Reflections during the pandemic
“People are dying,” was the line. I was in a featured role as a sophomore in college. My freshman year had been spent filled with anguish and a searing drive to be the lead. But I was a chubby girl with a knowing smile and funky accent from the UK. My only parts had been Servant #1 (or was it Servant# 2?) and as such, I was considered a bit of a joke in the theater department. Even so, at the end of freshman year, the acting society did bestow an award upon me. Best Actress in a Little, Little, Little, little role.
Happily, I was too young to see the irony, because my energies that year were devoted to being accepted as one of the gang. To that end, I smoked pot for the first time, blacked out for the first time, was date raped for the first time and slept through the first semester’s required courses. I was seventeen, out of my depth and completely bewildered.
When I returned for my sophomore year, I was now accustomed to sleeping with men, usually older, who harbored no ill will, but certainly didn’t love me. I had smoked enough pot, to now do so with a bit of swagger. Now, I only blacked out on occasion, as opposed to early and often.
The big show fall semester was William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life. Set in a saloon, with a wandering cast of characters, and only four parts for women. Kitty the prostitute, Elise Mandelspiegel who was a nurse and two others. Of course, Kitty the prostitute was the prize. But I was cast as Elsie, the nurse.
The set up for Elsie is that a young man spends most of the show fretting over his love for her, calling her on the phone, talking about her to anyone who will listen. The young man, Dudley, LOVES Elsie. Finally, toward the end of the show, she makes her appearance.
My costume was beautiful. A platinum wig, honey colored suit with chocolate velvet cuffs and collar, fabulous black pumps, exquisite and true to period.
But with my weak profile and chubby chipmunk cheeks, the way I saw myself was, always, as awkward. Everything in proportion, but just not the proportion I desired.
The girl who played Kitty was a freshman. Whippet thin and transcendent as an actor. I’d have given anything to be like her. She played with understatement and ease opposite the senior who was the school’s- take your pick- Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis- it doesn’t matter. He was the leading man, and together, they were terrific on stage. The only thing he and I did together was to get high and have sex in the attic of the house where I lived.
Back to Elsie. “People are dying,” she says… What on earth did that mean? I would look in the mirror and say it. Over and over. I said it during rehearsal. I said it in the cafeteria…. I had absolutely no understanding of why this woman said this to the boy when she finally arrived at the bar in the third act, looking like a vision.
It’s nearly 40 years later. These last months, nurses all over the world, have sat opposite those who love them, and there is always, at least, one thing to say. “People are dying.”
Religious language and ideas, rebirth from dust and ashes or metaphors with hands and time and sand and water become worn out, yet remain comforting, like old sweaters we wear during our brief moments together on earth. So much is lost in those seconds that some of us squander, not knowing what to do with the short time we’re here, insensible to our semi comatose forays, spent eating, fucking, hurting ourselves and each other.
“People are dying.”
“Do you like acting?” The director of the Saroyan play asked me. He was was also my drama teacher that semester. At the time, acting was the only thing I did like. I liked nothing else. Other than eating and sex. I still think of that teacher often. That semester, I had gotten my act together. I made all ‘A’s, with the exception of my Acting class. In Acting, I was given a ‘C’.
It takes some of us a very long time to get the crap in our path out of the way. Even while people are dying. And life is so very short. The 50,000 who’ve died in this country within the space of a few weeks bring to mind the Rapture, or the incomprehensible loss of the 100,000 who were swept away in the tsunami a decade ago. Now, since first writing this, the covid deaths in the U.S. have grown to 68,000.
Up until a few years ago, I carried a sorrow so profound, that all I could see around me was hopelessness and despair.I had failed to be the cool cat, the brainiac, the pretty girl, the jaded partier. I had watched my peers all being those people, and I was never one of them. I’d enter into their midst, and throw myself into seeming thus, but it was rarely convincing, and those who bought the act baffled me, either by their seeming acceptance of my absurd efforts, or because of their disdain for those same efforts which I had worked so hard to achieve. How could they not see that whatever I was doing to myself, was in a desperate act to conceal how far away I felt from those around me? Because at the time, I did not understand, that people are dying, and that life is too short — to be tormented by what we perceive as other people’s criteria.
Before I was twenty, I was sure I’d be dead by thirty. By the time I was thirty, I had no idea how I’d live through being 40….and every time I’ve been in love, the resounding truth that the shadows and cobwebs which I’ve struggled with -using copious amounts of food, sex and alcohol -will always be there, regardless of what tastes or feels good. Loneliness or isolation, is in fact, my natural state. But, much to my surprise, I’ve lasted long enough to see my 56th year. I’ve even felt accepted by a group (and I’m not ashamed to say it’s AARP).
Long ago, my parents hoped I’d turn out to be a genius. They invested a great deal into kidding themselves that things might turn out that way. But instead, I had the good fortune that things just turned out. People are dying, but I am still here. Life is too short to worry about fitting in, seeming cool, being the next great thing or even a genius. Those who love us, who truly love us, ask only that we be our best selves. The other stuff is immaterial. Servant #1, Kitty the prostitute or Elsie the nurse, each of those women were, somewhere, alive. If only in the mind of the writer. It doesn’t matter whether your role is a little, little, little one. The important thing is that you play it. Who knows where we’ll all end up? Because people are dying. If we’re lucky, we’ll live to see the next decade or two or three, and to recognize that life is short and precious, even in those times we feel alone and apart from those we most desire.
Because, chances are, those feelings will shift and change. Feelings often do. Mine have. Ask any of my friends. A lot of them became members of AARP, too.
