“You have very sensitive lungs, don’t you?” He gave me an annoyed look.
“Try smoking this shit and not coughing”..
I only had to raise my eyebrow in the cockiest manner for him to understand “challenge accepted”. I took the roll and breathed in an enormous amount, far more than anything ever recommended in order to stay safe. Once done, I jumped down the window corner, showing not only not the slightest desire to cough, but also no dizziness whatsoever. The students just looked at me with utter incredulity.
“Your friend’s pretty badass,” one of the musicians remarked.
“Thanks,” I responded, after which I slapped the back of Hugo’s head. “Throw that in the bin and don’t bring any again, you’ll put us all in trouble.” I turned to the guys in my gang. “Come on, we’ll be late!” They nodded and walked towards the theater quarters. Some of the girl musicians approached me.
“I think it’s pretty cool how you’re a girl and you can order them around,” one of them said, amused.
“Thanks,” I laughed back. “I mean I’m used to it, almost all my friends are guys, and you know how it is with them when you’re a girl… Either show them you’re business or they won’t take you seriously.”
After parting with them, I walked down the corridor to our classroom and there saw Alex, rushing to embrace him from behind.
“Hi there!”
“Hi sweetie”. I loved it when he called me that. He was the only one of the boys who called me something other than “bro,” or “dude.”
“Do you know what we’re doing today in class?”
“We’ll probably start the end of the year play, I reckon. Sarah said that we’ll do a postmodern-ish play with no dialogue. She said it’s gonna be about sexuality.”
Most of us were now twenty, the youngest eighteen, so such a theme was now finally available for treatment.
“What do you mean, postmodern?”
“You know, something not classical. Something fucked.”
“I know! I know!” exclaimed Hugo. “We’ll like, bash ourselves against the walls repeatedly for hours and that’ll symbolise some socio-political plight of the postmarxist something world.”
Everyone around me laughed. Me, I was feeling that same old boredom I spoke of earlier in this story. But that wasn’t the only reason for my calmness. My contemplation of Alex also required an amount of focus. I hated admitting it, but the reason I enjoyed hugging him was partly so my hands could feel his muscles. He was nowhere as muscular as Ari, but then again, he wasn’t as tall as Hugo and thus didn’t look like a tree. Alex was in that perfect middle. And even though he was my best friend… god did he look handsome. And most of all, it was the calmness in him, that elegant nonchalance, which I loved. It was the shame of my soul that I continually went through periods of being quite smitten by him. “Idiot,” I thought to myself. “He’s completely out of your league.”
We entered the so called “Theater Quarters.” The room was a great rectangular space of beige floor and walls. One third of the room across it’s longitude was occupied by a stage; large enough to hold 40 people, but minuscule compared to the immensity of the college stage where productions were held. The other two thirds were a large empty space, with only two big cubicles on each side, left and right : the costume room and the prop room. Between them, in the large space where we did most of our existing in the class, there was the circle of chairs which we formed to talk as a group; a large Arthurian round table without a table.
We all took a chair; of course I sat next to Alex; as the teacher Sarah sat on the one at the highest point of the circle, below the stage. She was a comely woman in her late thirties, blonde, a little short of stature and busty. I used to be quite jealous of her torso until last year, when slowly I realised that my own breasts had become larger and even more well rounded than hers. “Shut the fuck up,” I told myself. “You’re so narcissistic.”
“Hey Jade.”
I turned to salute Isabel, one of my only female friends for whom my friendship equaled that which I had for the boys. Isabel had always been my girl sister, the one to whom I could turn to when curious, sad, confused or even panicked about my womanhood. She was the one who continually helped me grow into a woman. The other girls, I knew only as casual friends from school. One was Chanel, a sport lover of a different cut than Chris’s. The latter enjoyed sports from his TV, Chanel enjoyed them with her very sweat and muscles, so much so that only Ari and Alex had ever managed to beat her in games of iron fist. I saw her talking with the other girls. They…well, I must say WE, since I was one; dominated the group. The seven boys were the only males out of the thirty students in the class. While everyone was friendly to one another, and teamwork and discussions were ripe, there was a clear distinction between the boys, who usually hung together, and the girls, who formed their own separate group. I again was the anomaly in that I was always with the boys; and many of the females that I had known for two years by then were still strangers to me. The only thing I can say with utter certainty about them; is that it was a recurrent act for them to steal glances at me whilst I’d be laughing with my male friends. I didn’t need the ability to read their minds to know that constant judgement and questioning was the object of their thoughts as they observed me so. After two years, they still looked at my being part of the boy’s group as something strange.
“Welcome everyone,” said Sarah in her enthusiastic poet’s tone, “please turn off your cellphones. Yes you too Ari. Alright, good morning everyone. Since we’ve spent the last two days warming up, we can cut right to the meat today. We’ll start preparing the end of the year play this very morning.”
“So what is it exactly?” asked Isabel.
“As I had told some of you, we’ll be doing something completely different this year. Since it’s your last year here, I want you all to go with a bang. This year’s play will be a testament to your talent and will have to be the most beautiful you’ve ever staged. The piece will contain no dialogue nor narrative. It won’t function on normal human language, or even the classical language of theatre. No, this play will be emotions, pure, raw feelings, nothing more.” Part of the class looked at Sarah dubiously, but I trusted the woman. She knew what she was doing. When she felt that we had gotten, albeit vaguely, an idea of what she was talking about; she continued. “You all know that the Theater here is very much esteemed and respected throughout the region. Critics and lovers of the theatrical arts come here every June to see the plays that we have crafted. Because of this reputation and commitment the college has to quality, I want to make sure that this play will be pitch perfect. Because of this,” she turned to me, “I want you, Jade, to play the main character.” A bright and shocked smile formed on my face as the assembly applauded me. After Alex hugged me congratulations, Sarah continued. “I said you’ll play the main character, but that’s not very true. You won’t be playing a character, since there will be none in the play. Instead you’ll be playing a feeling, an idea…”
It was now my turn to ponder dubiously on the words.
“An idea?” I repeated, confused. “How am I supposed to play an idea?”
The teacher smiled.
“A fair question. The only way to find the answer is to show you your costume, because all your performance will be in your costume.”
“Alright,” I said eagerly.
Sarah pointed at the ground next to her.
“This. This will be your costume.”
We all laughed. Yet for some reason, there was a stern seriousness to the teacher’s look.
“What? My costume’s gonna be the ground?”
“Not the ground, no. What’s above it.” Sarah’s tone was somber, almost gruff.
“But there’s nothing above the ground…”
“Exactly.”
Confusion was creeping in me.
“So…I’m not going to have a costume? I’ll just wear everyday clothing? Is that the point of my character?”
The teacher made sure that her gaze was fixated unto mine before speaking :
“You won’t be wearing a costume Jade. You’ll have to be completely natural.”
The air we all breathed was replaced with silent discomfort. Only the ticking of the clock spoke. With my confused look, I made it clear to Sarah that I still did not know what was going on. She only smiled, the way mothers do to comfort their children.
“Sweetheart, you won’t be wearing a costume. You won’t be wearing everyday clothing. You won’t be wearing anything…”. The heaviest, most awkward silence of all fell on the room. None spoke, for none knew what to say, but all looked at me. I just sat there, my lips parted, my blue eyes big and confused. “Jade dear, you will be naked. Totally and completely naked.”
Utter shock, that was the only response from me. No one could believe they had just heard these words. Isabel answered in my stead.
“Miss, what the hell? Did you say she’s going to have to be nude?”
Does anyone happen to have the full story? Back in the day the rest was posted in the comments.
Check the forum link. The rest of the story is posted there. I’ll also be posting the rest of the story on the blog over time.
Didn’t see that, thanks!
Please submit a gallery of Kim Kardashian’s nudes. There are dozens.
Where is chapter 2 and all someone please post everything
I read this story with great interest because the main character is all too similar to how the ex-wife turned out. When we met she was kind of a tomboy with “issues” about male and female gender role playing. But under that she was rather feminine and, as it turned out, horney and not a little kinky. Well, she fell headover heels in love with me and I guess I gave here “permission” to bring out her feminine side. Like when I bought her first bikini – she said she would have thrown it back in the face of any other man. Well, to make a long story short, she got wilder and kinkier and, when i got laid off and ran out of money, she decided it was time to move on. I don’t know. Is there some lesson in both this story and my own?