WAIT Training

First off, I did not misspell the title.  It will all make sense in the end.  I promise.

I’m at the gym working out with weights.  WEIGHT training makes me feel strong, powerful, masculine, and beautiful.  I can lose the expectations of society and my ego and become one with my body, pumping and stretching and falling into the music.  One more bicep curl, one more pull-up, a few more crunches, and nirvana.  A turn-on, a sense of accomplishment, freedom, and instant gratification in an hour and a half.

I walk back home, soaking in the vitamin D, with a spring in my step, and a drive to push forward with my creative career and my love life.  I get the mail and open up a SAG residual check for $0.59.  Yes, that’s right, fifty-nine cents.  Hiding under a Hollywood Reporter and some bills on my steel topped table I see my audition sides and bam!  Back to ego, back to thinking about the future, back to not knowing what to do, back to insecurity, and back to waiting.

I need to learn how to wait.  And wait consciously, without denying my feelings and without driving myself crazy.  How to just be.  I need WAIT Training. 

I look it up on Google.  Other than abstinence education, semen conservation, and waiting tables, there is nothing.  Well, I am a do it yourselfer so here goes… So, those sides were for an audition for a reoccurring lesbian role in a pilot for a major network. Whoohoo! Right? No. The audition got cancelled the night before. My manager assured me it would be rescheduled.  Well, that didn’t happen.  Then a new slightly different breakdown was released and again my manager submitted and pitched me.  Okay, still waiting. They probably went with a name.  Pretty normal in this business.  Or maybe it will still happen if I just stay positive and wait.  I look up at my ceiling beams for comfort and all I see is my dead plant hanging from a metal chain.  I need a distraction.  Oh look, there’s a message on my computer from a dating site.  She has only one profile picture and it’s out of focus and she’s wearing sunglasses.  Really? I want to fall in love with her eyes not her sunglasses. I delete her and her sunglasses from memory. Anyway, home is where the heart is, right?  Then why does my heart suddenly feel like it’s on vacation? Why does it feel like it is breaking under the pressure of stasis and loneliness? ​

Noelle Messier as Leah in Trophy Wife

Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic. Don’t get me wrong.  I am busy as can be.  Catering my ass off, submitting for projects, keeping up on my manager, auditioning for acting roles and voice overs, getting new headshots, re-doing my demo reel, writing my next feature screenplay, and trying like hell to keep up on social media, yoga, and the gym. Yet, I still have this sense that I am missing something.  A sense of constantly being in limbo and not feeling quite grounded. Waiting for something. The big WAITING finger poking at the back of my mind and the pit of my stomach.  And it just keeps getting multiplied.  The waiting on tables to pay the bills.  The waiting for casting notices that are right for me.  The waiting for those perfect auditions and then waiting to book the job. And of course, the waiting during the job to do the job.  And waiting for a part where I do not have a line that is either, “I am not a man,” or “ma’am I’m not a sir,” or some such variation.  Granted, I have done very well with those parts and am extremely grateful. Waiting for someone to recognize that there is such a thing as a sexy, butch lesbian. Or an androgynous, lesbian lead character.  Waiting to be comfortable in my own skin.  Waiting to be recognized for who I am and to own that without shame or discomfort. Ironically, it is through being other characters that I really learn how to be me.

I do not just need WAIT Training for my career. I am still, almost pathetically, waiting for love. For that special someone who jumps off the page and down my pants and actually lives in Los Angeles.  I just put my profile back up on the dating site after a year hiatus. If and when I actually find a potential match, there is the waiting to meet, waiting to see what they actually look like, waiting for the next date, waiting to see where it goes, or waiting for it to end. 

Our lives are full of waiting.  We spend endless hours in line waiting for food, waiting for entertainment, waiting to buy things, waiting to get things or ourselves fixed, and of course, waiting in the dreaded L.A. traffic.  Waiting to die and waiting to live. Waiting is part of life and death. It is what we signed up for.

So how do I make it all stop?  Kind of an odd conundrum.  I want to find a way to stop the immobility.  Maybe one way to stop waiting is to be completely present in the moment because then there is nothing to wait for.  Whatever I am waiting for only exists in the future.  My frustration comes from looking at my past and feeling like I should have accomplished more or done this or that. The missing link is obviously internal.  So yeah, I’ve done the self- help route and therapy and Eastern philosophy and A Course in Miracles, blah, blah, blah.  I know I should be embracing the NOW, living in the moment, forgetting about the past and future, and manifesting blah, blah, blah.  And it is all right and true, and I get it. But why is it so darn hard to do?  And then I get mad at myself for thinking that it is hard, because I should be thinking it is easy, if I really want it to happen. But I have to actually believe that and not just say it, blah, blah, blah.

Noelle Messier as the Police Officer in Dr. Ken

My fear of waiting is not really rational. It is almost instinctual.  A self- protection mechanism to soften the blow of disappointment.  I actually have a lot to be thankful for.  This year I booked a nice part on a major television show, Dr. Ken, and I actually had a scene with over 5 lines.  I love my new manager and have been getting some great auditions and feeling confident.  I am in the midst of researching and writing a love story about my gay uncle and his husband who have been together for 65 years.  My uncle John was a singer, a tailor, and a war hero.  He was married to a woman when he met Richard at Julliard in NYC in 1950.  It was love at first site. They sang opera, taught singing together, started a vocal foundation and coached Broadway stars.  They raised a son who became an actor and eventually tore the family apart with homophobia and scientology.  A true story of endless love, humor, music, tragedy, and faith.  For me, it has already been an inspirational, moving, and personal journey.

John Mace and Richard Dorr, Noelle Messier's great-uncles

  A feature film I starred in finally got finished after 6 years of waiting.  Granted it did not turn out the way I had hoped but I learned a lot and it did get picked up by a distributer.  That film, Black Tar Road, did not make it into OUTFEST but a little short I was in last year, Wedlocked, did.  I’ve been waiting for years for that. I will be part of one of the biggest LGBTQ film festivals in the world.  I will sit with my peers and soak in the estrogen on All Girl Friday as I watch myself on screen.  I built a voice over studio out of a telephone booth and have voiced four paying projects.  From all the catering work, I was finally able to ditch the 13-year-old car and buy a new one I love. As much as I like to complain about the food service industry, it has given me the flexibility to do what I love.  It also keeps me in shape and I have made some incredible friendships and made a lot of people smile.  Yeah, the love life is still lacking but I’m working on that. All in all, I am pretty happy. 80% according to a test I took. Yet why do I still feel stuck in the muck of the stagnant pond of waiting?

Noelle Messier in Cher Women's World Music Video

The secret to WAIT training was whispering in my ear on the way home from the gym but I wasn’t listening.  I drink a glass of wheat grass juice and the light starts seeping into my brain.  Okay, so, WEIGHT training puts me in the present, one with mind, body, soul, and the universe. Lifting weights is a challenge.  So is waiting.  I don’t look at WEIGHT training as a chore but as an opportunity and a positive experience.  Maybe if I change how I look at waiting, it won’t be quite so difficult.  Look at Heinz Ketchup.  Their late 70s early 80s advertising campaign with the whole, “anticipation it’s keeping me waiting,” Carly Simon song thing. They made waiting and ketchup look sensual and delicious.  If they can do it, why can’t I?  But, this is a new millennium.  I like to be in control of my ketchup.  I don’t want to feel like a powerless cog in the waiting machine.  I want to slap the bottom of my bottle and spill my bloody contents all over the counter. Here I go, not wanting to wait, problem solving, and making a mess of things again.  Perhaps, I need to accept that I do not need a solution.  I simply need to be comfortable with the problem. Maybe the secret to waiting is that I have to practice being at peace with the waiting and feel my feelings and just be okay in the discomfort. 

Or I need more sex. Look at me, making it sound like I’m actually having sex.

There is definitely a sexual component to WEIGHT training.  The push, the build, and the pay off.  My favorite part of sex is the tease.  The give and take.  That moment right before the thing I want is taken away is the most intense and powerful. The wanting and the yearning can be pleasing in itself. Especially if I am focused and concentrated and allow myself to feel it without fear of loss.  In that instant I am in the abyss, the waiting, and yet the anticipation is intoxicating.  The energy in that second right before the actual orgasm is, for lack of a better word, orgasmic. That payoff lives in every waiting moment.  It is happening right now, constantly, and in complete nothingness.  Maybe if I just give in and embrace it.  Feel the spark hidden in the waiting where desire and gratification meet in the present moment.  Then just maybe, that energy, in that positive space, will find a new home, where my heart, mind, and spirit can become one.  Where motion is free to enter my life and I am free and ready to accept it.

I look up at that same dying plant and notice one long, living leaf reaching out of the bramble.  Everything has its ebb and flow.  I am exactly where I am meant to be right now. I am a homebody nomad exploring life through love and art. A loving person in a loving world that exists in every waiting, magical, infinitesimal moment. Waiting is simply, joyful opportunity over and over again.  At least that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself.  I’ll let you know how it goes…

Oh and Miss Casting Director, can you please just give me that audition, so I can blissfully experience the joyful, orgasmic, intensity of waiting to get the part, waiting to shoot the pilot, waiting for it to get picked up, waiting for the contract, and waiting for the money to rain down and wash me with love.

Noelle Messier in photo by Laura Stevens

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