My Date with a Desk

Marlon Brando did it. So did Marilyn Monroe. Even St. Francis enjoyed a little self-flagellation. In New York, almost everyone’s taken an acting class. You may indeed be an actor, perhaps a singer, dancer, curious college student or maybe a Wall Street banker. I happen to be in school, majoring in theater arts. The point being, there are always lessons to be learned when it comes to verbally and emotionally “freeing yourself“… and becoming one with a cardboard box.

Yes, today I attended my Voice and Movement class, and by the end of it, I was best friends, roommates, sisters and lovers with an immobile, non-breathing, filthy black desk.

“Feel the desk. Hold the desk. Smell the desk. Love the desk.”

Never before have I been in a method acting class, and thought I was sane until today. The first of the excruciating three-hour period began with my peers and myself being instructed to intimately caress anything that crossed our paths as we floated, dreamy-eyed, seemingly mindless and zombie-esque around the room.

Some students kissed doors; others straddled pianos. The more promiscuous thespians of the group simply lost all inhibitions and gave themselves, in whole, to the widely spread, tattered carpet.

I was deeply disturbed, not only by their lack of morals and self-respect, but by their health. We had been prohibited from wearing socks, and bare feet means foot fungi galore. Hell-o!! Ringworm, anyone?

I nearly lost my lunch when I was told to stick my unwashed, subway-poll-holding hand in my mouth to experiment with the different sounds humans are capable of making.

I chose a conveniently placed object, with its back to the teacher. It was a scratched-up pupil’s desk with a little seat attached. Snug as a bug and free to smirk, nowhere else in the room would I have been able to get away with the hysterical giggling that was yet to come.

The furniture sure was getting a lot of action. Chairs were tossed through the air in ecstasy, tabletops were sniffed and licked with passion. Our professor told us to take the time to really get to know our objects, though I had no intention of making out with mine. Call me a prude, I just can’t imagine the wood was that good.

My classroom had turned into what looked like a gateway to a soft-core porn, directed by Tim the Tool-Man Taylor—a carpenter’s delight.

Throw in a chainsaw, hockey mask and a heterosexual couple doing sinful things (slim chance you’d find one in the theater department) and we would have had ourselves JASON XXXXV.

I don’t fit in with this crowd. Sure, I’m a vegetarian and appreciate women‘s rights, but I’ll argue with a feminist and wear fine leather any day of the week. My cynicism was running on overdrive. But I am an actor, and it was my time to play a part.

I put my head down to create the illusion that I was deeply involved in the personification of the desk. I too was falling head over heels for my writing tableau.

“Now, the object you have chosen has become somebody you deeply care about. It may be a boyfriend or girlfriend, mother or brother. A grandparent with whom you’re very close. Or it might be someone you have a crush on that nobody else knows about—a special secret. Your special secret. Speak to them. Tell them how you feel about them. Just let the words flow. Let it all out. Touch your object. Love your object.”

My teacher was causing my fists to clench, and my blood had surpassed its boiling point.Apparently I don’t do so well with the touchy-feely, soft-spoken, 21st century adaptation of flower power.

Is she serious right now? She wants me to talk to a fuckingdesk?

A scene from Billy Madison came to mind where Billy’s elementary school teacher, “Miss Lippy” the hippie, preaches serenity, happiness and lathers herself in paste.

The tension in the room was escalating. To my right were two twentysomethings, one male, one female, both searching for life’s answers in the cold heart of a wall. I heard the boy whispering to it, “I love you” while the sweet girl, a cute little bundle of Asian descent, started to cry.

“Why did you do this to me?” she asked the unconcerned plaster. “Don’t you know how you’ve hurt me?!”

Obviously, “he” could have cared less.

“This person ...,” my teacher injected. “Your loved one, your object. They don’t want you. They don‘t care about you. ‘I don’t want you,’ they say. ‘I don’t love you. I never loved you. You disgust me.’

Of course you disgust them, I thought. You’re manic, unstable and infatuated withsheetrock.

This may be one of the few cases where meeting your partner on MySpace wouldn’t be such a bad idea ...

Where was she taking us? My teacher went from our “Happy Place” to somewhere so dark and sad that I could feel the wounded souls howling out from within my classmates. I wanted to help them … Who am I kidding? I wanted to laugh. And laugh I did. There I was, me, myself and my four-legged boyfriend, caught somewhere between The Wizard of Oz and The Amityville Insane Asylum.

“I hate you!” one cushiony, same-sex oriented boy screamed at a painter’s ladder.

“Three years! Three years with you and this is what I get?! My heart, my body, I gave you everything! My Complete Works of William Shakespeare!! My life!”

It was an epidemic. The sickness was spreading at a rampant pace. Like animals, the bodies surrounding me were becoming more and more primitive by the second. Crawling, convulsing, foaming at the mouth, my fellow actors were so involved in this activity that I could see their emotions dripping down their faces.

My abdomen ached, trying to hide the fact that I was basking in amusement. My head was still on my desk, tucked away between my arms in the protective nest I had created. Hiding myself from the world of authority, I had hoped she, my own Miss Lippy, wouldinterpret my body language as suffering, spastic with pain.

Speaking of pain, I had gotten word before class began that a dear friend of mine had attended this same class earlier that day. After playing a game of “trust,” running full force down a hallway blindfolded, at the direction of her unqualified partner, she wound up in the emergency room with a concussion and the gargantuan egg to prove it. Apparently the sharp corner of the wall was in no such mood to be molested.

Proven to be a bad idea, the “trust exercises” didn’t survive the day and were called offbefore my class. The next task scheduled was to “fly,” but thank God that got shot down after my poor, lumpy-headed friend’s incident. As silly as it sounds, it was a serious matter, for she’s currently home without taste in her mouth, resting off her injury. Ask her how she feels about our teacher who put her up to it, and she’s bountiful with bitterness.

I do want to become more involved so that I can better engage and emote under all circumstances—even when I’m feeling like a participant in the Barnum and Bailey Circus. If that means rolling around with the occasional home furnishing, so be it.

I now share a deep connection with that black desk andam finally ready to commit. I just wish my new love could take me out to dinner.