Almost Been

At the age of eleven he started telling everyone around him - his friends, his mom & dad, his sister, his friend's parents and siblings, even his teachers, that he was going to be an actor when he grew up, and not just an actor, a star.

A big star, just like the ones he watched on the small television in the basement that he could commandeer for his own enjoyment every Saturday night when his parents and older sister would finally leave him alone.

He dreamed of it, of being in front of the camera, reciting the dramatic, or comedic, or cryptic, or even zany, dialogue of the talented scriptwriters who had written the same for his idols, the studio players whose performances in black & white two-reelers transported him to the old west or the far-flung future.

To this end he would watch the same films over and over again, committing to memory the lines of his favorite characters, whether they were words uttered by leading men or single-line character actors who were little more than filler.

Two days after he graduated from high school he packed up two suitcases of clothes and got a ride down to the bus station from his friend Greg. He bought a one-way ticket to L.A. and though his eyes watered up a little as the bus pulled away from the small station, he never looked back.

Two days later he was in Hollywood. He checked into the cheapest motel he could find and spent the day scouring the Roommates Wanted section of the classified ads until he found a couple that he thought sounded reasonable.

He called the number of the one he was most interested in from the pay phone in the motel lobby, and on the second ring the call was answered.

In short order they agreed to meet, and after a meeting that lasted less than ten minutes an agreement was made allowing him to rent a room in a home that granted him full kitchen and pool privileges, as well as the right to use the home phone as a contact number.

That was almost forty years ago. He now worked as a bartender in a slightly better than divey establishment in Costa Mesa, and was a member of the local community theater.

The first few years in L.A. had been harsh, he told me, as he was nowhere near as prepared as he thought he was. 

He said he went to every open casting call for every single role he thought he was qualified for, and he even took acting classes and joined a local acting troupe.

He landed gigs as background filler in a couple of commercials, and even had a line in a sitcom pilot that was never picked up, but it seemed that, despite mailing his headshot to every agency and studio he could find an address for, the destiny he was certain had awaited him in L.A. was just not to be.

I nodded my head in agreement to nearly everything he said as he talked my ear off, and when he went silent after his last statement, I muttered under my breath...

..."such is the fickle finger of fate, my friend, such is how it goes."