This year I woke to the first white Christmas Texas has seen since 1926. As I was beginning my drive from Austin to Dallas, fierce head winds sprang up from the northwest and the weather deteriorated rapidly into the kind of instant storm we sometimes get in Texas. The wind was gusting to forty plus miles per hour, snapping off road signs and hurtling icy rain punctuated with snow, slantways across the highway and into that variant beyond which is a highway's only constant, so fiercely that keeping my FJ-40 Landcruiser on the road became my sole focus. By the time I got to Dallas snow was general from there on north and west, but I didn’t expect it to last, because it almost never does.
My parents have a bungalow behind their house which is where I stay when I’m in town and when I arrived, dad had already built a mesquite wood fire and it was nice to drop my bag and
Showing posts with label university. Show all posts
Showing posts with label university. Show all posts
28 December 2009
07 October 2009
All My Friends Are Gonna Be Strangers
It's Southern Decadence week in New Orleans and I'm standing on the wrong end of Bourbon Street surrounded by literally hundreds of sweaty, horny, and very drunk gay men. Here, there’s a six foot six cowboy who’s built like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime and wearing only a straw cowboy hat, pointy toed cowboy boots and a black leather jockstrap. There, a matched brace of youths that might weigh in at buck thirty five a piece in matching sailor hats and white briefs. They’re singing "Anchors Aweigh" and seem very patriotic, albeit in a rather unconventional way.
It’s swelteringly, tropically hot and love is in the air, in the street, in the bars, the alleys. Am I uneasy? No. Am I straight? Yes. Am I offended when some men hit on me and some don't? Not exactly, though I do wonder why. Primarily I’m impressed with the sheer force of abandon with which these boys are partying and at the same time amazed at how well groomed the majority of them are. During beach season one year I tried to thin the hair on my chest with an electric beard trimmer, but the results were not as I see before me tonight. When I finished I didn’t look any the better, in fact I looked as if I had mange.
In any case, though dwelling on the past is as inevitable as it is futile, one needn’t dwell on the worst of it. I turn to why I even have the capacity to stand here and take all this in and it’s this: Georges Bizet and The Dallas Opera.
A lifetime ago, after college but before grad school, with no idea of what to do or who to be, I impulsively auditioned to be a supernumerary, a non-singing extra in the Dallas Opera's production of Carmen. The interview consisted of sitting down with the diminutive stage director who expressed relief when—after inquiring if I had any acting experience—I answered “No.” I told him I considered myself completely free of any opinions on acting, productions, plays, and anything else theater related.
“I couldn’t stage a coup in South America,” I quipped.
As he looked me over for a long moment I expected to be shown the door. The he broke the silence. "That's good," he said. "You have no idea how trying these bitches with a little experience can be."
It seemed sensible to agree, so I did and that sealed it. In short order he gave me the run down: rehearsals were every night for two weeks, afterwards there would be four performances: Friday night, Sunday matinee, Wednesday night and Saturday night. He paused before delivering what many in my position must have received as highly offensive information.
“The pay is five dollars per night.”
He may have taken my silence as the preliminary stages of shock. “Per night,” he reiterated. “Not per hour.”
I shrugged my shoulders and said “Sounds great.”
He pursed his lips and continued. Though vital to large productions, supernumeraries play only a small part and are always expected to do exactly what is asked, nothing extemporaneous, nothing additional and “No acting!” We were scenery. Even so, we were expected to be polite scenery and call ourselves and each other "supernumeraries"—or “supers”—as opposed to the trade slang “spear carriers” as that was considered a derogatory term. Upon entering the room I had noticed
It’s swelteringly, tropically hot and love is in the air, in the street, in the bars, the alleys. Am I uneasy? No. Am I straight? Yes. Am I offended when some men hit on me and some don't? Not exactly, though I do wonder why. Primarily I’m impressed with the sheer force of abandon with which these boys are partying and at the same time amazed at how well groomed the majority of them are. During beach season one year I tried to thin the hair on my chest with an electric beard trimmer, but the results were not as I see before me tonight. When I finished I didn’t look any the better, in fact I looked as if I had mange.
In any case, though dwelling on the past is as inevitable as it is futile, one needn’t dwell on the worst of it. I turn to why I even have the capacity to stand here and take all this in and it’s this: Georges Bizet and The Dallas Opera.
A lifetime ago, after college but before grad school, with no idea of what to do or who to be, I impulsively auditioned to be a supernumerary, a non-singing extra in the Dallas Opera's production of Carmen. The interview consisted of sitting down with the diminutive stage director who expressed relief when—after inquiring if I had any acting experience—I answered “No.” I told him I considered myself completely free of any opinions on acting, productions, plays, and anything else theater related.
“I couldn’t stage a coup in South America,” I quipped.
As he looked me over for a long moment I expected to be shown the door. The he broke the silence. "That's good," he said. "You have no idea how trying these bitches with a little experience can be."
It seemed sensible to agree, so I did and that sealed it. In short order he gave me the run down: rehearsals were every night for two weeks, afterwards there would be four performances: Friday night, Sunday matinee, Wednesday night and Saturday night. He paused before delivering what many in my position must have received as highly offensive information.
“The pay is five dollars per night.”
He may have taken my silence as the preliminary stages of shock. “Per night,” he reiterated. “Not per hour.”
I shrugged my shoulders and said “Sounds great.”
He pursed his lips and continued. Though vital to large productions, supernumeraries play only a small part and are always expected to do exactly what is asked, nothing extemporaneous, nothing additional and “No acting!” We were scenery. Even so, we were expected to be polite scenery and call ourselves and each other "supernumeraries"—or “supers”—as opposed to the trade slang “spear carriers” as that was considered a derogatory term. Upon entering the room I had noticed
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