“…My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…”
In June, I graduated with my degree in Acting from a prestigious conservatory school in NYC. I had auditioned for agents and got called back by ABC, NBC, and the Philadelphia Playhouse. I wasn’t very into TV, so I negotiated with the Philadelphia Playhouse to let me be a playwright as well as an actress, and they agreed. I had been writing all along on the side, but short stories and a novel, not plays, and I wanted to see if I could do that, because it seemed a logical step in my progression.
I no longer really cared about being an actress. It seemed to be all based on luck and fate. And I didn’t believe that I could succeed on luck and fate. I would only exceed by hard work. And hard work seemed to be detrimental to being an actor. To be an actor, one needed to be relaxed, and faithful. Two things I am still not very good at. But I still believed that theatre had something to do with my purpose in life.
I was working on faith, but hadn’t gotten very far. I was able to believe that there was a connection between everything, and that there was more order and beauty than chaos in the world. But I still didn’t know how I really fit within it all. So, naturally, I took up with a very beautiful and seemingly spiritual fellow I met at a Grateful Dead concert. Being with him and waiting tables to save up money for my move to Philadelphia took up most of the summer. He was making plans to move to an island in the Caribbean, because he loved to scuba dive. He worked in pest control. He thought he could set up his own pest control business there, maybe more green than the large company he worked for. He even asked me to join him. But how could I? How does one do theatre on a remote tropical island? My career was still more important to me than a relationship. Because, I believed at that time, relationships were not something that I could trust.
Our impending separation made me irrationally, inconsolably sad, which made him terribly uncomfortable. It was awful, really, I would just start crying like a fountain, right in front of him, and want to be comforted (okay, screwed) all night. But I knew it was really turning him off. So, we stopped seeing each other. And, I was going to have to go ask my Dad for more money, because I didn’t really have quite enough to get me to Philadelphia and pay the deposit on an apartment.
I don’t really remember how we got together when I went back home to Indiana. Did I call you? Did someone tell you? Was it mutual high school friends who wanted to see each other, in those salad days right after college, when we were hungry to find out who was thriving and who was failing at life? Such a competitive crew, we middle-class Midwesterners.
It doesn’t matter. I won’t pretend that I didn’t want to see you. Every time I went home, I thought about you, and the possibility of running into you. That feeling was so confusing, a longing to see you, along with a deep shame about the longing itself. It was a battle I had been fighting internally for a long time. Because all those years in high school, it seemed clear that you were not really interested in me as a woman, more as a sounding board, a comrade, a confidant. I identified with Echo, wasting away over your Narcissus. But I didn’t want to waste away. I wanted to find my own voice.
There was also the fear that if you were to decide after all that you did want me, that I would lose myself in you. That I would never be able to fulfill my own potential; to say my own piece. That in giving myself to you, I might destroy me.
It was funny the way time would seem to stop when we were together when we were in high school. We would ramble and chatter, and listen and question. I liked talking about psychology and history and morality with you. I liked your laugh and the way you smiled. I liked the way you smelled, like an old boat, and the coarse texture of your hair. But it always seemed like you thought I wasn’t really good enough for you. That I wasn’t pretty enough or popular enough, and now, I was relatively used merchandise. I was smart, of course, but that’s not a very desirable quality in a woman. I think a part of why I slept around so much when I was younger was because you wouldn’t sleep with me, although I felt I indicated my willingness many times. I wanted to prove that I could be wanted.
So this visit, when you took me up on it, and we went back to my father’s place, who was staying with his new girlfriend, who was counseling him not to give me any money and to convince me to get a real job, not in theatre, I was in a sad and desperate place. I had learned by sleeping with men that often, the consummation of the chase was the end of the relationship. And in some way, I believed that if we finally saw each other naked, and consummated our strange, awkward, confusing bond, that maybe it would just be over. And I would succeed at truly being alone, so that I could be the self-sufficient, unattached career woman that I thought I needed to be.
I don’t remember if I was purposely evasive, but I didn’t know if I was going to Philadelphia or back to NYC. I didn’t know where I’d be, or how you could reach me. There was no Internet back then, and I’ve never been good with the phone or snail mail. I remember you saying the morning after that you wanted to get together again. And I thought maybe you meant it. For some reason, I still believed that it was wrong for a girl to contact a guy. It was supposed to be the other way around. So when I didn’t get a message, or a call, or anything, I assumed that my prophecy had come true. That once we had each other, it was over. The mystery was gone. We were just two flawed and troubled people, who probably were never any good for each other in the first place. But I never really expected you to contact me, either. If I remember, it usually was me having to contact you, which just added to me feeling bad about myself over the whole thing.
So, I found a roommate to share the expense and made the leap to Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love. I got the keys to the literary office and read plays and began writing my first full length adult drama, that was, of course, about a troubled couple who had recently relocated to live on a tropical island.
See, it’s clear to me now that almost all my fiction is really about problems I’m trying to work out myself. But I still don’t have any faith that anybody really cares or wants to read it. At least with plays, I learned to weave an engaging plot and write snappy dialogue and compelling characters to keep people entertained. I suppose that’s some kind of voice.
But what I really wanted to do was make something beautiful and meaningful and true for the audience. Something that helps people understand themselves and the world around them better, like the great books and films and plays do. I guess I don’t feel like I’ve really achieved that to my satisfaction yet, although I’ve had many small successes along the way. I’m still hoping for a bigger one.
Anyway, as this was happening to me that winter in Philadelphia, this transformation from being an actress to becoming a playwright, I was experiencing what it felt like to truly, deeply be alone. And I could do it, but I didn’t really like it. I couldn’t see a future in it. It just seemed so sad and pointless. No career was worth having to give up on love. Companionship. Family.
And it was then that I met my future husband, and the relationship just developed very naturally from that point on. I knew from our first date, when I put my hand on his thigh, that I could trust this man. That he would be there for me. That he would do what he said he would do. That he would keep his promises.
And he truly wanted me. He wanted me to be his wife. And it felt right to me.
And he followed me around the country, as I acted for some of the last times. And that is when you came to see me in Anthony and Cleopatra, in the most important role of my brilliant but short-lived acting career.
And I saw you, emerging from the dark crowd still lingering under the pine trees of the outdoor amphitheater of the Summer Shakespeare Festival. I was still in my costume, big black wig, form-fitting Egyptian costume, complete with snake bracelets and sandals with heels that helped my too-short legs. You had such a look of desire about you, so bright-eyed and full of hope. You finally wanted me.
My husband approached from the other direction, as if he intuited the impending encounter. I had a moment of panic. This was a critical life decision. I was going to have to introduce you, or run away with you. Right there and then.
“Hello, um, this is my fiancé,” I said, feeling the words come up through my inner being, through my spine and abdomen, squeezing out of my mouth like the news of a loved one’s death. And I thought to myself, “You adorable, absent-minded thing. You are too late. You are too late.”
But it just wasn’t meant to be, was it?
It was meant to be what it was.
“O, withered is the garland of the war,
The soldier’s pole is fallen; young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.”