It occurred to me this morning that I left out part of the story in yesterday’s post. Because it was karate practice night, the theme was, by default, supposed to be sports related. Then, as I got writing, I got hung up on the kissing and forgot to mention the sports–or more specifically the sports injury. (This, perhaps, reveals a lot more about me than I care to know.)

Therefore, since today I’ve hit a major lull in the ideas for daily posts, I’ll revisit yesterday’s post a bit, and add a couple odd details.

As I said yesterday, when I was in As Is, I was performing several parts. Because it was a low-budget graduate student production, we were expected to provide our own costumes. I seem to remember telling the costume designer something to the effect that I didn’t have anything that was really gay looking. (Shut up, all of you, right now. Just shut up. Stop snorting.) The costume designer said “No, just bring some of your cool clothes from your closet”. I said something to the effect that she’d probably better come look at my closet herself.

She managed to find a few usable things, but I suspect she’s still recovering from the horrors she found there.

Now, as for the sports, playing several parts also meant I often had quick costume changes. If you’ve only ever been in the audience for a play, one of the truly remarkable things you never see is the highly coordinated, very carefully timed machine involved in a costume change. In one case I had a monologue where I was a scientist who’d been rejected by his peers after they discovered he had AIDS and then I had two minutes to get back stage, get into a new costume and be back on stage as a new character who was, as one critic described him, a “minty” AIDS hotline worker who actually got to deliver the line “You go, girlfriend” with every cliche stereotype the director told me to muster.

The problem is, the Purple Masque Theater is a thrust style stage built in part of an old football stadium. Because of where I was standing, to do the change, I had to run outside, run across the grass, run in through the front of the theater, run down the hall whilst undoing my belt and get backstage where a team of costumers would be waiting to simultaneously strip and dress me, redo my hair and then shove me back on stage.

The early stages of all that went well. I got outside and got across the grass, but as I made the turn into the entrance to start the run down the hall way, my left foot slipped and I landed on my left knee cap with an impressive smack that tore my trousers and bloodied up my knee. I then hobbled down the hallway to the impatient and angry costume team who told me I was late as they stripped me and dressed me and shoved me on stage. I then got to hobble around through a couple more costume changes.

Now, if I were smart, and if you’ve been reading this blog regularly you know how doubtful that notion is, I would have gone to the campus clinic to have my knee checked out. I, of course, did not. I don’t know if it’s psychological or If I gave my kneecap a good chip or hairline fracture, but it still hurts on occasion to this day (especially now that I’m writing about it).

The funny part is, because of the way we got our costumes, it was my trousers I ruined doing all that not the costume department’s.