Keep In Touch: Don’t Ever Change.

I was a little bit late meeting up with my friend today, because I needed to take the subway to where we were meeting, but the entrance was being blocked by — get this — the Mayor of Philadelphia and the Governor of Pennsylvania. Imagine shoving your way through a crowd to get to a stairway, and literally bumping in to Ed Rendell, who jokes that he’ll only let you pass if you promise to vote tomorrow. Bizarre.This past week has been madness. I didn’t even realise until yesterday that I hadn’t updated in over a week, that’s how nuts things have been. I pulled two all-nighters (not in a row,) memorized an entire play in the space of six hours, bounced back and forth between rehearsals for two other shows, and, oh yes, put in a forty-hour work week. It’s absolutely ridiculous, but I love it.

My schedule for the next couple of weeks is going to be brutal. I’ve written out a calendar to give to my boss to let him know when I’m going to be leaving early. He knows that I’m doing all these shows, but I don’t think he’s realized yet how much time off I’m going to need. He understands that theatre is my life and that my job there is just a job, so I hope it won’t be too big of a problem. Still, I’m not looking forward to this conversation.

Tonight, I met up with an old friend for dinner. She and I were friends when we were at college; I dropped out after a year and she transferred after a year-and-a-half to go to a school in the city where I now live. She knew about my plans to move here, but by the time I actually did, she had run out of financial aid and taken a leave of absence. Tonight was the first time in three-and-a-half years, give or take, that we found ourselves in the same place at the same time, so we gabbed and caught up over Vietnamese food and bubble tea.

It was nice, to catch up and joke about the absurd things we’d done together, (“Hey, do you remember that time we ran through the cafeteria covered in pudding?”) and also to hear about some of our other friends, whom she still speaks to but I don’t. See, I have this terrible inability to maintain my friendships. I’m very good at making friends, but I either don’t or can’t keep in touch with them over extended periods of time. I suppose that it stems from some sort of irrational fear of being unwelcome — that they don’t remember me or worse, don’t want to hear from me. I rely on other people to stay in contact for me, but that tends not to work out, for obvious reasons. Once in a great while though, somebody from my past pops up to see how I’m doing, and I get chucked into this well of nostalgia that I then linger in for weeks. It’s not that I don’t want to hear from them, because I do; it’s that I bounce around from situation to situation so often that if I didn’t do my best to move on from each one, I’d never get anywhere at all. Still, it’s nice to know that you’ve been remembered, and it’s nice to talk to an old friend and be reminded why you two were such good friends in the first place.

Apparently, I can be a little judgmental at times. I know that it’s not right, but I do make quick impressions of people, and I always feel like a big ol’ tool when I’m proved wrong. When I mentioned a while back that the girl who sits next to me in my chorus is an obnoxious teacher’s pet, I based it on one rehearsal. As it turns out, she’s really nice and was merely being helpful as somebody who studies privately with the person leading the rehearsals. We discovered last week that we grew up in adjacent towns (a hundred and fifty miles away from here) and actually know some mutual people. Now I feel terrible for having thought badly of her.

One person my snap judgment wasn’t incorrect about was Creepy Dinner Theatre Guy. I found out that he dropped out of the show where I’d met him because apparently, he wasn’t happy about the role he was given. (Might I add, that attitude pisses me off more than I can possibly say. What, he’s so talented that anything other than a lead is beneath him? Even when he’s not physically right for any of the show’s main roles? Or, what, he doesn’t have time? Then why’d he audition in the first place? If he doesn’t “have time” for a small role, then he certainly doesn’t have time for a large role! There’s nothing wrong with having a supporting part in a play — it would be an awfully confusing one if every character had three hundred lines to himself. Creepy Dinner Theatre Guy really needs to get over himself.)

In any case, as I was leaving the rehearsal, one of the other girls who’s in the show with me asked me if I’d met Creepy Dinner Theatre Guy. Turns out, she was also rather relieved that he’d dropped out. He never went as far as calling her a million times in one weekend like he did to me, but he did insist on walking her home one day and just generally came on too strong. It’s kind of sad, really, that he seems to throw himself at every girl he meets, because he’s not completely repulsive and I’m sure he could find a nice girl if he’d just learn how to act. ‘Cause, you know, I’m not the only girl who makes snap judgments. First impressions are everything, after all, and sometimes they’re just too strong to be overcome.