Places I've Lived part 4 (the childhood home)

40 Kingston Rd., Hanover, MA

Of all the places I lived as a kid, this is the one I remember as my childhood home. My recurring dreams about childhood all take place here.

A large wood frame house on a corner lot in suburban Hanover, Massachusetts. Four bedrooms: one big one upstairs for my parents (dad and step-mom), the biggest of the little ones downstairs for me, with windows that faced the road in front and a view of the brief woods out the side, my brother's room with custom cabinetry built in blonde wood by my dad, and a guest room that was in a perpetual process of being perfected. Two living rooms, one for living and one for fancy; a dining room with big glass doors that looked out to a big deck my dad built. A kitchen, two bathrooms, a basement with my dad's workshop, the laundry, and visions of a workout room with hot tub (it was the 80's, after all).

This is where my brother came home when he first arrived in our lives from Korea. Later this would be the place my family fell apart. This is the place from which I dreamed of New York, cried for my mother, hid a communion wafer in my closet, refused to eat tomatoes, tried to kill myself, abandoned God, and determined to write no matter what the cost. This is the place where my step-mother lost her mind for real and for true and where I watched my father turn into a person I didn't recognize.

We moved in when I was nine years old, in 1984. When I was 15, in 1991, I moved out, by myself.

My brother Nick was born in Korea in June 1987.

Lemme go back.

By the time Nick was born, I wasn't allowed to go trick-or-treating anymore.

I came home from school one fateful October 31, ready to don my costume and head out into the night, only to find my step-mom and dad crying in the living room. She couldn't have children, and they were both devastated. I didn't see what it had to do with me, this news didn't crush any of my dreams.

Until they told me I wouldn't be going trick-or-treating.

Instead, I handed out candy to the stupid kids in my neighborhood, watching the contents of the candy basket dwindle. My step-mom was too upset to hand it out herself, so I put on my costume and waited for the doorbell.

After multiple home visits with the adoption agency, we were rewarded with a freaked out baby just before Thanksgiving 1987.

Nick and I were pretty much instantly simpatico. I know he was only six months old, but we were besties anyway. I think he grew up and out of his infancy pretty fast. I don't know what he'd been through in Korea, how many loving arms he passed through and had to abandon, but I do know it was in Korean, and once he landed here, everything was in English. I was well-used to mix and match families by now, and had no trouble adopting this boy into my heart as my brother.

I didn't have alot of close friends in middle school, and there was always some kind of stupid issue with my parents when I wanted to do the group movie thing or whatever, so I spent alot of time at home. I spent alot of time with Nick.

But none of that is what this post is really about. I'm basically just dicking around afraid to get to the point.

The point is, in 1991, I left. Nick was four years old. I left him there with a mentally destroyed mother and a collapsible father. I left him alone in an abusive home with a depressed, dedicated drunk. My dad didn't have custody, even though he wanted it, and my step-mom was angrier and more vindictive than ever.

When the judge at my custody hearing asked me who I wanted to live with, I said my step-mom. I wanted to stay with Nick. I figured she couldn't hit us both, and I was already her primary target. I figured she couldn't scream at us both, and of the two, being a teenage girl, I was better able to take it. I could moderate my emotional investment in the situation, I had years of experience checking out while she screamed at me, her face inches from my face, her eyes darting back and forth in her head. I had already learned not to talk back. I would write my responses with my tongue on the roof of my mouth. I could hold her gaze.

I was used to it. Nick was little. He trusted me. He was my favorite person world wide.

I'd been staying at my mom's that summer, in Philadelphia. My mom and step-dad had a big pretty house, as old as mine was new. They had a baby of their own, my brother Dave. My mom had especially introduced me to one of her co-workers' daughters. A girl my same age, a girl into alt music, a girl who followed the college charts, a girl like me. She brought me into her group of friends. We went out dancing at Revival. They played The Smiths. They played techno-industrial. They played Souixie and Pixies and Sugarcubes.

I got my first pair of Doc Martens in Harvard Square when my mom took me back to Boston for whatever court procedure determining my future was next.

I left.

I think it was the right decision.

I don't think I could do it again.

having it all (4:45 am, reflected upon)

I woke up at 4:45 last night, wide awake and suddenly unable to sleep.

I'd recently signed up for a writing workshop with Eduardo Machado. It's starting in April, and I've been looking forward to it. Eduardo is someone I've studied with before. I met him in a Pataphysics workshop at The Flea Theater in 2003. Larry Kunofsky was there, Kyoung Park, Annemarie Healy, and if I had the sign-in sheet (there wasn't a sign in sheet), I could list off more accomplished playwrights who were in this workshop. I remember so clearly bringing in some pages from a play I was working on. I brought in 10 or 15 pages, and after they were read aloud, Eduardo said I should cut everything except for one line on the first page. I didn't have the sense to be embarrassed, but I was angry.

Dave was out of town that weekend so I called my friend Rachel and made her come out and get drunk with me, whereupon I proclaimed Eduardo to be an outright fool who had no idea of good writing, blah blah blah. Rachel laughed at me. She'd heard me tirade before. She said: Quit the class. I said: No.

Because the worst part of the whole thing was that he was right. He was right that I should cut 15 pages except for one line. So that's what I did. I cut everything. I started from that one line. I wrote a much better 15 pages, and went on to write a much better play.

Years later I heard the story from Eduardo's perspective. Upon arriving home that night, Eduardo had told his boyfriend Michael "there's a very talented girl in my class but I don't think she's coming back." I went back, because that's what I do. I knew he was onto something, and I wanted to find out what it was. Eduardo and I had hit it off.

I talked to him after class and on smoke breaks, and he asked me "what are you going to do now?" I said: "Eduardo, I don't know, what should I do?" He said I should come study with him at Columbia, so that's what I did. He got me a bunch of grants and fellowships and money, so while I studied I didn't have to worry about tuition, I just had to worry about living expenses. I did alot of writing. I learned alot from Eduardo, and my fellow classmates. Eduardo knows how to find talent, and again this class roster was an assemblage of fine writers: Daria Polatin, Jon Kern, Rehana Mirza, Alex Beech, Julian Pozzi, Jeremy Basescu, Christine Chambers, Reuben Jackson.

I loved studying with Eduardo. So when the opportunity to take a workshop with him this spring came up, I wanted very badly to take it. I've got a bunch of projects I'm working on, and a workshop with a master would really hit the spot. I worked it out, I signed up, I put it in my iphone calendar.

Then something else happened. The Library near my apartment started offering Ready Set Kindergarden for children ages 3-5 on Saturday mornings from 11 am-12 pm.

The workshop is on 52nd Street at 12. There's no way I can do Ready Set Kindergarden and Eduardo's workshop.

I knew this Library program would be happening, and that I would instead be taking the workshop. I figured Dave could take him, or perhaps a babysitter. I figured this would be fine. Dave assured me this would be fine. He knew I wanted to take the workshop, he wanted to make it work for me.

The workshop doesn't start for a few weeks, and I've taken my son to Library a few times so far. He really likes it. There's loads of other kids, and since he's not in day care it's a good chance for him to socialize. There's songs, and he loves to sing. There's stories, and he likes to lay on the floor and listen. There's crafts, and yesterday we decorated a cardboard guitar. The whole lesson was about songs and rhymes, and it was a very coordinated learning experience. Before we left we borrowed Harold and the Purple Crayon and Sendak's Alligator's All Around, which was turned into a song by Carole King, which I've been singing to my son since birth. When we got home, he wanted to read Harold during lunch instead of play with the ipad. Then he wanted to read more stories and snuggle. After he napped (he never naps!) he wanted to paint, and make cookies, and lick the beaters.

At 4:45 am I remembered something my father said when he was about to pursue his third master's degree, and my brother was embarking on his first years of photography school. My dad said: it's Nick's turn.

I wouldn't say that I want to take my son to Library more than I want to take the workshop. I wouldn't even say that I couldn't stand the guilt of taking the workshop and leaving my son's education in the hands of someone else (I can take alot of guilt: I'm Catholic and my parents are divorced, after all).

What I would say is that to be an effective parent sacrifices must be made. I would say you can't have it all. I would say that having it all, in fact, is not even a thing. Sometimes I will take a workshop and Charlie will do a thing on his own, or with someone else. But this time, Charlie's education comes first, and the lovely day of reading and projects will come first.

Next time I wake up at 4:45 am it will not be in dread of irrevocable decisions, but to write for three hours before anyone else is awake.

This time I'll be my own master, and do a workshop on my own.


(If you're interested in the workshop, there's now a free space. Email Megan at megansmith22 at gmail.)

Places I've Lived part 3 (the beginning of the nyc fixation)

165 W 66th Street, New York, New York

My mom lived in New York when I was a kid. I would visit her on winter breaks and in summers. Technically I didn't live here, my mom did, but it felt more like home to me than my actual house, the house I grew up in.

The apartment was on the second floor. It had started out as one apartment but when the tenants in the studio moved out next door, she bought that apartment too. She knocked the wall down between them, gained a bathroom and a kitchen. She sold her original kitchen, bordering on the other side of the apartment, to her other neighbor so he could make a bedroom for his daughter, who was too old to share with her brother anymore. The daughter and her brother were my summer/winter break friends, as was the super's daughter who lived down the hall.

We played barbie's. The brother, who was a few years older than us, thought we should play hooker barbie, since we had the dream house and everything. So we turned Italian barbie into a pimp (her legs had fallen off too many times to make her a prostitute). I suppose the right term would have been madame, but he was only 12, so he probably go to that later. We would have the pretend phone ring, and Lucia the Italian pimp would answer it by saying "hooker agency," and the brother freaked out and grabbed the phone and said: "No! You can't say hooker agency, what if it's the cops!" I had a crush on him, naturally, so did my friend from down the hall, but his sister thought he was gross.

I don't think I knew what a hooker was, I think I knew it had something to do with sex, was lascivious in some way, but I didn't know what that meant, either.

The apartment was above a Tower Records, and across from Lincoln Center, and next to the Chinese Embassy. We were right near the Park, and we rode the Sea Beach Line out to see my Nonna, great aunts, and cousins in Bensonhurst.

My Nonna, who was really my great gram, would tell me I was too thin and stuff me full of sausage and spaghetti and broccoli rabe. There was a ping-pong table downstairs where my cousins would play. I was the oldest, and they spent way more time here. It was their grandparent's house, the house their mothers grew up in. I felt like an interloper, I felt like I didn't belong. To be fair, five people can't play ping-pong at once, fivesies isn't a game. One time the second oldest and I found my great uncle's Playboys in his sunny sitting room. It felt like we were on the same team then, the two oldest hiding it from the younger kids, and totally mesmerized by it. The expressions on our faces, unable to look at each other, the expressions on the women's faces, what could make them look like that? They looked desperate, yet confident, and I didn't know why. My Nonna caught us in there and shooed us out. We still didn't figure out how to play fivesies after that, but I was able to get in a set of doubles or two.

I loved the subway trip, especially when the train ran above ground, but I especially loved coming back to the city, to my mom's big, open apartment. I wonder how different things would have been if I'd lived with her full time. Being a parent now, I know the day to day is a far different matter from being a part time parent. The thing is she let me wear fluorescent socks, two different colors on each foot, and they didn't even have to match. Sometimes we ate dessert first and called it backwards dinner. We ate "white food" when we were sad, which basically meant farina, or macaroni with butter and cheese. These were the essential foods at my moms. We held hands walking down the sidewalk. She made me feel good about myself. It was like she really valued spending time with me.

Even now I feel a familiar and sharp tug in my chest remembering how much I wanted to be with her. Why does it still hurt like that?

We wandered around the city, which to me was the only city in the world. In summers we'd nearly melt on the sidewalk, so we'd pop into shops to cool off. If I could bottle the smell of air conditioner spilling out of open shop doors in the heat of a New York City summer, I would do it. Favorite places were The Last Wind-Up, a store devoted to wind-up toys, the Doll Hospital, a second floor walk- up on 14th Street (maybe), that could fix any sick doll, and Utopia Diner on Columbus where I'd order breakfast no matter the time of day.

Eventually I felt like Thomas Moore and I were in on the same joke, and I still have an unnatural attachment to that book.

I had my own room but I liked best to sleep in my mom's bed.

Whenever I had to leave and go home I would cry like crazy and be inconsolable for days. I learned to keep a tight lid on it, and got to the point where I didn't cry quite so much, but I always felt like there was a steel door between the me who I could be at my mom's house, in New York City, and the me who I was in Massachusetts, where I lived the rest of the year.

My mom sold the apartment I guess in '87 or so, I remember thinking "nooooooooo!" And that I wanted to live in New York for the rest of my life.


I couldn't get my hands on photos from this period, but if/when I do, I'll post them in a follow-up. These photos are from when I was 15 (below) and 16 (above) at the house way out on the Sea Beach Line.

This is me and Nonna in the kitchen. I was about 16. That was my favorite sweater, and the cameo was a gift from my dad. That's one of my dad's old shirts, too, and I always wore that necklace. It had a rotating collection of charms. I anticipate looking just like Nonna one day, and hope to live as long.

This was me in the backyard at the picnic table when I was 15. This was an old sweater of my mom's. I still have it.

Places I've lived part 2 (and now I'm going backwards)

16th and Lombard Streets, Phila., PA

In February 1995, Dave and I moved in together. It was Ash Wednesday in fact, and both of us being Catholic (albeit substantially lapsed), it felt pretty immoral to start shacking up on the first day of Lent. Never fearing hypocrisy, Dave showed up to our morning move-in with ashes on his forehead. I'd been too ashamed slash too proud to go. Y'know how it is.

Remembering this apartment now all I can think is how brave my mother was. She actually dropped me off here with a bunch of my stuff. I was 19, what looked like a college drop-out, moving in with a dangerous looking boy, into a nearly dilapidated wood structured three floor apartment building situated next to an obvious brothel in a sketchy neighborhood of slowly gentrifying Philadelphia.

The apartment was on the second floor. The rickety staircase was carpeted with a dulled, dirty tan pile more suited for subdivision living rooms than inner city common areas. The carpet extended into our apartment, and went through every room. This included the kitchen, which was also a hallway from the living room to the bedroom, which all had to be walked through to get to the bathroom.

I worked several jobs in 1995, none of them ended quite well. The first was making sandwiches at an Au Bon Pain. I was the only prep school type who worked there, and this was a source of endless humour for my co-workers, until Wylene got pregnant with the manager's baby and Deb lost her washer/dryer for being late with just one payment. Cliff tried to sell me crack.

Film Festival intern, Arden Theater Co summer intern, record shop, hat shop. We hung at The Last Drop. Then my year's leave of absence, which I'd formally registered with the dean's office, was over and I went back to school. I wrote two plays that year and brought them back to Sarah Lawrence with me, where they were both produced by the department. Shirley Kaplan said I was a 'real authentic,' and I was just authentic enough to find that insulting.

My memory is awash with images of that year. Here are a few:

Sitting on the curb outside the apartment, tripping on LSD, wearing a long peasant skirt with tiers of patterned color. I couldn't stop smiling, but it was just my face, the world was reeling, the sky, and a friend reached down a hand to help me up. He said "you look like you're having a wonderful time. I wish I was having as good a time as you." And I laughed because I was miserable inside, I wanted to be myself again, and the irony that I was not capable of communicating that to him and he would always misunderstand was funny to me.

Watching the school children play across the street from my bedroom window. Them watching me back from their second story classroom when I would wake up late.

Sitting on our fire escape smoking cigarettes with Dave and a friend when a limo pulled up across the street and our neighbors, two black women who we'd assumed were lesbians but it turned out were actually prostitutes, got out and started yelling up at us. "Keep your people cool!" They shouted. "Keep your people cool!" We didn't know what they were talking about, but they were talking to us, so we scurried inside.

Dave helped the old woman who lived on the third floor carry her groceries in one day. He said he stopped and chatted with her for a while, said her apartment walls were plastered with photographs and clippings of her life. This is still a meaningful memory for him

The joy and anticipation of going back to school, knowing this wouldn't be my life forever.

For how short it turns out to be, life is vast and deep.

My friend Layla from SLC came to visit us. She took these photos and sent them to me. Elizabeth is my given name.

Me and our cat Molly. Note the Xerox box propping open the window. Must have been summer.

Dave reading us poetry. Behind him is the front door, the carpet, the wood paneled walls.

More of Molly and me. Molly died in 2007.

This was our bedroom.

Valentine to the right, playing Scopa, an Italian card game, with Casey (D and I are pretty sure that's his name), at The Last Drop. We were here every day. It was our living room, it was our facebook, it was everything.

Ned behind the counter making coffees and sodas. I loved this place.

Places I've lived part 1 (and in no particular order)

22nd and Chestnut Streets, Phila., PA

This was the location of the smallest apartment I've ever lived in. It was one room with two windows and a kitchen, one closet, a door to the fire escape, one bathroom where my brother-in-law often slept in the tub, and the largest roaches I've ever seen, coming through a vent in the kitchen. We called them water bugs to make ourselves feel better about it.

Despite it's diminutive size, this place was always packed with people. We had two cats. We had Sticky rehearsal. We had dinners where Dave made roast beast in the toaster oven. We had impromptu parties with people crowding the fire escape and the bathroom. Once we woke up on our futon to find a vacant wheelchair parked casually at the foot of the bed. It was a third floor walk-up.

There are some gruesome details of my life that I associate with this apartment.

That summer I was reading Crime and Punishment. It was a a hot Philly summer and we had no AC. We slept with the fire escape door open. The place was like a prison for us and we were always glad to leave it. We were doing Sticky at Bar Noir down the block and we went there every night. They had AC, and DJ Bobby Startup who as it happens played Revival, the all ages club I used to go to in high school. He avoided Brittney Spears (as much as a pop dj can) and played The Smiths for us while we danced on tables before turning into pumpkins and stumbling home at midnight.

I'd quit working theater admin jobs and decided I wanted to be a receptionist. Access to a computer, down time to write and read, these were my basic reasons. I remember the bright sun reflecting off Dostoyevsky as I walked to work. I remember sitting at my desk and turning my head to look at the row of people behind me. I remember dread.

Valerie was still alive then. It was 2000, and she died that summer. I died my hair magenta and named my alley-found kitten Mae Avdotya after Raskolnikov's sister.

Val spent alot of time at our place. She slept in the reclining chair. She demanded we get a garbage pail, and when we didn't she bought us one herself.

She said to me: "everyone thinks you have your shit together but only I know you're a disaster."

We went to her funeral, but we were late to the funeral home because of a smash-up on the highway. We sat in the empty funeral home amidst the remnants of her life and death. Turns out she'd been prom queen.

It took me about a year to start mourning, then it took two years to stop.

Dave in the tiny apartment we crammed full of books pretending we were Jean-Paul and Simone

Me at work.

Me in the apartment.

Mae Avdotya Romanovna. She's 13 this year, and sitting by my feet right now.

A fish I found and put int he dishwasher. Photographed in my office.

The orchid on my desk.

Me and Mae after Valerie died.

The view from the futon. Closet to the left.

Valerie in the apartment.

Why should I be nervous about things?

Years ago Dave and I worked on a show with Theatre Double Rep in Philly, Dennis Moritz's Just the Boys directed by Michael Leland. The show is a great show, vibrant and sexy, really exploring what it means to be alive and obsolete in America. It's the story of a mechanic and his sexual exploits, his pals, his women, their fears. Dave played a pal, I played tech and was generally glad to be on the team. It was a pretty stellar team actually, although it morphed and changed as the show moved its course that is the winding valley of venues, dates, and chances. Sheila mar, Peter Patrikios, Shelita Birchett, Wharton Tract. The guy who played sax, Elliot, I think, had a long braid down his back and wore either a beret or a little cap. Elliot Levin could be right. Really pulled your heart right out of your chest and made it dance right in front of you, that's what this show did when it was at its best.

It was one of those shows whose lines work their way indelibly into your life. I remember so distinctly Sheila's sizzle at the beginning of the show, Michael's solid but playful direction, Wharton's real-man strength, both in spirit and in his arms, Shelita's power on stage, her stare as mesmerizing as a loaded gun, Dave's real live smile that broke with honesty every night as he played opposite the mechanic. I don't think he played opposite Peter, I think Peter was in LA or someplace and couldn't do that incarnation of the show, but when I think of the play that's who I see, that group.

In the scene, Peter and Dave are at the garage, and it goes like this (I don't know if this punctuation is mine or Dennis'):

Dave
Nervous about things?

Peter
Why should I be nervous about things?

Dave
Nervous about things.

Peter
Why, should I be nervous about thing?

Dave
Nervous... about things.

Peter
Why should I be nervous about things!

Well that's all I could think about this morning when I saw this guy sitting opposite me on the R train as I made my way to work

a new life for an old clown

I had a rough day at work yesterday, where I'd gotten a wee bit of a talking to about my lack of enthusiasm of late, so after an afternoon of trying to be more enthusiastic slash trying to appear more enthusiastic, what I really needed were a few strong drinks, dinner with Ali, and some spontaneous indie theater. I fished my wish, on all three counts.

After dinner Ali and I checked out Brass Tacks Theater Collective's Script Tease upstairs at 61 Local in Carroll Gardens. The plays were short, interesting, actors flying by the seat of their collective pants, off book and with only an hour or so of rehearsal. Amina Henry's Government Cheese reminded me of my 20's in the Lower East Side, with too many bills and too many bugs; Matt Barbot's Boldy Go, a sci-fi romance on the precipice of off-world disaster was both charming and what I'd like to see more of in theater; and Daniel Kelly's The Ninth Life of Suzanne McKinley with Brandon Jones and Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld started off as just another relationship talk before taking a very sharp left turn into the realm of the absolutely enthralling, with overtones of Heathers and Clay McLeod Chapman.

I'd say those were my favorites. Except my play was my favorite. Wildfire at the Billings Logan International Airport was the first play I'd written meant to be performed by Ali and I, which was in 2007 or so, directed by the one and only Jason Podplesky. The characters are even named Libby and Ali. When I write for myself I write myself as a clown, someone with absurd assumptions and paranoias, someone who always thinks the plane is about to crash, the train is heading for the death camp, the food is poisoned, and everyone hates me. I set Ali up as the straight man, keeping the Libby character on track and in check to the best of her ability.

To say that we were excited to watch Mimian Morales and Samantha Cooper try us on for the night would be an understatement; we were stoked, and perchance a wee bit tipsy.

Barrie Gelles was directing, and before the show she came up to warn us that they might've taken the play in the direction of the absurdly funny, pushing our characters to their outer limits, and she didn't want us to think this was how she really viewed us. We assured her not to worry, we would not be offended; between the two of us in fact we are about impossible to offend.

We near died laughing. It may be that people don't view us that way, as a paranoid clown and a hyper-critical lush, but it's how we view ourselves, and Barrie and Brass Tacks nailed it.

the origins of 'wildfire at the billings logan international airport'

Ali and I went to Montana for a wedding. Dave was supposed to come, but he was doing a show with Michael Domitrovich at 59E59, so I brought Ali instead.

We flew into Billings. And from beginning to end, it was probably the most time we'd ever spent sort of alone together, and it's not like we were super friends. flying across the country to Billings, Montana, for five days at a mutual friend Stacy Rock's wedding.

We went to the airport bar at the Billings Logan International Airport could even remotely be considered international? Also the bartender didn't know how to make a vodka/soda. Eventually Randall showed up, and we headed out in the notorious Rock Force 1 van into the far reaches of Northeast Montana, through the badlands, to Fort Peck, Stacy's home town.

It was a beautiful drive, if you have a thing for the desolate American landscape, like me, although I must admit I had a mild case of nerves when cell phone reception died for what seemed to be several hundred miles of scenery that belonged more to the Moon than planet Earth.

We stayed in some cabins across the street from a little dive bar where I took the time to teach the bartender just how to make a vodka/soda, while she insisted I just have a shot and a beer. We Cate Bottiglione for the first time, we watched the groom's brother sing the most sincere karaoke I'd ever seen. So sincere was he in fact (and a good singer) that Ali had to convince me it was not ironic.

The wedding weekend was loads of fun, and eventually I gave up and had shots, although I forwent the beers. Stacy's Dad Roger Rock drove us back to Billings. Since he's a writer too we talked about plays and art and words, and shared a meal at Denny's with some Miller High Life before he dropped us at our hotel.

I was horrified to realize that our room had no mini-bar (wtf Marriott, for reals), and while we were ready to venture out in search of a liquor store, the packs of men roving the streets outside our hotel with nary a woman in sight led us to abandon the plan.

We took a cab to the airport the next day, and as we hopped in we wished Billings well, saying: bye bye Billings! It's been okay!

I wrote a play about it. It's called Wildfire at the Billings Logan International Airport. And it's happening tomorrow night at Script Tease, in Brooklyn.

Mary

I wrote this to be part of a collaborative writing project with Polybe + Seats, for their show Alice or the Scottish Gravediggers. It was a great piece to work on, and in the early stages I even got to butcher a duck as part of a recreation of a Renaissance Anatomy Lesson. 

In the story (and in real life), Mary was abducted by a guy named Burke and his accomplices, killed, and sold to a medical student for purposes of dissection. This is how students and doctors learned the inner workings of the human form.

Mary was played by Elaine O'Brien.

"Mary Patterson"

MARY

(with a big, conspiratorial smile)

I'm Mary.

(and a big eyed laugh)

I'm dead.

(and a wave of the hand, pshaw)

They try to romanticize it, but really dead is dead. At least I know where all my parts is now, they all got pointed out, each one. Them doctors, they knew where to find everything, though I reckon a few things surprised them.

(enjoying this)

The way the nudged each other to look, little tiny passages filled with blood spreading like spider webs out into my hands. Old Mary's still got something to show the world, even laid out cold and dead on a laboratory table. Whichever way you look at it I was dissected.

(don't feel bad, here's an upside)

That's how I come to know all my parts.

(pointing out each one, maybe pulling aside her gown to show them flapping out of her)

Here behind my ribs is my heart. Lungs here and here. Stomach, containing the last bit of food I ate that fateful day. Some says I'd had a whiskey breakfast, and in truth I may have, but the details are all a bit muddy.

(emphatically)

Either I was killed or someone else was.

(I'm smart! Pointing them out.)

Brains.

(long coils of intestine spilling out, does she let them spill or try to contain them?)

Down here we have a small intestine, and over here's a bigger one!

(in my defense)

I'm not the only one as has two, turns out most people is built the same as I am.

(see that you pretentious arrogant fucks?)

Me Mary Patterson is built the same as any of you, so when you go around thinking up all the ways you're better than me, you just remember we's the same on the inside. You an me an every other lonely heart as ever lived.

Truth is nobody really knows about me save for I'm the same as alot of other girls. I might not be Mary Patterson, I might be Mary Mitchell for all I know, hardly matters which one.

(defiantly)

I'm either me or someone else very much like me.

(a little coy, a little proud)

Maybe I had a bit more spirit, a bit more daring, a bit more whiskey. Maybe I'm guilty of selling my body, but I'm not the only one, and them others got a much better price for it than I did. I only sold a little piece here and there, never occurred to me to sell the whole damn thing! But them doctors, they're smart ones, they are, putting the chance to learn something real and true above everything else. I admire a man knows his priorities, always have.

(laughs at her own joke)

My story's the same story as the story of other spirited girls lost their souls to them we called grave robbers. We all had life one time or another, and in the end we all of us got by one way or another without it.

A Raisin in the Salad

Tonight I went to see A Raisin in the Salad. It was a reading, in support of The Fire This Time Festival, which if you've been following along, you know I already think pretty highly of.

Here's a few thoughts I had:

Actors are brave.

Kevin R. Free is brave. He wrote this play that starts out with alot of big laughs. I mean it's called A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People; that's already funny. I was watching it wondering if my laughing at certain parts and not others made me a stereotypical white person or a white person who was in on the joke or perhaps just thought I was in on the joke.

I decided, during intermission, when some stereotypical white intellectual feminists (yes, that is a stereotype, one which probably applies to me) who were sitting behind me starting talking theory, that everyone is annoying anyway so I would just not worry about where I fit, or didn't fit, or wanted to fit. But by the time intermission rolled around, I was already a little bit in awe of this writer, who had the fucking nerve to come out here and play a character based on a fictionalized version of himself only to finally abandon the character and be exactly who he actually is, right there in front of everyone, with his own words in his mouth. This artist was standing there engaging with his art and creating it right there in front of us. That's pretty fucking brave.

This isn't a review, but since I'm talking about the play, let me just mention that the actors gave it. They went for it, and they went hard. Christopher Burris, the director, who you know I already adore,  directed and performed the role of Blackboy, and he fucking killed it on both counts. Tracey Conyer Lee and Samantha Debicki were devastating as Blackgirl and Whitegirl, respectively, and Christopher Burke and Sarah Thigpen were more than a little off-putting as Whiteboy and Whitelady, which I think was at least part of the idea, and it honestly took me a minute to be sure that Pun Bandhu was doing the script as written and not just riffing from his own consciousness about the straight-up lack of Asian talent on American stages.*

But what I really want to talk about is Kevin R. Free. Kevin R. Free wrote a play. Just when I thought, out there in the audience, that I had the hang of this play, that I knew what was happening, he changed the rules. At a certain point I realized that the rules were not rules, the rules were Kevin, just like that one Star Trek episode on the holodeck (Warf and Alexander and Troi are stuck in a Western, you know the one) where everyone turns into Data. In this play everyone turns into Kevin.

KRF recreates the creative process and then lives it out. Why do I have to live within the boundaries of your definitions? He asks. Why can't I just be who I am? But then he rewrites all the definitions and suddenly you belong in his dictionary instead of the other way around.

I don't want to be in any dictionary, not even Kevin's, and the clarity of that feeling made me realize that I'd been in on the joke all along, and maybe it's not even funny after all-- it's as serious as it gets.


*Can we please just cast more Asian people? I mean it's enough already. Pun Bandhu, who played the Special Guest Announcer, brought this again to my attention.

Casting white people in all the roles isn't just blank, it's white. You can really cast anyone as anything. If a role doesn't specify an ethnicity that doesn't mean it's white. You can cast non-white actors in roles that don't even have anything to do with being non-white.