the missus and i went to see a play on friday night. easily ten years since i last saw actors grace the stage. found no more joy in watching than i did in watching music, which did not require the people in attendance to not make a peep. these days, i am more quiet — both inside and outside — so sitting is no problem.
we met up with simone and had a nice meal of fresh spring rolls and garlic noodles. the mission on a friday night, the place was alive. the theatre, intersection for the arts, a black box that puts on works by aspiring and first-time playwrites who are otherwise famous. mister otherwise famous was denis johnson himself, author of jesus' son, fiskadoro, and the name of the world, my favorite novelist who is living and writing. he wrote the play "psychos never dream" about a rural community in northern idaho. mister johnson lives there and is actively promoting the rural northern idaho style of life, which is to say home schooling, rugged property, and four-wheel-driven bearded men with sanity astray. when the audience, being we, sat and waited for the festivities, we were treated to several different renditions of "just like tom thumb's blues." bobby dylan's original, neil young's rocker version from bobfest, nina simone's slow-burn croon, and others i didn't recognize. i'm going back to new york city, i do believe i've had ee-nough.
the play started and we took aim at the stage. the actors were golden, and the writing was witty, humorous, everything one would expect. the johnsonverse is a curious place, everyone being stark raving mad. the possibly-murderous veteran looking for gold in the hills, the hippie with mercury poisoning, the lesbian deputy who weeps at the lack of love in the world, and the red headed housewife who is convinced that her husband is videotaping her and the vet screw on the husband's bed. that's another thing, the nudity. i saw two cocks and one scrotum for the price of admission. i'm still not sure how i feel about that. actors fake-doing it on stage is not amusing, nor sexy, nor even titillating. it's uncomfortable. maybe more so for them than me, but still.
play ends and the actors come out for a curtain call, and the lesbian deputy speaks to the crowd, offering thanks. then she looks at us, the three of us in the second row and smiles. or was she smiling at somebody behind me? "ladies and gentlemen, mister denis johnson," she says, points directly behind my chair. i nearly broke my neck spinning around, and i found denis sitting, smiling sheepishly in glasses. he's a little heavier, older, and hairier than in his author photos as most 40-ish authors are. they tend to keep their photos on jackets of younger and slimmer days. my hero, mister johnson, sat and watched the play, no doubt noting my every laugh and chuckle, the groan i let out at a cheap but perfectly executed pun, and the silence in between.
my breath shortened, as we stood up to leave, i thought of all possible scenarios that would put me face to face with hero johnson. but once there, what would i say? what should i do? i feigned listening to the missus and to simone as we babbled outside of the theatre, all the while looking over my shoulder for the man who saved my interest in contemporary prose. how unsure i was of myself and those sketchy stories of depravity i wrote when i was 19 and 20, how big that little book of his was to me, who knows? and he'll never know, because soon after that we were gone, he was gone, backstage maybe, off to toast with actors and rewrite scenes because the hipster in front of him failed to laugh as loudly as one would want the hipster to laugh. or so i tell myself.
Posted by snackfight at February 4, 2004 02:13 PM