"Frostfire" by Kai Meyer - Chapter 3, Part 4/7

            The door across from him was opened as well.  Then two others, farther to the front of the hall.  In the space of a moment the dark corridor filled with half-grown boys in pajamas.  Whispers and giggles pierced Mouse through.

            “What do you want?” Her voice sounded hoarse and breathy.  Her throat was suddenly as clogged as the corridor.

            “Girl-boy,” one of them said.   Others chimed in, and in no time at all there was a whispered chorus of it:  “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!”

            Mouse pressed her back against the iron bar of the emergency exit. Its cold cut through the jacket of her uniform like a blade.

            “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!”

            “The grown-ups say that you’ve never left the hotel,” said Maxim, and took a step toward her.  “Is that true?”

            Yes! she wanted to shout at him.  Yes, it’s true!  Because I’d die out there, and that’s just how it is!

            Nothing, absolutely nothing, gave her such fear as the world Outside.  She could not imagine herself standing on a street under the open sky.  The thought of this vastness, this emptiness, cut off her breath.

            She did not make another sound.  Not even a whimper.  Her heart galloped.

            Maxim’s tone stayed amiable.  “We have decided that you’ll miss out on a lot if you never go outside.  It’s high time, don’t you think?”

            “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!” whispered the husky chorus.  More than a dozen boys, most of them with their voices breaking.

            “Please,” whispered Mouse.  “I haven’t done anything to anyone.”

            Maxim shook his head, smiling.  “Nor do we want to do anything to you.  Just understand – we want to help you.

            He gave the other boy a wave – he worked in the kitchen, in the butchery – and the stout fellow immediately grabbed Mouse by the shoulders and lifted her high like a bouquet of dried flowers.  Maxim stepped past her, unbarred the door, and shoved her out.

            Snow drifted about.  And a cold, that caused the throng of boys to give out a groan and flinch back a step.

            “It’s not far to the main entrance,” Maxim assured the wide-eyed Mouse.  “Really, it isn’t.  You don’t even have to go all the way around the hotel.  At most half.”

            Tears popped into her eyes.  And then she kicked the butcher-boy’s knee with all her strength. He howled, let her go, slid down the wall and held his leg, whimpering. A few others laughed hatefully, but Maxim motioned them into silence.  Two other boys jumped up – pages from the entrance hall – grabbed Mouse and turned her face to the open door.  In the darkness, she could recognize the landing of an iron fire escape.  Nothing else.  Only night and driving snow.

            She began to scream.  She struggled, thrashed about, scratched, kicked, and bit. 

            “…want to help you,” she heard Maxim say again, then she received a shove and stumbled out onto the iron stairs.  She stumbled, and was only at the last minute able to grab the railing.  Never in her life had she felt such a cold.  With a wail she tore his hands away, whirled around – and stared in Maxim’s smiling face.  A bundle of fabric flew out at her – the old coat that he had held in his hand.  In the same moment, the door slammed shut, and the iron bar on the inside latched back in place with a crunch. 

            “Let me in!” she cried in panic, and hammered with both fists against the door.  “Please!  Let me back in!”

What Should Theater Look Like and What Should Theater Be About?

Above are the two driving questions for my Theater History class that I am currently taking for a fine arts GE.  It's not that bad of a class, even though the professor has a tendency to analyze things for us and not encourage discussion and argument against her; I'm bored, but that's why I crochet.  No, the problem arises when we do three plays in a row about race relations, and that is the sum total of our look at American theater.  See, apparently "being American" means what race you are and how you're being oppressed.

There is a quote from August Wilson which I would like to paraphrase and dispute.  He argued against colorblind casting, claiming that it was devaluing African-American identity, and that instead there should be more plays written by blacks about blacks.  That way, black people would learn to respect their black identity.

While I respect the sentiment, and can agree it was probably appropriate for the times, I would like to bring up one point - namely, myself.  Am I even going to see the German-Chinese lesbian identity validated on the stage or in print?  Probably not.  The bigger question for me, though, is that if I did find a story that was not my own about a German-Chinese lesbian in America, would it mean anything to me?  Would that character really have anything to do with me?  Would this hypothetical character be obsessed with languages?  Would she be a ruthless literary critic?  A laconic feminist?  Would she have struggles with identity and independence that have nothing to do with her race or sexuality?

I don't think so.  I think that I am more than my race, ethnicity, and sexuality.

It bothers me when people try to portray themselves and their characters solely as representations of their race.  Yes, more racial and cultural awareness is good, but the whole purpose of racial inclusion is to show that people who aren't white Christian heterosexual able-bodied males are people too.  That does not happen if your black character is a cardboard cutout of a black person, and not a fully developed person with dark skin and African heritage.

Compare the last two plays we had to read:  "Zoot Suit" and "Cloud Nine."  "Zoot Suit" bored and frustrated me.  It is a whiny minority play, about Mexican-Americans in the 1940's bitching about how they're being oppressed and thrown in jail just because they're Mexican.  There is one line that goes something like "You just don't understand the Chicano people."  To which I reply "No, I don't, because I haven't seen any of your culture or personality, I'm just hearing how you're discriminated against.  I don't understand you any better than I did before."

Now, "Cloud Nine" focuses more on gender and sexuality than race, though there is a small racial component.  What "Cloud Nine" does is crossgender casting - Betty is played by a man, Edward is played by a woman; also, the black servant is played by a white man.  This shows how gender (and race) roles are just that - roles that we play.  It questions the very institutions.  That is so much more interesting and thought-provoking than "Look at us!  We're being oppressed!"  Is it not?

Re-emerging Into Reality

You may have noticed that I have been somewhat less diligent about posting in this month of November.  That is because I have been participating in a cult group madness challenge called NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month.  50,000 words.  30 days.  One writer.

Okay, not one writer.  That is what is so wonderful about NaNo.  Writing is by nature a solitary activity, and sitting in a group of people all absorbed in their own laptops writing their own novels does not sound like a party by anyone's standards.  Still, it is a great way to stay motivated.  I tend to write in creative spurts, but I have a hard time finishing.  I get about half or two-thids of the way through, and the story starts to sag, and I start to see all the places I went wrong, and I want to start over and fix things.  And I get to a point where I don't know where to go next and I don't really care.

But with NaNoWriMo, every word counts.  Rule #1 is DO NOT DELETE.  Rule #2 is DO NOT GIVE UP.  I was up to being seven days behind, but I made up the difference in the last few weeks and pulled across the finish line with hours to spare.

I have done NaNo several times in the past, and this was a year of firsts for me.  It was the first year I made an outline the night before from a story I thought of that day.  It was the first time I threw out that outline on the first day and started with a story that had been smoldering in my head for a while.  And it is the first year that I re-started on the second day with a completely new story that had been gestating but I had not considered ready to be born; but it was my most viable option.  It is the first year I had no idea where the story was supposed to go.

That is another thing about NaNo.  It forces you to be creative.  For the first 20k or so I was writing myself in circles.  Then I added witch hunters.  I never thought I would until I realized that I needed something new.  And there they were.  That got me close to 40k before that arc came down.  The rest was a first person account filling in the gaps of the first arc.  Note:  First person in lovely for wordiness.  You can throw in so much opinionation and asides and rants.  It's wonderful.

Then I was still about a thousand short and spat out half a bonus scene with the witch hunters.

Every year after that first one I have told myself that I won't do NaNo - I don't have time, I don't any good ideas, I'm in the middle of another project - and yet somehow I always do.  And I don't regret it.  Any of it.  Even though all my drafts so far have been shit, and I don't very much think this one is any different, I wrote that damn novel.  I have proven to myself that I can can overcome my creative barriers.  It does not take skill to write, after all.  Skill can be learned.  It takes determination and persistence, and I definitely leveled up in that area this month.

Now for a rest. This is also the first year my wrist actually started twinging (at the 47k mark, when I was starting to think I might actually make it).  That has not stopped me from starting a new crochet project.  I want to get back to my translations - I've been making trips to the career center to see what the heck I can do with my life, and translator is still one of my options.  I also want to start reading books again.  Am halfway through the third Temeraire book and also for some reason have a strong urge to re-read the entire Chronicles of Chrestomanci.  Oh yeah, finals are coming up too.

Blah blah words blah oh wait, I don't have to count them anymore.