Things have been strange lately regarding someone from my
past. It’s not someone I had a deep involvement with. Friendly acquaintance and
school mate would be more apt terms. I met him when I was 18 and new to the
city. Then again, he was 18 and new to the city as well. We were starting first
years at NYU.
The whole place seemed weird. This had always been a dream
of mine, to study acting in New York. Here I was at the studio I had always
dreamed of too. The doors were glass and the place smelled as if there were
hopes and tears of aspiring theatre students in the floors of each room engrained
in the wood. I still remember meeting him, and how he just had these piercing,
dark, mysterious, eyes. In a way they scared the hell out of me, probably
because deep down I feared I was some sort of phony and the university had let
me in by mistake. Years later, I would find out I suffered from what is known
as Imposter Syndrome.
The fellow with the piercing, dark, mysterious piercing eyes
seemed confident in a way I wasn’t. He knew himself in a way I didn’t. I had to
convince everyone of everything, including myself. He didn’t have that problem.
Maybe it was confidence. Maybe it was life was easy for him and he was blessed
that way. Maybe it’s a man thing, part of being on the upper end of the
paradigm where they are born without the self-doubt women are gnawed and
plagued with on a daily basis.
There was a light about him, and he shined first year. He wasn’t
like the others who shined first year that would later burn out on acting never
to pick up a play let alone enter a theatre again. I had a feeling the whole
theatre thing would be good to him. Life would be good to him. Again, he was
blessed and lucky that way. Maybe the piercing, dark, mysterious eyes had
magical powers unbeknownst to me.
I wasn’t so lucky or so blessed. I wasn’t born with his
natural charisma or charm. First year was a nightmare for me as New York
handled me like a misbehaved puppy dog. Over and over, the city that was
supposed to make me a star was taking my dreams and puking them up on my over
made up face, monochromatic wardrobe, and uneven fake eyelashes. Each day, I
oscillated between anxiety attacks where speech was hard to depression so
terrible I could cut myself. I never did cut myself, I was too chicken.
I wasn’t like the people around me, so arty and attempting
to be different they were asinine balls of conformity. I hadn’t gone to prep
school or boarding school. I wasn’t a slut, I wasn’t a prude. I felt the
existential Esther Greenwood crisis, somewhat self-centered yet universal as I
struggled to forge an identity away from my parents and hometown. Not to
mention I loved puppets and still do. Most thought they were weird or laughed them
off. The one with the piercing, dark, mysterious eyes thought they were neat.
It was during one of the few times I had the guts to speak to him my first
year. It was one of the few times I had the guts to connect to another human
being. One of the few times I didn’t take the emotional cowards way out and
escape.
After my first year I ended up leaving the studio I was in.
The place was unbearable for me. It emphasized imagination. They said they
welcomed art and original thought. I found real quick that was a lie. My
teachers were failed actors for the most part, bitter they had to teach and
took it out on their students whenever they could. I especially found I was
unhappy, putting myself on diet after diet to quell the pain I felt from being
stifled.
More often than not, I butted heads with my teachers. My
imagination wasn’t grounded in reality, translated, they wanted a boring
choice. Boring like themselves. Boring like the dreams they still had about the
careers that never materialized. My choices had no truth they said. Neither did
the boring choices of the sheep who blindly followed them, nor did the choices
of the dippy girls and pretty boys they favored.
One teacher in particular made my life hell, Ariadne. A
frustrated, tired, worn out shell of a woman, she looked like Meryl Streep if
Meryl Streep had a crack baby clone. Ariadne, named after the Greek Goddess by
her theatre critic father, had the talent to make it but didn’t have the guts
to take it. Then again, most bullies never do. Ariadne Schwartz had studied
with our blessed mother petagauge before her passing years ago and had been a
prized student. From day one, Ariadne had an axe to grind with me. She informed
me I had no imagination whatsoever, and no sense of craft. Over and over again,
we did these stupid exercises, and in return for her insulting me I would roll
my eyes and make it obvious I was tuning her out.
Ariadne was eager to see me kicked out of the studio for
some odd reason. I had done nothing to the woman except exist. In any case, she
would go to the head of student affairs and claim I wasn’t listening to her
which was a complete lie. She wanted to terrorize me, and did so because she
was in a position of power. Most of the time, my choices were original and she couldn’t
stand that. I had more of an imagination that she did.
“You have no future
onstage.” She said to me calmly during the conference we had at the midterm. I
felt crushed. This was my dream. I just cried. Her bug eyes fixed on me, as if
she defeated the plant named Audrey and now bug girl could reign supreme.
Ariadne looked satisfied that my soul and spirit were
successfully crushed. I was looking at leaving New York, and my parents
suggested I maybe switch life goals. Deep in my heart I knew this was right.
Someone at Tisch suggested Lee Strasberg and off I went. I went to a place
where the teachers loved to teach, and the learning environment was
healthy. My refuge was an artistic home
where the Method made sense, and our teachers didn’t trash talk other
techniques. No one such as Ariadne would have been allowed on faculty at
Strasberg. Since Ariadne, I have gone on to perform comedy and have been on
national television several times. I also write and star in my own work. The
best she ever did was no pay theatre work here in the city.
Who has no future on the stage now, bitch?
Either way, when I left that studio, I left the boy with the
piercing, dark, mysterious eyes. He became a face filed in a part of my life I
wanted to forget as things steadily got better for me. Slowly, the wardrobe saw
more colors. The lipstick became less loud, and the fake eyelashes became a
thing of the past. So did any thoughts of the comrades from my old studio.
I would see friends from that place, and we would still be friends
of course. Inside, they brought back memories of something I sought to forget. Sometimes
I would feel anger about what I had experienced the year before. Other times, I
would get this sense that they were mad I left, and that in some ways I had
left a cult. Then again, that particular studio was a religious compound in a
sense. You were either one of them, or you were not. They were intolerant of
other forms of the Method and other techniques. I was at Lee Strasberg, the
evil empire. It was time they condescend or completely ignore me.
I didn’t have that experience with the boy possessing those piercing,
dark, mysterious eyes. He always waved when he saw me, not forming an opinion
as to why I stayed or went. Unlike many busybodies, he seemed to have a life. I
saw him twice really to be fair, once he was playing guitar with an
upperclassman in a hole in the wall joint in Chinatown. They looked like the
young Beatles. I was set for perform with May Wilson, and I looked like some
tranny had kidnapped me and did my wardrobe. They came and left and I went on
two acts afterward.
Then I saw him again at some party where I was relatively
drunk. The poison helped calm the nerves that were still ever present in my
young body. I said something to piss him off, I know that much. It was
pertaining to a theatre company a classmate of mine started. Feminist voiced,
they put on weepy pieces where everyone was raped in some way, shape, or form. “There
was a lot of rape going on, and I didn’t have time for it,” I stated. He didn’t
find it funny. I only know this because someone told me later what transpired.
Third year we had an academic class together. He still had
those piercing, dark, mysterious eyes. The hair was a mix of a young Beatle
still but now with a smatter of aspiring Beatnik. There were a lot of folks
from my old studio there. I felt weary to and from class, feeling a ripping in
my stomach. It was the same gut wrenching kick I felt whenever I walked through
the glass doors of the hell I had tried to escape from. Sometimes in my mind I
felt them judging me as inferior. Like the haunts in Harry Potter, I always
tried to run from them after class had dismissed.
I judged them too. After all, I felt it only fair and
justified. Sure, my life was working out, but they reminded me of everything
that had gone wrong that first year. As the semester went on, I found I was
actually quite hard on them, and they were not evil at all. That time in my
life wasn’t happy, and I found it easier to vilify them than to let go of the
resentment I felt, and let them symbolize a place that had wronged me.
Actually, they turned out to be imaginative, fun, and engaging. The one with
the piercing, dark, mysterious eyes turned out to be the most insightful and he
also had a wicked sense of humor. Thus we became friendly once more.
One day, through idle chatter I found they had elected to
leave the studio I had escaped from. At NYU, two years of primary training is
done, and then one elects to do advanced training. I had broken the mold after
being put on probation by my primary training studio, and thus the first year
counted as part of my advanced training. My two years at Strasberg, however,
were more artistically and academically successful. As we talked, the group
revealed that they had the same thoughts I did about the studio I left. They
felt it was a mecca for maladjusted, frustrated actors who were afraid of the
industry that were now teaching, and frankly were angry about it. Some of them
even told me they admired my courage to jump ship when I did. The young man
with the piercing, dark, mysterious eyes was most vocal.
Through the conversation, he mentioned he was doing
Experimental Theatre Transfer Track and he was much happier. Then his eyes lit
up, yes those piercing, dark, mysterious eyes, as he mentioned possibly
studying abroad. I found myself comfortable, as if I were relaxed among a group
of peers. That part of my life suddenly didn’t hurt as much. I didn’t want it
to, and it didn’t have to.
Life was crazy in other ways, still. The gnawing anxiety and
feeling of never being enough still ate at me. Most of the time, although it
was only once a week as opposed to every second of every day, I still felt like
an imposter. While school was better than it had ever been, my life choices
dictated that I didn’t like myself so much. I was in a so called “adult”
relationship that progressed to the level of dysfunction of a bodybuilder on
steroids. Slowly, I isolated from my friends and school became harder and
harder. Yet somehow, I still maintained A’s for the most part. Needless to say,
as the quicksand of that craziness pulled me down, the boy with the piercing,
dark, mysterious eyes was just a member of the chorus in the operetta on my
stage.
For the rest of college we didn’t cross paths. We graduated,
and the continued gnawing anxiety and feeling of being an imposter cause the
bottom to fall out in my life in ways I never imagined. School became an
idyllic memory as the nightmare of the reality I had tumbled into smacked me in
the face. Things got worse, and I almost made it my business to forget the past
and the people in it, good or bad. I didn’t want to be judged, and feared they
would do that. On the other hand, I was behaving so terribly perhaps I deserved
a little ridicule.
I did see him once, and I was having a day. Running, I had
spilled coffee on myself and he waved. That was the beginning and the end of
our encounter. I don’t know whether or not he took note, or if he reported to
the sources at the camp I was a bigger disaster than ever. I doubt it. I think
the hello was just a hello.
As I struggled to climb out of the grave I had dug for
myself, combination of bad decisions and low self-worth, I saw him on the front
of a magazine. He was in a show. Yes, I knew them, those piercing, dark,
mysterious eyes. There was a part of me that envied him, and how things had
always come so easily. Then there was a part of me that downright hated him,
because his life was so good and my life had become such a struggle. Yet there
was a part of me that wished I had his ease, the one someone has when their
self-worth is at a healthy level. Yes, the ease that men have more than women.
I was also happy for him. He was truly talented. I could say I knew him when
and happily grovel like a peasant.
Life continued to treat my friend with the piercing, dark,
mysterious eyes kindly. We spoke once, and he was in another successful show.
It was a fun, cute, but rather short conversation. I couldn’t tell whether he
wanted to talk to me or was eager to lose me. Later that day, I would deliver a
Hershey Kiss singing telegram proposal to a bride. In my adventure I would risk
getting struck by lighting. This would help spark the inspiration for my book.
Life would continue to get better for me. Maybe one day I would join the party
that he was at.
We both popped up in each other’s news feed from time to
time online. Other than that, our paths never crossed. Once again, in my life
he became an afterthought as those who are out of sight, out of mind typically
do. Recently though, things have gotten a tad strange if you will.
For the past several weeks I have been threadbare, what else
is new? Before bed, I went on facebook one more time. Apparently Mr. Piercing,
Dark, Mysterious Eyes is in a new play and seems to be doing well like he
always is. Never a hard day in his life. Not that I wish that on anyone, and
maybe I just see ease and no struggle because I want to play the eternal,
professional victim. Either way, then I went to bed.
Well the piercing, dark, mysterious eyes appeared in my
dreams. Except in my dream, he was my boyfriend! WTF!!!!????!!?!?!? He wasn’t even
my type. For one, he has goals that he fulfills, and has never been to jail or
drug treatment even once. There was no way someone like that would ever want me
for real. Of course this was a dream. I had never been into him like that
either. He was just a classmate. This was so bizarre. The Sandman was up to
something and I didn’t know what.
Yet he was the best boyfriend ever in the dream. He didn’t have
a criminal record or drug problem, and he still wanted me. Not to mention he
was a good boyfriend: patient, kind, caring, and I trusted him. This never
happens with the dudes I date. At the same time, he was a complete guy and didn’t
let me push him around. We laughed and had a good time, and had mad, passionate
sex. Yes, I looked into those piercing, dark, mysterious eyes. No, I didn’t feel
tempted to cheat or to ask for an open relationship. No, I wasn’t my typical I
will be mean and nasty the second you are nice to me self.
Then I woke up. Shit.
Wondering what the hell had inspired what went on, I went to
his facebook page. Life was good to him as I suspected, no rough patches in his
extensive feed. I was happy for him. Still, why was I dreaming about a dude I
had never previously been attracted to? I had had rough, raunchy, jungle dream
sex with an old school mate that I was acquainted with at best. Granted, the
dream sex had been sweet but still…..This was risky dream behavior. He did buy
me dinner in the dream, though.
I also saw he was dating a gorgeous, leggy Argentinian
model. There was no way he was lusting or holding a torch for me when he could
go home to that. I didn’t expect him to be. We hadn’t spoken in years. Still, I
had sex with her man in my dream. Did that make me a dream wrecker? Dear God
this was a mess. Piercing, dark, mysterious eyes could have his perfect luck,
his perfect life, and his perfect looking lay. I had errands to run, and I had
to shake off this dream before it occupied the rest of my day.
I told myself I had manufactured this because the winter had
been hard, and the summer had been sent bingeing on work, wearing the career
like a full body tattoo instead of a loose garment. As of late, my career was
in freefall and I was on thin ice with my boss. Of course I needed an escape. I
also told myself it would never work. He’s an actor, a man who says someone
else’s lines. He’s a guitar player, a real suavecito. He’s a DJ, need I say
more? Not to mention he is a Capricorn, a true ram in the china closet and
wants to be in charge all the time. His perfect life and perfect luck would get
under my skin. I would resent Lady Luck’s constant favor in his direction. I
would give him all the bad days he never had. Maybe he has had some, but I
would just give him more because I could. And when he was kind to me, I would
rebel. I would eat him alive, ha!
After my errands, I stuck some new photos and videos online.
My usual people commented and messaged me telling me they liked Mortimer, my
new blue monster in the closet puppet pal. However, I got one new message. It
was someone from my past. Someone I hadn’t thought of for some time really
until my dream last night. It was someone who’s passionate albeit imaginary
kiss I felt deep on my lips and deep into my core. Yes, the guy with the
piercing, dark, mysterious eyes. My jaw dropped open in complete shock.
I called my mom to tell her about my dream fling. E Harmony
had expired and this was the best I was doing at the moment. My mother agreed,
this was indeed freaky. It was almost as if he had read each other’s energy
streams. Either way, this was easily a “holy shit” moment.
Maybe this was the beginning of some crazy love triangle I
would end up entangled in, one that would end in murder/suicide. Maybe this was
just be being lonely and pathetic, knowing in my heart I would be too awkward and
shy to pursue him for real. Or maybe the universe is gently reminding me that
while enemies come out of the woodwork, so do friends, new and old.
Also, perhaps it was an amends to myself for the
mini-nervous breakdown I have experienced this past month. It’s a reminder to
be gentle to myself, I am only human. The fact I push myself is my best and
worst quality. People might love me or hate me. I can only do my best. If that
isn’t good enough they can eat shit and die. My imagination is my gift. If only
it could clean my socks.
When I sleep, maybe Mr. Piercing, Dark, Mysterious Eyes and
I can have more hot, steamy, imaginary sex.
If he reads this blog, I think I might die. Hopefully, he won’t read this blog, because he might get a hot, steamy, real life restraining order. “Officer, security, I am
telling you, it was only a dream.”
Then again, actors aren't the biggest eggheads let alone readers. So he probably won't see it, after all, he has the Argentinian model......
www.aprilbrucker.com
