acting raze i was a cat. i was a wise jamaican man who taught a group of stranded tourists how to live. i was a rod serling-inspired narrator with an oral fixation. i was a business tycoon trying to shut down a struggling toyshop, made old before my time with a fake moustache, a cane, and baby powder to grey my hair. i was my seventh grade teacher. i was the high-strung southern father of a wanted man. in grade nine, i was mr. darling and a pirate in an ambitious production of "peter pan" that incorporated dance sequences. a cool senior named neil was supposed to make me a fake beard. i met with him after school in an empty classroom and we talked while he glued synthetic hair to my face. he told me he was psychic. he said he was going to tell me all about myself. the first thing he said was, "you're much closer to your mother than your father." psychic my ass. i liked him anyway. he was older. he was popular. he had charisma and facial_hair he didn't need to glue on. whenever i saw him in the hall after that, i would wave. he ignored me every time. it took me a while to figure out why. talking to me in that classroom was a one-time thing. i was just a freshman. i was nobody. he was too cool to be seen acknowledging me. there was an arts night assembly that year. i played "isolation" by john lennon. they didn't give me a microphone. i didn't need one. my mother was in the audience. i stared at her and sang: "i don't expect you to understand after you've caused so much pain but then again you're not to blame you're just a human a victim of the insane" it went right over her head. "that was dope, man," jesse said in the wings. "but you should have done 'imagine' or something." i don't know what song neil played. i didn't recognize it. maybe it was something he wrote himself. if it was, he should have left it at home. i listened to him torture an acoustic guitar and sing in a tuneless, nasal whine, and it took everything i had not to laugh. he had nothing. he was just hot air. i had a dream about him one weekend. he was taking a bath with two girls. he was wearing a one-piece bathing suit and a black_and_white striped bathing cap. there were two holes cut into the bathing suit that left his breasts exposed. he played with his nipples. the girls joined in. they all laughed. the expression on neil's face said, "even my nipples are amazing." i thought that summed him up. the same thing happened with the other people i got to know when we were putting that play together. some of the dancers started talking to me. i thought we were friends. i saw the girl who was playing peter pan one night when i was getting my hair cut at the mall. her name was katie. she had short brown hair. she looked like a pixie. she smiled at me. as soon as the play was over, i was dead to her and all the rest of them. i wasn't a friend. i was just someone to talk to. a way to pass the time. the only one who didn't kill me was lacey. she played captain hook. i would see her outside at lunchtime and she would shout, "mutter pussbucket!" the year after that, i was the second lead in a play about a bullied teenager who killed himself. his character didn't have a speaking part. his friends and enemies brought him to life, talking about what they remembered, what they did and didn't do, what they allowed to happen. that one wasn't a high_school play. i did it on my own time. i refused to say "you know" as empty syntax even though it was in the script. i knew my lines before anyone else did. every time we rehearsed i felt like the only adult in the room. i was fourteen. everyone else thought the whole thing was a joke. all they did was fuck around. the woman who wrote and directed the play didn't even try to control them. her name was linda. when she finally snapped at one rehearsal late in the game and told them off for being a bunch of punks, they laughed at her. my dad was sitting in the corner of the room. i watched him punch himself in the stomach. "oof," he said. in the parking lot after the rehearsal, i screamed the dirtiest word i knew. i don't think i've ever made a sound louder than that. the night of the first performance at mackenzie_hall, we found out the lead actress still hadn't learned any of her lines. her name was jen. she had more dialogue than anyone else in the play. she was supposed to deliver a broken monologue that ran through the whole thing. the most important scene was a dramatic conversation between the two of us. linda spent the last hour before showtime trying to hammer the words into jen's head. i watched fear make lines in her face i hadn't seen before. not jen's face. linda's face. jen didn't give a shit. i had to rewrite my own dialogue on the fly to compensate for the out of sequence disaster jen coughed up onstage. i had to reshape the whole story. it was the only way what she said would make any sense to the audience. i had to save the sinking ship myself. and i had to do it twice. when it was over, jen smiled at me and said, "you were really great!" i gave the best performance of my life when i told her she was great too. that killed it for me. i took a few more drama classes in high_school, but i never acted in another play. i didn't want any more fake friends. i didn't want to be the hero no one knew about. it's been so long now since i've acted in anything, i've forgotten how to be anyone but myself. i think it's better that way. i don't have to count on anyone else to learn their lines. 211026 what's it to you? who go blather from