thediastema's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Master introduces Volume III with his version of a workplace legend Hi, this is Master, in for Erin, who doesn't remember the sequence of events in the anecdote you're about to read. I volunteered to confabulate some goodies for her, like the objective third-party I really am. For reference, today is DIFFERENT LIGHT day, for the 1980s Bangles album. Welcome, for that matter, to Volume III! A sidenote: thanks to Grammar, Bad variety and Foil, Duck variety for their acknowledgment of the recent milestone. You're babes, both of you. Ahem. ~~ It's the night before Laughing Stock closes at the theatre, and Erin's last shift for the show. Tomorrow she has an audition for U of U's prestigious (or highly overrated, depending on your outlook) Actor Training Program conservatory. She'll be reciting a really stupid monologue from a downright insipid play by Christopher Durang. She has it memorised cold but can't seem to inject meaning into it from any angle. Tonight at work she is a nervous wreck. Not helpful is the grim reality that Gimp, an attractive, unhappy, temporarily-disabled and incurably-comically-inept woman, is supervising her shift. Erin looks like the aftermath of Hurricane Camille, but, to her credit, she sails through pre-show transactions on a bubbly tide of adrenaline--smiling, counting change back to people, pointing the deaf towards the box office which she straightfacedly calls a "Cage." This is a blanket statement masking a very individual case of fond resentment. God love the stupid bitch, Erin has a crush. For a vague idea of what he looks like, find a blond guy who wears glasses. Covering one eye, hold up a fork between your other eye and his face so it looks like there are bars in front of him. For a clearer picture, find a bespectacled towhead who is disarmingly polite and sweet but really doesn't give a fart about Erin one way or the other. He's there tonight. So is the House Manager, an ageless Canucktahn perpetually at odds with Gimp. HM is rather unsung. HM cleans up after old people who puke in the lift. HM directs cranky, unrefined latecomers when nobody can find volunteer ushers. HM made a provocative sculpture during a game of "Cranium" at the holiday party. It was magnificent, really. HM is keeping Erin from hyperventilating tonight. HM will help understaffed concessions tackle the teeming mob that arrives at Intermission. He has volunteered for it. Normally, Gimp would reject his offer out of pride. Tonight she must really be desperate. This could partly be due to the fact that Erin is a bilious timebomb of dread this evening and may or may not collapse in a puddle of her own coffee-laced sweat at some time during her break. She paces. She recites for nobody in particular. She paces. She lies down. She is immobile for several minutes. She then starts kicking things and beating her head against the walls. She freezes again. She begins gnawing on coffee-stirrers like a confused chainsmoker. She hugs her knees and keens in a corner. "Breathe, Erin," HM says again. She nods and pours herself a cup of water. Four-Eyes looks over, perhaps even twice, bemused, annoyed, startled, but mostly unaffected. He returns with enthusiasm to his books, his computer games, his juggling of garden-variety office supplies. HM mentions to him that he'll be filling in the vacancy in concessions staff tonight during intermission. Four-Eyes volunteers to do this himself and let HM hold down the cage. It was the first job he worked here. Before, you know, he embarked on a spiritual journey to discover why the caged Bespectaculoid sings. HM declines this brave sacrificial self-offering. "You stay here. One less worry for me." He has two complete nutcases robbing people blind for Good and Plenty already, after all. ~~ "...filing cabinet, frying pan, frogs' eggs, faculty wives, frankincense, fornication..." But no matter what she tries, the monologue still sucks, and even if she is to show a little skin tomorrow, the conservatory faculty will roll their eyes into their heads and never look back. "Breathe, Erin." "I know, I know..." ~~ Intermission, miraculously, buoys across the pandemonium on more adrenaline and HM's best intentions. Meanwhile, across the lobby, Four Eyes sits by himself in the office colloquially known as a "Cage." He may people-watch. He may do secret office stuff. He may visit travel websites to book a secret Florida getaway for two. He may launch phlegmy loogies into the air and catch them back in his mouth. Nobody is really sure what he does. He's a quiet man. For instance, when intermission is over and the stragglers are effectively prodded back to their seats, Cage Boy does not mosey, skedaddle, or wander across the lobby to the concessions counter. He simply appears there and startles the piss out of Erin when she looks up from her inventory sheet. She has to make all kinds of corrections because he wants a free lemonade. She acts resentful. She cannot act. She is just another Foley face. She begins to flip out, comically, in front of everyone. "BIG AUDITION TOMORROW! I'M NOT ON EDGE!" she growls into the all-too-understanding eyes of HM. She sounds pretty much exactly like Tom Waits getting a handjob from Captain Hook. The caged bird makes his way behind the counter to inspect the fridge, apparently a much more exciting fridge than the staff had when he worked on it, but then again, in those days, the staff had him to entertain it, to quietly, analytically light nondairy coffee creamer on fire. At present it has Erin to count Dove bars and resist the temptation to cram a few histamine-provoking squares of the dark chocolate into her face and write it off as an overpour before she dies. He drinks his overpour spoils and gives himself an acute brain freeze, the kind that makes him pitch forward and jerk about like an epileptic vogue dancer, even make a little noise, and Erin thinks this is the most fantastic thing a human being has ever done in the history of Pioneer Theatre Company. Chuckling at Minute Maid's revenge, she asks if he's okay and attributes the whole thing to karma. Suddenly she no longer feels as if her own head is going to implode. She spits his way some monosyllabic prattle about the dress Betty stitched up to cover Bernie the Gurney. She counts things. Cage Boy is gone when she looks up again and Gimp is trying to trick Erin into thinking she'll be missing scheduled shifts tomorrow for the audition. Erin won't. She knows, logically, that Gimp is nuts. But she's vulnerable, and the tension shattered by the violent brain freeze dance rebuilds itself as quickly as it dissipated. The inventory will be WAY off tonight. And the audition tomorrow? Bombage. That's okay. Some things aren't meant to be, no matter how you try to tweak fate. ~Master 02:51 - 18 May, 2001 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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