The Carpool Log #4: Butter-hair
This is Pt. 4in a new series I am doing where I document the the results of car-rides to Logan Square from Andersonville. I’ll explain…
(((((If this is not your first time reading “The Carpool Log” you can scroll down, story begins after the picture)))))))
I do a late night show The Neo-Futurists theater called “The Infinite Wrench”the show is an attempt to do 30 plays in 60 minutes. I am not going to get too much into it here. You can check out the website. The most important thing to know is that we, the ensemble, writes all of the pieces in the show. We write them, and we pitch them to one another on aTuesday and if it gets in, we do these pieces live in front of an audience Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Recently, I wrote a play called “Carpool.” This is how the play works: I come out on stage and say: “Is anyone driving to Logan Square after this?” If someone raises their hand, I ask them to give me a ride. It’s simple, the inspiration for it’s existence even simpler:
1. My boyfriend lives in Logan Square.
2. The show gets out late.
3. The theater is apprx. 15 minutes away from Logan by car.
4. I don’t have a car.
5. Logan is impossible to reach (at that hour) by bus.
6. It’s ass-cold winter in Chicago
7. I am not a hardcore winter biker.
8. I like being held like a widdle baby as I fall asleep.
9. I make my living doing performance art, am running out of money for Lyfts
10. I like making new friends.
CARPOOL #4: FRIDAY
When I first heard someone say the expression: “But-Her-Face” I thought that they were saying “Butter-face.” If you are unfamiliar with the term, when someone (a dick circa 1994) says she’s a “But-Her-Face” it means “Every part of her is attractive…But Her Face” If that person is not annunciating, which is likely seeing as they are probably drunk at frat party, it sounds kind of like: “Butter-face.”
Folks, The Infinite Wrench is a wild time. We make messes, on the stage and on each other. These messes carry over from one play to the next. And because it is in a random order you never know what nasty will come first, and stay with you till the end.
Ensemble member and garbage boy Nick Hart wrote a play called “DAN HAS A LOT OF BUTTER” in the play Ensemble member and con-man Dan Kerr-Hobert rubs a stick of butter on an object of his choosing. One time it was a tube television, another time it was a wooden eagle statue, tonight: it was me. Tonight I became the closest I have ever been to a literal “Butter-face.”
With a head of hair jelled back with toast-topping that I approached the audience fourteen plays later and said: “CAN I GET A RIDE?”
CONFESSION: I needed to NOT sleep in Logan Square tonight. I had a meeting the next day, early in this part of town. Not to mention, I now had butter in my hair and I didn’t want to get butter all over my boyfriends pillow, or take a long shower at 1 am when their is a roommate sound asleep across from the bathroom. In order to still make the play possible I asked: “CAN I GET A RIDE?” instead of “Whose going to Logan Square?” which is way more of an aggressive question, I think.
Right now, in our show, there are beautiful and powerful monologues about the importance of consent. Then there is me, and my play, practically forcing myself into the cars of others. In these plays we consider the places in the consent conversation were there is and has been a complete lack of respect; asking the audience go beyond the simple “no means no.” AND THEN: I show up manipulating them in front of a live, paying audience to say “Yes.”
Usually, I go directly up to the carpool buddy when the buzzer goes off. Tonight, I let the audience members be the one to initiate. I had put them on the spot enough. I couldn’t get a gage from their in-the-moment reaction if they were truly okay with it, so I began mentally preparing myself to walk home….BUT the couple I had pestered DID come up to me.
“Let’s go!” they said.
They were a lesbian couple from the suburbs. And the ride was stupid short because I only live three blocks from the theater; I didn’t learn as much about them as I learned about my previously carpools. They met at a Bachelorette party. One of them had a crush on the other one.
“I was flirting with her all night!”
“And I had no idea she liked me until she asked me out!”
When I left the car they said: “Good luck getting that butter out of your hair”
(I washed my hair with Dr. Bronners. It made little to no difference. Whereas before it smelled like butter, after the show it smelled like a peppermint mocha. Mint Dairy.)
In an ideal world were don’t expect one another to be mind readers. In an ideal world we recognize boundaries are important, and we make the space for each other to set them. In an ideal world when we want something, we don’t force something, or assume something. In an ideal world when we want something, we ask. We take the answer seriously. We’re prepared to walk ourselves home.
