Beauty

Standing on a windy street corner with my friend Kate waiting for the bus HOWLING with laughter about a show we were in together (James Agee’s Death in the Family) – we never get tired of babbling about that show (which was a wonderful show, by the way). But something about it – the characters who were IN the show with us, the experience itself … We had SO MUCH FUN doing it. That show is when we became friends … and for whatever reason, we just strolled down memory lane tonight, and HOWLED over some of the remembered moments … which I will now list. They will be like a secret code to everyone but Kate and Sheila:

“Martha … your dress ssstinks.”

“How old?” “College.” “Thank you!”

“If I hahahahaha could see the wo-orld …”

“Mama cita, mama cita mama cita …”

“I love my dead gay costume.”

Kate reminded me of another moment when I referred to my own breasts as “udders”, and also a moment when I glanced in the dressing room mirror, took in my reflection, and said, “Huh. I’m having a fat day. I thought I was having a thin day, but now it is clear I am actually having a fat day.”

Another vivid memory: Martha having a loose thread sticking out of her costume and Stephen BITING it off.

Kate and I had to wear long heavy turn of the century dresses, and yet we both had short boyish haircuts. We looked kind of ridiculous. We totally should have been given wigs. As it was, we looked like two lesbian schoolteachers on the prairie, as opposed to two proper Victorian-era Catholic ladies.

Our dressing room was in a dank SMELLY basement. The cast was a bunch of witty lovable people, all with their own gifts, their own quirks … That cast bonded in a way I’ve never really experienced before. We became family. Just like the title of the show (and book) says. We were family.

Why all of this is so RIOTOUS to us is … well … maybe because it was the birth of our friendship, and so everything still seems so vivid and powerful.