College in Four Parts, pt. 4
I've been wanting to write, but I feel like I can't do anything until I finish this. I can't tell if it's that I'm afraid to say goodbye to everything. I know that the goodbye is only symbolic. but sometimes the symbol is the hardest thing, I think.
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PART FOUR.
it was the summer after Reefer Madness, and I headed home to Massachusetts feeling incredibly drained and empty. I was so sorry to see the family dissipate, and have no real goal or ambition or potential family for the three months I would be out of New York. there would be no theatre this summer, just work. I got a job as a waitress at Uno's in Burlington, which was initially disastrous and judging from the nightmares about serving I would have every night, I was fairly certain that this wasn't the part-time career path for me. these weren't the only nightmares I was having, though. I would dream about the distance between here and New York, between sharing a cigarette with Ryan and this place that had, over the years, been sucked dry of meaning. a silent space that once felt comfortable, but now all my comfort lived in noise. I visited the city for my 21st birthday weekend, and stayed with Brad. I remember that next to no one was still in town, but I went to the movies with TJ, drank wine with Jen on the Lower East Side, saw James Brown in one of his last concerts at B.B. King's with Mark, went to Dave and Buster's and shoplifted prizes, including a tiara and some kazoos. and Brad and friends orchestrated an entire city block in Times Square to sing "Happy Birthday" to me at midnight. and we went to my favorite shitty dive, the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, and sang karaoke on St. Mark's until I lost my voice and was in hysterical, meaningless, drunken tears. now that I was 21, Arlington started being less horrible and quiet, and I reconnected with Moose and Matt and Xana and the like for nights out at the Burren in Davis Square, where we would dance and sing along to 80s cover bands. and we'd end up in the hot tub in my backyard. and it was summer. I feel like, at this moment, I could see and smell the green, yes. but I was just waiting. not very patiently, but tapping my foot insistently and pacing for someone who would tell me to get the car packed and throw me the key. when would it be my turn again? had I worn love out in high school? could I be lovable now? I was getting closer and closer again to Matt, my first serious boyfriend, and realizing how deeply ingrained the language of our relationship was in me. not that I wanted to be with Matt now, five years later, but it was becoming clear to me that I should search for that thing, whatever it was. Jen and I decided to live together, and she started hunting for apartments in the East Village. I was burning to go back to New York. finally, Whitney came home from Mexico, and we did things like get our nails done, and sit in the hot tub and drink beers, and make a bet on who could lose the most weight by August. she was allowed to smoke cigarettes, and I was allowed to take Dexatrim. the pounds starting falling away, everything I had given up on about myself with the role I took in Reefer Madness. this was the beginning of my battle with my body, a more intense fight than in any previous year, and trying to conquer what seemed like an overwhelming emotional dependence on food, specifically overeating. I remember I took another trip to New York, to sign the lease on an apartment on Loisaida with Jen. I remember feeling so alienated from everything, I didn't even really plan out where I was going to stay. I don't know why. but I carried around all my shit and dumped myself on Xana, then Billy. I remember wearing my green dress and drinking pink sangria by myself, and sitting in the fountain at Washington Square Park and reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and letting myself sunburn. and Billy and I went to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and had coffee with Larry O'Keefe, and drank margaritas in the window of Yuca Bar on that hot night, and Andy came to meet us and hopped in through the window. I can't describe how deeply I wanted that to be my life. summer in the city. the heat was so beautiful. in Arlington, I was hooking up with a good friend of mine, which is always awkward, and I remember going to work with all those enormous hickies and getting laughed at by the cooks. the things that happen at home aren't real now, this isn't even real home. I wrote that I know what realness is. it tastes like limes and tequila, it smells like hot asphalt and pretzel carts. everything here is like a dream, Boston buried by fog from the view on Robbins, bodies that I used to embrace with love now quieted by friendship... and vice versa. I'm so tired of the stupidity and the indecision and the abandonment and the innopportunity, I have pretty eyes and good stories. my potential is enormous. I plan to come to terms with this regardless of any blanket of fog obscuring me, and something good is going to happen to me in just a moment. there are places I know of, they have pulses. I'm open, we'll go there to share our veins. we went on our family vacation to the Lake, but my sister got lice and the whole week was mostly shot to hell, my mom checking both of our heads for hours every night and going into town every day to wash our sheets and pillows and sleeping bags. we hiked though. and I read about Quality. and kyaked with my sister. I remember we had one last night at the Burren, and literally everyone was there... we drank Redheaded Sluts (which are disgusting, please never order me one, even if you think it's funny) and brought this ridiculous old man named Morrie back with us to the boys' apartment, where we all smoked a hookah together. and then it was time to leave. Dad and I drove to the city in a moving van, and Matt and Jen helped me move into the new apartment. my little room was cute, without blinds yet, so the traffic lights kept me up all night. and Dad and I ate at an Italian cafe outside, another gorgeous hot night. and this was kind of the start of many goodbyes, the moving into my first apartment.
the first weeks were amazing, just enjoying the summer, finally celebrating the city that I'd been longing for since Reefer's terrible post-partum depression. I didn't have internet for a while, so I was going to a little cafe on 3rd St. everyday with my laptop and sitting in the window, writing in here about my happiness, or watching handsome boys walk by with their tattoos and their dogs, or posting ads on craigslist personals for my own amusement. Jen and I would visit with Erin, who lived just around the corner from us, and we'd watch Project Runway. and I'd walk around the city all day and only eat apples, and have dinner at Around the Clock with Brad, and get drinks at Holiday with Hannah in my PJs. it was everyone's birthday for a week there, and I was going out every night... I remember Hannah and I drank 40s out of bags at Snakes On a Plane for Randy's birthday, and I was buying pitchers of margaritas afterwards, and Randy said that really nice thing, he said that I love theatre more than an actor loves theatre. finally, though, it was Hannah's birthday, and I remember I was wearing my favorite shoes, and we had a big Italian dinner and then went out for drinks at St. Dymphnas and met all those Irish guys. and then we went to Bua with them. that was the first time I'd been to St. D's and Bua, which is so strange to think about, but I remember drunkenly whining to Hannah and Kim that the Irish boys didn't like me but were all over the two of them. and they shoved that one drunken fool at me, and he kept biting me and kissing me. and he bought me a drink and then I remember nothing. basically nothing. and he was so rude and kept biting me, and maybe we were in a cab and maybe then we were in his apartment and maybe I blacked out and maybe I remember staring at the clock and begging for it to be over but not being able to move. and when I woke up fully, he wasn't there, but I didn't want to call my friends, I just wanted to pick up my favorite shoes off of the carpet and I left the apartment door wide open and stumbled down FDR Drive, hoping a cab would find me, and once I was finally picked up I just stared at my reflection in the plastic on the back of the driver's seat and cried. and cried. and it's really unclear what happened or what I said in that moment, so I guess I didn't know how it would end up defining me, if it would at all. it took days before I wrote that I feel like I've completely lost interest in... everything. I thought I wanted to meet guys and go out and drink and hook up with people, but the thought really bothers me right now. I don't feel trusting enough to even have a feeling about a person, let alone any of the possible outcomes of feelings. and even my secret/not-secret-at-all dream guy has turned out to not be all the nice things that I want him to be. I just feel closed, moreso than usual even, and I sit and think about the kind of person it's going to take to get me out of this place, and I can't imagine him, I've definitely never met him. it makes me sad, because I feel like the more I've sat with these bad thoughts about myself and the thought of this bad experience, the less and less hopeful I've gotten. not that there weren't nice things happening, we had that great dinner party at Brad's up in Astoria and laughed as hard as ever. and class was starting.
the beginning of fall-end of summer this year tastes like cigarettes, I was smoking all the time, and hanging out with Britta and Billy and Ryan. Britta and I would be the Tyra Banks Show and teach Billy how to approach boys in bars, and it seemed like we were perpetually standing outside of Phoenix and Eastern Bloc [Cock], lighting our cigarettes and talking to gay bouncers. and I remember that night that Ryan drove me home in his pickup truck as the sun came up, and we listened to Peter Pan. I had a dance class that I was actually doing alright in, because all the top dancers from my year had decided to take it as well. I was scared into proficiency. CAP was doing Evita as the all-school show, and I was so determined to get in, and didn't. I remember just panicking... that I would have no family this fall. that's what it's all been about for me, anyway. the families. and being away from training for a semester was like having no family, I had hoped that maybe a show could fill that void. I wrote that I'm so afraid of being orphaned by everyone I care about. I started becoming obsessed with Jerry Springer: The Opera, and would do anything to produce it... I was on constant alert that important British producers would contact me about rights. it felt good, satisfying, to be electrified by a show again. unfortunately, it fell through, because they still have hopes for Broadway. it would be a show-less year. what would that mean for me? I would just concentrate on the Practicum in the spring. and I would work on myself. this was obvious. it was time to pay attention to myself, and keep everything inside me from withering.
the best night of the early fall might have been the night we went to see crazy April do standup... on what turned out to be "Latino Night"... or maybe it was just hating-white-people night... but either way, we were wasted and combative and Britta was catching water leaking from the ceiling in her hands and Nick was being called a pedophile and Andrew was talking back to the comedians and I was getting sexually harrassed by just about everyone. and we drank free champagne, and some Puerto Ricans opened a bottle, and Brad and I found John Zurek, and we went to Isaac's roof and met British party crashers. no, I had no one for myself, and I wasn't doing theatre. but I was skinny. and I was fueled by my friends. and this was starting to feel like a real life. the Haley that I knew so well in high school was finally just present. not hoping to be closer, not hiding sometimes, not wishing for anything truer. but present. blissfully suspended and open. and it was Ryan and Kelly's birthday party way out in Bed-Stuy, and I got a pretty haircut and everyone complimented me, and we drank beers in the courtyard, and Ryan kissed me on the cheek and poured tequila down my throat, and we ate handfuls of cake, and I threw up while TJ held my pretty hair out of the way. I was working at Uno's on 3rd Ave. a whole bunch, and making a decent enought amount of money. our apartment was full of mice, but they were mostly innocuous, we'd just electrocute them in Mouschwitz. my life was consumed by my obsession with food. and how I wasn't eating it. I'd be really good for an entire day, and dance and work out, and then my idleness would overtake me and I'd be inhaling junkfood in front of the TV at 2 am. and then Brad was called to join on the Hairspray national tour as a replacement... and I was thrilled for him, but it had already been hard enough to be separated by boroughs. hell, it was hard enough to be separated by Union Square Park the year before. our goodbye night, Billy and Brad and I went to St. D's and found Hannah there... and shortly thereafter, the Arlington kids who now lived in the city- Isaac, Jill and Jason, with his brother Keith. and nothing happened. really. nothing. I bought rounds of shots to alleviate my own internal panic. Ryan and I christened this weekend the anniversary of our friendship, and we went out with this big group and Billy fell down trying to pirouette at Tracy J's, and we sat around at 3A and smoked a bong. and with my tongue as heavy as lead, Ryan walked next to me on the street and nonchalantly talked about the boy he was dating. I remember wracking my mind to figure out what the hell was going on, and pulling Billy out of the bar to freak out about this. my heart had sufficiently burst inside my chest. this was only fitting. of course this was the next chapter to the direction everyone's lives were going.
but everything was changing, because that October, I started doing yoga and reading about Buddhism. literally, everything changed. I can't explain this moment of my life without just pasting what I said then. but it was a revelation, as silly as that sounds. my heart hung open. we ended yoga on my second day with a story that began, "I have learned that you can't make someone love you. all you can do is be someone who can be loved." I've been so worried about letting the serendipity of love happen to me. but in all honesty, it's taken an alternate search to make me put that false patience-for-love on the back burner. I'm thinking about bodies lately. it's weird how we pin our hopes on so many external things, but all the actual questions and answers are contained inside this vessel. and it's weird how we can float along in the universe, thinking that we need to make bodily connection with others to be whole, when we are so complete and capable. we're lovable creatures. but I have learned that until you can accept all these things, you'll only project your own wounds and gaps and desperation onto others. it's funny how something so universally accepted as "you'll never share real love until you love yourself" can feel abstract for 21 years or more. I don't know. each day feels lovely. the way the air bites, how sun looks on leaves, how it feels to lie on a floor and let tears warm my cheeks, the feeling of stretching my arms out and embracing everything. I'm happy right here in this second. and it feels so practical, that my big search is on the inside. I've never been a spiritual religious-type person, and feelings like this are somehow unnatural to type for me. I just feel exceptionally lucky to be alive right now. feeling left out, not getting cast, being single, doing homework, the warm weather fading out, the way I look, fitting into jeans, having a meticulously planned future... none of it seems important. bodies are what are important; inside mine is a jumble of pretty things to rearrange, leftover sad thoughts to put in the trash can, and locked gardens full of secrets. I remember dying my hair bright crayon red one day for no reason. and Peggy loved it and told me that I should come over and dye the little grey tufts on her head a great shade of purple. and we saw Hair, and I decided moments before the show that I wouldn't judge it. even though I had initially been disgusted that they tampered with it. and I sat by Billy and Britta, and everything was so visually stimulating and magical and had that sick beautiful white of Clockwork Orange and the stage would be washed in yellow, suddenly. and I was enraptured. and then the finale came. and Adam lept off of that ladder and started to sing The Flesh Failures with such a driving, angry force... and the girl playing Jeannie clung to the bright red white and blue of the folded flag against the white of the stage and their bodies and heads. and then they rushed together and screamed to be heard let the sunshine in. and it was a plea, a begging for their lives. and the curtain closed in around them and they reached out for us to do .something. and I was wracked, destroyed, by tears. if it was imperfect, whatever. nothing had moved me so viscerally, ever.
later that night, John and I sang Kelly Clarkson and Christina Aguilera in my bedroom and took shots of vodka chased by candycorn, dressed as superheroes, and marauded about town, drunk and lost, until we reached Isaac's roof. the next day, we lost our heat and hot water in the apartment. with the ever-presence of mice, we were miserable in that dump on Avenue D, freezing and smelly, I was taking showers at the gym, and I'd go to my voice lessons all disheveled and Peggy wouldn't care if I didn't know my music, and she'd tell me I could sleep at her house if I wanted to. I remember the night that Billy and I saw Shortbus and were changed irrevocably. it was another piece in everything that was happening to me. I wanted to be permeable. I wanted to touch other people and feel their skin. and feel what their skin could do to me. there's no good to be had being safe and hard. I was Severin once, and I didn't want to be her ever again. the next day, I went to Mass to see my family and fly out to San Francisco with them for my uncle Brian's wedding. I dressed up as Supergirl again for a Halloween party at Matt and Nonni's house, where we played flipcup and I ended up in an anciently familiar compromising position. which, to be perfectly honest, was exactly what I needed to get me out of my dry and suspicious spell that had followed the incident with Irish boys on St. Mark's in August. the flight was long and I slept. and the wedding reception was beautiful and I got drunk and sang You'll Never Walk Alone for the bride and groom, after much pressuring, and we danced to Indian pop music. on Halloween night, Jen gave me a latex zombie face, and we paraded the streets, puking blood on slutty drunk girls. and without the aid of hot water, I tore it off in the sink, removing a section of my eyebrow that has yet to fully return.
November started, and I had to start thinking about the Practicum in the Spring. I knew that I needed to make myself want to be a performer, or the entire process was going to be incredibly painful. I wanted to want it, and I wanted to find what that unique thing was that I am, I knew I was not just funny. not only funny. and not funny in a typical, stock-funny way. that's what's hard to distill. I knew I was good at something, the way I make people laugh and the way I can look into my soul and pour it all out on a page. how could I translate that to theatre? in the meantime, I was spending lots of time with Britta, and sometimes we would wear the same dress with ripped jeans and sometimes we would be so far gone at Tracy J's karaoke Thursdays that we'd sing Take Me Or Leave Me and sometimes I'd drink so many whiskey sours with her that all I'd taste the next day were cherries in my mouth. it was different this year with Britta. this girl that I used to be intimidated by, then jealous of, then angry with, then uncomfortable around... was now my best friend. I think we were both somewhat astounded to have a female best friend. and when she came out in her giant ball gown to sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina on the balcony of the Casa Rosada/a stack of blocks in Studio One, I gasped and welled up with tears. she was just so incredibly beautiful and poised. and to know all of her insecurities and confusions about life and how aligned we sometimes seemed to be, she embodied that favorite role of mine as a person so completely full of life and complexities. and I was really proud to have this girl as my best friend. around this time, I met Matt M., who was a really cute boy who liked punk and rockabilly music, had a bunch of silly tattoos, and for whatever strange reason, was into me too. probably because we were opposites. at this moment, I was all sunshine and yoga and laughter, and he was cynical and sarcastic and dark. we'd drink lots of beer and talk about our problems, and I'd tell him over and over again how cute and funny he was. I was just so astounded that someone cute and funny was talking to me. I was taking so many diet pills at this point that I'd clean the entire apartment and cook dinner. and one day I had a panic attack while trying to bake an apple pie for Brad's Thanksgiving party, and ended up not going because I was so upset. and Peggy gave me an amazing song, my special cowboy song that no one else has, and I sang the shit out of it in her wonderful living room and she would clasp her hands and exclaim with joy, how I had really found something I loved to sing. that Friday after my lesson, I went to happy hour at BBQ with friends, and the third years, and drank a few margaritas before heading out for drinks with Matt. and I remember trying to paint my nails beforehand and it being a total drunken disaster. and when we finally said goodnight outside my door, many hours later than I had planned, we sort of awkwardly kissed and I had no idea what it would end up being. but we'd talk online and he said he wanted to make sure we hung out again before I went home for Thanksgiving... so we met up for dinner and drinks in the next few days... and we held hands and kissed for real. and everything seemed kind of sweet and hopeful, and no, we didn't have very much in common, and maybe the fun of differences would run out soon, but I was very much into the idea that it could become something good. I remember listening to Regina Spektor, endlessly, on loop. Thanksgiving was spent at the house I grew up in, for the first time ever, instead of my grandmother's. when I came back, I'd spend the night at Matt's apartment in Bushwick, and he was just really nice to me, kind of a nice asshole, and it was such a change to everything that had led up to it. but it was short-lived, because I was still negotiating the line between the silent greyness of dating and the vocal black and white of relationships. and we really didn't have much to talk about as the weeks wore on, and as I felt it disappear from under me, this nice little thing that was barely more than a speck of emotion, I hung on because I was on the brink of having a feeling. it was about to transfer over from text to impulse. in between all this, I auditioned for Hedwig at Tisch. and I honestly think they kept me for so long because I loved that fucking show so hard. I sang and tore at myself and showed them my insides, and even though I didn't get the part, I got to sing lift up your hands with the beautiful Max Jenkins and that may have been enough. and then there was the night that Britta and I were drunk at Tisch. and she didn't want to do CAP 4th Year, or even New York theatre, anymore and I just felt like all the gorgeousness of last year and this time that we'd all begun to really fuse together might be coming to an end. and it just hit me that college was coming to an end. and soon it would be more than the Williamsburg Bridge or the A train separating us, we could end up miles away. people take tours, people go back home, people go to California, people go to Europe. what would I be, if I didn't have these people? I had lived without Billy and Britta and Brad for too long to imagine more life spent alone. we had the Winter Wonderland Fesitival, I wrote my final paper for college ever about Rodgers & Hammerstein and Asian porn, and I headed home to Arlington for two weeks. Matt and I kept arguing online because I kept inciting things, because I have an ugly character trait of never being able to let anything go. I was kind of furious that he was unwilling to have feelings towards me. eventually I decided to call it quits from the internet for a while, which seemed to be the root of all my despair and compulsions.
back in the city, I'd spend lots of alone time in the apartment with the mice, eating only Cheerios and drinking only beer. and on New Years Eve, Billy and Brad came over and we drank champagne and went out for what we hoped would be an exciting night on the town... but what turned into Billy and I eating at the Automat and kissing each other at midnight and all the gays turning up at Phoenix until it started to pour and we had an unnecessary 4 am dinner at Around the Clock. it was the quintessential night to sum up 2006... a year of diner food, homosexuals, and binge drinking. I remember the night when Britta and I were Harold and Bronto in Billy's bed, and the ranch dressing they gave her at Odessa. I started eating only Slimfast bars, and school was starting again (which Britta had eventually decided to do), which meant that I had to get back into CAP-mode. but ten-fold. I got my headshot proofs back, and was so disgusted with myself that I considered quitting theatre forever, and cried all day. but my first day, I was put into a group of nine... imagine, we were halved down from that first day of freshman year... Britta and me and Nick and Chris and Chasten and Giancarla and Kate and Elena and Jen. it was such a funny little ensemble, but I couldn't have been happier. I remember our first day of class, and I got to do all the pieces I love the most, specifically I'll Stand By You, I'm Breaking Down, and my American Daughter monologue. and everyone was just so supportive, and Francis thought I was funny, and Nick told me I was really talented, and Chuck was astounded and said what happened since last year? and I said, everything. and he said, you understood everything that woman was going through, and I said, I'm a different person than I was last year. and it felt good to say. and my class... everyone seemed to have come to a similar revelation. everyone seemed to have found their place in the family of things. around this time, I posted another craigslist personal ad, mostly to be funny, but also because I knew I had to meet new people... Matt had been a big jarring change, it shouldn't be like that. and I didn't want to be stuck on him and feeling lonely. it became a kind of funny social experiment that I started documenting in my journal, and I weeded through all the crazy responses to find two guys who had varying levels of potential, Stephen and Sam. and I remember I met Stephen first, and he was so creepy and nerdy, and talked so loudly about all the lame things he likes. and kept touching me awkwardly. and didn't pay for any of my drinks. or food. or movie ticket. which mostly just annoyed me because he was so embarrassing as a whole. and then I remember meeting Sam the next night, and I had gone to yoga with Britta and Andrew and Emily, and I lied about having plans at night, and then I met this boy at Bua. I remember I had thought his picture was really cute, and then when I saw him he had just so much facial hair and I wasn't sure how cute he was in real life. and we sat and asked each other interview questions because we were so awkward, but it ended up going surprisingly well and we stayed out all night. and I remember dancing at Horus when we were drunk enough, to bad techno, and he was wearing a flannel shirt. and he spent the night but I was very good, and he kept telling me that I was sexy, and in the morning he told me that he liked me. and everything was just very, very nice. for the next little bit. mock auditions at CAP were going not so great, and my teachers didn't love all of my material, but I was glowing and smiling all the time because there was this adorable blonde boy who made me feel like a pretty and worthwhile person. all of a sudden, things with Sam were moving very fast... I met his friends, I started spending the night, he was saying things like I guess we're dating now and I was answering yeah, I guess we are. but I had learned something from the short time I dated Matt. they don't want to see your heart. they don't want to hear your fears. they don't want to articulate or define or analyze the things that are exchanged between the two of you. so I zipped my lip and tried to be just fun, just sweet, just funny, just quiet. but it didn't work. the thing I learned from Sam was that not all boys are alike. and if you don't show your heart, you're nothing. anyway, the long and short was that he was sort of rebounding, and sort of bipolar, and sort of having some stint of mania that made our time spent very very happy but very very small. but ultimately I blame myself. because I didn't give enough of myself, and I had such hope in the apparent potential but kept it silent. I remember the night he called me to break it off, things had been going so well with my auditions for Paul Hardt, who thought I was skinny and hilarious, and I tried to be funny and wonderful in my ten minutes of singing but I couldn't stop thinking about the things I did wrong in this minute non-relationship. and I'm a girl who has read He's Just Not That Into You and I think I've slept with enough wrong people to know that sometimes it all just isn't... why did I want Sam to work out so badly? I remember one moment in bed with him, and I thought to myself, this is fun, but I could never be in love with this guy. and of course, like the cliche I am, after the fact was an entirely different story. it's strange that two intense weeks have made me regret so much about myself, and that one intense, odd, sweet little person hurt me so profoundly in literally no time at all. but I learned that you can try to do everything right, and still be wrong. because my imperfections and the noise I make and the mess I am may be what makes me a person capable of being loved. why choose sterility, ever?
so time moved along and I just had to deal with the fact that I had been fully cut down to size in two weeks. and I had to keep singing at CAP, even though tears were flowing more freely now. we had David for vocal rep, and I'd try to sing Home and just lose it. and he'd put my hands on the piano and tell me to let the vibrations fill me. and I'd sob myself into a heap because I just felt like I had no idea who I was in the world of theatre. David wanted me to be vulnerable and open. I heaved my heart into the forefront. this was easy. I could go to that place. but what good would it do me? I couldn't hit the notes or look the part required of the vulnerable girl. I'd sing Look What Happened to Mabel, for god's sake, and cry. just because I was incapable of talking about myself in a positive way. life was just constant tears. I broke my diet and started eating compulsively again. I'd still go to yoga a few times a week, but more often I'd slack off. I started to feel guilty for not being Zen. my negative thoughts about myself were a runaway train. I think what happened next was that I started to become obsessed with finding a guy who was like Sam, but not actually him because he had no interest in me anymore. and I sort of wanted to revert to all these things about my personality that were more appealing. I wanted to run away from the city, and stop consuming all sorts of toxic things, and write music. I had a very clear idea of who I wanted to be. and if I could be this person, maybe I would attract the sort of people who weren't phony and theatrical, the kind of people who ride bikes and play guitar. everything about CAP was suffocating me, I wanted to do anything to rebel against it. so I gave up smoking, caffeine, all meat, fried food, and nail polish. and I started to feel a little cleaner. I knew that there was something pure and exciting and good beneath everything I had accumulated in the past years. my parents raised me well. I love so many things. I have had so many dreams that I could chase if I chose to.
Brad left again for Hairspray, this time for an extended period... he'd be going to Japan with them over the summer. we had a goodbye party at Holiday Lounge, and sang Frank Sinatra all night with senile old Ukranian Stefan. Peggy wasn't doing so well, this round of chemo seemed to be really taking a toll, but I'd bounce up the steps to her brownstone on St. Mark's as always on a Monday afternoon, and no one would answer the bell. and I'd call and leave messages, and a neighbor would let me in and I'd listen for Nika barking. I never would have imagined that week in March would be the last lesson I'd ever have with her. I was so beyond sure that I'd call one day and she'd pick up with her high-pitched, sing-songy "hellooo!" and we'd schedule our next class. I was sure. but I ended all my voice mails with I love you, just in case. it was spring break, and Billy and I were mostly inseparable. I remember playing never have I ever at St. D's with LaRaisha, Angie, Pete, Ryan and Billy, and poledancing at Eastern Bloc, and falling asleep at Mr. Black's. I posted another craigslist ad... this one was about the "new" me, the one who wanted to run away from taxicabs and asphalt and go camping, and never do musical theatre again. I started talking to one boy, named Jeff, but no one really seemed to be very interesting. I got a tattoo... a great big pirate ship on the left lower quadrant of my back. this was the skin of the girl I wanted to be. this was graffiti of my experiences on my body. I wanted to sail off in a great big clipper ship, shedding all the poison I've ingested over time, always homeward bound to something more clean and bright. there were a few times when I went to see Sam's band play, and I always got too drunk and either blubbered helplessly about my feelings, or insisted that we must sleep together that.night., and ultimately I just dug my grave and (sober) it was very, very obvious that I should let it go. what was wrong with me, I don't know. Chris and I were best friends, somehow. even though he was probably the member of the Lunch Bunch I knew the least last year, being in class together and taking yoga and getting salads at the dining hall and nachos at Around the Clock/7A/Heartland Brewery made us incredibly close. he was there at the second disasterous drunken concert, and he and Hannah extinguished my hair when I accidentally caught it on fire. the loveliest day of Spring came when I skipped school and took a road trip to Delaware with Brad and Danny, to drop off my darling for his next tour stop. and Danny and I found the only bar in Delaware and got tipsy on wine and talked about theatre, and I cried whenever Brad entered the stage. I was just .so. proud. it's unreal. this is going to keep happening. the people I love are going to have incredible successes, and I'm going to get to watch them. I feel blessed. and Danny and I got lost late at night on the ride home, that 80 degree day, and sang all of Falsettos, playing all the roles. I started going out with that craigslist guy, Jeff, every so often, and he would spend the night, but I had absolutely no interest. I couldn't muster a single feeling, even though he'd make me go to brunch, entirely against my will. I burst into tears in front of Malcolm Gets in a master class, which signalled to me that there was a deeper problem with my self-esteem than I was maybe willing to admit. it wasn't about theatre. if it was, I could control myself in front of important master teachers. if it was, I wouldn't feel so sad about wanting to quit. but I knew, inside my cells, that it was me that I hated. me in any role. there was a girl I wanted to be, but I wasn't her. not really. finally, finally, they chose my showcase material... I got to just stand and be for Stop and See Me, and be silly with my favorite silly partner, Giancarla, for The Stepsisters' Lament. it wasn't what I expected, and it took an enormous weight off of me. my mom brought my electric guitar, and Chris restrung my acoustic, and it dawned on me how important songwriting once was to me. how I'd pull leaves of paper from that Jack Daniels box in my bedroom in Arlington and sit on the floor and play and sing for friends. and everyone had a favorite song, or a song about them, and it was my most important outlet. I would have lost my mind as a teenager, had I not been able to write. it only seemed natural that I begin again. and rework those old phrases, reinvent the progressions to say something new.
Stop and See Me, of course, was the most perfect sentiment for me to express at the moment. I could pour my guts out at the drop of a hat. at a mention from Aimee that I should breathe and let myself be seen, my composure would just fall away. I remember after I sang it in our Share Day, Kate F. said to me I know that you sometimes feel like you don't want this or can't do this, but when you stood up there, about to sing, you looked so .worthy.. and I thought, even if I don't won't can't want to want this, I could complete this small task. I could craft this song, and I could make everyone laugh with Stepsisters. whatever came of it was not the point. I went to school to learn how to make art, and that is what I would put all my energy towards in these last few weeks.
and then Peggy died. no, she didn't. first she was about to die, and Kate and Aimee and Michon and Pam all told me. and told me that she had requested we not attempt to contact her or send her anything. all I could think of was how my mother would always tell me that I should give her flowers or a plant or make her a card, she'd tell me that every year. I always assumed that I'd write something for her, give her something green, when I graduated. I was so indebted to her, she had literally, physically, .given. me my voice. I knew how hard it would be to say goodbye to weekly lessons with her. I never considered how hard it would be to say goodbye to everything about her. and no goodbye at all, just the prayer all inside of my blood that she understood how much she meant. I just hoped that she knew how much I loved her. and every lesson I wasted with tears, every day I hadn't learned my music, I hope she knew that I always had the heaviest and most profound respect for her. I think of her soft wrinkled hand on my chest, weighted by rings and bracelets, I think of her rug and the smell of her house and the tea we shared and the tissues on her piano and singing my cowboy song, and when she'd be proud of me and when we'd talk about directing, and when she came to see Reefer and arrived late, and I saw her huddled against the wall, ducking from the dancing zombies, her face enraptured and a little terrified. and everything about her was so beautiful. and how I should have written her a card, at some point. how I shouldn't have messed up when I sang Mad Margaret. how I shouldn't have spent so much time hating myself, and more time loving her. and how when she asked me to spend the night, back in February when I had no heat, I should have accepted and curled up on her floor with Nika instead of going uptown to Sam's apartment. we make so many choices, and the time spent is so small. but life had to continue. when Peggy's husband, Don, died... the first month that I knew her... and then when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, not long afterwards... she allowed life to continue. yes, she was being pulled in the opposite direction, but she always said that the thing that kept her alive was our voices. and teaching. and music. our choices, and the minuteness of life, seem to be so enmeshed with the things we're passionate about, the things we protect, the things that make our hearts pound. there can always be more life, I think, if that's truly what we desire.
I started listening to In The Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel on a continuous loop. music was the answer. to whatever all this was. that record was about the beautiful things in stories about war and death, and the positivity of Anne Frank, and experiencing life with flowers in your eyes, even when decay is looming. I planned my next tattoo. it would be a sugar skull, like they make on Dia de los Muertos, when they celebrate life in a way our culture seems to be relatively incapable of. and lyrics would surround it and they would be out of the mouth of Jeff Mangum/Anne Frank, but for now we are young, let us lay in the sun, and count every beautiful thing we can see. imagining that I won't always be young, one day I'll be weak and maybe stricken with disease and hunched over, but the words will be there to recall a moment of my youth. an irrefutable record that more life is possible.
school was coming to an actual close. I had gained an astronomical amount of weight since the winter, when Paul Hardt had raved about the pounds I'd shed. everyone was telling me how heavy I was, how imperfect my body was, how I shouldn't wear this dress or that dress for showcase. I was robbed of my body. of course I wanted to be skinny. but more to the point, I wanted to be accepted for the way I am. my shape is my shape. these aren't statements that exist inside of the world of musical theatre. I found an outfit that hid my imperfections, and I went out drinking most nights. honestly, although I know there were so many fun times, they all blur together to some degree. there was Nick’s Sunday night out for his belated birthday, and many evenings at Bua, and drinking bottles of wine with Ryan, and smoking hookahs with Britta and Stefanie, and sitting in tiny rooms with Billy and Lindsey, and shots of jager at Uncle Ming’s, and plastic cups of tequila at Doc Holliday’s. and then we graduated. and I wore high heels and wore grown-up earrings. and my parents bought me a beautiful apartment in Williamsburg where Billy and I will need to buy grown-up furniture and live grown-up lives. and we had our showcase, and as we sang Cross The Line, I started to cry, sending off everything that I had accumulated in four years at CAP21. and we toasted at Merchant’s with grown-up martinis, and everyone moved to new grown-up apartments in new grown-up neighborhoods outside of our safe haven of the East Village. and we sent out our headshots and returned to our part-time jobs and we met up at night and looked at photos-of-then and felt ourselves wrinkle and harden with the distance of how-much-we’ve-changed. and I don’t know what I’ll be, or what important kernel of wisdom lives inside all of this, or what kind of markers will prompt me to reflect from here on out. but I think that life is about waiting for transformation. when will I leave my cocoon? when will life have color? when will there be blood, and water, and flight? when I graduated from high school and wrote a similar epic, I wrote that I was finished. every possible conclusive event occurred, but I still was waiting. waiting to write this, waiting to grow up or get some sign that I was an adult, it just never came. I suppose like turning 11 or 12 or 13 or going into 2nd or 3rd or 4th grade, you look in the mirror and expect to see someone else's face. but there you are, same plain baby face with as many freckles as last year, as flat-chested as ever, still the popular girl's fat sidekick, still without a boyfriend, still YOUNG. change is so secretive. it creeps in through totally innocent-seeming experiences, while you’re sleeping, through horrible tragedy when you don't have time to notice it. change doesn't play fair. we as people want to have landmarks. we want to see a different face in the mirror, we want a neon sign to announce that we have finally turned eleven years old, we want some kind of heavenly broadcast to tell the world what we have accomplished. maybe it's not even as selfish as all that. maybe we just want to know for ourselves. because we are ageless creatures always, lost and blank, waiting to get painted on. ultimately, there’s no one image that can carry the weight of all that has happened in four years. but if I were to let it paint on me, it would start at my toes with Larry’s hands and hard wood floors and standing in a windowsill and sense memories and dirty flip-flops and songs by Sondheim and exhaling all our deepest wishes. and it would creep up my thighs and into my belly with orchids and yellow roses and Blanche’s suitcase and red Christmas lights and cast recordings from start to finish and getting the greatest applause you’ve ever heard and pitchers of sangria on very warm nights and all our oldest lullabies. and in through my solar plexus and up the periphery of my spine would be drawn a leaky roof and musty curtains and grilled chicken in plastic containers and choking on my milk, snorting up my milk, spitting out my milk! and hearing Run Away With Me for the very first time and rolling out dough that is two weeks old and Marlboro Lights and dorm furniture in the basement and getting carried down stairs by a person who loves you. oh and then my cheekbones and the bridge of my nose and seeping from my irises and like blood from my lips are Peggy’s bangles and Peggy’s meow cuckoo and yippee and my green dress and a Shakespeare monologue and sitting on the floor with my dearest best girlfriend and her little puppy and looking into each other’s eyes when we make toasts and Aimee saying that I am not allowed to show only half of myself ever again. and that’s the graffiti of the body, oh these things are underneath your flesh. we don’t look different today, even though we pore over every inch of our skin to find any subtle change, but tomorrow or the next day or the next or maybe when we’re grey and tired… the ink will rise to the surface and we’ll remember. and I can’t be sorry, really, that it’s past, because I know it all only pales in comparison to the Next Thing. it’s unclear, I know, because the increments of time have no name now. but if I can stay open, permeable, reckless, vocal, I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay.
because
love.burns.its.patterns.on.my.life.
***
PART FOUR.
it was the summer after Reefer Madness, and I headed home to Massachusetts feeling incredibly drained and empty. I was so sorry to see the family dissipate, and have no real goal or ambition or potential family for the three months I would be out of New York. there would be no theatre this summer, just work. I got a job as a waitress at Uno's in Burlington, which was initially disastrous and judging from the nightmares about serving I would have every night, I was fairly certain that this wasn't the part-time career path for me. these weren't the only nightmares I was having, though. I would dream about the distance between here and New York, between sharing a cigarette with Ryan and this place that had, over the years, been sucked dry of meaning. a silent space that once felt comfortable, but now all my comfort lived in noise. I visited the city for my 21st birthday weekend, and stayed with Brad. I remember that next to no one was still in town, but I went to the movies with TJ, drank wine with Jen on the Lower East Side, saw James Brown in one of his last concerts at B.B. King's with Mark, went to Dave and Buster's and shoplifted prizes, including a tiara and some kazoos. and Brad and friends orchestrated an entire city block in Times Square to sing "Happy Birthday" to me at midnight. and we went to my favorite shitty dive, the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, and sang karaoke on St. Mark's until I lost my voice and was in hysterical, meaningless, drunken tears. now that I was 21, Arlington started being less horrible and quiet, and I reconnected with Moose and Matt and Xana and the like for nights out at the Burren in Davis Square, where we would dance and sing along to 80s cover bands. and we'd end up in the hot tub in my backyard. and it was summer. I feel like, at this moment, I could see and smell the green, yes. but I was just waiting. not very patiently, but tapping my foot insistently and pacing for someone who would tell me to get the car packed and throw me the key. when would it be my turn again? had I worn love out in high school? could I be lovable now? I was getting closer and closer again to Matt, my first serious boyfriend, and realizing how deeply ingrained the language of our relationship was in me. not that I wanted to be with Matt now, five years later, but it was becoming clear to me that I should search for that thing, whatever it was. Jen and I decided to live together, and she started hunting for apartments in the East Village. I was burning to go back to New York. finally, Whitney came home from Mexico, and we did things like get our nails done, and sit in the hot tub and drink beers, and make a bet on who could lose the most weight by August. she was allowed to smoke cigarettes, and I was allowed to take Dexatrim. the pounds starting falling away, everything I had given up on about myself with the role I took in Reefer Madness. this was the beginning of my battle with my body, a more intense fight than in any previous year, and trying to conquer what seemed like an overwhelming emotional dependence on food, specifically overeating. I remember I took another trip to New York, to sign the lease on an apartment on Loisaida with Jen. I remember feeling so alienated from everything, I didn't even really plan out where I was going to stay. I don't know why. but I carried around all my shit and dumped myself on Xana, then Billy. I remember wearing my green dress and drinking pink sangria by myself, and sitting in the fountain at Washington Square Park and reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and letting myself sunburn. and Billy and I went to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and had coffee with Larry O'Keefe, and drank margaritas in the window of Yuca Bar on that hot night, and Andy came to meet us and hopped in through the window. I can't describe how deeply I wanted that to be my life. summer in the city. the heat was so beautiful. in Arlington, I was hooking up with a good friend of mine, which is always awkward, and I remember going to work with all those enormous hickies and getting laughed at by the cooks. the things that happen at home aren't real now, this isn't even real home. I wrote that I know what realness is. it tastes like limes and tequila, it smells like hot asphalt and pretzel carts. everything here is like a dream, Boston buried by fog from the view on Robbins, bodies that I used to embrace with love now quieted by friendship... and vice versa. I'm so tired of the stupidity and the indecision and the abandonment and the innopportunity, I have pretty eyes and good stories. my potential is enormous. I plan to come to terms with this regardless of any blanket of fog obscuring me, and something good is going to happen to me in just a moment. there are places I know of, they have pulses. I'm open, we'll go there to share our veins. we went on our family vacation to the Lake, but my sister got lice and the whole week was mostly shot to hell, my mom checking both of our heads for hours every night and going into town every day to wash our sheets and pillows and sleeping bags. we hiked though. and I read about Quality. and kyaked with my sister. I remember we had one last night at the Burren, and literally everyone was there... we drank Redheaded Sluts (which are disgusting, please never order me one, even if you think it's funny) and brought this ridiculous old man named Morrie back with us to the boys' apartment, where we all smoked a hookah together. and then it was time to leave. Dad and I drove to the city in a moving van, and Matt and Jen helped me move into the new apartment. my little room was cute, without blinds yet, so the traffic lights kept me up all night. and Dad and I ate at an Italian cafe outside, another gorgeous hot night. and this was kind of the start of many goodbyes, the moving into my first apartment.
the first weeks were amazing, just enjoying the summer, finally celebrating the city that I'd been longing for since Reefer's terrible post-partum depression. I didn't have internet for a while, so I was going to a little cafe on 3rd St. everyday with my laptop and sitting in the window, writing in here about my happiness, or watching handsome boys walk by with their tattoos and their dogs, or posting ads on craigslist personals for my own amusement. Jen and I would visit with Erin, who lived just around the corner from us, and we'd watch Project Runway. and I'd walk around the city all day and only eat apples, and have dinner at Around the Clock with Brad, and get drinks at Holiday with Hannah in my PJs. it was everyone's birthday for a week there, and I was going out every night... I remember Hannah and I drank 40s out of bags at Snakes On a Plane for Randy's birthday, and I was buying pitchers of margaritas afterwards, and Randy said that really nice thing, he said that I love theatre more than an actor loves theatre. finally, though, it was Hannah's birthday, and I remember I was wearing my favorite shoes, and we had a big Italian dinner and then went out for drinks at St. Dymphnas and met all those Irish guys. and then we went to Bua with them. that was the first time I'd been to St. D's and Bua, which is so strange to think about, but I remember drunkenly whining to Hannah and Kim that the Irish boys didn't like me but were all over the two of them. and they shoved that one drunken fool at me, and he kept biting me and kissing me. and he bought me a drink and then I remember nothing. basically nothing. and he was so rude and kept biting me, and maybe we were in a cab and maybe then we were in his apartment and maybe I blacked out and maybe I remember staring at the clock and begging for it to be over but not being able to move. and when I woke up fully, he wasn't there, but I didn't want to call my friends, I just wanted to pick up my favorite shoes off of the carpet and I left the apartment door wide open and stumbled down FDR Drive, hoping a cab would find me, and once I was finally picked up I just stared at my reflection in the plastic on the back of the driver's seat and cried. and cried. and it's really unclear what happened or what I said in that moment, so I guess I didn't know how it would end up defining me, if it would at all. it took days before I wrote that I feel like I've completely lost interest in... everything. I thought I wanted to meet guys and go out and drink and hook up with people, but the thought really bothers me right now. I don't feel trusting enough to even have a feeling about a person, let alone any of the possible outcomes of feelings. and even my secret/not-secret-at-all dream guy has turned out to not be all the nice things that I want him to be. I just feel closed, moreso than usual even, and I sit and think about the kind of person it's going to take to get me out of this place, and I can't imagine him, I've definitely never met him. it makes me sad, because I feel like the more I've sat with these bad thoughts about myself and the thought of this bad experience, the less and less hopeful I've gotten. not that there weren't nice things happening, we had that great dinner party at Brad's up in Astoria and laughed as hard as ever. and class was starting.
the beginning of fall-end of summer this year tastes like cigarettes, I was smoking all the time, and hanging out with Britta and Billy and Ryan. Britta and I would be the Tyra Banks Show and teach Billy how to approach boys in bars, and it seemed like we were perpetually standing outside of Phoenix and Eastern Bloc [Cock], lighting our cigarettes and talking to gay bouncers. and I remember that night that Ryan drove me home in his pickup truck as the sun came up, and we listened to Peter Pan. I had a dance class that I was actually doing alright in, because all the top dancers from my year had decided to take it as well. I was scared into proficiency. CAP was doing Evita as the all-school show, and I was so determined to get in, and didn't. I remember just panicking... that I would have no family this fall. that's what it's all been about for me, anyway. the families. and being away from training for a semester was like having no family, I had hoped that maybe a show could fill that void. I wrote that I'm so afraid of being orphaned by everyone I care about. I started becoming obsessed with Jerry Springer: The Opera, and would do anything to produce it... I was on constant alert that important British producers would contact me about rights. it felt good, satisfying, to be electrified by a show again. unfortunately, it fell through, because they still have hopes for Broadway. it would be a show-less year. what would that mean for me? I would just concentrate on the Practicum in the spring. and I would work on myself. this was obvious. it was time to pay attention to myself, and keep everything inside me from withering.
the best night of the early fall might have been the night we went to see crazy April do standup... on what turned out to be "Latino Night"... or maybe it was just hating-white-people night... but either way, we were wasted and combative and Britta was catching water leaking from the ceiling in her hands and Nick was being called a pedophile and Andrew was talking back to the comedians and I was getting sexually harrassed by just about everyone. and we drank free champagne, and some Puerto Ricans opened a bottle, and Brad and I found John Zurek, and we went to Isaac's roof and met British party crashers. no, I had no one for myself, and I wasn't doing theatre. but I was skinny. and I was fueled by my friends. and this was starting to feel like a real life. the Haley that I knew so well in high school was finally just present. not hoping to be closer, not hiding sometimes, not wishing for anything truer. but present. blissfully suspended and open. and it was Ryan and Kelly's birthday party way out in Bed-Stuy, and I got a pretty haircut and everyone complimented me, and we drank beers in the courtyard, and Ryan kissed me on the cheek and poured tequila down my throat, and we ate handfuls of cake, and I threw up while TJ held my pretty hair out of the way. I was working at Uno's on 3rd Ave. a whole bunch, and making a decent enought amount of money. our apartment was full of mice, but they were mostly innocuous, we'd just electrocute them in Mouschwitz. my life was consumed by my obsession with food. and how I wasn't eating it. I'd be really good for an entire day, and dance and work out, and then my idleness would overtake me and I'd be inhaling junkfood in front of the TV at 2 am. and then Brad was called to join on the Hairspray national tour as a replacement... and I was thrilled for him, but it had already been hard enough to be separated by boroughs. hell, it was hard enough to be separated by Union Square Park the year before. our goodbye night, Billy and Brad and I went to St. D's and found Hannah there... and shortly thereafter, the Arlington kids who now lived in the city- Isaac, Jill and Jason, with his brother Keith. and nothing happened. really. nothing. I bought rounds of shots to alleviate my own internal panic. Ryan and I christened this weekend the anniversary of our friendship, and we went out with this big group and Billy fell down trying to pirouette at Tracy J's, and we sat around at 3A and smoked a bong. and with my tongue as heavy as lead, Ryan walked next to me on the street and nonchalantly talked about the boy he was dating. I remember wracking my mind to figure out what the hell was going on, and pulling Billy out of the bar to freak out about this. my heart had sufficiently burst inside my chest. this was only fitting. of course this was the next chapter to the direction everyone's lives were going.
but everything was changing, because that October, I started doing yoga and reading about Buddhism. literally, everything changed. I can't explain this moment of my life without just pasting what I said then. but it was a revelation, as silly as that sounds. my heart hung open. we ended yoga on my second day with a story that began, "I have learned that you can't make someone love you. all you can do is be someone who can be loved." I've been so worried about letting the serendipity of love happen to me. but in all honesty, it's taken an alternate search to make me put that false patience-for-love on the back burner. I'm thinking about bodies lately. it's weird how we pin our hopes on so many external things, but all the actual questions and answers are contained inside this vessel. and it's weird how we can float along in the universe, thinking that we need to make bodily connection with others to be whole, when we are so complete and capable. we're lovable creatures. but I have learned that until you can accept all these things, you'll only project your own wounds and gaps and desperation onto others. it's funny how something so universally accepted as "you'll never share real love until you love yourself" can feel abstract for 21 years or more. I don't know. each day feels lovely. the way the air bites, how sun looks on leaves, how it feels to lie on a floor and let tears warm my cheeks, the feeling of stretching my arms out and embracing everything. I'm happy right here in this second. and it feels so practical, that my big search is on the inside. I've never been a spiritual religious-type person, and feelings like this are somehow unnatural to type for me. I just feel exceptionally lucky to be alive right now. feeling left out, not getting cast, being single, doing homework, the warm weather fading out, the way I look, fitting into jeans, having a meticulously planned future... none of it seems important. bodies are what are important; inside mine is a jumble of pretty things to rearrange, leftover sad thoughts to put in the trash can, and locked gardens full of secrets. I remember dying my hair bright crayon red one day for no reason. and Peggy loved it and told me that I should come over and dye the little grey tufts on her head a great shade of purple. and we saw Hair, and I decided moments before the show that I wouldn't judge it. even though I had initially been disgusted that they tampered with it. and I sat by Billy and Britta, and everything was so visually stimulating and magical and had that sick beautiful white of Clockwork Orange and the stage would be washed in yellow, suddenly. and I was enraptured. and then the finale came. and Adam lept off of that ladder and started to sing The Flesh Failures with such a driving, angry force... and the girl playing Jeannie clung to the bright red white and blue of the folded flag against the white of the stage and their bodies and heads. and then they rushed together and screamed to be heard let the sunshine in. and it was a plea, a begging for their lives. and the curtain closed in around them and they reached out for us to do .something. and I was wracked, destroyed, by tears. if it was imperfect, whatever. nothing had moved me so viscerally, ever.
later that night, John and I sang Kelly Clarkson and Christina Aguilera in my bedroom and took shots of vodka chased by candycorn, dressed as superheroes, and marauded about town, drunk and lost, until we reached Isaac's roof. the next day, we lost our heat and hot water in the apartment. with the ever-presence of mice, we were miserable in that dump on Avenue D, freezing and smelly, I was taking showers at the gym, and I'd go to my voice lessons all disheveled and Peggy wouldn't care if I didn't know my music, and she'd tell me I could sleep at her house if I wanted to. I remember the night that Billy and I saw Shortbus and were changed irrevocably. it was another piece in everything that was happening to me. I wanted to be permeable. I wanted to touch other people and feel their skin. and feel what their skin could do to me. there's no good to be had being safe and hard. I was Severin once, and I didn't want to be her ever again. the next day, I went to Mass to see my family and fly out to San Francisco with them for my uncle Brian's wedding. I dressed up as Supergirl again for a Halloween party at Matt and Nonni's house, where we played flipcup and I ended up in an anciently familiar compromising position. which, to be perfectly honest, was exactly what I needed to get me out of my dry and suspicious spell that had followed the incident with Irish boys on St. Mark's in August. the flight was long and I slept. and the wedding reception was beautiful and I got drunk and sang You'll Never Walk Alone for the bride and groom, after much pressuring, and we danced to Indian pop music. on Halloween night, Jen gave me a latex zombie face, and we paraded the streets, puking blood on slutty drunk girls. and without the aid of hot water, I tore it off in the sink, removing a section of my eyebrow that has yet to fully return.
November started, and I had to start thinking about the Practicum in the Spring. I knew that I needed to make myself want to be a performer, or the entire process was going to be incredibly painful. I wanted to want it, and I wanted to find what that unique thing was that I am, I knew I was not just funny. not only funny. and not funny in a typical, stock-funny way. that's what's hard to distill. I knew I was good at something, the way I make people laugh and the way I can look into my soul and pour it all out on a page. how could I translate that to theatre? in the meantime, I was spending lots of time with Britta, and sometimes we would wear the same dress with ripped jeans and sometimes we would be so far gone at Tracy J's karaoke Thursdays that we'd sing Take Me Or Leave Me and sometimes I'd drink so many whiskey sours with her that all I'd taste the next day were cherries in my mouth. it was different this year with Britta. this girl that I used to be intimidated by, then jealous of, then angry with, then uncomfortable around... was now my best friend. I think we were both somewhat astounded to have a female best friend. and when she came out in her giant ball gown to sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina on the balcony of the Casa Rosada/a stack of blocks in Studio One, I gasped and welled up with tears. she was just so incredibly beautiful and poised. and to know all of her insecurities and confusions about life and how aligned we sometimes seemed to be, she embodied that favorite role of mine as a person so completely full of life and complexities. and I was really proud to have this girl as my best friend. around this time, I met Matt M., who was a really cute boy who liked punk and rockabilly music, had a bunch of silly tattoos, and for whatever strange reason, was into me too. probably because we were opposites. at this moment, I was all sunshine and yoga and laughter, and he was cynical and sarcastic and dark. we'd drink lots of beer and talk about our problems, and I'd tell him over and over again how cute and funny he was. I was just so astounded that someone cute and funny was talking to me. I was taking so many diet pills at this point that I'd clean the entire apartment and cook dinner. and one day I had a panic attack while trying to bake an apple pie for Brad's Thanksgiving party, and ended up not going because I was so upset. and Peggy gave me an amazing song, my special cowboy song that no one else has, and I sang the shit out of it in her wonderful living room and she would clasp her hands and exclaim with joy, how I had really found something I loved to sing. that Friday after my lesson, I went to happy hour at BBQ with friends, and the third years, and drank a few margaritas before heading out for drinks with Matt. and I remember trying to paint my nails beforehand and it being a total drunken disaster. and when we finally said goodnight outside my door, many hours later than I had planned, we sort of awkwardly kissed and I had no idea what it would end up being. but we'd talk online and he said he wanted to make sure we hung out again before I went home for Thanksgiving... so we met up for dinner and drinks in the next few days... and we held hands and kissed for real. and everything seemed kind of sweet and hopeful, and no, we didn't have very much in common, and maybe the fun of differences would run out soon, but I was very much into the idea that it could become something good. I remember listening to Regina Spektor, endlessly, on loop. Thanksgiving was spent at the house I grew up in, for the first time ever, instead of my grandmother's. when I came back, I'd spend the night at Matt's apartment in Bushwick, and he was just really nice to me, kind of a nice asshole, and it was such a change to everything that had led up to it. but it was short-lived, because I was still negotiating the line between the silent greyness of dating and the vocal black and white of relationships. and we really didn't have much to talk about as the weeks wore on, and as I felt it disappear from under me, this nice little thing that was barely more than a speck of emotion, I hung on because I was on the brink of having a feeling. it was about to transfer over from text to impulse. in between all this, I auditioned for Hedwig at Tisch. and I honestly think they kept me for so long because I loved that fucking show so hard. I sang and tore at myself and showed them my insides, and even though I didn't get the part, I got to sing lift up your hands with the beautiful Max Jenkins and that may have been enough. and then there was the night that Britta and I were drunk at Tisch. and she didn't want to do CAP 4th Year, or even New York theatre, anymore and I just felt like all the gorgeousness of last year and this time that we'd all begun to really fuse together might be coming to an end. and it just hit me that college was coming to an end. and soon it would be more than the Williamsburg Bridge or the A train separating us, we could end up miles away. people take tours, people go back home, people go to California, people go to Europe. what would I be, if I didn't have these people? I had lived without Billy and Britta and Brad for too long to imagine more life spent alone. we had the Winter Wonderland Fesitival, I wrote my final paper for college ever about Rodgers & Hammerstein and Asian porn, and I headed home to Arlington for two weeks. Matt and I kept arguing online because I kept inciting things, because I have an ugly character trait of never being able to let anything go. I was kind of furious that he was unwilling to have feelings towards me. eventually I decided to call it quits from the internet for a while, which seemed to be the root of all my despair and compulsions.
back in the city, I'd spend lots of alone time in the apartment with the mice, eating only Cheerios and drinking only beer. and on New Years Eve, Billy and Brad came over and we drank champagne and went out for what we hoped would be an exciting night on the town... but what turned into Billy and I eating at the Automat and kissing each other at midnight and all the gays turning up at Phoenix until it started to pour and we had an unnecessary 4 am dinner at Around the Clock. it was the quintessential night to sum up 2006... a year of diner food, homosexuals, and binge drinking. I remember the night when Britta and I were Harold and Bronto in Billy's bed, and the ranch dressing they gave her at Odessa. I started eating only Slimfast bars, and school was starting again (which Britta had eventually decided to do), which meant that I had to get back into CAP-mode. but ten-fold. I got my headshot proofs back, and was so disgusted with myself that I considered quitting theatre forever, and cried all day. but my first day, I was put into a group of nine... imagine, we were halved down from that first day of freshman year... Britta and me and Nick and Chris and Chasten and Giancarla and Kate and Elena and Jen. it was such a funny little ensemble, but I couldn't have been happier. I remember our first day of class, and I got to do all the pieces I love the most, specifically I'll Stand By You, I'm Breaking Down, and my American Daughter monologue. and everyone was just so supportive, and Francis thought I was funny, and Nick told me I was really talented, and Chuck was astounded and said what happened since last year? and I said, everything. and he said, you understood everything that woman was going through, and I said, I'm a different person than I was last year. and it felt good to say. and my class... everyone seemed to have come to a similar revelation. everyone seemed to have found their place in the family of things. around this time, I posted another craigslist personal ad, mostly to be funny, but also because I knew I had to meet new people... Matt had been a big jarring change, it shouldn't be like that. and I didn't want to be stuck on him and feeling lonely. it became a kind of funny social experiment that I started documenting in my journal, and I weeded through all the crazy responses to find two guys who had varying levels of potential, Stephen and Sam. and I remember I met Stephen first, and he was so creepy and nerdy, and talked so loudly about all the lame things he likes. and kept touching me awkwardly. and didn't pay for any of my drinks. or food. or movie ticket. which mostly just annoyed me because he was so embarrassing as a whole. and then I remember meeting Sam the next night, and I had gone to yoga with Britta and Andrew and Emily, and I lied about having plans at night, and then I met this boy at Bua. I remember I had thought his picture was really cute, and then when I saw him he had just so much facial hair and I wasn't sure how cute he was in real life. and we sat and asked each other interview questions because we were so awkward, but it ended up going surprisingly well and we stayed out all night. and I remember dancing at Horus when we were drunk enough, to bad techno, and he was wearing a flannel shirt. and he spent the night but I was very good, and he kept telling me that I was sexy, and in the morning he told me that he liked me. and everything was just very, very nice. for the next little bit. mock auditions at CAP were going not so great, and my teachers didn't love all of my material, but I was glowing and smiling all the time because there was this adorable blonde boy who made me feel like a pretty and worthwhile person. all of a sudden, things with Sam were moving very fast... I met his friends, I started spending the night, he was saying things like I guess we're dating now and I was answering yeah, I guess we are. but I had learned something from the short time I dated Matt. they don't want to see your heart. they don't want to hear your fears. they don't want to articulate or define or analyze the things that are exchanged between the two of you. so I zipped my lip and tried to be just fun, just sweet, just funny, just quiet. but it didn't work. the thing I learned from Sam was that not all boys are alike. and if you don't show your heart, you're nothing. anyway, the long and short was that he was sort of rebounding, and sort of bipolar, and sort of having some stint of mania that made our time spent very very happy but very very small. but ultimately I blame myself. because I didn't give enough of myself, and I had such hope in the apparent potential but kept it silent. I remember the night he called me to break it off, things had been going so well with my auditions for Paul Hardt, who thought I was skinny and hilarious, and I tried to be funny and wonderful in my ten minutes of singing but I couldn't stop thinking about the things I did wrong in this minute non-relationship. and I'm a girl who has read He's Just Not That Into You and I think I've slept with enough wrong people to know that sometimes it all just isn't... why did I want Sam to work out so badly? I remember one moment in bed with him, and I thought to myself, this is fun, but I could never be in love with this guy. and of course, like the cliche I am, after the fact was an entirely different story. it's strange that two intense weeks have made me regret so much about myself, and that one intense, odd, sweet little person hurt me so profoundly in literally no time at all. but I learned that you can try to do everything right, and still be wrong. because my imperfections and the noise I make and the mess I am may be what makes me a person capable of being loved. why choose sterility, ever?
so time moved along and I just had to deal with the fact that I had been fully cut down to size in two weeks. and I had to keep singing at CAP, even though tears were flowing more freely now. we had David for vocal rep, and I'd try to sing Home and just lose it. and he'd put my hands on the piano and tell me to let the vibrations fill me. and I'd sob myself into a heap because I just felt like I had no idea who I was in the world of theatre. David wanted me to be vulnerable and open. I heaved my heart into the forefront. this was easy. I could go to that place. but what good would it do me? I couldn't hit the notes or look the part required of the vulnerable girl. I'd sing Look What Happened to Mabel, for god's sake, and cry. just because I was incapable of talking about myself in a positive way. life was just constant tears. I broke my diet and started eating compulsively again. I'd still go to yoga a few times a week, but more often I'd slack off. I started to feel guilty for not being Zen. my negative thoughts about myself were a runaway train. I think what happened next was that I started to become obsessed with finding a guy who was like Sam, but not actually him because he had no interest in me anymore. and I sort of wanted to revert to all these things about my personality that were more appealing. I wanted to run away from the city, and stop consuming all sorts of toxic things, and write music. I had a very clear idea of who I wanted to be. and if I could be this person, maybe I would attract the sort of people who weren't phony and theatrical, the kind of people who ride bikes and play guitar. everything about CAP was suffocating me, I wanted to do anything to rebel against it. so I gave up smoking, caffeine, all meat, fried food, and nail polish. and I started to feel a little cleaner. I knew that there was something pure and exciting and good beneath everything I had accumulated in the past years. my parents raised me well. I love so many things. I have had so many dreams that I could chase if I chose to.
Brad left again for Hairspray, this time for an extended period... he'd be going to Japan with them over the summer. we had a goodbye party at Holiday Lounge, and sang Frank Sinatra all night with senile old Ukranian Stefan. Peggy wasn't doing so well, this round of chemo seemed to be really taking a toll, but I'd bounce up the steps to her brownstone on St. Mark's as always on a Monday afternoon, and no one would answer the bell. and I'd call and leave messages, and a neighbor would let me in and I'd listen for Nika barking. I never would have imagined that week in March would be the last lesson I'd ever have with her. I was so beyond sure that I'd call one day and she'd pick up with her high-pitched, sing-songy "hellooo!" and we'd schedule our next class. I was sure. but I ended all my voice mails with I love you, just in case. it was spring break, and Billy and I were mostly inseparable. I remember playing never have I ever at St. D's with LaRaisha, Angie, Pete, Ryan and Billy, and poledancing at Eastern Bloc, and falling asleep at Mr. Black's. I posted another craigslist ad... this one was about the "new" me, the one who wanted to run away from taxicabs and asphalt and go camping, and never do musical theatre again. I started talking to one boy, named Jeff, but no one really seemed to be very interesting. I got a tattoo... a great big pirate ship on the left lower quadrant of my back. this was the skin of the girl I wanted to be. this was graffiti of my experiences on my body. I wanted to sail off in a great big clipper ship, shedding all the poison I've ingested over time, always homeward bound to something more clean and bright. there were a few times when I went to see Sam's band play, and I always got too drunk and either blubbered helplessly about my feelings, or insisted that we must sleep together that.night., and ultimately I just dug my grave and (sober) it was very, very obvious that I should let it go. what was wrong with me, I don't know. Chris and I were best friends, somehow. even though he was probably the member of the Lunch Bunch I knew the least last year, being in class together and taking yoga and getting salads at the dining hall and nachos at Around the Clock/7A/Heartland Brewery made us incredibly close. he was there at the second disasterous drunken concert, and he and Hannah extinguished my hair when I accidentally caught it on fire. the loveliest day of Spring came when I skipped school and took a road trip to Delaware with Brad and Danny, to drop off my darling for his next tour stop. and Danny and I found the only bar in Delaware and got tipsy on wine and talked about theatre, and I cried whenever Brad entered the stage. I was just .so. proud. it's unreal. this is going to keep happening. the people I love are going to have incredible successes, and I'm going to get to watch them. I feel blessed. and Danny and I got lost late at night on the ride home, that 80 degree day, and sang all of Falsettos, playing all the roles. I started going out with that craigslist guy, Jeff, every so often, and he would spend the night, but I had absolutely no interest. I couldn't muster a single feeling, even though he'd make me go to brunch, entirely against my will. I burst into tears in front of Malcolm Gets in a master class, which signalled to me that there was a deeper problem with my self-esteem than I was maybe willing to admit. it wasn't about theatre. if it was, I could control myself in front of important master teachers. if it was, I wouldn't feel so sad about wanting to quit. but I knew, inside my cells, that it was me that I hated. me in any role. there was a girl I wanted to be, but I wasn't her. not really. finally, finally, they chose my showcase material... I got to just stand and be for Stop and See Me, and be silly with my favorite silly partner, Giancarla, for The Stepsisters' Lament. it wasn't what I expected, and it took an enormous weight off of me. my mom brought my electric guitar, and Chris restrung my acoustic, and it dawned on me how important songwriting once was to me. how I'd pull leaves of paper from that Jack Daniels box in my bedroom in Arlington and sit on the floor and play and sing for friends. and everyone had a favorite song, or a song about them, and it was my most important outlet. I would have lost my mind as a teenager, had I not been able to write. it only seemed natural that I begin again. and rework those old phrases, reinvent the progressions to say something new.
Stop and See Me, of course, was the most perfect sentiment for me to express at the moment. I could pour my guts out at the drop of a hat. at a mention from Aimee that I should breathe and let myself be seen, my composure would just fall away. I remember after I sang it in our Share Day, Kate F. said to me I know that you sometimes feel like you don't want this or can't do this, but when you stood up there, about to sing, you looked so .worthy.. and I thought, even if I don't won't can't want to want this, I could complete this small task. I could craft this song, and I could make everyone laugh with Stepsisters. whatever came of it was not the point. I went to school to learn how to make art, and that is what I would put all my energy towards in these last few weeks.
and then Peggy died. no, she didn't. first she was about to die, and Kate and Aimee and Michon and Pam all told me. and told me that she had requested we not attempt to contact her or send her anything. all I could think of was how my mother would always tell me that I should give her flowers or a plant or make her a card, she'd tell me that every year. I always assumed that I'd write something for her, give her something green, when I graduated. I was so indebted to her, she had literally, physically, .given. me my voice. I knew how hard it would be to say goodbye to weekly lessons with her. I never considered how hard it would be to say goodbye to everything about her. and no goodbye at all, just the prayer all inside of my blood that she understood how much she meant. I just hoped that she knew how much I loved her. and every lesson I wasted with tears, every day I hadn't learned my music, I hope she knew that I always had the heaviest and most profound respect for her. I think of her soft wrinkled hand on my chest, weighted by rings and bracelets, I think of her rug and the smell of her house and the tea we shared and the tissues on her piano and singing my cowboy song, and when she'd be proud of me and when we'd talk about directing, and when she came to see Reefer and arrived late, and I saw her huddled against the wall, ducking from the dancing zombies, her face enraptured and a little terrified. and everything about her was so beautiful. and how I should have written her a card, at some point. how I shouldn't have messed up when I sang Mad Margaret. how I shouldn't have spent so much time hating myself, and more time loving her. and how when she asked me to spend the night, back in February when I had no heat, I should have accepted and curled up on her floor with Nika instead of going uptown to Sam's apartment. we make so many choices, and the time spent is so small. but life had to continue. when Peggy's husband, Don, died... the first month that I knew her... and then when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, not long afterwards... she allowed life to continue. yes, she was being pulled in the opposite direction, but she always said that the thing that kept her alive was our voices. and teaching. and music. our choices, and the minuteness of life, seem to be so enmeshed with the things we're passionate about, the things we protect, the things that make our hearts pound. there can always be more life, I think, if that's truly what we desire.
I started listening to In The Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel on a continuous loop. music was the answer. to whatever all this was. that record was about the beautiful things in stories about war and death, and the positivity of Anne Frank, and experiencing life with flowers in your eyes, even when decay is looming. I planned my next tattoo. it would be a sugar skull, like they make on Dia de los Muertos, when they celebrate life in a way our culture seems to be relatively incapable of. and lyrics would surround it and they would be out of the mouth of Jeff Mangum/Anne Frank, but for now we are young, let us lay in the sun, and count every beautiful thing we can see. imagining that I won't always be young, one day I'll be weak and maybe stricken with disease and hunched over, but the words will be there to recall a moment of my youth. an irrefutable record that more life is possible.
school was coming to an actual close. I had gained an astronomical amount of weight since the winter, when Paul Hardt had raved about the pounds I'd shed. everyone was telling me how heavy I was, how imperfect my body was, how I shouldn't wear this dress or that dress for showcase. I was robbed of my body. of course I wanted to be skinny. but more to the point, I wanted to be accepted for the way I am. my shape is my shape. these aren't statements that exist inside of the world of musical theatre. I found an outfit that hid my imperfections, and I went out drinking most nights. honestly, although I know there were so many fun times, they all blur together to some degree. there was Nick’s Sunday night out for his belated birthday, and many evenings at Bua, and drinking bottles of wine with Ryan, and smoking hookahs with Britta and Stefanie, and sitting in tiny rooms with Billy and Lindsey, and shots of jager at Uncle Ming’s, and plastic cups of tequila at Doc Holliday’s. and then we graduated. and I wore high heels and wore grown-up earrings. and my parents bought me a beautiful apartment in Williamsburg where Billy and I will need to buy grown-up furniture and live grown-up lives. and we had our showcase, and as we sang Cross The Line, I started to cry, sending off everything that I had accumulated in four years at CAP21. and we toasted at Merchant’s with grown-up martinis, and everyone moved to new grown-up apartments in new grown-up neighborhoods outside of our safe haven of the East Village. and we sent out our headshots and returned to our part-time jobs and we met up at night and looked at photos-of-then and felt ourselves wrinkle and harden with the distance of how-much-we’ve-changed. and I don’t know what I’ll be, or what important kernel of wisdom lives inside all of this, or what kind of markers will prompt me to reflect from here on out. but I think that life is about waiting for transformation. when will I leave my cocoon? when will life have color? when will there be blood, and water, and flight? when I graduated from high school and wrote a similar epic, I wrote that I was finished. every possible conclusive event occurred, but I still was waiting. waiting to write this, waiting to grow up or get some sign that I was an adult, it just never came. I suppose like turning 11 or 12 or 13 or going into 2nd or 3rd or 4th grade, you look in the mirror and expect to see someone else's face. but there you are, same plain baby face with as many freckles as last year, as flat-chested as ever, still the popular girl's fat sidekick, still without a boyfriend, still YOUNG. change is so secretive. it creeps in through totally innocent-seeming experiences, while you’re sleeping, through horrible tragedy when you don't have time to notice it. change doesn't play fair. we as people want to have landmarks. we want to see a different face in the mirror, we want a neon sign to announce that we have finally turned eleven years old, we want some kind of heavenly broadcast to tell the world what we have accomplished. maybe it's not even as selfish as all that. maybe we just want to know for ourselves. because we are ageless creatures always, lost and blank, waiting to get painted on. ultimately, there’s no one image that can carry the weight of all that has happened in four years. but if I were to let it paint on me, it would start at my toes with Larry’s hands and hard wood floors and standing in a windowsill and sense memories and dirty flip-flops and songs by Sondheim and exhaling all our deepest wishes. and it would creep up my thighs and into my belly with orchids and yellow roses and Blanche’s suitcase and red Christmas lights and cast recordings from start to finish and getting the greatest applause you’ve ever heard and pitchers of sangria on very warm nights and all our oldest lullabies. and in through my solar plexus and up the periphery of my spine would be drawn a leaky roof and musty curtains and grilled chicken in plastic containers and choking on my milk, snorting up my milk, spitting out my milk! and hearing Run Away With Me for the very first time and rolling out dough that is two weeks old and Marlboro Lights and dorm furniture in the basement and getting carried down stairs by a person who loves you. oh and then my cheekbones and the bridge of my nose and seeping from my irises and like blood from my lips are Peggy’s bangles and Peggy’s meow cuckoo and yippee and my green dress and a Shakespeare monologue and sitting on the floor with my dearest best girlfriend and her little puppy and looking into each other’s eyes when we make toasts and Aimee saying that I am not allowed to show only half of myself ever again. and that’s the graffiti of the body, oh these things are underneath your flesh. we don’t look different today, even though we pore over every inch of our skin to find any subtle change, but tomorrow or the next day or the next or maybe when we’re grey and tired… the ink will rise to the surface and we’ll remember. and I can’t be sorry, really, that it’s past, because I know it all only pales in comparison to the Next Thing. it’s unclear, I know, because the increments of time have no name now. but if I can stay open, permeable, reckless, vocal, I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay.
because
love.burns.its.patterns.on.my.life.