Just One Day(55)

We finish Twelfth Night. I thought I’d feel relieved, as if I’d dodged a bullet. But I don’t. With Dee out of my life, I feel like I took the bullet, even without reading the play. Tabula rasa was the right move. Taking this class was the wrong move. Now I just have to buckle through. I’m getting used to that.
We move on to As You Like It. In his introductory spiel, Professor Glenny goes on about how this is one of Shakespeare’s most romantic plays, his sexiest, and this gets all the Glenny groupies up front swooning. I take vacant notes as he outlines the plot: A deposed duke’s daughter named Rosalind and a gentleman named Orlando meet and fall in love at first sight. But then Rosalind’s uncle kicks her out of his house, and she flees with her cousin Celia to the Forest of Arden. There, Rosalind takes on the identity of a boy named Ganymede. Orlando, who has also fled to Arden, meets Ganymede, and the two strike up a friendship. Rosalind as Ganymede uses her disguise and their friendship to test Orlando’s proclaimed love for Rosalind. Meanwhile, all sorts of people take on different identities and fall in love. As always, Professor Glenny tells us to pay attention to specific themes and passages, specifically how emboldened Rosalind becomes when she is Ganymede and how that alters both her and the courtship with Orlando. It kind of all sounds like a sitcom, and I have to work hard to keep it straight.
Dee and I start reading together again, but now we’re back in the Student Union, and he packs up as soon as we finish our assignment. He’s stopped doing all the crazy voices, which makes me realize just how helpful they were in “interpreting” the plays because now, with both of us reading in monotones, the words sort of drift over me like a foreign language. We may as well be reading it to ourselves for how boring it has become. The only time Dee uses his voices now is when he has to speak to me. I get a different voice, or two, or three, every day. The message is clear: I’ve been demoted.
I want to undo this. To make it right. But I have no idea how. I don’t seem to know how to open up to people without getting the door slammed in my face. So I do nothing.
_ _ _
“Today we will read one of my favorite scenes in As You Like It, the beginning of act four,” Professor Glenny says, one bone-chillingly cold March day that makes it seem like we’re heading into winter, not out of it. “Orlando and Ganymede/Rosalind are meeting again in the Forest of Arden, and the chemistry between them reaches its boiling point. Which is kind of confusing and amusing, given that Orlando believes himself to be speaking to Ganymede, who is male. But it’s equally confusing for Rosalind, who is in a kind of delicious torment, torn between two identities, the male and the female, and two desires: a desire to protect herself and remain Orlando’s equal, and the exquisite desire to simply submit.” Up in the front of the classroom, the groupies seem to emit a little joint sigh. If Dee and I were still friends, it would be the kind of thing that would make us look at each other and roll our eyes. But we’re not, so I don’t even look at him.
“So, Orlando comes to Ganymede in the forest, and the two perform a sort of Kabuki theater together, and in doing so, they fall deeper in love, even as they don’t entirely know whom they’re falling in love with,” Professor Glenny continues. “The line between true self and feigned self is blurred on all sides. Which I think is a rather handy metaphor for falling in love. So, it’s a good day to read. Who’s up?” He scans the class. People are actually raising their hands. “Drew, why don’t you read Orlando.” There’s a smattering of applause as Drew walks up the front of the room. He’s one of the best readers in the class. Normally, Professor Glenny pairs him with Nell or Kaitlin, two of the best girls. But not today. “Allyson, I believe you owe me a Rosalind.”
I shuffle up to the front of the room, along with the other readers he’s chosen. I’ve never loved this part of the class, but at least before, I could feel Dee cheering me on. Once we’re assembled, Professor Glenny turns into a director, which apparently is what he used to do before becoming an academic. He offers us notes: “Drew, in these scenes, Orlando is ardent and steadfast, completely in love. Allyson, your Ganymede is torn: smitten, but also toying with Orlando, like a cat with a mouse. What makes this scene so fascinating to me is that as Ganymede questions Orlando, challenges him to prove his love, you can feel the wall between Rosalind and Ganymede drop. I love that moment in Shakespeare’s plays. When the identities and false identities become a morass of emotion. Both characters feel it here. It gets very charged. Let’s see how you two do.”
The scene opens with Rosalind/Ganymede/me asking Orlando/Drew where he’s been, why he’s taken so long to come see me—I’m “pretending” to be Rosalind. That’s the gimmick. Rosalind has been pretending to be Ganymede, who must now pretend to be Rosalind. And she tries to talk Orlando out of loving Rosalind, even though she really is Rosalind and even though she really does love him back. Trying to keep track of all the pretending makes my head spin.
Drew/Orlando replies that he came within an hour of his promised time. I say to be even an hour late when you’ve made a promise in love’s name puts in question whether you’re truly in love. He begs my forgiveness. We banter a bit more, and then I, as Rosalind as Ganymede feigning Rosalind, ask, “What would you say to me now, an I were your very very Rosalind?”
Drew pauses, and I find that I’m waiting, holding my breath, even, for his answer.
And then he replies, “I would kiss before I spoke.”