Today I went on an audition for a Johnson & Johnson commercial. Now, before you ask, I'm no actor. In thespian mode, I probably would make Paris Hilton look like Dame Judi Dench. But you can't blame a guy for trying. Not that I didn't have some random, unexpected encouragement. One day, as I was walking home from Pilates, a woman stopped me on the corner of Santa Fe and Scalabrini Ortiz. She said she loved my look, and she was convinced that I could get work in advertisements. It wasn't something I'd ever before considered, but I figured that I should be open to trying new things. After all, I'm not in Kansas, nor New York, anymore. So I emailed her some photos I'd recently taken along with my personal stats and gave her the go-ahead to sign me up.
Since then, her agency has sent me on a handful of auditions, which I usually screw up because, as I said before, I'm no actor. But today was a bigger disaster than usual. I was trying out for the role of "papa," and part of my audition was striking various poses with the cutest little naked baby ever. Now everyone who knows me knows that for the past year or so, one of my greatest dreams in life has been to someday adopt a pair of Argentine twins, a boy and a girl, and name them Matías (my favorite Spanish male name) and Adriana (just a female name that I like). Of course, being a firm believer in the two-parent household (not that I have anything against single parents, but I don't think it's for me), I'm holding off on fulfilling that dream until I fulfill my other dream of meeting Mr. Right. You know, I'm holding out for butterflies, so that little Matías and Adriana can grow up in a stable two-parent household.
Anyway, there I was holding the cutest little naked baby ever, and I couldn't possibly have been more uncomfortable. You see, I'm the youngest of four children, so growing up, I was surrounded by older siblings. As a grown-up, I've never spent a significant amount of time around babies, so as much as I love them, I don't quite know what to do with them. So there I was holding the cutest little naked baby ever probably looking completely ridiculous and totally out of my element. I also couldn't stop wondering what would happen if the cutest little naked baby ever had the sudden urge to, um, you know, go. He must have sensed my discomfort--or maybe it was the way my right hand was jammed awkwardly under his right armpit to keep him upright--because he started to cry. Awww, I thought, and rocked my body back and forth, trying to calm him down. It worked, but I still couldn't get the baby-daddy pose quite right.
The "director" gave me a few more instructions in Spanish, and then it was over. Relieved, I gave the cutest baby ever back to his mom and thought to myself that this was one commercial I was not going to be invited to be in--nor did I really want to be in it. I also vowed never to go on another commercial audition. But I'm a sucker for punishment and a glutton for excitement--or is it the other way around?--so I'm sure I'll be back for more.
Meanwhile, that sound... It's coming around again.... Tick tock tick tock tick tock TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK TOCK...
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