It's My Birthday and the Show Must Go On
And no one has the grit for the theatre like ME and the girls in my head.
It’s my 39th birthday, and I woke up this morning, flooded with a cluster of contrasting thoughts.
Maybe it’s because I woke up in Hollywood. Or maybe it’s because last night I dreamt that I was an actress again, trudging from audition to audition.
For whatever reason, this morning I couldn’t help but think of these thoughts as a cast.
A cast of something girly: a teen episodic, or a modern musical about young love. The kind of show where there’s one of every trope. The cool girl, the bad girl, the sad girl, etc.
Just as every trope has her own distinct way of dressing, each thought was followed by her own distinct feeling. That’s how it goes—character drives personal style; thoughts drive emotions.
I didn’t care for some of the thoughts I was experiencing. I wanted to cherry-pick the thoughts that made me feel “good” and fire the ones that made me feel “bad” from whatever show my body had decided we were working on, this particular May 1st.
But then I felt like a problematic casting director, axing a girl ‘cause she isn’t “palatable enough” to suit the mainstream aesthetic.
And that’s the antithesis of who I want to be, not at 39.
Plus, I was that girl, the young actress who was always told she “was very talented but too inaccessible to be a star.” In many ways, I’m still that girl. As a writer, I’ve received feedback from some of the biggest dogs in the business along the lines of, “While we love Zara’s work, we have zero idea how to market her.”
I disagree with the ethos that women who are creative should fit into a pretty neat little box, so why the hell would I make myself part of the problem?
Begrudgingly, I flipped the script: “All of you are stars, and you all have something about you that’s interesting, so I’d like to see every single one of you for a callback. Right now. You’re all up for the lead. Show me what you got, girls.” I cooed, assembling a proverbial director’s chair. I scooted into the seat and slung on a baseball hat, as directors are wont to do.
“Who’s up first?”
A girl in baby blue boxers and a black hoodie emerged from the wings.
“Tell me. What’s your thought?” I tried my best not to judge her, but like, why was she wearing boxers to an audition?
“It’s my first birthday without my brother,” she sniffled sadly. She was followed heavily by the feeling of grief, it was apparent in her physical body: every limb was slumped downward, like she was carrying the weight of Manhattan on her back.
“Oh, you sweet thing. What’s your name?” I asked, feeling guilty for my initial superficial assessment of her presentation.
“Sylvia Del Rey,” she answered, sad eyes at half-mast.
A deafening silence passed between us.
For a second, I was tempted to fill the empty air with my own blatherings of how I related to her pain.
Let her fucking speak! The voice within sharply lectured.
Okay, okay, I got it, I promised.
I softened into the silence, and after several seconds, she cleared her throat. “I feel very alone in the world. I am very afraid. I feel small and scared, the world isn’t safe.” Tears sprang into her big, wounded eyes. “Like I lost my protector. My person.” She took a deep breath. “All I want for my birthday is to have my big brother back.” She began to weep, big, sloppy, wet tears hitting the stage floor.
Pretty soon, I was weeping too.
“What do you need?” I asked her, wiping my tears with my sleeve.
“For you to not wipe away your tears.” She answered simply.
“Why?”
“Because it makes me feel even lonelier.”
“What do I do with the tears, then?”
“Just let them fall.”
“Okay,” I answered. The tears were warmer than I expected as I felt them slide down my cheeks, landing together in the center of my chest, where they quickly dissolved into my skin, their essence lingering like perfume.
“Who’s up next?” I called to the group, basking in the shockingly sophisticated and weirdly healing scent of grief.
“I fucking am!” A girl stomped on the stage, dressed like me at sixteen: towering platforms, low-rise “Frankie B” black denim, hipbones exposed, vintage teeshirt shredded and doctored into a crop top, pack of Parliament Lights in shaking un-manicured hands, glossy pink lips pouting.
“I’m Violet and I want to get fucked up!” She hooted loudly. “Let’s fucking party.” The feelings that followed her were anxious, jittery, fight or flight, despite there being no visible danger in sight.
I cackled. I liked her. “It’s eight in the morning, why so early?” I asked.
“Cause I don’t want to feel this shit!” She laughed. She laughed a little too loud and a little too hard and a little too long for my comfort.
“I get it,” I said calmly. “What do you need, Violet?” I waited for her to say, a glass of fucking wine, bitch.
She unearthed a ciggy from her pack and lit it up with a hot pink lighter.
Smoke billowed from her glossy mouth.
Here it comes, I thought.
“You really want to know?” She raised her over-plucked eyebrows suspiciously and studied me.
“Of course.”
“Well it’s not like you’ve ever fucking asked me before.” She snapped. This time, smoke blew from her nostrils. A “French exhale,” as we used to refer to it back in my day.
I warded off the urge to defend myself against Violet’s allegations that I never fucking ask her what she needs.
Shut up and listen, that’s your only job! The voice within warned.
Calm down. I fucking know. I clipped back.
Violet’s eyes darted like bats. It was dizzying. Finally, they stilled, and so did her jittery body. She stood like a girl standing in her power for the first time.
“I need you to stop catering to my every whim. I’m just a teenager. Don’t you get that! I need a GROWN-UP!” She was scream-sobbing in teen girl hysteria, but her body remained rooted as an oak tree. I’d never seen anything quite like it.
“Wait—” Suddenly, all the pieces puzzled together in my brain. “Wait. You need me to parent you, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Her voice was loud and clear. “But if you ever fucking tell anyone I told you this—I’ll deny it to the grave,” she stamped her cigarette with her platform.
“Deal,” I promised. “But don’t smoke in my house—or at all—for that matter. You’re destroying your body. You need an outlet? It’s not cigarettes. Write a poem. Make something. Move your body.”
“You're ruining my life!” She grimaced like an adolescent should. Only this time her eyes weren’t full of distrust, they were full of so much love it took everything inside of me not to fall to my knees.
But she didn’t need me to fall to my knees. She needed me to be a grown-up. “It’s all out of love!” I chirped, sweet and strong, reminding myself of my own mother.
Before I could call in the next girl, she was already pacing the stage. She was wearing workout clothes, a cute set a fitness influencer might hawk.
“Let’s get this out of the way, name is Brittney, basic, fine, but you chose it. Anyway. You NEED to go to the gym,” she said, hands on her hips, “I’m VERY concerned you’re not going to go to the GYM.” She glared at me and smacked her gum. Her feeling was pure rage. Disproportionately so. What was she so angry about?
“What are you so angry about?” I asked, alarmed.
“Because if you don’t go to the gym, you’re going to beat me up—and I’m TIRED OF THIS CYCLE. You think that motivates me? Working so hard, running for miles and miles and miles five days a week—even after you spend the night drinking shitty wine—and god-fucking-forbid I miss one fucking day—and I get called a lazy piece of shit. It doesn’t feel good! It’s textbook abuse, and I’m PISSED THE FUCK OFF AT YOU.”
It dawned at me that my thoughts really seemed to liked the word “fuck.”
“What do you need?” I asked, “I genuinely want to know.” I felt a surge of tremendous empathy. There’s always some iteration of pain beneath rage.
“Stop being mean to me,” she started crying. “I’m doing my best. And I think I’m doing a great job. You put me through a lot. And I always show up for you.”
“You're my body, aren’t you?” I asked, blown away. Tears pierced my eyes and I almost wiped them away—but quickly remembered I’d promised Sylvia Del Rey I’d let them fall. Maybe they’d add a fresh element to the Grief perfume.
“I am. And I’m so fucking nice to you. Even when you abuse me. I’m nice! Please be nice back.” She begged.
A sledgehammer smashed my heart open. “I’m so sorry,” I jumped on stage and wrapped my arms around her in a hug. She hugged me back. It was surreal. Being so connected to her, my body. But also kind of fucking amazing.
“I’m next,” a small girl shyly raised her hand. She wore thick horn-rimmed glasses and a prim dress with a large Peter Pan collar.
“What’s your name?” I asked, “Also, you don’t need to raise your hand, here. This isn’t school.”
“Eve.”
“What’s your thought?” I was having difficulty reading her, she was so meek, so unexpressive compared to the other brash girls.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m feeling very unfulfilled. I don’t know what else to say. I’ll go now.” She shrank about an inch and slumped off stage.
In that moment, I knew in my spleen exactly what feeling she held, for it’s a feeling I’m well acquainted with: she felt ashamed.
Shame makes you small.
Shame makes you meek.
Shame makes you slump away and self-medicate in isolation and darkness. I didn’t want that for her.
“Eve, please come back. I truly want to talk to you.”
“But don’t I embarrass you? I’m not cool like the other girls.” Her voice sounded muffled behind the thick red curtain.
“Actually, we all want to be you. We really do.” Sylvia Del Rey, Violet and Brittney sang in unison from the sidelines. They all had pretty voices, different from each other, but when harmonized together, made the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard in my whole life.
I guess the show we were working on was a musical, after all.
Eve peered from behind the curtain.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“Please, please, please, please—tell us, tell us, tell us, we need you, we all do.” The other girls sang again, this time they sounded ethereal, heavenly, almost.
Eve stepped onto the stage and stared into loafers. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
I joined in the song this time, “never, never, never, never.” I was shocked by how good my voice sounded my other girl thoughts.
“Um. I need you to remember you’re an artist. First and foremost. I’ve been with you since you were born, and I understand that I’m the part of you that is the most sensitive and all-consuming and challenging and vulnerable—I really do. But when you ignore me, we both die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die.” She mumbled.
“Oh my god!” I sprang out of my director’s chair and clapped my hands, cheesily. “YES! You are so RIGHT!” I yelped. “This is what my brother told me right before he died—and I don’t know—I got scared, I guess? Art has broken my heart so many times—I got caught up in the whole money maker bullshit—and I’ve wondered why I’ve felt so hollow! Because I’ve been ignoring YOU. You, my darling, make my life magical and special and sparkly. More than that, You are the medicine that keeps me alive.
“You’re not a fucking content creator, you’re a fucking artist,” My brother’s voice suddenly boomed from above. “All great art takes a long time to be understood. Bottle Rocket got rejected by Sundance, and now it’s widely considered to be Wes Anderson’s greatest masterpiece—”
I knew where he was going with this; we all did. He led the choir like a conductor. I stayed quiet and let the chorus sing, so I could relish in my favorite all-time song, crafted by my big brother: “Do you want to be a Wes Anderson? OR A MICHAEL FUCKING BAY?”
“A WES ANDERSON!” I belted my first solo of the morning.
“THEN KEEP FUCKING GOING!” My brother and the girls passionately sang; it was clearly the grand finale.
“I will!” I heard my voice reverberate through the entire apartment, all the way down Sunset Boulevard, echoing up into the hills, rocketing right into heaven.
I didn’t need my last thought to audition. She’d already secured the part. She was palatable and didn’t make me feel so many uncomfortable, tricky-to-navigate feelings.
“I’m so grateful for this beautiful, messy life.” She’d thought, in her pretty pink cable knit sweater. The sweater looked comfortable. Gratitude is a comfortable feeling. A warm feeling. A good feeling.
But I’ve always welcomed her to the stage. She’s beautiful, in a simple way—she bears the kind of beauty society celebrates in women. That’s not to undermine the amazing value she brings to every scene she’s in.
But the other girls, the ones with the nuance and the angst; the anxiety and the lust; the dissatisfaction and the relentless desires—they’ve got just as much star quality as Gratitude. And they’re just as beautiful. In the way I happen to prefer: she’s got haunting beauty.
I thought Gratitude would be the lead, and I was kindly giving the others one chance to prove me wrong.
Turns out I was wrong twice: there is no lead. This cast is an ensemble. You kick one girl out—there is no show.
And as a former actress I know that no matter how grueling or tough or exhausted we are: the show must always go fucking on.
Which means I need to honor all the thoughts today. My 39th birthday, which I wanted to be easy, won’t be easy. It will be hard and excruciating and gut-punching and powerful and hauntingly beautiful.
But hey, that’s show business, kid.
And no one has the grit for the theatre like me and my cast of inconveniently gorgeous thoughts.
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