Outside of classes, we resided in the basement, a cement vault lined with a road rash of red carpets, the tape from old cast lists still on the hard tower wall. A root cellar for wanna-be actors where we barreled our bodies in scene work and guerilla improv. Always cold.

We were devotees of Ibsen, Miller, Shakespeare, and Wilde, the purveyors of the pure; and we shook our heads and drunkenly mocked the ones who showed pictures of vaginas and screamed and called it “art”. Always the vaginas, always the screaming, the beating of the chest. But not us. We held scripts in our hands; dog-eared and highlighted neon, borrowed words made our words. We savored the taste of them as they left our mouths and told each other that We. Were. Amazing.

We created our own work, an on-the-fly exposition on the subtext of clumsy encounters of pheromones and attraction, feigning sexual wisdom we did not have. It made people laugh, and laughter is healing, so we found ourselves on the way to Laurel Park, a planned community, tiny clapboard houses in orderly rows, boxes on a newly stocked shelf. Methodist. It was inhabited by old people, and old people need more laughter in their lives, so there we were.

Michael briefed us in the van as it cruised along the growing sprawl of King Street, “This is a religious community, so Denise suggested we clean up the language a bit. Take out the swears.”

Linda’s face drained, her threads of bangs touching the tops of her gold rimmed spectacles, “Michael, what about all the making out? The genitalia talk, the humping and whatnot?”

“I mean, it’s human, it’s natural,” he offered, then after a pause of quiet contemplation, “they are progressive religious, I think. Not religious-religious? Maybe just a toning down. If we eliminate, we will scrub the entire thing into a nothing.”

We sat in metal and composite chairs, pulled from the stacks of tens that lined the chapel wall. We rubbed each other’s shoulders and loosened our lips, A Monk’s Monkey Mounted Monastery Wall and Munched Melon and Macaroni then warmed up our bodies while we stood in a circle. We passed the gesture and played raisins in the box/raisins out of the box; a ritual we had performed many times before in our familiar dungeon but seemed surreal in the crisp whitewash and heavy wooden beams of a chapel.

We set up for an audience of 40, but three minutes before showtime, only five souls occupied the galley. The creatures were frail, heads whitecapped like the tips of angry waves, faces dour.

Rob was my scene partner, and we had performed this bit dozens of times to a receptive audience of fellow students and professors paid to validate us.

“Maybe we keep the tongue out of it?” he whispered to me right before we entered stage right.

“Fuck, okay. Shit. Crap. I forgot how to not swear.” My heart rate elevated.

I had grown tired of his lips, but even worse was knowing that Linda, the one who truly loved him, was watching while waiting in the wings for her scene.

We transformed our shits into God dammits, and our fucks into Jesus Christs, and it wasn’t until the last breath of the scene, when Rob and I were rolling on the floor in a tongueless lip lock, that I caught the open mouths and glassy eyes of the observers. A silent space grew, the shape of laughter that never came, filled with heavy disapproval, like a cat balking at being offered a salad instead of a sardine.

Rebecca Peacock Dragon is a mother of three teens, unemployed cult leader, and obsessive starter of impossible projects. Born, adopted, and raised in inner city DC, she was fed politics in the bottle and cut her feet running the cobbled alleys of Capitol Hill. She runs an advocacy platform, Adoption: Myths, Misgivings, and Mayhem, featuring the writings of adult adoptees, including her own. She is a founding board member of "Adoptees For Choice", supporting and fighting for reproductive rights while dismantling a false conflation of adoption and abortion. Her latest project, @GuaranteedHappyAdopteeTM, features satirical videos and content about the adoption industry. Credit: Photo by author.