Exeunt

Mama. I don’t know why you have to make everything so difficult. I look at having this baby as the opportunity of a lifetime. Sure, there may be some risk involved. That’s true for anybody. But you get through it and life goes on. And when it’s all said and done there’ll be a piece of immortality with Jackson’s looks and my sense of style…I hope. Mama, please. I need your support. I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.

That was my thirty minutes of wonderful. For the first, and probably only, time in my life I was a heroine. Yes, there was teased hair and awful high wasted 80's jeans and a horrid wig. But for once I wasn't a chorus girl, and when I died, people cried. I spent my whole life wanting that, and I will probably spend my whole live reliving those few moments. As time goes by I will forget the nights that we did our lines in circles, the nights we wanted to kill our fellow cast members, the nights we caused the director to want to go into early retirement. I will remember the smell of fancy face paint and hairspray, how hot that vest was under the lights, how that one night everything just slipped perfectly into place.
I have spent seven years now learning that I am not an actress, and I will spend fifty more at this rate. But, as the years pass me, so will the roles. Too late for Juliet now, and soon too late for Shelby too. Desdemona, my favorite, has maybe two years left. I am getting too old for the heroine, people get dried up faster in this business then in any other one in the world. So, through high school college, a job...somehow I still read these lines, hug my pillow, and cry.

What can I say. The stage is a fickle mistress.