Until He Comes: A Good Girl's Quest to Get Some Heaven on Earth by K. Dawn Goodwin

Author:K. Dawn Goodwin [Goodwin, K. Dawn]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2011-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

9 | Thespian Sex

“… her young breasts were crushed by the Egyptians.”

—EZEKIEL 23:21

Monologue performance week in high school drama class was the ultimate power trip. We sat in the dark, and narrowed our keen eyes toward the stage, pencils poised on our comment cards.

Too much fidgeting, I wrote on one. You abandoned your focus. Your accent does not sound English. The glasses look too feminine.

The actor being scrutinized mumbled “scene” and his performance concluded, the class crackled with weak applause. Too many props, too little subtext, I thought to myself and passed my note card o’ wisdom to the aisle. My stomach tied in delicious knots, awaiting my turn.

I was different. I was talented. I was gonna nail it. Jaws would drop, cheers would thunder, envy would reign.

You’re gonna be famous!

Oh, stop, I’d gush.

The only teensy-weensy impediment to my amazingness was memorizing lines. But what are lines really, mere words, when you have talent?

I stood onstage, holding my fist aloft, 1.21 gigawatts of drama quivering through my body, but my mind ticking on empty: line, line, line.

But I wouldn’t give up. Not like the others. No. I was professional. There was no shame in calling for your line, so long as you stayed in character.

“Mother,” I wept, brimming with the anguished subtext, “why did you… line…”

“Never,” hissed the script holder.

“Mother! Why, why, WHY did you never… line…”

“Love me.”

“Love! Me!” I breathed, in a dying stage whisper. “Line.”

Afterward, in critique, our class would sit in a circle on the stage and take turns sharing what we thought of each other’s performances, provided we didn’t edit. Meaning we had to be brutally honest. But you couldn’t just say it sucked. Even if it did. You had to state only what you obseeerved or how it made you feeeel.

Sometimes, it went something like this:

“I observed that you were really… unprepared.”

“You’re judging.”

“I’m not judging, I’m observing.”

“I observe that you are sometimes… hypocritical.”

“I observe you are being rude. That makes me feel… like hitting you.”

“Guys,” said our teacher.

“I observe me observing you threatening me. And I’ll FEEL happy when you get arrested for assault.”

With so much drama and serious inner work going on all around me, it was easy to fall in love with someone who loathed serious inner work. Someone like Liam, a freshman two years younger than me, but also a real living, breathing bona fide child actor.

I had never seen anyone who could ad lib like Liam. Sometimes when the teacher left, he’d chuck costumes, scripts, and pieces of plastic furniture offstage, rattling on in a dialect he’d made up off the top of his head.

“Who did that?” the teacher demanded, returning to survey the mess.

“Who did that?” Liam asked me calmly, his face right in mine. “Who did that?”

I pinched my nose and tried not to pee my pants.

Later in the costume closet, Liam would corner me, hanging a plastic wreath around his neck.

“My character needs to wear this,” he’d plead. “Needs it. NEEDS. IT.”

“Okay, but what’s the subtext?”

“He was raped by a Christmas tree when he was five.

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