-off only in bursts and when surrounded by friends. Then I am a big show-off. A sometimes annoying show-off. A sometimes “shut the fuck up Eleanor” show-off. Where did that go now?
The rest is an etc. Audition in front of a camera – easy when you’ve done infomercials as I have, and singing for three people – of which I am remarkably better then I remember myself being thanks to many long drives to LA with the stereo on full blast. Finally the booklet of what happens next is given, with the inevitable “if you are chosen here are our fees: a mere $5000 for the week in New York.” I throw it in the bin as soon as I leave. I do not call back to see if I ‘made’ the audition (guessing everyone who called back made it). I so hope Marguerite raised the money and went.