Lost Theatre Love

I met her during a theatre course. The first lesson, we had to improvise in pairs of two, I immediately scolded her for ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’, with the rest of the students applauding loudly. It was fiction.

Screaming it out for a moment felt great. Sparks splashed out of my eyes, I was totally in character. She was impressed. The next lesson, I saw her again, right in front of the rehearsal hall. I couldn’t remember her name. That happens more often.

She immediately lured me with her eyes and asked my lips what I was studying. I started, completely under the spell of hypnosis: ‘I hate boxer shorts, ‘ and I pulled on my trousers a bit. She looked at my jeans ‘I like boxer shorts, nice and sexy, ‘ at which I shyly stuttered: ‘I like boxer shorts, to sleep with them um, during the day not, because that … irritates my um.’

Her study friend arrived just then and a wonderful example of communication was gagged. I then proceeded to read all the texts, because I was so good at that. Reading passages, we often had to do that, then we sat around the table and chose what we found interesting. That day she sat next to me, I read from Heiner Müllers Quartet:

‘O noble maiden, lovely child, delightful niece, your innocence makes me change my gender.’
She put her hand on my leg.
‘Fate between my legs makes me wish for such a change.’

She, my newfound theatrical love, rubbed my jeans as if they were soft velvet. What was small became big. I read the text even more intensely. At the same time, I didn’t know where to stay with my thoughts. I began to stumble. Her hand disappeared, away from the scene. I lost my eyes among the print. Dyslexic, everything disappeared into letters that jumped from one place to another, making reading impossible. Silence.

She looked at her friend with a gaze as if she had just stolen my virginity. I saw red. The rest looked at me in surprise and a little pitiful, someone relieved me and read on. My head was pounding, trying to organise everything neatly, but this was something I couldn’t do right now. Was this a hint or some lurid game whose secrets I did not know. For just a moment I felt that hand, a touch, and I was already being robbed of my sanity.

After the lyrics, we went to rehearsal the scenes. As one big happy group losing their souls in the lyrics, and me, anxiously hiding behind them. A few glances still reached me. By the end of the evening, I was shaking so hard that I couldn’t open my bike lock.

The very next week she disappeared from my life, she was too busy with her studies, so she informed us. That day I lost a piece of theatre love.

I didn’t know her, nor did I dare to ask who she was or where she lived. From now on, I decided to take full advantage of every touch, respond to it, not let it go and receive it so the gates of heaven would no longer close for me.

By, my theatrical love.