Marauding Make-over and the dress rehersal from Stage right of Hell...('92)

Squinting back through the thumb prints of molecules  constituting  the breath of corporeal reality, I see myself I the backseat of my aunt's vehicle skidding down University, across the longitudinal beam of time pausing at the traffic lights watching the freight train of traffic peeing like cosmological braille down War Memorial, blasting forward before shifting lanes, heading North for a half mile, swerving a hard right on Lake, squinting back I  can see the building 22 years ago looking like a grade school diorama, the thespian uterus of Peoria Players Theatre.

The place I will be reborn.   

The light in June escapes from the balcony of the west;  the color of cheap zinfandel and somehow I can smell the stiff musk of backstage eclipsed by a womb of darkness, the girl who goes to my high school  echoing on stage lights in a poached crescendo.  I can see myself entering the theater 22 years later as an adult. I will leave and go to the Metro Center and have a beer at Laurie's bar because we once had sex in her SUV in Jumers parking lot, only when I see her I realize that she is her early thirties, younger than I am today.

 I am looking for myself back stage, gazing at my visage through the nose-shaped windshield fractals of time wishing I still had not been creatively cozened into cutting my ponytail for my grandfather’s funeral.

Somehow if I keep squinting through the atomic curtain of the past, the atmospheric valence of reality, brushing through the apiary of quarks and neutrons, the wilted pinecones of nearsighted reality I see myself seeing myself spinning the classroom globe in Miss Reinhardt’s fifth grade classroom in reverse hoping that the studded tip of my finger lands on the tear shape prayer that is the state of Illinois, that I can perform a sort of dyslexic moonwalk and skirt back rewinding through the whirled equatorial static finding a younger variation of myself wanting to gang-rape the vibrational silt of the past, to  neurologically sodomize and reclaim the staggered yelp and whisper of youth, helicoptering back to that summer,  I can see myself fourteen years of age, lost in the breath of youth, that I can somehow grab myself by the labels and tell myself look kid, its alright, all of this is leading to some goal, some place you can’t fathom, telling the archipelago pimple- riddled countenance that is myself not to worry.

That things are happening.

 That it will all somehow be good.

                                                                      ***

River City. Next stop. River City Iowa.

                                                                              ***

In the dressing room we take off our clothes. Theatre kids are much less self-conscious than athletes when it comes to peeling off their attire.  The manner in which we maneuver our wrists, loosening then lowering our trousers looks like we are buckling a seat-belt in reverse.  Everyone is wearing so called tighty-whities that look like a school of albino stingrays floated across the center of our respective loins, copulated and then died.

 A carol of feminine giggles sprinkles across the hall from the girls changing room.


Mayor Shinn comes in. A couple of younger boys who get embarrassed by getting naked in front of their male peers change in the back. Since this is community theatre the odds are overwhelming  that nearly a third of the lads in the production harbor some sort of homosexual proclivity. Shirts peel off with ease. When it comes to pricking near the waist and unbuttoning the trousers the bulk of the boys do so laggard, swiping their chin in multiple directions as if to verify that none of their fellow actors is checking them out before stepping out of their pants like scissors.

The next room over the girls are talking about Anastaia getting busted for breaking curfew. One of the girls either is calling her a slut or surmising that she has a big butt.  

 Before Mayor Shinn takes off his pants he removes three cassette tapes form the interior of his pockets.

What tapes are those? I inquire.

 He tells me the first two are dubbed tapes. He tells me the last one is Van Halen’s For Lawful carnal Knowledge. He tells me the next one is Queen.

I love Van Halen.

He looks back at me with a quizzical expression epoxied into his lips.

"The album sucks. 1984 was a classic. Ou812 was indelible. "

Van Halen always names there albums after either years or alien zip codes.

 I tell him that I really enjoyed For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

 “It’s an acronym for F.U.C.K shithead.” Mayor Shinn says to me, putting on his Mayoral pants.

I feel like telling him to watch his phraseology, a line he says several times in the play.

 “The only thing that is good about that album is Right Now and the only thing that is good about that song is the video."

I tell him again that I really like For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

"FUCK." He iterates again in front of several younger kids.

Fuck.

                                                                         ***

After getting dressed in our on-stage costumes it is time for Make-up. Several older high school girls who apparently do make-up for theatrical performances at Richwoods embellish our face with splotches and pastel lines. I hate wearing make-up. I sit down in front of the iridescent glower of the thoroughly bulbed mirror in front of a high school girl with blond hair and a side ponytail.

 She begins to attack my face.

I feel like cursing even though I don’t curse. She is holding the vial of lipstick as if she is coloring inside the lines a picture of a little-lamb-who-made thee at a vacation bible school picnic. She has long straight blonde hair and bangs. Her lips seem to form a concentrated bend of a tulip. She is attacking my visage with her artillery. There is laughter. Several of the boys apparently have no neurological qualms when it comes to applying their own facial cosmetic armor.

"I can't understand why we need make-up. Everyone can see my face just fine."


The girl with the side ponytail states that it is to accentuate my features.

"If we didn't apply cosmetic's to accentuate your facial characteristics  your face would appear wan under the stage light."

"Juan?"

"Wan, you would look ghastly. Like a Ghost."

I try to flirt. I try to be witty. I rhetorically ask her if that means the next time I perform the Ghost of Christmas past In Dicken's Christmas Carol I get off scotch free. The make-up lady doesn't smile. She is vexed. She continues to dab my cheek with lithe brushes of rouge. I tell her it tickles. I tell her that a man can maybe get used to this (lying). I ask her if maybe sometime she wants to get together at the cosmetic counter at JC Penny and just do make-up.

She holds up her hand as tells me sorry she has a boyfriend in a way that sounds like she is auditioning for Sweet Valley High the musical.

I have not seen Stacia. I am being pelted with feathery brushes and drawn on with ruby tubes. It feels like the girl with the side ponytail is playing a game of lightbright with my face.

I become disgruntled. I tell her to hurry. She snaps back  informing me if I don't sit still  my  visage will look like Dee Snider mated with Bozo the clown.

"I hate this." I tell her. "This is stupid."

"Almost done." She notes.

I look at myself in the mirror My face looks bruised.  I wince.

“I’m done.” I tell her as I pull out of the chair looking for my suitcase for the opening scene.

“Yes,” the make-up adds, with a little swat.

"Go."

Places are in fifteen minutes.

      

                       

                                                                    ***

“You didn’t hear about it yet, did you?” I can tell that Couri is taunting me as I head towards the direction of the stage.

 I ask her hear what.

 “Your girl. Anastasia. She is grounded. She went out two nights ago and she stayed out half the night and didn’t get back til like three in the morning.”

 “I know, she told me she was going out with friends after the fireworks.”

 Ethel Toffelmeyer shakes her head in a long elongated swipe and says no, child.

 "Yeah, they were all going out to see Batman Returns. She asked me if she wanted me to come with her only I couldn’t because I had to go hang out with my family after the fireworks.”

Ethel Toffelmeyer again addresses me as child.

“You don’t understand child, it's what she did afterwards.”

 I ask what but for some inexplicable reason I start speaking French and for some reason I say the word Pourquoi.

 Pourquoi means why.

It's more like who she did, afterwards. As in the male lead.

 “She was out all night with Anthony and broke curfew and her mom caught them."

 I again say pourquoi. I mean to say qui for who, but again I say pourquoi.

“You know Harold Hill. The lead. She was out all night making out with Harold Hill.”

Suddenly the inside of my chest resembles a welling socket. An aching void.. A viable numbness. A feeling of caring so much for an individual yet never being good enough.

Couri goes on to say that her mom caught her in the driveway practically dry-humping and was appalled because Anthony was black.

 “You’re black,” I add. Couri shrugs. She says that's not the point.

 “I told you this was going to happen. I tried to warn you that you were going to get hurt.”

Terri Andrews is already at her station with the lights. Scott is running the stage curtain. A volunteer lady wearing headphones with a clipboard addresses us as actors and says that we have five minutes til ShowTime.

I have not seen either Anthony or Stacia.

"I'm really sorry," Couri/Ethel adds. I am standing still. I am not moving. It's like I am stunned. I am holding my tears cause I don't want the fucking shit that blonde girl with the side ponytail put on my face to run.

I don't know what to say. Couri is rubbing my shoulder. She says that if I need someone to talk to she is there.

It feels like I am standing on a pier staring at something that is lost.

 It is our final dress rehearsal. We have six performances in four days.

 After that I will start high school and focus on running and my life will start again and I will never see any of these people again.

.

                                                             **

Cold as a falling thermometer in December if you ask about our weather in July.

                                                                ***

We are to perform the play in its unheeded continuity. Stacia is still nowhere to be found. Apparently she is still downstairs changing.

The seats to the Rock Island opening are arrayed like the purported interior of a train. We sit as the engine begins to idle chugging our shoulders with the ruffled burgundy drape of the stage curtain behind us. Stacia sits down right before the  dome light  erupts on our bodies.

There is a hush. Anyone is invited to attend the dress rehearsal for free. The audience is fraught with parent’s parroting camcorders into their eye sockets and pointing out their kid.

Hey,” I say.   Stacia has a smile glued on her lip. She doesn’t look ike she has been reprobated in the slightest.  I ask her if she is okay.

 “I’ve been trying to call you all weekend?

Stacia shoots me a look as if to say why.

 “Rumor has been circulating that you are grounded? Are you okay?”

 Stacia appears to be frozen in  a daze. Her face seems bruised with light.

 We walk back stage. Past the old spray painted montages of old show and the date in which they were performed. Amadeus back in 84. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas ’89. Grease ‘77.

 Listen, I say, grasping her wrist.

“Charlie what!!” She says, pushing my hand back down.

 If I wouldn’t have been so concerned about what my parents would have thought none of this would have happen. If I just would have gone out and seen Batman Returns with the Washington clan I would have sat next to her the entire night. She wanted me to come. Maybe she would have even feigned scarred and groped the slant of my arm during the movie. 

“I was really worried about you.. What happened? "

Stacia  smiles

"I stayed out three hours past my curfew but damn it was worth it. Some things in life are ust worth getting grounded for."

I ask her what she was doing and who was she with. Stacia says that I sound like her parents.  I think  about the time I kissed the tiara of her forehead last week, I lasso my right arm around her back and give her a little squeeze.

"Were you with Anthony?"

“Charlie,” Stacia says. She tells me now isn’t the time or the place to be having this conversation.

 “Anthony has like a long term girlfriend. They’ve been together since the end of his sophomore year.

 Stacia tells me that she knows.

"Listen, I know this isn’t the time and the place but I really thought we had something special. All those sunrises we witnessed on the phone together last month. I really thought we had a special rapport."

Stacia tells me that I just met her. That we  have no rapport.

Right when Stacia says the word rapport a screeching clarity floods the socket of my chest. Somehow I realize that Stacia was sorta seeing Anthony all along. Somehow I realize that the night she was crying after rehearsal and cradled my arms around her and told he to stay cool and called her later that night and we talked for six hours straight on the phone and experienced a shared dawn, somehow I realize that the reason she was in tears was because Anthony must have informed her thathe didn't want to be with her.

I feel that pining emptiness in my chest again. I have speaking lines in five minutes. I have to talk about Harold Hill giving all of us fellow Traveling Salesman a bad name. I call Harold Hill a no good thimble-rigger. I state that I have never seen him a day in my life and when he jumps off the train and holds ups his suitcase in my face I slam down my hat in disdain.

It feels like he has not only taken Iowa away from me, he has taken the person the pulse of my youthful heavily-make-up'd fourteen year old heart thought I loved.

I want to ask her if we had anything that mattered.  I want to ask her about those crazy conversation we had on the phone. I want to ask her about how every time I would see her she seemed to squeeze the bony knob of my kneecap.

 Stacia addresses me as Charlie. She has only called me David once.

 “Listen, Charlie the thing  is…”

 The lady with the headphone and clipboard is calling places. She says the words  quiet. She says the words lights. From below in dim gulch of the pit the overture begins to sing chime and ski through the airconditioned vents of a theatre in summer.

Anthony walks on stage last and calmly takes his place in the makeshift aisle. We are all shadows, keyhole shaped silhouettes forming a nylon mountain range of shoulder and bodies against the backdrop  awaiting the overture to end and the splotched dome of released light to animate us.

To set us free.  

                                                                     ***

He's just a bang beat, bell ringing, Big haul, great go, neck or nothin, rip roarin, every time a bull's eye salesman. Thats Professor Harold Hill, Harold Hill.

                                                                               ***

On stage Anthony is portraying Harold Hill, breaking into the jagged introit,  the admonishing tirade of Trouble stating that your young kids are going to be frittering away stating that your young kids will be frittering. At the end of the number the audience explodes in a fusillade of claps.

Anthony is stage right awaiting his cue. On stage Mrs. Paroo, Wintrhop and Marian the librarian are espousing the working class verities of Gary Indiana.  I am thinking about Stacia. I am pissed. I wonder what happen in the car with Anthony last night after the fireworks. After Batman Returns.

I wonder what they did.

 “Hey,” I say to Anthony, grappling him by the labels and swiveling him around in between numbers.

“What’s up with you and Stacia? I thought you had a girlfriend”

 Anthony looks down. He seems sad.

 “She knows we can’t be together.”

 He sounds like he is auditioning for a soap opera. I want to tell him to cry me  goddamn river.

 “Dude, don’t hurt her man. She’s an angel. She’s a sweetheart.”

 Anthony looks off into the rosemary baubles off stage right adding that there is more than that.

 I don’t know why I feel impelled to stick up for Stacia.

 “I mean, she really seems to like you and everything."

Anthony looks down and says that he knows. He says that he feels guilty and conflicted. He has literally seconds before he is supposed to be back on stage for his next number.

"What's the problem man. I mean, she really likes you. She was in tears a couple of weeks ago."

Anthony adds a that's not it there's something else. I ask him what?

"She's a virgin." He says.

I ask him what he means. He repeats the sentences again. He says that if she were anymore virginal she'd be olive oil.

"What's wrong with that? Maybe she's just saving herself for someone special."

Anthony tells me that that's not it. I don't know what to say.

"I mean,  did you guys like listen Salt-n-Peppa and talk about sex or something?"

"No," Anthony says, looking both ways, "I felt it."

"What?" I say, bemused.

Anthony's lips are sewn together. He is trying to make a correlating expression with both his eyes and his clenched finger.

"You know, I felt it."

Again I don't move. She slaps me on the shoulder. It doesn't seem like he is taunting.  He is the hero and I am the villain. I want to ask him again about his own girlfriend.  He tells me that he can't talk. He tells me look, there's my cue.

  The interior of my chest feels like it is trying to swallow itself again.



 

                                                                                       ***

I am all alone by myself backstage. My only job is to help roll out the Wells Fargo wagon at the end of Act one. Sometimes I hang out with Scott who is in charge the stage curtain. Mostly I sit on stage left and lose myself at Stacia. I try not to think about her being with Anthony.

Next to Scott, on a diminutive table near the stage pulleys there is an unopened heap of programs that will be passed out in the lobby prior to each performance.  On the cover there is a crimson frenzy of bodies marching in an amoebic mass that looks almost like caricatured Communist sperm with the words MUSIC MAN bulged in block lettering. Inside the numbers are listed on the left hand side and the names of the cast and company on the right. There are 33 townspeople of river city listed. There are 31 listed under Chorus and Dancers. There are 21 speaking parts listed under cast for a total 85 on-stage participants altogether. Apparently there was some picaklittle gossip from a couple of the soccer moms that there are too many children on stage and it is fire hazard,


I flip through the program I see the names of the my fictitious fellow townsmen played by my peers. Olivia Hix and Ewart Dunlop and Tommy Djilas and Amaryllis who apparently has no last name and is played by my friend Aliesha who will go to Manual in a year and whose mom, Paula is on my paper route and helps out with costumes.  Thee is Eulalie, Gracie and Zaneeta Shinn. Couri's friend who is always smoking and gossiping outside is playing Maud Dunlop.

Inside the program the numbers are listed.  Pam said the reason that Shipoopi is being  omitted correlates with the reason she doesn’t want me voyeuristically espying the taut contours Marian the Librarian’s ass; because the show we are performing  a children’s show.

   I peruse the bulletin like I am looking at baseball stats. Nowhere is the name Charlie Cowell listed. Nowhere is the name of the actor who has portrayed him.

My name is not listed in the program. It is like I am completely anonymous. It is like the craziness of the last six weeks never existed. The hurt, the long tortuous walks through the vernal dales of Bradley park mulling over my lines, the one-on-one conversations with Pam about how to augment my performance and enhance my visual conniving portrayal of my assigned character on-stage. The late night phone conversations with Stacia where we hold each other as we watch the sun hatch from the aquatic blue haze of the east before letting go and convening with my paper route.

There is the name of 85 of my peers. The name of musical director Jana and the name of the choreographer. There is Scotts name in charge of Stage props and the name of the belligerent occe mom who is always calling out places while prattling away into her headset.

There is Terri Andrews name who is in charge of lighting.

There is Pam's name, the hyphen of her last name indicating that she was once married.

There is Stacia's name listed as both a traveling salesman and one of the Pikadilly ladies and Anthony's name listed as Harold Hill and somewhere my name is nowhere to be found.

It's like the defining month of my youth never transpired.

I am anonymous and the last six weeks was just a wavering gasp of an unwarranted whip of a waking dream.

  

                                                                          ***

I leave and I go downstairs walking by myself. I am not slated to be on stage for a half hour even though I should be staying close to theatre. To Peoria Players. The second act is beginning. The soccer mom with the headset and clipboard is caroling out places. As I walk into the spearmint coated basement of Peoria Players I see the make-up lady who scowled at me with three of her friends. They are all in high school. One of them has short curly hair that drips into her shoulders. They are all holding cosmetics.

I fucking hate wearing make-up. I fucking hate how I might have had a good thing going with Andrea who is hotter than Stacia and is a cheerleader and maybe she would have been the one. I hate how I even though I ran an abysmally fast time at Steamboat I didn’t place in my division because the York Dorks Cross-country team was in town.

 I hate how my name isn't even mentioned in the program.

Briefly I think about my two botched attempts to reach French soil last winter and the winter before.

All I can think about is that I  have failed.

All I can think about is that I need to get out of this fucking theatre.


I need to leave.

I go out the side door. Uninterruptedly I have maybe twenty minutes before I am on stage performing the scene where Charlie Cowell Traveling Salesman gets mock-seduced and  then waylaid by an all of a sudden vixenesque Marian the Librarian  

There is a grassy loam next to Peoria Player Theatre. I tramp past the library that looks like it was  refurbished out of Lincoln Logs. I walk into the direction of Lakeview Museum and the planetarium. I can see the Girl Scout building. I espy  Owens center and Rainbow Ben waterslide and Lakeview pool where I used to go to free swim falling in love with the slick red hair of with Meredith Elsie Willow and the way her Rainbow Bite swimsuit stuck to her body.

Behind Lakeview museum there is a sylvan glen teeming with stalks and shadows and a creek separating a gulley before the back of the Metro center becomes visible.  I can see the bald heads of several adults are ashing cigarettes into an old Hillsboro coffee can before entering a 12-step meeting behind Joanne Fabrics. 

 I walk into the woods and lie down.  The trees look like botanical exclamatory marks. I am thinking of Stacia. I am still not one hundred percent sure what Anthony alluded to when he said that he felt it even though I have a pretty good idea.

It is nine o’clock at night. I will have to be on stage in fifteen minutes.

I lie down in a pyre of leaves leftover from last autumn.

Without thinking I drop my pants and my underwear down to my ankles. I hold myself, the Doric column of my  flesh grasped in reins-to Stallion clutch, the antennae of my virility bowing above the caps of torso. I am wearing make-up. Somehow I think if I squeeze myself tight enough I can get the creature I have pined after for so long to come back to me. Sometimes I feel if I could mutilate myself, that if I could release myself in a fountain of hurt, that if I yank the center odalisque of flesh long enough than maybe I could refrain from hurting all the time.

Than maybe everything would be alright.

I am thinking about Stacia changing into her costume. I am thinking about he make-up lady with the bitchy banter and side pony tail  saddled on my lap as she is doodling on my face. I am thinking in French and picturing Andrea in her bra and panties smelling .like coconut lotion and the sun. I am picturing Anthony and Statcia together in the backseat, yanking at each other's flesh, tryingto be one. 

As if marshaling a sticky KOOL AID stained Nintendo joystick I jerk my anatomy upwards in the direction of the lavender clouds before my entire torso explodes.

Suddenly I am losing all the apprehensiveness. All the hurt. Suddenly the pawing ovoid of existential loneliness is beginning to weld.  

I am to be on stage right for my cue in less than five minutes.

I am sure the lady with the soccer mom with the headphones and clipboard is saying my name with a question mark attached the end of her sentence.

                                                                           
                                                                                ***


Before I go on stage I make sure my the copper helix of my zipper is reeled north.

The Soccer mom with the clipboard gives me a disgruntled glare.


I am on.

                                                                                       ***

It is dress rehearsal. When I do my scene with Marian the Librarian I make a point of whistling and looking directly at her ass. I even try to give her a lil’ spanking on stage but she steps back.

We kiss in a way that she leans me back granting the audience the semblance that we are making out when in actuality our chins are overlapping like mismatched lapels. This time I move in closer. As I did with Stacia three nights ago I plant my lips on her lips. As I did with Jessica in the woods behind the Christian center I plant my tongue into her mouth. Summer steps back. She remains in character. She wants to slap me. Instead she pushes me back and performs her lines ad hoc. 

I can tell she is infuriated.

For as terse drip of time I am afraid that I am going to replaced in my role even though it doesn't seem to matter since I am not listed in the program anyway. I then hear Pam screaming in the background. She is saying well done and clapping even though we are not stopping because this is a dress rehearsal.

Off Stage Marian Scowls at me. I don't care. My altercation with the two-bit thimble-rigger protagonist where he mock-pummels me into the ground is the next scene. I have known Anthony all my life. He was always three grades ahead of me. The last time he was at CLS he was an eighth grader and I was in fifth grade.  Now I will be a freshman while he will start his senior year at the high school down the hill. He is hero and I am the villain and somehow Stacia is the female lead, we are scowling at each other. I am gnawing at him through my lines. I address him as a charlatan and a braggadocio.   We are standing touching noses and never seeing eye to eye. I am informing him that he doesn’t know the territory.

 I am thinking about the tips of his fingers combing over her body. I want to tell her that he doesn’t know the territory. That I have metaphysically drooled over Stacia every moment since I have met her. That I envisioned long drives out to Washington, Il holding her after an autumnal football game, the cindery scent of an errant bonfire lost in her constellations of her bangs, and the stainglass sonnet that is her smile. 

I still wonder why Anthony made such a big deal about Stacia being a Virgin and what he meant when he said he felt it.

I am thinking of the two of them alone, bodies forming conjoined mathematical emblems in the back seat of Anthony's  85 Chevelle. I am not suppose to push him very hard.

 Instead I explode.

I am exposing his character as being a fraud. A Fake. As coming into River City and corrupting what was bucolic and pure.

I am only suppose to push him gently but instead I heave everything stowed up from the past three years in the joints of my elbows. Harold falls back.



The next thing I know he is on the ground.

There seems to be a collective pause in the audience. All the parents have camcorder's wedged in their eyes like telescopes on the prow of an unknown ship.

Hill gets up. I can't tell if he s acting. We have choreographed the punch more than fifty times. His arm wields back and a fist the size of a softball  hammers in my direction. I hold my left hand in front of my jugular like a dyslexic salute. When his fist makes contact with my palm there is an audible clack.  I can hear members hissing.  My feet slip up at a 45 degree angle and my entre anatomy crashes on the stage floor.

Imminently I get back up. I point. I quote my lines. I tell Hill that I will get him if its the last thing I do.

If it is the last thing I ever do.

                                                                           ***

Years later while doing research for a novel that is almost conspicuously autobiographical I type in the name Meredith Wilson into the screen where I spend half the day writing and half the day ogling cleavage. The screen where all my fetishes are sated. The screen where I can have sex with random people via an Instant Message rectangle. The screen where I was discovered and flown out into Hollywood to perform. The screen where I can  see everything I have ever wanted to see and gain instant access to everything I have ever wanted to know and still feel all alone, by myself, as I pelt out sentences and inquiries into the cyber chin of the abutting screen as if I am playing a game of battleship with myself.

Dual decades later I will type in the name Meredith Wilson, the director and lyricist of the play I am performing. I will discern that he is male (since Meredith I guess, was at one time a male’s name).  That he was 55 years old when the Music Man  was first produced on Broadway. That he had previously worked as a composer in Hollywood. That he was from Mason City, IA and that he wanted to capture something of the magic of his youth when he started work on the production. That it took him eight years and over thirty drafts to complete the finished product. That Marion the Librarian is based on a woman with the same first name who was a librarian he was madly in love with when he was in the military stationed in Utah.  That he had written 40 songs for the play and 22 of them would ultimately be cut. That  the Musical  beat out West Side Story for Best Musical Tony award 1958, the New York times flaunting, "If Mark Twain could have collaborated with Vachel Lindsay, they might have devised a rhythmic lark like The Music Man, which is as American as apple pie and a Fourth of July oration.... The Music Man is a marvelous show, rooted in wholesome and comic tradition."

That when it came time to make to make the movie the studio in Hollywood insisted that Frank Sinatra plat Harold Hill and Meredith Wilson slammed down the gavel saying that is Robert Preston doesn't play the lead the film simply does not get made.

And how it took him eight years to write the score, bleeding everyday over the ivory tips of the piano.

And how at times, he must have felt like it was never going to work out. Never going to come together.

How at times he probably felt that he had failed.

                                                                         ***

At the end of the dress rehearsal, the final rehearsal before the inaugural performance Pam calls the entire cast and company on stage. She goes over notes. When she says my name she makes forms an okay sign with her pointer finger and thumb and tells me to keep up the energy. I am surprised she didn’t lambaste me for pushing down the male protagonist who just made out with the creature whom I thought was my girlfriend or yell at me female protagonist for slipping her the tongue. There are several menial notes. Everyone is looking around under the lights like they can’t believe tomorrow is actually opening night.

Pam invites everyone to form a circle. We all hold hands. She invited us all to seal the lids of our eyes. We follow.

Pam tells us that she is proud. Pam tells us that we have all worked really hard. She tells us to relax and take several deep breaths.

She then pauses and asks us a rhetorical question.

“Why do people go to the theater?”

There is a pause.

I gaze past the etheric yawn, into the frazzled pond of reality I swear, I can almost see myself in the audience behind Pam’s head, extracting various stages of a life that is to come. Pam is eloquently expressing her aesthetics of art and I see myself in various shrink wrap incarnations over the next dual decades seated in the rows of the theater behind her. I can see myself wearing a brown turtle neck beneath a blazer holding a copy of poems by someone named Anne Sexton. I see myself with my hair long, grainy stubble of a beard dotting my chin, not even recognizing myself at first. I see myself pelting sentences into what looks like a computer only it is papery thin and anemic, I see myself holding what looks like a portable phone although it is also thin and rectangular shape and I keep inexplicably typing into it with my dual thumbs as if I and then smiling  as if I am having a valid conversation with someone and (twice, from where my 14 year old vantage point appears on stage) it looks like am lugging my pants to the caps of my knees, holding the phone a certain way before capturing something and smiling.

Next to myself the phone I see myself chain smoking cigars (which is something I can never imagine  doing ) and drinking beer something I find appalling and both are counterproductive to my dreams of being an Olympic athlete. I’m not just one sipping beer I appear to be slamming them, chugging each aluminum chalice and then crunch the can into a corrugated dent and then cracking one open and pounding again.

Pam is telling us that people go to the theatre because of life.   Because life hurts. Because life is full of pain. They go to the theatre to get entertained. To get a number lodged in their skull. To laugh. To hear a keen performance. But more than anything else they go to the theater to escape, just for a while, to forget about the sorrows of life, if only momentarily.

I see all this while Pam is talking about aesthetics and loss. I see myself with hair that isn’t exactly long or short and I’m holding hands with a girl with ivory skin and lemon hair who looks like she just walked out of a cross between a Waterhouse Museum and a Victoria secret catalogue and it looks like the two of us our madly in love. I see myself with what appears to be the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. She has black hair and skin that looks like Caucasian and mixed ethnicity. We are holding each other as if there are magnetic plates in our hips and I keep kissing the movie screen of her forehead and occasionally she sits on my lap.  I squeeze her hand in three metered beats, as if trying to convey something indelible and timeless to her. She is wearing a wedding ring that looks like it was purchased from someone who was brought up with serious money and even though it appears we are not together and we will leave each other soon, I can tell, behind’s Pam frantic almost windmill like gesticulation that the two of us are madly in love.

Pam is stating that people come to the theater to find a reprieve from the hurt of life. She tells us that, even though the bulk of us are too young to comprehend, life is fraught with pain and hurt and theater and art offer a solace that is valid; she is talking about how the cathedral of the building we are in right now is place people come to feel special and loved.

Pam is saying all this.

Pam looks like she should be somewhere else besides Peoria. She looks like she is from New York.

 I continue to look past Pam. In one row I am flanked by my two sibling and my mom. We look like each of us are about ten years older although mom looks the same. The four of us are attired all in black and you can tell that we have been crying as if something has been invariably taken from us at the most inopportune time. Mom is crying and she stands up and holds her hands in the position of a football referee indicating a successful field goal attempt and you can tell that she is praying to something inscrutable and higher even though I have never seen her hold her hands like that in supplication and prayer at the Southside Lutheran Church we attend.


Pam is saying all of this.

She is stating that people come to the theater to find a reprieve from the hurt of life. She tells us that, even though the bulk of us are too young to comprehend, life is fraught with pain and hurt and theater and art offer a solace that is valid; she is talking about how the cathedral of the building we are in right now is place people come to feel special and love.

As Pam is finishing her soliloquy I look in the front row. There are beer cans strewn from where the sasquatch-looking creature behind them with the long unkempt hair keeps chugging.

In the front row of the theatre I see my parents. There is a baby carriage between them.

My mom has long straight black-licorice hued hair. My father is young with thick glasses. They both kind of looks like nerdy hippes protesting  the public library for not having a section dedicated to contemporary African American authors . . They are ferrying what looks like a baby carriage between them. They sit in the front row. They looked like they were clothed by the costume director of the partridge family. My mom has long black hair and looks kind of like the mingled-ethnicity of the creature who is seated on my lap with the ring who is now crying.  Beers cans continue to loll and dip onwards in the direction of the musical pit but the parents continue to smile at their creation, their heads bowed as if they are in a Nativity scene kowtowing to a wooden trough. The child in the baby carriage is crying. He is screaming like a siren. My mother picks him up and begins to coddle him in subtly petting his young spine.

The long hair creature behind my young parents continues to chain smoke cigars and chug beer.

 The baby in front of him continues to shrill.

Even though he is being held  and dandled he screams like he is calling for mommy.                                                                        

                                                                            ***

As I am walking off stage Pam waves at me. I feel she is going admonish me for slipping Summer the tongue.

I look behind, I can still make out my parents and my mom dandling the newborn.

 “Charlie” She is walking towards me, waving at me

I walk close. I am awaiting the verdict. It feels that nothing I have done would matter anyway since there is no listening for wither my character or my name in the program.

“Charlie baby C’mere. Pam says again.

 I feel she is going to berate me. She is stepping close and before I know it her arms are buckled around my shoulder and she is giving me a hug.

 “Charlie baby you were on t’night! You were on tonight baby!!!”

She says this is the first night of our collective Music man experience where I have appeared vile and just plain Mean on the stage. She says somewhere Meredith Wilson is smiling.

“Charlie baby I am proud of you.” She says, as if I just ran a personally best time in my mile.

I nod. Stoically. I don’t know what to say. I tell her thank you. As I step back she manacles my wrist with her right hand. She reels me in closer. At first I feel that she is going to engage in a make-out session employing her tongue and my right earlobe. Instead she begins to whisper.

“You can’t kiss her like that on stage. This is a children’s production.”

 I don’t look the director in her beautiful visage. Instead I simply nod.

 I look back at her. She doesn’t look angry. She is still smiling.

“I won’t” I tell Pam. I tell her I got carried away.

When I walk away she continues to give my wrist a little squeeze.


As I look out into the audience I note that the house lights are up. I fail to see myself in different warped incarnations of time. I fail to see myself holding the blonde or squeezing the knock-out girl with straight black hair who is married around the waist. I fail to see myself with long hair drinking beer and chain smoking cigars.

     I fail to see my parents when they were only five years older than I am now.

                                                                         ***

Later that night before I take off my make-up I apologize to Summer in the dressing room.

“I’m sorry I kissed you and slipped you the tongue. It won’t happen again. I was just pissed off.”

Summer smiles.

 “The kiss didn’t mean anything.  I mean, we were acting. You really pissed me off. You did a good job at really pissing me off but I was supposed to be pissed at you in the scene. We were just acting, that’s all.”

 I feel that my make-up is running.  I’m looking for anything wet to splotch it off. Downstairs several moms are looking at me as if they saw what I did on stage in front of their eight year old daughters and do  not approve in the slightest.

In the dressing room there is a tub of baby butt-wipes in the back room that all the males swear with to swipe off  their make-up.

 Anthony is nowhere in sight. It is heavily rumored that Stacia’s mom picked her up directly after the performance due to said grounding.

I am swiping my make-up off. My cousin Matthew has just finished changing. To my right I see Anthony. He is undressing. We haven’t said anything since he hit me and I fell back.  Several of the younger lads in the protection are looking at me like I am a bad ass.

 “Listen, Tony, I’m sorry bro.”

 He doesn’t want to talk. Instead he holds out his hand. I grasp it and we shake sans pumping our fist.

We shake as men.

“You know what Charlie, you’re going to do really well in high school.”

I tell him thank you.

 I tell him that its good to have the duplicitous traveling salesman as a friend, even if he is a no good to-bit pain in the ass thimble-rigger.

 I take off my make-up. Tomorrow is our first bona fide performance.  

As I am walking out of the dressing room I bump into a girl with blonde hair who is wearing one of the tweed hats the traveling salesman wear. She appears to be a few years older than me. I have never seen her before.  Apparently she is classmates with the pesky make-up lady who swatted at me to vamoose.

"Hello." I say to her, a wadded baby buttwipe still in my paw.

She looks back at me and simply smiles before saying hi.