Then what's the point? (not refined, please take this with a grain of salt)

Remember earlier when I wondered what it's like for guys? I found out more than I wanted.

I'm still trying to process all of the information I soaked up today. To follow up on a previous conversation, keeping with the somber tone of our rehearsal, I asked Harry what exactly he meant by being able to "really relate" to Guy in our show.

I should begin this discussion with a preface of my relationship to Harry. It is fashioned entirely off of (a) casual run-ins, (b) mutual friends who give rave reviews, (c) our fantastic work on Monday, which included (d) Melissa praising our great chemistry, which (e) also reads in our Laura-Harry interaction, and, lastly, (f) subsequent intense conversations.

Today, Harry and I had a crap rehearsal. Something was off. We were in a new room and the acoustics were weird, or it was the first time we were supposed to know our blocking, or the setup was different, or our director was sitting somewhere else, or Harry had been working his lines all day, or I had been up since six this morning, or I was just reeling from a test, or coming off of a caffeine ride, or we were hoping Monday's magic would just manifest itself, no problem. Or any combination of the above circumstances.

Either way, after our time was up, we went downstairs for some food to run our lines again, which turned into a heart-to-heart. On Monday after rehearsal we bonded over our relationships to our characters; I vaguely but, according to Harry, sincerely, related my Bobbi-like experiences. After really listening to what I was saying, Harry casually mentioned he can relate to Guy.

Topics I must expound upon:

1. Harry paints himself, like guy, as "not an evil guy." Harry sincerely believes in this character that Neil LaBute has fashioned, and has expounded it upon himself, fashioned his own space within this grander narrative of what I will call the Everyman predicament. In shaping the play around this seemingly jerky and relatively spineless Guy, who is kind of a douchebag until you remember that somehow he cared for and hurt each of the women in the play, LaBute first makes you think the focus is on the women.
2. What it means that the focus is on the women.
3. But with Guy's explosive realization of his love for Bobbi, and awkward manifestation of these feelings, it becomes clear that this is, no matter how it appears, a masturbatory effort on LaBute's part to excuse male behavior with relation to women. "Hurting" becomes a consequence of essentially being a guy. As if they're hard-wired to screw up. That is the end of the story. As a woman who has felt personally wronged by at least one of the male species in her recent past, I am personally offended that LaBute makes us think the play is about how all these women are actual people, regardless of where they fell within his spectrum, and then reveals that Guy's apologetic sentiments are all calculated and most of them insincere. I don't deny that guys have had the same effect on me - lasting - but putting it in a play and having Guy take advantage of the hurt he's caused, then painfully repenting, then ultimately returning to it means LaBute is saying this behavior is inevitable. Excusable. Does it mean he will forever regret everything he's done? What a burden. To know you've hurt so many women. Oh, no. Not like the being hurt feels great.
4. Harry mentioned that he, like guy, isn't one to fuck around. He believes he's one of those guys who does take things seriously, who, by his very nature, fosters a sense of importance in his relationships, and often things end up being more serious than they probably should have been. To be a little less respectful, girls fall for him pretty hard. He says he and Guy share this quality, which is probably true.
5. He chronicles his relationship history for me, as it eerily parallels Guy's most important escapades.
6. What I glean from his revelations is sad to me.

No matter how strong the connection, how good of people we are, how fantastic, stellar, or pig-of-happiness-life-altering we are to these menfolk we worry ourselves with, our entire relationship will most likely be structured and reliant upon the strategic placement of our relationship in the grander scheme of the MALE'S relationship spectrum.

The play explores what Harry explains to me is a relatively typical progression: the high school sweetheart whose life you "can just see," the fling afterwards, the college girlfriend who was probably wife material but just came too early in his life, the kinky girl he left the college girlfriend for, the subsequent mess-ups, and the eventual safe girl who is just Really Great.

Currently, Kristine and I are learning to stop taking things "as they come," as we learn that it is NOT true that

Any Relationship > No Relationship

and learning how to deal with the unnecessary stress that often results from such dealings and worries.

Why is it that the limiting sex is the one that always wants to push, when it is so much harder for us to access what we want, which tends to be commitment or something similar?

In the mindset of wanting Something over Nothing, does it mean we are just victims of circumstance, as far as where we begin to appear on the spectrum of any particular guy in which we are interested?

Because I am "wife material," I have to wait around until my peers are all ready to Get Serious?


Harry and I also talked about how things seem to be serious. I gave him my conclusions, and he said they were probably correct: that we know ourselves pretty well, and at this point, are tired of trying to prove things to ourselves by entering into, really, anything that comes along, either as a challenge or ultimately as a learning experience. Instead, it has to feel easier, a little more stress-free, in order to be worth it. Which makes the relationships last longer in the first place.

How many people do you know whose parents met in college?
Hm. I wonder how much of this is right, at all.

Acting is more than reacting

When I was at Emerson, I took an acting class with Eric Weiss, who is a genius.  In this class for non-acting-majors, I met some of the most surreptitiously and unexpectedly, earnestly talented individuals that I have ever encountered in my whole life history of theatrical endeavors.  We worked on intense scenes between people with broken relationships, with brand new relationships, with no relationship at all before they met in this very bar on this very night, and I saw some of the most incredible moments of honesty.  

I learned so much in that class.  Next to writing my research paper for the honors seminar, it was by far the most difficult thing I worked on all semester.  For our first scene, which I worked on with adorable Kosuke from Guam, I worked on channeling my own emotions and experiences to make everything feel more natural, more organic.  I was able to modify myself, place myself within the context of that scene, and it flowed so wonderfully from there.  

For our final scene project, I worked on a scene from John Patrick Shanley's Savage In Limbo.  I had a good two-page monologue as my character, Savage, kind of dribbles on audibly about relationships with other people and ultimately admits that she's a virgin.  At 32.  To this woman in the bar, who she hasn't seen since high school.  I was having a lot of trouble with the part - how could I find that sort of emotion, and the weird drive to tell this other woman everything about myself, within myself?  Where did that come from?  How would I find that in me?

Eric must have noticed my struggle, because he pointed it out in front of the class.  He also made a point of saying that he gave me this part - arguably, the most challenging part in all the scenes we were working on - because he wanted to push me further.  I don't remember what it was, but something clicked after that, and I pulled myself out of myself and suddenly I was Denise Savage and I felt strong.  And ready.  But really confused, like, it's like, everybody knows everything.  and everybody argued everything and everything got hashed out and settled the day before I was born.  it's not fair.  they know about gravity, so nobody talks about gravity.  look at me, my feet are stuck to the fucking floor - fantastic!  but no, that's gravity, forget it.  it's been done, it's been said, it's been thought, so fuck it.  it's not fair.  

i been shut outta everything by a smartness around me that won't let me think not one new thing.  

and it's been like that with love, too.  you're a little girl and you see the movies and maybe you talk to your mother and you definitely talk to your friends and then you know, right?  somethin' a what somebody told ya inna movie or in your ear is what love is.  so you go head, and you do love.  and where the fuck are you then, that's what i wanna know.  where the fuck are you when you've done love, and you can point to love, and you can name it?  and love is the same as gravity is the same as everything else and everything else is a totally dead fucking issue.

I don't know where to begin describing the kinds of things that I learned through the socially inept, sporadically thoughtful Savage.  And through the encouragement - Eric's positive reinforcement, not letting me quit; and, on the last day, when Chris Cullari told me he thought I was the greatest and most honest actor he has ever seen and if I ever want to be in a film, I should call him immediately.  What does a girl even say to that!?

A year and a half later, I have been given the role of "Bobbi" in Neil LaBute's play, Some Girl(s).  I have been saying for probably just that long how much I would love to have a good, solid part to work on, to apply all of these things I have come to learn about myself  in the context of a character.  Bobbi is incredible.  She is sassy and smart, and unlike all the other women in the play, she isn't going to take Guy's bullshit.  At all.  

At first, I was flattered, and very excited.  Bobbi is the one woman that Guy truly loved, ever - and through this weird confrontational vignette in which she appears, she allows me to weirdly live out every fantasy I have ever had about running into an ex-something.  She makes him squirm, makes him work for it, and sees through everything, challenging him to be honest and to justify putting her through this weird regurgitation of emotion and pain.  Eventually he is honest, and professes his love for her - which she ultimately has to reject.  How many times have I played this scene in my head:  being called up by [insert name of recent object of heartbreak here], reluctantly meeting him to "talk," during which he admits he's loved me all along, and won't I take him back; and following all of the prosthelitizing I'd done in the wake of the breakup, all of the advice of my girlfriends, and the reasons why I shouldn't give into it, I would walk away.  

Bobbi is more complex than that.  After guy's two-page monologue describing his life, which ends with "I realize now, it's all about you! I don't care if you buy it or hate me or laugh in my face...(tears up a bit) I love you and I'm .... ohh, boy.  No way I'm gonna top that, so I'll just leave off right there.  I love you, Bobbi.  Not your sister, not anybody else I've ever known, even this girl I'm supposed to marry ... no one.  Just you."

A beat.

"I wish you'd say something."

And Bobbi says, "It's very late."  

Guy: "O-kay... is that metaphoric, or.. ?"

Bobbi: "I think it's sort of all-encompassing.  (glances at her watch.)  It's late."

And, with a pointed reference to the fact that he is getting married to another woman, she takes her leave.  

What is fascinating to me is that I think Bobbi leaves for a very strange and weirdly practical reason.  I think she leaves because she knows how complicated and muddy and scary it would be to reopen the possibility of a relationship with Guy.  After spending who knows how many years convincing herself she's better off without this guy who just took off after a three-year relationship, she's probably in a relatively stable relationship.  How tempting must it be to fall back into it, even just for a minute?  And she leaves it.  She leaves it in the past, where it seems to belong.

She says, Don't do some last-ditch, shitty thing that we'll both be sorry for...

I think the entire play is a commentary on how we ultimately take the easy way out, or we settle, maybe.  Guy has a brief moment of passion about his love for Bobbi, and then his fiancee calls - he winds the cassette tape back up, on which he mercilessly recorded his conversation with Bobbi (my favorite part is when she finds out!  Dear God!), and quietly returns to his ruthless, kind of sad and sorry life.  

Because how do you live with something like that?  There are some things we can't give into, some things we shouldn't - or maybe, are afraid to - normalize within our lives.  To give them weight is to admit we are vulnerable.  A few times in the last year, I feel like I've given into the reluctant desire to do so, to examine specific details of my life and try to reassess their presence, to realign my priorities.  It's terrifying.  

Nietzsche said, "I approach deep problems like a cold bath; quickly in, quickly out."

Being Bobbi is delicious and terrifying.  It feels indulgent and yet, I have to remember the entire time, that she can't be funny because she's at ease.  It's because she's wildly uncomfortable and scared, not knowing what to expect, or probably why she even went to meet him in the first place, or how she will react.  I have to take that little bit of the me that I put into her during our first reading and twist it and hurt it and make it much, much sadder.

You think it's okay just as long as it's one person, rather than a dozen? Or a million?  When is hurting okay, when you say so, or is it just open season, all of us going at it, in any way we see fit?  Seriously, if you've got the answer, tell me.

...but you can't, you cannot equate like, some war with me not calling you!

Why not?  Who says I can't?  In fact, I already did.  Just now, and I'm gonna stand by it.  I am, because when you do what you do, what it sounds like you've done - a lot - people get hurt.  Injured.  A bit of them, some piece... it dies.  They lose something that will never come back.  Not ever.  This part that you decide you can just ... take from them and damage.  Piss on.

I, I didn't take anything from...

You did!  From me, you did - not what you thought maybe, but you did do that - and you didn't care.  You did not even look back.  And that - that one little brutal gesture makes you more than just some ex-boyfriend.

It is very, very challenging in rehearsal to look Adorable Harry in the face and imagine that he has injured me in this way.  

It makes me hope that I never let myself become so bitter and scared.

People as a science

In my political science research methods class, we discussed what makes a science. I have been making a science of life, blending together actual disciplines and my own experiences. Is that even valid?

I worry that I systematically study my life and my friends' lives and that it is wrong. That, by sorting and analyzing, I am somehow removing the humanity from it all. And yet, it's therapeutic, it's a coping mechanism for getting it all through. Processing. Continuing.

Andrew Bird has a way of presenting lots of questions in his songs about human existence, but he doesn't offer any explanations. Somehow, through crafting the music, he creates a way of feeling it all at once and being able to let it wash over you. In a weird apologetic way, like he can't answer anything, and he's sorry for bringing it all up, he gives us the music as a coping mechanism for all the quandaries of life that we can't understand.

"a nervous tic motion of the head to the left"
overprescribed, under the mister
we have survived to turn on the history channel
and ask our esteemed panel, why are we alive?
and here's how they replied:
You're what happens when two substances collide
and by all accounts, you really should've died

"the happy birthday song"
when i wake up
in the morning,
pour the coffee,
and i read the paper,
and i slowly,
and so softly,
i do the dishes.
i feed the fishes.
sing a birthday
sing it like it's going to be your last day.
like it's hallelujah,
don't let it just pass on through ya
it's a giant and long cliché,
and that's why i want you to sing it anyway
sing me happy birthday
'cause hell, what's it all about?

Work in progress. will get better. i promise.

Last night I lay splayed on the big couch in Dakota 205 with my lovely friends, recovering from an excessively long day at Swing's, with a steady stream of Kleenex floating from the box on the table to my nose to the bathroom. I must say that, in addition to being in transitory times and places, being sick and drugged up also provides me with weird moments of clarity.
This week, I have been pondering the ends, beginnings, and loose ends of relationships around me: what they mean, how we deal, how these same problems we create for ourselves seem to unite all of womankind. And why we involve ourselves in the first place. The things we miss out on when we focus on a relationship. And the things we gain. The things we glean.

As I said to Alysse and Katrina last night, I can only hope that the retrospective ridiculousness that I see in myself, when I was processing and normalizing a not-so-smart relationship and the subsequent breakup earlier this year, will eventually be a small price to pay for the experience, memory, and wisdom that I have gained from it.

1. So I have to ask, what do they mean, and why do we muddy our own lives so nonchalantly with problematic relationships with the opposite sex? To gain some insight, I asked my dad some questions while we were driving up to DC a few weeks ago. I had been talking about how much I loved living with Jenni this summer. The conversation went like this:

"Dad. I do not understand. I don't want to worry about getting married and being stable and whatever or being alone. Why can't I just live with Jen my whole life? It was so easy and wonderful. And she pushes me. Is that acceptable?"
"Laura, are you trying to tell me you are a lesbian?"
"Hah, if only. If Jenni and I were both lesbians and we fell in love I would be so happy. My life would be, like.. set. What is it that makes you want to work for something like that? It stresses me out sometimes. I hate that the world around me pushes me to want validation from a dude, in some way. Is that all it is? Validation? I guess recently I experienced the whole best-friend-in-a-dude thing at first, it was nice. Different. But why does it have to be more complicated than that? It isn't fair. I don't even want to think about it. Why do I need to spend my life with someone of the opposite sex? I love my best friends. That should be enough." (Sometimes I think that the fact that my parents met in high school makes me feel like a failure for not having found the same thing already. As a trade-off, my mom often says that I have an uncommon bond with my high school girlfriends. Which is totally fair.)
Dad took a second. Then he said, "I think you are forgetting the whole biological aspect to life there, Laura. Sorry."
Well, damn. Is that it? Is it biology? This innate, natural urge to procreate is what makes us turn ourselves inside out searching for the "right thing"? And then everything that comes along with this desire to be desired, or to be stable, or whatever - the emotional turmoil, the rejection, what Jenni would call "the rat race" for attention, the competition, the forgetting of all things that previously seemed important for sake of pursuing a "potential something" with a dude. Granted, this dude is probably really cute and all. But what do we really want to get out of it?
In the past, I have been confused by friends of mine who think marriage is a dumb idea but still pursue relationships with men. This leads me to wonder, what is our goal in putting ourselves through this?

Currently, in my brain, I can identify two schools of thought. The first: our ultimate goal is to be in a stable, loving relationship with a person of the opposite sex that lasts and lasts. Does this goal come from a biological need, or are we told by everything around us that it's right? The messages we get as women are so confusing. We are supposed to be independent and fine and smart and motivated and happy, but still want to be in a relationship. Is that the goal? As if everything is so easy once that happens? I wonder what life is like for men. In general.

The second: because, I don't know, we want to have fun?

On Facebook, I saw a bumper sticker with a quote from Sex and the City: "Maybe our girlfriends are our soulmates and guys are just people to have fun with." I think it's credited to Charlotte.

The fun stems, ultimately, from sex. The love part also seems to stem from sex. Why is it that no matter how hard we try to pretend men and women are the same, we still have to form these distinctions at the most basic level? That my relationships with women will only be friendships and with my male friends there will always be some strange semblance of sexual recognition or even tension?

At this point, I must say that I have a problem with using the phrase "only friendships" or "just friends." I don't mean to use it. I said this to Sam earlier this summer, that friendships are highly underrated and that being "just friends" is really underwriting the magnitude and importance of a relationship! I can't even begin to describe how important my Just Friends are to me! I could not live without them!

So why does it change a relationship with another person when sex in any form is involved? Why does is it suddenly easy to be wronged? Expectations are strange. Why are we so afraid to either "tie ourselves down" to another person in that way? I never say "No, thanks," to a new friend. Why are these things so complicated?

What scares me also is that relationships to other people, no matter how much I analyze and categorize and normalize them, sort them, file them away, are still comprised of very human beings. We make choices and who knows why? Our culture seems to push us to do things for strange, irrational reasons, painting pictures of unconditional and all-encompassing LOVE.

Or are they rational?
Are we hard-wired to experience and feel as much as we can?
Is that it?

2. How do we deal?

3. The things we miss out on when we focus on a relationship.

4. And the things we gain from a relationship that has ended.

5. The things we glean from the whole experience.