February 23, 2013

• It’s like an essay, but less wordy

  Three things I’ve decided I’m probably more than passionate about: art, the natural world, and my spiritual path. Any other interests I enjoy, but they don’t consume my every waking thoughts like those three.
  My first opening night in three years. And I had a part in the play, although it was only one line, and I was pretending to be a man. And I got a laugh. And I was treated like an actual part of the group, not a pariah. It was like a dream come true. Although, I gotta say that this is the first time that I’ve had dealings with theatre where almost everyone was untrained. I kind of felt like I was the go-to answers person, but I still had fun.
  I’ve also decided that if someone were to make a slice-of-life comedy that was something closer to reality, at least in this economic climate and targeting the under-30 set, it would be more likely that one of the main characters is living out of their car, or in some other non-traditional, borderline-homeless situation. My thinking about that led to me making up a rather awkward romantic comedy in my head. Here’s how the plot goes:

  A guy and a girl meet in high school. The guy is super-popular, while the girl is kind of a nerd. They both have feelings for one another, but don’t say anything. The girl is pretty shy at first. The guy’s friends don’t approve of him dating the girl, so he mostly just makes fun of her a lot. He secretly asks her to prom, and tells her that they’re going to play a prank on his friends. His friends find out, and confront him. The guy lies and says that he’s actually playing a prank on the girl. The prank gets played on the girl, and she’s humiliated. Fast forward ten or so years, and the girl is a librarian in a town in West Virginia, far far away from where she grew up. She is going to her favorite cafe for lunch, and her server is none other than… the guy who stood her up at prom. He has no idea who she is, but she knows him, and acts very sarcastically towards him. When he figures it out, he is completely blindsided, and figures she hates him. The guy has grown up a lot, moving from place to place after college and his family falling apart after his father’s business tanked. He moved to West Virginia to take care of his ailing great aunt. The aunt has a lot of animals in her house, so he stays out of the house, in his car, in the cluttered garage. He’s working two jobs, one as a server, the other delivering newspapers.  He tries to make it up to the girl, but she’s still pretty untrusting. He plays his guitar outside the library, trying to get her attention, and gets picked up by the dopey town sheriff for vagrancy. After the guy and the girl get together, they get into some sort of fight over something, so he goes out and gets drunk at the town bar. He doesn’t want to drive after drinking, so he tries to sleep in his car in the bar’s parking lot. The next morning he wakes up in the county jail, where he’s been arrested for vagrancy, again. He gets one phone call to the girl, and apologizes. The girl has to tell the whole complicated story to the police while she’s posting bail. And everyone lives happily ever after…

  • 12:16 am
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