In One Person

would
all
be waiting for Manfred—my most combative Tybalt.
    I was having a political conversation with my Benvolio, one of my gay boys. He was very active in the campus LGBTQ group, and we were talking about the election of the new governor of Vermont, a Democrat—“our gay-rights governor,” my Benvolio was in the midst of saying.
    Suddenly, he interrupted himself and said: “I forgot to tell you, Mr.A. There’s a guy looking for you. He was in the dining hall, asking about you.”
    I’d actually been in the dining hall for a quick bite to eat earlier that same evening, and someone else had told me there was a guy asking where he might find me. A young woman in the English Department had told me—a kind of Amanda-type, but
not
. (Amanda had moved on, to my relief.)
    “How old a guy?” I’d asked this young faculty person. “What did he look like?”
    “My age, or only a little older—good-looking,” she’d told me. I was guessing that this young English teacher was in her early thirties—maybe mid-thirties.
    “How old a man, would you guess?” I asked my young Benvolio. “What did he look like?”
    “
Late
thirties, maybe,” my Benvolio answered. “
Very
handsome—
hot
, if you ask me,” the gay boy said, smiling. (He was an excellent Benvolio to my cow-eyed Romeo, I was thinking.)
    My cast was showing up in the black box—some arriving alone, some in twos or threes. If Manfred got back from his wrestling match ahead of schedule, we could start our rehearsal; most of the kids still had homework to do—they would have a late night.
    Here came my clergymen, my Friar Lawrence and my Friar John, and my officious-sounding Apothecary. Here came my chatterboxes—two junior girls, my Lady Montague and my Lady Capulet. And there was my Mercutio—only a sophomore, but a long-legged and talented one. He had the requisite charm and derring-do for the likable but doomed Mercutio.
    Straggling into the black box, not quite last, were various Attendants, Maskers, Torchbearers, my Boy with a drum (a tiny freshman, who could have played a dwarf), several Servingmen (including Tybalt’s page), sundry Gentlemen and Gentlewomen—and my Paris, my Prince Escalus, and the others. My Nurse came at the end, shoving my Balthasar and my Petruchio ahead of her. Juliet’s Nurse was a stalwart girl—a field-hockey player, and one of the most outspoken lesbians in the LGBTQ group. My Nurse did not countenance most male behavior—including gay and bi male behavior. I was very fond of her. If there were ever any trouble—a food fight in the dining hall, or a disaffected student with a weapon—I knew I could count on Juliet’s Nurse to watch my back. She had a grudging respect for Gee, but I knew they weren’t friends.
    And where was Gee? I began to wonder. My Juliet was usually the first to arrive at the theater.
    “There’s a guy looking for you, Mr. A.—some creep who thinks very highly of himself,” Juliet’s Nurse told me. “I think he’s hitting on Gee, or maybe he’s just walking with her and talking to her. They’re on their way here, anyway,” my Nurse said.
    But I did not, at first, see the stranger; when I spotted Gee, she was alone. I’d been discussing Mercutio’s death scene with my long-legged Mercutio. I was agreeing with him that there is, as my talented sophomore put it, some black humor involved, when Mercutio first describes the seriousness of his stab wound to Romeo—“’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis enough. ’Twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.” Yet I cautioned my Mercutio not to make it the least bit
funny
when he curses the Capulets and the Montagues: “A plague o’ both your houses!”
    “Sorry I’m a little late, Mr. A.—I got delayed,” Gee said; she looked flushed, even red-cheeked, but it was cold outside. There was no one with her.
    “I heard some guy was bothering you,” I told her.
    “He wasn’t bothering
me
—he’s got a thing about
you
,” my Juliet told me.
    “He looked like he was hitting on you,” my sturdy Nurse said to her.
    “No one’s hitting on me till I get to college,” Gee told her.
    “Did the man say what he wanted?” I asked Gee; she shook her head.
    “I think it’s personal, Mr. A.—the guy is upset about something,” Gee said.
    We were all standing in the stage area, which was brightly lit; my stage manager had already dimmed the houselights. In our