Visit

The New York kids came into town this weekend for the first mainstage show of the season (which was good, by the way — a few of my friends really jumped out as excellent, particularly Adam, and that’s not just me being biased it is absolutely true).  Anyway, that means that Danny is here!  So wonderful to see him.  We finally found some time to sit together and talk last night, before he went to see Urinetown, and I went to see Around the World in 80 Days, the equity show in the building right now.  We only had an hour, but it was a good hour.  A snip of our conversation (which Danny says could be from a play):

DANNY (after a fair amount of normal chat): So where do we stand in each other’s lives?
STEPHANIE: …That’s a slightly ominous question…what do you mean?
DANNY: I mean we saw each other and we talked a little, and then I left–
STEPHANIE: And then we saw each other and we talked a little, and I left–
DANNY: And now we finally have time to really talk.
STEPHANIE: So we know all the little things, but if there are major changes, we don’t know them.
DANNY: Exactly.  So, what’s going on in your life?
STEPHANIE: I’m changing religions.
DANNY: I’m gay.
(And then we both burst out laughing.)

I’m glad he finally told me.  I don’t know if I wrote about it in here, but Joshua outed him to me this summer, so it wasn’t a surprise…I’ve just been waiting for him to tell me.  So I’m glad that’s out of the way.  It was almost as though this was our first real conversation…crazy, I know, Danny and I had our first real conversation the day we met at the beginning of freshman year, there was no messing around with us.  But this was different.  It was like one of his walls had come down, and he could say things as he actually felt them and not how he was twisting them around in his own head in order to be safe.  He didn’t realize this himself until last year, so it’s not like he’s been lying to me…but there was a new level of truth.  It was good.

He came over again today, briefly, to talk some more before he had to go.  We talked about how our transformations mirrored each other, that we were each just starting to discover who we really are, or how to bring what we’ve always been deep inside to the surface.  And his quote from Arcadia, "It’s the best possible time to be alive when nearly everything you thought you knew is wrong."  There was great joy in discovering that, after so much time apart, we are at the same place.

Next semester, he will be living with Adam, which is excellent, not least because it will give me an excuse–er, I mean opportunity, to see a lot more of him.  So I am pleased.  Danny just left to go back to New York.  Yick, I hate saying goodbye to him.  There are ways in which it is so much like Sam…and, of course, a thousand ways in which it is different.  But I will be very happy when Danny is back next semester.  He’s coming back in a couple of weeks, for generals, but…I just wish he didn’t have to leave at all.

In other news, today is Adam’s birthday.  I bought him a card and wrote what I hope is a very nice message in it, including a line saying that I hope we have the chance to get to know each other better this year.  I could here go into a long overanalysis of recent statements having to do with him, but I’d rather not, it’s just silly.  I will say that I had a very nice, albeit brief, talk with him on Friday night, where I sat quite close to him and it did not feel odd, and we smiled a lot.  This does not mean anything.  It was just something nice.

–Stephanie