Feeling: relieved but regretful
Listening to: Vertical Horizon - Running on Ice
Reading/Watching: the DVD backstage extras

Last day in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It was all going well, until during our last notes of "Good Old Girl," when Melvin P. Thorpe reached out and took my hand, kissing it and holding it to his heart.

And I hugged him, even though he was massively sweaty (and naked under his robe, which is a whole other story), and started crying.

"Hard Candy Christmas" did not improve matters, and I stood in the wings with tears rolling freely down my face, trying not to make eye contact with anyone on stage, so as to avoid throwing them off. Some of the actresses were crying, so much that they flubbed lines and could barely sing. I closed my eyes, let the tears roll, and sang every note like I'd never get to sing it again. (Because I wouldn't.)

But I'm making a conscious decision to be better at keeping in touch. I am horrible at it; I make promises, and hug, and smile, and swear that we won't drift apart, and then we do. But not this time, not when it's these people.

I'm not saying I'll go out partying with all of them every weekend, but I will definitely pick up the phone on a random Tuesday and call the people who really got to know me, the people with whom I spent hours sitting in random restaurants, talking. And I fully intend to be as active as possible in theater for the next few months that I'm in this city (although my trepidations about leaving are growing... I really, really am a homebody, and this is feeling like an even stronger wrench than when I moved 200 miles from Hometown to Schoolville).

Even so, something ended today. And there was not a single person in that theater who didn't feel somewhat divided between relief and regret. We will (most of us) lose touch with each other, but once we're on stage again, it will be like we're still at Miss Mona's. I drove home thinking about it, about the odd relationship we had with each other, inhabiting our own strange island, in the world, but floating separately from it. Real life never touched this place, except for the few moments when a real-life friend came backstage, and so we could wander and goof off and flash people and smack asses and make dirty jokes and it was like Playboy crossed with Big Brother. (It's very difficult not to bond when you're all running around in underwear.)

I drove, and my CD began playing a song that seemed particularly relevant, and so of course I'm crying again, only this time while navigating the curvy, fickle bitch that is Downtown Interstate 10. It was Vertical Horizon's "Sunrays and Saturdays," and I think from now on it will always remind me of this group. Like a close relationship that was never true love, but damn it felt close.

Once the Madness of Matrimony is settled, I am definitely going back to the playhouse. I call this experiment a wild success.

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