Around the Corner

Far east of the stomping grounds of the cliques and the cubers, past the pilgrimage site of the brain dead (Starbucks), just out of sight from the seemingly sole fourth floor window, there is a hideaway thrift store behind a chipping green scaffolding. If you are ever lucky enough to make the trek a block beyond the subway station and you find yourself enthralled by the slightly musky odor, the meaningless bobbles and sequins weighing down even the simplest tank tops, the yellowing pages of the monologue books by the shoe rack, don't be afraid. This is the normal reaction. Well, normal for J2 and I, anyway.

Someone asked me today, over Milky Way Midnights and a deck of cards, just where she fits into my life. What cracks does she caulk? they wanted to know. Immediately, I told them, "The secrets, when the insides of our eyelids are too infuriating to look at for us to fall asleep. The sadness, when a piano chord or an old jacket can make us start crying again." Looking at J2 today, perusing the flounces and frills and faded neon as I giggled, spinning around in the gray lace number, I realized I forgot something. "The everyday, when my hand feels a little cold and I need someone to hold it."

Welcome Back

When I was four years old, I rummaged through drawers of mismatched, too-sparkly fabric and accessories until I found the perfect red scrap and a clashing wand. Whisking them around my body like a cocoon, I declared myself Mary Poppins and went parading around the halls. When I was seven, I wrote and filmed a low-budget ($0) movie with my grandmother about a rabbit and a chicken gallivanting through the woods. You could barely hear the dialogue over the crumple of dead California leaves beneath our church shoes, but the giggles shot through the noise. Then, when I was nine, I found myself searching for the breath squeezed below my excruciatingly tight yellow dress to send high notes soaring to the back of the church basement in my first real show. There were purple flowers in my hair, and the lipstick tasted like strawberries, and the momentum of the raucous clapping made me unstoppable by any human force.

I never could have guessed, after all those years of putting on someone else's skin, that I would feel so explosive in my own. To everyone who stood up for me last night, even though their chairs clacked loudly against their backings and their knees groaned like a car settling into the ground after the engine turns off: Thank you. I can't thank you enough.