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DreamYou're looking for him. At any other time you would find the very idea impossible. You spent so many hours in rehearsal, reviewing each minute detail until it was all second nature. This is not in the script. But suddenly you find yourself on stage. House lights are down. The audience knows what the play is about. Or did know. But now it's a new play, by a new director, and your name received top billing. You are free to act how you want. In this opening night performance you will have no director screaming at you from row E, center, arms perched on arm rests, white hands punctuating each syllable. She will be powerless to tell you to obey her rules, to follow the script, to do the blocking. She will watch you from the tiny crack in the curtain backstage. She will pace frantically in the side wing, chewing the bent knuckle of her index finger. She will turn to the other acters. Some will look at her, mouthing empty requests for an explanation as their hands slam against the air. Tiny drops of spit will land on the hard wooden floor. Some will cry silently near the hard ropes of the pulleys, stained black by unclean stage hands. The director's blonde nephew with the tan and the gym muscles in tacit thuds will beat the sand bag in his usual manner; strictly for show and without emotion. The air will be thick with eternity.You want to find him. He is in the dressing room, isolated from your little performance which the critics are preparing to label "theatrical suicide" in ten point font next to your name. At any other time you would care deeply. He is applying the last smears of bottled perfection to the white sponge flecked with bits of barely there black stubble. In the mirror he sees the longer hairs growing in a small patch in the indentation above the bony tumor in the middle of his throat. He sees the uneven way his chest hair grows up into his neck. He does not care.You found him. The snow on the stage is crisp and reflects well onto your flawless skin, echoing off the blackness of your eyes. You smile to yourself, knowing how this makes you appear radiant. You are the brilliance of dawn reflected on ice. The sharpness of the cold stings your nostrils as it crystallizes the protective moisture. You step onto the timbered steps of the chalet, gaining strength with each step. You rehearse your lines. You review the introduction to the conversation; the small talk, the hellos, the motions. You're on the top step now. The heartbeat is faster and adrenaline assures a body filled with 100 volts that jitter over all parts of your body. You see him at the edge of the railing that sweeps around the house. He recognizes you, is bewildered, and you walk over, forgetting to review any more lines. He asks you to wait until tomorrow to discuss it. You say no. He concedes, and waits for you to talk, waits for you to tell him how you feel, to shout at him for taking away your innocence by force, making you lose control over your life for the first time, and for being taken advantage of. You remember how young you were and how you pinned your hopes on him, and the excess voltage runs through your body and paralyzes your chest as it centers in a tight knot in between your lungs before the numbness is vomited into your mouth. What you are doing is not what the director said to do. This scene does not exist. There is no script. There were no auditions.You lost. The curtain comes alive and sweeps its way to the center of the stage. The director pulls you aside, slaps you hard, and you feel the spit from her index knuckle cooling down the ferocious heat on your cheek. The pad of her ring finger grazed the soft surface of your eye. Her shoes thunder angrily into the bowels of the theater. You examine your hand for blood. You look up. He stares at you. He smiles with his left eyebrow and raises his lip to mutter "asshole" in his condescending way you once loved. You sit because your body is locked into place, and your eyes do not register the lights of the theater as they slowly click and die. The uninterrupted cycle you couldn't stop because you were too weak consumes another. You think of her young, fresh nephew as he notices the few black hairs above his Adam's Apple. You imagine the nephew as he nuzzles the uneven chest hairs that grow into his neck. You think of the empty bottle of wine that the nephew drank from, lying by the side of the bed on the crisp white carpet. You think of the hand covered with black hair that sprinkled the white powder into it before the young boy drank. A tear slithers out of your vacant eye and lands onto the melted snow. |
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