Booby Lift by Kathryn Merrifield

A friend of mine asked me what my best day at work was.

I told her, well, I have a lot of best days.  Mostly because I work a lot because I love to work.  Compared to life, it’s the easy stuff.  Measured goals and that kind of thing.  Having children taught me that everything else is the easy stuff.  People told me just that at one point.  I didn’t believe them, but I do now.

Enough whining.  I never liked parental whining, but I also don't like the parenting alone thing either. Where it used to take a village, now it takes money.

That’s a little morose, so forget that, and let's get back to laughing at something that pokes fun and my neatly contained late twenties self where I rewind to my most embarrassing work moment, that moment where you realize, “Gee, you’re not as pretty and desperate as all of these Hollywood girls.  And, really.  Who cares?”

Embarrassment, I have found, is that thing that makes me human when I don’t want to be.  That thing that needs you to be flawed, when you don’t want to be.  But, when you need to be.  Because your head needs a real Linda Blair 180, or needs to be birthed out of your stupidity or your ego that sent it down the wrong-ass path.

Whoooops!

This is what happens when the only rudder you’ve got is what your parents gave you in he spare time of no spare time (see no village, above).

That is not whining.  That is the truth.

So, what we have is a grueling several months under the discretion of, essentially, Kevin Spacey as a bald woman with a disease that rendered her hairless, who represented the top talent in the United States of America in the myopia of Hollywood.  Not the highest-grossing talent, but the top.  For sure.  She shall remain nameless.  I signed a contract that bound me to secrecy.  And, even though I was beaten to a pulp using borderline torture methods via entertainment industry bootcamp, I am loyal.  And, I have a soft spot in my heart for her.  That place was a pressure cooker.  More pressure cooker than a cooker that could induce real humidity with a well-placed lid, and the promised... pressurization that makes good rice but not so good people.

I survived just under a full year before the agent found a real agent recruit – essentially a JD working in the mailroom that had thick enough skin and connections that could somehow show promise or connections to dear Agent who would abuse her outright while she endured and kept her eye on the prize.

Even Dear Agent, who addressed those training-to-be artist-representatives, told her minions, “You have to love it.”  Her way of saying, "Get out if you don't."

I didn’t.  Mostly, because I wasn’t much of a party girl.  I just was not there yet.  I wanted a family.  Kids.  A life that extended beyond living in the bubble of THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY. If you live in it, in LA, you know what I’m talking about.  Because there is nothing else.  People even forget about the beach and the ocean is pretty huge.

Myopia about as interesting to a writer as a being an author reading a book about a writer.  That’s like watching paint dry.  Or, like watching in real time, a real, mosquito-catching, target practice, spider web get made with eight tiny arms and legs.

Riveting?  Definitely not.  Reading a bout the entertainment industry except in reference and history is just dull.  No way around that.  Non-fiction about fiction.  Kill me.

So, my embarrassment occurred around a bit of a turning point.  I met Scott Lobdell, the writer for many, many of the X-Men comics published by Marvel.  When we met, I was finally off of high-powered talent agent’s desk and onto packaging – working with producers on ICM talent-centric packages for television.  Tom was new, and when Tom (my gay, Irish, actor boss) was new, he found many new clients.  When word gets out, that’s what happens.

So, in the time of Bryan Singer and the dawn of Marvel motion picture franchising, I made a friend in Scott Lobdell, mostly because he knew I was mostly a writer and he was a writer, and we were both starting out in a world that we knew nothing about and too much about.  He wanted to be a producer and ultimately got a deal that did not pan out.

As for me, my exit from ICM came one night, dressed in my favorite BCBG, fitted, short-sleeved sweater with the neutral stripes and pencil cut skirt and heals. 

When the doors of an elevator opened up to let me and Scott out – me, his stand-in date for his wife, Laura, who was ensconced in her art masters degree in New York and could not attend.  Me, going to a premiere that I was invited to because Scott had producer friends who had access to such things.  Me, who would have rather go to sleep early.

And, quite honestly, Scott was a little strange.  And, because I can be a little strange too with my broad range of tastes and peculiar fascination with super heroes and two brothers who made me a no bullshit girl, we got along quite well.  I found a friend in sea of the smoke screen.  Me, the girl from La Canada, dressed professionally, stood waiting for an elevator.

Scott asked me, “What’s that on the floor?”

I looked down to the garage, beige carpeted floor, and said, matter-of-fact, “That’s my bra pad.”

A white little teardrop of a pad on the floor defied any legitimate lie.  And, why bother?

It was funny.  And, it was mine.

And, that’s when I knew I’d never make it.  I could not lie to a client about my bra pad lying on the floor.  I supposed it could have been worse.  But, that was pretty bad for a twenty-something young woman, boarding a lift with an imbalanced lift.

It was the first step in a series of coming-into-oneself lessons.

And, learning what bra to buy and not.