A.M. (one performance on 05/07/94 at Pyramid Art Center/LIQUID THEATRE)
Yo! What? Huh? jeeze… feels like I been up all night… nothin on my mind… nothin keepin me up… nothin I can think of… is there? I don’t know… I guess not…
Now, where was I? or, more to the point, where AM I? Am I where I wanted to be by now? But where did I want to be? I never had a “plan”… Oh, I started… and quit… plenty of stuff. I just never wanted anything badly enough to stick with it. “Finish what you start!” (even if I don’t like it?!) lack of discipline?… Hey! I go to work! I pay my bills! I brush my teeth after every meal, dammit!
Alright… alright… Leave me alone! (you’re telling yourself to leave you alone?!) I know… I know… I hear me… ranting… raving… unraveling!
If I have no material goals, it shouldn’t mean my goals are immaterial… they’re just intangible. But is that inaccessible? ethereal? grasping at thin air?
NO! the air around me is thick and lush… a GARDEN… full of every imaginable… seed of thought? waiting to grow?
Or am I spreading the fertilizer as I speak… and it’s only words… full of CRAP… to cover the reality that my dreams… are only dreams… unattainable… thus immaterial…
Does it matter? and it MUST… because I must… because I DO… DO matter… and that mattering IS my material goal! HUH?
Proclamation: I am a dropout! (Well, that’s not accurate. Just as I cannot be a “has been” without first being an “is”, thus I cannot drop out from that which I have never been a member in nor a part of). Am I a dangling participant? there on the fringes… around the edge… waiting… getting ready for membership… then, deciding NEVERMIND!
Maybe I think too much… OK, so now start thinking about thinking so you can think how NOT to… think?!
But it isn’t really self-indulgence, is it? When did I actually BECOME AWARE of ME… AS A SELF?
Mrs. Hersch, the neighbor lady, came out onto her front porch. It was a gorgeous summer morning. She watched the child playing alone there in front of her… the child oblivious to the housewife… the housewife who swept the steps leading up to her apartment. The little girl, this solitary tomboy, wore a holster and was firing a toy gun at some imaginary bad-guy there across the yard. A plastic orange bullet dropped from her belt. Did Mrs. Hersch feel some kind of obligation to snidely remark, “Dropped a bullet Wyatt!”
The little girl, suddenly acutely aware of my own existence, ran home crying… didn’t first pick up the bullet… nor ever returned to pick it up.
Maybe THAT’S what’s keeping me awake… maybe somehow, some way, I am awake because I didn’t simply pick my bullet up!
But what has “triggered” this memory… and why does it BUG me?
Standing at the sink, I spotted a very large beetle-type insect behind the faucet. It startled me. My college dormitory in Illinois was built in 1900. There I stood… 72 years later… staring. There were probably all kinds of icky things living behind and under fixtures. I went door-to-door to locate a can of Raid. I clutched it tightly as I stood as far from the sink as I could… stretching my arm as close to it as I could… looking from the corner of one eye while turning my head away. PSSST…PSSST…PSSST… bug spray coated the faucet… actually saturating the adjacent wall. The deed done, I returned the unused portion to my equally repulsed neighbor and thought no more about it. The next afternoon, I decided to rest a few hours in preparation for a long night of studying ahead. My mattress was on the floor of my room. I laid down, closed my eyes, and slept for nearly two hours. I was awakened by a strange sensation of being watched. I distinctly remember that I was aware of being awake well before opening my eyes. When I did open them, I found myself literally face-to-face with “sink beetle” less than six inches away. A reflex action quickly rolled me over, off the mattress, and out the door of my room… so quickly it couldn’t be divided into three distinct motions… just a continuous awkward ballet movement… Plee-ay, plee-ay, Please get me outta here! My heart was pounding, adrenaline pumping, I was in a midwestern state of panic! I made a vow right then and there, barefoot in the hall: That bug had probably lived in the dorm for years before I arrived… and it had every right to remain (“squatters rights?”). It had done absolutely nothing to infringe upon MY college career… so why was it attacked by my “aerosol arsenal”?! “Live and let live” I proclaimed, returning to my room. Nearly half an hour had elapsed. Upon re-entering, I lifted blanket and pillow, scanned the floor, the baseboards… the only place left for my vision to invade was that old sink on the wall… in the corner near the window. I walked over, looked in, under, and behind. I didn’t see Gramma Bug then, or ever again… I hope she’s OK!
What’s crawling through MY brain? digging craters? Maybe there’s a full moon… Howling! Howling! Howling! I am feeling LUNATICKLISH!.. lathered… foaming at the mouth?!
Walking home from a bar, late into a 1981 night, the DOG ran out from behind a building and jumped up and bit me… on the ASS… on Park Avenue… (on Park Avenue on the ass?!) I kicked at the canine… it ran away. I got back to my apartment… the skin was broken (and the paint was peeling),,, but NO BACTINE! But I did have a pint of Dewar’s so I splashed some scotch on the bite, downed a couple of gulps internally for good measure and went to bed. The next day I went to the library and looked up “RABIES” in a medical reference book: “symptoms take from six months to a year to appear in humans. The brain is examined after death occurs to confirm the disease”. Forget it! I haven’t the patience to worry about this for “six months to a year”! I simply went on with my life. I DO remember telling my sister very specifically “If I should suddenly die in the next year, SAVE MY HEAD! It’s needed for medical verification!”
Verification…
Excuse me, but may I see at least two forms of ID? A current driver’s license? Your birth certificate? Some proof you exist? COLD HARD FACTS?!
I exist… Honest I do! I witness as well as LIVE my identity… a hapless voyeur peeking in my OWN window. I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth… but are my recollections hazy… in retrospect? Melting colors blending together?
I got the blues, I got the greens, I got those aqua in-betweens.
I got a fever, I got a chill, porcupine without a quill.
I got the highs, I got the lows, I got those… I just don’t knows!
Maybe it’s these pillows! They’re new… not “broken in” yet…
I was in Sears Marketplace last weekend and noticed pillows were on sale so decided to buy a few. I saw the various bins which had pillows divided not only by size (standard, queen, king) but also by firmness (gentle for those who sleep on their stomach/firm-support for those who sleep on their side/extra firm for those who sleep on their back)
TRUE CONFESSION TIME! I bought two gentle standards because I sleep on my stomach! But I also bought two extra firm queen size because when I watch TV in bed, I lie on my back.
LYING ON YOUR BACK… is that the same as FAKING AN ORGASM?!
Wish I could get some sleep… but it’s okay. I have today off from work. I had to fill out a “vacation request form”. There are lines on the form which ask for “name”, “date”, “position”, etc. On the “position” line, instead of writing my job title which is senior dispatcher, I wrote the words “ON TOP”. Karen, my supervisor, upon reading this told me: “You know this request is kept on file in your permanent record folder!” Well, I better be more creative then. I’ll pick up a copy of the Kama Sutra so I can alter the “position” on each request… possibly draw little diagrams in the margins!
What a kidder!… Who am I kidding?
Kids today! Everyone wants immediate gratification! unable, unwilling to wait… all that “something for nothing” mentality. You know the root of THEIR problem? PRE-WASHED JEANS! It’s true! It was never like this when I was 15… when I bought my very FIRST pair of blue jeans (we even used the proper noun: BLUE JEANS!) They didn’t come already torn, already faded… I had to EARN that! I marched on Washington D.C. in those denims, I sat in sit-ins, I rallied, I protested. It took years of honest effort (outdoor concerts and passing joints) to get my blue jeans “lived-in”. I paid MY DUES! Damn it! I grew up! I grew up… ???
Growing up, I always wanted to be… Maynard G. Krebs… a beatnik, playing bongos in a coffeehouse. But it was no longer the 50’s, so I chose other options.
During a college break in 1974, I rode the train to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I took my camera and wandered through the city opening and closing the aperture at everything… hundreds of sights seen through that lens. People everywhere stopped and waved and posed. They were having at least as much fun as I was… probably more! How could I afford to waste all that film? I wasn’t wasting it. I intentionally didn’t put any film in my camera! Smile! Say “cheese”! well, not anymore. Too much cholesterol!
Growing up… growing up…
10×1 having fun… at least I guess I could be… at least I guess I should be!
What did I want to be? MYSELF! myself? What kind of an answer was that? You can’t major in that! It’s not a career! Who would hire me?
10×2 loving you… at least I guess I could be… at least I guess I should be!
NEED a husband? I had no use for a husband! Get married? Have a couple of kids?
Oh, so I’d be too busy for all this introspection nonsense? I suppose I could have just settled down… just settled… settle?!
10×3 I’m still me… at least I guess I could be… at least I guess I should be!
Didn’t I have EVERY opportunity? EVERY advantage? Did I NOT FIT IN because I was unwilling to “give a little”? Why WASN’T I MORE LIKE.. everyone else?!
10×4 wanting more… at least I guess I could be… at least I guess I should be!
What do I want? What would make me happy? MAKE me happy? Rather flippant… as if it were as simple as… putting together the right ingredients? Does such a recipe exist? Would it be too sweet? and rot my teeth?
I sat in the dentist’s waiting room with my sister… looking in the magazine pile for an issue of “Highlights For Children” which she & I would read together. Our favorite cartoon was “Goofus and Gallant” and we sort of likened ourselves after those two characters. Sharyn, being the oldest, was “Gallant”: the parent-pleaser, good grades, quiet, always reading. I was much more like “Goofus”: not intentionally bad but rather clumsy and oblivious. I also remember composing a scenario based on that cartoon in response to an actual family conversation when we both were teens. My grandmother had remarked to Sharyn and me on several occasions, “Isn’t it interesting how you’re sisters but one of you has dark brown hair and the other has light brown hair.” Rather than merely acknowledging Gramma’s observation, “Gallant Sharyn” replies’ “Oh my! Grand-ma-ma, you are SO perceptive!” whereas “Goofus Lainne” leaps to her feet, drops her pants, and shouts, “Yeah, but our pubes are exactly the SAME color!” I’m sure childhood scenarios might have ensued if Dr. Sanders receptionist hadn’t startled me with, “NEXT! Lainne, you’re next!” I rose from the hard backed chair, entered the hygienic office and sank into the adjustable fully electronic model, complete with headrest. Now I know it as nitrous-oxide but Dr. Sanders always offered me painless drilling by unreeling the ELEPHANT NOSE which would fit snugly over my face and, by simply counting backward…10…9…8…8… take me away! And later, waiting for Sharyn’s checkup to finish, I attempted the “Highlights For Children” magazine’s monthly challenge to Find the hidden faces in the tree! It was more than ten years later before I actually realized (with the help of a hit of blotter acid), “I’ll be damned! There really ARE hidden faces in the trees!”
Whoa! I could sure use a drag on that elephant nose now! 10…9…8…8… Eight o’clock is still hours away! It remains dark outside but inside… what the hell is happening inside? INSIGHT! That’s what’s needed… some internal insight… mind implosion!
I’m leading the mind excavation… through the inner ear… looking for some explanation… of why I am here… Whoa! It’s the convolution roller coaster! You get to ride… for free!
Up & down
Up & down
Makes me dizzy… try to FOCUS!
“Look into my eyes Renfield… What do you see?”
“Yes Master… I am under your control!”
“Eees bloomin’ cryzee, gov’nor!”
And Sharyn and I drove to the open-all-night Wegman’s on Hudson Avenue to buy Pillsbury slice & bake cookies. It’s 11 o’clock on a Friday night… Not a school night… so we could stay up late and watch Chiller Theatre on TV… hosted by Jerry Carr… before he became Station Manager… before he was (probably forced?) to act dignified and professional.
Some of those quarter-circles of cookie dough would never make it to our cookie sheet. Sharyn and I nibbled it…RAW!
A pornographic thought now crosses my mind concerning the “tee-hee” Pillsbury Dough Boy: “Nothin’ says lovin’ like his raw dough in her oven… TEE-HEE!”
And the oven timer goes off and the hot splotches (probably not quite thoroughly baked) are scraped onto a plate and we return to the movie… “Yes Master… I am coming for you!”… and the film jumps and the sound skips and we stuff our mouths with piping hot dough… “A stake through the heart… kills him… for all eternity”… and the credits role: for Bela Lugosi and the nameless faceless, now bloodless others…
Fade to black? not MY mental projector… and the thoughts continue to ROLL…
Trying to turn it off… trying to sleep… I am trying, aren’t I? These are trying times! At least for ME!
I’m tired. Well, I feel tired… most of the time… maybe it’s my diet?
I take vitamins! Shit! I take a handful every day! I have a vitamin B COMPLEX for gods- sake!
Gotta snap outta this funk!
Okay! Okay! Grab the Guide to Women’s Health. Let’s see: Fallopian tubes… fat… fat comma body… fat comma dietary… fatigue– page 64… chronic fatigue syndrome…
Geeze! I hope I’m not chronic! I never aspired to be a syndrome either! No! No! That’s not what I have. I don’t really have anything… nothing with a name… maybe not even anything I can put my finger on… WHERE does it hurt? NO where… EVERY where! It’s my BRAIN that hurts… well, not hurts exactly… more like starving. My brain in growling because it’s so hungry!… treading water in a sensory deprivation tank… I’m UNDERwhelmed! Help! I’m drowning! Ooooh!
Forget the diagrams! Forget the anatomical charts! Forget THIS reference book! Maybe I should put a call in to my doctor. Well, “physician assistant”… I don’t even have a real doctor… or an imaginary doctor… although that would be a terrific HMO: Health Mirage Organization? Hallucinated Medical Order? HA!
Okay, get down to this phone call thing! Gail Bench at Family Medicine. Shit! Which group am I in? It’s been so long. Oh Yeah, they’re divided into COLORS! BLUE! am I in the BLUE group? Shit! Like third grade reading. Bluebirds. Are you one of the Bluebirds? or the TURKEYS? in the SLOOOW group? No! I’m accelerated thank you very much! I’m well beyond “See Spot run”!
She sprayed the fabric with (pre-laundry) Miracle Mist… and saw the spot run… down the shirt and into the sink… rub… rinse… re-apply as necessary! On sale today! So fill your cart! And get MOVING!
There were only a few days left before the end of the month… March 1983 and I really needed to get my stuff moved out of my old apartment on S Goodman St. and into my new apartment on Park Ave. near Culver Rd. I didn’t have a car… so around midnight I walked down to the Bell’s supermarket because I knew they were closed and their parking lot would be virtually empty. I located an “abandoned” grocery cart near the building and wheeled it back to my old apartment. REET…REET…REET… always a bum wheel on these damn things!
Back on S Goodman, I loaded up the cart with as many of my belongings as it would hold… then wheeled it back down the avenue to my new place to unload. This went on, back and forth… REET… REET…REET… until about a dozen trips had been made and most of my stuff relocated. I then took the shopping cart back to Bell’s parking lot, around 4am, and “re-abandoned” it.
Walking back to my old, nearly emptied apartment, a smug sense of accomplishment began to filter in… while a waning sense of helplessness slowly dissipated.
“AM I A MOVER… and a shaker… or WHAT?!” I exclaimed to no one in particular, now very aware of my sustained smile!
WIPE THAT SMILE OFF YOUR FACE YOUNG LADY! This isn’t funny!
It’s not my attitude… really! It’s my “perspective”! I just don’t… I just can’t SEE things the way I’m SUPPOSED to! It’s a “CONDITION”! A congenital DEFECT! REALLY!
The diagnosis was made at age three when it was determined that I had the “condition”, the visual impairment, that in the early 1950’s was referred to as: THE LAZY EYE . It sounded more like the name of a Western ranch!
I’m a young cowhand… from Amblyopialand!
Weak muscle, oh my!
Called THE LAZY EYE!
It strays out this way… way out!
Yippee ki-yo ki-yay… YEE HA!
Exercises were recommended to attempt to correct the problem. One required Mom to hold a tiny flashlight about an arm’s length in front of my face… and as she slowly brought it in to touch my nose, my eyes would FOLLOW the light… getting them to mutually focus upon it. Later on in my life, these corrective exercises became more elaborate… HIGH TECH!
Now in grade school, I was allowed to leave class an hour early once a week. Dad picked me up in front of the school and drove me to an old brick building on Alexander St. I met with a middle-aged woman who spoke with a “foreign accent”. Her teeth were crooked and stained and she smelled like butterscotch. I would watch her unwrap the amber cellophane encasing her Brach’s hard candy before each of our sessions. She sat me on a stool and placed my chin on a metal bar. The bar was adjusted until my eyes aligned with the viewing lenses. The lights in the room were then shut and the lenses lit. Into one lens she placed a photographic slide of an empty fish bowl; into the other, a slide of a goldfish. I was instructed to move each side, using hand levers, until I created ONE 3-dimensional picture in the center.
“PUT ZEE VISH IN ZEE BOWL” SHE DEMANDED… “ZIMPLY PUT ZEE VISH IN ZEE BOWL!”
Put zee covers over your head, I beseeched myself, zimply put zee covers over your head! But I think… don’t think! Just close your eyes! But maybe it… Relax! Let go! Don’t think!
But I think about EVERYTHING… Think about EVERYTHING… yet BELIEVE IN NOTHING?! Am I the protagonist? Not really. Am I the antagonist? Not really. Actually, I’m the PLAY TAG-onist! 1…2…3…NOT IT! am too! are not! am too! are not! … The game began DECADES ago…
Decade… decayed… rotted compost heap of what-might-have-beens… What might have been… what might YET to be… POTENTIAL! Isn’t that the very essence of existence after all? It’s there before birth and continues until death… sometimes subtle and dignified… other times it accuses and blames… but it’s ALWAYS there… LURKING!
The comment on my report card read, “needs to work up to her potential”… and the first grader zones out of “twelve minus seven” to contemplate life… and of what stuff IS this reflection comprised? Grades and test scores? Looks and personality? Oh Dear God… Is it a PAGEANT?! If only to be first runner-up… really… that would be fine. I could settle for that… “SETTLE”?! There’s that word again, in its usual benign context… if that’s the BEST you can do… IS that the BEST you can do?! I had such high expectations… expectorations! cough cough! choke choke! I don’t WANT to swallow my pride! I don’t WANT to submit… to accept LESS than I deserve. It’s not fair!… fair… fairy tail… but I’m an ADULT now!… fair… AFFAIR!… A very different tale!
But I’m too proud to beg! Though I’ve long forgotten WHY. Too proud to beg!
CUL-DE-SAC … How BOURGEOIS! Slightly better, more refined than A DEAD end… You can turn around… you don’t have to BACK out… but a DEAD ENDing all the same!
I turned onto that road for the first time nearly two years ago… My car headlights revealed the sign “No Outlet”. How prophetic. Even at the time I knew… I sensed that if I didn’t turn back now, there would be NO turning back… I was compelled to enter… drawn into an experience from which there was NO escape… the words immediately echoed within… “No Outlet”… and so it both began and ended driving to that house.
I am grateful I was Not there THIS year to witness the “For Sale” sign being pounded into the front lawn… the lawn where I played baseball with your children. I am grateful I was never there to witness those perspective buyers pulling into the driveway… the driveway we shoveled during the blizzard… as we joked and laughed and NEVER even felt the biting… COLD. I woke up with you… and shared a cup of coffee… and I don’t even drink coffee… but THAT morning it tasted GOOD… so GOOD… for the first time… last time?… only time? And standing outside, snow falling, wind blowing, I did not want to leave… not THAT morning… not EVER! But I did… and knew there was no way back… the path filled behind me… flakes of guilt… drifted doubts… No plow has been constructed to clear THOSE mounds… of questions turned to frozen anger… but… BEFORE…
We did embrace in the kitchen, my eyes fixed on… the fish tank there on the counter… I once read an article which postulates “fish-watching” as a soothing form of meditation… Why am I NOT soothed?! Up the stairs… into the master bedroom… we sat at the computer, shared the only desk chair, and collaborated on a short story… and the typing on the keyboard was transformed… as letters became notes… and I actually HEARD the music of our union…
HARD DRIVE?… or just soft drivel?
****(STAGE DIRECTION: looking into the audience… squinting… recognition… then shock… horror?… on my face)****
Yo! What? Huh? Jeeze! What the hell? What the hell are YOU doing here?!There is no possible way that you could have heard about this! about my being here now… tonight! Well, at least you’re alone… you are alone? Are you alone?… never mind! I don’t even need to know! This showing up… It’s like your phone calls to me… every ONCE in a while… just “checking up” to make sure I’m… MISERABLE, right?! Well, guess what? I’m NOT! I can live with WHO I AM… with or without YOU! YOU! You don’t even KNOW who you are! SO AFRAID to listen to yourself… and find out! Better to go through the motions!… Follow the script!… Do what’s expected! NOT ME! At least I’m comfortable with myself… even if… maybe… I don’t always know my lines…
LINES! MY LINES! Goddam it! This is my show! MY show! a ONE woman show!
So, if you’ll excuse me…
I have a conclusion… the solution… a REVELATION!
WHY am I UP all night??? I’m thinking about THIS SHOW! MY show! MY LIFE!
****( FYI addendum: City Paper reviewed all the Fringe Theatre performances. MY review was 7 words: “Thankfully it will not be seen again”)****
