Requiem In The Green Room

When I was in the tenth grade, my headmaster, David Hicks, drew fire for saying that the new McCoy Federal Building was so ugly that the people of Jackson must feel like the slaves of Thebes with the eyes of the sphynx glaring down at them. We were just boys, silly immature boys, more concerned about boobs, beer, and how many cylinders somebody's car had, but we knew what the Sphynx was, and we knew where Thebes was, and we knew what the eyes of the Sphynx could do to you if you couldn't answer her riddle.

I was born into a level of discourse that I don't think I ever really appreciated because it was always around me. When I withdrew from the world and started hanging around on the internet, I learned just how differently most of the world spoke compared to the people I knew.

Doing plays with Larry Wells, somebody (often James Anderson) would bring food. Larry usually let a fairly high level of emotion build in him prior to the curtain going up, so he wouldn't eat before or during the show, but he would afterward. We'd have cheese and cold cuts, cookies, and talk.

Supersticious, Larry didn't like to talk too much about the play he was in, but he could and would discuss any other play. Pretty soon, he'd introduce something Lance or Ivan said, intermingled with something Khant, Stanislavski, or Lee Strasberg said on the same subject. He knew music, Russian literature, Mississippi and United States legislation, carpentry, firearms, the Constitution, economics (both the Reagan kind and the regular kind), and the films of George Pal, Mel Brooks, and Akira Kurosawa.

He knew the fine details of what Millsaps was trying to do, how they intended to pay for it, and where they were in that process. He knew what girl I liked often before I did.

He was a man's man. He spoke with a level of saltiness and punctuated purple prose that your grandmother wouldn't approve of, but he was a gentleman about it and often very selective about who he let hear what words. He knew boxing but didn't care too much about football.

Born to it, I often don't appreciate the level of discourse that surrounds me. Working in the scene shop with JR, Brent, Sam, and Ted Ammon, we casually tossed about topics and people that would make most Americans tilt their heads and wonder, "what-tha-hell-son?" We're not better than anyone. Absolutely not, but we are decidedly different.

Larry's funeral isn't until Monday, and I'm already thinking about what I'm to wear, who might be there, what I might do after while I'm in Madison (I don't go there any more than I have to), and how the hell I'm going to do this without breaking down in sobs.

My first exposure to Larry was when he played Iago in his early twenties when I was in my mid-teens. Othello has some great language, but Iago is the part with some juice. I've been a part of the company with Larry probably twenty times and directed him once in a play with some really complicated language. He's part of a pantheon that's one-by-one becoming more a part of the stars than living here on earth with us anymore.

I don't like saying goodbye. I don't do it well at all. My wife left a decade ago and I still haven't said goodbye.

Good night, Bud. We'll work together again. I promise. Say "hey" to George, Lance, Ivan, and Frank for me. Break a leg, will ya? We'll miss you.