Scratching The Surface

Well….I just wrote a ridiculously long piece, and got walayed by the pleasure of putting two stories into one. Do tell if you think it distracts too much from the purpose of the piece, but I felt inclined to over share given that I am asking so many people to tell me their stories.

I was 19 when I tattooed myself. Like a good responsible not-in-the-grunge-culture girl, I waited for over a year until I knew it was not a passing fad or idea, but something I needed, not wanted. The back story is that when I told my parents I was applying to NYU for acting school, they answered with, “Save your time and our money and go find yourself a good acting school.” I did, and was accepted to one of the more prestigious acting schools in NYC. I should have listened carefully when they explained how rare it was to accept someone as young as myself, and that very few people my age had ever made the 80% cut after the fist year. But I was young; filled of confidence, and blind to possibilities that didn’t fit into landscape of my design.

Stetson, my teacher, the one acting teacher who was featured in the book I had read about the school, called me his favorite. And I was. I studied him as much as I studied the technique itself. I hung on his every word, watched his every move, performed as he wanted. In my youth I was malleable, and the acting technique was similar to one I had studied while in high school. The skills of being present, reacting with honestly, and accessing my emotions, were all easy for me.

What wasn’t as easy, was noting the obvious. It was Sandy Meisner’s last year offering classes at the school, and my first time performing in front of him was not only memorable, if I don’t say so myself, it was fabulous. The lesson was on following every instinct. Sandy’s throat had rotted out, I imagine from throat cancer, so he traveled with an interpreter who I nicknamed Santa Clause for his hearty belly and full white beard.

Sandy was small and shriveled, and you never knew if he was smiling or grimacing, but usually he croaked out these mechanical sounds from the hand held machine he held over his throat, and than Santa would interpret the tones into swears and insults that would make or break the dreams of the next generation of aspiring actors.

I was assigned Ben as a partner the day I was to go before Sandy. Ben was like James Dean meet The Fonze meets Elvis. He was Irish, and cute, and wore great jeans. But he couldn’t act his way out of a box and we all knew it. And so did he I guess, which is why he pulled the stunt. We were sitting there on the stage, the customary one prop in place, the bed. I only remember one moment. I was sitting on the bed, and he walked across the room, stood over me, and started to unzip his pants. “Your unzipping your pants.” I said. “I’m unzipping my pants.” He repeated. This was the technique, use the same words, but continue the dialogue. “Your unzipping your pants!” I said, meaning, you idiot, we’re performing in front of a legend, and your doing this crap? “I’m unzipping my pants.” He said. And so it went on back and forth until finally Sandy stopped us. The slur of mechanical insults flew from his mechanical box. I didn’t need the interpreter to understand we were getting reamed. I think he told Ben to get a job and never come back to the school, that he was unfit or unworthy to live. It was New York City. We were in acting school. That was a perfectly acceptable thing to say. And then he turned to me. I’m shocked now that I think about it, that I had the courage to even look up. I remember the blue of his eyes, magnified through his thick glasses. “You.” He said. “You were good.” And that was it. Those were the words that made my day, and I assumed, sealed my fate to be invited to the second year.

My acting teacher continued to say that I was his “favorite” in our class. And I ate it up. Still naive, and oblivious, I missed the banner that was apparently screaming, “Beware! Watch out! Don’t feed into it! Don’t believe the hype!” Because the girls started to talk in the locker room, and as we were changing for ballet, casually asked if I was studying with him….ya know…privately. It was a play on words. On our acting teacher taught private classes for students. But I knew what they meant, I was grossed out. He was like… my fathers age.

They told us they would mail us our letters that determined if we were invited back or rejected two weeks after school ended. I had complete confidence I was going to be invited back. I wasn’t a good dancer, and I rarely practiced my voice work, but I was a good actress, and this was, after all, and acting school. But during the last week of school, Stetson wouldn’t look me in the eye when we passed in the hall.

One week after school ended, I packed my bags, and headed back to VA for the summer.

That moment was coming that I feared the worst, the one where I was about to lose control over my life, that once again, someone was going to make a decision that was going to affect my life in a way that I couldn’t control. Before this past year, I had lived with my parents, who after divorcing when I was two, I moved between for the next 14 years. At the time, I don’t think I knew to the degree of why I needed to take control.
But now, 16 years later, I have a better understanding of what I needed out of that moment. At the time, I just knew that I wanted to claim my future before someone else could. So one week and 4 days after school ended, I got my tattoo. Two Chinese characters on my right hip that meant “change is for the better”. I didn’t know what was going to happen. But no matter what the affect, the influence, the reaction, the potential, the future. Change was going to be for the better.

A few days later two letters came in the mail, the first was the rejection letter saying that I wasn’t invited to attend the second year at neighborhood playhouse. The second was a personal letter from the director, apologizing for not inviting me back. I’ll never fully understand the purpose of that second letter, but it somehow vindicated the rejection.

I had already claimed the transition, the change, as my own. Change is for the better meant that the transition, not staying stagnant, being true to the truth, motion, flexibility, transformation, that this is what I wanted my life to be about. That was the icing on the cake.

Since getting that tattoo, I moved back to NYC and worked off Broadway, (as an extra). After deciding I didn’t want to spend my life speaking other people’s words, I moved to Arizona where I eventually became a wilderness leader. Five years later, I noticed that because I didn’t return to school that second year, I was in the right place at the right time to work on an Everest expedition. I have driven across the country four times, gone six months without sleeping in the same bed more than two times in a row, and guided wilderness trips in Idaho, Montana, Utah, Arizona, and Alaska. I moved to Richmond, Virginia to get a masters degree in social work, where I went on to work as a community organizer. After a run-in with cancer, I recalibrated, and re-remembered that being an artist was not an option. I started my own non profit that utilized the arts for social change, and upon falling in love with documentary filmmaking, moved to Berkeley California, where I started over again. I now work for a large corporate media company, where I sit. All day. And look into the computer. And I look around me, and realize that I am marked. I feel in my being that I am not of these people. The vast majority of the people I work with are in their early 20’s, they hopped out of school, knew what they wanted, and came here. I look at them, and I look back at myself, and realized the only thing I knew how to do at that time was to seek the biggest adventure in life I could possibly imagine. And now, I am at a desk, and I am seeking something else, the core of the soul. I am seeking understanding about the greater elements of what it means to be alive at this time in the world and why I am here. I am continuing to refine and understand what I am here to do, and how to be best prepare myself for that work. I still move every year. Even when I have been in the same city for 5 years, I have moved every year. Sometimes I get tired. I get tired of the part of me that seeks. That moves. That has to build a new garden at every new house. But then there is a part of me that knows that I have picked this life, and tattooed the commitment on my body. This one is not about staying still or staying safe, but rather it is about transition, transformation, and embracing change as for the better.