Big Boy: A Tale of Tween Regret

So I was ten or eleven? Somewhere in that range and me and my preteen friends were having some sort of tiff. Someone had said something about someone else behind their back and then word had gotten back to that someone and they were pissed and etc, etc. Typical hormone driven melodrama. I was incredibly upset about the whole thing and so my oldest sister, Sage, invited me over to her apartment to hang and talk. Sage and I haven’t always had the greatest relationship, but this is a moment that stands out for me.

That night we got onto the subject of theatre and acting. I mentioned that I wanted to try it, but was too scared to audition for anything. Sage had done theatre in high school. She was in the first real play I ever saw performed and she was good. Not just passable, but genuinely fucking talented and I was really in awe of her for that. Upon hearing my interest, Sage immediately began looking up local auditions on her laptop. I insisted that I couldn’t do it -- that I would be too scared to get up in front of people -- but she persuaded me to try. We found an audition for the next day at a community theatre. It was a children’s Christmas play, you know the type. Some pastor’s wife had probably written it, clutching desperately to the English degree she never used and taking swigs from the communion wine. The audition was a cold read, so I couldn’t prepare the night before, but Sage talked me through what the process would be like. 

The next day I was T E R R I F I E D. We got up early and swung by my parent’s place to pick out my audition clothes and then Sage drove me to the theatre. I don’t remember much, but I remember Sage getting my sides and reading through them with me. My character was the second eldest child in a group of five siblings. She was practical and intelligent and annoyed with her brothers and sisters - particularly her one older brother. She had a line. God. She had this line making fun of her brother and it ended in with her mockingly calling him “Big Boy.”

So, when Sage and I ran through the scene, I said the line. 

Big Boy

“That was really good, but...” Sage laughed a little “Don’t say ‘Big Boy’ like it’s a sexy thing - he’s your brother!”

OH GOD. I was in a panic. OH DEAR GOD. The last thing I wanted to do as an awkward eleven year old dweeb was get on stage in front of these thespian children - who at the time all seemed to me like haughty, well dressed, Draco Malfoy types, giving me the stink eye and whispering about my hand me down robes - was to IMPLY I wanted to FUCK my onstage BROTHER. 

BIG BOY

I’m sitting in the theatre and I’m shaking in my seat just absolutely losing my goddamn mind and reading the script over and over and practicing that last line in my head “Big BOY? no BIG boy... no BIG BOY.”

BIG BOY BIG BOY BIG BOY BIG BOY

So they finally call me up on stage with the other kids who are gonna be playing my siblings. It’s totally all good. I don’t trip getting up the steps and I line up how they tell me and then -- oh no. Oh. Oh fuck no.

The kid who’s playing my older brother? The Big Boy himself? He was probably 14 or 15 so of course to me he was a distinguished elder gentleman. And poor me. Poor tween me, he’s fucking cute. In my memory he’s like a Shawn Mendes type - as twinkie as twink can be and a regular heartthrob for an eleven year old. It was like Aaron Carter had made his way on stage and I had to call him “Big Boy.” HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO ACT LIKE I DIDN’T WANT TO MAKE OUT WITH MY STAGE BROTHER WHEN I ABSOLUTELY DID?

And of course the directors position me right next to Zac Fucking Efron and I am just. Sweating. My newly developed adult sweat glands are giving it all they’ve got. 

We start the scene. And it’s good. It’s all good. I can’t fucking see anything past the stage lights and I’m dripping sweat, but I say my lines and I refuse to look Justin Timberlake in the eye. If I don’t look at him, he can’t woo me with his boy band face. 

But the line is coming up. It’s coming. And it ARRIVES and I turn to Jesse McCartney and most of the line comes out. Almost the whole line comes out, but he’s CUTE, and when I hit the words in my script BIG BOY BIG BOY BIG BOY --

Nothing comes out. It’s silent. Chad Michael Murray is looking at me like “bitch say the fucking line” but I C A N ‘ T. The pause goes on and and on and then the next kid with a line realizes I’m a fucking broken human being and continues with the scene. 

It ends, the whole ordeal ENDS and I am GONE. Off that stage and in my seat so goddamn fast no one even sees where I go, just the puddle of sweat I’ve left in my wake. Sage gives me a thumbs up and we head for the door into the lobby to wait for callbacks. But they did not want to cast a pre-pubescent sweat goblin, which I understood, so I did not, in the end, not have to go back on stage and face Orlando Bloom.

Sage was still encouraging. And she was right when she told me now that I had done it, had actually auditioned for something, it would be much easier for me to do it in the future if I wanted. 

She did ask me why I didn’t finish the line and I flat out told her I couldn’t figure out a way to say it that didn’t sound like I was hot for my bro. She found this pretty funny. 

“You still should have said it!”

Not a fucking chance.