Same Old Song and Dance

    I attended a medieval “fayre,” and, yes, they spelled it that way. I left my friends’ party and hopped aboard a train heading to Ludlow and, once there, proceeded to revisit the old town. I was rather fond of the place, with its towering church and ancient castle, and am a bit of a medieval geek, so I thought that I’d feel right at home. Well, I did at first, enjoying the elaborate costumes that ranged from historical to fantastic,

except that most of the normal people walking around weren’t very keen to talk while everything that I looked at cost a mint. Still, wandering around the castle again, chatting with medieval history specialists, and browsing the stalls was fun. Then the lights went out. I think that there was a power outage in most of Ludlow, or at least in our area, and all of the floodlights that illuminated the night died and the occasional gas powered torch was not enough to stave off the gloom. So I went back to the shops, since most of the events had to cancel (some medieval fair that can’t go on in the dark, right?) and bought a few things for my parents when Christmas came. I got a small, hand carved chest, splendid in ivy and leaf patterns, for my mother and a bottle of mead for my father, since that just seemed like a perfectly “English” thing to get for him. After that, I bugged out and crashed in my dorm after listening to the guys complain about our dorm parent again. They dislike how strict the housemaster is, but I rather like the Spanish teacher. I refer to him by two titles because, while they share the same man’s name body, they are as different from each other as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The man is personable, fun, and listens well, but from the moment he goes on house duty, well, let’s just say that he’s stringent.
    That week I had to sing with the choir for their annual “Carol Service” where I was roped into giving a small, mediocre solo, perform three times in a pantomime of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,” where I had to cross dress and sing again and dance. If I have not mentioned this before, trying to organize extra rehearsals for the pantomime when it became clear that our weekly sessions would not suffice was hellish. You have no idea how difficult it is for people to take your stage directions seriously when you’re hitching up your dress and adjusting your wig with every step. Furthermore, with the late nights caused by extra rehearsals for choir and drama plus homework, I fell asleep during all school assembly. The world became a soft and comforting darkness with droning voices for white noise. And then it exploded. I almost jumped out of my seat as the speakers banged and crackled with noise when the speaker moved the mic. Sleep eluded me after that. Turns out that I’d slept through the announcement of the essay competition winners and I’d earned second place with the rough draft I’d submitted. I turned in the paper, alright? I thought when our head of house berated me for being lazy when I told him that it was just a once-over paper. That’s all you said you wanted from me. Ha. Can’t complain now, can he?
    Anyhow, that was all before scrambling through my application to the University of Southern California’s film production major, part of which was to make a short film. Everything was going well until my actors failed to show at the appointed time and then, when we rescheduled, the other guy still failed to appear. As I was out of time, I had to grab some random kid to play the part of a priest (thank God I had planned on not filming the priest’s face, as a boy would be very… out of place in the film), and not record about a minute out of the film itself before I had to catch a train to London for a meeting with the people hosting my scholarship for this gap year at school and a Thanksgiving dinner. It turned out to be a gathering of pretty much all of the other current scholars and some past participants as well. I got to meet some very friendly people, some other rather self-absorbed people, and many very pleasant folk. The food was a little disappointing, the company was great, and then we made fools of ourselves before a camera before heading  onto the streets, seeking clubs and pubs.

    Well, it turned out that a good number of us were underaged while most of the clubs were absolutely booked on a Friday night and could not hold us. So we split up and I ended up with a group of four others heading to a pub and then sleep in our hostel. I should have gone with the others it turns out, as they had scrounged up a club after about an hour of searching and sounded like they had a great, if extraordinarily expensive, time. I’ve found that few places can match London’s exorbitant prices. Anyhow, as my application to USC was due by the end of that weekend, I was forced to seclude myself in the hostel for the entire weekend, instead of heading out and exploring the city with the others. This wouldn’t have happened if I had been able to film when I had originally scheduled, but trying to organize teenage guys is like trying to convince a wet cat that it’s happy. It is an impossible task.

    By the time I was heading back to school, I was disappointed at my lack of adventure, but glad to have finished my application. Then things went south. My train had an hour delay on the tracks, nearly causing me to miss the opening night of the Pantomime, the Common App broke, so I couldn’t submit my application to USC on time, and I caught a fever right afterward. Whee. Soon enough, everyone was sick of the pantomime, as it was directed at four year-old kids. On our final night, two days before Christmas break was to begin, the Pantomime suffered a little *ahem* “derailment.” We started the night with almost half of our cast missing with another two scheduled to leave about half-way through, as if performing this show for our classmates and teachers wasn’t bad enough. Furthermore, the girl playing Snow White was having a mental breakdown because a storm had cancelled all flights to her home for several days. Most of the other cast members thought that we should refuse to perform, due to the absent cast and how we all detested performing a kid’s show for teenagers and adults. However, I encouraged an alternative. Since the girls playing Snow White and the evil queen were eastern European, I started making socialist and communist jokes which the others caught onto quickly enough. We threw in quips about missing characters being imprisoned for absurd felonies ranging from spitting on a seagull to sexual harassment and, half way through the play, we murdered Snow White. Yep. Stabbed dat bitch good an’ dead. While unorthodox, the students got a least a chuckle out of it. Our drama teachers were not so amused. You can imagine how happy was I for break to start after that week.

Of Fascists, Catching Fire, Body Shots, and Tarzan

    There’s very little for me to say about the three weeks between half term and Thanksgiving because, well, I forgot about pretty much all of it. This is part of why I need to keep a blog or a journal or something. I’ve got a horrible memory for what happens in my own life. I forget events that aren’t particularly significant after about two weeks. Sorry about that. The only things that come to mind are drama related plus a party. I was recruited for two shows by the drama teacher in the span of a week. The first was quite short (I just helped perform a reading from a script excerpt that a student named Wes had written) and was presented at a student art show called “Create.” We rehearsed a little bit and I practiced a stage punch, where I swing and smack my hand to make it look and sound like I’m socking someone, and I perfected it just enough so that I swung and totally missed my hand during the performance. Yep. I can’t even hit my own hand. Go me.
    The second recruitment went something like this:
    The drama teacher was waiting in ambush before I even entered the front door of the arts building. “Hello Matt! The A2 drama students have to put on a couple of plays for their exam and there’s a role in one that I think you would be just perfect for! Would you like to help?”
    “Yeah! I’d love to! What’s the role?”
    “Well,” she said with a smile, “the play is called ‘Death and the Maiden.’ Have you heard of it? No? Well, it takes place in a South American country just after a fascist regime is overthrown and you would be playing the part of Dr. Miranda who tortured and raped the protagonist when she was kidnapped by the fascists!”
    “… Uh-huh. And what have I done to make you think that I would be perfect as a sadistic rapist?”
    So, yeah, that happened. I still agreed, but I can’t say that I was flattered. I mean, I haven’t even sexually harassed anyone for at least five months! Kidding.
    So the birthday party was for a pair of twins. Before going to the theater to see “Catching Fire,” they had reserved a place for all (fifteen?) of us at a restaurant adjacent to the theater. However, we arrived to discover that, not only was the place packed, the hostess there somehow forgot about the reservation. The conversation pretty much amounted to “Oh, yeah, you had a reservation, but these other guys came in ten minutes before your appointment and we just gave it to them. Here, take this buzzer thingy and we should notify you of a spot in about fifteen minutes.” Well, forty-five minutes later, we were still sitting on our hands and had approached the hostess multiple times, emphasizing that we had places to be. When she finally seated us, she parted with a quick “Maybe if just one of you had talked to me instead of five of you coming at me all the time, I would have figured something out sooner.” Well, we had tried that for about fifteen minutes before the incompetent woman had seated another party about our size right where we could see them. As if that snub wasn’t enough, she blew us off every time we spoke to her. When we told her that we gave up and were leaving, she changed her tune and magically found somewhere for us to sit (even though one of the girls had pointed out the enormous open space about ten minutes prior) where we wolfed down our food before running off to the movie. I think that I had something called a New York calzone, but I don’t remember tasting it in the rush. Anyhow, the movie was fun, but I thought it was kind of, well, garbage. If I hadn’t read the book the night before, I would’ve had no idea what was going on, as nothing was adequately explained. The acting was sub-par, the action unrealistic (while pretending to be realistic), and the pacing disjointed enough that I got no sense of building suspense or, well, any emotion. Forgetting that, though, we enjoyed it just by virtue of being in each other’s company and the experience of watching it in an enormous theater and discussed it on our way to the house of one of my day student roommates.
    There, our host appeared, after a few minutes of us lounging around and dancing, with a beer bong. We were half way through drowning one of our guys when my roommate’s father walked in carrying a beer. Well, I thought. There goes the party.
    “Hey! James!” the man called into the other room. “Come over here!” My roommate’s uncle then appeared in the doorway. “When’s the last time you saw one of these things?”
    His uncle took a look at it. “Whoa! Where were you keeping this thing, Sam? Keep it up!” They left laughing.
    Excusez-moi? was the only thing I could think. Not sure why it was in French… Afterward, both Sam and his parents encouraged us to help ourselves to whatever we could find in the fridge. Now, I know that WKD is associated with homosexual guys here, but they had lots of it and boy did it taste good. It was especially refreshing after everyone had drunk about five and we ran into the back lawn, in the pitch black night, to play on the rope swings and ladders suspended above the lawn on a line running across the yard, while singing Miley Cirus’s “Wrecking Ball.” It took me about five minutes to realize that I wasn’t wearing any shoes in the wet grass, so, to get off of the freezing ground, I climbed the ropes and started swinging myself from one end of the yard to another “like mother fucking Tarzan,” according to one of the shadowy guys below me. Once sufficiently frost bitten, we all huddled around the fire pit, warming ourselves and nursing another set of drinks while chatting with the host’s family. Funny enough, one of the adults there was from Ohio. What are the odds? Anyhow, I was sent to get glasses for us at one point and, before heading into the kitchen, I did a little trick I’d learned for clearing my head. It turns out that the one thai-chi form that my sensei taught me helps to lend a bit of lucidity for a while. Walking into the open and retrieving the glasses, the host’s mother asked me, “You’re the only sober one, aren’t you?”
    I shook my head. “Absolutely not, mam.”
    “Good,” his father said. “Because we aren’t either. You’re good at hiding it though!”
    I guess the acting classes helped, I thought as I brought back the stuff and then disappeared to satisfy my intoxicated inclinations. If you recall, I get really hyper and crave exercise when I’m drunk. Half-way through a set of wobbly push-ups, I realized that one of the guys from the party had found me and was recording me on his phone. Yeah, that video haunted me for a week or two. I did wrestle the phone from him in the middle of Media class later when he was showing it to some girls, but, being of my good humor, I decided to let him keep the video. Everyone could use more humility, right? Anyhow, throughout the night, I danced like an idiot, we teased the dog with shadows (yes, the dog chased shadows), my friends explained what a “body shot” was, several people unloaded lots of emotional baggage, and I volunteered to sleep on the floor. I didn’t mind the floor, I do this at home sometimes just for a change, and I didn’t want to share a bed with anyone, considering my sleep talking habits. Also it was a very fluffy carpet.
    The next morning, I awoke with a backward roll, springing to my feet with a smile and greeted the others. I was greeted in turn by looks ranging from irritation to awe. “How can you do that after last night?” one asked. “Don’t you feel sick after what you drank?”
    “Nope!”
    “Fuck you.” He then rolled over, burrowed under the covers, and stayed that way for another few hours, awake, but unwilling to move. I love my steel-plated liver.
    One more thing: I should probably mention that this party also took place in Chester. This city’s just done wonders for my education!

A Long Needed Hiatus

It's the night before I return to England now (3rd of January). Between reading, seeing old friends, playing with my dog, and the festivities, I just found that I only wanted to rest and relax and couldn’t bring myself to blog. The freedom is intoxicating. Anyhow, I apologize again (what is this, the fourth time I've had to beg forgiveness?) for my laxity.
    For the last week of my midterm break, I returned to Chester, a place you may recall from my entry "To Those Who Wait" about Chester "Pride." When I stepped off of the train platform, I had no place to sleep again. I was planning on staying with my friend in three days, but I hadn’t told him that I would be in town that early, knowing that I’d just end up slacking off and messing around in his company instead of finishing my university application. Thus, I wandered to the nearest youth hostel that I had found online and, despite their website posting no vacancies, they had a bed available! I was greeted at the front desk of “The Bunkroom” by a friendly Brazilian woman. After a day of traveling and fearing another sleepless night in a place colder than Venice, I was overjoyed to have shelter! I bought a bottle of wine, some grapes, brie cheese, and crackers then returned to find one of the assistant managers sitting with her siblings in a small courtyard beneath a candlelit cabana. They greeted the gifts with open arms and voracious stomachs as I went upstairs to ask my bunkmates if they wanted to join in. Only one Indian guy assented and we just chatted away for hours, getting to know each other. We all went out for a beer at the pub across the street (a place called “Kash” where they brew their own stuff) where the bartender helped initiate me into beer appreciation. Over the next few days, I finished my application and revealed my presence to my friend who almost immediately started introducing me to his eccentric friends. He then set me up with a military costume, skull mask, and orange hair spray for Halloween week at the various clubs. “I’m going to introduce you to the concept of a five-day bender, my friend.” Boy did he live up to his word.
    The first night out, we went with his friend Joel to a club where we drank *ahem* more than was healthy and just had a great time dancing. We then hung around a pub called “The Plumber’s Arms” until four in the morning. The bouncer regaled us with stories about his time in Vegas where he spotted a brewing fight before any of the casino staff did and was rewarded with a VIP tour of the town. While my friend had a ball, I thought that the pub itself was boring to the tenth power. However, there was this irritating woman who was so wasted that she was green and yellow around her eyes and mouth. I didn’t want to deal with the dumb broad, so I remained impassive and emotionless while she kept insisting that I was secretly angry and that I wanted to punch her. She even gave me permission to do so, but when that failed to get a rise out of me, she tried to provoke me with everything from attempting to spill my drink (failed), punching me (blocked), and spitting on me (dodged), at which point she turned to harassing other people and even tore a man’s shirt off of him. He was none too pleased about that. I encountered some other sloshed people who only wanted to talk about how much they hated “Pakies” (Pakistani people) “for taking all of the jobs and being so dirty.” I tried to rationalize with them but, between their intoxication and ingrained racism, I made no headway and called it a night, feeling disgusted.
    The next night, I discovered a problem with wearing military garb during Halloween. I was having a drink with my friends on the roof of a club when a man tapped me on the shoulder and saluted me. Thinking it was a joke, I stood at attention and saluted back, keeping a straight face. “Permission to accompany you tonight, sir?”
    Smiling a little to myself, I replied with exaggerated arrogance. “Permission denied. Get out of here! I don’t want to see your ugly mug around me again!” The man looked a bit taken aback and saluted again. Worried a little, I laughed and gave him a pat on the shoulder to show him I meant well. About thirty minutes later, he reappeared with two other guys behind him. He and his saluted me and, still thinking it was a joke, I saluted back.
    “Permission to remain on the premisses, sir?”
    “Permission granted! Now be off with you! Have a good time!”
    “Thank you sir!” he said with about as curt a salute as a drunken man can give. Thirty minutes after that, he found me again with his friends and asked “Excuse me, but where were you stationed?” he asked, words just barely slurred.
    “Stationed? What do you mean?”
    “Where were you posted while you were on military duty?”
    Then it hit me. “Oh, no man, I’m not even from England! I’m from the US! I just got this outfit from my friend who had a spare.”
    “Really? Well, you probably shouldn’t wear it. Some of us might see it as disrespectful to the armed forces.”
    “It’s just a costume. I don’t think anyone’s going to take it too seriously on Halloween.”
    His buddies took a step forward. “Yeah, well, just some advice from a soldier, don’t wear it around other soldiers, or else someone like us might be insulted that someone not in the forces is wearing our uniform.”
    “Look,” I said, putting down my drink and breathing in some cold air to clear my head, noting the bouncer watching us. I’d had enough of their veiled threats and I doubted that anything would happen with a bouncer standing eight feet away. I just wanted them to lay off. “I spent four years stationed at Camp Cachalot in the US and became Senior Patrol leader for my troop, so I think that I can get away with putting on a slightly different uniform. Besides, you should be flattered that people want to emulate soldiers like you. Now have a good night.”
    “Oh. I didn’t realize. You too.” With that he left and I let out a sigh and finished my drink. Little did my gung-ho friend know that Camp Cachalot was just where I’d spent my summers with the Boy Scouts. Sucker.
    My friend then walked over. “Hey, I just noticed those guys. They giving you trouble?” Coming from my mate, this was code for “Do you want someone to kick these guys out or beat them up?”
    “No, it’s all good. Just a misunderstanding with the uniforms we’re wearing. All’s cool.” We made a return trip to the pub. Before I could get bored, I met the sloshed lighting technician (Dave Beasly, he said his name was) for the group “Iron Maiden.” Between insisting on buying me drinks and my polite refusals, he told me about going on tour in Turkey, where some guys tried to pick a fight with him and the band’s head of security chased them off. He then taught Dave how to fight a bit and one of the pyrotechnics designers taught him how to mix chemicals that would permanently blind someone if they got it in their eyes. He also related their trip to the other side of the Berlin wall during the Cold War where Dave and some of the others gave away pretty much everything they had, clothes included, because they felt such pity for the common people stuck in the Soviet blockade. He also happened to mention that he made a habit of carrying a pistol under his coat “just in case” and I resolved to stay either on his good side or close enough to him that I could stop him from grabbing it. He was a very amiable guy, though, who was just as free with hugs as he was drinks.
    On the third day, my friend and I went to Manchester to try snowboarding for the first time on an indoor slope. I was surprised at how fun it was, despite all my years of prejudice against shredders, and how hilarious it was watching my mate tumble down the slope. Poor guy. *snicker* Regarding the night, well, let’s just say that I now have another reason for Halloween being my favorite holiday and I earned the nickname “Alleyway Warrior” with minimal injuries.
    I went through day four on about three hours of sleep and had a headache that could have been my one and only hangover ever, but I think it was more to do with sleeping only sixteen hours over the last three days. This was probably the least enjoyable of the five days, as I went to a gig that my friend set up called “Defiance.” He said that there’d be metal and heavy metal, which sounded great to me, but it turned out that it was all screemo and death metal, which I find atrocious (though the heavy metal cover of George Michael's "Faith" was pretty hilarious). To the uninformed, there isn’t even a fine distinction. The first is melodic while the second is loud. When I wasn’t helping with equipment or cleaning, I stood in the corner manning the souvenirs table, wearing my army outfit with a Guy Fawkes mask and some sort of steam-punk top hat with goggles on it that I swiped off of a girl there.
At one point, I volunteered to run back to my friend’s house, jump over the fence (he’d lost the front door key), and retrieve the t-shirts that he’d left in his room. I was thankful to be out and moving again, no less exercising, and I had fun pretending to be Brad Pitt from “Fight Club” as I hauled myself over the seven-foot tall gate. Once the gig finished, I was still exhausted and not sure if I wanted to go clubbing, but we set out again. There I ran into a couple of the people that I’d cruised around Chester with on my last visit, failed to notice a girl hitting on me because I was so tired (also, I’m naturally oblivious, especially when I haven’t had a drink), and then met a girl who took a picture of her kissing “Boston” on my phone.
    Day five was fairly uneventful. I didn’t drink too much, except for when we went back to the pub (again). I had a couple of ciders in my system already when the bartender introduced my friend to white rum. Now, my friend is a borderline alcoholic (Don’t worry, he handles himself well and doesn’t have cravings, I don’t think) and ordered a shot. Boy, you should have seen his face as he drank it. His eyes scrunched up as he gritted his teeth, put down the glass, and then started to flail around the room, beating his legs and groaning while Joel, the bartender, and I laughed. “That stuff,” he managed through his fit “is vile!” He then looked at me, looked at the empty glass, and back at me again. “Hey Matt, you like whiskey, right?”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “I dare you to have a double shot of whiskey with a shot of that mixed in.”
    I just looked at him. “Are you insane? No way! Not after watching your little seizure!”
    “Man, Joel and I will help pay for it. I just want to see you try it.”
    “Nope. Sorry man, not happening.” After about five minutes I tapped him on the shoulder. “Did you say you and Joel would split the cost with me?” What the heck. I’ve only had two drinks anyhow and they were at least an hour ago, I thought.
    “Yeah. You gonna do it?” I nodded. “Good lad!”
    The bartender had been privy to this exchange and thought the idea rather stupid, but funny. “I can’t legally mix those, but I can give you a double shot of whiskey and a shot of white rum, which you can mix yourself.” Before I even agreed, she had the drinks all set up.
    My friend then called in the bouncer and said, pointing to the mixed drink, “Hey, mate. Smell that.”
    The bouncer took a whiff and put the glass down like it was filled with nuclear waste. “What is that?” My friend described it and included that I was the guy that was going to drink it. The bouncer turned to me. “I’ll bring you a stool for when you keel over in ten minutes.”
    “Thanks.” As for the rest, I did not keel over afterward and even won a couple rounds of Jenga. Ha!
    The next day, my friend’s father took me shooting with him. I was either watching or joining the beating line to herd the pheasants toward the line of shotguns. I was not paid, but I got to meet a bunch of dogs while tromping through the woods. Toward the end, though, I tripped on a bramble and sank calf deep into a mud hole. “Um, excuse me!” I shouted to a passing beater after about a minute of struggling to reach something to pull myself out with. “Would you mind giving me a hand? I seem to be rather stuck. Just push that branch over here and… yeah! There we go- Ohhh shit,” I said as I noticed that I’d left one of the wellingtons imbedded in the mud. Soon after, I watched a man shoot a fox and helped myself to a dinner of roast pheasant. How perfectly English.
    Aside from celebrating Bonfire Night by hanging out with my mate’s friends in a parking garage and watching fireworks from the roof, very little happened after. School resumed and it was back to the same old drill. Still, I returned with some… “enlightening” experiences.