Being in Belmont is an eye-opening experience. Unexpected bits of my personality are popping up left, right, and center. I like to dance in crowded rooms with speakers throbbing with the volume of the pop music they’re pumpin’. Meeting people by singing Les Miserables is much better than the conventional, “Oh, so what’s your name? What grade are you in?” And screaming inane nonsense is actually really fun. Apparently, I’m a party animal and I didn’t even know it.
This was my first party of this kind. Remember formal? Remember how most people were awkwardly standing aside and chatting, but how Emily and I were interpretational dancing with balloons in the center of the dance floor? This party was everybody interpretational dancing with balloons to hits like Kesha’s “Timber” – and screaming at the same time. If there ever were chaperons at the party, they must have gotten fed up in the first five minutes and skedaddled. Adults can’t handle noise. All the black and white photographs on the walls, and the rooster-print potholders hanging by the oven emanated disapproval.
New England is that way: a setting of tradition and class and culture, but wacky and liberal at the same time. I think this party reflected that. People were not that crude or vulgar, and yet I was dancing with a plastic spider named Veronica off of a guy’s zombie hat, facing a dude dressed up as Tinkerbell.
LOUDNESS, LOUDNESS, LOUDNESS. It took some getting used to. In the beginning, I felt awkward because I didn’t know ANYBODY in the house. To be honest, I don’t know why I went exactly, except with the political motive of “making connections.” I got out of the minivan fairly shaking with cold fear. However, the people there were theatrical, it being a Performing Arts Company party, and theatrical people don’t mind my weirdness – so things improved quickly.
There was banter, there was spontaneity, there were new faces and extreme costumes, and I often found myself in situations like belting out Hot and Cold with random seniors dressed as cats. A guy who is even more obsessed with Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables than I am, a girl dressed up as a Mormon, and little old me managed to make ourselves heard in a beautiful rendition of “One Day More” in the middle of a rave.
There was a great piano. Sugar covered the tables. It was like being abducted by aliens. I now know lots of names, and hold bits of souls. First step to taking over the world: go to a party.
Farewell, farewell, farewell. Oh, and btw, I’m not drunk or anything. Nothing illegal happened.
Now to hear it from my alter ego who is mature.
Yeah. There were a bunch of yelling, singing teens and they all thought they were sooo cool. Some of them thought they were real bad boys too, with their leather vests and “I don’t care; I’m Miley Cyrus!” expressions. But anyone could see they were New Englanders. Each kid sticking out his tongue and making peace signs at the camera and pretending to be lost in the excitement held a certain restraint in his bearing. There was always a bit of self consciousness, a refusal to go all out wild.
I must confess I acted like them too, but we were all actors. It’s easy to lose oneself in the excitement, and actors can slip into that role at will, but it’s a role nonetheless. Go to school on Monday and see us then; we’ll be acting like students, heads close to the scribbling pen at paper, conversing in quiet voices with middle aged teachers. No hint of Halloween madness will remain in the sensible scholars we pretend to be. Roles, roles, roles. Remember Hamlet’s line about life as a stage, and we the actors? When is the real self manifest? Is there such thing as the real self? I’ll leave it to you to find the answer.
Farewell.
Oh, and to leave you more to ponder: Which is the real me speaking: the first narrator, or the second?
Interesting article….