Does that say "pounding"?

Wait, I'm sorry, I left out the best LA story I've got.

So one day I go to a workshop with my grandmother and this woman who was signing people in at the desk (another actress, not any sort of casting person) asks me if I have time to go to a casting call later that day. Apparently she works for someone who is looking for girls around my age to read for parts in a movie. I got very excited and said of course I'd go. She handed me a breakdown of the roles and told me that I'd be told who to read for when I got there. Hooray.

There were two female parts being cast and neither of them exactly seemed perfect for me, I was either too young of too old. I decided to go anyway, 'cause hey, you never know, and it'd be good experience and a way to get my face and name out into the world. I put on a stupid amount of makeup (just for reference, most amounts of makeup are stupid amounts to me...I'm very much a moisturizer and chapstick girl and that's it...actually, you can probably skip the moisturizer half the time too. I'm so very lazy) and my mother and I set off to the audition. She dropped me off and went to a nearby diner to wait for me.

I walked into the building where the casting was taking place. It was kind of...okay, I can't avoid it, it was kinda sketchy. It was a dance studio and all the walls were wood panneling and it kinda looked like an old Cracker Barrel (if you don't know what Cracker Barrel is you haven't taken enough road trips) that had been turned into studios. But, I thought, you can't judge a book by it's cover (though I totally do, btw, no matter how hard I try not to....that's actual books I'm talking about, not anything else like people or anything). LA is way different from New York in a lot of respects and just because stuff is going on in an odd sort of building doesn't mean I shouldn't take it seriously.

I sat and waited with three other girls for a few minutes. They all had sides (parts of the script that they use to audition people with) already. A woman came out with a clipboard for us to sign in with and I told her how I'd been sent here by someone and told I'd be given sides and told who to read for when I got there. She left for a few minutes and came back with two sheets of paper for me. I was reading for a different part than all the other girls there it seemed.

I skimmed over the pages quickly and saw I only had two lines...that seemed kinda weird for an audition. I saw a note at the top of the page that said: "You will be reading for this part alone, we just want to see your emotional range". Okay, I get that, it's reactionary stuff. Then I went and actually read the entire thing. It started off with a guy walking into a room naked and jumping on some girl....um...alright. Then it skipped to another scene which involved the character I was trying out for and another guy. After about two seconds it became clear what kind of a scene this was.

My first line was, "I want you to be my first."

This, my friends, was a hardcore sex scene.

And by hardcore, I really don't think I'm exaggerating. The words "pounding into her", "sweat dripping onto her", and "went limp beneath him" were used. Did I mention that my character is supposed to start crying while this is going on? And the guy in the scene is "pounding" her while looking at a picture of another guy....right.

So I read this and am sure I'm blushing furiously and also slightly freaking out. This is not what I was expecting AT ALL. So, I think, maybe I can ask to try out for the other part. I turn to the girl sitting next to me, she's skinny and pretty and waif-like. I ask to look at her sides. Her's are for another character and it's a nice long conversation scene about I don't know what. But the part definitely seems too old for me. It's maybe mid-twenties and every casting person I've met so far has told me how lucky I am that I could play 15 or 16.

I'm at a total loss for what to do now. I could go in, suck it up (no puns intended), and audition for the sex scene. This would kinda take a lot of willpower and concentration on my part 'cause I don't really know how to show lots of emotional range in some random sex scene where I don't know anything about the characters besides she's a virgin and the guy obviously has some issues. Plus, hi...sex scene? Definitely not easy to do without being completely embarassed and blushing and not acting like a four year old. Ew, sex scene..four year old...bad metaphor..or whatever. Anyway. I sit there for maybe two more minutes, looking around the room and feeling really embarassed 'cause no one else has to do a sex scene for an audition. Plus I kinda feel like a guilty little kid who found some dirty magazines. I'm not supposed to be looking at this! This is for people far older than me!

Finally I give up. I hand my sides over to the waif girl sitting next to me, say "I have to go, can you make sure that woman gets these back?" and bolt. I would kind of describe it as a "kthxbye" moment but in real life. Seriously, I'm surprised there weren't dust trails behind me I got out of that place so fast.

After that, I found the nearest supermarket, got some make up remover to get the crap off my face, then went to a nearby mall with my mom and got a nice cold chocolatey drink and tried as hard as I could to repress the last few hours.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of my very first ever LA audition.

At least I got a good story out of it.