Proverbs 15, Verse 7
"Only the good can give good advice.
Rebels can't."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
I just broke up with my therapist via e-mail. Isn't that trashy?
Well, I suppose it's more avoidant than trashy. I told him that I was discontinuing our sessions over e-mail instead of during our regularly-scheduled session on Tuesday because I'm an "errant coward and a sappy pussy", and I don't know why I said that, because he knows both of those things. I think they're my Axis II.
Even though he keeps trying to make me listen to sandal-wearing shamans masturbating on their podcasts, that's not the reason why I'm not going to therapy anymore. It's dollars and cents. If it were free, like it was in college, I could probably go talk about myself once a week until my dying day, because that's the kind of humanitarian I am, but our finances are taking such a concussive hit from childcare that it is necessary to make some sacrifices.
It's funny to think of giving up therapy as a sacrifice. It's such a New York, Woody Allen, pedantic, East Side, Jewish, pencil-prick thing to say, but it's true. The plain fact of the matter is that ceasing therapy will save our family $1,200 a year-- a damn sight more than shitcanning my iPhone was saving us. That, by the way, amounted to a $240 a year savings, and, last weekend, I caved in and re-activated the iPhone. In spite of our draining bank account, I haven't looked back on that one. iT's niCe to have an iPhone.
Maybe I'll go back when the babies start "school" in the fall and we're actually able to save a little money. But maybe I won't. I don't know. I'm feeling pretty good of late. The Viibryd seems to be doing its thing, making pirouettes in my brain or whatever the fuck it's doing to my seratonin, I have more energy around the babies, I'm more sprightly and ridiculous. Sure, I still think about death pretty much all the time, but I don't know that there's anything or anyone that's going to necessarily be able to help me out with that. I think that's just kind of my thing, unfortunately.
I was thinking a lot about death this weekend, especially. That's what happens when you go to see a high school production of "Peter Pan" on a Friday night. One of my private acting students was in the show and I went to go support her, and also, more selfishly, to go back to Neverland. It's a place (where dreams are born and time is never yea yea yea) where I never, ever get tired of going-- either as an audience member or as a mustache-twirling, bewigged, Captain of misery, murder and loot ("eager to kill any who says that his hook isn't cute).
"Peter Pan", for me, is the most emotionally complicated show with which I've ever been involved. For most people, it's about never growing old and the magic of fairy dust. For me, it's about nostalgia, love, pain, and death.
I was cast as Captain Hook when I was in seventh grade and, not to be immodest, I rocked out in a pair of Girl Scout boots that belonged to the costume lady's daughter, a Michael Jackson wig and a handlebar mustache drawn on with eyebrow pencil. It was the role and the show that made me and theatre shack up together in a big way. The applause during my curtain call rained down so hard it almost made my little 12-year-old heart freeze up-- it was narcotic. But I got brought down hard a few months after the show closed when one of the Indians, who was a close friend of mine, went to go have her wisdom teeth out. She went into cardiac arrest during the procedure and she died. Shellshocked, I went to her funeral with the director of "Peter Pan". I stood in the receiving line absolutely terrified-- I had no idea what I would do or say when I got up to her parents. When I got up to her mother, she looked at me and said, "Oh, Captain Hook-- she loved you so," and she hugged me so hard I thought we would both break.
Seventeen years went by before I got cast in "Peter Pan" again, as Captain Hook again, directed by the same woman who directed me in the show in middle school. I called my mother and told her I was going to be playing Captain Hook once more and she said, "Oh that's wonderful, honey-- are you going to play him gay again?"
Not one to miss a set-up, I replied, "Of course."
I suppose even someone who's not obsessed with death can't help but think even a little bit about mortality when you're playing a role as an adult that you once played as a child. You can't help but think about how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same. I was delivering lines in exactly the same cadence as I did as a thirteen-year-old, which doesn't really say much for how I've grown as an actor. At least my voice changed. It was wonderful, though, I'll admit-- to be surrounded by love and wonderfully talented children and a show that I hold so very close to my heart. Standing off-stage every night, listening to the overture, waiting for the clock to play "Tender Shepherd", and the curtain rising, wondering whether the audience would applaud for the set, waiting for Wendy and John to dance-- "playing at Mother and Father". That's my favorite part of the show.
On Friday night I was back in Neverland again, watching that high school production-- trying not to compare myself to the Captain Hook on the stage (he played it very dark-- sorry). I was really taken with the vocal abilities of the girl who played Peter Pan-- an astonishingly powerful performer-- capable, competent, confident, commanding-- everything Pan needs to be.
It wasn't until intermission when I learned that, in January, she became an orphan under horrifying circumstances-- in an instant-- a terrible, shocking, disgusting instant-- a life changed forever. And suddenly, all the lines she spoke and the lyrics she sang in Act I were searing through my brain. Lines about mothers and fathers and Lost Boys and Act II was an absolute blur. I just wasn't there. I tried to be there, but I was far, far away. And "Peter Pan" just got a little more emotionally complicated for one more aging Captain Hook.
I probably would have spent a good part of Tuesday talking about this to my therapist, but, instead, I'm talking to you. And I'm okay with that, because I love you and talking to you is free and I know I have to work on not judging myself and being mindful and keeping perspective and noticing my emotions and my tendencies and making little changes and accepting and acknowledging and just being.
I know.
And I also know that, some day, I have to be in "Peter Pan" again. Maybe I'll be forty, or fifty, or older, and that'll only add another layer on top of what is already there for me. But that's alright. Because it's not all youth, joy, and freedom, and it's not all Christmas and candy, Michael. Sometimes you have to take your medicine, just like Father.
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