College in Four Parts, pt. 1
yesterday was my last full day of classes... ever. the way this is all winding down has a sense of anti-climax to it, since I'm staying here in New York, and most of the people I know are, too. it isn't like High School in that respect. the big saying goodbye, the separating yourself, finally, fitfully, from your childhood. but this is the big one in the picture of all pictures. the formal learning of things is over, your parents stop being present entities, emotional and mental presence is no longer required of you, maybe you find a career, maybe you just find a job. no one will push you for more, that's a ledge you need to bring yourself to. there's so much fear and... relief... in all this. I wasn't sure if I was ready to write this, but I just tried on my enormous purple tent of a graduation gown and felt my stomach hollow out and my tongue turn to sandpaper. and yes. it's time.
***
PART ONE.
the morning I would be moving to New York, I woke up early and walked through Menotomy Rocks Park while the sun spilled onto the leaves. I ended up at Robbins, the playground where I spent my whole childhood, the benches where I drank with teenage friends, the grassy hill behind the basketball court where I had kissed boys while the whole field of dandelions consumed us. I stood up on the highest part of the hill, and watched the dawn break all over the skyline of Boston, thinking that no city would ever fill my heart like this. I remember saying goodbye to every room of my house, and getting into my overstuffed car with my mom, dad and Bridget. I remember trying to figure out my orientation week schedule and crying in the car because I was so stressed out about it, and my dad yelling at me for stressing him out. we entered the city though... I remember singing "NYC" over and over again, interspersed with verses of "New York, New York" until my family had had quite enough. we waited on 10th Street in a line that went on for miles to get into Brittany Hall, all my belongings in a bin on the curb... we got to my room, 300E, and Blaire and Erin were already there with their parents. I got the bed by the window- with the scenic view of the airshaft. we all hugged and took a picture together. my eyes are closed, my hair is doing something interesting, and I look fully awkward standing in my new room in my new home with my new friends... none of which were circumstances within my control. my parents teared up when they said goodbye, after my dad spent a good hour hooking up my computer and getting my connected to the internet. but the worst, the very worst, was when Bridget had to say goodbye, she was wearing her cheerleading jacket and she came up to me with her face all knotted up and she hugged me without saying a word. we were on the brink of being close then, it just hadn't come quite far enough, and my heart completely broke to say goodbye to her right before she'd be starting high school.
so I dove in, it wasn't like myself at all, whatever this personality I was showing to people was. Erin and Blaire and I ate in the dining hall together every night, we tried to go to "cool" New York clubs (that were 18+...), we even went to frat parties (NYU has frats?). we expanded to include across-the-hallmates Hannah and Jen, and we introduced ourselves to everyone we met, as I guess you're supposed to do at the start of college. at loud dorm parties we'd help people remember us as "Hannah, like the palindrome," "Blaire, like a loud noise," and "Haley, like the comet". I wasn't drinking much, though, I didn't trust anyone, I had no idea who they were. I was really enjoying the quiet part of it so much more. coming home to a room that was my own, separate from my family, with my own keys to it, my own schedule, millions of places to eat and sit on benches and get incredibly lost. I remember one night I got lost on Waverly Place. sometimes I don't feel like it's been very long at all, but when I think of that, there's instantaneous distance.
Ben broke up with me. we were so intent on making this relationship work, and it took about six days before the good college try disintegrated. I shared a room with two girls, so it was sort of impossible to not end up talking about my feelings. everything took a seismic shift towards real friendship, as soon as I had to bear my heart a little bit. it would take some time for the whole thing to show its face, but it was a start. there were weeks of planning Pirate themes for Halloween, and watching Strongbad videos and Teen Girl Squad, drinking from a funnel, and eating pizza at Amore's at 4am. the wonders of post-midnight pizza were completely out of my suburban range of comprehension.
and then school started. and studio completely changed my entire existence, starting even on the very first day. I wasn't comparing myself to anyone then, no one gave criticism, it wasn't about the high G above C you could belt, or your love handles. we just stood in a room. a white room, with hard wood floors, and windows that looked out onto 18th Street. and Larry Arancio would somehow teach you how to rid your body of every ounce of tension, and you'd float all the way home down 5th Avenue. he'd stare at his hands as if he'd never seen them before, he'd tell us to take off our armor, he'd have us shout "FUCK IT, I AM COMING INTO THE ROOM." if only we could always enter a room with so much power and abandon. imagine, I was going to school to hear people with beautiful voices sing, you're sorry-grateful, regretful-happy... which has nothing to do with, all to do with her and could it be that I never really knew you from the start? did I create a dream? was he a fantasy? even a memory is paradise for all the fools like me... and once upon a time, a girl with moonlight in her eyes.... and you'd walk into your school and here tapping to the opening of 42nd St. coming from behind a closed door, or weird alien sinus resonator sounds coming from a Voice and Speech class. and in school, we had a class about how to give someone a real hug. not a squeeze or a grope, a real hug, it would make them feel supported, and you'd feel your energies combining through your palms to their back... and you'd breathe, and hold them, and it wouldn't be awkward. it would just be. in a white room. with hard wood floors. and windows that looked out onto 18th Street.
I had my first one-night stand, with a total stranger, I remember being really upset about it afterwards. I remember Mia and Ben trying to get me to come home, and I broke my promise of when I'd visit, and pretty much severed my relationship with both of them irrevocably. but it was the first big step... I chose New York over home. and it wouldn't be the last time. all the Sondheim, and all the sense memory exercises that would take me to my room at home in bed with Ben, all the crying together with the beautiful group 1B, all the running to the bathroom in tears to get paper towels... running into Michon who'd smile knowingly and say "Larry's class?", it was all bigger than anything I'd ever experienced. so this is what I chose. oh, Collaborative Arts Project. I can't even.
I remember Writing the Essay with Britta and Jenna, who I wasn't friends with then, and our crazy Bulgarian teacher, Blagovesta, who graded our papers with a Bulgarian-English dictionary. I remember the one weekend I spent back in Arlington, teaching drama classes at the high school. everyone told me I was so skinny and so poised. that I talked with my entire body now, that I didn't bat my eyes anymore. and I went into Boston with Whitney and the Knights and we listened to "Hey Ya" on loop in the car for two hours straight. I remember Blaire's friend from home, Mike, came to visit... and we randomly fell into like with each other and starting talking and flirting online like losers. I remember eating a bowl of sugary cereal with every meal, but working it off in Sue Delano's jazz class every week. I remember wanting so badly to be my real self, my silly funny self, the one who always brought people together and talked about intensity and bounced off the walls, but not knowing how to introduce her.
I started dating this Mike guy, it was incredibly random and sudden, but we spent a whole day together and were in a relationship by the time the sun went down. I broke all my allegiances with Ben, even though we had talked about "working it out". I was intensely happy for a short time. Mike lived in New Jersey, so one night, Blaire and I took a surprise trip there. and in this short intense happy time, I met all of his friends, his mom, dad and brother, and slept at his house. it was very... very. I remember we sat in his car on this gorgeous fall night, and I think "Redheaded Woman" was playing, or maybe "Foxy Lady"? and Mike told me that he loved me. and I said it back. it was all fast and manic, and ended thusly, brief candle.
all those suicides were happening at NYU. I wrote this poem about jumping, and it ended with a cool couplet: "the other night I stood on a sill and marvelled gazing down. it's not so much a fear of heights as it is a fear of ground."
I wasn't close to anyone at CAP, but I really loved and wanted to do theatre. so I was opening up, little by little. it still felt like a popularity contest. my dorm friends were good though, we had added Ken, Drew, Kim and Sarah to our ensemble, and I remember walking in the Village Halloween Parade in our pirate regalia, seeing all the freaks down on St. Mark's, wrestling Ken, and drinking orange juice and vodka on the Ninth Floor of Brittany, always. I had a scene in class with Jordan, from Loveliest Afternoon of the Year, and Larry would make us pretend to crunch through the leaves over, and over, and over again. I'd talk to Jason all the time on the phone. I was learning all about Artaud and Brecht and Marat/Sade and Theatre of Cruelty, and I was writing a play for Jason. because, like Augusto Boal, I knew that I had the power to free a person of their oppression and shackles through words and art. we had to sing soprano everyday. it made me want to die. Pam Phillips would shriek a high A in my face and I'd burst into tears. in the mean time, Rebecca DuMaine was freeing my natural voice, teaching us how to isolate our coxic bone and drop our pelvic floor and whatnot. I started to get really homesick as the winter hit, and I started longing for my days of absolute fuckery, drinking my parents' vodka in my bedroom, smoking bowls in windowsills, getting attacked by John Zurek with shaving cream. home would come shortly, but while I was growing impatient, I had my first incredibly drunken night of college (a few months after everyone else's), a night that room 300 deemed "Black Friday". we had a big wall we had decorated with chalk drawings, and forever immortalized (until washed away) was "Scott and Steph save the night... Black Friday 2003... Merry Fuckin Christmas".
I went home for the winter, hooked up with one of the kids that I used to call "Son", which is semi-awkward, taught Ben's drama class, sat on Isaac's roof with Jason like old times, sang the score of Les Mis with John and Jay at my kitchen table one night, and promptly got very, very sick. my mystery illness turned out to be intense tonsillitis, and I couldn't swallow food or breathe very well without a ton of pain. I was reminded everyday by someone or something that I'm selfish, perpetually, and a bad friend. I think that at this point I was so plagued by the idea of myself as a selfish person, that I dug my holes as deep as they could go. my voice came back by the end of break, but not without an existential crisis about the meaning of being voiceless. we scheduled a Spring Break appointment for me to get my giant tonsils yanked. I had a night of shooting flaming arrows out of car windows with the Knights, followed by smoking bowls and playing with a few rolls on toilet paper with a strobe light on in Burakoff's basement. had a Secret Drinking Party in my house with all the kids, filmed by Isaac, complete with Twister, and ending with me crying, standing out on the frozen pond. it was time to go back to New York.
back to walking up Fifth Avenue and singing out loud to the clear blue sky, but it isn't weird, because in New York, the guy next to you is probably crazier than you are. but before I could even get my footing, I was back home, bed-ridden with another bout of debilitating tonsillitis. and then back in New York again. it was all very frustrating, but made me more determined to accomplish everything I could at studio. I started voice lessons with Peggy, I'll never forget the walk from 10th and Broadway to St. Mark's, it always seemed like springtime there, and I'd bounce up the steps of her brownstone and we'd say "Meow! Cuckoo!" and I'd play with Nika and she'd figure out how to get me to make sounds despite my tonsils. around this time, I remember going with Jen and Hannah to Brock's studio, and Hannah tore apart the entire wall for the video camera. and Eliza told me that I have too much happening inside me, and that I "clearly couldn't live among regular people". Michael took me to see Patti LuPone in Can-Can, and I said that I wanted to be her. he said, "we already have a Patti, we need a Haley." I was so desperately, inconveniently, disasterously in love with theatre. everything was exploding out of me.
and then... I hooked up with Ken. we were having our Sex & the City party, and almost everyone was asleep in 300, and we had the most awkward and strange cosmo-induced hookup that ever existed. and I wouldn't tell anyone about it... until we hooked up again after the toga party... and started spending all sorts of weird time together... Hannah and I watched the SATC finale uptown at her aunt's house, and clung to each other and cried for the full two hours. Ken became my Big... we were commitment-phobic, but happy. my tonsils wreaked havoc again, CAP was incredibly supportive, and it was suddenly Spring Break and time to have surgery. on the day of my tonsillectomy... I don't remember anything. haha. I was high on morphine. but I remember falling down in the hospital bathroom afterwards, not being able to open my mouth more than a centimeter, and the nurse trying to feed me ice chips. the pain set in pretty soon after, and it was the worst feeling of my entire life. Ken was supposed to meet me online that night (because I couldn't talk), but instead I got a message from Hannah saying that he'd been rushed to the hospital for an appendectomy. so we both had obnoxious vestigal organs that were trying to kill us. I started to have real feelings for him. I watched one hundred movies on my couch for the two weeks I was incapacitated. I was miserable. but I started to have this seedling of an idea while couch-bound... about directing a show in the summer with all the kids...
back in the city, Ken and I laid around in bed for days, him unable to move and me unable to talk. it was sad and sweet. it was finally inevitable that we were together, no matter how repulsed we both were by the idea of attachment. went home for one more weekend, to see Les Mis. I couldn't not. it broke my heart, and being in the Lowe Theatre made my blood stop flowing and my skin start prickling and then they played the opening notes of the Overture and the floodgates opened. I fully fleshed out my summer idea, almost as a response, I was just desperate to make art. it would be called the Rose Garden Theatre Project, and we would be doing Bat Boy in August, I started to give my heart to my little Roses. Spring sprung, and Ken was officially my boyfriend, we went to a Yankee game, he planned to meet my family, we were sleeping together constantly, it was all pretty interesting. I'd cry all the time in Bill Daugherty's class because my vocal range was... um, about an octave. I remember having classes on warm days in Washington Square Park, and scene rehearsals in the playground at Union with Tim in the dark. everything was so very green. I'd sit in the park with Hannah and we'd eat cheesecake maybe, and sing, real quiet-like to the leaves on the trees at night, it's too soon to ever say goodbye.
CAP ended for the year, and I had started to get frustrated because of my hurt voice and annoying CAP personalities... but the armor came down as always on our last day. when we said goodbye to Rebecca, we all cried... thinking of everything she unearthed in us, and not just our voices. everything. the day with the Bitch Circle. all of that. let me just cut and paste about this class: we went around a circle and listened, really listened to what we all had to say. Alonso said something, he went right before me, he said "I'm a big fan of fucking up. but this is home. home is where you fuck up." and then it was my turn, and I was propelled back in time to the first day of voice & speech, where we talked in a circle like this, and Rebecca said afterwards, "how many of you didn't even hear what the person before you said, because you were planning what you were going to say?"... and of course, all of us had done just that. but I sat there silent for a second this friday, and reminded the class of that, and then said, "I just realized that I don't plan anything anymore". and promptly began to cry. and my peers, my wonderful supportive family of group B, applauded because we had all heard every word said in that circle that day. and had clearly learned so much. about ourselves, about our craft, sure... but also about each other. I looked around and realized that I know what makes each of those people tick. we're in rhythm. and it breaks.my.heart. to know that this brain and soul we share is parting.
with Ken, we lived in each other's rooms every weekend, brushed our teeth together, acted stupid, I didn't wear makeup, it was romantic. on Cinco de Mayo, Hannah and I went to see Ben Folds and it was the most beautiful, ever. thinking about how we all sang "Not the Same" that night, it.kills.me. we drank flavored beer that night! and we were KHKH back then, that was fun. in bed that night, under the covers, Ken told me that he loved me. and everything was just lovely. then... it was time to move out of Brittany Hall. I remember eating a muffin on the floor of 300 with Ken, most of my things in boxes, and being on the brink of tears but holding it in. and when he said goodbye, and I was alone in that room for the very last time, I let it all run down my cheeks.
it all seems like miles from here, but I know what all of that was. I know what that was about... the green, the heart explosion, the sorry-gratefulness, the Linklater warmups, studios 8 and 10 and 12, walking out onto the ice, rubbing my eyes with paper towels from the bathroom at 18 West 18th Street, the touching, the palm to palm, holy palmer's kiss, the overture, the enter'acte, the three beds in one room, the box of rainbow chalk, the urgency, the panic, the longing to one day say fuck it. and come into the room. and show myself. but who would that be? I think about the girl with her eyes closed in her strange new room with her strange new family, and I know that when she opens them, the vividness of the world will stun her.
***
PART ONE.
the morning I would be moving to New York, I woke up early and walked through Menotomy Rocks Park while the sun spilled onto the leaves. I ended up at Robbins, the playground where I spent my whole childhood, the benches where I drank with teenage friends, the grassy hill behind the basketball court where I had kissed boys while the whole field of dandelions consumed us. I stood up on the highest part of the hill, and watched the dawn break all over the skyline of Boston, thinking that no city would ever fill my heart like this. I remember saying goodbye to every room of my house, and getting into my overstuffed car with my mom, dad and Bridget. I remember trying to figure out my orientation week schedule and crying in the car because I was so stressed out about it, and my dad yelling at me for stressing him out. we entered the city though... I remember singing "NYC" over and over again, interspersed with verses of "New York, New York" until my family had had quite enough. we waited on 10th Street in a line that went on for miles to get into Brittany Hall, all my belongings in a bin on the curb... we got to my room, 300E, and Blaire and Erin were already there with their parents. I got the bed by the window- with the scenic view of the airshaft. we all hugged and took a picture together. my eyes are closed, my hair is doing something interesting, and I look fully awkward standing in my new room in my new home with my new friends... none of which were circumstances within my control. my parents teared up when they said goodbye, after my dad spent a good hour hooking up my computer and getting my connected to the internet. but the worst, the very worst, was when Bridget had to say goodbye, she was wearing her cheerleading jacket and she came up to me with her face all knotted up and she hugged me without saying a word. we were on the brink of being close then, it just hadn't come quite far enough, and my heart completely broke to say goodbye to her right before she'd be starting high school.
so I dove in, it wasn't like myself at all, whatever this personality I was showing to people was. Erin and Blaire and I ate in the dining hall together every night, we tried to go to "cool" New York clubs (that were 18+...), we even went to frat parties (NYU has frats?). we expanded to include across-the-hallmates Hannah and Jen, and we introduced ourselves to everyone we met, as I guess you're supposed to do at the start of college. at loud dorm parties we'd help people remember us as "Hannah, like the palindrome," "Blaire, like a loud noise," and "Haley, like the comet". I wasn't drinking much, though, I didn't trust anyone, I had no idea who they were. I was really enjoying the quiet part of it so much more. coming home to a room that was my own, separate from my family, with my own keys to it, my own schedule, millions of places to eat and sit on benches and get incredibly lost. I remember one night I got lost on Waverly Place. sometimes I don't feel like it's been very long at all, but when I think of that, there's instantaneous distance.
Ben broke up with me. we were so intent on making this relationship work, and it took about six days before the good college try disintegrated. I shared a room with two girls, so it was sort of impossible to not end up talking about my feelings. everything took a seismic shift towards real friendship, as soon as I had to bear my heart a little bit. it would take some time for the whole thing to show its face, but it was a start. there were weeks of planning Pirate themes for Halloween, and watching Strongbad videos and Teen Girl Squad, drinking from a funnel, and eating pizza at Amore's at 4am. the wonders of post-midnight pizza were completely out of my suburban range of comprehension.
and then school started. and studio completely changed my entire existence, starting even on the very first day. I wasn't comparing myself to anyone then, no one gave criticism, it wasn't about the high G above C you could belt, or your love handles. we just stood in a room. a white room, with hard wood floors, and windows that looked out onto 18th Street. and Larry Arancio would somehow teach you how to rid your body of every ounce of tension, and you'd float all the way home down 5th Avenue. he'd stare at his hands as if he'd never seen them before, he'd tell us to take off our armor, he'd have us shout "FUCK IT, I AM COMING INTO THE ROOM." if only we could always enter a room with so much power and abandon. imagine, I was going to school to hear people with beautiful voices sing, you're sorry-grateful, regretful-happy... which has nothing to do with, all to do with her and could it be that I never really knew you from the start? did I create a dream? was he a fantasy? even a memory is paradise for all the fools like me... and once upon a time, a girl with moonlight in her eyes.... and you'd walk into your school and here tapping to the opening of 42nd St. coming from behind a closed door, or weird alien sinus resonator sounds coming from a Voice and Speech class. and in school, we had a class about how to give someone a real hug. not a squeeze or a grope, a real hug, it would make them feel supported, and you'd feel your energies combining through your palms to their back... and you'd breathe, and hold them, and it wouldn't be awkward. it would just be. in a white room. with hard wood floors. and windows that looked out onto 18th Street.
I had my first one-night stand, with a total stranger, I remember being really upset about it afterwards. I remember Mia and Ben trying to get me to come home, and I broke my promise of when I'd visit, and pretty much severed my relationship with both of them irrevocably. but it was the first big step... I chose New York over home. and it wouldn't be the last time. all the Sondheim, and all the sense memory exercises that would take me to my room at home in bed with Ben, all the crying together with the beautiful group 1B, all the running to the bathroom in tears to get paper towels... running into Michon who'd smile knowingly and say "Larry's class?", it was all bigger than anything I'd ever experienced. so this is what I chose. oh, Collaborative Arts Project. I can't even.
I remember Writing the Essay with Britta and Jenna, who I wasn't friends with then, and our crazy Bulgarian teacher, Blagovesta, who graded our papers with a Bulgarian-English dictionary. I remember the one weekend I spent back in Arlington, teaching drama classes at the high school. everyone told me I was so skinny and so poised. that I talked with my entire body now, that I didn't bat my eyes anymore. and I went into Boston with Whitney and the Knights and we listened to "Hey Ya" on loop in the car for two hours straight. I remember Blaire's friend from home, Mike, came to visit... and we randomly fell into like with each other and starting talking and flirting online like losers. I remember eating a bowl of sugary cereal with every meal, but working it off in Sue Delano's jazz class every week. I remember wanting so badly to be my real self, my silly funny self, the one who always brought people together and talked about intensity and bounced off the walls, but not knowing how to introduce her.
I started dating this Mike guy, it was incredibly random and sudden, but we spent a whole day together and were in a relationship by the time the sun went down. I broke all my allegiances with Ben, even though we had talked about "working it out". I was intensely happy for a short time. Mike lived in New Jersey, so one night, Blaire and I took a surprise trip there. and in this short intense happy time, I met all of his friends, his mom, dad and brother, and slept at his house. it was very... very. I remember we sat in his car on this gorgeous fall night, and I think "Redheaded Woman" was playing, or maybe "Foxy Lady"? and Mike told me that he loved me. and I said it back. it was all fast and manic, and ended thusly, brief candle.
all those suicides were happening at NYU. I wrote this poem about jumping, and it ended with a cool couplet: "the other night I stood on a sill and marvelled gazing down. it's not so much a fear of heights as it is a fear of ground."
I wasn't close to anyone at CAP, but I really loved and wanted to do theatre. so I was opening up, little by little. it still felt like a popularity contest. my dorm friends were good though, we had added Ken, Drew, Kim and Sarah to our ensemble, and I remember walking in the Village Halloween Parade in our pirate regalia, seeing all the freaks down on St. Mark's, wrestling Ken, and drinking orange juice and vodka on the Ninth Floor of Brittany, always. I had a scene in class with Jordan, from Loveliest Afternoon of the Year, and Larry would make us pretend to crunch through the leaves over, and over, and over again. I'd talk to Jason all the time on the phone. I was learning all about Artaud and Brecht and Marat/Sade and Theatre of Cruelty, and I was writing a play for Jason. because, like Augusto Boal, I knew that I had the power to free a person of their oppression and shackles through words and art. we had to sing soprano everyday. it made me want to die. Pam Phillips would shriek a high A in my face and I'd burst into tears. in the mean time, Rebecca DuMaine was freeing my natural voice, teaching us how to isolate our coxic bone and drop our pelvic floor and whatnot. I started to get really homesick as the winter hit, and I started longing for my days of absolute fuckery, drinking my parents' vodka in my bedroom, smoking bowls in windowsills, getting attacked by John Zurek with shaving cream. home would come shortly, but while I was growing impatient, I had my first incredibly drunken night of college (a few months after everyone else's), a night that room 300 deemed "Black Friday". we had a big wall we had decorated with chalk drawings, and forever immortalized (until washed away) was "Scott and Steph save the night... Black Friday 2003... Merry Fuckin Christmas".
I went home for the winter, hooked up with one of the kids that I used to call "Son", which is semi-awkward, taught Ben's drama class, sat on Isaac's roof with Jason like old times, sang the score of Les Mis with John and Jay at my kitchen table one night, and promptly got very, very sick. my mystery illness turned out to be intense tonsillitis, and I couldn't swallow food or breathe very well without a ton of pain. I was reminded everyday by someone or something that I'm selfish, perpetually, and a bad friend. I think that at this point I was so plagued by the idea of myself as a selfish person, that I dug my holes as deep as they could go. my voice came back by the end of break, but not without an existential crisis about the meaning of being voiceless. we scheduled a Spring Break appointment for me to get my giant tonsils yanked. I had a night of shooting flaming arrows out of car windows with the Knights, followed by smoking bowls and playing with a few rolls on toilet paper with a strobe light on in Burakoff's basement. had a Secret Drinking Party in my house with all the kids, filmed by Isaac, complete with Twister, and ending with me crying, standing out on the frozen pond. it was time to go back to New York.
back to walking up Fifth Avenue and singing out loud to the clear blue sky, but it isn't weird, because in New York, the guy next to you is probably crazier than you are. but before I could even get my footing, I was back home, bed-ridden with another bout of debilitating tonsillitis. and then back in New York again. it was all very frustrating, but made me more determined to accomplish everything I could at studio. I started voice lessons with Peggy, I'll never forget the walk from 10th and Broadway to St. Mark's, it always seemed like springtime there, and I'd bounce up the steps of her brownstone and we'd say "Meow! Cuckoo!" and I'd play with Nika and she'd figure out how to get me to make sounds despite my tonsils. around this time, I remember going with Jen and Hannah to Brock's studio, and Hannah tore apart the entire wall for the video camera. and Eliza told me that I have too much happening inside me, and that I "clearly couldn't live among regular people". Michael took me to see Patti LuPone in Can-Can, and I said that I wanted to be her. he said, "we already have a Patti, we need a Haley." I was so desperately, inconveniently, disasterously in love with theatre. everything was exploding out of me.
and then... I hooked up with Ken. we were having our Sex & the City party, and almost everyone was asleep in 300, and we had the most awkward and strange cosmo-induced hookup that ever existed. and I wouldn't tell anyone about it... until we hooked up again after the toga party... and started spending all sorts of weird time together... Hannah and I watched the SATC finale uptown at her aunt's house, and clung to each other and cried for the full two hours. Ken became my Big... we were commitment-phobic, but happy. my tonsils wreaked havoc again, CAP was incredibly supportive, and it was suddenly Spring Break and time to have surgery. on the day of my tonsillectomy... I don't remember anything. haha. I was high on morphine. but I remember falling down in the hospital bathroom afterwards, not being able to open my mouth more than a centimeter, and the nurse trying to feed me ice chips. the pain set in pretty soon after, and it was the worst feeling of my entire life. Ken was supposed to meet me online that night (because I couldn't talk), but instead I got a message from Hannah saying that he'd been rushed to the hospital for an appendectomy. so we both had obnoxious vestigal organs that were trying to kill us. I started to have real feelings for him. I watched one hundred movies on my couch for the two weeks I was incapacitated. I was miserable. but I started to have this seedling of an idea while couch-bound... about directing a show in the summer with all the kids...
back in the city, Ken and I laid around in bed for days, him unable to move and me unable to talk. it was sad and sweet. it was finally inevitable that we were together, no matter how repulsed we both were by the idea of attachment. went home for one more weekend, to see Les Mis. I couldn't not. it broke my heart, and being in the Lowe Theatre made my blood stop flowing and my skin start prickling and then they played the opening notes of the Overture and the floodgates opened. I fully fleshed out my summer idea, almost as a response, I was just desperate to make art. it would be called the Rose Garden Theatre Project, and we would be doing Bat Boy in August, I started to give my heart to my little Roses. Spring sprung, and Ken was officially my boyfriend, we went to a Yankee game, he planned to meet my family, we were sleeping together constantly, it was all pretty interesting. I'd cry all the time in Bill Daugherty's class because my vocal range was... um, about an octave. I remember having classes on warm days in Washington Square Park, and scene rehearsals in the playground at Union with Tim in the dark. everything was so very green. I'd sit in the park with Hannah and we'd eat cheesecake maybe, and sing, real quiet-like to the leaves on the trees at night, it's too soon to ever say goodbye.
CAP ended for the year, and I had started to get frustrated because of my hurt voice and annoying CAP personalities... but the armor came down as always on our last day. when we said goodbye to Rebecca, we all cried... thinking of everything she unearthed in us, and not just our voices. everything. the day with the Bitch Circle. all of that. let me just cut and paste about this class: we went around a circle and listened, really listened to what we all had to say. Alonso said something, he went right before me, he said "I'm a big fan of fucking up. but this is home. home is where you fuck up." and then it was my turn, and I was propelled back in time to the first day of voice & speech, where we talked in a circle like this, and Rebecca said afterwards, "how many of you didn't even hear what the person before you said, because you were planning what you were going to say?"... and of course, all of us had done just that. but I sat there silent for a second this friday, and reminded the class of that, and then said, "I just realized that I don't plan anything anymore". and promptly began to cry. and my peers, my wonderful supportive family of group B, applauded because we had all heard every word said in that circle that day. and had clearly learned so much. about ourselves, about our craft, sure... but also about each other. I looked around and realized that I know what makes each of those people tick. we're in rhythm. and it breaks.my.heart. to know that this brain and soul we share is parting.
with Ken, we lived in each other's rooms every weekend, brushed our teeth together, acted stupid, I didn't wear makeup, it was romantic. on Cinco de Mayo, Hannah and I went to see Ben Folds and it was the most beautiful, ever. thinking about how we all sang "Not the Same" that night, it.kills.me. we drank flavored beer that night! and we were KHKH back then, that was fun. in bed that night, under the covers, Ken told me that he loved me. and everything was just lovely. then... it was time to move out of Brittany Hall. I remember eating a muffin on the floor of 300 with Ken, most of my things in boxes, and being on the brink of tears but holding it in. and when he said goodbye, and I was alone in that room for the very last time, I let it all run down my cheeks.
it all seems like miles from here, but I know what all of that was. I know what that was about... the green, the heart explosion, the sorry-gratefulness, the Linklater warmups, studios 8 and 10 and 12, walking out onto the ice, rubbing my eyes with paper towels from the bathroom at 18 West 18th Street, the touching, the palm to palm, holy palmer's kiss, the overture, the enter'acte, the three beds in one room, the box of rainbow chalk, the urgency, the panic, the longing to one day say fuck it. and come into the room. and show myself. but who would that be? I think about the girl with her eyes closed in her strange new room with her strange new family, and I know that when she opens them, the vividness of the world will stun her.