This is not my soul. People would think I was crazy if I told them about it… so it’s this white sheet of paper that I’ll bare myself onto. My soul is weak, it has been known to hide and sulk. My soul is wiry and ducks behind backyard fences to get away from bullies. My soul cries and understands the long-term benefits of self pity, and regret. My soul smiles and it nods agreeingly at injustices. My soul does not use my eyes to see, but rather to discern. My soul is logical, and employs reason and not passion. I do not know what a soul is, but this is not my soul. I know it with every fibre of who I am, because I felt it leave and I felt something new … and I felt full. I know because I’m not the same.
It was at the third call back. I always get calls backs, but I never get the part. I’m one of those guys who look like they would fit into the costume, or whatever persona they happen to be casting for that day. I look like every guy because I am every guy, but something is missing inside of me. No one tells me what it is, because no one knows. No one knows what makes people who they are, and who theiy aren’t. No one sees inside you. No one looks, so I would imagine the very simple act of taking a soul would go unnoticed, for everyone but the object, and I’d be right.
There were three people watching my every move this time; three desperate souls in which their gaze felt almost judgmental against the nervous emotion which was struck upon my face, two were resting on various parts of my body, and one I lost track of. I could feel every one of them. I stayed focused to maintain my breathing pattern to hide my racing heart rate, when they asked me the take off my clothes. This role, they explained, had a full frontal scene in it. My eyes fixated on the wall opposite me for what seemed like an eternity, because I knew this was my last audition. If I failed to get this job my agent will not send me out to sell myself again. I had never been asked to do this before, and to be honest, I didn’t want to. I don’t even like to be naked when I’m having sex, which is why I almost never have it. I cherish the dark, and the anonymity that it allows, but this was not the dark, and these were not my lovers.
It was then when I felt an involuntary exhale of mass leave my body. It was as if gravity had been arrested for a spilt second. My joints expanded; I could feel the slight tug of my ligaments, as they pulled apart. And then suddenly, I felt like I wasn’t there at all. I felt alone, scared and disconnected, but before I was aware of the void, I felt heavy … but not burdened. I felt the ground under my feet, but not like before. I didn’t feel like I was weighted down to the ground, but rather that the ground was just a surface I was balancing on. I could feel the connection of my heart to the rest of my body, and I understood somehow that these two things were not just opposing forces, but rather harmonic in nature. I no longer felt the surface tension of the eyes on my body, but rather the softness of their gaze.
I smiled and pulled off my shirt, not even thinking about the sit-ups I didn’t do that morning, or the couple days missed in the gym that month. I then unbuttoned my jeans, looked up, raising my eyebrows a touch, and pushed them down to the ground. I reached down and adjusted myself, and gave a little tug to make sure I was hanging right, and then just stood there. After asking me to turn around, they said thanks, and I pulled up my pants and walked off stage and outside.
Instinctively I knew I was different, but I didn’t know how it was possible. This striptease was not courage, valor, or even a wild hair up my butt. It was the act of somebody else. It’s a strange feeling to be someone else and know that you are. When I was younger I remember reading as story about a hundred mattresses, a pea that was placed underneath them and a young woman who was tested to see if she was sensitive to it’s placement. I know I have another soul because I spent my entire life on that bed and never felt a pea until today. Today it was different, and I felt it, and it caused me to stir, to toss, and to fall. I’m not sure if my soul is the pea, or the mattresses, or my sensitivity, but then I don’t know what a soul is. I do know that now I’m no longer resting dormant.