AfterMARK, Part 4

Open Curtain.

In the aftermath of that make-out session Jack and I stopped talking quite abruptly. It was a nice lesson in moving on. We were both ready and there were few holdups. We didn’t dwell on it. And we both realized that things ending didn’t have to be so painful.

The following Thursday, I found myself going to dinner and a show with Cole and Bobbie Jean, our music history mom. It was a special occasion for Bobbie Jean’s Cuban mother was in town.

“My mother has to meet my gay boys I keep telling her about,” she told us weeks before the visit. Sure enough, dinner plans were made and kept.

Returning to that Thursday: we found ourselves at a Vietnamese restaurant. Cole and I on one side Bobbie Jean and her mother Carmen on the other. Interestingly, Carmen and I connected on an unexpected level. While Bobbie Jean and Cole joked about Purell being the Holy Ghost of the hand sanitizer trinity, Carmen and I discussed Latin America and life as an academic as she is a retired college professor.

“You watch out for this one. He’s going to go far,” Carmen told her daughter. She was quirky, witty, and always smiling even when the jokes went a little too far for her taste.

At the show, the four of us sat in the back row. (It’s probably the only place, they’d allow us to sit in the theater so as to not distract from the actual production). The show began and my eye began to drift towards one of the actors. He was taller with dark hair and features. Although his character was not particularly macho, it was clear that he worked out. His arms were enormous and his costume hugged his thighs and chest quite nicely.

As I imagined what lay concealed beneath that dressing, everyone enjoyed the show. There truly is nothing like good company to fortify laughter. As the show was reaching its climax, we were all giggling over the cheesy jokes in the show and the dirty ones we read into it.

Suddenly, a line of actors dressed in police uniforms emerged from either end of the stage (among them the muscled hunk), and in perhaps the most shrill, excited tone I’ve ever heard, Carmen rose to her feet and shouted, “Oh my God! It’s tap dancers!”

Still in our seats, I, Cole, and Bobbie Jean all heard something else.

“Did she just say, ‘God damn those tap dancers?’!” Cole asked. If anyone thought our laughter was annoying at that point, they were in for an earsore. I have no doubt that there has never been nor never will be a laughter quite that loud erupting in that theater again. The four of us were all in tears. Everyone was staring at us including the actors—many of whom muted their laughter so as to avoid breaking character or worse.

As their number ended Carmen rose to her feet for a standing ovation, shouting “Encore, encore!”

Following the show, we got a few compliments on how fun it was to watch the show with us. Who knew that the audience could steal the show from the actors?

We made our way around making small talk with the actors, musicians, and directors.

“Anderson,” he said, introducing himself and shaking the hand I’d just offered. The grip was firm. I was a little flustered at his strength.

“That was a fun little tap number you guys did,” I said, patting his arm for a feel.

“It took a lot of work. I’ve been at it for weeks and my feet are killing me.”

“We loved it,” I gushed. “ We were the ones disrupting the show.”

“That’s what we’re here for. I love musical theatre because it makes people feel.”

What he said at that moment rang true of the entire time we dated. He was sweet, genuine, sincere, simple and sensitive (and perhaps a bit of a stereotype). He didn’t really catch on at the moment that I was flirting, but the next day we’d worked things out and planned a date over Facebook. Hours later and quite unexpectedly, being the newbie that I was, I met someone else—a cowboy—under remarkable circumstances.

End, Part 4.