Wanna eat the absolute worst peanut butter sandwich you could ever imagine (think: foam core, vaseline and sugar) while waiting indefinitely for release in a 3 x 6 cell, be lied to eighty different ways when asking "why am I being handcuffed" because the law enforcement officials THEMSELVES have no idea, and get a bunch of idiotic polariods taken with you, your bike, and your arresting officer so they won't have to hold your bike as "evidence", only to be told upon your release that it's being held anyway, I suggest you ride a bike in the streets of Manhattan with your friends because apparently, it has become a crime in the eyes of those hired to protect us. And while you're at it, why not shit on your own civil liberties before they beat you to it.
At least I have an interesting excuse for my students today as to why I'm unprepared for class...
Monday night my pal Jason and I went to see a play in the Village... it was the kind of play you walk away from feeling like you've just taken a fairly pleasant nap on a long subway ride and can't remember what you dreamed. Jason called the play "aggressively mediocre", and I got such a kick out of the phrase that I've used it about eighteen times in the past 43 hours to describe practically everything, from burritos to men's haircuts to greeting card logos. I'm lying, I just used it to describe the play. I also said that I felt pretty okay about the whole theatre-going experience, like I had just bought a pack of gum from the play and it smiled at me benignly when i handed over my money.
I'll tell you though, it was precisely the kind of play that would have made me livid a few years ago. The subscription audience laughed uniformly at every well-cued joke, as though someone was pushing the "bon mot" button on their heads. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKERS??!" the Long-Lost-Me would have wailed, "Don't you know there is a dancing spiderman somewhere out there without a disco ball?? WAKE UP TO THE FUNNY!!!" But the bare truth is, this is exactly what they wanted. And good for them. I'd venture most Americans over the age of 35 can't say as much.
And then I googled the term "aggressively mediocre" and discovered that everyone uses it. So there goes THAT small joy.
*sigh*...
Soph and I made our first fire of the year today, and frankly, we just could not get over ourselves.
My favorite segment is the second one because you can hear my roommate's mom talking loudly in the kitchen about her friend's chronic skin problem.
And could someone please tell me why I'm addicted to this girl?
It rained the entire time. And I ate horribly. And my play is too fucking long and too fucking histrionic. What else...
Southern Cali breaks my heart like no other place in the world. Something about the way all apartments open up into the daylight rather than a musty hallway, or the sunny carports with storage overhangs rather than oily garages, or how the smallest ugliest flowers always smell the best...
In LA I learned my father had died. In LA I fell wicked hard for a beautiful man and an impossible woman. In LA I took the MTA everywhere and lay my foulest karma on skinny ladies in expensive cars.
A mental snapshot of me in LA... waiting alone for the #2 bus at midnight to take me from a supermarket in Santa Monica to a lesbian bar in West Hollywood, drunk off my ass on Jack Daniels, having no expectations of coming home that night. Watching a huge warm-weather spider walk past my shoe, talking to it out loud: "help me... please..."
Is it wrong to have nostalgia for that? Although it isn't really nostalgia for an unhappy time... more like for a lost self. But if I knew me back then I would ask myself to wash the pink dye from my hair and eat more greens.
Little scrapey joy, scritch-scritch on my ribs... I have a large spinning neuron in my chest, I can almost hear the whirring... my feet are too cold, the landlord living downstairs doesn't like warmth because his husband's fake heart needs the chill to keep pumping, but luckily my own heart's whir is keeping the rest of me warm. In a few hours I'll be squinty in SoCal, and I'm buzzing with that. It's in my throat. Now my cheeks. My forehead. Fingers.
I won't come home this time...
(the Betrothed in a rare moment of frivolity)
My mom always said it could happen... she was right. I'm addicted. Am I ashamed? Slightly. But god, to breathe clearly again, with just the quick squeeze of a thumb and a little creepy squirt... three times yesterday. I can actually pretend that I'm not sick, and buy a coffee instead of an herbal tea. And I LOVE BREATHING. Through the nose. I insist on nose-breathing even when there is a foul odor afoot, due to my warped yet not entirely unfounded idea that I will be "eating" the smell otherwise.
I hope my cold goes away before I fly out to California on Monday. I'm really looking forward to the reading. SCR is so excellent to their playwrights. They'll put me up in artist's housing and give me a per diem. Places like that actually make me feel like playwriting is a legit career and not some scrubby masochistic indulgent hobby. And they're hooking me up with great actors. I can't wait to hear the script again. Now I can actually listen to it, rather than dissolve into a moist quaking wad of terror like I did at the Soho Rep reading.
Oh. These are kind of funny...
So tomorrow night is the gig and I'm shit-ass terrified. Soph and I have practiced a few times and I've sounded okay, and we did a run-through for our roomie tonight and she seemed entertained, so as long as I don't freeze up and forget lyrics or die on stage, everything should be swell. And the venue is excellent. The Mountain Goats just performed there on Thursday. Everything will be fiiiine...
Although I can't help but recall that time I auditioned for a touring gig at Six Flags... I wanted so badly to leave Jersey that I was willing to play a Looney Tunes Friend in some shitty Warner Bros. kids show in fucking Florida. I made the first cut, which was an "actors who sing and move well" cattle call, and they asked me to prepare "New York New York" for my call-back. It was completely out of my range, but I knew the song well and felt like I didn't need to rehearse it much save a few rounds in the shower.
On the day of my call-back I drove 45 min. from my little state school in Trenton to Great Adventure in Jackson, and was shocked to find all the auditionees gathered under a single tent. Over two-hundred wanna-be Jessica Rabbits and Tweety Birds had been invited back (no other potentially female Looney Toon characters actually exist)... and who do I see sitting in a plastic fold-out chair waiting for her turn to sing but my high-school rival Janel Margaretta.
The gal who dumped me as a friend in fifth grade because she grew breasts before I did. The gal who tried to out-sing me at every impromptu Whitney Houston lunchtime tribute. The gal who made fun of me for saying I wanted to star in a movie and win an "Emmy" for it. The gal who was famous in our town for being able to burst into tears spontaneously whenever the situation required.
We greeted each other with awkward friendliness and chatted nervously a few moments. My throat was tight because it was winter and the more I talked the drier my mouth got. Of course the first name the casting director called was MINE, and I had not even warmed up my voice. So I stood there before all 200 girls--including Janel--and in my panic I asked the pianist to play the song a step down, closer to my natural range. Which of course I hadn't rehearsed ONCE.
Needless to say, I fully embarrassed myself. Janel did splendidly, though (like an asshole I had stuck around to watch). Right after she finished I bolted without saying good bye, and ran to the womb-like comfort of my little white Tercel. I wept in the parking lot for twenty minutes, and of course all the long drive back to my dorm.
And it was my birthday, too.
Tomorrow will be different, though. As long as Janel stays in Florida.
My pal Jay wrote this to me when I asked him if he ever reads my blog: "Frankly, my opinion about blogs in general is that they get pretty stale without a some kind of hook... The 'here's what happened to me' or 'here's what I think is interesting,' to me, gets old very fast." And I got bummed out, realizing that I've harbored a substantial fear of this all along, and that the only reason I have a blog is my friend Yatta (a blogoholic) convinced me that my "voice" is interesting enough for a public forum.
I don't rant about politics. I don't divulge juicy dirt about my personal life. I don't post recipes. I don't show my breasts. I don't even link to interesting sites. I already have a private cloth-covered journal, but it's basically one long vitriolic rant about how badly I (or my friends or my career choices) suck, peppered with moments of nearly Victorian rapture and a scrupulous record of my eating patterns. I wonder what I'm getting out of this...
I am a dirty blogsniffer, by the way. I found this woman's blog online the other night that broke my heart... married at 18, two little kids she is inasne for, a husband who cheated once and is emotionally distant, and reams and reams of pain and frustration. I was addicted to her suffering. I kept looking for the entries that had the most gravitas, like when she gave birth to her boy and when she found out hubby was cheating (that one doesn't exist). I pretend this mild case of vouyerism informs my work, but it may be a much cheaper disease than that.
One of my students came to me before class yesterday and told me her fiancé had just committed suicide, and so she'd need the class assignments she missed while she was away for the cremation. I told her okay, and then I taught my class. How grotesque and false can one person feel explaining MLA fucking format...
It's late. I have to plan a lesson for tomorrow.
Six nights ended last night. Bob and Phil threw a little party for us with wine and wings. It was an exhausting experience (the production, not the party), but I think everyone got something out of it. These short-play festival things are so unforgiving, so I have to say this one was more rewarding than most.
Sat around grading papers in a brand new Seattle Roasters Cafe in Queens the other day, watching Jeanne throw sheets of rain onto all the undergrads running between buildings at LaGuardia College. The cafe is so new that the helium-filled balloons tied to the backs of all the chairs have not yet begun to sink. The cafe is on the second floor and has large windows, which makes for a fine perch. Though the view is mostly grey. Grey sky, grey traffic, grey #7 train rattling the platform on the elevated track across the way...
Sitting there watching the rain, my mind unravelled toward the blond tan dreadlocked man on the beach in Waikiki a month ago... he lent me his straw mat so I could lay on the grass and read my book while he wove beads onto hemp strings to sell to tourists. I was wearing a flowered sundress and chuck taylor knock-offs with my hair in little stubby pigtails. Maybe I looked like I needed a reckless adventure. When I returned his mat to him, he flirted with me so boldly that I bolted directly into the "Cheeseburger in Paradise" across the road with my face on fire. There I ordered the sloppiest, rarest burger on the menu and thought about strangers and kissing. Then I slipped into a nearby thrift store and purchased a cute girlish sweater (cotton-candy pink) and ambled around in the sun for the remainder of the afternoon, swinging my purse and humming. Ah, the power of a well-aimed flirt.
I don't know how that is related to the rain in Queens. Maybe it has something to do with abandon.
My brother got married in Jersey today. The atmosphere was: swedish meatballs, 80's power ballads, white zinfindel, and Wiccans. Possibly an anticlimactic day for the pair, as their characters had already exchanged their vows last year.
