I get a text to go on a go-see, and it's for a "Free People" ad campaign. And I'm not entirely sure what that means.
So I Google the name just to see what it is and stuff. Not that I really needed to, I trust that my agency would never send me to like a empty warehouse filled with serial killers, but if I had Googled it and a website with, say, serial killing tips or something came up, I might've just stayed home. I'm not sure what kind of dumbass serial killers would make a website in the first place, but...anyway this is off-topic.
Oh right, some might not care about making one. They're serial killers.
I find Free People's not-murder-related website though, and it looks all gypsy and hip and all kinds of things I never was in high school (or now). Moreover, I notice it's all girls. Like, no dude clothes at all. And at a comedy show that night I'm talking to a girl who went to FIT, she asks me what I'm up to and I tell her I have this casting the next day. And she goes "Oh I didn't even know they did guy stuff." But still...big deal, right? Maybe they're just starting some guy stuff. Or they need dudes to help model with the girls or something. I don't know. Shut up FIT girl!
Anyway I'm getting ready to leave the next morning, and I'm trying to decide what to wear, and a brilliant idea hits-- "Hey, maybe I'll try to look gypsy and hip and something kind of close to what they want." Because clearly I have a Ph.D. in Knowing What To Do At Go-Sees. The problem is, I don't actually own anything gypsy or hip, given that, again, I'm not anything fucking close to either of those. But then my Ph.D. kicks in, and I go "Oh but my roommates are gypsy chic! I can borrow something!"
Except the roommates who are gypsy chic are girls. For some reason, however, this doesn't deter me and I pick out the least girly-looking thing I can find, some plaid long-sleeved thing that somehow fits me despite my being a good nine-feet taller than any of them. None of them are home to advise me on any of this, of course, I had to text the one just to make sure it was okay to go into her closet.
Cue going through Manhattan in this outfit, and finally arriving at the place. I step off the elevator, there's no one in there waiting. Cool, hopefully that means no line. So I ask the receptionist where to go, she points, I turn the corner...
...and the table of girls in the next room EXPLODES into laughter.
And of course it immediately hits me, they're laughing at what I'm wearing. How in the entire fucking world I thought I could get away with wearing a girl's shirt to a casting for a company THAT EXCLUSIVELY MAKES GIRLS SHIRTS is beyond me.
I can't bail now though, they've clearly seen my face, and I'd rather just be known as The-Guy-Who-Wore-The-Girl-Shirt than The-Guy-Who-Wore-The-Girl-Shirt-And Ran-Away. Plus, I mean, all of three of them were pretty hot.
So somehow I find the courage deep in my lady-attired self to go up to the table and say hi. But they can't stop laughing. I kind of chuckle and go "What's going on?" but that only makes them laugh even harder, which makes me want to alternate between laughing and rolling into a ball and crying. When I think they're almost done they just erupt into it more, cycling through frenzied laughter like they're playing that old school Donkey Kong game, where as soon as you think you've climbed all the ladders and saved the princess that motherfucker grabs her and jumps up another level.
"What is that Mario, a fucking blouse?!"
Mario eventually kicks that guy's ass and the girls calm down, but not before I literally say "Ha, what the hell guys" out loud, more than once. And when they do, one of them drops this barrel on me:
"Sorry, we just don't usually cast boys."
At which point I'm like FUCK, Google and that FIT girl were right! Somehow I managed to stumble into a fucking GIRLS-ONLY casting. I mean...at least I dressed the part?
But that wasn't quite it. Turns out they WERE casting guys, and just honestly didn't do it very often. What happened was they were in the middle of joking about the guys they'd seen and doodling on their pictures when I strolled up unannounced, and they thought I had caught them goofing off. So the girls I thought had caught ME being a cross-dresser actually began laughing because they thought I'd caught THEM being giggly 24-year-olds or whatever.
Well that and I was wearing a girl's shirt, which kind of exacerbated everything.
One of them told me I was good-looking before I left though, and that made me feel like I could run through walls. She was probably lying to cover her doodling tracks, but oh well, any day where that happens is kind of like winning a fucking NFL game in overtime.
I do think I'll stick with my own shirts from now on though.
