Double Tears
Chapter 105
“We’re actors—we’re the opposite of people!”
—Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
I’LL NEVER BE AN ACTOR, but I discovered I love performing. The first weekend of the Renaissance Festival taught me that. Our ‘stationary’ performance venue was a place called The Three Oaks. It was actually just one tree that split into three trunks. I don’t think it was even an oak tree. Someday I’ll go back to Kansas and find the other tree. Two? You say there are more than two trees in Kansas?
There were three troupes that performed at The Three Oaks. We were scheduled to have an hour between the beginnings of each performance. We entertained there for about forty-five minutes and then there was a lull for fifteen. We were scheduled at 11:00, 2:00, 5:00 and 8:00. Between our times at the venue, we strolled around the fair just playing our instruments and spontaneously bursting into a performance on occasion. The first performance only had about a dozen people who stopped to watch our antics, listen to our music, watch our dancers. As the afternoon progressed and people needed a place to sit and rest from touring all the 250 vendors who had displays, our audiences grew. We had close to fifty at the last one of the day.
We were also invited back to some vendors who found that ten minutes of entertainment in front of their booth drew people in. While we were there, we always invited people to visit Riko and Riley… AFTER they had viewed the fine crafts displayed at the booth where we performed. I say we invited, but Desi was the official spokesperson and other than our asides and runs at a little comedy interspersed with our music, she did all the talking. She had a great British accent—compared to some that we heard and compared with the poor attempts the rest of us made—and she had the experience of having worked these events before.
Cindy was a bit overwhelmed by the direct interactions with the audience. I sympathized with her. When she’s performing with an orchestra or in recital, there’s usually no loudmouth in the audience yelling out, “How can you think a wench like that is a boy?”
The other girls got into the performances. Riley gave Livy and Rachel tambourines and Brittany and Sophie had well-concealed castanets. They would give us occasional breaks by leading our troupe with a little dance as we moved from one place to another—especially as we headed to our performance venue and Desi called out to follow us to The Three Oaks. Fortunately, Livy and Rachel could at least keep time on the tambourines as Brittany and Sophie danced. All four girls were good at passing the hat, too.
By eleven o’clock Saturday night, we were all so exhausted, we could scarcely walk. We’d had breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the food stands, trying not to eat so much we burped while performing. And we made frequent stops back at our booth just to get water. We changed back to street clothes before leaving the village, giving Cindy first use of the changing room so she and her mother could leave for their motel. I think Betty was slow to realize that when the show closed at eleven, she’d still have to spend an hour getting out of the parking field before she could even drive to their motel.
I felt bad for Cindy—not so much for Betty—and wished she could stay with us. Of course, that would have other problems. The five girls and I slept in one tent. Naked. And even though we had to be up early enough to get costumed, breakfasted, and in position for the opening, we fooled around until close to two o’clock before we collapsed together. Riko and Riley had cots in the dressing room where they spent the night. A lot of vendors didn’t want to trust their wares unguarded overnight. During the week, we’d take turns sleeping in the booth.
“What do we do with all this?” Rachel asked Sunday night. She’d just dumped the contents of the hat in the middle of our bed. Blankets. We’d brought the foam mattress out of the truck and put it in the middle of the tent. Desi produced an air mattress that pretty much filled the rest of the tent.
“How much is there?” Brittany asked.
“A lot,” Livy said. “Should we count it out?”
“Our usual is to just dump all of it together and…” Desi stopped her suggestion. “I’ve never had to split it up before. What do we have? Six? No, seven of us. That pile isn’t going to look like so much when we split it seven ways.”
“You don’t need to include us in the split,” Rachel said. “Livy and I are just here on vacation, hoping our boyfriend will have the energy to make love after we’ve followed him around adoringly all day.”
“It’s the former virgin Brittany’s weekend,” Livy said. “We all agreed.”
“Um… my pussy is… a little sore after three nights of regular use. I could forgo tonight. You two need some loving before you leave. Besides…” Brittany looked at her aunt.
“Go ahead. You thought up the brilliant idea. I’m with you,” Sophie said.
“Desi, we were wondering if it would be okay to stay. This was fun and we’d like to perform with you next weekend, too.”
“Why are you asking me?”
“You’re the boss,” Brittany said.
“I am? When did that happen?”
“You know when and where everything is supposed to be. You have experience,” Rachel said. “And Beca’s not here.”
“We can check with Riko and Riley in the morning,” Desi said. “I don’t think they’ll have a problem with it. They were pretty happy with how sales went. We did a good job of getting traffic to them.”
“It was smart to get cards made that we could hold up instead of shouting all the time,” Rachel said. “Anyway, if I have a vote, I think Brittany and Sophie should stay if they can. As long as I can get a little loving from our man tonight.” She rolled me over onto the foam pad and I got lost kissing her, so I didn’t really pay attention to whatever the others decided.
The Renaissance Village had a summer festival that drew pretty well and had a lot of people from the University working at it. Over the years, it became a year-round events area. As a result, there were some permanent buildings for the convenience of the cast, including a shower facility that we all made use of in the morning. When we were all dressed for the day, we went to see Riko and Riley.
“We had a good weekend and aren’t paying anything extra to have you with us, so if you’d like to stay, it’s fine,” Riko said. “Sophie, do you have permission for Brittany? She’s the only question at fifteen.”
“I called my sister this morning and explained the situation. If next weekend goes as well, we might want to join you for more of these. It has been a wonderful experience,” Sophie said.
“I’m fine with it,” Riley said. “Which of you are sleeping in the changing room tonight? Riko and I need a bed for a couple of nights.”
Everything in the village was closed so we needed to go into town for breakfast. As soon as we’d eaten, Rachel and Livy took off for the long drive home, wishing us well. We met up with Cindy and Betty and agreed we’d all be taking a day off today but they would pick up breakfast and come to the village on Tuesday to practice. We decided to go tour the University. I know I made a joke about how flat and treeless Kansas is, but the campus is really beautiful and has lots of trees. We walked around the place and it had that spooky feeling of a deserted post-apocalyptic dream.
Summer term was in session and there were some students around, but several buildings were locked. We walked across the campus and found the library before we found the admissions office. We just wanted information, so this seemed good enough.
College enrollment had been falling since the early 2000s. The cost of higher education and a cultural disdain for education opposed to ‘working with your hands’ had caused several smaller colleges to collapse. When National Service went into effect six years ago, it about collapsed the entire educational system. For two years, there were nearly zero new enrollments. No freshmen enrolled because they had to do Service first. That was 3.5 million students a year who would have gone to college but didn’t. The university here lost 4,500 new students.
To stay afloat, they’d increased the number of foreign students. The percentage of foreign students admitted went from ten percent to forty percent in two years. The expected explosion of students entering college after the first two years of the National Service was more like a firecracker than a bomb. When students come out of high school, they are used to going to school. They might have a dream career in mind but more likely they are exploring to find out what they should do with their lives. National Service removed that aspect of higher education. The momentum for continuing in school dropped significantly. Many found they had all the training they wanted or needed and passed on the free tuition offer at low-ranked colleges.
Being businesses first and foremost, the American educational system continued to exploit the market of international students. After six years of the National Service, enrollment in colleges and universities was nearly fifty percent international.
The government made a lot of noise about limiting the number of student visas but the education lobby was strong and managed to keep the numbers up. Students, however, were given strict limitations and were required to leave the country within five years of arrival or upon graduation, whichever came first.
Looking over the enrollment statistics for the university and the graduation statistics, it was easy to see the effect on what was offered in the way of programs. Science, mathematics, medicine, and engineering programs had grown exponentially. English, literature, mental health, and the arts had decreased at the same rate. I wondered if we would survive the coming dark ages. We were simultaneously turning into a nation of uneducated thugs while turning the rest of the world into inventive, creative scientists.
I was pretty depressed by the university visit. After lunch, we went back to the village. Riko and Riley gave us tasks we needed to do to get everything ready for the show on Thursday night. At Ren Faires, they rented costumes as well as selling them, so there was a lot of laundry to be done. That was another of the permanent buildings behind the village like the showers. The laundry was busy and we were limited to just a few machines, both by the crowd and by the way we needed to sort clothes and care for them. It was dinner time before we got all the clothes ironed and back to the booth.
As medieval as the village looks when it is open to the public, buried electric cables provide power for all the booths and restaurants. Propane is used in the restaurants for cooking and heating water. Subtly hidden lights make the grounds glow at night while obvious torches and bonfires make it appear the light all comes from them. It’s a clever bit of engineering and design. One food stand was open serving a limited menu during specific hours. We grabbed trenchers full of beef stew and soft drinks before finally dragging ourselves to bed. We’d brought the foam mattress from the tent to the changing room and all slept there. There was a lot of touching and kissing as we cuddled our naked bodies together, but we were just too tired after the weekend and work of the day to make love.
23 June 2020
I talked to Beca. She’s doing fine now. Joan called her Sunday night.
I guess the story eventually unfolded that Joan couldn’t bear to say goodbye, so had run off to start her service immediately. She was in a camp in Central Florida and already suffering from the heat as they had physical workouts outside every day. But something Em hadn’t mentioned during our calls was that half the day was spent in classrooms. The first three weeks had been mostly assessments to see where inductees were lacking. Next week, their field training would include basic weapons instruction and they’d be placed in remedial classes where they were determined to be weak. I was surprised to find that keyboard skill was expected to be one of the major remedial areas. Most of these kids typed with their thumbs.
The big news, which made Beca fall in love with Joan all over again was the other reason Joan had hurried off to service. She joined on June 1, 2020. That means her Service will be over on May 31, 2022. Our high school graduation, by quirk of the calendar, is June 5, 2022. Joan wants to be with us for graduation and by going in on the first instead of waiting, she will be there. I have to give her credit. We all need to think about the timing of our service. We do have a little flexibility. I need to talk to Rachel.
Our performance Thursday night was a little more stable—more practiced. We’d spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday rehearsing. Several skills acts could be seen in rehearsal as well. Swordfights, jousts, juggling, axe-throwing. Our friend from Indy PopCon, Dustin Kane the armorer, stopped to talk to us for a while as he was polishing his hardware. He was having a difficult time figuring out whether he should focus on Desi, Brittany, or Sophie. I think he could tell Cindy was just too young. He tried for Sophie.
“Did you know my boyfriend is a writer and musician?” she asked him loudly enough that we could hear. I turned toward her. “You have swords of steel, but if he impales you on his satirical lance, your business won’t recover,” she said slipping away from him. He stared at me and pointed to each of the girls in turn as he counted.
“Four?” he asked weakly. I held up both hands, fingers spread.
“Ten,” I said. He clasped his hands together and bowed. We all got a laugh out of it and promised we’d perform in front of his booth this weekend.
Sophie’s comment about being impaled on a satirical lance led Brittany and her to improvise a bit in front of his booth.
“The grass is green, is it not?”
“Every blade.”
“Yet in the dew it shivers with light.”
“What is your point, sir?”
“That here we stand on the edge of night.”
“I make nothing of your rapier wit.”
“I am cut to the quick.”
“’Tis the point I was wont to make.”
“Fence not with words. ’Twas my point to begin.”
All in all, it was ridiculous, made to sound Shakespearean, and got the audience laughing. Then Cindy and I played a dance tune while Brittany and Sophie engaged in a dance that included various moves reminiscent of a sword fight. We moved on.
“Cindy, you look glum,” I said Sunday morning when she and her mother arrived for breakfast.
“I’m tired,” she said.
“I’m not used to working so hard either. At least I managed to get out for a good run a few times this week. That gets my blood circulating. You should try it,” I said.
“I’m used to working hard. I practice six or more hours a day. I study the music. I listen to other performers. I perform with an orchestra in front of hundreds of people. Why is this so much more tiring?” she begged.
“I could say it’s more physical, which it is, but I think it’s something else. You rehearse six or more hours a day. Alone. You study the music. Alone. You listen to other performers. Alone. When we’re out here walking and playing and joking, we are not alone. We’re on all the time. We can’t sit to eat without staying in character. When we’re playing our instruments, we’re the focus of attention, but even when we’re watching our castmates dancing or verbally jousting, we are still in character and preparing to be on again. Cindy, yesterday, we worked thirteen hours with audiences, spent another hour getting ready, and then you drove an hour before you could go to sleep. Of course you are exhausted. I can hardly wait to close this down tonight.”
“At least you have company at night. I have Mother. I sleep to Mother’s snoring. I wake up to Mother’s lectures. Can I stay with you at the next faire?”
“Um… Cindy, Mother would not approve. And besides, I don’t think you’d be comfortable with our afterhours activity,” I snickered.
“No wonder you stay in such a good mood. I can’t even touch myself at night without Mother… I want to lock myself in my room and scream for a while,” she said.
“Is this too much?” I asked gently, laying a hand on her shoulder. She sagged toward me.
“Just tell me it’s advancing our career, Jacob. When I’m out in the village and we’re playing and performing, I enjoy myself. I love working with you and Desi. The dancers make it possible for us to slip into the background for a while occasionally. I just want to know it is moving us forward,” she sighed.
“I don’t know if we’ve advanced musically or not,” I confessed. “I feel like I know you better now. I feel like we’ve connected in a way we were only sampling before. Look. Tomorrow we’re driving home. Tuesday, let’s take a day to rest. Completely. No six hours of practice. Wednesday we have lessons together. Let’s see if our connection working out here on the faire translates to anything positive in the rehearsal room. Okay? If it doesn’t, you aren’t committed to go back on the road like I am. Desi and I can rework our characters back to where they were when we started.”
“You don’t really need me out there, do you?” she sighed.
“Maybe not need you, but I’d miss you.” She smiled, stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek.
“Sebastian, let’s go kick some medieval pantaloons,” she grinned. We got our costumes on and headed out for our last day of performance in Kansas.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
