The Bubble Rule bursts (sort of): August 26th, part 1

Continued from here. I don’t think I’m putting any pictures in this one. Just words. But words that mean a lot to me, as this turned out to be one of the happiest evenings of my life.

The cancellation of the show on August 25th was crushing to so many people, especially those who’d flown from abroad and had only one chance to see it. I saw them talking about the problem on line, and talked to at least one of them myself. I am not equating my woes with theirs, for I still held tickets to seven more performances. If I were a better person, I might have given some of those up, but I confess, at that point, having come so far in a state of conflict to be held off yet one more day from something that I’d been steeling myself to experience for weeks, I wanted to know what it was about, and I wasn’t ready to surrender any chance to figure out what was going with the play — and with me. The cancellation annoyed me on two levels, though. First, it was the only ticket I’d had from the rear of the stage perspective (so I never saw the play from the rear stalls). Second, I’d wanted to see the play on my own for the first time, and now that opportunity had been lost. Guylty was coming to see the play on Tuesday and to meet me. (That aspect turned out completely differently than I thought, but at first I was annoyed at the lost chance to see it “alone.”)

Guylty turned out to be wonderful. Of course, you will say, we knew that all along. I knew it too — or I wouldn’t have asked her to transfer her *ooof* series here for my edification. But my trust level for fellow fans had been so reduced by the events of the spring that I didn’t even tell Guylty I was going to be at the play until August 15th, though I’ve never had any reason to doubt her. So kudos to her for being willing to take a chance, tamp down her frugalista impulses, and organize an expensive plane fare to come down to London at the last second to meet a stranger. She may have her own story to narrate about this rather remarkable evening, though I am just a part of the uproar of her last week.

I’d slept well, again — probably a combination of the tramping through the rain and the physical response to adrenaline rush and dissipation — and was actually a bit groggy in the morning. By about 10 or so, the Old Vic had gotten its act together to tweet that the evening’s performance would be offered as scheduled and Armitage had confirmed his enthusiasm.

Full steam ahead for tonight 🙂

— Richard Armitage (@RCArmitage) August 26, 2014

Guylty popped up around noon, and it was still raining, and there was not a second of awkwardness between us, and we decided to take a tramp down to the Canteen at the Royal Festival Hall for a long chat. Fuck London, I said, this is about talking to you. And we had a wonderful, hours long chat about this and that: Richard Armitage, of course, and the play, and the fandom, and that ever-recurring topic of whether our behavior suggests that we’re “in too deep” (whatever that means). She tolerated my increasingly stumbling use of German, and it was just a charming afternoon altogether, apart from the rain. I felt immediately at home with her. I know that some of that was life experience (having spent years in a relationship with someone who came from very far away from where Guylty grew up), but most of it was simply a high level of personal affinity. It’s so rare to meet someone to whom one doesn’t feel obligated to explain oneself, and that was how I felt around Guylty: understood and affirmed.

We’d talked briefly about whether we wanted to visit the stage door. She’d been before, and been bemused; I was still so conflicted and remembered the horrible feeling of nausea the previous day when I even got close to the theater. Still, when a professional photographer goes with you to a play? I said what I’d been saying all along — let’s see what happens — without any confidence at all about what would happen.

I had an interesting lunch — Stilton-celery soup, raspberry ice cream with homemade shortbread — but my stomach was still too nervous to hold much (a pattern that held during much of my week in Southwark). My nervousness grew over the course of the afternoon, and I was worried that I was infecting her with my vibe. Eventually Guylty suggested we go back to the hotel. I once again put on my costume of black, and sorted through the tickets. It turned out that we’d be sitting at 90 degree angles to each other; she was in C18 stalls and I was in F19 stalls. So in a way, it was a bit like I was seeing the play by myself. We had a funny chat about the question of preparation — punctuality is important to Germans, but the ones I know tend not to like to wait around ahead of time. I, in contrast, wanted to sit for at least a half hour before the play and ponder and prepare myself. So when we got to the theater, we entered and separated, Guylty to look around a bit in the theater itself (she’d seen the play before), and me to find my seat and prepare for something I’d been anticipating, not entirely with pleasure, for such a long time.

[ETA: Guylty’s impressions of our meeting are here.

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to August 26th, part 2.

~ by Servetus on September 5, 2014.