CHAPTER SEVEN - Far Beyond Driven (part 3)
Rehearsals for new shows always begin on Sunday. This is the one fucking day out of the week that I like to reserve to myself so that I can deal with the other 6 days more effectively. After this one though, just one more to go. I just need to hold my shit together for a few more months and then I’ll have my freedom. If someone told me that the first rehearsal would be so damned entertaining though, I would have shown up early and brought snacks…
I enter the Bird around 1:00pm, which was the call time for this rehearsal. I’m greeted by half of the cast, which is unusual as I’m usually the last one to arrive (barely on time, but on time none the less.) Upon looking around I realize why we’re missing half the cast, Laydee was indeed missing. She was the glue that held this volatile cast together; everyone feared and respected her, including me to some extent. Let’s just say I would never directly go against her; or do anything to deliberately piss her off. However with her gone, people would likely get much slacker.
The new cast members were there however, as it’s their first day on the job and they likely want to make a good first impression. There were two new additions to our group: One of which I didn’t know, and one of which I sure as hell didn’t like.
The two new cast members were both very memorable, in completely different ways. One was a raging homosexual, and the other was a raging bitch.
The raging homosexual was a very pleasant individual. He was very keen and caring. He worked very hard and was always in a very good mood. He was a great addition to the team, I felt as he introduced himself to me. “Tinker, Tinker Belle” he says as delightful as a human could likely be.
The raging bitch on the other hand needed no introduction, I knew her well enough from seeing her around, especially Sunday nights on the boardwalk, as she used to work in one of the establishments there. My disdain could only grow in my proximity to her I suspected, and I’m sure she wouldn’t disappoint. Her unusual hairstyle made her easily recognizable right away. I called her Bitchie Doo and she was about to win the title of Flaming Bird bitch of the year, claiming that title from Taytor who had won it three years in a row.
First rehearsal started out kind of slack. Without Laydee there to manage people, it was going to be tricky. Divah simply didn’t have the skills for the job, but she thought she did, which is usually a really unfortunate combination. Things were very disorganized and everyone was spread out as we were trying to go over lines so that we can begin to get a feel for the show. Bitchie and Ekim were sitting at a table a row away from the rest of us, busy talking to each other and generally not paying attention. The rest of us were working hard trying to develop our characters and go over our lines and every time it came to those two, everything would slow down. Divah demanded that they come join the rest of us, with a tone of speech reminiscent of that crabby old school bus driver we all had growing up. Oddly enough, she probably WAS that crabby old bus driver that we all had growing up. I agreed that they needed to come over with the rest of the group but that’s no way to do it. Bitchie flips out at Divah, the two have a bit of a heated exchange and then not long after that Divah is pulling Ekim and Bitchie into the kitchen for a chat. The rest of us wait for the screaming to subside. We end up losing our momentum for the rest of the night, and there’s thick tension running all through the room. We break and I go to my weekly Sunday gig and give Archie the scoop on what’s going on, we both shake our heads and get on with our night. I just needed to vent and Archie knows the situation in there quite well, so he’s good for that.
The next rehearsal is a lot of the same, Divah and Bitchie are bitching at each other, the rest of us watch as the tension escalates and we get little work done. I pull Divah off to the side and tell her I’d like to have a word with her after rehearsal. She looks at me afraid at what I might have to say. She’s having a hard time enough with Bitchie; she wouldn’t make it through an argument with me. She’d be right, but little did she know I had no interest in arguing with her. Still I enjoy the look of fear in her eyes for the moment. I’ll hang on to that for a while longer. Besides she’s done nothing to help my mood in the past few days.
So after rehearsal the cast dissipates. A few of them give me a look, knowing that I was about to have a sit down with Divah. Divah was trying her best to avoid me all together. She was being defensive and elusive. I finally caught up to her when we got outside, and she was trying to tell me that she was in a hurry. I told her to make some time.
I said “You know this isn’t working right? What you’re doing isn’t working.” She was quick to jump down in with “I’m doing the best that I can, everyone needs to calm the hell down. People need to start respecting my authority!” She said that so quickly and frantically that I could barely make out the words. She was obviously flustered by her less than stellar management skills and her fear of this conversation didn’t help. “I know you are doing your best.” I offered. “But you need to understand that respect is earned and you need to lead by example and treat others with the same respect.” I continued, as she sat there listening. The conversation must’ve lasted 45 minutes and she was in tears through parts of it. This was the first time that her humanity had really been apparent. I mean, obviously she’s human but there were so many layers of bullshit between her and the rest of civilization that sometimes it’s easy to forget.
The next few weeks of rehearsal went well. Divah felt much better and treated the cast much better. Bitchie was obviously still testing her, and Divah was at her wits end with her, but things can’t go too well eh? Divah’s new mood wouldn’t last too long, she eventually went back to being a maniacal bitch, but the break was good for everyone.
When music rehearsal began I started to realize that we didn’t really have any strong vocalists left. Bitchie was supposed to be the new attraction in terms of vocals, but I didn’t see it. Her vocal range was incredibly limited and it was hard to find songs that she could sing. Her voice had a nice tone to it, but she had a long ways to go as a performer. Nothing wrong with any of that, but whereas she was being touted as the next best thing to happen to the Flaming Bird since God knows when… I’m just saying I beg to differ. Especially since the amount of raw emotion that she brings into that building is quite impressive. I swear to fuck she’s bi-polar. Some days she’d be coming around in the best of fucking mood then by the end of the night she’s the most miserable bitch in the world. Surely her mediocre vocal talents weren’t worth all of that?
Tinker on the other hand was always happy and gay (either way you want to look at that you’d be right…) and such a pleasure to work with. He was an amazing performer, and probably one of the strongest vocalists that we had left, which doesn’t say much at all but I thought I’d throw that in there for context. He didn’t have a great voice but he was a good singer, and that combination works well for musicals and dinner theatre. He was a real professional though. Since Tinker is pretty much perfect and drama free, I probably won’t write too much about him because it’s not as interesting as the rest of the drama going on, I just wanted to take some time to give him the credit he deserves on record, as one hell of an example to the rest of us.
The run went by rather quickly. I played a nerd so there wasn’t much for me to do on stage, so I just kept to myself and played my drums. Bitchie was as unstable as should be expected from a sociopath, and the rest of that run was a blur.
Rehearsals for the final show started and I for once felt differently about rehearsal. For starters, this would be my last rehearsal for a new run. Once the show was up on its feet I’d never again need to worry about rehearsals, which up until now were the major low points of my life. Secondly was the fact that Laydee had returned and this time was actually co-directing. This was truly a treat. I’m going to enjoy this.
As it was our Christmas run, and that is our busiest season, we picked up yet another pair of cast members.
The first was the girlfriend of Laydee’s younger brother. She was basically like family to the Sparkel clan. I called her Teenie Sparkel. She was a typical valley girl, blonde, bubbly, not too much going on up there, but generally good to deal with. She was a decent singer, and was under the protection and guidance of Laydee, so I didn’t bother much with her. Besides, she was nice enough to me. She would get pretty bossy with other members of the cast and I had to call her on it from time to time, which I found odd considering she had just gotten there… but she didn’t bother me directly, so as the kids say these days, “Whatevs…”
The second was a young guitar player who seemed eager enough. Maybe too eager, he was your typical dime-a-dozen blues guitar soloist. I really, really get irritated playing with guys like this. Songs always end up longer when these jerk-offs hit the stage. His name was Wanks Alot and he was a nice enough guy but he had something to prove to someone, and I wasn’t interested. He was about 5 foot nothing and weighed about 100 pounds soaking wet. Maybe that was it, maybe he was trying to make up for what he felt he lost in physical stature. Regardless he was a nice enough kid and I’d treat him with respect as I would anyone else.
The whole thing would have remained pretty uneventful had Bitchie not taken a liking to our little SRV wannabe. During the rehearsal process Bitchie was telling us about how much her boyfriend was a douche bag, and then not long after, her and Wanks start acting like retarded junior high school kids. Public displays of affection (PDAs) are not fucking appropriate at work. However I would have accepted simple PDAs if they could fucking pry themselves away from their hormones to get some work done. They became so enamoured with each other that the fact that they were at work with responsibilities was totally lost on them. It was really annoying to have to work with this. At least it was better than if they were fighting. But as quickly as the flame was burning it would be sure to fade fast; we’d just have to wait for it. I predict that they will be cussing each other out long before I’ve left.
In mid-November we hosted the 3rd annual Divine Divas benefit. This is an event that Shynea and some of her peers organize to raise money for various charitable organizations. They can raise anywhere between fifty and seventy thousand dollars at one of these. It's a lot of stinkin' cash, made really quickly. It's a wonderful girls-only night out and the event itself is a lot of fun, everyone dresses up in their best disco gear. This is the only fundraising event that I really enjoy doing for a variety of reasons. I don't have to set up, clean up or serve anything. I just play 3 short sets, and I get free finger foods and drinks. But mostly, it's because this event has absolutely NOTHING to do with Taytor. Well, that and I love a room full of women with money. Shynea organizes this entire event independently of Taytor; all he does is volunteer the venue for the evening. That's his donation. The cast does this every year for Shynea's benefit, not his. He doesn't even need to come to the event... and this time it would have been best.
Now before we get on with the story, one more thing worth noting. Delta Hotels is a platinum level sponsor for the event. They donate tens of thousands of dollars in goods and services to the event. Their servers fight over who can come to the Flaming Bird to volunteer their time to serve the food provided by the Delta.
Taytor was at the event as he is every year. This year though he had been drinking heavily, something that I thought was behind us. Now in all fairness to Taytor I have to say that he's gone through some really terrible personal trauma this past week. It isn't an excuse but it helps to put things into perspective. He should have been home grieving and not out in public. Period.
He was joking with me early on in the night as to how he'd like to divert one of the trays to his table so that he didn't have get up to get some food. I said to him, that if he asked one of them they might be able to help him out with that. Later on however he took the liberty of asking one of his kitchen staff to take a tray that had been momentarily put down by the server. The kitchen help, not knowing any better, was about to bring him the tray when the server realized that her tray disappeared. She went to go recover her tray, and Taytor saw that as a direct insult to himself. He then proceeded to "explain" to her that he didn't need their fucking food, and grabs the tray from her and threw it in the garbage and said that she could stick it straight up her ass... Needless to say the server left the kitchen crying. Taytor pursued her, and continued with his usual charm. Within 3 minutes there were a handful of Delta servers crying.
Taytor wasn't done yet though. He then told one of our cast members that anyone that eats the Delta's food would be fired on the spot. He started to tear strips out of the cast member in question. He had enough and told Taytor to get out of his face (and justly so). He went on to continue his tirade on Shynea next, explaining to her how it's "his fucking building" and on, and on... He's embarrassing poor Shynea to no ends.
He then proceeds to Laydee, explaining that the cast was to stay away from the food. Laydee, very politely explained that this didn't really make sense. So he proceed to tell her off, in not so many words, then gathered the rest of the cast, and wanted to hold an emergency cast meeting, but Laydee and I weren't invited. Hmm... So I crashed his "meeting" just to hear what he had to say, then I walked out on him after hearing his "spin" on the events, I couldn’t believe the amount of bullshit coming out of his fucking mouth, nor was I sure of why everyone else was still in there listening to the shit. He was blocking the door, but that wasn't going to stop me, that's for damn sure. I'm pushed him aside, told him that I couldn't support any of this and that I wasn't staying to listen to it. I went back to Shynea and Laydee, and declared that this wasn't even worth fighting him over... He's just being a silly little bitch.
Meanwhile Shynea's husband is likely somewhere else in the building, trying not to put Taytor in the hospital. At least that's what I'd be doing, were I him... But I'm just speculating. I have a lot of respect for this man, to show so much patience.
While this is going on, Shynea can't do her live auction, and when items are being bid on for thousands of dollars a piece, every minute
not auctioning is money lost.
Taytor wouldn't look me in the eye all night, except to scowl at me while I was on stage, when I was off though he didn't say shit to me. He realizes by now, he can't spin me.
I had to leave to go to the boardwalk, so I wasn't around for the end. However I heard that Taytor gave a big closing speech at the end of the night, thanking the entire cast for the hard work and insisted on paying them all for their work at this benefit, for which he had nothing to do with.
How does he even fucking sleep at night?
With that fucking train wreck behind us, the show continued forward for the rest of the Christmas season.
The problem with the Christmas season for me is that I work a regular nine-to-five job as well as working 5-6 nights a week at the Bird. So it’s really easy for me to get burnt out, and because of that I need certain routines to make things work. Since I usually go straight from work to the Bird I never have a chance to eat. So I usually order myself a meal and once the meals are out to my customers I typically take that opportunity to eat myself. Laydee was not a fan of that. Everyone else was bussing tables and working and here I was eating food. She wasn’t “wrong “per se, but my tables were already bussed and I haven’t eaten since noon. So as much as I respected her, I wasn’t going anywhere until I was no longer hungry. She didn’t want to push the issue with me, and we left it at that.
Noob was terrible slow with his tables still so Laydee had asked me if I could find some way to get his tables cleared quicker. So after my meal I’d go and help Noob bus tables. I turned it into a game. It’s not that Noob was incapable of work (he was a farm boy) it’s just that he lacked motivation. So I pushed him and I tried to get him in competition with himself night after night. I would get him to set records for how fast we can get the room cleared and then get him to safely try to break that record. The difference was quite significant. We’d be on stage sometime 10-15 minutes earlier than normal. It was harder on me though because I’d be serving close to 40 people at a time when Noob would barely have 15, simply because he can’t handle more than that. It’s really hard work serving tables. Archie used to avoid it all together by just doing bussing. That worked since Archie actually did his job. Noob was asked to bus the room more since he had the fewest customers but he was so slow that it didn’t work out the same way. But this new system worked great. Other people would help me serve my coffee while I was helping Noob with tables, it felt like an actually team environment most nights.
The bar situation was still ridiculous. Divah was a pain in the ass to deal with when it came to the bar. She had a growing list of rules to follow and it was always a giant clusterfuck to try to get drinks for your tables. To make matters worse, the Christmas season was all staff parties and everyone was getting drunk on the bosses tab. I’d easily sell $1000 of booze in a night some night. It was foolish.
This brings me to perhaps one of the most memorable moments I had at the Flaming Bird. One of my best stories from there actually. This is an event that most of us now affectionately call
"The Great Wine Caper of ’07".
One night we had a rather large party booked and they had pre-ordered 2 litres of white and red wine per table. There was 4 or 5 tables in total, so there was somewhere between 16 and 20 litres of wine overall. The party was short a few guests and this would have been an excessive amount of wine even if everyone had shown up, so there were about 4 carafes left at the end of the night; Which the man paying the bill offered to us the cast members. I thought that was very nice of him. However Taytor’s partner was floating around circling the table trying to grab the wine to put back in the fridge behind the bar. My instinct was that Taytor intended on re-selling the wine. Of course my Robin Hood complex prevented me from just leaving it at that and minding my own business.
Ekim was serving that table so I explained to him that I was going to take care of the wine, since Taytor’s partner was eyeballing the carafes earlier. I told him Ekim to just stay out of my way and I’d take care of it. I helped him continue to clean that section of tables while I placed the wine under the grand piano. Taytor’s partner saw me putting something under the piano but at the time he was busy in the kitchen so I pretended to bring something into the cast changing room while making sure that I was visible to him. Once I was done my misdirection I proceed to very discreetly move the carafes two at a time over to the backstage area. The tables in the room were high enough to allow me to conceal the wine naturally enough during the transport. Once I got all the carafes backstage I hid them in plain sight in the darkest corner of the backstage area, a small area where no lights could reach. To make certain though I threw a pile of black drop clothes over them in a way that made them invisible even if you were looking right at them. They would be safe for now, so I had to go back and continue cleaning the room for a bit to avoid suspicion.
I went back out onto the floor and continued cleaning and no one seemed to be the wiser except Bitchie and Wanks that had been watching me since I left the backstage area. I paid no attention to them yet, and proceeding to continue clearing tables. Eventually Bitchie walk up to be and said, “Drumwaiter, I know you took that wine. You better not be taking that all for yourself.” I told her that I don’t really drink and the wine was for whoever wanted it once I got it out of the building. She insisted I let her in on my plan. I told her to shut up. I didn’t need her compromising my plan by drawing attention to it, or me for that matter. She groaned a bit and left it at that.
Not long after that exchange, Taytor makes for the cast room. He seems to be on a mission, as he walked rather quickly and had his trademark angry face on. He kicks everyone out of the change room, slams the door and then you just hear him ransacking the place. He comes out 3 minutes later, and the room is completely upside down. He gives me a menacing look, but I doubt he’ll actually call me on it because it means he’d have to justify why he was trying to re-sell the wine. He then proceeded to comb over the stage and then proceeds to the back stage area. He suspects that I’ve hiding the wine, but he won’t come out and ask me about it. This whole situation is very funny to me. I mean what’s he going to do fire me? Fuck it… This is too much fun.
Bitchie comes by and whispers to me that Taytor is going to find the wine. I reassure her that it’s impossible that he finds the wine. What I haven’t mentioned to her, or to you the reader, is that as I was clearing tables I gave one of the kitchen boys $10 go back and cover the carafes with saran wrap and then I went through the room downstairs and discreetly brought the wine next to the side door downstairs. It was well hidden amongst the junk down there. The wine was no longer backstage so Taytor was shit out of luck.
I ran in a problem at this point though, while I was downstairs I had a really hard time un-barring the side door downstairs. There are 3 latches and they all seemed to be stuck. Now I could’ve tried to force them open but I didn’t want to make too much noise and arouse suspicion so I left the door as it was for the time being.
Meanwhile, Taytor is starting to get agitated because he still can’t find the wine. I still need to go back downstairs without Taytor seeing me, but now he’ll be likely watching me like a hawk. I needed to disappear, or at least be somewhat hidden. An idea struck me, as I looked down at the floor. The floors were a mess and Taytor had let go of the cleaning lady, so he was now the one to have to vacuum the floors. With 200 chairs on deck that was going to be hard, so I offered that the cast should put all the chairs on the tables. Taytor agreed because it would make the task of vacuum much easier. Taytor didn’t get it at the time, but by putting the chairs up I was cutting his line of site to the back door that I needed to access without being noticed. Once the chairs were up I then proceeded to fight with the door latches until finally I got them loose. I then tried to open the door only to realize that the door was stuck. Something on the outside was blocking it.
I went back upstairs and knew that I needed to have an excuse to go outside to check on the door situation. I took Taytor’s truck keys and informed him that I was going to take down the linen to the truck. Since this was part of my nightly assignments this was a perfect cover. I went outside and sure enough, there was about 3 feet of hard packed snow up against the door. I go and get a shovel and start chipping away at the rock-hard snow and finally free the door. I go back through the main room upstairs and go back to the wine. Bring it outside and I place it next to the building so that I can pick it up when I leave. I go back upstairs and kibitz with Taytor for a few minutes just to reinforce my cover. Well, that and I wanted to see the look on his face while he held back his urge to question me concerning the missing carafes. I said goodnight and that was that.
I got a drive with Ekim and his girlfriend but not before grabbing the wine that I had placed just next to the building. Ekim was very impressed with the execution of my plan, and I took the next few minutes to allow my success to inflate my already bloated ego. Before I left the car though I made sure to be clear with Ekim that he was to bring the carafes back the next day when he came in to work. This was to be his responsibility, as I’ve already did my share for wine that I’ll never drink. It’s simple really; the containers belong to Taytor, the wine did not. I wanted to make sure this was clear to avoid problems later. He assured me that he understood and I go home and go to bed.
Now, the story should end here, but then it wouldn’t truly be “epic”. Ekim (not surprisingly) didn’t bring back the carafes as I had requested. He didn’t even transfer the wine into other containers. He just left them in his fridge, in plain sight. Now at the time Archie and Ekim were living together and Laydee happened to be over visiting Archie, so she saw the wine. She was pissed, since she had gotten grilled by Taytor while I was busy being up to no good. So when all of us went back into the Bird the next day, shit got really messy.
I don’t mind things getting messy (as those of you that know me probably already know), because I like figuring out ways to get back out of said messes. Besides it makes for great stories and this time would be no different.
Laydee and Divah were up in the office with Taytor (who apparently spent all morning looking for the wine.) and Taytor was reading them the riot act. Taytor didn’t make a big deal about the wine, because it was a terribly slippery slope to open the doors on. He did however say that Divah was to conduct a count of the carafes at the end of the show and if they aren’t all accounted for no one was leaving until someone took responsibility. He also said that the responsible party would be charged with theft.
After the meeting Divah and Laydee discussed the matter and Laydee said that she saw the carafes in Ekim’s fridge. Divah confronted Ekim and he flat out lied to her and said he had no idea what she was talking about. Divah isn’t dumb though she knew that Ekim didn’t have the skill to pull it off with all the heat that was on that night. She then quickly scanned the room and realized I was the only one ballsy enough and clever enough to pull it off. She confronted me about it and my ego was once again delighted at the compliment. “Drumwaiter, do you know where the wine is?” I replied, “No.” She then asked, “Do you know how it got out of the building last night?” I responded, “Yes.” She then asked if Ekim took it out of the building. I laughed in her face. I told her I was done with the interrogation and that I had work to do.
Laydee then confronted me and basically backed me into the corner and started asking rather forceful questions. She knew it was all me and she was very upset with me. I had no intention of going toe-to-toe with Laydee. Maybe I could hold my own, but if wasn’t worth the aggravation. I levelled with her, but explained that I told Ekim to bring the carafes back as they belonged to the Flaming Bird. It was then that she told me that Taytor asked Divah to do a count at the end of the night. I told her not to worry, that I’d take care of it.
I then approached Ekim who was obviously disturbed by talks of criminal prosecution that were uttered by Divah. I asked him where the carafes were, he said they were still in his fridge. I asked him what part of bring them right back he didn’t understand, and he sat silent. I told him that he needed to help me fix this, as the whole thing wasn’t even for my benefit. I realized that even if he wanted to help he’d have simply gotten in the way. So I had to act fast.
I called Archie and had him transfer all the wine to other containers. I also had him rinse the carafes out. Now, this happened to be the night of a one of the biggest snowstorms we had in recent memory. So transportation was going to be a problem. Half of the customers we had booked for that night had already cancelled, and you could barely see 2 feet in front of you. I tried calling a taxi to deliver the carafes but no taxi company was taken any fares due to road conditions. It became clear that I was going to have to go myself.
Thankfully it wasn’t too busy so I could get Laydee to cover for me while I was running my errand. I went out to get in the car. I had borrowed Wyre’s car for a reason that I still can’t remember and his tires were bald. Now that was bad enough but when I got there I was met with a 7 foot snow drift in front of his car. I started trying to dig it out but was getting nowhere fast. I went back up and I convinced Laydee to push the supper and desert breaks together to allow me more time. It also makes the show end earlier so the rationale is in place if Taytor questions her decision. I went back down to the car and enlisted the help of some patrons that were outside smoking on the steps. I had 5 customers helping me, by shovelling and pushing the car. It was a small Honda Civic and the boys that were helping me were quite strapping so we got out of there before too long.
Next I had to actually make it back to Archie’s in one piece on these bald tires. I can totally understand why taxi drivers refused to go out in this shit. Normally this would have been a 3 minute drive, but under these circumstances it took me nearly 15 minutes to get there. I grabbed the carafes, blast back to the Bird and just make it back in time to start the second act. On my way in I hid the bag with the carafes under the table with the guest book. There are two reasons for this. First, no one that works at the Bird goes in that section during a show, there’s just no reason, so it’s a lot easier to sneak things in that way. The other reason is because next to that table is a door that goes to the kitchen. I gave each of the kitchen boys $20 to siphon the carafes through their regular dish washing cycle through out the night, and to make sure that they weren’t caught by anyone in the process. They were young kids, and loved being part of my little schemes as it made them feel important. So they agreed.
I got on stage and Laydee asked me for a status report. I motioned to her that things were all under control. We proceeded with the rest of the show and got to the bow at the end. That when I saw Taytor putting away dishes at the bar, unbeknownst to him that the carafes he himself was putting away were the very ones he was looking for.
We all sat at the table after the show until Divah finished her count. She was actually two over what she should have had. Apparently there were two extra carafes in the bag that Archie gave me… I’m not even sure what to say about that. In the end Taytor was pissed that he couldn’t catch me, the way he looked at me when I left the room that night said so. It also said that he knew it was me. I returned a look of my own. The look that says, “Yeah it was me, and you can still go fuck yourself.”
The rest of the run was largely uneventful in comparison, and with less than a few weeks to go, I was starting to feel the weight lift off me. There was still a bunch of drama in the cast but I was less and less aware of it.
By the time it got to NYE I started feeling excitement because I knew I was never going to come back again. I had one last piece of business to discuss with Taytor though as my contract came to a close. I wanted one more thing from him a parting bonus, my headshot off the wall. You see, when you come into the Flaming Bird you are greeted at the top of the stairs by a wall with headshots of all the actors, present and past, that have graced their stage. I wanted mine off the wall. Sure, I could have just taken it. But I’m not a thief, and it would’ve been to easy that way. I wanted him to hand it to me himself. So when the show ended and the room had been cleared, I pulled him aside and asked him. He said he didn’t know what to say, no one had ever asked that of him before. He said it would make everything seem so final. I agreed, because I told it that it was final. I was never going to return this time. I got what I wanted, and he had failed to destroy me in the process, so I was going to cut my losses and move on.
He gave me the photograph, we shook hands and that was it. It’s like you see in a hockey game. During the game they are fighting each other and shoving each other, but at the end of the game everyone shakes hands and acknowledges the opposing team. Taytor was a fine adversary and although we had our differences I respected that he was still a fierce competitor in this game of wits we were playing. I still had one card to play though. I felt bad for taking the picture from the wall and leaving a big empty spot up there so I left a picture that I made in its place. I’ve been told to this day it still hangs in Taytor’s office. Notice the lettering on the t-shirt:
It was all a game and I played it the best way I knew how. I strongly believe that he came to understand that in the end. It wasn’t personal, I just like something to cut my teeth on.
THE END