xtcian

forward as one

8/19/04

I tend not to go to things like the Fringe Festival in New York – I much prefer to read Sean's cruel admonitions instead of having to sit through any live theater. Tonight, however, I ventured into the duodenum of Manhattan – Pace University – to see an operetta conceived by my high school confidante, Sherry Boone.

Pace University, like anything else south of Chambers Street, is nowhere to be hanging out after dark – it's an unfortunate confluence of unsafe and boring. The windows at Pace were shortened into arrow slits because people kept firing rounds from the Brooklyn Bridge. I mean, you're in a car, you're going over the bridge – why not take potshots at a university?

Sherry's play, "Ellen Craft," was absolutely FANTASTIC. The story of a slave who disguises herself as a white man to escape the South, "EC" was a straight-ahead modern opera in the style of "The Secret Garden." This meant hardly any actual spoken words, which can be a landmine for lesser talents, but the book was fabulous and the music gorgeous.

Sherry conceived and wrote the piece, and the place went bonkers when it ended. She and I were the first interracial prom couple in the history of Norfolk Academy (a school chartered in 1680s Virginia, thanks for asking) and she made my senior year at NA bearable. She was the first person to come over to my place after I'd collapsed from malnutrition (true story for another blog), and her spirit has obviously multiplied 19 years later.

I was a total bonehead when I was 18, still not having kissed a girl, pent-up and shut-down emotionally, and I was easily the worst prom date on earth. But it feels good to see her again, both of us still taking our artsy fartsy stuff seriously, purporting to string words together for a living. It makes all those grandiose ideas we had on weekends, riding in the VW Beetle listening to "Tenderness" by General Public, not so goddamn silly anymore.