anbesol and other diversions

anbesol and other diversions..

i got myself a bachelor's degree in theater years ago in colorado. i hated theater school, and loved it, and saw some shit at parties that you guys have never even HEARD of (except of course my readers that were there with me.. the keep - just makes you wistful thinking of it, right?)

i showed up my first day, and somehow formed a crazy, tight bond of friendship with two guys, josh and brock. josh was this cute, airheaded, curly-blonde, ultimate frisbee challenge kind of guy, and brock was the asshole that wore ripped up jeans and a leather jacket, said things that made you feel dirty, and that you'd never EVER take home to meet mum. we were an unlikely bunch.

i don't know how we came together the first day, or how we stayed together after that. but for a year or so, we went everywhere together. EVERYWHERE. we were sort of like the three stooges, now that i think of it.

most of our classes were in this horrid, cement, basement area-cum-classroom (it's a real word, people. no snickering.)

this dungeon had some of those awful desk chairs that folded up into themselves and that were never ever comfortable no matter who you were. but for some reason, this classroom also had a couch at the back. it was shitty, ripped up, and comfy as all hell. it fit the three of us perfectly. nobody would ever dare sit there when we were coming to class, so there was no problem getting to class late - it would be waiting there for us.

we would sit on that couch, and talk shit, sometimes listen to lectures (at least *I* did), and we'd explore new ways to entertain ourselves. for instance one day, brock brought some anbesol out of boredom - i don't think he needed it for any medical purpose. and we spent most of class spreading it on our lips like lipgloss. after about an hour, most of the lower half of my face was asleep, and i think brock was drooling (though maybe that was unrelated.)

i have a shitload of brock stories. he was a fucking fantastic writer, and an even better storyteller. his stories were so good, he had a way of making believers out of skeptics listening to an absolutely unbelievable tale.

some of you may have heard the story (not the long version, mind you, which the first time i heard it lasted about 40 minutes) about brock's one night stand with a paraplegic girl who had a rich family and an overly protective father. it's one of my favorites.

another story about brock i like to tell involves a redheaded girl in our theater school named sasha. she had a horrible fake french last name that i can't spell, and she drove us fucking crazy. brock would always go on about what a dumb whore she was (his words, not mine - but she was). brock was even adept enough to be the first to notice that she had a third breast, which wasn't much good to her because all three put together couldn't have filled a b-cup.

she was a disaster in all ways. and worst of all, everyone confused the two of us, simply because we were in the same year in theater school, both our names started with an 's', and we both had long red hair (don't even go there about the breasts thing. i have TWO. promise. and NO, i won't prove it.)

i hated having people call me sasha, because everything about her was everything i never wanted to be. i loathed it more than anything in the world, and brock took advantage of this whenever he could. of course, he loved every second.

i was in the costume shop one day, busily mending some circa 1880's dress, when sasha and her faithful companion susan came in.

susan was the girl that would be fantastic on her own if she had courage enough to do so, but instead sheepishly followed someone she worshipped around and adopted all their opinions.

i wasn't able to get up and leave the shop, so i tried to fill my mind with thoughts or music so that their conversation wouldn't seep its way into my conscious mind. but, as we all know, in a quiet room, you can't ignore those annoying people and their obnoxiously loud conversations.

i didn't hear the beginning of the story she was telling, but i got the gist of things. sasha was regaling susan with the story of some absolutely gorgeous guy that adored sasha but that she was only passively interested in. she didn't really have time for him, she said, but she figured she'd give him a chance anyway to be nice.

she continued on to explain that, during sex the previous night, she was bored and had to resort to watching the muted episode of "leave it to beaver" that was on this uber-hunk's television. she was trying to keep interested, she told susan, but this adonis couldn't elevate her mood past apathetic.

susan hung on every loud, irritating word sasha said like she would remember to do the same thing if she ever had sex. which was ridiculous to me because anyone with half a brain except susan KNEW there was NO WAY IN HELL that sasha had ever had sex before. no way. absolutely fucking none.

anyway, sasha had started feeling guilty because she ended up having to fake her orgasm. apparently dreamboy wasn't doing it for her. which, as sasha explained, was pretty standard for her. she always had to fake her orgasms because no man she had ever been with, and believe us susan, it was a LOT, had ever been able to pleasure her. she faked orgasms every single time, and was quite bored with sex in general because of it.

i made the mistake of retelling the whole thing to brock, which was never a good idea but i always did it anyway and then regretted it afterward. i made him swear he would never repeat it or say anything to her, and he agreed that he wouldn't.

the following week, brock and i were in our monologues class (along with sasha and susan, of course) and for whatever reason, we were actually seated in desks in the second row (i believe due to our professor's skepticism about our productivity level if we stayed on the couch for the day's lesson.) he was explaining our homework for the following day, and how we needed to take a 2-minute monologue and transcribe it into the phonetic alphabet (which more or less meant we had to write out several paragraphs in dictionary-pronunciation symbols, which was long and arduous.)

as he continued in detail, sasha, who was sitting directly in front of me and clearly exasperated, thrust her hand into the air and whined, "do we really have to translate the WHOLE monologue into the phonetic alphabet?" to which brock grinned proudly at me and loudly announced, "no, sasha. just do the first half. you can fake the rest."

what an asshole.

and now, 14 years later, i have happily reunited with him by the power of myspace. in fact brock, back when i knew him, liked vagina. but he is still, well, himself. he showed my myspace page to the guys he worked with, and evidently i got high marks because i got a few cross-continental sex offers. of course, in true brock fashion, he then weaved an amazing story about how he and i used to constantly sleep together in college until i contracted chlamydia. neither of which is true, by the way. which could be said for pretty much anything that man says. except for the paraplegic chick. that was real.