Thing is, I’ve changed the other person’s name. Barely. So that’s ok, right? Why am I so fucked up? Maybe this impending Fringe festival in Edinburgh is making me anxious, poisoning my rational narrative. Or maybe I’ve lost control because I want to. Someday I might find peace. In the meantime, struggling, stifled romance will have to be enough. In fact, I just wrestled a Brazilian into bed, and he left claw marks on my right breast. But that’s for next month’s column.
Scott Capurro
GT August 2008
After a return to the ‘legitimate’ (my mother’s word) theatre, I found myself surrounded by actors. Ten of us in total, stuffed into the tiny, grimy dressing room of a small, respectable fringe theatre in Earl’s Court. Over a four-week period, two of us built a sort of partnership, a bond that intensified by the intimacy of the play, and life, as they say, imitated art.
The play, Fucking Men, is about men who fuck. Though each of the scenes have two persons, the characters intersect; each action effects the other, each affair feeds the circumstances of the next; as my character states, ‘sex is about connecting’. I played a failing playwright using sex for approval. Obviously the research was strenuous.
When I arrived at the theatre for my first rehearsal, the director was late, leaving me alone with my new scene partner, Alan. I’d been warned he was pretty, so I did what I do when I’m nervous. I flirted, awkwardly, suggesting this insolvent actor try prostitution. Alan’s from Minnesota, and though he’s lived in London for nine years, he, like packaged crisps, retains his freshness. Pale and sloppily dressed in baggy denim, his hair combed into a fin, he seemed disturbingly young. Forgetting momentarily I didn’t have a ‘type’, I reckoned he wasn’t mine and we’d get along just fine.
Initially, I thought Alan was a bad actor. Our scene involved two gay men circling one another, wondering how, or even if, one would pounce. He seemed distracted. I was of course bouncing off walls, sputtering and mugging with forced charm. Alan looked down, shyly. When we did make eye contact, he consumed me. I wondered why he disliked me so much. In fact, Alan was wryly responding to my showmanship. He was listening, as any skilled actor would. We – sorry, I - had a lot of work to do.
Unfortunately we had little time, so I innocently requested we meet alone, in Hackney, on a sunny day, to run lines. We ended up eating lunch, and as I asked him loads of personal questions, Alan cruised just about every bearded man that traipsed by. He asked me almost nothing about myself. In a way, I was relieved. He was a self-centered actor who couldn’t wait for opening night when he could get drunk. Again, though talented, I thought him plain. I praised myself for my own discretion.
When I made him dinner, he lightened up. “Can I just say that everything in this apartment is totally cute?” Yes, I said, you may. And that includes me I hope. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re as pretty as a princess.” I showed him photos of my mom and he told me about an extremely painful break up. We wandered to Shoreditch, and before he scurried off with his posse, we spent an hour on the street, alone, laughing and making fun of everything. Each joke made the other better. Intermittently, Alan leapt at me, excited, and hugged me.
Then, before a show, we discussed his father’s passing. He was still very upset, and we stood next to one another, in a cramped, warm hallway, my left shoulder pressing against his right, as I stroked his damp forehead. We looked at one another, and I brushed his left earlobe. Then his cheek. He stared so intently I thought he’d cry. I wondered if he wanted me to kiss him, and I worried what a sexual touch would feel with someone with whom I’d grown so intimate. Instead I walked away, then, later, watched jealously, as, in the scene before ours, Alan kissed an actor several times, longingly.
Eventually, we talked. Well, I did. I have feelings so infrequently, I think it best to reveal them when they do happen. We were on a bench in London Fields, so many passers by knowing Alan’s name. I was terrified of his sexuality; that he was young and still in demand, but I felt his coyness with me was forced. I hoped it was hiding something deeper that only my honesty could unleash.
Yet he stared off, like a slack jawed retard. He asked if I wanted to be friends, and of course I said yes. We parted, promising to speak soon. We haven’t. Though I miss him terribly, my ego won’t allow me to be familiar with someone who finds me unattractive. And that’s sad, because briefly, this feeling I’m foreign and misunderstood and abstract, diminished. With him, I felt necessary. I felt love. Which, for now, I’ll have to live without.
