And, Scene...
Episode 10:23:2023 - Prompt: Drama
Where Drama took me…
I have three best girlfriends from high school. Two studied acting and one was just lucky.
WT performed in plays and went on to perform in theatre and film in New York.
AL had a natural instinct for drama. She managed to be cast in a Woody Allen film using an enlarged Xerox of her drivers license as a headshot.
KM never performed on stage, but she had a voice for selling things.
All three had their time in the profession.
I, on the other hand, am not inclined for on-camera or voice performing. I stick to writing what people say and do on camera. It’s where I am most at home.
The one time I took an acting class with an English actress who had worked with one of my favorite directors, Mike Leigh, I was reduced to a blinking wreck.
“Stop blinking!” she kept saying as I blinked.
(I am a blinker. )
When I’m with any one of these best friends, invariably drama occurs.
It can be little things.
Like when AL and WT were visiting me in Spain for the first time when we were on the verge of 40. We spent the day on the beach in Málaga before checking into our shared hotel room in Granada for a night out on the town.
As AL went through her bags-within-bags, I noted urgency in her rustling. I heard some mumbling that evolved into, “Where the…?”
And it started to feel panicky.
WT and I looked at each other.
Oh no, we thought. What’s coming next?
AL couldn’t locate her vintage Ray-Bans. She remembered having them at the beach. Now she couldn’t find them. We were going to have to back track, go back down to the garage, check the trunk of the rental car, maybe go back to the beach!
WT asked calmly, “Do you remember when you last saw them?”
And just as AL was about to blow, she found the Ray-Bans. The room went silent.
WT, being a prepared theatre actor, said,
“And… scene.”
We all laughed and went on to have a night of drama in the streets of the Albayzin.
Which brings me to drama as a sign of distress…
I’m told I was a well-behaved child.
I didn’t act out or cause much trouble (not until I had my first shot of tequila, and that was much later!)
My childhood friend, Juliano, did act out.
Everything seemed fine until something pissed him off.
I definitely provoked the first episode I experienced.
We were sitting across from each other during snack time in kindergarten. Juliano was trying to tell me something about something I clearly didn’t care about.
I put my fingers in my ears and made an obnoxious bla-bla-bla noise that I had seen on television. I remember watching his face become tense, and as if in slow-motion…
Juliano threw his milk carton in my face. And we were sitting close to each other.
He just whipped it at me.
Made his point. Don’t mess with Juliano.
Another time, we were eating ice cream at our friend’s house. One of the kids put a shampoo cap in Juliano’s ice cream. Juliano screamed and threw the ice cream bowl onto the floor.
The young babysitter was completely unprepared.
Writing this now, as an adult, I understand that we kids were being jerks. None of us had siblings. We were only children to artist parents without consistent supervision.
Anarchy was bound to occur.
Juliano was like a brother, and none of his outbursts caused us to separate or tell our parents. I simply learned that some kids had tempers, and if I wanted to hang out with them, I had to respect their boundaries or pay for it.
Juliano was the last friend I saw of my Washington DC friends before we moved to Michigan. It was 1978, and we seven-year-olds didn’t keep up with each other.
Our parents, however, did.
Years later, as a teenager, when I was visiting my dad in Maryland, he told Juliano’s parents I was there. A dinner date was suggested by Juliano’s father.
My dad dropped me off at a restaurant that two kids wouldn’t be eating at by themselves. It was kind of fancy, beyond our means or sophistication.
Juliano’s dad dropped him off a little bit late.
It was awkward, as I recall. He was tense.
I remember Juliano telling me about having had a drug problem but that he was doing better now. I’m sure that news wouldn’t have bothered me. It’s just that we didn’t have much else to talk about.
The check was left on the table by a waiter who probably thought we were going to do a runner.
Neither of us had any idea how this worked. Juliano’s dad had given him money to pay the bill. He insisted he was inviting me.
Juliano searched & searched his pockets but couldn’t find his wallet.
He was pissed.
I started to see the kindergarten Juliano emerge, his rage was so close to the surface. He believed his dad set him up to fail.
He went to use the payphone and said his dad was on the way with the wallet.
How we passed the time, I’m not sure.
Perhaps another round of Coke’s.
When his dad arrived, Juliano accused him of what he thought to be true. That his father had set him up to look stupid in front of me.
Juliano walked out.
His dad paid the check while trying to make casual conversation, but I saw through it. I believed Juliano: his dad had used a reunion with me to set him up to fail. To need his dad to save him.
I remembered hearing they had a volatile relationship.
I never spoke about the dinner date to anyone. I didn’t understand what happened at the time, and I didn’t want to start any rumors about the family.
Ten years later, I found out through mutual friends that Juliano died, aged 27.
I think of him to this day, about how his behavior that was characterized as dramatic was really a call for help.
I believe I’m more attuned to the nuances of drama because of him.
We were both Aquarius babies of the 70s.
YOUR TURN: I went through a slew of DRAMATIC memories over the weekend. From high school (when I first started drinking) and beyond.
I thought of some of my favorite dramatic friends, of times I’ve diffused drama because I’m used to dramatic personalities.
I decided to write about Juliano because I never have, and I felt like he deserves respect for knowing he was getting shafted by his own father.
Where does DRAMA take you?
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I could talk about the time, way back, when I was warned not to chase my little brother around on slippery rocks, causing his fall, gashing his tiny knee, resulting in stitches. Or I could remember my big bro flattening me, a pre-teen, against the wall after I called him “FU*C*ER!”, resulting in a broken collarbone. Maybe tales of encounters with local police as a minor getting “booked” for multiple “arrests”, the underage drinker forcing sleeping parents awake to claim and retrieve an uncontrollable son. Or stories of gift-wrapped boxes flying in fits of rage, catapulted by our older brother on Christmas mornings, always a hard day for him. Suicide, divorce, death, drama. All families have drama, none are spared. But ever since early on, I decided to focus on fixing, the mending of bridges, the opposite of detonation. A kid trying to piece together unity whenever it frayed. I still do that today. The natural role of a middle child.
Many years ago, after witnessing people willingly invite and participate in rather destructive, pointless, and time-wasting, interactions, I disallowed elective drama in my life. It's come to my attention that I have expanded on the theme to the point of not perceiving things as dramatic if they are anything short of soul destroying. I often say,”Life is short, don't sweat the little stuff,” but my apparent gift to myself is considering all but the truly devastating to be little. I won't list the dreadful experiences I've endured, and there haven't been a lot but they were big, so in comparison I reflect on the lesser stressors as ironic, unfortunate, or even comical. I recently recounted a time I had to act fast to desperately encourage a mother goat to accept her newborn kid. It had fallen out of the birth hut on arrival. When replaced next to her, she rejected it. We quickly rubbed it with the afterbirth but she repeatedly pushed it away. After a few sleepless nights of bottle feeding every couple hours and nestling the little fella into a cardboard box in the warming oven, he became robust and the worries over his survival were over. Sure, that sounds full of drama, but I had only brought it up to share my primary recollection of how funny it was when he would try to suckle on the knees of our leather jeans.