43 Boy Crazy
I decided that “Jerry” was probably closer to the right name than “Jordi.” It also sounded a lot less like “Jared,” an association that bothered me – I didn’t want to start overlapping the two. Kissing a boy who could be treated as almost imaginary was a lot safer than imagining myself kissing my fellow actor.
Once dressed, then, I imagined myself standing with “Jerry” again. Being dressed carried much less of the sexual innuendo. I took a deep breath and thought, I’m a girl before reaching my arms up for a kiss. In the character of this girl I had conjured up, this girl who was surely “Jerry’s” girlfriend – not his wife – I still felt a lot of the excitement from before, but it was definitely lessened. Then I tried Alvin’s last direction. I kept my hands down and imagined simply lifting my face for a kiss. Much better. I could feel the fondness, but no excess of passion. That would be the sequence, I decided. Look up, put my hands down, and lift my face. I did it a few more times, adding my simple line, “Done” as I looked up. I can do this, I told myself. I’ll just have to choreograph the interaction with Jared. He’s already got the feeling, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for him.
I’m not going to say that I was eager to kiss Jared at the next rehearsal, but I did really want to see if I had worked out the problem. I couldn’t help smiling at the prospect of impressing Alvin with my recovery from that disastrous last attempt. The biggest downside was that I had to remember to think of myself as a girl while I did it.
I took in two more sewing jobs, including an alteration. I’m sure that the girl I pinned up would have been mortified if she’d known that I still thought of myself as a boy – no matter, I was harmless now. In fact, I would have apologized to Terry, if I could have thought of a way to do it that wouldn’t upset her.
At dinner, two of the boys where arguing about Classic Rock music again, and this time they actually asked me to decide who was right.
One of them, whose name I thought might be “Fred” asked, “Marsh, do you know the group, Three Dog Night?”
“Sure, there were big in the late 60s and early 70s, I think,” I answered.
“And how many songs did they do that actually mentioned dogs? I say it was three, to match their band name. Sam says there was only one.”
I took a moment to think. “Actually, I can’t remember even a single one.”
The other, whose name was evidently Sam, looked at me scornfully. “C’mon, Marsh everybody knows that one. You know,” he said, and sang quietly, “Jeremiah was a bulldog! Was a good friend of mine…”
“No, no, no,” I shook my head. “Not ‘bulldog,’ – ‘bullfrog.’ ‘Jeremiah was a–” Then I broke off with a realization. “Jeremy! That’s his name – Jeremy!”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s Jeremiah,” Sam insisted.
“Not the song,” I said impatiently. “There’s no dog in the song, and I don’t think there’s a dog in any of their songs. I’m talking about this guy I met. Jeremy. I was trying to remember his name.”
We had attracted some attention from the other girls. “Who’s Jeremy?” Lee Ann asked.
I turned to her. “I met him over break.”
“Oh!” she raised her eyebrows. “Did you like him?”
“Yeah, that’s the point. I have to kiss somebody in the play, and the director told me to imagine a boy I’d want to…” I stopped as I realized how that could be interpreted. “Anyway… he’s just a nice guy, and… I couldn’t remember his name.”
I was very aware of my roommates and a lot of other people staring at me; my face was hot under their gaze.
“Yes…?” Terry prompted.
“Nothing. Nothing,” I said, wishing I had kept my mouth shut. “It’s just… nothing.”
My eyes were focused on my hands, which I seemed to be wringing awkwardly, so I couldn’t see anyone, but I was sure they were exchanging glances. How was I going to explain my way out of this?
Sheila said, “You can’t just leave us hanging like that, Marsh! Tell us more.”
“There’s nothing to tell! I just met him and we talked.”
“Uh huh.”
“Don’t worry,” Lee Ann spoke up. “Terry and I will get it out of her tonight.”
“There’s nothing to ‘get’!” I insisted.
“We’ll see,” Lee Ann grinned.
I was still protesting as the three of us walked back to our room. “You guys are reading way too much into this, you know.”
“Uh huh,” Terry said skeptically as she closed the door behind us.
“Sit down and spill,” Lee Ann added. “Where did you meet him?”
I sighed in exasperation. “I took my sister to choir practice, and he was there. His sister is also in the choir and we were both waiting for them to finish, so we just sat and talked. That’s all that happened.”
“Tell us about the part where you said you liked him,” Terry suggested.
“I just thought he was nice,” I tried, but my face grew hot again.
“How nice?” Lee Ann prodded.
“Alright. Alright, I liked him. I thought he was… fascinating.” How did I get myself into this situation? I was admitting – and truthfully – that I had been attracted to a guy.
“Well, at least now we know why she wasn’t interested in Phil anymore,” Lee Ann observed.
“No, it’s not like that!” I insisted. “I didn’t think he was real – I thought I was just dreaming!”
“So he’s the man of your dreams?” Terry simpered.
“No! He’s just… a guy I met. That’s all.”
“Did he ask for your phone number?”
Fortunately, he hadn’t. I don’t know what I would have done if he had asked. Thinking it was a dream, I might well have given it to him – and wouldn’t that have been interesting to explain away if he’d called?
Aloud, I said, “No, he didn’t ask. We just talked, that’s all.”
They exchanged glances again. “So he doesn’t know how to get in touch with you?” Lee Ann asked, sounding a bit disappointed.
I hesitated, and then admitted, “He knew who my sister was; she’s pretty well known in the choir, so if he really wanted to, he could probably ask her.” But Tina probably wouldn’t give a boy my number, all things considered. I didn’t think I needed to tell them that part.
“How long ago did you meet?”
“Beginning of break.”
“That’s like three weeks ago, Lee Ann.” Terry pointed out. “If he was going to call, he probably would have down so by now.”
“You’re right,” Lee Ann agreed. Then she came over and hugged me, “Oh, Marsh, I’m so sorry.”
I laughed. “It’s really OK. I told you, I don’t have time for boys right now.”
“You are so strong, Marsh,” Lee Ann said, looking me in the eye. “I really respect that. I just hope things work out for you.”
I told them I was pretty sure they would, and thanked them for their concern. Inwardly, I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or horribly embarrassed. It was really nice to see them so concerned about me, or actually, about Marsha. It made me feel all the more guilty about deceiving them as to who I really was – but that was hardly a secret I could share.
Before rehearsal started the next day, Alvin pulled me aside. “Nikki says that you found a memory that would help with the kiss, but that you needed to work on it. Will you be ready to try it today?”
I smiled at him to show confidence I almost felt. “I think so. My sister helped me work on it.”
“Well, I don’t want you agonizing over it any more than necessary, so why don’t we start with that scene as soon as Jared gets here?”
So we did. Just before Jared’s entrance, I reminded myself of how I had looked, naked in the mirror. I’m a girl, I insisted to myself. It’s fine for me to kiss a boy.
As he said, “Shall I stoke the Aga?” I thought about Jeremy and remembered how I had felt when I met him. I imagined him standing where Jared was. Then I looked up at Jared/Jeremy, wiped my hands on an imaginary apron and lifted my face to be kissed as I said my line, “Done.”
The kiss felt right. It felt loving, and from Alvin’s murmur of approval, it read properly from the audience. I had done it! The scariest part of our blocking, and I had it nailed. If I could do that, there was no reason I couldn’t get into character for the rest of Mollie’s reactions.
The feeling of triumph carried me through the rest of rehearsal. I was on and I knew it. My energy was good, my delivery was sharp, and by the time we finished, I was emotionally spent. That’s really one of the great things about this role – Mollie goes through so many changes of emotion, from panic over finding Mrs. Boyle’s body, to concern for Chris and anger at Giles, finally ending with the terror at being threatened by Trotter, relief at rescue, and a loving reconciliation with Giles. It’s a high-energy role, and for the first time, I felt really confident that I was going to be able to do a good job with it.
Nor was I the only one who noticed. Even Naomi, who rarely spoke to me, came over and said, “Good job!”
I was so surprised that I didn’t even get a chance to respond before she left. Jared nodded his approval, and Nikki gave me a hug.
But probably the best was Alvin, who said, “Atta girl, Marsh. Now that’s the acting I was expecting when I cast you.” Then he winked. “You do realize I expect you only to get better from here on, right?”
On the way back to the dorm, I called home, and Mom answered. “I hope it’s not too late to call,” I said, “but I’m feeling terrific and I just wanted to share it.”
“It’s not too late,” she said. “What happened?”
“Just a fantastic rehearsal. The character finally clicked for me.”
“That’s a great feeling, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah. Very definitely. Is Tina up? She helped me with part of the role, and I’m sure we wants to hear how it went.”
“She went to bed early. She has auditions tomorrow, you know.”
“Oh, right. Well, tell her it all worked out, and that I said to break a leg, OK?”
“I’ll do that. Good night, Marsh.”
“Good night, Mom,” I said before hanging up. “I love you.”
I composed myself before entering our room; after our earlier discussion, I didn’t want to admit to jubilation over managing to kiss a boy realistically on stage. I needn’t have worried. Neither was in the common room; I assumed that they were studying, which was something I really needed to do myself. So I worked on my lab notes for a couple of hours before calling it a night.
An interesting chapter. It made me feel as if you were trying to do ‘catch up’ on events that should have been covered earlier.
The ‘girl talk’ was great… for a beginning! Both the talk with the girls and the talk with Mom should have been much longer (IMO). Not necessarily all in dialouge. For one thing all the dialog was about Marsh, where I would expect a real girl talk conv to include bits about the others… times something like that had happened to them, how they had felt about it.
I like the fact that he is beginning to have an inkling of the immoral actions he has been performing.
>>I took in two more sewing jobs, including an alteration. I’m sure that the girl I pinned up would have been mortified if she’d known that I still thought of myself as a boy – no matter, I was harmless now.
You do realize (even tho Marsh doesn’t) that this sentence is contradictory? That it is precisely the feelings of the girl that make this another case of visual rape? That it is the girl herself who is violated by not being told… that it has nothing to do with his ‘harmlessness’?
>>How did I get myself into this situation? I was admitting – and truthfully – that I had been attracted to a guy.
Bizarre. So he is not upset at the *fact* of having been attracted to a guy… but by the *admission*??? An admission which will make the role he is trying to play that much easier? Nothing could help him more than to have a boyfriend (one that was in on the reality… like Chad, for example) as far a cover… yet he is upset at the admission?
I’m not sure but what I don’t actually like this example of his supreme illogic… kind of like Tina’s earlier. I *almost* get this.
not necessarily all in dialog… as in you could summarize some of the rest (tell, not show)but let us know it happened.
“You are so strong, Marsh,” Lee Ann said, looking me in the eye. I really respect that. I just hope things work out for you.”
You’ve missed opening quotation marks at “I really respect that”.
“The kiss felt right. It felt loving, and from Alvin’s murmur of approval, it read properly from the audience. I had done it! The scariest part of our blocking, and I had it nailed. If I could do that, there was no reason I couldn’t get into character for the rest of Mollie’s reactions.”
What did it TASTE like? Whenever I kiss someone new (it’s only happened three or four times!) I really think about how it tastes. OK, that’s bad if they haven’t cleaned their teeth, but it’s a nice thing to remember about someone.
Neither was in the common room;
Neither were in the common room? or Nobody was in the common room?
Allow me to speak for all the Jeremy’s in the world when I say that I hate the song “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog.” That and “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam. Seriously people, that stopped being witty or amusing a long, long time ago. Thanks.
>>What did it TASTE like? Whenever I kiss someone new (it’s only happened three or four times!) I really think about how it tastes. OK, that’s bad if they haven’t cleaned their teeth, but it’s a nice thing to remember about someone.
AS in the prev chapter I think there should be a lot more detail about the kiss. A lot of lead up, no detail.
>>Allow me to speak for all the Jeremy’s in the world when I say that I hate the song “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog.” That and “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam. Seriously people, that stopped being witty or amusing a long, long time ago. Thanks.
ROTFL
Well, I have been thinking about the “visual rape” case and … shouldn´t a lesbian girl have the same problem?
A lesbian girl may feel atracted to the females in her gym class and she will shower in the same room as they.
So, when a lesbian gets out of the closet should all girls that she ever saw naked sue her?
Because, in a sense, this is what Marsh is now, a lesbian woman … or perhaps even a bi-sexual woman.
No, it is not at all what Marsh is now. And the cases are entirely different.
In Marsh’s case he is flying under false principles. It is the equivalent of someone dressing in drag and going into a girls room. It has nothing to do with his ‘sexuality’, as Russel has made clear. The girl would be mortified *in spite of* Marsh’s acknowledged pro-boy sexuality, and pro-girl neutrality.
Certainly someone who is attracted to their shower mates should, if they desire to be moral at all, refuse to shower with them.
>> How was I going to explain my way out of this?
What is there to explain his way out of? Met a guy at break, thought he would be a neat guy to kiss. So?
>>where arguing
were arguing
>> What is there to explain his way out of? Met a guy at break, thought he would be a neat guy to kiss. So?
If Marsh were thinking like a girl, that would be an easy solution
>> What is there to explain his way out of? Met a guy at break, thought he would be a neat guy to kiss. So?
>If Marsh were thinking like a girl, that would be an easy solution
I am thinking less and less highly of this guys acting skills 🙁 I mean, I am not actor, but this would so occur to me. In fact, from the beginning I probably would have been going on and on about some guy from back home. I might have had Chad in on it, and had *him* call me and we could have had long, sexy, and *accidentally* overheard chats.
Does this guy not know how to invent a cover story??
Oh, just ignore me. I have too active an imagination.
>>“Good night, Mom,” I said before hanging up. “I love you.”
BTW, was that last line new? I am trying to think back over the book and whether he said this easily before.
This is indeed the first time Marsh has said that in the book, IIRC.
??IIRC??
I like that touch,then.
BTW, for clarification of some of my earlier comments. By ‘attracted to’ I mean in the active sense… deliberatly choosing to accept visual stimuli and act on them in inducing pleasure in oneself. I do not mean the merely passive ‘stimuli exists that are pleasurable’. ‘Attracted to’ in the sense of to look at in such a way to stimulate ones own desire and arousal.
Ah. “If I Remember Correctly”?
Morality is involved with harm to another. It isn’t involved with purely internal thoughts or feelings. That’s just guilt and superego and has little to do with morality. The confusion on this point leads to a lot of mental anguish by people who really need to get on with their lives and stop worrying about completely mental transgressions.
I dearly love this story about Marsh, Russ. I am very much looking forward to each installment with bated breath. Sure, there are little mistakes here and there, but I consider those to be like my mother’s home made brown gravy. It’s a little lumpy, but it tastes like no other and only she can make it.
Your dialogue is engaging, without relying too heavily upon it. Your narrative flows in such a way that I am never feeling impatient. The dynamics of the relationships are genuine feeling, if a teensy bit idealistic, but that’s TV’s influence om us all, eh? Most importantly, I am intrigued by the pickle that Marsh finds him/herself in concerning his memories of being a male versus the reality of being a woman.
My only one gripe and major downer when reading your stories is the comments pages. I find it hard to stomach when some stalker spams the hell out of each chapter with negative comments and superficial, selfish imperatives under the guise of being ‘constructive’.
If you truly value von’s input, could you ask that person to send their input privately, so as not to have interested readers who come here fall in love with your story, only to see someone attempt to tear it up and rewrite it for you every. single. chapter?
Your fan for as long as you have a story to tell,
Jenn
Thank you. Lately I have been trying to send previews of the chapters to him so that he can make most of his comments in private email. I think he has helped me, and I am aware of the annoyance of having long critiques in the comments section, especially once I have made any changes in response.
>>and I am aware of the annoyance of having long critiques in the comments section, especially once I have made any changes in response.
Can you not delete comments once you have fixed the mistake/ changed the chapter?
I would be interested to know if Jennifer liked the first or the second (after my comments) version of that chapter with the kiss.
Stalker!
Yes, I should go back and do that…
>>Morality is involved with harm to another. It isn’t involved with purely internal thoughts or feelings.
huh.
So if my teenage son drills hole through the shower room wall where your three beautiful teenage daughters shower, and spends a very pleasant summer watching them shower. And if no ‘harm’ is done… ie they never find out, then my son has done nothing immoral?
Pray, where did you find this?
> So if my teenage son drills hole through the shower room wall where your three beautiful teenage daughters shower,
> and spends a very pleasant summer watching them shower. And if no ‘harm’ is done… ie they never find out,
> then my son has done nothing immoral?
He’s done more than just think, in this case. “Drilling a hole” is an action, as is “watching them shower” secretly. At the very least he has violated laws and societal customs of modesty.
>>“Drilling a hole” is an action, as is “watching them shower” secretly. At the very least he has violated laws and societal customs of modesty.
Yes. Leaving aside the vandalism (which wasn’t the point, and I could have written the example without this) I was reacting to the ‘harm’ issue. Not all moral issues involve ‘harm’… or at least harm that would be directly seen and measured.
IMO the young man has done irreparable harm to himself and his wife.
As you know at least one of the commandments directly involves only ‘thoughts’, and at lest two others do no overt ‘harm’ to anyone else, any person anyway. As one wise man once said, ‘Character is what one does when no one is looking.”
(Example without vandalism: Chad realizes that from his room he can (by standing on a chair) look over the curtain in Marsha’s bathroom and watch her and Tina change and shower etc. Moral action? No harm… Marsh and Tina have no idea he can do this, he turns out the light before he does it so they can’t see him. No harm, no foul, right?)
To von, read what I wrote. Do not characterize it as something I did not write and then criticize something you made up.
Joyce. I not only read what you wrote, I quoted it:
>>>>Morality is involved with harm to another. It isn’t involved with purely internal thoughts or feelings.
And I clarified my reaction:
>> I was reacting to the ‘harm’ issue. Not all moral issues involve ‘harm’… or at least harm that would be directly seen and measured.
You are quite incorrect. Not all issues of morality involve harm to another person. No moral system of any great civilization has ever made this claim, let alone made it work. Private character, internal actions, are essential to morality; and the foundation of any civilization or system of ethics.
>>To enjoy the things we ought, and to hate the things we ought, has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.
– Aristotle
>>THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859) — British writer and politician
“The measure of a man’s character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.”
It is written: Thou shalt not covet.
It is written: Thou shalt love the Lord thy G-d with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy strength.
It is written: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
But Russ would like this particular discussion off his blog. Feel free to come to my blog, vonstakes.blogspot.com, if you wish to discuss it further.
“Well, I don’t you agonizing “