The Exact Opposite of Okay(3)
Mrs Crannon is a lovely woman. She dresses in purple glasses and Birkenstocks and crazy tunics, and veers toward the eccentric side of the personality scale. And she always gives me great parts in school plays because I’m loud enough that the tech department doesn’t need to supply a microphone. I’m currently playing Daisy in The Great Gatsby, for example, despite not being elegant or glamorous in the slightest.
I’ve always liked Mrs Crannon, but in a Stockholm Syndrome sort of way. I mean, do any of us really like our teachers? These are the important philosophical questions, people.
When I walk in, she’s sitting behind a desk piled high with playbooks, coffee mugs and a massive beige computer from the nineties [good old budget cuts]. The whole room smells of dusty stage costumes and stale hairspray. My favorite smell in the world.
“Izzy! It’s lovely to see you outside of rehearsals for once.”
She ushers me in and I take a seat on quite literally the most uncomfortable plastic chair I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. It is the Iron Maiden of the chair world. I’m not exaggerating.
“Thanks,” I say, trying to give off the pleasant expression of someone who is not in severe physical discomfort at the hands of a chair-come-torture-device. “I brought peanut butter cups to compensate for the fact I’m keeping you from getting home to Mr Crannon.”
“Actually, I have a Mrs Crannon.” She grins, waggling her left hand at me. Her engagement ring has a Dwayne Johnson of a diamond on it, and an elaborate wedding band sits next to it. “I’m gay. ?And married. Which, as a combination, is apparently difficult for a lot of the population to comprehend.”
“Oh! Awesome. But let me get this straight.” [Or should it be “let me get this gay”? Honestly, what a minefield.] “You’re both called Mrs Crannon? Does that not get confusing?”
She laughs, cracking heartily into the packet of peanut butter cups I’ve plonked in front of her. “Yes, in hindsight we probably should’ve kept our own names. But I had to do something to keep my traditional Catholic parents happy.”
I grin. “Aren’t you tempted to write some sort of farcical sketch about two wives with the exact same name?”
Mrs Crannon smiles warmly. “Which leads us nicely onto your writing. Mr Rosenqvist told me you’ve been writing your own scripts? That’s great! Tell me more about that.” She leans back in her chair [a delightful padded malarkey, you’ll be pleased to know, if you’re at all concerned about the well-being of my drama teacher’s backside].
Suddenly I feel a little embarrassed, mainly because I can tell I’m expected to hold a normal adulty conversation at this point, not one that’s peppered with inappropriate gags and self-deprecating humor. And I’ve sort of forgotten how to do that.
Mumbling idiotically about Nora Ephron, I reach into my satchel, which is decorated with an assortment of pins and badges to give the illusion that I am halfway cool, and pull out the sample screenplay I brought along. It’s a feature-length film I wrote over the summer. The logline [i.e. a one-sentence pitch] is this: a broke male sex worker falls for a career-obsessed client with commitment issues. Basically, it’s an updated Pretty Woman that challenges gender stereotypes while also telling an impressive array of sex jokes. [Be honest. You would so see this movie.]
“You’ve already written an entire screenplay?” Mrs Crannon gapes at me, clapping her hands together like a performing monkey. “Izzy, that’s fantastic! So many aspiring screenwriters struggle to even finish one script, and they’re professionals who’ve been to film school. When I was a working theater director I used to despair of writers who seemed incapable of seeing an idea through to the end. You should be very proud of yourself. Writing ‘fade out’ is quite the accomplishment.”
“Really?”
“Really!” She takes the script from me, examining the professional formatting and neatly typed title page. [My best friend Danny pirated the proper software for me on account of my severe brokeness. Don’t tell the internet police. Or, you know, the actual police.] “I’d love to take it home with me to read. Can I?”
This show of unbelievable support catches me way off guard. “You’d do that? Spend your own free time reading my work?”
“Of course I would!” She crams another peanut butter cup in her mouth, tossing the paper in the overflowing trash can behind her. It’s full of empty candy wrappers and soda cans. Obviously she is just as nutrition-conscious as me, which is precisely not at all. “I know how talented you are through working with you on school plays. You have me in stitches with your clever ad libs and witty improv.”
I blush fiercely. Again. “Thank you. It irritates the living hell out of most people.”
“Well, most people aren’t budding comic writers in the making. Have you given much thought to what you’d like to do after leaving school? College? Internships? If you wanted to do both, USC is incredible for screenwriting – Spielberg is an alum – and you could intern during spring break and summer vacation while you’re in LA. Best of both worlds.”
I fidget with the zipper on the fake leather jacket I picked up at a thrift store last fall. This is the part I dread: coming clean about my financial situation. For the second time this afternoon. It shouldn’t be a big deal, and in day-to-day life it doesn’t bother me that much, but now that it’s actually having an impact on my future decisions, it’s kind of uncomfortable to discuss.