This is how it works: Show them each side, say who you are and in less than thirty seconds, prove to them that you, with your eyes, voice, smile and body, can sell anything they have to offer. Today it’s tampons. “I am a free, independent woman. I like being me and that is why I use Brand X tampons.”

It has nothing to do with being me. I use tampons because I don’t like to feel like I am wearing a diaper. I use tampons because I liked tormenting my mom into wondering if I was a virgin or not. That is what I want to say, but I could never say this and for all that matters in my thirty seconds, that is not what I think. I think, “I like being me. I like being free. I like getting commercials that pay my rent.” Smile.

“Thank you. Please be sure you signed in and we will have call backs on Wednesday.”

“Thank you. Have a great day.” Those words flow off my lips as sweet as honey and I show my ex-braces wearing, laser-whitened smile as wide as my lips will stretch and walk out the dirty, warehouse audition room. I pass the other fifty or so women who are diligently practicing “liking to be me” and keep that smile on as if it were a requirement to live. Some smile back and some ignore everything except the absurd seriousness that comes with “liking to be me.” For all their differences, they all look the same. The intention is the same and that clones us all. We all want to be “discovered”. We all want to be stars of the century. There are some petite one’s, but most are over 5’5”, all dressed in khakis and sweater sets- usually dark colors, but never red, because red looks bad on screen, and don’t forget it. Their agent told them the same thing my agent told me, “Dress upscale-casual (khakis and sweater set), pick up your copy at the agency, its for a tampon commercial about a woman who is an independent spirit and I can just see you as an independent spirit, so go get ’em, honey.” Walking by my clones, I see that my agent sent at least ten other “independent honeys”, so she can earn her independent ten percent.

I suppose I sound cynical, I’m not really. I have been at this for three years and I find the absurdity amusing. The copywriters spend hours coming up with the lines that “work” to sell products in commercials and when you memorize and memorize and then shoot for five hours just to have the copy changed to some unimaginable context of hooking the product, you realize that words can absolutely be absurd. Then to justify what you have to say, you convince yourself it is the easily-sold consumer that is absurd- ”I saw it on TV and I am an independent woman, or at least I want to be, so I am going to buy these tampons.”

All of this is only if you get the job. Months and months of auditioning can go by before scoring a job, if you’re lucky. I have friends who have auditioned for years and still have not gained work. Everyone but they knows that they are just terrible. They can’t speak, they can’t emote, they can’t act, but they try, every day, every month, and every year. They are usually the one’s who are stone serious in the classroom and when show time comes, they fumble over their intent and words, then near tears, apologize, and everyone smiles and enables, “That’s ok, dig deep. What is your character trying for, what is their main objective?” That actor hasn’t a clue or maybe they do, you never know for sure, because they just don’t have what it takes to express it and you pray for them- their life would be so much easier if they would just go do something else. You don’t tell them, no way, because you might be that way, you might be the one everyone thinks is a hapless, fumbling idiot. You think, no, people have told me my performance was good, and I’ve worked in the past year. Maybe I was lucky though; maybe I was just the lesser of the idiots. When do you know your ok, when do you know you are good enough? You don’t. You give it your best, try to find your instinct, appreciate it and live with it and fall in love with the art again tomorrow. That is why I keep going and perhaps my fumbling, idiot actor friends continue for the same, as melodramatic as that may seem, I think it’s true.

I actually hate commercial acting. I hate auditioning for commercials, I hate the idiotic commercials that placate the consumer, and most of all I hate seeing a commercial I didn’t get, which means royalty checks I didn’t get, which means no extra’s this month. I have only one commercial to my credit. It ran during the Super Bowl and at least once a week I see my smile on t.v. and I smile back, knowing that next week I am going to receive a nice check and reassurance that I can act. My big commercial paid off my car, my four-thousand dollar braces bill, my fifteen hundred dollar teeth-whitening bills, six thousand for six months up-front rent money and the rest goes into savings or as I like to call it, “the debatable, plastic surgery pot.” This is Hollywood, after all.

As I said, I hate commercial acting. That may seem disrespectful. A lot of people make their living from commercial acting and that is as far as their aspirations rise and they are great at their craft. I want to tell stories, reach people, and move them. What effect does liking myself enough to buy tampons matter? Before you can move people, you have to eat, so this is the life of a wannabe super-star, brown-nosing a casting agent’s assistant who stands behind a digital camcorder. Who, by the way, doesn’t really care if you get the job or not, they just want to be done by five. Although you know this, you still, in those thirty seconds, hope that they see in you what you know to be true: I’m a good person and a great actor. I am smart and funny, people like me and I like people. I’ve got moxie, don’t you see it? Everyone I know does.

You can’t say this out loud, you just try to think it and say it with your eyes to the camera, but with rejection after rejection, you begin to doubt it, until your agent calls and says you got the job or you were close, you were just too wholesome looking or to young looking, or, gasp, too old looking, or too short or too perky. These are the enabling moments that keep the love affair with acting going and again you fall in love with the art and your abilities and give a super-charged shot again the next day.

All that I have described is just commercial auditioning. Film and television auditions are worse. Hundreds and hundreds of beautiful people flock to this city, because their family thinks they have talent or their high school drama teacher discovered they have a gift that lies deep within and should be explored. Every prom queen and cute high school thespian stud is in L.A. waiting to crush your aspirations, and they are being crushed by the Stella Adler scholars, the Yale drama students, The Actor’s Studio prodigy’s. They who are the well-studied, serious actor, not the prom queens and the studs, who will be considered first. Hollywood is a business. It’s hard work and there is not a business on this planet that isn’t going to look at the well respected places that churn out the well-respected folks first.

I’m not from the well-respected places. My dad is a blue-collar man who believes that acting is a pipe dream, so I study as best I can, where I can and hope my personality and talent makes up for the lack of Stella, Actor’s Studio and all that comes with the upper echelon of acting education.

I don’t feel particularly good about this audition today. I suppose I gave my all, but it is getting harder as I age to find the strength to want to sell copy for products. Tomorrow will be a new day and a new way to audition. This is slow time in L.A. It is summer and most are on hiatus, but the network shows start filming after the fourth of July and I will soon be busy checking with the extra services to gain employment. I am fortunate that I have a flexible, non-waitress job. I work nights at Cal Fed Bank, entering cleared checks in the system. I am fast with the ten-key punch and I make my fifteen hundred check quota and then some regularly. This is enough money to sustain my lifestyle in between acting jobs and I work with women and men who don’t care about auditions and becoming movie stars, so when a job comes up I have an army of people who are more than willing to switch schedules. I don’t think I will be calling upon them this week.

My routine: Wake up at six, get to the gym, work out for two hours, unless an audition calls, stop off at my favorite coffee house, jack-up on caffeine, fight the notorious L.A. traffic, go to a class while trying and hoping to find a steady acting job, then work at night. I watch what I eat and I drink, try to maintain relationships and fight the insecurities that come with creativity. I despise the vanity that is considered the norm. I love the growth that comes with acting, but loathe the constant review of what I said and what I did to find an answer to why I'm not working. Today is no different. I should have been more confident in my approach to the tampon, but I am tired and I am trying to find the reason why I can’t express myself in the capacity of thirty seconds that makes people believe in a moment that suspends their reality.