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Notes for the earliest version of what would, 35 years later, become Illyria. Rather than go to my Catholic high school, I would hitchhike to John Jay HS in Katonah, where my boyfriend Steve went, and spend the day there hanging out, observing and writing down what I saw. I hung out at rehearsals for “Twelfth Night” and the cast and crew became my friends. The forgotten book was the hardbound notebook where most of the story was first recorded — I was (and remain) devastated when it was stolen in fall 1975 during my first semester at college. The “slender boy with large bruised eyes” was the real-life Rogan/Feste, whom I wrote about obsessively for decades, first as a teenager, later as an adult and published writer. He remains my oldest, closest friend.
TRANSCRIBED: April, 1975 ... So I htiched into Katonah, didn’t get raped or murdered. Very nice on the roads at seven in the morning: birds, sun rising, school buses.... I like being an observor: no one knows me. Well, actually, I am known here [at John Jay High School] but just enough to be kept from feeling isolate. (JJ cafeteria, 10:10) Young people are such an odd breed: I wish that I could do justice to all the psychotic beings I see. Sometimes I wish I could be somwhere else — o, fuck it, I can’t philosophize today. Just open my eyes and observe. Wish I’d brought my book [my journal]. I wonder if I make people uncomfortable looking at them. Probably. Eternal curiousity, I am the obnoxious busybody with the sloping nose and acne. Too much caffeine in my bloodstream. Wanderers. I can always spot them, feel their pose as my own. The same lame gait, refusal to stop the nervous flow of energy from mind to foot. I subvert it — writing I’ve done, I should be good at it by now. Why aren’t I? If you can'’t be beautiful, be interesting. Am I interesting? How wrong if I sit here and blaspheme my own world by boring people.
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| Me and Steve |
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Playbill for Twelfth Night Click to Open |
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