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!
No comments:
Post a Comment