Doing as directed

04-14-80

 So, I play this role: director, finding myself caught between the actor and the real director, scurrying like a go-for to tell this person to move here and that person, there, and one actor I have to deal with in particular.

 "You have to tell her she's wrong for the part," I'm told, then sent off to deliver the sad news, sitting in her home in Fairlawn, her Jewish features and parents and life like a rare jewel I am ashamed to help destroy.

 She tells me about her life instead of me telling her straight out that the real director, the director with power, wants to dump her from the show.

 "I'm not really so protected as you might think," she tells me, referring to how her parents -- her doctor father in particular -- keeps her from harm, little knowing that I have come to hurt her.

 And suddenly, I'm making out with her in her parents’ house, with her parents in the other room, we coming as close to making love as the circumstance will permit, each of us fearful that if we removed too many articles of clothing we might not be able to replace them in a moment's notice when her parents coming knocking and asking what we are up to, each of us doing what we can by unzipping zippers or undoing a blouse, each of us giving each other pleasure in anticipation of oncoming pain.

 Then, two days later, she stands beside me, holding my hand, as someone else takes her place on the stage, someone else playing the part exactly as he had played it, like a mirror image of herself.

 Causing pain!

 And I'm the one alone with her, the real director nowhere to be found.