Life Worth Living

Tonight I got up on stage and in front of 500 40 people sang, danced, recited, and shouted, all in German. It was exhilarating, at least if you don’t count the parts where we awkwardly scrambled around on stage trying to find our places and whispered frantically to each other: “What comes next? What comes next?” It was throw-all-dignity-and-caution-into-the-wind and damn-I-wish-we’d-had-another-week-to-practice. But I mean, it was an experience, and if we weren’t as polished as we could’ve been (far from it), at least we didn’t fail disastrously. And people laughed. And there’s always tomorrow.

In case anyone’s wondering, only one person that I invited showed up. Rosemary said she would come tomorrow, and she’s writing a paper, so that’s fine. Leone was at practice, and that’s fine too. Jasmine and Rose plumb couldn’t make it, and Buttercup had a headache and didn’t want to sit by herself. One face in the audience that I knew, and it was that of The Runner, whom I’ve only talked to sporadically this semester, and whom I only invited out of desperation two hours before the show, fully expecting him to decline politely. It meant an awful lot to me that he came.

Honestly, it took a little bit of the hurt away, the disappointment that was brought on by having all of my friends absent while I made a fool of myself on stage, performing what is for better or worse the culmination of an entire semester’s work. Rosemary’s and Leone’s reasons, I get, and besides they promised to show tomorrow. But Jasmine is one of my two best friends here, and I don’t think I’d be wrong in guessing that she declined without even really considering it. (I had to rehearse last night so I had Buttercup bring along the flyer to Classics Friends Dinner). And Buttercup? Her reason amounted to “I won’t have anyone to sit with,” which—well, it just hurt, and hurt more in the face of how many times she’s guilted me into doing things I’d rather not do, things that took more effort, plan-changing, and traveling than would hauling her butt to the most accessible building on campus for one hour to see a free show.

But, well, that’s just how some things go, A lot of the air is taken out of my elation from having no one to run to after the show, which just makes me so much more grateful to The Runner. He understands no German, came expecting to have no one to sit with, and fiddled with his phone the entire time, but he came. And might also come to tomorrow’s show.

I was looking forward to spending the night at Leone’s today, but right now I’m just a little disheartened and don’t much find appealing the prospect of fooling around with him in bed. It’s no fault of his; I’m just in a mood where I’d really rather just curl under my own covers and get some much-needed sleep. It’s a quiet mood, not sad so much as disappointed. I’m not going to cancel on him, because I know just seeing him in an hour will make me change my mind, but for now I’m just going to languish in this feeling.

I have serious rugburn on my knees, and this is how I went about getting it:

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We rock. All of us, we rock. Me, Rosemary, Buttercup, Jasmine, and The Runner (an old friend from Chinese School two years my younger who I was delighted to find out just started his first year at Berkeley. The Runner, you are going to love it here. Really, this is only the beginning). We threw all inhibitions to the wind and belted out in that little Karaoke room, except probably Rosemary, who maintains inhibitions even when she has no inhibitions, but that’s just the kind of person Rosemary is.

Also, there’s this little Korean place in Oakland on Telegraph that does the most amazing thing with chicken.

Also, Buttercup, The Runner is cute, but I’ve known him since he was ten and chubby and awkward, which means I am not allowed to find him so. (But who am I kidding, it is me, after all).