You see when you graduate everyone wants to know what you are doing. Because everyone _does_ something after graduation. People get jobs. they walk across the stage, grab an empty diploma cover and start packing up a u-haul. this is when life is supposed to start. Even the other theatre majors are off doing things. if they arent working now they have season jobs that start in the fall.

I am unemployed.

I have been rejected by some of the finest theatres in america and a few of the not quite as finest. I dont even have a non-theatre job. I live in a house where my rent is insanely low and I am worried about managing to pay it. I am coming to the realization that my government stimulus check will most likely be used to buy groceries, pay bills, and pay rent rather than getting a new tattoo or a wii. I have credit card debt and my savings is dwindling

and what is strange is that what is bugging me the most right now is that i don't know how to talk to women. Yesterday I was sitting in barnes and noble reading a book and this girl sat down opposite from me, also reading. we made eye contact, i thought she was so attractive . . . but i didn't say anything.
This isn't unusual. the cashier at borders who always makes me smile. The girl with the perfect laugh who sat beside me at a show. I see these women and I feel this flutter of possibility. A smile that might be for me and an instant of eye contact. and I know that at the very least i could make a friend, at the most I could ask for a date and get it.

Date.
I haven't been on one of those in ages. There is something delightful in the formality of it. There is a joy in coming in and knowing you both want something similar. Being able to call the movie or the dinner, or whatever a date means a certain confusion has been cleared alreay. that means she is not the girl who smiled at me and made me wonder. she is the girl who smiled at me with certain intentions and i know what those are without a huge margin of error.
As nervewracking as it is i know the expectations and the goals. and that makes it better. better than this at elast. better than a million unborn possibilities.

The girl next to me in the theatre makes eye contact with me in the dark during the show and suddenly I am walking out holding her hand, tangling our fingers together, bumping into eachother clumsily on the sidewalk. making awkward conversation over drinks until the drinks kick in and i start to open up, loosen up, and make her laugh. She laughs perfectly with jumbles of air escaping her throat and her hair falling in her faces and she leans on me just perfectly. and we fast forward and my lips are touching hers and we fast forward and there is another date where i kiss her when she first opens the door, and fast forward and i'm cooking her dinner and again and again
but in reality i rush out of the theatre after the acgtors bow and only work up the courage to talk to her 20 minutes later when the lobby is nearly empty and i see her outside waiting on her ride, but by the time i find her and think about it and plot what to say she is in someone else's car driving off and i have 90 lives with her plotted out and planned in my head that will never happen. and I know that all I had to do was talk. that there were some sort of magic words that could come out of my mouth and i would have gotten one of the 90, or maybe just half of one but something. I could have had something and considering I have had nothing lately something would be amazing, something would be beautiful.
but the thing is i dont know what those words are, they dont come to me. my tongue swells up and my lips freeze in a forced smile and i can't make conversation.

right now i would kill even for some failure, because at least someone would be speaking to me.