Summer Days, Drifting Away

I remember my second summer in New York (the summer of '97) as though it were a hot moment in an endless fever dream. I remember it better than my first because I actually stayed here, all summer, and slowly lost my mind. During my first summer in New York (the summer of '96) I had gone home to the desert of Denver to get my navel pierced and smoke cigarettes in the back of my friend's art gallery. So it didn't really count.

During that summer of '97 I attended my first New York cattle call for Grease. That was back when I thought that just because I kinda sounded like Rizzo and sometimes wore my hair in those same rebellious adult waves, I could totally play her. I remember that day well not just because I wore a leotard and tights in front of a panel full of strangers for the first and only time in my life but also because it was hot. My first hot New York summer day. I was two months out of school and had one audition outfit: a long-sleeved, vintage blue velvet swing dress. I wore it with opaque black tights and three inch t-strap character shoes. It was 100 degrees at noon.

I remember the day like it's in my DNA. I remember sitting in my underwear on my roommate's lemon gingham sheets, curling my hair into a retro swoop as MTV ran the Spice Girls' cooing ballad on an every-half-hour rotation in the background. I remember getting a callback at the dance call and I remember meeting the director, who said he liked the darkness in my voice. Darkness. After the audition I returned to my fourth-floor walk-up to eat frozen Milano cookies in front of an open window and wait for his call.

I remember that day on every hot New York summer day. Like today. Like yesterday. New York heat tattoos itself onto your thin skin -- inner wrist, eyelid, earlobe. It sits in your spinal fluid and rises slowly to your brain, melting tissue into sense memory. It never changes. It is always that same day, in June of '97, when I was young and sweaty with ambition.