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Tonight's post is brought to you by a Spanish wine named "Wrongo Dongo" that was recommended to me by the nice gay at the Kafka wine shop. So helpful! This wine is perf.
After the semi-rambling I puked out last night, I felt as if I needed to write about a little something else. I've been thinking heavily, while drinking heavily, about Harold Pinter. I've been thinking about minimalism, and I've been thinking about Harold Pinter, and I've been thinking about Betrayal.
I've been a performer for my entire life. Even though I spent my formative years on the stage, I never felt anything as painful and as bizarre as when I saw Betrayal for the first time. I was either a freshman or a sophomore in college, and I was taking an introductory acting class at my very bourgeois, very tiny private college, in a very small town in Wisconsin. The story is as follows: Three people spend their entire lives figuring out that they have all fucked each other in various sexual and non-sexual ways. There are the two marrieds, Emma and Robert, and then Robert's BFF Jerry(who is also married) who enters into an affair with Emma whilst at a party thrown by Robert and Emma. The story is told beginning with the end of Emma and Jerry's affair, and we take the horrifying trip backwards through all of the stolen moments, and almost uncoverings of the affair, right up to the very first illicit kiss between Emma and Jerry.
I want to hate these men, and this woman. I want to stop them from making mistakes that will ultimately ruin their lives. Every time I have the opportunity to see this show, I will see it. Harold Pinter is the master of minimalist theater because he doesn't waste your time talking and singing about every single arbitrary thing the people in the cast are doing at any given time. The dialogue is so short and loaded, and that is why it is so uncomfortable. It is possible to communicate with truncated language instead of a Gilmore Girls-esque verbal diarrhea landslide.
Any time I start thinking about Betrayal, I start thinking about our relationships with the people who are closest to us. I start to think about all the threesomes and foursomes, and in some sad, silly cases, twosomes we get ourselves into.
Two days ago, I was getting my hair cut, and my stylist, who is also my friend said, as we gossiped about our relationships and non-relationships, that "we never like who actually likes us. We always want the asshole." I don't mean to get all superficial, selfish, sonofabitch Carrie Bradshaw, but.....the FUCK? As much as I want to hate Harold Pinter for being a misogynistic man, I can't help but agree with Emma. Why not try to have both of the men you want? Because threesomes never work out as glamourously as the movies allow them to be. In real-time, they are very much like Betrayal. We start something with one person, knowing goddamn well that this is the person that is mean to be the "right" choice, and, then, cue the third party who is more exciting, even a titty bit dangerous, and absolutely the wrong choice. The wrong choice will always win because it makes a person disassociate. Psychologically, you spend the vast majority of your time rationalizing why spending time with the wrong person is ok, and why spending time with the right person is boring and will never go anywhere.
Betrayal can serve as a morality tale for all of us who are in-between friends/lovers. Telling a person you are in love with, that you are in love with them is terrifying, and can be, in some cases, totally out of line and a case of mistaken identity. The line you cross can and will become unclear, and you will decide that the wrong is the right, and the wrong is the absolute.
Pretty words are what sways us in the end. Both the "right" and the "wrong" have said the right things, and I have said the right things, but we cannot all live together in peace and harmoneeeeeeeeee...Make a choice. Claim this person or lose them forever to the shit show that is non-descript relationships.
Claim a person and eliminate the prospect of a Betrayal like betrayal.
I can never love you both the same way.
XOXO
Betsy
p.s. Even if you thought it was Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, this is my favorite piece of music ever written.
If there isn't already a musical homage to Wrongo Dongo set to the tune of Ted Nugent's "Wango Tango" we should record that sometime soon.
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