Move on

Lend Me a Tenor was wonderfully received.  It was a very hectic week or two, sorry I haven’t written, but I’ve barely had time to eat and sleep, let alone sit down at the computer and write.  The show went well.  Opening night was fantastic, Elisabeth was here, she enjoyed it, people laughed.  People actually laughed.  I had forgotten that the show is funny.  I mean, I knew it, but I’d forgotten that the script itself is funny.  People laughed when we weren’t doing anything funny, just because they hadn’t read the script before.  It was great.  Almost every single one of our shows went well — Thursday night was the worst, but other than that, it was excellent and a whole ton of fun.  The curtain call was the best part.  Leaning out of our doors and shouting in unison "HE’S DEAD!" and getting hysterical laughter and huge applause for it…I remember the day Robbie told us to do that.  Just humor me, he said.  We probably won’t keep it, it probably won’t work, but just try it.  And it was my favorite part of the show, forever.

Elisabeth was only here very briefly.  There wasn’t enough time for her to get to know anyone at all, it was very sad.  Also in town that night, unexpectedly, was Geoff.  He came to my show on Saturday.  I didn’t get to spend much time with him, but it was a pleasure to see him.  I was grateful.

One night, Paul couldn’t get the closet door open, and, after three tries, went in through the bathroom instead to get the prop he needed, explaining to Jason/"Max" afterwards that "the bathroom connects to the closet!"  It was hilarious.  He’s amazing.  They’re all amazing.  I shall have to finish my Cast of Tenor entry.

And now the show is over.  I’m having an even harder time adjusting than usual.  It was just so much fun.  All of it.  The rehearsals, the performances, the cast.  Everything.  I miss it badly.  I don’t know what to do with my time.  I’m sad.  Sadder than I have been in a while.  Robbie isn’t speaking to me.

I’m not exaggerating.  At some point over the last week and a half, he stopped speaking to me beyond the occasional "Hi, Steph."  I don’t even usually get that.  One of us walks into the room where the other one is, our eyes meet, and before I can even form a smile and the beginning of a greeting, he’s looking away.  And then he avoids me for the rest of the time we’re both in the room.  I don’t know what exactly changed.  He’s known for a while how I feel about him, and this complete avoidance is new.  I wonder if I said or did something…or if someone else said something.  I’m going to ask Sharone, but more than that I’m going to talk to him.  Tell him that this is silly.  I don’t know about him, but it is a rare thing for me to meet someone I can really talk to, someone with an appreciation of subtleties.  And I am loathe to let such a person go.  The only thing I’ve done wrong is to like him too much.  I’m hoping that if I can make it clear that him talking to me or even just being courteous to me isn’t going to give me the wrong impression and false hope, perhaps we can get back on the track to friendship.  Because this is dumb, it’s stupid.  And I no longer have anything at all to lose.  The show is over.

It’s really hard.  It’s bloody awful, in fact.  I’d let him go if I could, but I don’t seem to be wired that way.  Sharone’s cabaret was about growing up Israeli in Los Angeles, and one of the things it dealt with at length was the issue of dating/marrying a Jew.  Her costars were Kara, Chrissy, and Robbie, and in her story, she was in love with Robbie, and the two girls were playing her parents.  And they sang this wonderful song — to the melody of "Forget About the Boy", from Thoroughly Modern Millie — "Cut the cord/Is that the man you once adored?/He’s nothing but a Catholic, Italian kid from Delaware–forget about the goy!"  It was amazing.  When I sing those lines to myself, it doesn’t seem so bad to step back from this and move on.  Nothing but a Catholic, Italian kid from Delaware.  Forget about the goy.  Forget about the boy.

Only, he isn’t nothing but.  He is many things but.  He is clever, witty, kind, warm, and no small bit brilliant.  We have enough in common and enough shared favorites to have a starting place, but are different enough to make it interesting.  He is wonderful, and he is exceptional.  He is also ignoring me.  He is so uncomfortable with me that he is avoiding me completely.  The last time I treated someone like this, I was in middle school.  I try to remind myself that what he’s doing I have done also, to Akio, to Elliott.  But I was 13, 14 years old.  He has no such excuse.  I suppose I did something similar to Elisabeth’s friend David, as well, but we had only known each other two days and it was almost as though we lived out a full romance in those two days.  That’s a different business, if the romance actually happened.  Not better, not more right, but different.  To do this to a person who you know has feelings for you but you’ve never even talked about it, to make me nothing like this, that is hurtful and terribly immature.  I am angry and I am sad and it just seems so unfair.  What did I ever do but to like him a little too much?  It’s not like I’m expecting anything.  I know where his attentions lie, more the fool him.

Closing night, he gave us all roses.  A single, beautiful, red rose.  It’s in my room, on my dresser, acting as a sort of subtle torture device.  With it came a card.  It reads like this: "Steph– There are very few people as hard working and dedicated as you are.  I appreciate that a great deal.  It has been so much fun watching you work.  Congratulations on a job very well done. Thanks for adding to the fun.  Break a leg! –Robbie".  Somehow this note made me even sadder.  It’s so…impersonal.  It’s so…all about the work.  Is this my fault?  Was I just so all about the work that that’s all he has for me?

I don’t want to be here.  I don’t know what I want.  I want to be home with my family, watching the season change to winter at home.  Winter at home means overcast days and rain, it means tea in the afternoons with my father, it means the occasional long-sleeved shirt, it means stepping outside and feeling brisk cool.  Winter here means endless snow, huge coats, no sun ever, it means a terrible cold and loneliness.  I don’t know what to do with myself now that the show is over.  A cast is a family.  All semester I’ve had a family here.  First Web, then Tenor.  Now, coming up to evals, which I don’t even have a scene for yet, coming up to winter and probably a mild Seasonal Affective Disorder, I lose that.  I lose that connection.  Danny has mono and is going home, only for a week but with only three weeks left of the semester, that’s a lot.  Anna

is in Sound of Music and is going into tech next week.  I don’t know where to turn.  I’m lonely and I hurt.  I want my show back.  I want my cast back.  I want back the frienship I almost had with my director, my wonderful, textured, fascinating director.  I hate being alone, I’m so sick of being alone.  For some people it is so easy.  They set their eyes on someone, and a week later he’s theirs.  Why does it never work this way for me?  Why not?  Why must I always be alone?

–Stephanie