THE MEANING OF LIFE LA STYLE

I’ve been running for approximately twenty-six years.  Not continually, but regularly and wherever I seem to find myself.  Along the foreshores of Sydney, on the dried crusted sands of outback Australia, through a grey, dank park south of London, along the frozen Hudson River in New York.  Wherever I’ve lived I’ve run.  It’s very cathartic for me.  Without it I’d likely be medicated for anxiety.  At the very least I’d be rather difficult to live with. It also fits my budget…it’s free.  All I do is throw on a pair of old runners, fall out the back door and go for a trot. 

That’s the easy part.  It’s getting back again that I find difficult, for I perpetuate the feminine stereotype of having utterly appalling navigational skills.  Absolutely no sense of direction and a complete inability to read maps.  It shames my brothers, but if forced to use a map, I flip it to match any turns I make and therefore embraced that navigational masterpiece, the GPS, with more joy than I did my husband on our wedding night.  The points on a compass mean nothing to me and unless I waited until the sun set, I would never know where west is. I’m a navigational black hole.  Any relevant information enters my brain and if it comes out at all it’s warped.  Left seems right, up is down, and as for roundabouts, circling them until you’re dizzy is better than getting on a freeway you can’t escape and traveling for miles suspecting, correctly, that you’re going in the wrong direction. 

I think my father thought he could fix the problem by enrolling the four of us in an orienteering course when we were young.  We were put in pairs, given a compass and a map, and a series of targets to find somewhere in the bush.  The first team back won.  I was always put with a family friend who (if he’d been so inclined) could likely have represented Australia in the middle distance running events.  Off he would dash, disappearing amongst the gum trees and buggar following the map, my sole objective was to keep up with him and not spend the day lost in the wilderness.

New York spoiled me; its convenient grid meant that even when I was lost, I was still only one block in the wrong direction.  I’d forgotten how much that hid my disability when I was briefly back in Australia and working in Darwin, Northern Territory.  On my first night there, I stayed with my new boss and her husband and headed out for a jog.  Two and a half hours later, heels bleeding, mouth as dry as a popcorn fart, they found me pounding the pavement clear on the other side of town.

In those days I was a fashion workout puritan; old t-shirts with no labels, my midriff securely covered, shorts from my soccer days and definitely no music device.  I’ve graduated now - audibly anyway - and strap an ipod to my arm.  An excellent device that detracts those pesky talky-trotters from striking up a conversation with me when I cross their path.  It is an instrument I wish I’d had as a little girl when my father would drag me from bed for an early morning run.  In my entire running career I’ve never met a runner like Phil.  He doesn’t seem to find breathing a necessity thereby allowing him to run and talk at the same time.  “So Nome,” he’ll say, half way up a hill, “what do you think is the meaning of life?”

These days I sprint along the edge of the Pacific, the Santa Monica Pier in the distance, dodging seagulls, my feet pounding in time to the rhythm of the Venice drum circle, the theme from Chariots of Fire running through my head.  Usually I am accompanied by a pod of dolphins playing in the waves where the lifeguards are performing one of their many surf rescues.  I’m not sure why there are so many, though it may have something to do with the large number of people swimming fully clothed, which can’t help too much with their buoyancy.  

Sometimes I skip the beach, bike ride to a steep set of stairs and run up and down them until my legs shake so badly I can barely ride home again.  It may seem like an odd thing to do, but I am never alone.  The stairs are always crowded with hundreds of sweating, panting, puffing Santa Monicans all working for the perfect body. 

Up and down the steps I pound, head down and eyes on the stairs, which is great for avoiding an embarrassing trip, but gives me no time to prepare for coming face to face – or face to bum as the case may be – with the person in front. 

Usually it’s a woman in Lycra pants and matching sports bra because here, a display of midriff is compulsory, regardless of its state.  The owner of said midriff may have just given birth to octuplets or placed first in a hamburger eating competition, but still their jiggling abdomens are revealed, shuddering like bacon on a factory convey belt.

And if it’s not the jigglers I run into, it’s the man with the weights, always dressed in a black fleece tracksuit and covered in a weight jacket.  The pungent odour of man-sweat trapped between metal and a synthetic fibre wafts behind him like a skunk under threat.  Though I do occasionally wonder if I’m not much better.  My typical morning involves getting dressed into the pajamas I didn’t wear to bed, (I find them restrictive for sleeping, but perfect for writing) writing for a few hours, then getting out in the sunshine for a bit of exercise.  Rationalising that there’s no point showering before a workout, or putting deodorant on either since I’ll only sweat it off so I may as well save the money, I head for the stairs as natural as nature intended.  The saying ‘ladies don’t sweat, they perspire’ does not apply to me and it has occurred to me that my natural pheromones may, in fact, be offensive to others. 

Now, while the stairs are being pounded by those with the extra pounds, they’re more likely to be lightly tapped by rawboned women, their glossy manes bouncing around their doctor-designed faces, their chopstick legs desperately balancing the weight of their surgically enhanced chests so they don’t topple forwards and land at the bottom of the stairs in a tiny bundle of plastic, collagen and spandex. 

LA is the kind of town where if you didn’t have an eating disorder when you got here, you’ll quickly acquire one.  They’re obligatory.  Like a valley accent, or air pollution, or a passive-aggressive attitude.  Here, pre-schoolers do yoga and ladies carry their complexes in their designer handbag.  Recently I overheard a woman ask her friend how she stayed so thin.  “I haven’t eaten anything that tastes good in years,” the friend replied.

I’ve only been here eight months and already I’ve developed the disturbing habit of reaching under my shirt and feeling my belly pooch every time I take a sip of tea with sugar in it or - heaven forbid - eat the bread my sandwich comes with.  Sometimes when I’m running the stairs I grab at it, as if I might be able to feel the fat dissolve with every step I climb.

So here we are, the fatties, the clones and me, all vying for space on the wooden stairs.  And just like I can sniff the weight man, I can also sniff the clones’ disdain when they glance at my outfit, my baseball cap hiding my unbrushed hair, the sun cream running milkily down my arms.

“What’s the time?” Clone One asks Clone Two, pointedly ignoring the watch on my wrist.  After taking her earphone out of one ear and telling the person on her iPhone to “hang on a minute,” Clone Two looks at Clone One and says; “twelve thirty.”  (No self respecting Hollywood-wannabe exercises before noon.  Probably because their waitressing shift didn’t finish until three and they also need the morning to blow dry their freshly washed hair).  But it’s not really the time Clone One cares about.  What she’s really saying is; “how did you convince your surgeon to do your breasts so big?  I tried, but mine refused.  I knew I should have spent the extra money for the surgeon on that reality show, all my friends did and he did exactly as they asked.”

One of my greatest runs was back in New York on the night of ‘blackout 2003’ (as the commemorative t-shirts said).  At first New Yorkers panicked (it seemed a little too much like that fateful September date) but after it was ascertained – and blamed on Canada – that it was just a huge power failure, it was a very pleasant evening indeed.  Spontaneous street parties erupted, stores gave away melting ice creams and candles were shared as people gathered together on the brownstone steps.  At dusk, not a single light but the fireflies in the trees and the sun setting over the west side apartments, I strode around the Jackie Onassis Resevoir and thought of Phil. 

What was the meaning of life?  Was it this?  A mad-paced city forced to stop and smell the dog pee evaporating from its sidewalks?  To recognise that for all their differences, the inhabitants could still be united by a single blown fuse.  Or did the clones have it right?  Was the meaning of life competitive uniformity?  Should we abandon individuality and strive instead for homogenous perfection? 

I decided to ask Clone Number Two…if only I could work out which one she was.

I WRITE LIKE CHUCK PALANIUK

I'm a bit behind in my newspaper reading because I've been re-reading Harry Potter (Harry Pooper as my oh-so-mature husband calls him) in preparation for the final movie release.

I fancy myself a bit of a Ginny Granger. I've got red hair and lots of brothers too. And my love could defeat an evil super-wizard too.
Though with a whisk or a spatula. Not a wand.


I digress.
The point is, I just read last week's Sunday Life mag and submitted some of my writing to a website that tells you who you write like.
Apparently my match is Chuck Palahniuk
Cool huh?

HOW TO TRANSPORT A DEAD DOG ON A NEW YORK SUBWAY

The second story in my tales from New York...

I hope you enjoy it.

My friend tells a cracking good story about her escapade on the subway.  She was house sitting, well dog-sitting actually, when one night she comes home to find the dog has up and died on her.  Terrified, she calls the owners but they don’t seem too distressed by their pet’s passing and ask her just to take the dog to their vet and they will sort it out when they get back. 

How am I going to transport a dead dog around the streets of New York the girl wonders the next morning, staring at the deceased canine lying in rigor mortis on the living room floor.  Sensibly (she thinks) she chooses a suitcase and stuffs the stiffened dog inside, pushing his paws into the corners and curling his tail around the special compartment for socks and ties.  It’s a pretty tight fit and she only just manages to close the lid, so she grabs the dog leash, (figuring the owners won’t need it anymore) and ties it around the case for extra support.  There is no elevator to the top floor apartment of this brownstone in Greenwich Village, so she has no choice but to lug the suitcase full of demised dog down the stairs and out into the snowy streets of NY.  Now, the vet is located in midtown and one would assume the ideal mode of transport for courier of a dead dog would be a taxi.  But she’s an actor, therefore she’s poor and doesn’t have the money for a taxi, so she embraces the chariot for the common man, that mighty workhorse…the great New York subway.  She drags the case along the snow-slicked street and kuh-thunk ku-thunk ku-thunk’s her hefty load down two flights of stairs to the subway platform.  So far so good she thinks, waiting for the uptown train.  It arrives and she joins the commuters, her suitcase blending inconspicuously with their double bass cases, shopping carts, un-assembled K-Mart furniture, plants, bikes and assorted paraphernalia other Americans would transport in their car.  She alights at her stop, dragging the doggie bag out just in time to escape the closing doors, then looks up the three flights of stairs, daunted at the prospect of getting her corpse to the top.  The last thing she needed was for the case to bust its seams and spill perished pooch all over the stairs.

“Excuse me ma’am do you need a hand?” asks a young man.

“Oh that would be awesome,” she says gratefully, “thank you so much.  This bag is really heavy.”

“It looks it,” says the Good Samaritan, picking up one end of the case, “what’s in there?”

“Ah…computer supplies,” lies my friend, hoping he doesn’t get too close and catch the faint whiff of expired canine.

“Oh right, like parts of computers?” asks the guy as they reach the first landing.

“Yeah,” agrees the girl, going along with his assumption.  “I’m moving and this seemed like the best way to transport my computer.  Pull it all apart and pack it in a suitcase.” She cringes at her tale, but the guy seems to believe her and they make it to the second landing.  “Nearly there,” she says, “thanks so much for helping me.” 

“No problem,” says the guy, “I’m just glad I was around when you needed me.” 

And then he punches her in the face, prompting her to drop the bag and grab her bleeding nose.  Before she has a chance to recover, the guy grabs the case, sprints up the final flight of stairs and out into the streets of NY never to be seen again. 

Gone. 

And not with a case of dismantled computer pieces like he supposes, but rather of a day-old deceased Fido on its way to the doggie morgue. 

INTRODUCING THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH...

The Sydney Writers' Festival is on this week, but Miss Q provided such a complete and utter distraction, that it wasn’t until two weeks ago that I remembered, and by then all the events I wanted to attend were booked out.

Like this one. A chance to pitch your novel to three international publishers with the possibility that they may choose to represent you.

I’ve come agonisingly close with the manuscript I wrote based on my seven years in the US but it was ultimately rejected by a u-beaut-passionfruit publishing house because the marketing department said the GFC meant people weren’t travelling much at the moment and that short stories are hard to sell.

Three points on that one.

I don’t know much about a lot of things, and virtually nothing about economics, but isn’t the Aussie dollar doing pretty well right now? Maybe lots of us are travelling.

Secondly, I doubt my book would make a very helpful travel guide around NYC anyway, unless you wanted to know which bin it was that I searched in for a Rolex with bad karma, or how a dead dog managed to travel on the subway.

And thirdly, what's wrong with short stories? They're great for people with short attention spans. 

Like me.

Some of these short stories have already made it to various public forums, (see, plenty of us have short attention spans) but I have a lot of stories to tell, so I’ve decided to put them up on this little blog of mine, one story at a time, until all 45 000 words have been posted.

I hope you enjoy…

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH

By Naomi Hart

Low Overhead And A Sense of Improvisation Make For A Great Life.

John Leland.

Chapter One

AN ODE TO THE APPLE

My box of chocolates is confiscated on the grounds that it has the same density as a bomb.  Is it legal to rifle through a lady’s underwear in full view of the other passengers?  It seems highly unlikely I’ve constructed an explosive out of my asthma puffer and yet it is still confiscated due to its high security risk.  Am I a security risk? 

Welcome to Los Angeles International Airport, October 2002.  Just long enough after September 11 for Homeland Security to have developed a complex and time consuming screening process that seems to do nothing more than target old men and Australian musical theatre students on their way to New York City.

LAX has to be the most terminally boring airport in the world.  Pardon the pun.  They could learn a thing or two from the Singaporeans.  Or the Thai, or Japanese.  Get off a plane in those airports and you can indulge in a massage, delicious fresh Sushi or buy a twenty thousand dollar Rolex.  LAX has nothing more exciting than a Starbucks. 

Several hours and several more security lines later, (it’s a line now, not a queue, since I’m now in America proper) the sugar-free-hazelnut-flavoured-non-fat-double-shot-soy-latte easing the pain of my jetlag, I boarded the plane for the city that was to become my home not just for the six months I’d originally intended, but for the next seven years. 

My wondrous, overwhelming, passionate, thrilling home.

I had moved to the Big Apple to study musical theatre and found myself in student accommodation on West 100^th in an apartment block called The Midway.  The Midway?  Sounded like a halfway house to me.  In fact, we’re not entirely sure it wasn’t a brothel.  One whole floor was painted bright pink and there was a curious amount of traffic in and out of there all night long. 

I climbed the six flights of stairs (New York did nothing to heal my discontent with elevators) and opened the door to my first American home…four uneven walls, one window with a view of a collapsed fire escape, linoleum floor, leaking radiator, a sink, two shelves and bunk beds.  Bunk beds?  I was twenty-three years old and I was going to sleep in a bunk bed?  As it turned out, the room was large by New York standards and my roommate and I quickly became the envy of all with our very own bathroom.  Our friends shared theirs with cockroaches, rats, and the hermit on the fifth floor.  He died sometime in December but no one knew until right before Christmas when an ungodly odour permeated the place.  The police were called and suddenly I was in my very own episode of Law And Order.  The room was guarded twenty-four hours a day and the yellow tape you see in the movies quarantined half the floor.

“Welcome to New York City, the greatest city in the world.  The envy of the world.”  (Or so we were told by the Dean of our school).  “Remember,” he added, “performing is the X-Ray of your soul.”

With my soul exposed, classes began and I was put in a group with my very own Miss America.  Well, Miss Delaware actually.  She lost out in the finals and had a fight in the dressing room with Miss Nevada and Miss Hawaii.  I was completely fascinated.  The closest I had ever come to someone like her was Miss Granny Smith in the Apple festival at the Eastwood fete.  She wanted to know if “ya’ll have kangerroooos hoppin’ bout yer yard.”  And although I already adored her, she sealed it forever when we all read A Streetcar Named Desire while she thought we’d read A Streetcar Named Desiree. 

We took four different dance disciplines – tap, jazz, theatre and ballet - most of them at eight o’clock in the morning when I was as ready to kick-ball-change as Giuliani was to give up his post.  In our first ballet lesson we had to step forward, say our name, where we were from and whom we had studied dance under. 

“Naomi Hart, Sydney Australia.  I studied ballet at the Armidale Ballet School.”  Do you think anyone had heard of that?  Our teacher took one look at our pirouettes and suggested we practice them in a closet until we could do fifteen in a row.  For a while I used my room since it was about the same size, but it all came together when my jazz teacher told me the elevator theory.  “You know when you’re in a crowded elevator and you need to fart,” he said as if it was perhaps an everyday occurrence for him, “so you clench your butt muscles to keep it in.  It’s the same thing with pirouettes.  Just pretend you need to fart.” 

I didn’t get to fifteen, but it did help me land my triples.

I was the wild card entry into the top tap class (the first class I could actually do was also the last) with a teacher that had snorted so much cocaine, blood dripped from his nose in time to the warm up.  I did get to hang out with the cool dancers though.  You know, the ones who when their tights ladder cut out the crotch and wear them as tops. 

I learned the original choreography for Cats, 42^nd Street, A Chorus Line, Chicago, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Tommy to name but a few.  My knees made more noise than popcorn cooking in a microwave, (I should know since it was the only thing I had to cook with) my hamstrings were tighter than an actor’s budget, and when G-Dubbya was looking for those elusive weapons of mass destruction, I though he may have been referring to my leotard and tights.  They were fierce.

Our music theatre teacher advised us not to smoke.  “If you want to rebel against your parents, I suggest lesbianism.”  He also reminded us that “acting is like a virgin on prom night; you just have to put out.”

We were taught never to point one finger on stage because it looks like a small skinny penis, and the first time I work-shopped a sex scene, (laying on a makeshift bed in nothing more than a body stocking) my teacher cautioned me to avoid looking like freshly landed trout.   He then turned to my scene partner and advised seriously, “if she is trying to seduce you, you must account for the significant shift in body mass that is likely to occur.”

The instructors were so concerned with my speech they sent me to accent reduction class to learn standard American for the stage.  It was me, the Mexicans, a couple of French Canadians, and a few blokes who wanted to rid themselves of their gay dialect.  Pretty soon, we were learning to say therrow not thorough, kahndm not condom, can’t not cahn’t.

The rest of my voice and speech class was spent squatting on my haunches “like a beer shitting” as our teacher so eloquently described.  Apparently he was looking for an open space so that if he shone a flashlight up our butts the light would come out our mouths. 

My voice teacher followed this up with a discussion about the fache (jelly) in my face and how an open throat for singing was rather like the feeling of openness during a visit to the gynecologist. 

There were times my teachers caused me great concern. 

One of our subjects required we spend seven hours each week studying the craft.  We could get away with watching reality TV if we wished, but most of us didn’t have one, so instead, we turned to our playground.  Five buck nose-bleeder tickets at the Lincoln Centre to see Jeremy Irons perform in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.  Australia’s own Caroline O’Connor as Velma Kelly in the 2500 anniversary performance of Chicago.  Standing room tickets to see Antonio Banderas play opposite that tour de force Chita Rivera, in a production of Nine that stands in my memory as one of the greatest pieces of theatre I have ever seen.  I cried when Hugh Jackman sang I Still Call Australia Home, cheered silently when my acting teacher came on stage in an off-Broadway production of Sin and saw Kathleen Turner naked.  Clearly I’m not a true artiste if that’s all I can tell you about her playing opposite Jason Biggs in The Graduate, but it did start a run of Broadway nudity for me.  If Kathleen was my appetiser, my entree was a rather meaty course of front row seats to Naked Boys Singing and I sated my sweet tooth with a production of Take Me Out, which held several of its scenes in a locker-room complete with showers.  In my professional opinion, the arctic air conditioning of a New York theatre can do nothing for a man’s self esteem. 

My favourite class, called Film Lab was scheduled once a week.  We’d all file into a dark studio and watch live recordings of the greatest theatre stars Broadway has ever seen.  Chita Rivera, Dame Judi Dench, Nathan Lane, Ann Reinking, Bob Fosse, Julie Andrews, Glenn Close, Tommy Tune…I would sit there with tears running silently down my face and think; This is it.  This is what I want to do.  I want to be like Carol Channing and still performing the title role in ‘Hello Dolly’ at the tender age of 72.

People’s response to NYC is typically both immediate and strong.  You either love her or you don’t.  From the second I landed, New York became my mistress.  For seven glorious, intoxicating years I was privileged enough to be her lover and while I may never live there again, when we finally broke up, she certainly kept a piece of my heart.  New York.  A farrago of cultures, generations and influences crammed together in an area only five miles by seven.  For many her spice and bolshiness seem rude and combative.  Her cauldron of cultures overwhelms and confuses.  Her speed and audacity don’t charm they repel.  She is more than just a mistress, she’s a dominatrix.  She humbles you with her frenetic pace and uncompromising ways, and if you manage to survive all that, she just waits for winter when no one will doubt who’s boss.  

If she sees you’re tired, she’ll send the trash train instead of the last A express.  If she senses you’re frustrated, she’ll send a torrent of rain when you’ve got to cross town for an audition and forgot your umbrella.  If she perceives vulnerability she’ll send your nemesis, wrapped up in a nasty casting director or a canceled flight on your Christmas getaway. 

But where else can you do your laundry at two o’clock in the morning and enjoy a beer in the courtyard while you wait for it to dry?  Not even the sign saying Please Remove All Bullets Before Washing can ruin that experience.  Or go on a first date to Momofuku noodle bar in the east village, initiate him to The Strand bookstore in Union Square, get in a bit of kanoodling in the self help section and marry him eighteen months later at a converted foundry in Queens.

Corn bread and collard greens in Harlem, Ethiopian on the West side, baklava at the Greek café on the corner of Broadway in Astoria.  Pedicures in Spanish, bikini waxes in Vietnamese, haircuts in Polish.  Get your free coffee at the porn store on 48^th and 8^th on your way to a callback at Chelsea Studios.  Study a lady flossing her teeth in the middle of Times Square and watch a man trim his beard on the crowded subway.  Teeming sidewalks, taxis honking, people yelling, everyone ignoring the urgent siren of the ambulance.  The Met, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art.  Twenty-four hour diners with a side of mayonnaise, dance class with original cast members of Broadway shows, the rich and famous mixing inconspicuously with the worker-bees that keep that town alive.

Twenty-fours hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.  She doesn’t stop, she doesn’t slow down, she doesn’t have to.  Don’t even think about trying to change her, if you don’t like the way things run, move to Westchester and commute like all the other pussies do. 

New York.  A city of unconquerable energy and its inhabitants, all thirsting for what they’re not sure, but knowing that if it exists at all, they’ll find it here.  It was the greatest, loneliest, headiest, saddest, ‘funnest’ and toughest time of my life.  I’m stronger now, but I’m more vulnerable, I’m quicker of mind, but more deliberate in action and I oscillate between having all the answers and not knowing a damn thing for sure at all.             

Yes, I thought as I strolled 9^th Avenue one frosty February eve, I’ve made the right choice.  Now let’s get on with the show.  

ATLAS PRODUCTIONS RATES THE FIRST SENTENCE OF MY NOVEL!

The fine people at Atlas Productions think I have an excellent first line to a novel.

It’s a shame the rest of my manuscript didn’t live up to expectations as I finished only with a highly commended and not the winning publishing deal.

Ah well. Better than nothing my friends, better than nothing.

CHECK ME OUT ON T-SQUAT.COM

I've had my article included in issue three of T-Squat an online mag for emerging artists. I'm a few stories in, just scroll down till you see my name.
Very exciting people. Check it out, there is a lot of good material for you to while away a boring office afternoon...

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH - TALES OF NEW YORK THROUGH STORIES AND SONG

misc.Productions present...

- THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH -

TALES of NEW YORK through Stories and Song... 

Featuring NAOMI HART accompanied by PAUL GEDDES

Come and discover the Big Apple no tourist will ever see. Chuckle, cry, commiserate, cringe and land back in Oz exhausted, exhilarated and damn sure you’d do it all again in a New York minute because.....

Acting is like a virgin on prom night...you just have to put out.

Dead dogs can indeed be transported on the New York subway. 

There is a porn store on the corner of 48th and 8th that gives out free coffee.

Ketchup packets and hot water make an excellent budget tomato soup.

Bullets should be removed before clothes are placed in a washing machine; and

Clingwrap prevents the transmission of genital herpes....

THE BERKELOUW WINE BAR [70 Norton Street, Leichhardt] Friday 27th and Saturday 28th of August @ 8pm [Free Entry]

Table reservations are available [Contact: 0438 644 622] 

www.berkelouwwinebar.com www.naomihart.com www.thisismisc.com

SCHADENFREUDE

“Do what you want and the money will come.”  This has been our father’s career mantra to us our entire adult lives.  He learned it from one of his fellow social work buddies, and though it seems to have worked out all right for them, I don’t think they considered the career trajectory of Phil’s only daughter.  I started off with dreams of medicine, but quickly realised I had no natural affinity for the sciences, did not in fact, enjoy stranger’s bodily fluids and really only wanted to do it because I’d gotten lost in a fantasy of my own design.  I had pictured myself charging through the bush to save a patient from a vicious tiger snakebite.  Life-saving surgery aboard the Royal Flying Doctor Service, quadruplets delivered in the back of a car in peak hour traffic.  I imagined striding across the tarmac to a chopper, the wind from the propellers blowing back my hair, my stethoscope tossed jauntily over my shoulder, as I headed deep into drought stricken Africa.  Then it occurred to me…I can do all that, and without the ten years of agonising study.  I can amputate limbs, coordinate relief teams, discover the cure for cancer, and all from the safety of the stage.

Thus began my career in musical theatre. 

I’ve always liked performing and danced at the local ballet school from an early age.  One of my greatest artistic achievements was my role as head chick in the Armidale Ballet School Premiere of The Ugly Duckling.  Left backstage to dress myself, I slipped on my ballet shoes, secured my cardboard beak and climbed into my matching yellow leotard…backwards.  Out onto stage I danced, my little hands tucked into my armpits like wings, no idea that my four-year-old nipples were proudly on display.  Things haven’t really improved much since then.  I’ve been weed on onstage by a terrified goat, forgotten by my scene partner who was playing cards in the green room, and competed for stage time with a theatre’s resident squirrel.

This is the reason people like live entertainment.  Schadenfreude.  The thrilling possibility that something will go wrong and the performers are made to look exceedingly foolish.  (People hope for it in real life too of course, hence the unstoppable machine that is reality TV). 

In actuality, me trying to get a job in theatre would provide far more schadenfreude than if I actually had one.  Most people aren’t privy to the mysteries behind getting a gig in theatre (come to think of it neither am I) so let me try to help you out. 

First you read the audition notices in the weekly trade rag.  Every Thursday there’s a new issue and it’s just like Christmas; you know what you put on your list – decent theatres, decent roles and decent pay – but you never know if Santa ignored you and gave you a lump of coal instead.  After skipping castings that say things like ‘seeking talented actress with infected toe’ you plot your day so as to hit as many auditions as possible.  Then you pack your bag.  I imagine the rate of back injuries is higher in New York than anywhere else in the world because of the number of actors trolling the streets and subways weighed down by said bag.  In it, you have several copies of your resume and headshot (it should look like you on a blind date; groomed but realistic) leotard, dance tights sans ladders, tap, jazz, ballet and theatre shoes, repertoire book (a gargantuan folder filled with musical excerpts ranging from Oklahoma to Celine Dion’s rendition of My Heart Will Go On), plenty of reading material and countless snacks to keep you going on what could easily become a ten hour day.  You arrive at the audition studios, ignore the stares of the other women each trying to ascertain if you’re a threat to their chances of employment, follow the sign to the small stuffy holding room, add your name to the list that at nine a.m. is already at two hundred and fifty-six and wedge yourself between a wall and a window that has a view of the snowy fire escape of the building next door.  Now, your location in the holding room is far more crucial than you would assume.  You can’t just plonk yourself down in the first available seat.  That would be holding room suicide.  You’ve got to treat it like the war zone it is.  Survey the land, identify the terrorists and head for neutral territory.  Beware the girl doing splits up the wall and carrying on a conversation like it’s perfectly normal.  Also avoid the girl talking extra loud about how her manager didn’t even want her to audition for this role and she’s only here because the casting director called her in.  “I was just about to take a pilates class when he called.  Lucky I’d already washed and styled my hair.  I just threw this dress on and ran down here.  It’s so handy living in midtown.”

There’s always some twit warming up at the top of her lungs, right next to the sign saying ‘no vocalising permitted’ or a girl at your elbow hogging all the mirror space so she can curl her hair because ‘that’s how the girl in the original cast had it.’

There you sit squashed in your corner, sipping on your bad NYC coffee and ignoring the girl with the manager who says loudly to no one in particular; “you know, you should never drink coffee before singing.  It dehydrates your vocal chords.”

She may be correct, but there are two very important factors involved here that she hasn’t even considered.  One – I don’t live in midtown, so I’ve been up for much longer than her just to get here in time and two – I paid ninety cents for that acrid, burnt, thicker than tar coffee and have no intention of letting it go to waste.

When your number finally comes up (number two hundred and fifty-six can take quite a while) the monitor collects your headshot and bio, marches you into the hallway and lines you up along the wall outside the audition room.  Here you will see some of the greatest theatre of all.  Someone always assumes the role of the bitch and actively tries to sabotage her competitors; “you’re not going to sing that are you?  The director is a friend of mine and I know he hates that song.”  It’s like ten pin bowling.  If you play well, you can roll a strike, unsettle all the other pins and clear the way for yourself.

Soon it’s your turn and the monitor opens the door, ushers you inside and closes it quickly before the girl behind you gets a chance to take a look.  Going through the audition room door is like going through the wardrobe to Narnia.  Everybody visits the same place, but has a totally different experience. 

“The panel is lovely.”

“The accompanist is horrible.”

“They asked me to sing four songs.”

“They were all eating hamburgers, I should have sung the McDonald’s commercial.”

You take your music to the accompanist and inform him about your songs without upsetting his delicate professional sensibilities (never, ever tap the tempo of your piece on the surface of the instrument) and head to the centre of the room, sometimes stopping on a gaffa taped X that makes you feel like you’re facing a firing squad and not a bunch of musical theatre queens.  Thirty seconds later it’s over, and you’re back on the other side of the wardrobe with no idea if they loved you or thought you should consider an alternate career in plumbing.

Dance auditions are something else entirely.  Often they’re after the singing and the room is filled with a horrid mix if diva dancers (the ones who, when their tights ladder, cut out the crotch and wear them as tops), sopranos who aren’t used to doing much else but standing on stage and singing really high, and the rest of us who fall somewhere in between.  It’s like riding a bike.  You have to share the road with wide-loads spilling out of their lanes, riders who took their training wheels off a little too early, and the occasional Cadel Evans (Lance Armstrong for the Americans) who puts the rest of us to shame.  In either activity, you still end up with a sore groin.

My friend Libby has the greatest dance audition story.  She is a fabulous actress with a dynamite voice but no ability to grasp choreographed movement whatsoever.  She absolutely cannot dance.  She tried to convince a panel of this, who nonetheless coerced her into attending the dance call later that day.  There she stood in her shorts and t-shirt, dead in the middle of the room, desperately trying to learn the combination.  Step kick step leap, arabesque lunge pirouette.  Pirouette!  Oh no, this is going to be bad.  Still, just as she saw the others do, she prepped for the turn, attempted it…and took down all six people dancing around her.  Climbing to her feet, she dusted herself off, sent a “see I told you so” to the panel, a “sorry” to her fallen comrades, gathered her bag and quickly exited the room.  I really wish I’d been there for that one.

Sometimes, despite the odds, you manage to land a gig.  I’ve been a whore, a nun, a princess, a peasant, a murderess, a cow and a dancing plate in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.  Backstage for that show was a riot.  The green room looked like a giant’s kitchen cupboard.  Four-foot forks and spoons were propped against the wall (we broke the knives in final dress and didn’t have time to fix them), the clock couldn’t get up the stairs unless he hopped and the guy playing the magic carpet wrestled with his costume like a criminal in a straight jacket.  Final dress would have been better entertainment than the show itself I reckon.  I had a collision with the teapot, a serviette broke the staircase, the beast busted a chair, the kick-line forgot the teacup and the wardrobe lost her drawers. 

It is at times like that, dressed in a gold lame headpiece with matching waistband and leotard, a huge spinning plate harnessed to my back, that I consider the career choices of my high school friends.  Accountants, teachers, scientists, town planners.  Sensible, stable, perpetually necessary professions with a base salary that keeps you above the poverty line.   Because that’s the biggest schadenfreude of it all.  Theatre – unless you’re a star on Broadway – doesn’t even pay well.  My first salary was two hundred and fifty dollars a week.  Even a tight arse like me finds it difficult to live on that. 

So I considered medicine again.  I grappled with my aversion to years of study, got out my calculator, worked out how much I’d need to live on, how much it would cost me to get the degree, and how long it would take me to pay it all back. 

In the end it just wasn’t worth it.  I decided to stick with theatre and the magic of make-believe.  At least then I could do what I want and pretend the money will come.

A TRAVEL MEMOIR WITH A KICK-BALL-CHANGE

Acting is like a virgin on prom night…you just have to put out.

You can pass your driver’s test in LA by bribing the examiner with fried chicken.

There is a porn store on the corner of 48^th and 8^th in NYC that gives out free coffee in the morning.

A dental tool and an American flag are all the tools you need for successful drug smuggling.

The annual plastic flamingo festival is held in Maine.

Bullets should be removed before clothes are placed in a washing machine, and clingwrap is an excellent preventer for the transmission of genital herpes.

These are just some of the invaluable pearls of wisdom I have gained after seven years in the Big Apple.

Based on my time as a theatre student in New York City and later as a performer in theatres across America, these gems belong to stories in a compilation titled The Seven Year Itch, A Travel Memoir With A Kick-Ball-Change! 

Told with a New Yorker’s candidness and an Aussie’s sense of the absurd, The Seven Year Itch is a wicked insight into the trials and tribulations of a fast-approaching-thirty-time’s-a-tickin’-dancin’-girl as she pirouettes around Maine, tip-taps through London, shuffles off to Santa Monica and lands back in Oz, exhausted, exhilarated and damn sure she’d do it all again in a New York minute.

Hear some of these tales on ABC's Radio National Life Matters Program and contact Naomi for further information.