The Reluctant Receptionist

it’s inevitable that on the first day of fall-like weather i put sleater-kinney onto my ipod. (of course, it wasn’t always the ipod; i’ve been an s-k fan for so long that i’ve evolved with them from tape to cd to minidisc to mp3.) never mind that today’s weather is just a tease, that i’m sure the thermometer will spike at least one more time, there’s a crispness to the air that feels like fall on my face. and the clouds are skirting across the sky, dark against blue. this weather always reminds me of indiana, a fact that i discussed with amanda when we were in chicago last weekend. we were walking around downtown, somehow needing a sweater in the middle of august, and the air just smelled different: it smelled like the midwest. and as much as i love new york, as much as i appreciate everything that i have here that i could never have in the midwest, it made me miss it. it made me miss 2:00 a.m. breadsticks and coke in a box, eaten with amanda in the third floor of the SCARE house, and sneaking downstairs to have a cigarette on the back porch before i finally admitted that it was a stupid habit that would catch up with me in the end.

we wrapped up the rape of lucretia yesterday, a fact that i was thinking about while getting dressed this morning and i can’t quite believe. i know how cliche it sounds to say shit like, “it seems like just yesterday…” but seriously. it seems like just yesterday that i was saying things like, “well, i should really go buy that score since we start staging in three weeks!” i’m proud to report that i married myself to boosey and hawkes (it’s kind of a polyamory thing) for all of august and the performances thursday and sunday went really smoothly. i of course had a couple of wrong entrances between the performances, but it was nothing major and nothing anyone would notice unless they were following along with a score. it’s not often that i will say this, but doing this role was a bit of a personal triumph. it was a lot of range-y singing and difficult to pull off, but i don’t think that i personally could’ve done a lot better. could nathan gunn—or any of the legions of young baritones who are better than me? probably. but this game is increasingly more and more about challenging myself personally than competing with other people, and so it was a personal triumph. it also didn’t hurt that everyone in the cast was easy-going and fun to work with. it was seriously a win-win.

and so here i am, monday afternoon on the last day of august, with another role on my resume. back at work filing papers, running errands, wondering what my next gig will be. it’s rare that i don’t have something lined up when i finish one project, but i’ve got some callbacks and leads on gigs—and, of course, my wonderful ongoing work with rhymes with opera and at christ church. so i’ll walk to work and back, and then to the gym, looking up at the quick, dark clouds, listening to sleater-kinney, thinking of depauw.