Unforgettable

I was 22 when she kissed me for the first, and last, time. She was 39, maybe 40, gorgeous, a total stranger. 

This is a true story. 

I had just graduated college with a theatre degree and was spending six weeks at a prominent professional theatre which had a summer acting conservatory. (Folks, I could not GET enough theatre.) So each day I would drive most of an hour, don my tights and recite Shakespeare sonnets in the tiny black box theatre or from the rolling grass hillocks outside the complex.

One day a staffer I had never seen before poked her head in the rehearsal room and called me out of class. Twenty heads went up to watch me go. I did not know what was happening. A death in the family? Egads, and me in tights? 

She explained that actors were auditioning down on the mainstage for the upcoming season's Chekhov play and the guy who normally "read" scenes with the actors was unavailable, so Martin suggested they use me.

Martin.

He was one of the two co-founders of this famous theatre, and the year before he had actually come to my college a few miles up the road to direct us in a classic piece of Irish drama. Our professor and he were old pals. I played a great part, and got to work with this esteemed professional director.

He kicked our butts. Our young ivory tower-dwelling butts. 

"I didn't believe you. Start over" was something I had never heard before from a director. He made us better. Exponentially better. See above: butt-kicking.

"You're a good actor, George" he said to me once. I was 21, and coming from him, it was heady stuff. That sentence continued with a "but..." but there is no need to elaborate. You and I are busy people, dear reader.

So a year later in Martin's own theater, he had tapped me to help with auditions, something he knew I could learn from, something I would appreciate. Let's be clear—I wasn't auditioning for this professional show, just reading scenes with the "real" actors. 

I played a young man my own age. I acted one scene with ingenues my own age, vivacious and gushing. And I played another scene with middle-aged actresses, auditioning for the part of my mother.

That's when she walked in. I'll call her Emery. Emery Eldridge. Her name was all alliteration, and her long, wavy blonde hair framed a Hollywood-perfect face, which is why I never forgot either. 

It was a scene in which my hand is injured, and the mother is doting, cooing and leaning close and being over-attentive. I had played the scene a few times already. It was a little disturbing, kind of incestuous. Then Emery took it up a notch. She fawned on me, caressed my hand, then leaned in and kissed me right on the lips. Mama!

I was not expecting that.

The director was not expecting that.

I have to think she got the part right on the spot.

See, auditioning requires a different set of techniques than performing the final product. One key goal of an audition, when you are up against so many other talented, beautiful people, is to be memorable. You may do things in an audition you would never do in performance, just for effect. 

Emery had an effect.

My first thought was oh wow, I am getting kissed. She is kissing me. She is effing kissing me right here! This is a good kiss. 

My second thought was, oh crap, she's blocking my script. Do I have the next line? 

I hated to break the moment, but I wanted to be a pro. Didn't want to miss a cue. So I found my place and we finished the scene.

There was small talk between her and the director, the other founder of the theatre, who I had never met before. Another heady moment. Then I did it. I waited for a lull and then went for the laugh.

"Um," I said, "You know...that wasn't quite right for me. Could we do it again?"

I was 22. 

The balls. 

Cracked everybody up. Eventually I went back upstairs to my fellow students with quite a story to tell. Emery did get the part. I never saw the show, so I don't know if they used the kiss. I doubt it. It would have been a bit much, even for Chekhov.

I have thought about her over the years, her memorable name. A few days ago, I went a-googling. I was saddened to see she had died in her late 50s, about 20 years after our moment. No details were given, except that a few years after our scene she had left acting and become a humanitarian, working to help the underprivileged around the world, and the planet itself. Her obit said that her college major, at an Ivy League school, was a double—theatre, yes, but also political science. In the end, she wanted to make a difference.

I checked her acting credits on the Internet Movie Database, and she was in everything in the '70s and '80s, cop shows and mysteries and comedies, in shows which can still be found all over YouTube. 

I watched a scene or two. The writing was not exactly Chekhov. Nobody kissed anybody. Elegantly alliterative names were not noted by impressionable young actors. 

There is a theory of the universe that all things which have ever happened or will happen are still going on, just in a different dimension. That right now, somewhere, Emery is leaning in to kiss me. Right now she is kissing me. Right now her blonde hair is brushing my cheek. Right now I am never forgetting her name.

I did this play called “Gatsby”

I acted in a play this month for the first time in years, brought out of retirement by the lure of a pair of plum roles called “Waiter/Policeman.” Well, I did play a third part with an actual name, but one so obscure in the show, “The Great Gatsby,” that unless you are an English teacher you wouldn’t know the guy. A self-involved, effeminate hack photographer “artiste” named Chester McKee. This guy, holding the drink:

At the drop of a hat he will invite you back to his place to see his, um, “portfolio.”

I got hooked on theater in high school, at 15. I played dads, grandpas, gamblers, lawyers, Irishmen, twins, guys with fake facial hair:

In college it was capes. Lots of capes. 

In middle age you get the parts with smoking jackets and double-breasted suits. The roles get rarer, but the clothes get better. 

Aging creeps up on you, like a critic you never noticed was in the audience until the review comes out. One minute you’re the 30 year old leading man for whom playwrights pen tons of parts, and the next you’re the character actor getting winded dancing the Charleston. 

You look around and the 30 year old guys on stage didn’t break a sweat. In between scenes, the 30 year old guys are doing push-ups in the wings to get up for the show. You’re not jealous, though, just kind of awed. You were never one to do push-ups without a P.E. teacher’s glare as the instigation.

Doing theater involves remembering taboos and traditions, like not saying the word “Macbeth.” Supposedly, if you say it inside a theater bad luck will befall you or your cast. You are supposed to refer to it as “the Scottish play.” As if the Fates can’t figure out the ploy. As if bad luck is thwarted by verbiage. 

Avoiding saying the word was tough because late in our run, our director began directing “Macbeth.” This led to many close calls like “So how are things going with Macbet—that kilt-fest you’re taking on?” And “Patrick, what are the show dates for Macb—that damned spot show thingy?”

Side note—It would fun to work spotlight for “Macbeth,” and turn it off when the famous line comes. 

I am pretty sure I said the word backstage, and I definitely watched another guy straight-up say it without even remembering not to. Nothing bad happened. But these superstitions, passed on, put you in a kind of club whose membership runs back and back through time, to the first schmuck who said the play’s name and then, probably, fell into the orchestra pit which just happened to be outfitted for a show involving live crocodiles. I am only guessing.

I got a couple of small laughs as Chester, which is the best part of doing a tragedy like “Gatsby,” in which the stage is strewn by the end (spoiler alert) with three dead bodies. Laughs in a drama are a little gift to help the audience cope. I have always felt that coping is overrated. I know I am in the minority. But let them cope if it means me getting a laugh.

I only had one quick change. I had to exit stage left, toss an armload of clothes against the wall, rip off my fake mustache, glasses, vest and gloves and then hustle across the backstage while tying on an apron and donning a different vest, all in about a minute before entering stage right. It made my pulse pound. How many things do that these days outside of politics?

When you go years without doing theater you can forget how magical it feels backstage where the lights are low, costumes are hung for quick-changes, there are prop guns and liquor bottles, fake ice cubes and cigarette lighters. The whole place smells like lumber, paint, makeup and hair spray. It’s that club thing again. We are back here, and they are out there, and what we are about to do to them they have no idea. It feels like having the password.

It is, in essence, showing off. I know that. You dress up and show off. Normal people don’t need to. Actors and politicians and preachers; we’re all in the hey-look-at-me business. Society sanctions it, so we get away with it in the name of entertainment, diversion, governance, salvation. Call it whatever, I’ll take it. Now and then.

I admit it is kind of weird to ask your wife to borrow her makeup remover, though.

. . .