I walked out of the hall in the arts center today from
Shakespeare rehearsal and found Kara and Stewart making out against the brick
wall beside he old art storage room where the guys used to
practice “metal” or whatever band last year. Now it pretty much sounds like construction
all the time and between that and the constant thumping of the wrestlers on the
stage[1]
and the hellacious sound of Caitlin’s bagpipes[2]
WHICH YOU CAN HEAR EVERYWHERE FOR LORD’S SAKE, it’s hard to find a quiet place
to run lines. Rebecca and I have been
sitting on the big table in the auditorium lobby, where we were interrupted by
the wrestling team running sweaty laps up and down the stairs. But then the
wrestling coach told us we weren’t allowed to sit up there anymore because we
were distracting the team.
I guess getting the whole theater wasn’t enough for those
neckless wankers.[3]
I hate sports.
So now the hallways, by the music room and that’s why I keep
running into Kara and Stewart in awkward moments. They’re supposed to be running lines from
the whole Angelo and Isabella[4]
scene, so they say, and even though I’ve never understood the Stewart thing, at
least Kara’s not hanging out with that whole seersucker miniskirt crowd right
now. All of those girls are mean bulimics[5]
and they hate me.
I am friends with at least four people who really believe the lyrics
to “Black” are the best poetry they’ve ever heard. What will I do? I worry that I’ll never find people who can truly understand
me.
[1]
At the end of my sophomore year, the school tore down the building containing the
wrestling room in order to construct a fancy new student center. The wrestling
team was given the entire theater to practice and hold matches during the their
season. That decision canceled the winter play. The School always valued “team sports”
over the arts, so this came as no real surprise, but most of us drama kids had
already figured our schedule around a winter play. We wrote
a petition. I penned a fiery editorial to the school newspaper and we convinced
the young, then under-employed wife of one of the English teachers to sign on
as our director and with a little negotiation got permission to build out the
music room ourselves as a black box theater. The wrestling team had first
priority on the stage for two whole years, wasting the real theater with their
occasional meets that no one came to and a lot of grunting and useless sweating.
[2]
Required afternoon activities also included individual music lessons and studio art (as well as the traditional sports, mountaineering, drama and
horseback riding). Caitlin’s instrument was the bagpipe. The music teacher put
her in the chapel because the chapel was basically the only place on
far enough away from the other buildings that her practicing would not literally stun the entire campus into
horror-struck silence with all the squawking and droning. On the other hand,
the chapel was kind of in the center of everything so there was no place to completely escape the sound.
[3]
Welcome to my English slang phase! Good news: it’s brief.
[4]
The play was kind of a Shakespearean Revue.
And the Angelo and Isabella scene is from “Measure for Measure.” If you
don’t know the play, Angelo, a zealous, though corrupt public
administrator, tells Isabella, a rigidly pious nun, that he will commute her brother’s
death sentence (itself earned from illicit fornication) if she will break her vows and sleep with
him. It’s an ugly, weird, uncomfortable scene in an ugly, weird, uncomfortable
play (and still one of my favorites, by the way). The Young Director blocked the
scene as a heated negotiation that turned into a borderline sexual assault. It
was pretty rough stuff for sixteen-year-olds. Given that the administration
regularly censored the living shit out of our scripts, I’m completely shocked
that she got away with it. Of course it was the blocking that was suggestive,
not the dialogue (which was Shakespeare and thus “educational”). But the blocking . . . still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
[5]
I can’t confirm that any of them were actually bulimics. There was a lot of
idle chatter and bragging about binging and purging outside the girl’s bathroom
on the Day Hall that year. They were, however, sort of mean.