Like That at Home

During a rehearsal for "The Sorcerer" last night, as I was leaping, prancing and mincing about, inhabiting the character of John Wellington Wells, of J.W. Wells & Co. Family Sorcerers, throwing my voice, screeching, yelling and, occasionally, singing, a familiar event was taking place backstage.

Chrous members were grilling my wife about our home-life.

"It must be a laugh-riot in your house, twenty-four hours a day!"

"He must be so fun to live with!"

"Does he just prance around like that, singing and being funny all the time?"

"Is he always like that at home?"

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Am I always "like that"? I don't quite know what "that" is. Is "that" adopting effeminate, 19th century gestures and rolling my "r's" while discussing whether to have pasta or Gardenburgers for dinner? Is it speaking in a reedy, seedy, affected British manner and grimacing all the time while conversing with my wife about our respective days at work?

Is that "that"?

The truth is, as soon as rehearsal is over, the first thing I do once the car doors are securely closed is spit vile about how awful it was, everything from my own performance to the leaky church ceiling to the incompetent director. And I don't do it like a Victorian gentleman, if that's what they're wondering. It's a profanity-laced tirade where I happily fantasize with my wife about giving fellow cast members MacGuyver-style lobotomies with paperclips and car-keys.

In short, I'm not the very model of a modern Major-General once dismissed.

It's slightly disturbing to me to know that other people are spending their time wondering about what I'm like "at home." I mean, I come home, I drink Caffeine Free Diet Coke. I fart. I shove Glucosamine pills down my dog's throat till he gags. I enjoy me some good online pornage. I blog. Occasionally, I rehearse my lines and songs, or far less than occasionally, I practice banjo.

There's not much to it.

I mean, I suppose I'm a little fun to be around at home. You do never know when I'm going to run down the hall screaming with a pair of underwear on my head, or fall off the couch or perform a monologue from Dr. Strangelove in the kitchen. But these moments are fleeting, and they are perhaps overshadowed by my constant dilemmas about work and the intermittent times when I am convinced that I have somehow contracted some sort of wasting disease, initiating an endless string of visits to Web MD where I slowly drive myself and my wife crazy.

And there's the farting which is an act that, I believe, even Beyonce and Robert Sean Leonard perform at home.

There's often discussions on the 20something bloggers board about the mask that we bloggers wear online, and whether we are "in real life" the way we "are" on our blogs. Well, I don't really know what that means either. Some people inevitably turn this into a discussion about whether or not they swear more on their blogs or in real life, as if using or not using "fuckscum" in real life somehow defines how "authentic" you are on your blog. The fact of the matter is that we are never how we are, and we are always how we are, because how we are is constantly changing, shifting, and evolving depending upon whom we're with. My behavior is completely altered when I go home to see my mother and my father. My behavior here is different from my behavior at work, and yet, in some ways, it's the same.

I don't know that living with me is anything special, but you'd have to ask Mrs. Apron. She puts up with it pretty well, I think, although I think she was pretty much ready to suffocate me with a pillow the last time I brought up buying a forty-one-year-old Volkswagen Beetle.

We're getting some new windows for the house instead.