by Jamie Condor

Created on: July 09, 2008

My headshots were ugly compared to the others. This was the scene of my most recent audition. I remember looking through my peripheral vision at the big glossy, slick papers belonging to the the actresses that were waiting beside me in the casting office. Now I don't mean that my picture was ugly, no, it was a great picture and I thought I looked pretty good in it. My teeth looked white, my lips perfectly pouty, and my eyes popped brightly from the paper. It wasn't cheaply done. It had all the markings of a professional headshot taken by a professional photographer. But it was ugly. It reeked of desperation and it vitually promoted the fact that I make seven dollars and fifty cents an hour at my day job.

I can't even afford a forty dollar rotary paper trimmer to get my headshot to the clean 8-1/2 by 11 standard. I used a dull pair of what looked like shearing scissors my roomate abandoned in our apartment after she'd gotten evicted for not paying rent.
I didn't even have a stapler to attach my resume. I had to ask the creepy photo guy at CVS, the one that always stares at my chest, if he could kindly loan me their own to get the job done.
Hell, I'm lucky to have gotten another resume worth of ink from my printer's cartridge. I imagine a little electronic gremlin in my HP Deskjet squeezing the tape like water from a dishcloth every time the unit slowly spits out my acting curriculum vitae. I sigh a bittersweet sigh of relief every time it does and again imagine that little gremlin looking exhausted, wiping his brow, and falling to his knees.
A few moments later a sour-looking female casting director emerged from the room complaining to her assistant about the heat. She never makes eye contact with the actresses in the room and only makes a notion to us when she asks the check- in girl who is next. She calls my name. The woman finally looks at me and I swear to god she looks dissapointed. She motions me into the room with a mere hand gesture and refuses to look at me again until she starts the camera and tells me to slate for it. There are four other people in the room. A man that greets me in a pseudo-sleazy manner and three others that don't even bother to look up as they tap away at their Macs.
"It makes any time a shopping time!"
This is what I'm instructed to say over and over again into the camera. Camera Lady thinks I don't have enough attitude.
"Say it again...sassier!" She oozes condascendingly. I do but I have a feeling she's already made up her

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