Men With Own Tuxedos

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I went on Craigslist and I wrote the ad: Wanted: men with own tuxedos to be extras in independent film. I added, tuxedo must be clean.

Responses filled my inbox. Men who owned tuxedos needed work badly. I conferred with our director, a brilliant but impatient man. He waved his hand and told me to take all of them; take all the men with tuxedos.

The men with tuxedos arrived en masse. They were already wearing their tuxedos: an army of shuffling sadness. They were paired with women in velvet gowns. Upon seeing these women, many of the tuxedoed men began to cry. Those in blue and purple tuxedos, in particular, seemed to be stricken with agony. They blew their noses and dabbed at their eyes with their pocket squares. Others crossed their arms and scowled at the women, who looked around as if they didn’t know what to do.

Men who own tuxedos must have terrible luck if they’re willing to work for $10.75 an hour. Maybe this is what makes them so sad. I pouted, out of sympathy. I took a photo. Those tuxedos must have been expensive, originally.

The men with tuxedos were difficult to motivate. They wouldn’t follow any of our director’s blocking. They were told to mingle but avoided making eye contact with each other. Our director suffered twenty minutes of this and then told me to speak to the men with tuxedos.

I stood on a chair and called them over to me and said they looked like the saddest men in the world and they had to shape up. I looked over at our director. He nodded, stern. I said to the men with tuxedos if they couldn’t get happy they wouldn’t be paid. Whoever knew he wouldn’t be able to be happy for the shoot could just leave now, I said.

And then the men with tuxedos followed the only blocking they knew by heart: they turned on their shiny heels and plodded away, off the set, down the street until they were gone. Only one remained: a bald man in a powder blue tuxedo. His shoes were scuffed and his tuxedo was wrinkled, but his face was clean and unlined. He said he thought he could stay and get happy, if we wanted.

I looked around the set. The women in velvet gowns were showing each other pictures of their dogs; the crew was eating; our brilliant director was lying on the ground with his arm flung over his face.

“No,” I said. “One man in a tuxedo is useless.”