The Author

Eugene

  I’m trying to concentrate but the guy down the hall has his music up so loud that I can’t. I sit and finally I decide to put everything on the line and try. It is a reasonable request after all. I feel my face getting hot and embarrassed before I even get to his doorway and I wish that I were braver. I step into the doorway and ask the masses inside the room if they could please turn it down a little. They say sure and turn it down, but once I am in my room they turn it up louder than before. Of course I hear them laughing. Do they think that I disappear when I am out of their sight? They smile at me in the hallway the next day as if nothing happened. Guilty cowards. I’d probably do it too if I could. We all need someone lower to practice stomping on. I close my door, knowing full well that I run the risk of them tying it shut. I can hear my mother’s voice like she said on the first day I came here and we passed some guys sitting on their porch with beers in their hands. “Oh, I’d like to smack them. Little brats! Your parents are paying for this!”

  It occurs to me, as I sit down to write, that this probably happened to HIM too, though in the past tense.

  Dear Mom,

  Just thought that I would say “Hi!” I have some free time. I hope that all is well with you and dad. Things are just great here :-) :-) :-) Everything is perfect! I am so thankful for my perfect life! I love you!

  I have a fantasy, or a dream or something, in which I do or write something amazing. It’s like Captain Marvel or Clark Kent or someone like that. Everyone thinks that I am just a quiet nobody and then “Shazam!” I come up with this remarkable thing that blows them all away and then suddenly they all love me.

  I would like to write something. Create something concrete. That I have control over. I wanted to take some sort of writing class and the only one that really fit in my schedule was one about writing plays, which is OK I guess. Theatre is kind of neat because you get to be somebody else. Well, I guess they usually say “play” somebody else. But I would love to “be.”

  Dear Mom,

  I’m sorry. That last email was a lie. Not the part about “I love you,” of course but the other stuff. I don’t really have any free time. I actually have a ton of stuff to do. And this time is supposed to be for sleeping. But I can’t concentrate. On the work or the sleeping. Oh, I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t be bothering you with this. :-) But she is working late again and you know that I worry. I wish that she didn’t work so late. That she didn’t have to, you know. It must be my fault. I hope that she will get home all right. Because I love her. I love her as much as a

  million hugs and kisses just like this: XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

  “When creating a character in acting, the first thing to do is flesh out the words in the script and create a living and breathing person from them. Your tools are the dialogue, playwright’s description, and the character’s action. In order to do the art of performance justice, you must convince the audience that the character they see before them is in fact a real person. You must MAKE him a real person. You need to make clear choices about what he ate for breakfast this morning and why he chose to wear the shoes that he wears. It is Ball that describes this best . . . .Yet the most important element in all of this is your ability to discard him afterwards. Be very careful not to get so close that you cannot break free again. Step two is to purge yourself of this character. For as real as you make this character that you are to play, you must kill him in order to retain that which is you . . . Therefore theatre, when done correctly, is, by its very nature, cruel.”

  I don’t remember where I read that. But I cannot shake that last sentence.

  This girl in my Playwriting class asked me to be in her play. I’ve had the script for about a week now and I just keep re-reading it. I’m excited about the process. Step two terrifies me but step one fascinates me. I would like to exercise a different brain for a while. Feel different pain. Pain that I have some control over because I create it. Though I must admit, I feel a little bad for HIM.

  I walk towards the theatre cautiously; our first rehearsal is tonight. I feel guilty as I walk into the backstage area. Like everyone there will know that I don’t belong. They will all stare at me because they know that I’m not one of them. Like my reasons for being there aren’t enough justification. “I have rehearsal. For Constantine’s class.” I practice it in my head so that I can say it flippantly (though there is no one there, so I never have a chance to).

  It takes a lot for me to say Constantine without Professor in front of it.

  Dear Mom,

  You probably think that I am nuts ‘cause this is my third email in only 2 days. HAHAHAHA I’m not nuts, Mom! I’m angry. I’m so angry that I keep seeing fire. Right now I am thinking that I would rather like to see how my mousepad would look on fire. There is also a little movie that plays in my head where I am squishing eyeballs like they are peeled grapes. They even begin to smell like grapes to me even though I see all the blood and feel the veins between my fingers that just keep pressing and pressing harder and harder until they are just pressing against themselves and turning white under the red of the blood (I can’t see the white but I know it is there) and then I stop and laugh because it is a silly sick vision that is not really at all like me. Did you ever have a silly thing like that where your mind starts thinking about something that really isn’t “you” but you can’t shake it? It’s kinda funny. But I wash my hands anyway.

  I think that I have identified my fatal flaw. Not that I’m saying I am some sort of hero in a Greek tragedy, but I can probably trace things back to this moment. One of the first weeks of school, my roommate asked me if he could have some people over. I had work to do, but I said OK, because I really didn’t know anyone on campus besides him anyway and it would be good to meet some people. The guys from our hall came over and they brought beer. I’d never seen it before. Oh, I saw the TV commercials where they aren’t allowed to drink it, but I never saw any in person. It smelled disgusting.

  They were just being nice when they offered me a can. I realize that now. I also realize that I could have just said, “No, thanks.” But instead I went off on this lecture about what losers they were for drinking, how they are wasting their lives, and how I didn’t need any substances to have fun. I sounded like an after-school special. Then I marched out with the intent to confide instantly with the RA and get them written up. The RA reluctantly walked down to their room and did indeed write them up, but he apologized to them over and over as he did it. They didn’t seem mad at him either, just at me. He finished writing the report and I stood there waiting for some sort of verbal pat on the back, but instead he turned to me and said, “You’re one pretentious asshole, you know that! Live your fucking life a little!”

  As he walked back to his room, I didn’t see any reason why he needed to use the f-word, but I realized that I had just broken some major code. I spent the evening in the 24-hour computer lab and didn’t go back to my room until the next morning. I was sorry and just wanted to forget about the entire evening. But they would never let me forget.

  She assured me today me that I am guilt-free. That HE commits the murder. I feel a little silly worrying about HIM in the cafeteria. But HE is always in my mind. On my mind, I mean. I must create HIM, flesh HIM out, from what she gave me. It takes the two of us to give HIM life. Does that make me his father? I am a little afraid. What makes me any more real than HIM? Why do I deserve to continue while he must step back into the oblivion that I picked HIM from? And where is the line? The names are getting mixed up. I am beginning to forget where I end and HE begins.

  Dear Mom,

  Ok, you want the truth? You want the whole fucking truth?!? Because that is what it is. “Fucking” truth. She isn’t working late. She’s off fucking. Merrily fucking her way through the evening. Fucking every Tom; Dicking every Harry. Fucking me over.

  And the worst part is that she assumes that I don’t know! They all just think that I don’t know. Of course I hear them laughing! It
’s a reasonable request, fidelity, is it not? They smile at me in the office as if nothing happened. Like they haven’t been screwing around with my wife. And my life.

  Excuse my language, Mom. I don’t feel like myself. I feel like my memories are gone and those that are there are not my own. I open my eyes sometimes and see strange scenes: a room, a classroom, a theatre. Which one of us is real? Which one is the fiction? I have this dream too. No I won’t tell you about any more of my violent visions but this feels so real.

  She knows I know and decides to die. I walk into the room and it’s like “surprise!” in my head ‘cause she has a noose around her neck and she is about to jump off a chair. Seems kinda contrived, you know, Mom, how she waited until right when I walk in to almost jump. So we begin to talk. I look at her beautiful, mature body, her dark hair, and tall figure stretched up on the chair. She looks hot. And I want her. I see her long flowered skirt blowing in the breeze from the open window nearby and I curse myself because I still want her. Even after everyone else has had her.

  So I tell her what a joy life is. I pump her full of all of the bullshit about the joys of life and the wonders of humanity that you know aren’t