Joanna: So you wanna hear my story? — she asks this standing outside the
\nclassroom last night during break, just shortly before dr. allums walks
\nback from his office to interrupt us. he calls her on a habit we all seem
\nto have: “do you realize we’re always going around doing that to each
\nother? one of us is constantly saying to another (pointing his finger
\nmenacing), `i’ve got a book you need to read’. right. like any of us
\never have time to do that.” it dawns on me later, most people talk about
\nsports, or movies, or restaurants. that’s right, i’m officially a geek.<\/p>\n
my raised eyebrow and wrinkled forehead do little to dissuade her. “well,
\nyou’re gonna hear it anyway.” she then goes on to explain how she’s in a
\nthird-floor dressing room down at the saenger (all the _real_ actors get
\nfirst-floor priority. i won’t repeat what she said when i told her this.)
\nand that the makeup tables are down on ground level. she reminds me how
\nlittle she knows about using makeup; i become increasingly aware this will
\nend up being some excuse for the fact that her hair’s green this evening
\n— not green, bad shampoo day green, but green, bright lime jello, granny
\nsmith apple, fourth button on a gravis pc gamepad green — to which she
\noffers something about being emerald city denizen number three, something
\nconcerning a frank l. baum novel … likely story. <\/p>\n
so she’s downstairs, trying to figure out the proper way to transform
\ngreen goup in a bottle into being green goup on one’s face when a contact
\nfalls out. it’s not on the table, it’s not on her clothes, best she can
\nfigure is that it bounced off her hand and rolled to parts unknown when
\nit fell out (ahh, the joys of being dependant on artificial eyewear)..
\nthe bright, naked lights surrounding the makeup mirrors do just about as
\nmuch as yelling “ok everybody, don’t walk over here.” suffice it to say,
\nshe gave up to traipse back upstairs and finish costuming before the
\nperformance, which was gonna be interesting seeing as how she was sort of
\nin charge of moving sets around and stuff. see, there is a reason to
\nhave minor characters in a play: directors give bits parts to stage
\nhands as a token to make them feel important ( ^: ok, cheap shot…
\nback upstairs, her dressing-room mate calls her over to the table up
\nthere. “Is this your contact?” pointing to the semisphere nestled in the
\nmiddle of the table. Do you even bother trying to rationalize that?<\/p>\n
He has a sense of humour you know.<\/p>\n
It was then that larry walked up, laughed at the idea of getting to
\nread anything you choose to on your own, and preempted the only relevant
\nstory i could have offered. The other day, sunday, running late to get
\nout to rehearse with some guys that want me to play piano with them in a
\nhonky-tonk quartet, for private parties and stuff, I had to take the van
\nbecause I was using my rhodes out to there to play on. We’d just had the
\nignition changed a few days before so the keychain had both the old and
\nnew keys still on it. Old key fit, just wouldn’t turn — ironically, the
\nsame symptom as the last time I’d driven that van, precisely the reason
\nthe ignition was being replaced. I fight with it for a short eternity,
\nthinking to myself, “I don’t have time for this,” when I realized I was
\nusing the wrong key. Switch, turn, and the engine takes a minute to
\nstart, at which point I offer a good-natured growl in His general
\ndirection. At precisely the same instant my eyes lift slightly upwards,
\ncarrying my internal laughter with them, the now-purring, happy little
\nengine dies. My laughter at that point becomes articulated, as does
\nthe sense of One very near and yet not physically there smiling with
\nme, and it didn’t even matter when I got there that I was late.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
My future roommate Paul wrote this, so I didn’t have to. Yes, it’s true. While I was downstairs doing makeup for the UM Theatre Dept’s production of The Wizard of Oz, my contact fell out. I had given up looking for it, hiked up the three flights of stairs to my dressing room reserved for those of us lowly actors with such illustrious roles with titles like “Emerald City Denizen, #1” when my fellow actress pointed to the counter. And there, inexplicably, lay my missing contact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joanna: So you wanna hear my story? — she asks this standing outside the classroom last night during break, just shortly before dr. allums walks back from his office to interrupt us. he calls her on a habit we all seem to have: “do you realize we’re always going around doing that to each other?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonclassified-nonsense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}