The Reluctant Receptionist

something i didn’t know—something, obviously, no one could have known—when i made the extremely well-thought-out and widely-discussed decision to leave my day job at columbia is that, the week after i went to my old temp agency looking for easy, short desk jobs, the bottom would fall out of the economy. it’s so strange to think that i of all people could be affected by a crashing stock market. i mean, sure, i have some investments, but those were all made for me by my parents and grandparents a long time ago. the only reason i know what i have at all is that a few years ago when i finally started having to do (and pay) my own taxes, i was introduced, over the phone, to my financial adviser, a man whose office is back in ponca city and has handled “my money” since before i had a checking account.

this is real, though, this slump: i worked five days last week and am contracted to work five days this week, but the woman i’ve been filling in for comes back to her job a week from today and i’m once again floating around in tempville. ideally, my agency will be able to place me somewhere else immediately, even if it’s just a for a few days. there’s always hope, although that hope is tempered by the fact that everyone i know who’s temping (meaning, really, every singer i know who doesn’t have a big-time real day job) is out of work. i’m the only one of us with any kind of temp job, and they keep saying things like, “what? you have work? i haven’t worked for three weeks!”

i can’t—none of us can—afford to not work for three weeks. it’s not like i’m going to starve to death or be evicted, but i’m also a lot closer to that line than i like being. i knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, this jumping ship and trying to make it as a singer thing, but i always thought it would be hard on the part of me that’s a wienie, specifically the part that says, i have to practice now!? but i just spent EIGHT HOURS AT A DESK! not the part of me that has to pay rent and bills and can only dream of buying a new winter coat. (i’m not getting all little match girl, so don’t worry. i have a coat. it’s nice. but i am an urban homosexual and i want a NEW ONE.)

so let’s hope we can all pull through this. we will. go buy something.

i’d completely forgotten how enthralling blogs are when you’re at the office. when i wasn’t working (like, ahem, the last three months) i could barely be bothered to even clear out my google reader, and the blog entries would pile up 900 or 1000 deep, until reader just told me that i had “1000+” unread blogs. this means that in any given week at the office, when i’m sitting here at a desk, i’m sifting through a thousand or more blog entries, everything from my friends’ updates (the only one of which who actually updates, i’m sad to say, is jessica) to techno blogs (which means i can keep up a conversation with near-strangers about the politics of apple computers for thirty minutes.) to gay news and opinion blogs. it’s no wonder i feel that by the time news has reached the television it’s soooooooo five minutes ago.

and so i’m back here in office-land for a second day in a row. as temp jobs go, this one really couldn’t be better. there’s stuff to do, so i stay a little busy, but none of it is hard or physically taxing. then again, none of it is sifting through excel spreadsheets or mindlessly filing. still, i got home at 5:30 last night completely exhausted, with just enough time to eat the dinner that phong made us (who’s the housewife now! i’ll see you in hell, billy, but i’m going to have some fun before i get there.) before i had to run out to cendrillon rehearsal in astoria. i can’t tell you how much better it is rehearsing in astoria than in hoboken (or, gasp, newark). not that hoboken isn’t lovely, but i don’t have to buy a separate train ticket for these rehearsals.

i tried not to fall on my ass too violently, but this was our first music rehearsal. this role is completely new to me (as in, i haven’t even sung it with a piano, much less had a coaching on it because i’ve been unemployed for three months and coaches don’t take payment in chocolate chip cookies, even the most delicious ones made with love), and i had to get up there and sing it in front of everyone with a conductor for the first time. did i completely fail? no. but it was sort of a personal crash and burn, as you musicians will understand. anyone else would’ve thought, “feh, that was fine,” but we can never live up to what we really wanted. so i left rehearsal vowing to practice even more (don’t ask me where that time is coming from, since i’m working again and am in rehearsal every night from now until curtain) and sing more spaciously and not be scared and not fall back on old habits, blah blah blah. singery bullshit.

the fall has me feeling all the things i usually feel in the fall. it has me nostalgic for college, for the security that we had at depauw. it’s made me nostalgic for dinner every night in the dining hall at longden, when everything was paid for, when the biggest thing i had to worry about was hiding my smoking from amanda (she honestly thought i’d quit, only to find me sitting on the back porch smoking a benson and hedges 100. why was i smoking a benson and hedges 100? i have no idea, honestly. nor do i know why i smoked for ten years.) and going to theory class at 8 o’clock in the morning. i look back on it and think, if i could add phong into that whole crazy time, it would be the best time in my life. at least, nowadays, we all still have each other to get through things like three months of unemployment and figuring out where the money for my insurance is coming from.

it’s hard for me not to over-romanticize college. sure, i had no real responsibilities, but i also went to a crazy, tiny, liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere and was one of three gay people. so i think about that, how it actually was, and it balances out my need for a make-your-own waffle from the dining hall.

wow, that was, like, the longest weekend i’ve ever taken. may 30th to september 25th. really? really. i’ve somehow woken up and am back at an office, albeit it’s an office where i have my own cubicle (actually, it’s someone else’s cubicle. someone named lesley who will be on vacation until mid-october and so i’m here doing her job.) instead of an office that i share with five other people while i’m not sucking up dust in the projects of new york city (and the bronx).

this summer and early fall has been an incredible whirlwind. i know that sounds so cliched, but i don’t know how else to put it. in the last three months i’ve quit my job, sung the summer festival at opera new jersey, been to wichita and provincetown, learned most of the role of pandolfe (i know, i know, singers. it’s not my voice type, i’ll never sing the role in real life, and it’s lucky as hell that it’s only with a piano accompaniment in a house that seats 150. but when your friends ask you to sing a part and you’ve got nothing else going on…), and spent the last three weeks fretting over my unemployment. somehow, i was completely unfazed for the whole of august. wes, in fact, decided that it should be called “funemployment” and that’s exactly how i treated it. i practiced a shit ton and played housewife, happily doing laundry and having dinner ready for phong when he got home. and i did it all in a silk nightie and furry slingbacks.

now, though, it’s fall. it’s time to start sending out young artist applications. i’ve already sent two, in fact, which means that i’ve somehow gotten my shit together. i’ve even made a recording to send along with applications, though i’m too poor to pay courtenay back for my half. which brings me to my next point: this summer was incredibly fun. i learned more than i ever could’ve hoped for, made new friends, spent time with friends i already had, and got to have days full of quality time with the man i love. (oops, yeah, i’m gay.) and, just as i expected, it basically broke me financially. so here i sit, a temp again. it’s not so bad, though. there are free coffee drinks in the break room, and it looks like i’ll have time to work on applications and memorize some music.

and, best of all, i’m back with you.

okay, folks, today is the day. i’ve got my “last fm player” set to “artists similar to sleater-kinney” (hole just came on. but not hole when they were punk; celebrity skin. you can’t get much further away from s-k than this album, yet i digress) and am looking at three more hours here at columbia, an hour of which will be spent at my last trip to the gym in the foreseeable future. there has to be a gym near princeton’s campus, right? i mean they have hot people there. hot collegiate people who need to lift weights? there must be.

my desk is, for the most part, cleaned of debris. yesterday i went through the piles i’d allowed to form after i found out i was leaving, distributing and filing and shredding things. today i threw away everything that needs to be chucked and have everything else in a pile, ready to be put in a bag and carried out of this place. yesterday, erin suggested that i follow our friend james’ advice for a professional exit: “as you leave, announce, ‘fuck these bitches – I’m OUT!’” there will be no fucking of bitches, however. my study team, most of which has already disbanded, is all getting together for a dinner of pizza at angelo’s in midtown. then phong and i are going to do some shopping, at which point i will try to convince him that i should, in fact, be allowed to buy birkenstocks whether or not i look like a 45 year old lesbian in them.

everyone is asking how i feel about my impending summer in princeton, which starts monday afternoon. until i spoke with the company manager this morning about my arrival (check-in to the dorm and all that), it was kind of hard for me to grasp that this is actually happening. no matter how many people i’ve told, how many plans i’ve come up with, it’s seemed fake. like something was going to come up and i wasn’t going to end up leaving my job and doing this. but i am. and how do i feel about it?

the truth is, i feel every single feeling that one could possibly be having right now. i’m excited as fuck to be spending the summer not working a day job, to be expected to do nothing but work really, really hard as a singer. i’m scared because i have to go and meet all new people, to really step it up and be an opera singer for a summer. i’m pretty bummed because i know that i’m going to be missing out on a lot of stuff happening in the city, bummed and sad and scared to leave my friends. and let’s not even get into the being away from phong for seven weeks issue. i don’t often get all schmoopy, but i don’t even like it when phong is on call. i very nearly lost my mind when he was in japan for 9 days. and now i’m looking at seeing him, at best, once a week. for seven weeks. will he be happy to have our tiny apartment all to himself for a while? probably. but that twin bed in a dorm in princeton is going to feel awfully cold.

and so this is the last post i write from my day job (this one, anyway). the reluctant receptionist is going off to be a singer for seven weeks. i’m trying to believe it, really i am.

i’m in the home stretch here at my day job, and that’s a very strange thing to say. all of these things that always seemed so far off—singing HBX in baltimore and durham and then leaving my job and two days later moving to princeton—are right here on top of me, and i’m trying not to freak the fuck out. i know that everything that everyone is telling me is totally true: that this is the right move for my life and my career; that it’s going to be incredible; that i’m going to meet really fun people; that i’m going to be too busy to miss my friends, life, phong. knowing it and feeling it, though, are two different things. and as i stand here on the edge, having left myself no choice but to close my eyes and jump and hope that there’s something at the bottom of this ravine to catch me, it’s easier to be nervous than it is to be certain of success.

i should take heart in the fact that our HBX tour was so successful, that—except for being stuck in traffic—it went off without a hitch and was well received. and that wasn’t an accident; it was purely due to planning (on ruby and george’s part) and tons of practicing (on mine and bonnie’s). i should approach my impending operatic summer the same way that i approached HBX: methodically, determinedly. one bit at a time. of course, let’s not forget, i leave monday evening and start rehearsals tuesday morning.

courtenay asked me earlier if i had any kind of a send-off planned. i said, “well, we’re going to phong’s departmental party on saturday night, but i suppose that’s not really a send-off.” the fact is, having a send-off hadn’t even occurred to me. it’s like i’m just going to live my new york life—planned down to the minute, but wonderfully so—until one evening i disappear onto a train to new jersey. and everything is flipped upside down.

the only words that can effectively sum up this past memorial day weekend are “holy. shit.” yes, with a period between them because that is exactly how i would say it if i were talking to you. what’d i do this weekend? well…

thursday after work i raced home, ate a subway sandwich, packed for our tour, and finished cleaning the house. as i told you, as soon as phong leaves the house i begin making it a total, horrible pigsty. i knew that his parents would be bringing him back to the city and that he would murder me if the apartment wasn’t spotless. so i made it spotless, because i value my life. i got to penn station in plenty of time for my train, especially considering that my train left 40 minutes late. i ended up not making it to baltimore until after 11, but we still needed to run through HBX because i’d never sung it with the accompaniment. i sort of started to have a minor freak-out because i was having a hard time singing in the space (i guess that’s what happens when you do all your practicing in a tiny room that’s resonant as a barrel) and i was exhausted. we did what we could, though, before george drove me to kel’s house, where phong and i were staying. phong and i made a bit of a scene in kel’s entry hall (i hadn’t seen the kid for 9 days; lay off me) then went to bed.

the next morning, we had breakfast at city cafe, baltimore’s favorite gay-neighborhood coffeeshop/restaurant, then phong drove me to rehearsal and he went to visit friends. george and i made some major breakthroughs on both HBX and we two boys during rehearsal, and i started to get the distinct feeling that things weren’t just going to be OK, but were going to be pretty great. afterward, phong and i took a nap at kel’s, then met him for dinner at a new thai place in baltimore, my thai. we got to the performance venue, settled in, and listened to our opening band.

so many of my baltimore friends were there: tom, john, kel, and even my old boss and coworker from hopkins. the performance space was really cool: this large room with cafe tables where the only light was provided by christmas lights. there was a huge, wall-sized window overlooking the howard street bridge, toward mt. vernon, that was open, letting in the sound of the city and a band playing across the street. everybody there just seemed to be so open, so ready for new music and for an experience, and you could feel it. all the worries i had about peoples’ reception to HBX melted away immediately: the audience heard it was an opera “about dolly parton,” and you could tell that they were into it. how could you not be? i mean, who doesn’t like dolly parton, even if you’re not into her music? there was this great moment, about halfway through the piece, where you could tell that the audience figured out that this was no parody piece, that it was funny in parts and touching in parts and pretty emotionally intense in others. they just, for lack of a better term, got it.

the next day, we drove to durham (which took, i kid you not, eight and a half hours with traffic), loaded into the space, and did it all again. the space was smaller but attracted another nicely-sized crowd. the next morning, after a quick rest at george’s house, i got on a plane and came home, arriving at the apartment before noon. what happened that afternoon, as well? oh that’s right: i met phong’s parents when they drove him home. this was a big, big deal—i’m the first of phong’s boyfriends that they’ve ever met. granted, his father and mother both shook my hand and then proceeded to hide from me in the kitchen. but baby steps. we’ll take baby steps.

yesterday was recovery day. i slept in, only to wake up and find that phong had made us breakfast sandwiches (mmm, egg and bacon on an english muffin. yes please.). i watched tv and played super mario paper when he went back to bed, then we met sean and cory at christopher street pier, where we laid around in our tic-tac bathing suits with more muscle than the rest of nyc combined. happy hour at monster, awesome italian dinner in greenwich village. cannoli and coffee after that. could i ask for a better end to an already incredible weekend? not unless i won the lottery.

good morning, the six people who check this site legion of devoted readers! it’s been a long three days since i last caught up with you, and plenty has happened. well, not really. not much has happened (besides dealing with the assholes at chase bank and at my prescription insurance company, but i won’t bore you with those details. let’s just make a long story short by saying that i’ve had to use my “this is what i need from you and this is what you’ll be doing” voice on the phone. twice.) besides practicing like a madman for heartbreak express, going out for a crazy evening with austin (open bar at HK, happy hour at barrage, dancing at ritz, home at 3. i don’t do those kinds of things anymore.) on friday, having a fun evening in with sean and cory on saturday, and seeing amanda make her new york city operatic debut with continuo collective on sunday. wait, now that i type it that actually does look like a lot.

i was really proud of amanda’s work on venus and adonis. i talked to her last night at length about the production and i told her something that has really impressed me about this whole situation: besides the fact that she was a sparkling gem onstage, fun to watch, looked cute in her tunic, and sounded good, it’s pretty incredible that this time last year neither of us were singing anywhere besides our living rooms, and we have now both sung productions with local companies. now, it’s not onstage at the met, but they were both solid productions with some really good singing. we are making it happen. taking asses and kicking names.

something that’s really been causing me to ride around on a cloud the last few days—besides the fact that i know my last day at this day job is a week from friday and i’m going to premiere george’s piece in two different cities in three days and phong FINALLY comes home from japan the day after tomorrow—is the california gay marriage ruling. you know, the one that said that “tradition alone does not justify the denial of a fundamental constitutional right.” that one. and so, just like that—assuming that the assholes that be don’t actually get a constitutional amendment banning it—i can get married in the state of california. and, thanks to a recent ruling in new york state, that marriage has to be recognized by the state of new york. it’s not completely equal, still, since it won’t be recognized federally, but it’s a step.

i was talking to my sister about it, and brought up the way that people are calling the judges “activist judges” and deriding them. you know what kind of activism judges also took part in? striking down the ban on interracial marriage. striking down the ban on sodomy. desegregating schools. legalizing abortion. if it takes an activist judge to make things fair for everyone and, in my opinion, to be the one voice of common sense in a nation of hypocritic, hateful, bigoted fools, then so be it.

cancel those cards, flowers, and donations to the jerry lewis telethon in my name, because i’m not dead or sick in the hospital with a bout of crohn’s. i took a sick day yesterday and didn’t step near the computer, except to put some new things (sally shapiro, leslie hall, some random weezer back-catalog stuff) onto my iphone and to write phong a sappy email about how i missed him even though he has no internet access.

i realized this morning, with slight trepidation, that i only have eight more work days left at my day job. this makes me all kinds of things: excited to start something new; scared about what it’s going to mean to not have a steady income; extremely scared about the fact that i’m supposed to know the choruses of traviata and cenerentola by two weeks from monday (by memory). each time i practice now, though (which is a lot, seeing as i’m trying to pull together this dolly thing by a week from today. while i’m on the subject, let me talk a little bit about it. the next-to-last section of this monodrama is written as a country waltz, with the viola plucking away and the violin playing a jangly fiddle melody, intertwining with my singing. it’s a big artistic risk, which is why i like it so much. it’s like, we’ve been through ten minutes of difficult, cloudy dissonance and then—bam—there’s this country waltz with this lilting vocal melody. and then as quickly as it came, it’s gone.), i get excited to be a singer again. to not have to sneak thirty minutes at the end of my day, between my day job and cooking dinner, to try and get my voice back into shape.

and it’s got me wondering what this summer’s going to be like. we all know that i don’t really hang out with classical singers that much, namely because except for the classical singers i do hang out with, they suck. they’re neurotic and difficult and often lame (aka “i don’t drink—ever—because i have to sing the queen of the night aria in eight weeks.”). but i’m going to be hanging out with them this summer, quite a bit. i’m hoping that people will come visit me in princeton, and that i can get home a few times (a week). but this is just my difficult neuroses kicking in again.

i made it through both of my songs last night without any major lyrical fuck-ups, i’m proud to say (type). i’m sure that you can picture me in the moments before i went onstage to sing, pacing back and forth in the residential hallway behind the duplex that sometimes doubles as backstage. there i am, ignoring the glares of the people who live there, people who pay three thousand dollars for their apartment only to have poor musical theater singers running through their lines over and over and over in their dirty hallway. i was standing back there, literally going through both of my songs on a loop, trying to quickly come up with some sort of device—anything—to help me remember the order of these lyrics. all that i really needed, i have come to find out, was to make myself concentrate on what i was doing instead of thinking, “there’s caryn! oh shit, phong is sitting in the very first row. i wonder how much they charged to get in. there’s austin, sitting next to phong. i like his new haircut.” and then, having been “acting” the whole time—and subsequently thinking about my “acting”—i’m somewhere nineteen miles away from where i need to be to come up with my next line. and so the song goes, “there is laughter in the other room/as the bottles crash below/.../.../.../.../.../for you had a thing you can no longer find.” and i’m “acting” like it’s supposed to be like that.

but not last night, ladies and gentlemen. last night i took the stage and was thinking about my lyrics and thinking about what was next and thinking about “acting.” so that’s my big breakthrough from this cabaret: it actually helps you sing if you concentrate. huh. who would’ve thought?

now that i think about it, though, those have been my best auditions, too. the ones where i wasn’t thinking “what is my VOICE DOING?” but where i was focused on the production and—gasp—what character i was trying to portray. so maybe it was a bit of a breakthrough, after all.

as of two hours ago, phong is officially on his way to nippon. “where in japan is nippon?” i asked phong—in front of people—last week. “um, nippon means japan in japanese,” he said. what? i suddenly speak japanese all of a sudden? so i couldn’t find iran on a map and i thought that japan was the size of texas. i’m amurrican. anyway, phong’s off to japan for twelve days starting today. i haven’t been away from him for that long since he moved to nyc, and i’m not exactly relishing the idea of him being gone so long. i mean, not to get all schmoopy, but i miss him when he’s not around. and what the hell am i going to do while he’s gone? it’s bad enough when he’s on call—literally twelve hours after he leaves the house our apartment looks like a tornado hit it (too soon?) and i have to spend upwards of twenty minutes putting away clothes, doing dishes, moving bodies into the hallway.

at least i’m kind of busy while he’s gone. tonight i have another of scott and tim’s cabarets (hopefully this time i’ll sing more than 5 correct words. let’s go 7!); tomorrow night church choir; thursday night i have to pick up HBX again. friday and saturday are unaccounted for, but then i have church sunday morning and my usual sunday things (you know, tina binge; the usual), then we’re already into next week. i leave a week from thursday for our east-coast tour, at which time i have to have we two boys down colder than cold and be able to sing hbx while twirling fire batons and wearing a dolly parton wig. ok, so there are no batons or dolly wig, but that’s seriously how well i need to know it. i do not want any reason to screw this up. it’s not every day you get an opera written for you—much less an opera about a gay dolly parton superfan.

and so i’m going to leave work in a little over an hour, stuff a sandwich into my face, put on my tight t-shirt (this cabaret is at the duplex, after all), and go try to be a musical theater star again. my voice isn’t really cooperating today, and that’s quite possibly due to nerves. why does singing in front of strangers and friends at scott’s cabaret make me so goddamned nervous? when i wasn’t even this nervous during B&B? good question. but i’m thinking it’s probably the uppers.