Psych Lab
The term "Bambi-Is-A-Snake" I heard a few weeks back at the restaurant. My customer was explaining how his wife worked at Nordstroms and how much it sucked, the hours, the customers, "...not to mention Bambi-Is-A-Snake [referring to his wife's bitchy, but sunny-faced co-worker]..."
Anyway, friends knows this -- i used to be a English teacher in Taiwan. For more than a year, I walked around with stabbing headaches and cheeks shredded by acne --- I'd never been so stressed in my life. Once, before class, my whole torso filled up with, yes, gas and I ended up at the school track, burping for three rubber-turfed laps until I worked off all the anxiety. It was hard being insecure and a teacher.
So, I can sorta empathize with my teacher at LACC. (The class is THTR 001 - beginning acting. Signed up cuz I was scared and curious) She's a short, slight woman, late thirties to early forties, cute, but large pouches under her eyes, skin shiny from lotsa daily moisturizer. Her hair is amber colored, wavy, above chin-length, bangs in the front. She always wears three-quarters length pants.
So there's this girl, M________ all brown curves spilling out of expensive, too-small clothes with nice salon highlights and haircut. Almost sexy. Like Eve Langoria (sp?) with a wrester's build. A total attention hog but amusing and uninhibited and always the first to get up and volunteer to go up when everyone else is feeling pre-noon shyness -- even if she does always preface by announcing that she hasn't prepared and is just gonna have to wing it.
The first week we had to go up and share a life-changing moment with the class. She told us she'd gotten into pot at 13, coke when she was 14 and everything else the year after and was basically a total wreck until her mom forced her to go to rehab and boarding school. And now she was totally cleaned up except for the occasional rendezvous with weed.
This past Monday she walked in, went up and whispered something to the teacher -- turns out she'd lost her voice and would have to do her monologue on Wednesday. She sat down and during critiques, whispered hoarse comments to the guy sitting next to her, which he then rebroadcast to the class. As I was leaving class, I told her I hoped she got her voice back. She laughed and answered in her normal voice.
Yesterday only 6 of us were in attendance. Rain was mucking things up outside. We were discussing different ways to approach our monologues and ended up on the topic of "covers" -- my teacher's term for how we mask feelings we don't want to show -- like busting grins-all-around when we're actually upset about something or making mucous jokes after we've finished crying our eyes out (me) or just staying really stoic when inside we're MOTHERFUCKIN MAD!!
So twenty minutes into the class, M______ pops her head in the door and gesticulates wildly. Something about being double parked...she'll be back in a second.
The discussion continues. Pretty lively. People are rifling their pasts for insight, they're asking the teacher lots of questions. Everyone's engaged. My teacher is standing in front of us, riffing fluidly:
She has a student in another class who doesn't come often but when she does, is always crazy hostile and antagonistic. Later it comes out that the girl's family was displaced to Lancaster after Katrina and her homelife has been an absolute madhouse.
She has a British friend that covers his disappointment with his life and his bitterness with his country's class system with explosive anger. Favorite phrase: "fucking cunt of a whore." Once a plate went flying.
Covers help us feel in control of our situation. We use them all the time.
Like, she continues, if any of us had to, we could easily do imitations of each other. We would just pick some essence of the person that we radar in daily interaction and just act that out -- and essentially we'd be acting out each other's covers. For instance, (she goes over to the doorway), she could do M____. (She crouches a little and waves her arms wildly and makes a goofy exaggerated imitation of our double-parked classmate.)
It's a poor impression. My mouth is registering a funny taste.
M__ apparently never finds a way to un-double-park her car because with thirty minutes left in the class, she's still not there. As the discussion winds down - teacher brings our missing classmate back into it:
"Take M____ for instance - here's a person who has very few or almost no covers" (Two students in front look at each other quizzically and chime "or just one big cover!") The teacher keeps going.
"That's what makes her kinda this free personality," she gesticulates to conjure some related essence, "and frankly" she strolls over to her desk, "kind of... fucked up." Really matter of fact like. Like she's not telling us anything anybody doesn't know. Somebody laughs.
The Armenian kid who told the butt-shaped avacado parable during Week 2 and a girl with long turquoise fingernails who looks a lot like Nico go up and do their two-minute condom skit.
We're instructed to think about "covers" over the weekend.
I duck out early to move my car. Wednesday street cleaning. Meter's almost up.
--alice the worm
Anyway, friends knows this -- i used to be a English teacher in Taiwan. For more than a year, I walked around with stabbing headaches and cheeks shredded by acne --- I'd never been so stressed in my life. Once, before class, my whole torso filled up with, yes, gas and I ended up at the school track, burping for three rubber-turfed laps until I worked off all the anxiety. It was hard being insecure and a teacher.
So, I can sorta empathize with my teacher at LACC. (The class is THTR 001 - beginning acting. Signed up cuz I was scared and curious) She's a short, slight woman, late thirties to early forties, cute, but large pouches under her eyes, skin shiny from lotsa daily moisturizer. Her hair is amber colored, wavy, above chin-length, bangs in the front. She always wears three-quarters length pants.
So there's this girl, M________ all brown curves spilling out of expensive, too-small clothes with nice salon highlights and haircut. Almost sexy. Like Eve Langoria (sp?) with a wrester's build. A total attention hog but amusing and uninhibited and always the first to get up and volunteer to go up when everyone else is feeling pre-noon shyness -- even if she does always preface by announcing that she hasn't prepared and is just gonna have to wing it.
The first week we had to go up and share a life-changing moment with the class. She told us she'd gotten into pot at 13, coke when she was 14 and everything else the year after and was basically a total wreck until her mom forced her to go to rehab and boarding school. And now she was totally cleaned up except for the occasional rendezvous with weed.
This past Monday she walked in, went up and whispered something to the teacher -- turns out she'd lost her voice and would have to do her monologue on Wednesday. She sat down and during critiques, whispered hoarse comments to the guy sitting next to her, which he then rebroadcast to the class. As I was leaving class, I told her I hoped she got her voice back. She laughed and answered in her normal voice.
Yesterday only 6 of us were in attendance. Rain was mucking things up outside. We were discussing different ways to approach our monologues and ended up on the topic of "covers" -- my teacher's term for how we mask feelings we don't want to show -- like busting grins-all-around when we're actually upset about something or making mucous jokes after we've finished crying our eyes out (me) or just staying really stoic when inside we're MOTHERFUCKIN MAD!!
So twenty minutes into the class, M______ pops her head in the door and gesticulates wildly. Something about being double parked...she'll be back in a second.
The discussion continues. Pretty lively. People are rifling their pasts for insight, they're asking the teacher lots of questions. Everyone's engaged. My teacher is standing in front of us, riffing fluidly:
She has a student in another class who doesn't come often but when she does, is always crazy hostile and antagonistic. Later it comes out that the girl's family was displaced to Lancaster after Katrina and her homelife has been an absolute madhouse.
She has a British friend that covers his disappointment with his life and his bitterness with his country's class system with explosive anger. Favorite phrase: "fucking cunt of a whore." Once a plate went flying.
Covers help us feel in control of our situation. We use them all the time.
Like, she continues, if any of us had to, we could easily do imitations of each other. We would just pick some essence of the person that we radar in daily interaction and just act that out -- and essentially we'd be acting out each other's covers. For instance, (she goes over to the doorway), she could do M____. (She crouches a little and waves her arms wildly and makes a goofy exaggerated imitation of our double-parked classmate.)
It's a poor impression. My mouth is registering a funny taste.
M__ apparently never finds a way to un-double-park her car because with thirty minutes left in the class, she's still not there. As the discussion winds down - teacher brings our missing classmate back into it:
"Take M____ for instance - here's a person who has very few or almost no covers" (Two students in front look at each other quizzically and chime "or just one big cover!") The teacher keeps going.
"That's what makes her kinda this free personality," she gesticulates to conjure some related essence, "and frankly" she strolls over to her desk, "kind of... fucked up." Really matter of fact like. Like she's not telling us anything anybody doesn't know. Somebody laughs.
The Armenian kid who told the butt-shaped avacado parable during Week 2 and a girl with long turquoise fingernails who looks a lot like Nico go up and do their two-minute condom skit.
We're instructed to think about "covers" over the weekend.
I duck out early to move my car. Wednesday street cleaning. Meter's almost up.
--alice the worm
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