Feet 3

(Feet 1 -- http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/andrewjlederer/2006/11/30/feet_1)
(Feet 2 -- http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/andrewjlederer/2006/12/09/feet_5)

In New York, despite a multitude of impediments (aesthetic, financial, and otherwise), I was somehow strong. I believed whatever was making others see me in a negative light was temporary; it didn't define me and if I did what I did as if things were not in the way, eventually I'd come out the other side of this crucible of dorkiness, whole.

My relative success in L.A. would, you'd think, have supported that view and hastened the arrival of the post-dork era. But though TV and movie gigs were coming at a rate of about once a month, I was living in a motel, falling behind in my rent, and using the acting money to pay off each month's accumulated debts. I could never get ahead, which meant I remained inside a larger man's shoes.

And once the heels wore down, I could no longer transcend the shoes' effect on me. I walked weirdly; a confused cocktail of sliding in the vastness, tilting at the heels, and a futile fighting back.

Wardrobe from acting jobs offered glorious moments of temporary liberation, so imagine how I felt when -- playing a high school kid with a gambling problem in the final season of "CHiPs" -- I was forced to wear my own shoes, which they thought looked right for the character.

Now, I had to fight the fight on camera as well as in life.

And the fight in life was tough. New people at The Comedy Store were meeting me for the first time just as my footwear got the better of me. They had no memory of the way I used to be.

At least cripples, comedic though their walks can be, have an excuse. No one (well, maybe a few) thinks their off-kilter motions are definitive of their personalities.. But my inexplicable lurchings had no apparent physical source. They seemed to represent me.

To Be Continued

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Originally posted December 11. 2006, 14:36 @ http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/andrewjlederer