Ok. Not really. This post has no sex in it, so now that I’ve got your click, I’ll move on.

A black mood last night and the night before, black as pitch and just as sticky. I’m not sure how days like that begin, but I knew that my yapper needed to remain decidedly shut if I was to get through it without “saying something I would later regret.” Some sort of twenty-four hour pissiness. It started late on Sunday night and ended after a brief time in Kenosha spent teaching unappreciative high school geeks the fine art of stage combat.

It’s strange to me that once I was exactly like them, though with somewhat more respect for teachers and learning. I see myself now as just like them still, but I know that in whatever way I might humiliate myself in their presence, they will still consider me somehow more important than they consider themselves. And I do the same with my elders, a lot of the time. Confidence and experience hides things, I suppose.

Reading about status in Impro has really changed my perspective. Although I cannot, as the brilliant Mr. Johnstone claims to be able, interpret status changes as they occur, I can replay scenes as hindsight-skewed projections and see that the young stagehand attempting to embarrass me in my choice to affect a Spider-man t-shirt (at my age, really, I should know better) was, in reality, playing a status game and not consciously berating me as my sensitivity would believe. In fact, I can now recognize that my dismissal and explanatory joke was simply a skillful volley of the carelessly created lob of an insult. 15-love, you little prick.

I digress. Perhaps I’m no better than said prick – stagehand, sorry – in that my black mood seemed to dissipate after the incident. Granted, those who claim me as friend would rebut that it was the fencing instruction that relieved whatever unnamed anxiety vexed me. Possibly, quite possibly, but I must entertain the notion that catharsis came from some less altruistic portion of my psyche. In short, I was glad that I didn’t look like a complete doofus.

So, there’s that. Blog entry. I feel satisfied. They will likely get better as I do more of them. Just wanted to get that little bit of self-deprecation status changing out of the way early on.