Diary of a Blood Ray - March 12th, 2005

Once, in college, I was stage-managing a production of The Fantasticks.  In the cast was a girl named Mary.  Mary was one of those annoying types of folks who were all about Jesus, but could conveniently ignore the parts of the good book she felt didn’t apply to her.  In this case, I’d say all references to pre-martial sex.  I ain’t saying she got around, simply that I have very little tolerance for Christian piety as it is, and the hypocritical sort (he sighs, is there any other kind?) just makes me nuts.  This fact of about her is fairly irrelevant to the story, as was her shiny, greasy skin.  I hear she’s got a decent gig doing regional theatre somewhere, so don’t feel too bad for her.

Mary was more a music department person and there was often bad blood between her department and mine, the theatre department (or maybe there was just bad blood between me and the music department.  All those fornicators for Christ would really get to me after a while.)  Add to that I’d fucked around with someone in her clique (doing my small part to fornicate for Christ), a situation that turned really really ugly and didn’t really make me look too great, and you can imagine how we weren’t exactly all that tight.  We got along, were friendly, etc.  We had mutual friends and we were both students at a small university, so we saw each other a lot. 

By the time I stage managed her show, things were pretty cool between us.  I was even in her presence the first time she got high (tokers for Christ!)  and, contrary to what might be your initial reaction, it wasn’t even at my suggestion. 

And the she and I shared a quintessential Blood Ray moment.  I was talking to her one night, and for some reason, out of the blue I teasingly commented to her that genital warts, while not fatal, were incurable.  I don’t remember there being much of a reaction from her, and I forgot all about it after it happened.

The next day, Mary (flanked by two music department flunkies) came flying at me and started screaming at me for what I said.  At first, I didn’t even know what the hell she was talking about, as I say a lot of things all day long.

For several days, random people would come up to me and attack me for what I said to her.  I’d gone from apologizing to Mary to apologizing to half the campus.   Jesus, I knew that joking about genital warts probably wasn’t all that funny, but did it really need to inspire such vitriol?

Several months later, after Mary had graduated, I was hanging out with a mutual friend of ours and the subject our last scuttle came up.  He said, “She was ready to kill me.   She told me that in confidence and was furious at me.”

“Why?”

“Because she thought I told you.”

“Told me what?”

“How did you find out, anyway?”
By this point, I am totally lost.  “Find out what?”

“That Mary had genital warts.”

“I didn’t.  I – wait, what?  She really had genital warts?”

“She – you didn’t know?”
”No, I was just making a random joke.”

Turns out that my throwaway comment about genital warts hit a little too close to home.  Heh.

I would like to take this moment to apologize to Mary.  And her warts.