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The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Silent Night: Difference between revisions
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I was happy to have the break from the dull clerical work, and it seemed as if these men were bored, too—distracted and irritated with their wives and children, tearing open packages of Snowballs and Mars bars and down- ing cans of Coke. I can honestly say I never knew what sort of work they did at the company or looked with any interest at the piles of papers on their desks. I never saw them working at anything. | I was happy to have the break from the dull clerical work, and it seemed as if these men were bored, too—distracted and irritated with their wives and children, tearing open packages of Snowballs and Mars bars and down- ing cans of Coke. I can honestly say I never knew what sort of work they did at the company or looked with any interest at the piles of papers on their desks. I never saw them working at anything. | ||
owner of the Hole in the Wall theater, and he played Romeo in a version in which Romeo and Juliet remove their clothes in their tower, a construct of wood and artificial stone. Paul had invited me to the show’s final perform- ance the week before. It was our first date. The lights were dimmed in the theater, but everyone knew beforehand that there would be a nude scene— this was probably why they were there. I sat in the audience and watched him step out of his pants, embarrassed for him. After, I met the theater owner at the cast party, and he took a handful of my hair in his hand and asked me to be in his version of “Hair.” | |||
“You have to do it,” he said. “Convince her Paul.” | |||
I knew that this play, too, had a nude scene and that the theater owner wasn’t just complimenting my hair. He ran his fingers through the long strands and when I tried to step away he gripped my hair in his fist. In his other hand he held a plastic cup of wine and a cigarette. He was an English professor at a nearby university and had started the theater in the early s. He made me nervous, the way he stared at me, and held my hair, though I behaved as if he didn’t. I thought he was probably dead now, as were most of the people I knew back then. I smiled at him and sipped from my own plastic cup of wine. He wore a velvet jacket, as threadbare as the red carpet in the theater lobby. Outside, the wind blew white paper napkins in the street. I watched them flutter past the front window, waiting for him to release me. | |||