I was looking through the archives, as you do when you wish there was something new to read, and I thought it was probably time to re-post this story. It is the first tgi story I ever wrote, penned before I met M, and before I had ever played. Thus, although I had done plenty of scenes in the theater, I had never done a scene like this, and never felt a whack since childhood. Even though this story is overwritten and naive in many ways, I like it as a portrait of who I was in the summer of 1995, weeks before I met the man who would become my husband. It has all the markers of a new-at-this 26-year-old: the over-intellectualization, the bravado, the over-estimation of how much it might hurt, etc.
Some bio for those who like that kind of thing: I did do summer stock in Boston, and during college I had a roommate with a wild sex life and a predilection for TMI (which at the time I wistfully considered liberated). Andrew is loosely based on a guy I knew in college, but we never roomed together and nothing ever happened between us. In fact, once, just before he graduated, he asked if he could kiss me. I froze in terror because I had never actually kissed anyone [can you believe it??]. “Er, I don’t really do kisses,” I lamely said. He accepted this, sadly. He probably went away thinking I hated him or was a lesbian. LOL! Poor guy!
When I first started emailing with M, there was such an instant connection that I thought we already knew each other. I accused him of being the guy who had inspired Andrew. Not true, of course. But in role-play he wound up sounding a lot like Andrew sounds here.
I started acting at the age of six. I did a lot of directing in college. The acting stuff here is all taken from experience. It was one of the ways I was able to get my head around role-play then, and in retrospect, I find it still true, maybe more true than I knew when I wrote this piece.
A last remark – it’s odd for me to read this story and see “Casey” as this adult character, basically me with a pseudonym, whereas for most of her existence, Casey has been a kid. I suppose that’s because when I wrote this story, she was still evolving.
Equity Day Off
© Casey Morgan 1995
1.
It was ten o’clock at night in early June and the air felt like breath for the first time that year. When you went outside and walked around, it smelled like Florida. I had spent my first Equity day-off getting high with my roommate Judy. We took blankets out to Walden Pond and lay around in the sun from about ten a.m. until three thirty, at which time Judy had gone home and packed for her great-aunt’s funeral. I’d smoked pot before but never got high until that day. I’m not generally into drugs. Maybe I’m a goodie-goodie, but I was always afraid they’d fry my brain cells or make me do something I regret. On this occasion, though, Judy talked me into it.
“You can’t expect me to spend two days in Fairfield County Connecticut and not get stoned first,” she told me. I agreed because I knew going home was horrible for her. Though there might have been something else working in the decision. It was the first summer I’d had an apartment (albeit with my college roommate and her cousin). We were all part of a summer stock company. Judy was the designer, I was a director, and our third roommate, Andrew, was one of the actors. My play was up first, and after a week of eight-hour rehearsals I could barely think. Still, the legitimacy, the sense of adulthood intoxicated me. Maybe that’s why I agreed to get high. I don’t know. The point is I had.
And I was regretting it by ten o’clock. After Walden Pond, I’d gone to Quincy Market and gorged on chocolate ice-cream smush-ins. By the time the pot wore off, my stomach ache had set in. When I got home, Judy had left, and Andrew was nowhere to be found, so I crashed on the couch. When I awoke, I remembered what I’d done. That was when my stomach really started to hurt. I thought the best remedy would be work, so I sat down at my desk and got out my script. The play was Cloud 9, and I had to finish blocking the first act the next day. The harder I concentrated, though, the more I heard in my head awful snatches of my conversation with Judy.
“How was it seeing Klaus again?” I had asked her. Her German boyfriend had just arrived in Boston for a three-week visit, and I knew she’d missed him.
“It was…different,” she said.
“Different?”
“Fantastic, but different.” She took another drag on the joint, and so did I.
“What do you mean?” Judy usually took no prompting to go into the most intimate details of her sex life. She simply refused to be ashamed of anything she did. I admired this and hoped I might someday become as liberated as she was. Today, though, she turned over onto her stomach and squinted at me, as if I’d irritated her.
“You’re a real piece of work,” she told me. “You’ve been listening to me tell about my lovers for two years and you’ve never once told anything in return.”
“There’s nothing to tell. You heard all about my aborted kiss with Justin.” My virginity and pathetic lack of experience was something Judy accepted, even if she did vigorously encourage me to Go For It.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “There’s always something to tell. You must have fantasies.”
“I dream about making out with Hugh Grant, if that’s what you mean.”
“That is not what I mean.” Judy seemed pissed off at me. “You are my best friend, Casey, but I’ve got to say I’m sick and tired of being your tutor or your erotica supplier or your voyeurism satisfier, or whatever it is I am to you!” At first I’d thought she was joking, but now I thought she was weirded out on a combination of pot, funerals, and Klaus, and was taking it out on me.
“I know you’re not as pure and naive as you make yourself out to be,” she said. “It’s not possible. And I take your Nothing To Tell line as an insult to my intelligence. You must have fantasies that are a little bit smutty.”
“Well, sure.”
“So let’s hear one.”
“No way, Judy.”
“What do you mean, no way? Think of all the embarrassing stuff I’ve told you!”
“Look, it’s nothing personal, and I know I shouldn’t be ashamed of fantasies, but I am.” I saw her cock her guns for another attack against Shame. Words came from my chest, not my brain: “I hate myself. As much for the fantasies as for being ashamed of them.”
She shut up. We finished the joint, then went swimming. Afterwards we lit up another (the third, I think), and I asked Judy to reapply the sunscreen to my back. I was wearing a black, one-piece in the style of a 1930′s bathing suit, the kind that fit like Calvin Klein Boxer Briefs. It had a big scoop back. Judy’s hands were always soft and squeezy, and when she rubbed the lotion on my back she also gave me a little massage.
“That’s great,” I said. “A little higher.”
“Casey, I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“Uh-huh.” I felt deliciously relaxed as Judy kneaded my back in the frying sun.
“I hate to think of you hating yourself.”
“I don’t usually,” I said, feeling a little dizzy.
“The thing is, I feel strange talking about what Klaus and I did last night. I mean embarrassed strange.”
“But you’re never embarrassed.” I couldn’t tell if it was the massage or the pot or what, but my body felt heavy and buzzing all over, like I was floating in humming water.
“Well, this particular incident embarrasses me. So here’s what I propose: I’ll tell you what Klaus and I did last night if you tell me your most embarrassing fantasy.”
“Come on Judy, I said I didn’t want to tell.”
“Please, Casey. It would mean a lot to me. See, it’s going to drive me crazy if I can’t talk to someone about last night, but if you don’t tell me something equally embarrassing then I’ll feel gross.”
“Oh I don’t know…” It was all starting to feel really dreamy. She was my best friend. She was genuinely asking for my help. “I’m afraid you’ll hate me, or think I’m sick.”
Judy burst out laughing. “That, I think, is impossible given my experiences. Please, Case. What good is it getting stoned if you don’t tell embarrassing secrets while doing it? Don’t be a Puritan.”
“I’m not a Puritan!” I’m as broad-minded as they come. I was directing Cloud 9!
“Prove it.”
“All right,” I told her. “If you promise not to think less of me.”
“Less of you? The smuttier it is the more highly I’ll think of you.”
read the rest of the story
The coal burned brightly in the grate, but the room was cold, leaking the gale which blew down Wester-Ross. Mr. Prior had summoned her for a Little Chat, which Casey found unfair on holiday. Worse, he had announced uniform inspection. She hadn’t worn her uniform in forever. The iron at the cottage was temperamental. The whole proposition irked her.
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