Triptych Interviews
Allison
Saturday, September 10 (After Chapter 27 of Triptych)
ALLISON: You chose a great time for this. Couldn’t we have talked sometime when I was sure and positive and knew what the hell I was doing? This is like the most confusing time of my life and I’m in rehearsal and have my senior project to do and... Heavenly days! Can’t anything be simple for once?
aroslav: Hi, Allison.
ALLISON: Breathe. That’s all I have to do. Just take a deep breath.
[Pause]
ALLISON: Well if you was a gentleman, you might ask me to sit down, I think. [Thick Cockney accent]
aroslav: Please have a seat, Miss...
ALLISON: Doolittle. Miss Eliza Doolittle.
aroslav: Ah. In rehearsal are we?
ALLISON: First show of the season. We open “My Fair Lady” next weekend. Reciting lines helps me relax. Sometimes I get a little frantic and start talking a mile a minute. Then you can’t get a word in edgewise. There was once that I went for an interview and the guy only asked me one question and I talked for half an hour and never did figure out what the interview was supposed to be about. I just get started and rattle...
aroslav: Allison?
ALLISON: on and on.
aroslav: Allison!
ALLISON: Sorry! It’s nice to meet you.
aroslav: Thanks for taking the time. How about we start with simple information. Name, age, birthdate, college, major. That sort of thing.
ALLISON: Okay. I’m Allison Janine Perkins. I’ll be 22 on the 25th of October. I’m a senior at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. I’m majoring in Theatre with an emphasis in Acting and I’ll have a minor in Music with an emphasis on voice. I’m about five credits short of a minor in Dance. Just can’t put the schedule together.
aroslav: Wow! Talented.
ALLISON: If I was that talented, I’d be at a performing arts school instead of a State university. But I’m getting a lot of opportunity here. Playing Eliza is a good one. Wide range of vocal challenges from accents to music. Transforming from the Cockney guttersnipe to the sophisticated lady without appearing to just throw a switch is a challenge.
aroslav: Have you always been interested in theater and performance?
ALLISON: Yes. I was in my first play in kindergarten and was the only performer who actually had her lines fully memorized. I started singing solos with the church choir when I was ten. If I’d lived somewhere with more opportunities, I’d have insisted on dance lessons, but the best I could get was the minister’s wife teaching “Worship Through Creative Movement.” It was a strange combination of gyrations and sign language set to the music of popular hymns.
aroslav: I take it religion was also an important part of your life when you were growing up.
ALLISON: Major. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not religious. But I went to church every Sunday, sang in the choir, and had perfect attendance in Sunday School for fourteen years. I guess a little of that is still in my system. It will take years to flush it all.
aroslav: Did you study the Bible a lot?
ALLISON: Memorized it. And...yeah. Studied. I used to study the Bible every day, but then I discovered Sudoku.
aroslav: ???
ALLISON: Turns out that I like puzzles that have an answer.
aroslav: So you’ve turned your back on religion in favor of brainteasers?
ALLISON: [sighs] No. It’s still there. I still go to church, if I’m not up too late on Saturday night. I still listen to sermons and try to believe. But it’s so contradictory to life. Okay. I can’t find anything in the Bible that says you can’t have sex. Oh, if you’re married, there’s a bunch of things that say you shouldn’t commit adultery. But there is no Bible verse that says you shouldn’t get a little tipsy or high and fuck the director of the show you’re in. Uh...Not that I ever did that...exactly. Shit!
aroslav: Who was it?
ALLISON: The stage manager. Stop looking at me like that. Do you have any idea what theater is like? Last year I did summer stock in a little theater in Maine. It was so cold there at night that we about froze our tits off. And there was this one space heater. Not in a dressing room, mind you, but in the stairwell where we all waited for our cues. So that’s where we dressed. And undressed. And made-up. And made out. It was easy to go from that stairwell to a guy’s apartment. And we’d play dress-up. And dress-off. I’m not a tramp. I only ever did one guy a season.
aroslav: I’m scarcely one to judge. Why so much trouble with women, though? I mean, it’s obvious that when you kiss Melody or Lissa you get turned on.
ALLISON: The Bible! No. Not the Bible, but the preacher. They always told us homosexuality was a sin. I don’t believe it, but I believe it. And when I feel so tingly, I feel so sinful. I’d do Tony in a heartbeat, but no matter how much I wanted Melody and Lissa or how much I loved them, I never could bring myself to really be with a woman.
aroslav: Could? Has something changed, Allison?
ALLISON: Mmmm. Oh. Well. I think...yes.
aroslav: What?
ALLISON: Well, once you’ve done it, you’ve done it, right? Hell’s not going to be any worse if you do it again. You’re just as guilty once as twice, so why not?
aroslav: You’ve done it?
ALLISON: We were sleeping in the same bed and she convinced me that we didn’t need to get dressed before we crawled in because we’d been in the hot tub together and we were all naked, so what difference did it make to just stay that way all night? After all, it was just us girls. And she was so sexy and cute. And she kisses like...Oh man! She’s so soft and...
aroslav: Who?
ALLISON: Do you know what she did to me? We crawled into bed and she said, “Give me a goodnight kiss, please?” And it was so sweet. We’d kissed before, I mean with Tony, but let’s face it: it was our hands on each other’s tits, not Tony’s. So we kissed, and our hands got busy. I was just touching her tits; nothing else. But they’re so full and round and luscious. I was thinking how like mine they were and what I liked done to my nipples and so I was just pinching them a little and she was breathing in my mouth and I was feeling so good. I didn’t realize for I don’t know how long that it was her hand in my pussy and not mine.
aroslav: Allison, we don’t do sex scenes in the interviews.
ALLISON: This isn’t a sex scene. It’s important. She was just fingering me and I was getting more and more turned on and was just moaning into her mouth as our tongues were exploring each other and I was pinching her nipples. It was easy to just forget that the fingers in my pussy belonged to a woman. And all of a sudden she stops and pulls away. Then she starts pecking at me lightly with my eyes closed. And while she’s giving me these little chicken kisses, she’s whispering, “You’ve tasted yourself before, haven’t you, Allison?” And I just moaned some more and nodded my head. Then she brings her wet fingers to my lips and starts rubbing them and I can smell my arousal because it’s, like, right under my nose. So I start licking her fingers and pretty soon they’re in my mouth and I’m sucking on her fingers and trying to get all my juices cleaned off.
[panting]
And you know what she says then? She says, “Yours or mine?” Just like that. And then, as if she was going to have me compare them she touches my lips with her other hand and it’s just as wet as the one I just cleaned off and it smells just as good and... Oh god!
aroslav: Allison? Are you okay?
ALLISON: Oh god, yes. So okay.
aroslav: And you just licked her fingers then?
ALLISON: Her fingers and her lips and her tits and her navel and her pussy and the little space between her toes and behind her knees and under her arms and behind her ears and...
aroslav: Who are we talking about?
ALLISON: Beth!
aroslav: You had sex with Beth?
ALLISON: Labor Day night when we were at Tony and Melody and Lissa’s house. We made love. A few times. And we fucked a few times. We didn’t really get much sleep that night. [sighs again, more deeply]
aroslav: Are you all right?
ALLISON: I could use a smoke. Only I quit. That’s why I took up racquetball. I had to get my lungs back. The first year of college was pretty wild. I could have ruined my voice. Then I’d spend my life with a raspy voice, singing in smoky bars for tips and drinks—gambling my life away and selling my body until I died of consumption.
aroslav: Uh, where are you?
ALLISON: Carmen. Manon. Dulcinea. Bess. You name it. Sorry. It’s just a dream.
aroslav: You dream about being a tragic heroine?
ALLISON: Well, of course! Those roles have all the best music. Man, I could nail those.
aroslav: What are you doing for your senior project?
ALLISON: A one-woman show based on the writings of James Joyce. The entire second act is Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses.
“...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
I’m going to play it lying in bed naked, exactly the way Tony painted me.
aroslav: That’s pretty daring. I’m assuming you have big plans for after college.
ALLISON: Yes. Who doesn’t? I’ve got my eye on a cashier’s position at Walmart.
aroslav: Seriously.
ALLISON: It’s a Walmart in Seattle.
aroslav: You really want to be with Tony, don’t you.
ALLISON: No. Yes. I want to be with Tony and Melody and Lissa. Or...if not with them, at least near them. I know I’m not going to be “one of them.” But you know, I really like them. I mean I love them. It’s not like I have to be part of their household, but I’d like to be near them. They brought the me out of me.
So, of course, I’m looking for real jobs out there. There’s some good theater going on there, and opera. There’s this guy who heard me sing in Chicago. Tony gave me his card. Geez! If the guy only knew that I was stretched out naked on a bed in front of Tony while he was standing outside the door listening—Well, anyway, it turns out this guy is legit. When I got home this week, I called him. He has a light opera company in Portland and cooperating agreements with a few other West Coast companies. I’d never sing at the Met, but I can do light opera. Of course, I’d love to do musical comedy, but regardless, I know that I’ll end up in a chorus working my butt off for union scale. But I love doing it. I just love the stage.
aroslav: That’s interesting. How’d you get involved in racquetball? That seems out of character for a diva.
ALLISON: Why thank you. I don’t think anyone’s called me a diva before. Let’s see. I left Eureka to go to the big city of Manhattan...Kansas. People for miles around come to Manhattan for a drink because it’s in one of the twenty-five counties in Kansas that allow people to buy a drink in a bar that doesn’t sell food. But...you’ve gotta be careful. Clay County, right next door is still a dry county. No on-sale liquor at all. Still, most of the kids—especially underage—opt for three-two beer. That’s beer with less than 3.2 percent alcohol. From personal experience, I can tell you that it takes exactly one-and-three-quarters pitchers of three-two for me to be shit-faced. That’s how I spent a lot of my freshman year. That and smoking. And sex. Just with my boyfriend. My freshman boyfriend. Well, I was a freshman. He was a junior. I did my first stint as a camp counselor that summer and was absolutely knocked on my ass over how out of shape I’d become. And no smoking at a YMCA camp. I decided that I needed regular exercise and a reason for clean living. I looked at the various campus activities and discovered racquetball. I loved it. I’m no Lissa Grant, but I can punish a little blue ball pretty severely.
aroslav: What are your plans for that?
ALLISON: I want to keep playing. I saw Lissa win Opens last year. What an inspiration. This year I’m going as a player instead of a fan. I’m not in the same class. I’m rated Division B. I really screwed up my games at the Intercollegiate National Championships last spring, but I’m not going to do that at Opens. I am ready to play. Racquetball. Of course, I’d like to play with Lissa and Melody and Tony, too. But I’m really there to play racquetball. Yeah.
aroslav: What do you think of their new line of sportswear?
ALLISON: I’ll be one of the first women on the courts wearing an Ice Queen outfit. They’re really cool, and kind of sexy. Just knowing that Lissa will be wearing a matching outfit when she plays makes me... You don’t need to know that, do you.
aroslav: Probably not. How do I wish you luck?
ALLISON: Well for my show opening tonight, it’s “break a leg.” Please don’t suggest that for Opens though! Try something like, “Move yer bloomin’ arse!”
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