On a whim I decided to audition for the V Day production of The Vagina Monologues at Douglass in late March. It’s been a a while since I’ve been to an audition or been on a stage and I wanted to go mainly just to see if I could get it.
When I showed up, there were a bunch of young ladies discussing frat parties in the hall outside the audition room. Needless to say, I had little to bring to the table. They were discussing an upcoming heaven and hell part which immediately captured my attention so I asked “Where’s this?” and the answer was gamma something or other, a co-ed fraternity. Which, incidentally, doesn’t make sense how can a frat be c0-ed? Doesn’t the frat negate that? Maybe it’s called a social organization or some other PC term.
One girl asked me if I was a student. I’m assuming she meant Rutgers right? Inside my head I was singing “one of these things is not like the other things.”
I choose my monologue from the four choices and pretend to prepare while I eavesdrop on girls speaking about the plays subject matter in a very refreshing way. Well, maybe refreshing isnt the right word……wondrous, that’s it, they were filled with wonder discussing their orgasms and trying way too hard trying to sound casual as they said “cunt” over and over.
Today I learned I got a callback. We all sat together and did our monologues in front of each other.
As I did my second monologue, I decided to take a chance, and I couldn’t be happier with the reaction I got. The room was filled with Heaty belly laughs and that sound literally fills me with a physical feeling of warmth and power and sheer bliss. There is no greater feeling in the world to me that making a room of people howl with laughter. I’ll find out tomorrow if I got it.
At the Sophia Club Holiday party a few of the other Bunting program ladies mentioned how they were shunned by the younger students. They didn’t say it with sadness or avarice, it was more like…..amusement.
Seriously, I thought it was just me. I asked Jean about it and she elaborated, “the kids don’t like us because we ruin the curve.”
I don’t have a firm grasp on the whole “curve” thing but from what I can tell it grades the shitty students harsher if there are some really outstanding students.
Sitting around the table with the rest of the old biddies we laughed and joked about how younger students avoid sitting next to us, don’t chit chat (we used that word because we’re old biddies) they only sit next to us on test day or talk to us if they’ve skived off class several days in a row and need to copy someone’s notes.
This took a load of my mind as I thought maybe it was simply my misanthropic personality and not in fact judgmental teenagers.
Then the weirdest thing happened. In my Intro to American Studies class, which has around 150 students in it, someone talked to me. Not just a question, but they…..I think it’s called…”struck up a conversation”. It happens so infrequently to me I’d almost forgot what it was. I guess I’m just so used to doing things by myself and for myself that I don’t feel the need for chatting up strangers and when they do it to me, it’s something i don’t recognize.
Anyway, the woman who sits next to me in Intro, talks to me a lot. She’s older than me. But our conversations have overflowed into rows behind us and as serendipity would have it, the girl who sits behind me has exchanged messages with me on the class website.
She’s married and lives off campus so it’s not as if I’ve cracked the younger demographic or anything but it’s a start.
