The Beast with Two Faces and the Beast with Two Backs

The two best things in this world are beasts, mostly because they bring us great joy and immense suffering.  Many human beings think about them constantly.  They lure us in, make us feel indomitable and oft abandon us as quickly as they came.

I'm talking about theatre and sex.

One beast I can talk about at great length. I've done it daily.  In acting school I did it nearly twelve hours a day.  Most of the time I do it in front of people.  Sometimes I practiced alone.

But when it comes to sex I merely postulate.  My mother did an excellent job "protecting (my) virginity*."

Those little masks at the Broadway souvenir shop don't lie, theatre has two-faces.  Simultaneously it loves and ignores you. The elusive beast!  We stalk it despite the low employment rates and our parents' tears because we love it, but we enter into the industry knowing that it won't be kind to us.  Well, we hear it won't be kind to us and we secretly believe we will be the exception to the rule, only to find out later we're not.   We're given just enough validation, joy and pleasure through the years to keep beating our weathered bodies against the current: working two jobs in order to pay rent and do the play produced in the ninety-nine seat theatre on the fourth floor of a Manhattan family court, the play that--though it's unpaid--three hundred people auditioned for.  It's insane and beautiful.  We sacrifice incalculable amounts--security, love and comfort, just to name a few things--for something as fickle as theatre.

Sex is no different.  Allegedly.  The beast with two backs controls virtually everyone, like theatre but worse because it affects both artists and civilians.  There are many parallels between these two beasts: like doing a play, most of the time your sexual partner is a somewhat limited engagement.  Even if you've made the life-long commitment, there are lulls in your practice when you might go months without playing. Furthermore, we always want the parts we can't have.  That's the worst of it.  We might have a great, amazing, solid role in one show and want to go on one night in another one.  This, unfortunately, means that you miss your  usual part and get in big trouble.  After all, your part doesn't have an understudy.  What a tricky beast.

The beasts can try to eat you alive, but ultimately you're responsible for your own salvation.  We might incessantly think about them, but we must rise above, get out of the theatre or the bedroom and live life.      

Grab those beasts by the horns.





*My mother is the only person who consistently reads my posts, so I must maintain this idea.  I'd loathe to lose my most avid reader.

The Farmer and the Cowman

I'm a liberal.

I believe in social equality and opportunity.  I believe in small business.  I believe in publicly endowed art.  I believe in freedom of expression.  I believe in safe public transportation.  I believe in reproductive rights.  I believe big corporations should pay taxes--lots of taxes.  I believe in the rights of the worker.  I believe in siesta.  I believe in public education.  I believe in peace.  I believe in the availability of public health.  I believe in immigration.  

Yet I loathe politics.  Discussing it usually ends in my sister and me fussing at one another, her rolling her eyes and me speaking in this rarely evoked shrill harpy voice.  It isn't good.  Experience has taught me to avoid political discussion like a toilet seat at Port Authority, but recently I've found myself having no choice but to take that proverbial bull by the horns.  

You see, I've made friends with a republican. 

He doesn't outwardly say he is such, but I'm sure he is; it makes sense.  He arduously works for a big corporation.  He knows what a hedge fund is.  He doesn't regularly attend Off-Broadway productions or the Puerto Rican day parade.  I'm happy to diversify my friendship base--a group mostly comprised of poor artists and fantastic gay boyfriends I've made out with at parties--but I'm smacked with a bit of fear.

In the musical Oklahoma! the ensemble muses whether or not the farmer and the cowman can be friends.  Through both jolly song and jig we learn that yes indeed, though they're opposing types of people--after all, "one man likes to push a plow, the other likes to chase a cow"--they can be friends.  Times have changed, though.

Can the liberal and the republican be friends?

I jokingly said something to test the waters the other day, something about how he must know a plethora of republicans while I have my token republican friend. He laughed it off, not really addressing my subtext, which was: are you a republican? Like money less.  How could you be a republican? Please stop being a republican.  Shut up, you republican. He didn't get where he is today by being dull, so he smoothly dodged me.  Eventually the conversation has to come up, though.  If it doesn't happen naturally I will force it.  I guarantee.  I'm bossy.

The simple answer is yes, of course people with polar viewpoints can be friends.  Today's political climate is incredibly sensational, though, and opposing sides rarely listen to one another; this definitely reflects in the microcosm of day-to-day relationships.  Media makes it this way because it's more fun to watch. Maybe we behave this way because it's what we see on television.  I don't know.  I do know it's rare that any kind words are shared in political discussion even when people agree with one another.  I also know that only pain and disappointment result in conversations where people don't listen.

I hope one of two things when this inevitable conversation happens:  either I am breathing deeply and free of judgment or I've had half a bottle of chenin blanc on an empty stomach.  Either way I'll be relaxed enough to listen.

Hey, if nothing else, it's a start.