Hall of Mirrors, Part III
(Continued from yesterday)
My brother, four years ahead of me in school, had established himself as an actor of note in the drama productions there. Eager to see if I could follow in his footsteps, I got a small nonspeaking part in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a seventeenth-century comedy. Tights, doublets, and frilly shirts were the order of the day. My monastery school had such arcane costumes on hand in bulk, much the way other schools might have been ready at the drop of a hat to outfit a production of Guys and Dolls or The Man Who Came to Dinner. My costume included a pair of puffy sharkskin shorts that looked like a lady’s shower cap adorning my loins.
Along with a handful of other seventh-graders, I played one of the villagers, who hung in the background of scenes murmuring, stiffly nodding assent or scowling disapproval. At late-afternoon rehearsals, as the main actors worked on their blocking or polished their dialogue, there were long stretches when we extras weren’t required. I sat in the audience watching the older boys -- sixteen and seventeen years old -- crossing the stage with shirttails loose and ties undone, a select few with a suggestion of actual five-o’clock shadows.
As the little brother of one of the stars, I was fondly teased and nicknamed and paid attention to in a way my classmates weren’t. Sometimes, when I felt a hand on my back or caught a grin tossed from the wings to my seat in the fifth row, I dreamed affection into devotion. I imagined myself being welcomed, before my time, into a masculine sub-world of deepening voices, unself-conscious strides, headlong laughter that would hold me in its net, catch me when I fell.
My brother had the one drag role in the play. Fake-breasted and falsetto-voiced, he was the nagging Grocer’s Wife, who brought the house down whenever he opened his mouth. I couldn’t believe how unabashedly he took on the part. The type of thing I barely dared in private -- tying my longish hair into a ponytail with a scarf, licking my lips in front of the bathroom mirror until I achieved a sparkling lip-gloss effect -- he was being allowed, and allowing himself, through weeks of rehearsals and three performances (in front of our parents.)
I was torn between envy of his sojourn in skirts and relief that the same thing freed me to simply be one of the guys -- a task seductive in itself when membership entailed standing in whispering clutches in the dark of the wings, waiting for the burning lights and the cue to go on.
(To be continued.)
My brother, four years ahead of me in school, had established himself as an actor of note in the drama productions there. Eager to see if I could follow in his footsteps, I got a small nonspeaking part in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a seventeenth-century comedy. Tights, doublets, and frilly shirts were the order of the day. My monastery school had such arcane costumes on hand in bulk, much the way other schools might have been ready at the drop of a hat to outfit a production of Guys and Dolls or The Man Who Came to Dinner. My costume included a pair of puffy sharkskin shorts that looked like a lady’s shower cap adorning my loins.
Along with a handful of other seventh-graders, I played one of the villagers, who hung in the background of scenes murmuring, stiffly nodding assent or scowling disapproval. At late-afternoon rehearsals, as the main actors worked on their blocking or polished their dialogue, there were long stretches when we extras weren’t required. I sat in the audience watching the older boys -- sixteen and seventeen years old -- crossing the stage with shirttails loose and ties undone, a select few with a suggestion of actual five-o’clock shadows.
As the little brother of one of the stars, I was fondly teased and nicknamed and paid attention to in a way my classmates weren’t. Sometimes, when I felt a hand on my back or caught a grin tossed from the wings to my seat in the fifth row, I dreamed affection into devotion. I imagined myself being welcomed, before my time, into a masculine sub-world of deepening voices, unself-conscious strides, headlong laughter that would hold me in its net, catch me when I fell.
My brother had the one drag role in the play. Fake-breasted and falsetto-voiced, he was the nagging Grocer’s Wife, who brought the house down whenever he opened his mouth. I couldn’t believe how unabashedly he took on the part. The type of thing I barely dared in private -- tying my longish hair into a ponytail with a scarf, licking my lips in front of the bathroom mirror until I achieved a sparkling lip-gloss effect -- he was being allowed, and allowing himself, through weeks of rehearsals and three performances (in front of our parents.)
I was torn between envy of his sojourn in skirts and relief that the same thing freed me to simply be one of the guys -- a task seductive in itself when membership entailed standing in whispering clutches in the dark of the wings, waiting for the burning lights and the cue to go on.
(To be continued.)
posted by Billy at 12:25 AM
1 Comments:
"pair of puffy sharkskin shorts that looked like a lady’s shower cap adorning my loins" - i think you should resurrect this look. it would be very edgy.
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