With new management, it seems I now have to provide you a bit more context so the story might be told properly. How I met my dapper-daddy. That sounds so sketchy to me. It isn’t really like that. Well, not completely like that. Anyway…

Tony is a gentlemen: either the son of a duke or the heir to a fortune. Actually we met at a bus terminal while he was having his shoes shined. He was on his way to work. Some sort of checkout-retail-fastfood-securityguard-type organization. His bowtie was crooked and I thought it might be a good idea to take his picture. I get confused a lot between what is good and what is not good. Tony didn’t exactly say cheese.

And here we are. Decades (or is it hours?) later. My new life. The daily demands of monotony remind me again and again why Tony is so vital. For instance, the landlord just left. He had to fix the soapdish in the shower. I had to let him in. At some point he asked for a paper towel and mentioned that “tiling” isn’t really what he does. He’s just helping out his family who retired.

If a soapdish might help my family I’m not sure if I would be able to do it. They live so far away. And besides we didn’t have a shower for a long time. I took baths until I was in high school. The orange plastic pitcher was helpful to rinse your hair. I didn’t realize that filling it up with water was actually recycling my own filth. Never even occured to me until Abby wrote that play. It was especially fun to memorize the part of the monologue where my character described how the pain of losing your legs means you have to take baths. Or rather, “stew in your own filth.”

When John took over as my director I felt for sure we might kiss eventually. I liked it when said the words. Also, one afternoon, I went to his dorm room to ask a question and he was napping without his shirt on, wearing only a pair of khaki cargo shorts. The afternoon sunlight covered him as it would a cat. I definitely lingered a bit too long. Although I’m pretty sure he wasn’t really asleep.