Back to Black

A demon grabbed my shoulder the other day and I told him to let go. “You’re looking at me like I’m an asshole,” he said. “I’m not an asshole.” I shirked his hand away from mine and abruptly replied, “Then why are you acting like one?” These seven magic words changed my life. No, this is not a Biblical allegory. Nor is it a scene from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” This is how I got fired at a Halloween party and changed my life forever.

As a young man starting to pursue acting, I was always told the holy grail of “survival jobs” was Catering. It was flexible, you could make your own schedule, and you could always come back to it after a gig. Sure you have to put up with some crazy chefs and some ambitious requests from “out of touch” clients, but no other job was as reliable as being a Cater Waiter. So I joined the ranks of the black tie army and fought alongside legions of handsome out-of-work actors. Together we accomplished remarkable feats and I’m proud to say that I was one of their best soldiers. I poured champagne at million-dollar weddings and I served tuna tartare at Michelin star restaurants. I even managed to get a smile out of Martha Stewart as she bit into a delicious Truffle Cheese Pate a Choux that I convinced her to eat. I was unstoppable. Unfortunately, these small victories could not keep this sergeant enlisted for long.

The money was “good.” My hourly wage was dwarfed by what a lot of my friends made. And the brutal hours made this rate go a long way. However, the highs and lows of this industry hardly made it sustainable. After weeks of great money and grueling hours, came the dreaded slow season. And when my busy days came to a lull, the blur of the world started to come into jarringly vibrant focus. I saw multiple coworkers book Broadway roles that I had auditioned for, while I saw me eating canned tuna trying to make ends meet.

I loved the highs of catering but the lows started to become inescapable pits of depression, self-doubt, and anxiety that I had trouble escaping. Why was I still serving the rich and famous while my contemporaries got to BE the rich and famous? This only got exacerbated as I started to serve former coworkers at various opening night events. I should have been feeling some sort of pride for my contemporaries as they turned their lives around. But all I ended up thinking was, “Why them instead of me?” All the money that I thought I had saved, I used to barely break even to endure every slow season. The holy grail of catering was starting to look like a wet diaper.

After months of ennui came the aforementioned Halloween party. Skeletons and cobwebs lined the block of 69th Street and Central Park West as I rushed to the party from the 72nd Street Station. I remember thinking the decor seemed to match my mood at the time: worn out and tired. For the most part, the party was like every other private event I had worked. A middle-aged rich man bossed us around while out of touch elites asked me for glasses of champagne. However, the biggest difference at this party was that our boss was dressed as a demon and I was forced to wear an alien mask. As if it is not humiliating enough to be an underpaid worker at a million-dollar event, I also had to remain anonymous to all who spoke to me. So eventually the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came in the form of a demon mask-clad host continuously pestering me on how to pour champagne properly while I mouthed back in an ironically mouthless alien mask.

At one time I loved catering. It offered me a freedom in my life to audition and make so many wonderful connections in the arts. I even got to serve so many artists that I had admired as a child. But I had overstayed my welcome and gotten to the point where my commitment to “flexibility” in my work, had caused me to have rigidity in my art. As I constantly auditioned hoping to book a job that would free me from my shackles of a black tie, I lost the spark that my art once had. I missed the joy that came from collaborating and the unbridled freedom that I had as an undergrad exploring new roles. My hunger for artistry and collaboration had become desperation, ultimately diminishing my work as an actor. I am not proud of the fact that I mouthed off to a superior, but I also know that I would be stuck in this never ending cycle of highs and lows without it. I do not know what the future holds for me as an artist or as a person, but I know that I refuse to go back to black.