For the World is a Stage

I'm taking a drama class.  Really I'm only taking it because I need a fine arts credit, but I have done a lot of theater in the past.  I had some bit parts in plays, before I realized I have the biggest stage fright ever, which is odd since I tend to have long conversations with total strangers.  I usually hit a point once I've been drinking that I call "way too social drunk" during which I HAVE to have a small conversation with everyone I can find.  Maybe that was my problem with theater, I was never drunk.

Ugh, that was a strange tangent.  Anyway.  I enjoyed working behind the scenes doing lights and sound and building sets, so I thought this class wouldn't be terrible.  And it isn't... terrible.  I can't even really say anything bad about the professor, she seems like the nicest most precious lunatic ever.  She wants us to write a three-page, one scene play with three characters, and I'm having problems coming up with something school-appropriate.  I have a few pages written, but I think I'm going to have to scrap it because most of it revolves around fucking in a bar bathroom, and I'm not certain if she'll make us perform these.

So the other day in class she asks us to write a one page monologue, and gives us 20 minutes in which to write it.  I am AWFUL at writing under pressure, seen here, and I don't think I was the only one struggling to make a character, find a struggle, solve the struggle, and put it all into the words that the character would use in 20 minutes.  People looked panicked, one guy put his pen down, folded his arms and refused to write anything, and I saw a guy ACTUALLY wadding up paper and throwing it away when he gave up on an idea.

Today we got our papers back, and she held mine up and said loudly to the rest of the class, "Now THIS is what a monologue is supposed to be!"  So to keep the feel of this paper that is so absurd, but apparently the best anyone could come up with, I have forgone all editing attempts and I'm just going to post this as I wrote it, in 20 minutes in class.  (Hilarious, I'm acting like I have an editing process at all.)  Enjoy.

Untitled Monologue

Time: Late June
Place: Dallas, TX
Setting: A dark wood-panelled study
Character: Sandra, 50, wealthy and well-mannered, nervous, fashionable

(Sandra is standing by the wet bar, gripping a glass of scotch, and speaking to husband, John, who is in armchair.  She is pacing.)

"I can't do this anymore.  I'm exhausted, I never get enough sleep, Julie needs to go to boarding school, my neck feels like someone beat me with a sledgehammer, and I don't love you anymore.  Oh god, did I just say that out loud?  I suppose I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it.  Let me try that again, I-DON'T-LOVE-YOU-ANYMORE.  Wow, it just flows off the tongue, doesn't it?  I was talking to Michael about it the other day, have I mentioned we're having an affair?  Oh god I've had too much scotch.  But I can't live in this soulless prison of a marriage anymore.  I want to be free and not have to go to any of your insipid dinner parties anymore, I want to peel this fake smile off my face and stop pretending that everything is fine.  I want the armoire.  Yes, yes, I know we haven't even spoken about the d-word yet, but once I talk to my attorneys, and you talk to yours, and I throw a few dishes, I want us to be ok as friends and I want that god-damned armoire.  It was my mothers.  You haven't said anything, but I guess I haven't given you the chance.  This is for the best, John.  Julie will understand, she sees us fight every day.  She still loves you, you know.  You were always a good father even if you were a boorish husband.  Leave me now.  I need to have another drink."

The Virgin Mother

My mother finally read my blog.  When I asked her what she thought, she took a moment of silence before saying:

"It's artsy and pretentious, but I still love you."

So that's a resounding vote of approval.  She did say she loved the guest post, but she always did love him more.

I was raised Catholic.  Thankfully, my mom taught me from a small age that guilt is a useless emotion, so I'm not plagued by the debilitating guilt that most Catholics seem to eat for breakfast.  In her opinion, there's no reason to dwell over something that's already happened, because there is nothing that you can do to change it.  You can only learn from it and move on.  She drilled this into me for so many years, and starting from such a young age, that I've never really experienced that emotion.  Which might make me a serial killer, and has definitely gotten me into a large number of fights with boyfriends when they realize that I'm only really apologizing to make them feel better.  Since she is a Methodist, and only agreed to raise me as a Catholic because my father was one, I wonder if maybe it wasn't a defense against the shaming that the church tends to put into people.

I adore the Catholic church.  Technically, I suppose I would be considered "agnostic", but I love the way that Catholics do things.  The rituals they go through are (SACRILEGE) almost pagan at times, and the saints and the candles and the confessions, it's just such an ornate way to worship.  They don't do anything half-assed, and they are so much more forgiving than any other sect.  I joke a lot that anytime I fuck up, I'll just say I'm sorry, do a quick rosary, and I'll be fine again.  I would love to visit the Vatican, and movies/books about the mystery and intrigue and the secrets are just wonderfully juicy.  So yeah, I like Catholicism for all the wrong reasons.  But I do love the thought of putting on a black dress and a big dramatic black hat and standing in the back of the church, sneaking away from my family to go attend mass secretly, and smoking a cigarette afterwards in the parking lot looking all mysterious.  Because I'm god-damned artsy and pretentious.

I know you will all be shocked and surprised by this, but I wrote this next piece about a boy.  (GASP!)  It was yet another of those situations where nothing was "official" and I got led on and then got my little black heart broken.  So I drank a shit-load of everclear and wrote this.  AMEN.

Get Thee to a Nunnery!  (Also titled: Jesus, ya'll)

I clutch my chest to staunch the bleeding and my hands come away red with stigmata.  My sins weigh heavy on me, forcing me down to my bed with my arms outstretched in crucifix.  The nausea overcomes me again.  I wait for this wave to pass, knowing that another will follow it shortly.  The sacrificial wine I pour down my throat does nothing to consecrate my soul, it weeps for Him.  As if the whore of Babylon has any tears left in her dry and rotting carcass, as if she dares cry after all the men she's bedded and hearts she has ripped out.  I long for the numbness of yesterday.  Yesterday, before the pain came again like a dark Judas in the night, slipping a knife into my side, and ripping away so much of what I cared for in this world.  For I so loved the world, and now it seems like a torture box designed solely for me.

They speak of over-dramatic, and over-emotional, but what could one dare say when you feel like the first woman ever placed on the earth, alone.  Alone in the darkness with nary a friend in sight, and I know that without love (somewhere, sometime, with someone) I must surely die.