ACTING DEBUT

I dream I’m giving a toothy blowjob and wake up menstruating, blood all over the sheets. My email inbox has an interesting invitation, even though it’s a Saturday. It’s from one of my favorite authors. ‘Would you,’ the subject line reads. The body continues, ‘play me in a production on the 29th?’ 

‘probably,’ I reply, ‘what are the details’

After getting coffee, I text all of my friends that I’m making my acting debut. Then I text them again, before they can reply, that I’m menstruating, because I want sympathy. 

‘I heard women are smarter on their periods,’ Katie replies.

She says she’s at a sex exhibit at the Cloisters. I think of when my ex-boyfriend and I got into a fight there. It was the day Mac Miller died. He was mad that the shirt I was wearing was from a guy I used to hook up with. Katie texts me photos of statues and the descriptions.

‘do I have to memorize lines or can I read from paper,’ I ask the author.

‘Read from paper. The sloppier the better.’

Katie sends a photo of Goblet with Febilla and Virgil. ‘This glass depicts a medieval fable centered around sexual violence,’ the description reads, going on to tell the story of Febilla, who had hot coal shoved in her pussy after rejecting Virgil. ‘The goblet was likely used during a wedding banquet, issuing a brutal warning about the dangers of not acquiescing to a man's advances.’ The sex exhibit does not sound as fun as I thought.

‘Can you wear a white slip? That’s what I wore in those days,’ the author emails. The production is a reenactment of her time as a performance artist.

I put on a pink slip that I’ve never worn in public. See-through silk. My belly bulges. ‘I’m going to tell everyone I’m pregnant,’ I text Katie, ‘then when I get skinny I’m going to tell them I aborted it.’

Katie says she got an accutane microdose prescription. She explains it’s an oral acne medication that’s also for anti-aging. She says there’s lots of side effects. She sends me pictures of the package, which shows a baby with an enlarged head, it looks like a Megamind baby.

‘Supposedly Hollywood actors do the microdose,’ she says.

I email the author that I might be too fat to wear a slip. She suggests overalls. I try on my overalls, which my ex-boyfriend—the one I had fought with at the Cloisters—and I purchased from a woman at a garage sale in Woodstock after we hiked a mountain. The woman had almost no voice left; it was almost impossible to understand her. The overalls used to be baggy on me. Now they don’t fit. I can’t button them up. The denim squeezes my ass. My tits pop out.

‘i’ll just wear the slip. i have this pink one if it works,’ I email the author with a picture of me posing awkwardly in the slip.

‘Like I’m looking in a time delay mirror,’ she replies.

I’m reading a book about a woman obsessed with a man. It reminds me of the man I recently broke up with. I broke up with him because I was too obsessed with him. It took a week or so for the fixation to fade and then I was okay again, normal, thinking of other things. This book is ruining everything, making me wonder if I should call him and hang up when he answers, if I should invite him to my performance, he is an actor himself after all, I didn’t like that about him, I don’t like actors, yet here I am, becoming one, but that’s only because I could never say no to this author, I love her and I wish she was my mother, but also maybe I’m doing it for the attention, so everyone can look at me in my pink slip and think, ‘She is so important. She was chosen for this. Out of everybody in New York, the author chose her. She must be special. Especially because she is not skinny. Usually they choose skinny girls for this kind of thing. She must be really special.’ Maybe I’m doing it in hopes that the man I broke up with will come, even though he probably won’t, not unless I give him a signal, which I shouldn’t, but this dumb book I’m reading is making me want to.

‘You’re banned from age gap novels indefinitely,’ Katie says. But the age gap in the book is only nine years. She’s 30; he’s 39. It’s my only issue with the book, aside from it being unbearably annoying, which is also what makes it so relatable and readable.

‘when does the event get announced,’ I ask the author, ‘and who else is doing it?’

‘It’s just us. It’s to be announced whenever anyone gets off their butt and announces it.’