empress of the world, sara ryan

  Last year, during Guys and Dolls, I was stage manager. I had to help Rachel, who was playing Sarah, with her costume change before the Havana scene. It was a quick change, so I held her fancy dress while she wiggled out of the skirt and unbuttoned the jacket of her Salvation Army uniform. Standing there in her lacy underwear and bra, she looked like a pinup girl from the forties – the kind of girl who’d be painted on the side of an airplane that shot down Nazis.

   She stepped into the fancy dress and pulled it up, and I went behind her to zip it. “Oh my god this is tight,” she said. “Does it make me look fat?”

  “No,” I said. “You look beautiful.”

   She kissed me on the cheek and said, “You’re such a sweetheart, Nic!” before sailing out onto the stage.

   Margaret, who’d been putting the props in order, came up behind me and mimicked, “Ooo, you’re thuch a thweetheart!” Then in her real voice: “I saw you staring. You’re just a little thespian lesbian, aren’t you?”

  I think I said, “Fuck off,” or something equally brilliant, but the words kept echoing in my head, and I almost missed calling three light cues in a row.

   But that’s not the whole story.

    I see beautiful Rachel in my head, but then I see shy, smart Andre – the boy I spent all last year in Geometry trying desperately to attract.

   It doesn’t make sense. Thespian lesbian, thespian lesbian. How can I be a thespian lesbian when I filled up a whole notebook with ways to impress Andre?

   Then Andre’s face turns into Battle’s, and I wish I could stop seeing her, wish I could stop thinking about what it would feel like just to touch her hair or hold her hand.

  But I can’t.

 
field notes:

   i tried to press that flower battle brought me from the hike, but it didn’t dry, it just squished like a dead bug. i hope this is not an ominous sign from above.