File #85 and the story continues...

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the woman teaching us the dance combo walked in. Jess and I exchanged knowing glances.
“Whoa bangs!”
Her bangs were teased into a claw that I hadn’t seen since 1988. She flashed us a big toothy smile and immediately launched into a series of kicks, turns, pivots and thrusts.
We were trapped; trapped in Casino Show Girl audition hell. It was just us and Greg Thompson’s man parts.
The audition was being held in a dilapidated old scene shop on Elliot Avenue. Paint cans littered the circumference of the room and 2 inches of dust and glitter were caked on the floor like adobe. There were about 100 of us girls crammed into the room. We all looked somewhat the same but somehow I felt all wrong and out of sorts. My character shoes were too low and squat, my tights were too cheap and although I was 5’5” and only weighed 102 pounds I felt like a little sausage stuffed and pinched into my all wrong outfit.
I somehow got over my physical discomfort and managed to focus on the choreography being taught by the toothy and banged blonde. The dance was pretty easy. 5,6,7,8 and passé and pivot and shake your ass and smile and wink and shake your ass….
“Now this,” I said to myself “is something I can do. Thank god for those 4 years as a high school cheerleader.”
My thoughts were interrupted…
“All right Girls,” Booms Greg Thompson, “get into a line.”
He then proceeded to split us up into 10 groups according to our height. I landed in group number 3. Jess and I were separated. We zoomed straight into doing the combination group by group. There were 16 counts of “free dance” before the set combo began. This is a common thing at auditions; they want to see what length you’ll go to draw attention to yourself. I felt a little sheepish at first, but soon enough I joined in with the best of them.
“Whoop, Whoop,” I startled myself by whooping out some kind of crazy mating club call.
I wiggled, body rolled, thrusted and shimmied. I was officially wearing my cleavage like jewelry and offering it right up to Greg Thompson. If my Mother had been there as a fly on the wall- she’d have been proud. I finished my freestyle with ease and shot straight into the choreographed dance. I imagined that I was a young Mistinguett and paraded myself like a tiny poodle on a rhinestone leash. My legs kicked, whizzing past my face and my moves were perfect- it felt so natural as if I had emerged from the womb with jazz hands. As my body moved, my mind was shocked.
“Who am I and what happened to the old me. She was here a minute ago.”
After about 45 minutes of dancing, group after group, repeating the same set of steps; Greg cut over half of the girls. Luckily Jess and I made it into the new line of show girl hopefuls. The rest of the girls were asked to leave. They looked somewhat relieved as they gathered up their water bottles and dance bags and high tailed it out of that sweaty scene shop.
“Let me just look at ya’all.” Said Greg.
I pondered standing pigeon toed so my legs would appear smaller. Oops. Too late.
“OK, let me take a look at your backsides.” Said Greg
“Oh Fuck.” I mouthed to my friend and only alibi Jess.
I quickly sent mental messages to my ass to perk up, but I’m pretty sure she just hung back there.
“You should all get higher heals, it makes the back side view a little sweater.” He said while chuckling and making sex eyes at “Miss Blonde (twenty-something) America.” She let out a triumphant squeak and blushed at his obvious approval of her perfectly high heals and ass. I turned and tried to see how my own butt looked, but I couldn’t even see it. The audition had started to look dismal from where I stood.
To my great surprise Jess and I were put into the remaining group of 7. She looked at me and rolled her eyes. She looked like she was enjoying this even less that I was. Then something in me clicked. The music started and I found myself shoving girls out of my way so I could get to the front. I winked and looked directly into Greg’s eyes. That job was gonna be mine.