Ok so continuing with last week's scandal:
Ok so Saturday night there is a big banquet and if you still have a leg left to stand on there is general dancing. It's amazing, I had been up since 6 am and dancing since seven and I still had it in me to dance. Anyway at these events, like everything else in life there is always a surpluss of women. (I'm beginning to think that practice of exposing girl children probably came from trying to keep the gender populations equal. Ok that's a stretch, but why is it there are so many more women in the world than men? This is surely some natural failure. I mean, does this happen in animal populations too? If you know feel free to email this blog's special email address russboyfriendproject@hotmail.com.) Now I can handle that my destined man at such events is going to be a gay man. After all I've spent a majority in the theater, which if that doesn't mean I'm used to being escorted by gay men, well I don't know what to tell you. Uh, actually in a show I once played the husband of a six foot tall drag queen. So being the "date" of gay man is actually my natural condition, but to be stood up by a gay man?! I hate to say it, but from a straight man I expect it, but I have a higher standard for gay men, Yes I actually expect that they will show up. And Drew did show up, he had a glass of red wine with me and then vanished for twenty minutes. So everyone is asking me where he went, as I had some kind of tracking device on him. I said he must be around somewhere, maybe in the bathroom or in his room because he forgot something. He finally comes back at the beginning of dinner and tells the managers of my studio that he is too sick to stay and then comes over to me. He tells me the same thing.
Now by the this time the managers of my studio, I shall refer to them as T and M,(have you noticed that with the exception of Max if I like a person, I won't name him or her, but if I don't like a person, I will repeat his or her name as often as I like? )they weren't happy with Drew and clearly didn't trust him as they both came to me asked what he told me. I said he told me that he was sick and couldn't stay. So I danced some that night, but I was ready to collapse.
So Monday I show up and studio and of course D, asst. manager, wants to talk to me about what happened. OK I'll try to keep this short so as not to totally bore you. Basically, what came out was that D, T, and M had been harassing Drew to learn the steps for a month and that they were worried that this would happen. Apparently D realized two weeks before competition that Drew wasn't ready to go to comp. but it was too late by that time to cancel or switch me to another teacher. She didn't say anything because she didn't want to alarm me.(Oh yeah let me blythely go into humiliating myself. Thank you for your concern.) So they switched me to Max as my full time instructor.
Now this switching is both good and bad in and of itself.
Its good because Max, despite being all of 19, is a good teacher. He is very serious about technique. But there are some bad things to having Max as a teacher. Namely, we can't be flirty anymore. Now that he is my teacher is much more distant. He doesn't ask me about personal things anymore. Ok so points for professionalism. But it is difficult to be in such close proximity to someone I'm attracted to and not be able to do anything about it. I have to say as an actor I was very lucky, I never had to do a love scene with anyone I was that interested in. (Mainly because I wasn't really a romantic lead kind of girl. I was always a villian or a character actor.-Actually when I was thirteen I had to "love" scene with another thirteen year old. I had to play Laura from the Glass Menagerie, unfortunately this idiot kid couldn't hit my lips. He would always kiss me on the chin, the cheek, and I swear once he almost hit my eye. I was tempted to draw a bull's eye on my lips.)
Now I have to admit Max was put in a wierd position. On monday he sees everyone questioning me and talking to me about what happened. So after everyone is done and my teacher has been switched he asks me what happened. Now it was hard to talk about it A because Drew was there that day and had been hovering around probably hoping to talk me into keeping him as a teacher and B because I didn't want Max to get the impression I was blaming Drew for my failures as a dancer. So I tried to explain to him that I felt toally unprepared and therefore I felt betrayed. If I was going out there unprepared I wanted to know that instead of being told up until the day of "Oh we are going to blow them away" and then the day of "Oh well this is just for fun I always do poorly with first comps." (Oh yeah, that really re-affirmed my faith.) Max to make me feel better, told me about his first competition, (which I will reproduce here without permission). Apparently Max was thirteen at his first comp. He showed up in jeans and sneakers because, as he admits, he just didn't care. So his mother runs around for two hours finding him dance shoes he can borrow and in the ned he ends up wearing his mother's Versace black pants to compete. "Of course I thought I was the best one out there, but my ass was sticking out the whole time." Basically his point was, everyone has a bad first comp. or if not first, eventually there is one bad comp. it's just the way it is. What he didn't udnerstand is that I can accept there just being a bad comp. but this was utterly preventable and unnec. oh well. It was sweet of him to try. And this is why I love Max.
I digress.
So at that point, they weren't saying anything about firing Drew although I could sense it. But the next day is what did it. D called me about a couple of suspect signatures. I have to sign everytime I have a class and at the end of the week they compare the signatures to the scheduled classes. Well it turns out there were two signatures for monday and tuesday, the days Drew called in sick, that indicated he had taught me. Well I had class with him on thursday, two classes, to make up for his sick days. I told D it was probably just that he had me sign on monday and tuesday for thursday's classes. D says no, she has two signatures for thursday. She asks me to come down and verifiy the signatures, well, I had to go in for class anyway. So I went and looked at the signatures, no way were they mine. My hand writing is very loopy because I don't hold my pen correctly these signatures the loops were too tight and the slant was wrong as well. So I told D. She asked if I was sure, since they looked the same as my other ones to her. I told her no way. So now Drew was definately getting fired.
I have to admit on some level I feel awful. This guy was a friend of mine. I mean we went out and had drinks on occassion. And the fact that he is HIV does play some part in it. We both pretend to be healthy people and we do it well, but he is HIV and I'm disabled. I feel on some level like I betrayed him. Although a friend of mine who is neuro psych ph dsaid to me "Having HIV doesn't give anyone the right to forge your signature. And a friend doesn't use you like that. If he was a real friend and needed money he should of just asked you to loan it to him." I still on some level feel responsible. On the other hand I feel very betrayed and used.
Alright I really have to figure out what the hell to teach tomorrow and finish grading papers.
Tomorrow the thrilling conclusion. Some last thoughts before Thanksgiving. And as always biting wit and scathing commentary. (Not to mention scintillating vocabulary.)
I always want to take this last moment here to make a promise to you my readers, never ever to use emoticons on this web log.
Thank you and good night.