Emma Who Saved My Life by Wilton Barnhardt

with—”
    â€œTell me about the night he died. I want to hear about it.” The girl was quiet a minute. “If you can’t share pain, if you can’t bring us inside your life, the door’s over there, you have no place in this production.” The girl cleared her throat. “Go ahead, leave if you want to—”
    â€œNo, it’s all right,” she began unsurely. “My father—”
    â€œYou didn’t call him Dad?”
    â€œNo, not really. We said Father in our family—”
    â€œYou weren’t close to him were you? You were distant, you were a stranger when he died.”
    â€œNo,” she said defensively, “it wasn’t a perfect relationship but I’m sure he knew I loved him—”
    â€œ Not if you didn’t tell him, baby!”
    â€œWhat the hell business is it of yours?”
    The director, now energized, laughed. “That’s right—fight me, fight me. Come on—tell me you loved him and he knew it all his life. You wanna fight, we’ll fight…”
    This director closed in and intimidated and needled her into telling him about the night of her father’s death and as tears rolled down her cheeks she mentioned that since she had been caught as a teenager in bed with a boyfriend by her father that he had never been warm to her and he had always preferred her little sister for some reason …
    â€œSay it, say it!” said the director, who must have thought these catharses were important, that he was doing good necessary work.
    â€œI never said I loved him,” she sobbed, breaking down and bending over, holding herself.
    I left before my turn.
    The Time I Almost Got a Role but Walked Away:
    â€œThat’s great!” yelled the director in this particular audition, a young wiry man with a pointed beard. “I don’t have to see any more.” He pointed at me. “I don’t care if you can act. I want someone who looks like you —I want your body type, your looks. I don’t care if you’re a grocery clerk.”
    Gee, thanks a lot.
    â€œNow let’s get Pamela out here—Pamela!” Pamela, I gathered was my possible co-star. “Pamela, this is…” The director checked his clipboard. “This is Gilbert Freeman. Kiss him.”
    Pamela kissed me, without hesitation. “Okay, Mr. Limpermann.”
    She had flat, bitter breath, this big groping teethy mouth—
    â€œAnd again and again and again…”
    More kissing. Pamela groaned with pretend passion. It seemed like bad porn-film acting to me.
    â€œAre you hot for her, Gilbert? You want her, you have to have her, here, right here on the stage!”
    I thought he just meant figuratively.
    Pamela started unbuttoning her blouse.
    WAAAAIIIIT a minute, I say. I didn’t think this was a production with nude scenes.
    â€œIt may be, it may not be, I have to see,” said the wiry director, all seriousness. “I have to see if you work together. Can you make heat for me, people?”
    I said my clothes were not coming off and I was not copulating with Pamela onstage, I was sorry. And everyone looked at me as if I was some fugitive axe-murderer. Look New York, I didn’t want to be psychoanalyzed, I didn’t want to cry, I didn’t want to screw onstage, I didn’t want to show my naked body, I didn’t want to sleep with all the directors in town. Acting? You remember acting, don’t you? The thing they do onstage? The thing auditions—I assumed—were all about? ISN’T ANYONE IN 1975 INTERESTED IN MY ACTING TALENT?
    The Time I Got Asked to Leave the Stage:
    I had seen a part advertised for someone in their mid-thirties for a family drama and I got it into my head that, weary and defeated as I was, I could convince people I was early thirties. Quite horribly, I had this idea it was perfectly zany and wild and one-of-those-experiences to audition for