King Hall pretty much empty, save for first year theatre - that would be us, a mix of sophomores and juniors. The other majors now scattered across campus, into each of their respective buildings. A couple of seniors face each other, sitting in desks in the hallway running lines from Tartuffe. Michael Kelley works his dialogue alone, gesturing kind of wildly as he paces back and forth.
“You didn’t do your hair.”
“Yeah, well, I decided against the whole nine. Easier just to wear the jeans and jacket.”
“Okay, so, have you talked to him again?”
“No, and it’s not really like that. I mean, I don’t even know if I like him that way.”
“Would you have mentioned him, dear, if you didn’t?”
Then her customary karate chop moves.
“OOH, MODED.”
“Oh, my god. River. He’s just interesting. Like. We just talked. Without it being, like, awkward or whatever.”
“You all are gonna get married, mark my words.”
“Okay. You have gotten a BIT too far ahead of yourself, homes. Like, where am I even supposed to start with all of this, my god. I guess with my critique of marriage, as an institution.”
“Do I look like I’m pro-marriage?”
“Nobody looks like they’re pro-marriage, River.”
“Way to parse the language there, nerd.”
“The subtleties of the English language, my friend.”
“How about the subtleties of your crush on this Marc boy.”
“I don’t know if you can really call him a boy anymore.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“He just turned twenty-one.”
“SO-phisticated LAYDAY.”
“Whatever. It doesn’t even matter. This kid is, like, WAY, WAY, WAY out of my league. On any level, any context.”
“You say he’s beyond boyhood and yet you call him ‘kid’”
“Life is full of contradictions, my friend.”
“You’re not a total troll, you know.”
“The way this kid dresses… I mean, I always end up being, like, more of a guy friend to them, anyway. Which is fine cause most of the time they just end up making me feel weird and sick to my stomach.”
“Not to fret, my friend. That weird, sick to your stomach feeling is LOVE.”
“Well, I don’t get what the fuss is all about then because it just really does not feel good.”
“Like I said. All right, all right, all right. You know, I just really have to say, Amanda. You know, you really look good as a guy.”
“Please don’t say that out loud ever again. To me or, like, anyone.”
“First Amendment, yo.”
Leah strolls into the classroom, trailed by Laurel and Roland, of course, dressed in his customary black.
“Hey. I’m going out to Leah’s tomorrow, we were thinking about checking out Aron’s.”
“Ah, man. I can’t. Tech starts.”
“FOO.”
Roland rolls his eyes at River, but is smiling, too.
“Another corny musical?”
“Fuck, yeah, man.”
“I get it. Collective energy and that.”
“Word.”
“You up today, Leah?”
“Tomorrow.”
Leah’s from Israel and lives in Park LaBrea with her dad, her mom still lives in Tel Aviv. I’ve often wondered what it was like for her to grow up in that kind of environment, so uncomfortably close to so much violence, though I still really don’t understand exactly what the whole thing is over. Crazy, though, when you really think about it. Like, you’re just going about your day, getting out of class, let’s say, or walking home from El Taco or wherever. And then, out of nowhere, some bomb or a gun fight or some shit goes down and someone gets shot or killed in front of you. Like, what? I’d like to be able to ask her about it sometime, but, I don’t know, that feeling of not wanting to answer THAT question again, I just wouldn’t want to be another one of the ones to make her feel that way. If she even does, I don’t fucking know.
Flyman sits quietly beside her, painting his nails. He does this all the time, but nobody seems to care and, if they do, they haven’t said anything yet. None of us know his actual first name, even our teachers call him Flyman. So called for the very black sunglasses that he never takes off, shaped like the eyes of a fly. He changes his hair color often, fluorescent orange or yellow or green among a rotation of many other garish tints, wears lipstick, clothes bought amongst hidden shops off of Melrose and out of the way thrift stores or the Sunday dollar sale at Jet Rag, Flyman’s a Fairfax High kid. Kate, one of the kids in my scene.
“I think it was definitely, you know, the right call. Not spending too much more time on it.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“You were supposed to call me last night, KATE.”
“Use it for the scene, yo. Keep the real life shit until later.”
Laurel, the last of our three, pops her gum at us.
Ms. Bloom sweeps in with a flourish. Her sister really was a 1970’s sitcom star, that isn’t bullshit. She has the air, though, of real theatre. Probably because she fucking is, she’s been directing plays with the same company since, like, 1981 or something.
“Good afternoon, friends. I trust you all are preparing or have prepared. I would hate for anyone else to suffer the fate Mr. Abernathy did Wednesday.”
Tom Abernathy’s scene had not gone particularly well and Bloom took the opportunity to show us all what a teaching moment was. You really do learn something new every day.
“I kid, I kid…”
She peers over her glasses at us.
“We’ll be seeing three scenes today, so let’s get to it. Amanda, Kate, and Laurel have graciously offered to start us off this afternoon. Take as much time to prepare as you need, ladies.”
“Hey. Gimme’ a second, ‘kay?”
Kate shoots me this look.
“You’re just gonna have to trust me.”
Step outside to the hallway. I wet my hands in the drinking fountain, slick back my hair, check my reflection in the display glass, then I slip on the jacket, button it all the way up. I close my eyes and then exhale, reach into my pocket for my spirit gum and costume burns. Nicky fucking Paradise, of all the parts. Of course there’d only be, like, eight flipping guys in all of first year theatre. Kate and Laurel take their places for the start of the scene, standing together center stage,
“Let it go,”
I whisper to myself,
“Inhabit the words.”
This is what I came here to do. Commit and lay a part of myself bare. If only to myself. No one can really know anything, I tell myself again. Exhale and tap on the glass, keeping myself well out of sight, the murmur of their muffled dialogue behind the closed classroom door. I peek in from the window corner, waiting for Laurel’s stage left cross. I let myself go. And step in, no longer wearing leather like Harry’s, but Nicky’s. I take a few steps into the classroom and feel settled. Into Nicky. Into my part and into the words. I am present. In the moment, waiting for the words that I know they’ll say, but still listening, inhabiting this other body. I know that I’m tapped into something inside of the words, but it’s inside of myself, too. We’re into our rhythm, say and response, and then natural pauses for laughs, a well oiled machine, the muse is with us today. The last line of the scene. And then a pause before applause from the class, all of us scanning Bloom for a clue of her critique about to come.
She stands, holding her hands together behind her back. Her eyes are closed, a tiny wrinkle forming between her brows. And then she opens them.
“Well… Done. My god, that was just excellent, excellent work. You worked so well together, captured what I think the essence of the scene is. I’m pleased. So incredibly pleased with all of you. I have to say, though. Amanda. That this. This. Is what I’ve been waiting to see from you, my fucking god. This what I wait to see from each of you, in every scene that each of you perform for me. You could have easily, easily portrayed Nicky as a caricature, broadly, with no substance. Mimicry, if you will. But instead. You. Embodied Nicky Paradise, his physicality. Embodied the era, your dialogue. And I have to say that after what I have seen from you today, I am sure that any one of your male peers could not have done better than you did today. And that jacket. That jacket played so perfectly, was just so perfect for the character. You showed us a side of yourself today. A side that we all have, mind you. That contradictory something about ourselves. That’s lying deep beneath the surface of things. When we tap into that, as actors, as artists, that’s when our art becomes real.”
publishing excerpts on an ongoing basis from my novel in progress, “all apologies - the beginning of the end in the 1990s,” a queer coming of age tale set across the span of the decade.
previous chapters.