I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. THE clean-cut Ken doll from the open call was sitting next to the only open folding chair at my next callback. I hadn’t seen him at the dance call, but they’d probably run multiple days, so that wasn’t totally surprising.

Smiling as I took the seat next to him, he smiled back, a glint of something flirtatious in his eyes. Ooh, Jorge, I cautioned myself. You’re not here to make friends. Or more than friends. It was time to focus, and I didn’t mean on the hottie whose leg kept maybe-accidentally-maybe-not brushing up against mine. But as I continued sneaking peeks at the all-American angel sitting next to me, he was looking more and more kissable.

“Keller?” the audition monitor called. “Kevin Keller?”

“That’s me.” So the hottie’s name was Kevin Keller. Totally basic, but this boy was working basic and turning it into an art form. He smoothed a hand over his chestnut hair and stood up. Mmm, I’d forgotten how tall he was.

“Break a leg in there.” I couldn’t resist saying something to him. I should have been doing vocal warm-ups or something, but instead, I was trying to smolder at some guy in a polo shirt. Who was I right now?

“Thanks.” He smiled, and I swear a little twinkle shot out of his smile, like he was in a toothpaste commercial. “You too.”

Okay, now it was time to really get serious. I pulled my highlighted sides out of my dance bag and smoothed them. I’d been going over my lines like crazy ever since they were emailed to me, but there were only so many ways you could say “Holy cabooses!” before it felt completely surreal. I’d even called Katy to read for her, but I could tell she’d been distracted over the phone. Not that I blamed her; she had a lot of stuff going on with the fashion show, but I wished we could have hung out in person instead. That girl needed to move uptown, STAT. The Lower East Side was over, anyway. It was all UPPAbaby strollers and eighteen-dollar oat milk lattes now.

“Jorge?” I blessed the audition monitor for not pronouncing it “George,” like some of my high school teachers had. “Jorge Lopez?”

“That’s me.” I smiled my very best “cast me” smile, even though I knew the likelihood of the casting people asking her opinion about the most castable smiles in the hallway was slim. “You’re on deck.”

“Great, thank you so much.” I looked back at my lines. They were memorized at this point, but I couldn’t keep myself from scanning the page over and over again, trying to do something, anything that would make me feel ready.

“Holy cabooses,” I whispered. “Holy cabooses.”

The door to the audition room opened, and Kevin Keller came through. I tried to read on his face how it had gone, but his neutral smile told me nothing.

“Jorge Lopez?” the monitor called, nodding at me. “You’re up.”

“Thank you.” I smiled at her again, determined to be the friendliest bish in the hallway. She held the door open for me, and I walked back into the black box. There was the same panel of people behind the table, only this time, a woman with glasses and a ponytail sat slightly to the side, a binder in her lap. That must have been the reader.

“Jorge!” Ethan Fox said from the middle of the table, a warm smile on his face. They want to like you, I reminded myself, in Ma’s voice. Ethan Fox, at least, was certainly acting like he did. “Great to see you again, man. Go ahead and get started whenever you’re ready.”

“Thank you.” Nobody was more thankful than actors at auditions. Like, truly, had a more desperate group ever existed? I took my spot in the center of the room, made eye contact with the reader, and nodded to let her know I was ready.

“Barnaby, you and I are going to New York,” she read in a complete monotone, her eyes firmly locked on the page.

I kept my script in my hands even though I didn’t need it to deliver my lines, listening and reacting like the reader was giving me something instead of the absolute nothing she was serving. Like, I knew it wasn’t her job to emote, but come on. I’d seen more acting out of my brother Miguel when he helped me run lines for my role as Officer Krupke in high school, and Miguel was a chauffeur. Not exactly an artistic profession.

“And one more thing.” Man, this reader was so flat, it was like acting with a post. “We’re not coming back to Yonkers until we each fall in love with someone cute.”

“Holy cabooses!” I exclaimed, throwing up my hands. “Cornelius, we can’t do that! We don’t even know anyone cute!”

Everyone behind the table laughed. I smiled with triumph, preparing for my next line.

“Hold on a minute, Jorge.” Ethan Fox stopped. I turned away from the reader, surprised. They’d all just cracked up. What was the problem? “Just a quick note for you.”

“Great.” I smiled, because God help you if you weren’t gagging for criticism at an audition.

“We’re looking for a read that’s a little less …” Ethan Fox paused, like he was struggling to pick the word. “A little less, hmm …”

“Less soft,” the woman suggested.

“A little less gay,” the man with the bald head and glasses said flatly.

Excuse me? I stared at the casting people, shocked that some of them were actually nodding along. This wasn’t the army in the ’90s. You couldn’t just go around telling people to be less gay! Especially not in a theater of all places! The theater had always been my sacred space where I could just be me, no judgment, ever since I was a little gay-by. And I was willing to bet that at least half the people behind the panel felt the same way, including, perhaps, Mister Be-Less-Gay Bald Head himself.

“Maybe more of a masculine energy, is what he means.” Ethan Fox gestured with his hands, like masculine energy could be conveyed in a gesture.

“There’s a lot of different ways to be masculine,” I shot back. “My sexuality doesn’t have anything to do with my gender expression.”

“Of course not,” he said conciliatorily. “It’s just, you know, Barnaby does have a heterosexual relationship—”

“Who says?” I knew I was being combative, and I should probably just roll over and take the criticism if I wanted the part, but I did not survive four years of high school gym class to be told I was “too gay” by some middle-aged theatre queens who probably wished they were on my side of the table, looking this killer in tight pants.

“It’s in the text,” the reader pointed out unhelpfully.

“Barnaby could be bi. Minnie Fay doesn’t have to be a cis woman. I thought this production was going to be different from some community theatre show in Iowa. Isn’t that, like, the whole point of what you do as a director? I thought that was the whole Ethan Fox thing. You do new works, or you break old works down and make them new again, in ways nobody’s thought of before? Because you’re such a daring experimental genius or whatever?”

Everyone behind the table exchanged looks like they couldn’t believe I was talking to the director like that. I kind of couldn’t believe it, either, but whatever. Even at eighteen, I was too old for that fragile straight boy nonsense.

“You know what? Let’s call it for today,” Ethan said.

And there goes my chance at Broadway. I’d probably feel bad about it later, but right now, I was too pissed to even think about what I was missing out on.

“But, Jorge, I’d still really like to see you at the next callback. Get you to read with some of the actors auditioning for Cornelius.” The other people behind the table looked as surprised as I felt. I’m still in this thing, even after all that?

“Great, sure, yeah. Thank you so much.”

As I waved good-bye and headed out, I wondered if I even cared that I made it to the next round of callbacks. Did I still want to be cast in this production of Hello, Dolly!? I wasn’t sure. Any environment where I couldn’t really be me wasn’t one I wanted to be part of. But being on Broadway had been my only dream, since before I could even read sheet music. What if it was like this everywhere?

No one had ever told me I was too anything in a theater. It was the one place where I was never too loud. Too skinny. Too gay. But maybe it had just been that way at school and at camp. Maybe, now that I was trying to be a real working actor, that was all over.

The idea of giving up on my dreams was awful.

But having to hide who I was to make them come true was even worse.

Cutting through my inner monologue of nonstop angst, I could hear Ma’s voice in my head warning me not to burn any bridges. Better to go home now and see if I could talk it through with Katy before I made a decision, especially while I was still so angry.

“Hold on a minute, Jorge.” Much to my surprise, Ethan Fox emerged from behind the table and jogged over to meet me by the door. Up close, he was even younger than I’d thought. I could see a smattering of freckles across his nose, and only a faint crease of lines by his eyes. “Listen,” he said quietly. “I really like you, and I’m sorry for the way Gilbert delivered that note. It was unprofessional, and uneducated, and I am truly sorry.” I would have preferred the apology accompanied by a heaping side of calling Gilbert out for being a bigot, but it was something, I guess. “I think you can bring a lot to this production. You have a great voice, you’re a phenomenal dancer, you actually look seventeen, and you clearly have a knack for comedy. I’m definitely interested in seeing the Barnaby that you can create. Like I said, we just need an energy that’s more—”

“Masculine,” I finished for him. Right now, Ethan Fox was every gym teacher I’d ever had. He was my dad not understanding why I wanted to be Princess Jasmine for Halloween as a little kid. He was my brother Hugo making fun of me for “throwing like a girl.” It was hard to even look at him.

“Exactly. I mean, there’s a great tradition of truly grounded, masculine dancing in the American musical theatre canon. That’s what I’m trying to tap into. Think, you know, more Gene Kelly in An American in Paris, less Billy Porter in Kinky Boots.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Ethan Fox should be gagging to get Billy Porter in one of his shows. But I kept that thought to myself.

“Think about it, okay?” He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “I know I shouldn’t say this at this point in the process, but I’m rooting for you.”

Ethan Fox was rooting for me? This situation was way more complicated than the choreography at the dance call. Even with my hurt and disappointment, part of me couldn’t help but feel excited that I had a real shot at this. And Ethan Fox, probably the most famous director working in New York right now, was rooting for me, some unknown kid who’d never booked a professional gig. It was unreal.

Think about it.

I couldn’t promise anything else, but that, at least, I could do.