If I had a penny for every time a young girl emailed, tweeted, facebook’d or sent a message through tumblr asking me for guidance in their journey of accomplishing their dreams, I’d be rich.  There’s so many young faces out there, wanting that big break and willing to do whatever it takes to get it. They are just looking for that validation from someone who has ‘done it’ to let them know that it will be okay.
But as much as I would like to encourage each person to be willing to sacrifice comfort, complacency, a steady paycheck, good benefits and a social life to go hard for what they want out of life, I do have to warn them that some people that they may meet along the way may not have their best intentions at heart.  You will meet people that can sense ‘desperation’ and vulnerability and they will take advantage of that.
I never ever told this story before (not even to my closest friends) but I feel the need to share it now. I always conveniently skip this part of the story when I talk about my journey but somewhere some girl needs to hear it.
Years ago, a few months after my mother had passed, I was at a very confused state in my life. I had also just broken up with a guy who had cheated while I was away on vacation with my friends (he’ll tell you otherwise —‘we weren’t together’). My spirit was broken and I was trying to put all the pieces together while starting my last semester of school and working full time at an accounting firm.
One night I went out alone and I met this girl who worked for like the Washington Post or something, (It’s all a blur), but she seemed pretty nice. We exchanged info and everything seemed pretty cool. A few days later she text me and told me that she had passed my info to a film director that was looking for an actress to be a lead in his film about the entertainment industry.  I said, ‘Okay’. I had took a few acting classes while in a TV & Film program but it wasn’t my goal to be an actress. But just that text alone sent my mind off into fantasy land of what could happen if I was to get the part. I had stars in my eyes. Finally, I could leave this damn desk job at the accounting firm (making $30k), leave school which was stressing me out because my work schedule was making it hard to work on team projects in all of my production classes, and I could prove to my family that I was really going to be ‘somebody’.  I saw ‘lights, camera, action!’
The ‘director’ contacted me shortly afterward and I went on lunch break so that I could speak to him. We talked for about an hour and he asked me questions about my life and told me from that he thought I’d be the perfect person for his film which was about a girl who had a similar story as mine.  He would just need me to come out and audition the next night.
I said, ‘fine’.  Meanwhile, I never mentioned this to my friends. I traveled to the location he gave me the next night (which was a huge house) and I was immediately relieved when his wife answered the door and there was the girl from the party sitting in the living room as well as another really nice girl (all who were all there to audition).
This isn’t going to be too bad I thought.  We were shown a brief teaser film that involved the usual in a tale of a black girl lost, rappers, athletes, money flying (if you ever saw the BET film ‘Video Girl’ with Meagan Good’..it was along those lines).  He said, he just wanted us to get an idea of what the film would be about. He also showed us some of his work.
Everything seemed fine and I was waiting for the script to come around so I could study those lines. I mean, from acting class, I knew enough that I’d have to perform a monologue or at least a scene from the script right? Wrong
What he requested next was kind of odd. ‘The girl has a lot of sexual scenes in this film. We’d like to see if you could handle those kind of scenes’.  I glanced over at ‘Party girl’ to see what her reaction would be and she seemed to be fine with it as well as the other girl that was there.
Fine. The first thing they wanted us to do was kiss each other. The other two girls were then asked to get naked and to ‘act’ as though they were having sex with each other while moaning and groaning and the whole shabang.  The husband and wife kind of joined in too and it was like watching one big orgy, meanwhile this director tells me to watch so that I know what to do when it’s my turn.  I completely blanked out. The whole room went blank and all I could hear was noises. Everything became a blur because in my mind, I knew my mom and my grandmother were somewhere turning in their grave at the thought of me going out like that. Yes, I was lost. I wanted some form of success but I be damned if I was going to get it while losing sight of my morals and dignity in the process.
The director guy took one of the girls off in a room somewhere and he may have come back for me 5-10 minutes later. He grabbed my hand, he was completely naked and I burst in to tears. He said, ‘what’s wrong?’.  I said ‘I can’t.. I won’t.. I’m not’.
I was beyond distraught.  More so from what I saw out of the other girls. How did we get here? Clearly we were raised to know that this isn’t remotely close to being right.
I can’t tell you why and how he let me out of that house (I may have signed a confidentiality agreement..I clearly can’t remember) but as I drove home at 2 in the morning, I had a sense that I had failed again. There would be no lights. no cameras and definitely no action. I also realized that I would never tell my friends what happened that night because I was too ashamed. I didn’t want to hear the, ‘why didn’t you google him first’, why did you go to a location without telling us where you were going to be’ and all of those things that people who care about you will say. I knew they would be right but I didn’t want to hear it.
I didn’t go to work the next day.  My best friend called me and said, ‘Your job has been calling me, you didn’t show up or anything. They are worried’.  I told her, ‘Tell them I quit’.
She was confused but she told them and we left it at that. My attitude was so matter-of-fact that she didn’t ask anymore questions.
At the time, I realized that I had no money except for a check that I would be receiving two weeks later but I also realized that I couldn’t go back to that job, I couldn’t go back to school and I couldn’t keep living that mundane life that I was living. And I wasn’t about to put my life and whether I was going to be successful or not in the hands of some shady ‘director’ character.  I wanted out of everything.
Two days later, I found myself in a car, packed up with all of my things, driving to Detroit
My real journey started there..
Looking back, I believe I saw what I saw for a reason.  In the span of time I’ve been in the entertainment industry, I was never put in that situation ever again. I never put myself in a position where I felt compromised, what I was doing was morally wrong or that I was defying my own dignity to achieve a certain level of success. God put me through that for a reason, because he knew I could potentially be faced with that same situation time and time again if I wasn’t careful.
The lesson in all of this is this: When you are trying to get put on, people who may or may not be in positions of power, will approach you and promise you the world. ‘What are you willing to do to get what you want? How bad do you want it?  It happens in the industry all of the time, and if you don’t have a good strong support system around you that can help protect you from those type of things, you can find yourself lost and caught up in the matrix.
If I didn’t say ‘No’, I would have never been able to live with myself.  But unfortunately there are not enough of us that are saying, ‘No’.
Guard your dreams. Don’t put them in the hands of someone that may not have your best interest at heart. And always know, that if it goes against what you believe in and your moral values, it probably wasn’t meant to be.  You want to be able to live and be happy about your success when all is said and done.
Originally posted on My Tumblr

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