How Did We Get Here? How the Hell? |
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Here we are at the Nederlander Theater. Second in line, only after some guy named Joel, who says he has seen the show 62 times. Obviously this will be our first show but I'm not going to let him bully us. Ha! I can't believe I am sitting on a New York sidewalk at 4:00 p.m. on a night projected to be 25 degrees. Only 20 hours to go until we get our tickets! The three of us are the only ones here right now. I guess we came a little too early. Oh, well. H. went to eat with her sister, who lives here. This is so surreal.
The two of us, Shelley and I, are wide-eyed and excited, with runny noses, too dumb to be scared. I feel like two female versions of Luke and Tom Wingo coming to see Savannah for the first time in the Big Apple, doing everything a little backwards and seeing everything a little cross-eyed. Truly, this is just too amusing. It is so damned cold.
The first thing we saw when we got here was Anthony Rapp. H. "Balls of Steel" marched right up to him to ask for a picture. Is she a geek or what?
It's now 8:04, which means that the Saturday night show is about to start. EXCITING. We made two new friends, Jason and Reagan from Austin. We are now the only five people here. I still think we came too early, but like I said before, oh-fucking-well. I'm so amused that I don't care. Shelley is eating Hershey's Easter eggs, and Joel is snuggling under his down comforter, trying to patiently answer our series of inevitably annoying questions. There's a scalper lurking about who looks a lot like Denzel Washington, but I've deduced that in all likelihood, it's not him.
I'm hoping that writing will keep me coherent and sane, but I'm afraid I'm going to end up like the guy in To Build a Fire who has to crawl inside his dog's carcass to stay warm, going insane from brain freeze.
We just got reprimanded for making too much noise by the door. Shelley was caressing Adam Pascal's lifesize picture and exclaiming, "Look! It's my boyfriend!" a little too enthusiastically.
Ok, two new people are here, Sarah and Joe. They go to NYU. I told them how I am here to do my grad school schedule and meet some professors and they answered lots of questions for me. I HAVE NO HEAT, I TOLD YOU! It's now 9:03.
Someone is describing the lighting of "One Song Glory" and now (I can't write I am so cold) we're singing the soundtrack and let me tell you, we sound like rock stars.
Now we're talking about "Your Eyes" and how the band comes in halfway, but Shelley is delighted to learn how well Adam can supposedly play the song on his own.
There's loud rap music across the street. Someone in line is directing passersby on how to get places. There's a limo waiting to pick up the rich playgoers. It's 9:53.
Everyone's about to play cards, but I announced, "I don't like games." H. came back with coffee. Shelley had to buy Tylenol because she's feeling ill. I think it might be because she ate the entire bag of Easter eggs. All of Jason and Reagan's fellow Texan friends just showed up. H. is hysterically laughing about the fact that we are actually here.
Shelley is being demanding about everyone posing for pictures. I've decided we're definitely the most annoying people here.
H. just said with me in unison, regarding the length of our stay in New York, "Til Tuesday!" and we collapsed into giggles, recalling the 80s band. I think we've both had far too much coffee.
Shelley keeps trying to reassure herself that a police officer will be patrolling, while someone says sarcastically that the last time a police car drove by, it was to play the Jeopardy theme song over its loudspeaker.
I just asked Shelley if she wanted to smoke so she might calm the fuck down, and she said, "Think twice before you poo poo it." It was funny, but probably only to me at this moment when everything seems funny. Oh yeah, it's 10:18 now.
Reagan says he likes the character of Mark the best because they're both redheaded Jewish boys.
What's the time? Well, it's gotta be close to midnight. It's 11:52, actually. We just caught glimpses of Wilson, Taye, Idina, Anthony, Daphne. She is small and beautiful. Shelley bonded with a random guy in a gray hat with red eyes. After the show let out, he wandered around, transfixed, saying, "I cannot even speak." They exchanged addresses. This whole experience is just plain weird.
Right now we're all lying on a masterful bed of blankets and visquene, a word I don't think I've ever had occasion to write down in my entire life, so I have no idea how to spell it. It's like our own little tent city. Did I just write that? I swear, the geek in me is coming out like never before.
People keep staring at us. Some guys told us they auditioned for RENT, and I believed them, and everyone laughed at me for being gullible.
Some nice boys from Brown just randomly walked up and decided to join us. They're going back to get warm stuff, because let me just write for the record that it is butt-cold out here, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm starting to get a little delirious. I keep wiggling my toes to make sure they're still there. DAMN IT'S COLD!
1:20 a.m. -- tried to sleep in the visquene bundle but it was too cold. How can it be this cold in March? This is insane. I can't feel my feet. Two guys quoted Monty Python for thirty minutes straight. Now I'm sitting in a deli on the corner trying to regain my senses. Andy, my new best friend, came in to try and buy some beer. He wants to drink until he feels warm. I told him it will take more than a six-pack to achieve that impossible dream. He has decided to run around the block six times.
7:18 a.m. -- Wow -- we made it through the night. It's still absurd. It was so dumb to try and actually catch any quality zzzz's when some guys were rehearsing for The Glass Menagerie and some random hopefuls were debating who should ask to see the list and yelling / whispering, "You go." "No, YOU go!" then finally, "WHY DON'T WE BOTH JUST COME BACK AND DO THIS IN THE SUMMER!"
Everyone started talking about their favorite movies and someone said, "Puppetmaster ... Casablanca ... it's a toss-up."
Everyone is starting to annoy me. I have to get away from these people for a few minutes. I think I'll go to McDonald's to stare at myself in the mirror and make sure I am registering some level of coherence in regards to my surroundings.
H. just said, "Only 4 and a half more hours to go! Let's pretend we're at Hamlet right now. Look. Isn't Kenneth Branagh sexy? God, this movie is SO GOOD!"
8:30 a.m. -- H. and I walked down to the Marriott to get our blood circulating. It was luxurious to pee on a toilet that didn't smell like week-old vomit and actually provided sanitary seat covers. It was weird to peer into the Disney Store and remember last summer.
It's not as excrutiatingly cold now that we're sitting in the sun. My face is cracking, though, and bursting into red splotches of scratchy coldness. Some guy named Kent had to freak out for a few minutes, fearing that he had frostbite because he accidentally fell asleep with his hand exposed. I don't think it's cold enough to get frostbite, but what do I know? I'm Southern and it gets this cold there about once a year. Argh. I can't take it. Shelley, kind as always, gave him her hat and gloves.
Just found out that Andy loves Mandy, too. Patinkin, that is. He's quoting him in The Princess Bride. We had a "remember the good old Mandy moments on Chicago Hope" fest. Some scary man just demanded to know where the line list is.
I don't know how I would have made it if not for the deli from heaven. It seemed so lush and gourmet in the middle of the night and even though the bathroom is truly repugnant, at least they have flavored coffee and snyder's pretzels. My nose is truly in pain.
10:16 a.m. -- "I've decided against gloves with no fingers," a still suffering Kent just declared, rubbing his hands together. "Eliza's friend Vinny told her she was going to climax in ecstasy when she sees the show," H. just announced to everyone. Nice. None of us has put on deodorant today. But we don't smell because we're too cold.
True giddy delirium is setting in. Speaking of orgasms, I just gave Kent and Reagan a lesson on the Wife of Bath, queen of nymphomaniacs. They have a Chaucer test next week.
Now we're talking about the Indigo Girls. Andy followed them one summer. We are gushing obsession about one song or another. It's weird how people who love RENT, love Stand By Me, Monty Python movies, Mandy Patinkin, The Princess Bride, the Indigo Girls have all come together -- we are all bonded by common loves. Now I'd like to buy the world a coke.
10:41 a.m. -- Shelley is shrieking at Andy's eyeball convulsion tricks. H. is curled up in a sleeping bag like an olive green armyfied glow-worm. Swear to God my mind is no longer working. Shelley bonded last night with "The Moved Guy," and she keeps imagining that he's walking by -- illusions.
My camera is rewinding and it sounds like it's eating my film. Paranoia. "Am I, or am I not, the sanest person you have ever met?" Andy just demanded when Shelley called him a psychotic fiend. "I have turrets," he explained.
Someone keeps cornily saying, "I feel like I've been here 525,600 minutes," and it's getting rather irritating. Someone is now singing "More Than Words" and I'm about to get violent. Sit on my face and tell me that you love me -- Andy just sang this and declared it his ultimate fantasy. And to think he seemed like a perfectly normal guy.
Andy and Jason are blasting into the air-guitar instrumentation of "The Final Countdown" by Europe. Final countdown. We're almost there.
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