Something About Mary

Author's Note:  Posts have been few and far between because The Author has been busy dealing with family, business, and theatre affairs.  Complacency and lack of focus on developing writing skills is also to blame, to be sure.  But mainly its because of the shit in the first sentence, not the second.  In the coming weeks, An Angry Mexican Guy in Chicago will return to a more frequent posting schedule.  For now, here is a motherfucking review. 

THEATER REVIEW: Mary

Mary
Written by Thomas Bradshaw
Directed by May Adrales
Presented by The Goodman Theatre *

If the last sentence in the Author's Note above, offended you in anyway, stop reading now and don't even think about going to see Mary at The Goodman Theatre.  You probably give words more power than I do and my swearing and the use of the word nigger in Mary may be too much for you.  Seriously, don't fucking do this to yourself.  Go back to saving the world via Facebook status updates and everything will be OK.  


Everybody else, follow me.

First of all, I think its important to note that I am not a trained theatre critic.  I have only my experiences in life and in the processes I have been a part of to inform my opinions about the show.  The closest I ever come to writing reviews of shows is when I g-chat or email with friends about a show of I saw.  


Second of all, SPOILER ALERT.  If you plan on seeing this play, and you don't want to know what happens, stop reading and come back after you have.  In order to address why I love this play so much, I am going to have to give the ending away.  You've been warned. 

Third of all, and most important, in the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I am biased as fuck.  I have worked at The Goodman on 2 Latino Fests and as a stage hand for a couple of other productions.  In that time, I have made friends there.  Friends that have worked on this production.  You'll have to believe that my respect for those people allows me to be as critical as possible about the shows I see there.  (Actually, that practice is the same for any show I see that a friend has worked on.  I trust and expect them to be honest with me about my work, so I am honest with them about theirs.) 

All of that said, it is my biased, non-trained critic, opinion that you go see this fucking amazing show.  You can buy your tickets by clicking on this sentence.  


The actual narrative of Mary is centered around Christmas Break in 1983 at the home of James and Delores, an upper class family living in Southern Maryland.  Their son David, a closeted homosexual, has invited his boyfriend Jonathan to spend sometime with him and his family during the break.  It is during this visit that Jonathan meets the family servant, Nigger Mary.  Through Jonathan, David realizes that he has a big problem with his family's treatment of Nigger Mary and Nigger Mary realizes that she has a big problem with David's sexual lifestyle.  Thanks to David's realization, Nigger Mary is given the option of learning to read.  She takes it and eventually graduates college.  Thanks to Nigger Mary's realization, Jonathan gets shot with a BB gun in the balls by Nigger Mary's husband, Elroy.  All of these events lead up to Nigger Mary's graduation speech at the end of the play, where in Nigger Mary address the audience directly.


Much of the controversy around this play if focused on the use of the word nigger.  And frankly, in this case, getting pissed off about that, in this show, makes no fucking sense to me.  If you get stuck on that word, you're going to miss the whole point. 


This is not a play about racism.  


This is a play about religion, homosexuality, and American Hypocrisy. 


Racism and the word nigger are but a setup.  They are used merely to illustrate the point that we as a society recognize that there are words we know we ought not use and that we recognize that there are ways people ought not to be treated.  We know that it is objectionable to call some one Nigger Anything.  We know that slavery was bad and that its effects still affect our society to this day.  These points though, are clearly addressed, and justified in Mary, though.


Nigger Mary is questioned by David, at one point, about how she feels when she is called Nigger Mary and about whether or not she feels like she is being treated like a slave.  Nigger Mary answers these questions on two occasions during the play.  Once to David, in the presence of his mother, Nigger Mary's boss, Delores and once hours later to her husband, Elroy, in her own cabin.  It is during these interactions that playwright Bradshaw, in my opinion, justify's his use of the word nigger and makes his comments about the African American community as he sees it today, making it a non issue.


Ok, so if we've address the Nigger Mary part, and the racial issues brought up by the play, we then examine what is left.  Sex, Homosexuality, and Religion are all addressed culminating in one of the greatest satirical monologues I've ever witnessed at the end of a show. 


Sex is a huge part of this piece.  There are three couples in the show, James and Delores, David and Jonathan, and Nigger Mary and Elroy.  We hear all three couples talk about or engage in sex.  James and Delores are trying out a penis pump.  David and Jonathan have some makeup sex after a fight.  Nigger Mary promises two blowjobs to Elroy, in exchange for the hit on Jonathan's balls.


Homosexuality and religion are also driving forces in Mary.  David's parents lament that he wont be honest with them about being gay and when they discuss this, they use words that I am sure make some in the homosexual community react the way some in the black community do when they hear the word nigger.  Before Nigger Mary learns how to read, she lives her life based on the bible stories she was taught from her mother, who learned them from her grand mother, and so on.  It is as a result of these stories that Nigger Mary resolves to do God's work by shooting Jonathan in the balls.


Racism is the setup.  Religion and Homosexuality give us some context, and then the end of the play, Nigger Mary's last monologue is the pay off.  


The end of the play, as I stated earlier, takes place at Nigger Mary's graduation ceremony.  She was chosen as the Valedictorian and is addressing her speech directly to the audience. She starts off by pointing David out in the crowd, asking him to approach the stage.  Once on the stage, she thanks David for suggestion she learn to read.  Learning to read was the first step that got her to graduate college in the first place.  At this moment, the audience is happy, "Things worked out in the end for everyone!".  If it ended there, no one would be saying shit about shit.  But the play doesn't end here.  This is where the play actually begins.


For the next 5 minutes or so, Nigger Mary goes into a rant against homosexuality that would make Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and The Westboro Baptist Church proud, invokes the fundraising spirits of some of the best Arts organizations in the city, and proved that I learned something in English class in high school because I kept thinking that Jonathan Swift would have loved to see this play after he was done eating a baby. 


In the closing monologue, the audience member is reminded that there are people in today's society that vilify homosexuality the same way that African Americans were, and in some places still are, vilified.  That monologue shocks and upsets many because it hits very close to home.


Just as it is not okay to refer to someone as Nigger Mary, it is not okay to refer to someone as David the Fag.  We scoff at one and laugh at another.  Just as the idea of a family starting historical plantation to reenact the days of slavery makes us recoil in disgust, so too should the idea that a man could be shot in the genitals because of who he choses to sleep with.  Just as religion was used to justify why Slavery was a good thing, so too is it being used to justify why Homosexuality is a bad thing.


This piece was great because it hides its meaning from you until the very end.  If you are not careful, if you allow yourself to get hung up on the word nigger and the crazy claims made by Delores and James in their defense of their lifestyle, you miss the satire that presents itself when Nigger Mary, sets out to persecute gays they way Black people were persecuted. 


I love this piece because it acts as a mirror to our own hypocrisy.  We have just spent about 1 1/2 hour's feeling offended for this woman being called Nigger Mary, and laughed the whole time at her, and our, treatment of Fag David.








(If the formatting here looks familiar, it should -- its the same one the Angry White Guy Uses for reviews.  Unlike the blog's title, though, this one is directly Copied.)

The Model IS Broken

A comment in response to the blog posting "Waiting for a new business model for the arts." on Jumper: Diane Ragsdale on what the arts do and why.

What I hear, when I hear people say “the model is broken” is that the money they feel they are entitled to as arts organizations isn't getting to them. That for some reason, the money for the grants they are writing is given to other people, or that enough money is just not being allocated to the arts in the first place. The model that was set up to get them money isn't getting it to them as such, the model is broken.

What I mean, when I say that the model is broken, is that its a stupid system. The model itself from the get go is wrong and broken.

I come from a family of small business owners. At the end of the day, theatre companies, much as they like to deny it ARE businesses. People will pay money, or support your business, if you offer them a product worth their time and money.

“But we can’t cover all of our expenses for a season from ticket sales alone!”

Thats not my problem, nor the governments, nor the audiences. Produce within your means. Figure it out. Theatre companies will survive, and thrive, I think, if they focus on producing a product worth the time and money of whatever audience they are speaking too. (Audiences are not universal, nor should they be.)

The expectation that the government, corporations, or the generosity of others should fund your business has never made much sense to me. 

The model is broken.

Red Red Wine

Heads up, the Author of this post has consumed 4, maybe 5, glasses of Red Wine.  It worked for Hemingway, right?


Some thoughts on some things:

The Blog
Posts have been few and far between of late.  Shortly before Thanksgiving, during Thanksgiving, and after Thanksgiving, I had some personal, family, and business obligations to attend to.  I had to focus on those things which didn't leave much time for anything else.  I could either press on with going to the gym and continue working on my health or write the blog.  Of course, I chose to let the blog slide.  I had too.

In addition to not having enough time to focus on the blog, I felt stuck -- there are only so many ways that you can say that you are going to the gym.  The last two posts I needed to write for me, for my family.  After that, writing about losing weight didn't seem as important.

Going forward, I still want to write at least twice a week.  I love writing and I have things that I want to say, so I'll find the time to do it.

The Country
Today, was a horrible day for America.  DADT, Tax Cuts, D.R.E.A.M. Act, Volume Levels for Commercials... Instead of making some positive changes in the policies of our country, our leaders, that we elected, have done nothing.  Instead of addressing some of the major issues of our day, that could include people, we chose to keep them out.  Instead of making history, we kept with the status quo.  It makes me sick.

I am a lower Middle Class American, the son of Immigrants, with friends and family that are gay, who has a remote control that adjust the volume on his television.  Today, my government did nothing to help me, and everything to piss me off...Fuck this, lets move on...

An Angry Mexican Guy in Chicago will be back in a second.  The author, having read the last two paragraphs has slammed his wine and is on his way to get more.  Please enjoy this message from our sponsor:

Taco & Burrito House - Just Good Food

The Women

Um...Nope, not that drunk.  Lets keep going.

The Friends

I...Well...Um...You know...Right?  Yea...You know.

I love you all.

The Family
I...Well...Um...You know...Right?  Yea...You know.

I love you all.

The End

The wine caught up with me.  If you see above, I think it happened when I went to Google the picture for the Burrito House.   That is it for now.  

I'll be back soon.

Sober. 

Peas piece peace. 

Hemingway is a fucking G.  Writing is tough when your drunky. Really tough.

To My Favorite Skate Boarder:

Dear Dude,

I've never told this to anyone really, but things being how they are, maybe its time...

I've never tried to kill myself.  

Once in my life, though, I tried to make myself go insane...

About 5 or 6 years ago, I don't remember exactly when, I ate an 1/8th of Mushrooms.  For the second night in a  row.  I was working this crappy job, and my Boss at the time made an investment in Mushrooms -- a recession proof stock, really.  I was doing a good job at work around that time and I would frequently get tipped in 1/8th's of Mushrooms.  Back then, I couldn't believe how lucky I was but looking back on it now, it was one of the most dangerous and self destructive periods of my life.

As I have mentioned before, my Mother and I had a ton of issues.  The biggest of which, which you may or may not have heard about before, was when she confessed to me that she had been lying to me my whole life about who my father was.  I did not know how to handle that information.  Any sense of who I was, or what I was supposed to do with my life was gone.  

I had dropped out of college.  I was broke.  I didn't trust anyone or anything.  I was trying to use the people around me to make myself feel better, to understand what the hell was going on around me but all that did was push people away.  That brought on this intense loneliness and depression that I didn't know how to deal with.  I was a hot fucking mess.  I often thought that I didn't fit in, or know how to live in the world that everyone else lived in. 

I thought I was going crazy.  I can still remember those feelings.  When I think about those days, my neck tenses up, my jaws clinch, I start to get nervous and sweaty.

Well, one night, 5 or 6 years ago, I came home from work with my second 1/8th of Mushrooms in as many nights.  I held that 1/8th of Mushrooms in my hand, and I decided that I was sick of being afraid to go crazy.  I was going to take matters into my own hands.  I had eaten an 1/8th the night before, and I knew how strong these things were, but I also knew that they weren't going to kill me -- I was too afraid to kill myself, but I was perfectly OK with making myself go crazy.

So I ate this entire bag of Mushrooms and let me tell you, Dude, it was one of the scariest fucking things I have ever lived through.

For about three hours there, I thought I had done it.  I vaguely remember sitting in front of a television, in my living room, all alone.  I looked outside and I didn't know if it was day or night.  It was rainging, but I didn't know what rain was.  I couldn't understand the languages that were coming out of the speakers on the television.  I was terrified.  I couldn't stop crying, and laughing, and feeling nothing, and crying, and laughing, and feeling nothing.

For three hours I was convinced I was in hell.  

Somehow, 5 hours in, I ended up at my Mom's house at 3 in the morning.  I woke her up, I told her what I had done, I told her that I had gone crazy and that I didn't know what was going on.  I scared her senseless.  We called my Godfather, and I called a friend, I told them both that I was crazy, and that I couldn't deal with reality anymore.  I may have told the friend that I planned to hurt myself, at that moment, it seemed like the only way out. This trip wasn't ending.

My Godfather and my friend calmed me down, Dude.  They walked me back into reality, and gave me some hope.  My Godfather told me to spend the night at my Mom's and that he would take me to the doctor in the morning, which we did.  

That night was one of the worst nights of my life. 

I am sharing this with you, Dude, because you need to understand that you are not alone in feeling the way that you feel.  I want you to know that there are other people that have gone through what you are going through.  I also want you to know this because I hope that you never, ever, ever, live through something like that. 

Never, ever, ever.

You have a strong, loving, amazing group of people around you.  They love you.  So much, they love you.  In time, you will come to see, how I did, that there is strength and hope in that love.  You need to understand that if you ever feel like doing something so hurtful to yourself, you have people around you that understand, and while we may not feel how you feel, we understand.  

We are here for you.  Please, please, please don't forget that.

I won't lie and say that everything was great and perfect the next day.  It wasn't.  For a long time, it wasn't.

5 or 6 years later, though, having lived through all I have lived.  I can say, that things are better.  It took a lot of hard work, and there was a lot of bullshit to deal with along the way, but things are better.  

I have the greatest friends a guy could ask for.  I create awesome works of art, with amazingly talented artists.    I am still broke, but thats ok, haha....More time, more effort...

As cheesy as it sounds, it gets better.

Much Luv, Dude,

Chuy

11/23/1947

She was born November 23, 1947.  Tomorrow, she would have been 63.  The last birthday that I spent with her, was two years ago, when she turned 61.

I don't really remember what we did during the day but that night was spent at home, in our kitchen.  We had dinner, I think.  She wasn't feeling to well, she hadn't been for a few weeks.  No one really knew what was wrong.

No one actually thought anything was wrong with her.

The last five years of her life, she had a shit ton of health problems.  She was a diabetic.  She was a smoker.  She was overweight.  She had a useless limb -- her ankle, heel and all of the bones connecting them had been shattered in a car accident.  The useless limb made her mobility pretty much non existent, which didn't help her weight or her diabetes.  She also had ovarian cancer.

Those five years, she had hospital stays of at least a week at Northwestern, Swedish Covenant, St. Joseph's, St. Elizabeth, and St. Mary's.  I was on a first name basis with the staff at some of those places.  We went to the hospital all of the fucking time.

The year leading up to her 61st birthday was very similar to the previous 4 in that regard.  She kept asking me to take her to the doctor.  She wanted a pill that would give her her strength back.  That is all she would ever say.  "Tell him that I feel week, that I want a pill or something to give me my strength back..."  Her doctors having given her ever fucking medicine under the Sun, really didn't know what to say.  They would take blood samples, run tests, nothing of consequence would ever be found.

Ever.

Three months before her 61st birthday, she spent 3 weeks at St. Mary's.  They thought that she had put on too strong a pain patch (she had them because of her foot) and that she had started to get addicted.  That she was weak and her balance was off because was fucked up all the time.

They thought this because I told them that is what I thought happened.

My mother and I had a trust problem.  I didn't fucking trust her.  When I was 18 she revealed to me that the person I thought was my father, was NOT my father.  It was just a name I had, mind you -- I'd never met my father, but I had a name.  I thought I knew who he was.  When that happened, her and I were never quite the same.  In time I would grow to understand, well, reconcile that situation.  As, I saw it, my mother was a person, she made some mistakes, but she always loved me.  Who was I to judge someone that did nothing but love me all of my life?  She asked to be forgiven, but I never did.  I never felt that I had too.

She never did anything to me, but love me unconditionally.  Yes, she lied.  She made that mistake.  But after that, it was Ride or Die, Bitches...  No one had my back the way she did.  No one.

To forgive her was to say that she needed to apologize for loving me...That never felt right.

The thing is, I never really trusted her again.  I tried.  Actually I am not sure that I did.  I hope I did.  It was all just so fucked up at the time.  I don't know.  I do know that the trust was never the same.  Ever.

When I told those doctors that she had taken too strong a pain patch it was because neither they, nor anyone else, at any other hospital, ever found anything wrong with her.  Doubt crept into my head.  I stopped listening to her.  I got angry, frustrated that I kept having to take her to all of these fucking doctors appointments and nothing would ever be fucking found to be wrong with her.  Other members of my family started thinking the same thing.  Maybe she was just getting old.  Maybe she just wanted attention.  Maybe the guilt of her life being exposed just caused her to go insane.  We all thought she might have just lost it.

The night of her 61st birthday, I was at my wits end.  An Uncle came over.  He saw her, saw the way she was acting, and because she had just been released from the hospital, because I was so angry, and we were all so frustrated, we just stopped listening.  I resented that even on her birthday, she couldn't let up this act for sympathy.  That she was just acting this sick and confused to sell the fact that she was sick, when in fact she was fine.

My Uncle and I challenged her, if she felt as bad as she was acting she just needed to go to the fucking hospital.  She refused.  She had been in and out of those places so much she didn't trust them.  I mistook her refusal for not wanting to be found out.  I was so confused.  So angry. She wasn't lying to me.  She wasn't acting.

She was fucking terrified of having to go back to the needles and the nurses and the shitty food and the hard beds.  I had stopped listening though.

Finally, she agreed.  We would go to the hospital the next day.  She wanted to spend the night at home.  It was her birthday, she wanted to sleep in her bed.  In the morning, we would go.

We did.  The day after her 61st birthday, I called an ambulance.  For the 3rd time that year, fire fighters, about 8 of them, filled our house, carried her out, loaded her in an ambulance, and then we would rush to the emergency room.

When we arrived, I told the doctor her history, like ever other time.  I knew her medicine.  I would run down our hospital stays, how long, what hospital, and what for.  I would list the various surgeries, for what, when, and where.  I knew what doctors they should speak to at what hospitals to fill in any blanks.  I had this routine down.

This particular time, I told the doctor I was leaving.  "Listen dude, I have to go to work.  I don't know what the fuck is wrong with her, I just can't take this anymore, I need to take off.  Just...Just call me when you don't find anything."

The doctor said, "No problem, Mr. Contreras.  You go ahead.  I just got her blood work back, everything does look normal.  I'm gonna run a few more tests and then I'll call you.  Have a good afternoon."

I left the ER, got in the car, left the hospital, pulled over and called my Godfather.  The closest thing I have to a father.  I broke down.  I was convinced she had gone insane.  He agreed.  Maybe we needed to face the fact that she had in fact lost her mind.  Maybe for the good of everyone involved the next stop, after the ER, was a psychiatrist.  After all, nothing was wrong with her.

The day after her 61st birthday, at about 3:20pm, I found out that her ovarian cancer had spread.

The doctor told me that my Mother had 13 brain tumors.

She died 7 months later.

I work hard to move past her death.  I make an effort to be positive.  To remember the good parts.  To move on and not let this moment in my life define who I am.  I am not entirely there yet.  Fuck, I don't even know that I am close to being there yet.  I do know that I know that I will always miss her.  I know that I loved her, and that she loved me.  I know that she is not suffering.  I know that I am alive.  I know that she would want me to live.  I know that she would want to know that I am not suffering.

Not today though.  Her 63rd birthday is still to close to her 61st.

I will go to the gym.  I will go to work.  I will go to that dinner meeting and talk art.  I will live.  But I will hurt.

I will hurt so fucking much.  A pain that I can't explain. A pain I don't wish on anyone.  A mix of headache and loneliness and body ache, and fuck, fuck, fuck, God Damn it I fucking miss my Mom.  There is no getting around it.  I am human.  This is how it works.

I will also remember though, in that pain, how much she loved me.  How much I loved her.  It wouldn't fucking hurt as much as it does if we didn't love each other as much as we did.

Feliz Cumpelanos, Madre.

Te quiero, tanto...

Tanto...

Tanto.

(If there are spelling error or grammatical mistakes, for give them.  I needed to get this out, I just can't go back and read it right now.)

Change In The House of The Chuy

You often hear, at least I do anyway, that saying, "People never change...".  

That idea terrified me.  No wait, that is a lie.  Not terrified.

Terrifies. 

Besides mice, nothing scares me more.  

Its a crutch that I have used my entire life to stop myself from developing myself .  I knew that, in my case, my life and the way that I looked, were a direct result of the choices I made and the attitudes I held about the world around me -- I just didn't want to admit it.  Instead of realizing I was the reason I was who I was, I chose to ignore that fact.  I made myself a victim.  Things happened to me, never because of me.

Whenever I would hear that saying, "People never change...", it would make me quiver.  Every time, what I heard was, "You live life how you live it because this is what you want.  You will never put the effort into being happy, into living the life you want.  You will always be this way because people never change."  For a fleeting second, that is what I would hear, regardless of the context it was said.  Like the flash on a camera, it would blind me for a second, and then I would dismiss it. 

You see,  I knew that it would take a lot of hard fucking work.  The hardest work I had ever done in my life, to correct the mistakes I had made which resulted in me being who I was.  I had to take responsibility for my actions and realize that I looked how I did, and felt how I did, because I wasn't willing to put in the work to be happy.  (For the record, being happy is hard fucking work.  For some of us anyway.  It doesn't come natural to me, and it is something that I have to develop, have been developing for quite some time now.)

"People never change..."  also left me hopeless, at times, when it came to how I dealt with people.  Understand that as a human, I have made mistakes.  Many mistakes.  Like a lot of stupid fucking stupid mistakes.  I have said and done things to people, that I care a great deal about, that I know were horrible, hurtful, mean things.

I am human.

Seemed like the right thing to do at the time'n'all that...

As I have grown and matured. Lived.  I have seen the mistakes of the past and learned from them.  Told myself that I needed to address certain things in a different manner.  Adjust my perception of certain situations.

Change.

Then I would remember...."People never change..." and I would get scared.  Frustrated.  What good was changing if people actually believed this.  If I changed, but no one else thought that I had, did I really?   Would people ever see me different.  I would know that I changed, but in the eyes of some else, I never would.  That sucked.  It didn't seem fair.

And then, one day, about 5 weeks ago...I changed.  Well started to change.  

For the better.

Forever.

And now "People never change..."  scares the shit out of me for a completely different reason.

Five weeks ago, when this all began, for the first time in my life, I decided that I was ready.  That I needed to take the reins of my life and take control and put in some hard fucking work and change things.  My mom was gone, there was nothing I could do about that.  I needed to move on.  I was severely out of shape.  I  could control that and I wasn't.  I needed to move on.  I was fucking broke.  I needed to put more effort into getting a better job, work more.  I needed to move on.

I needed to change all of those feelings and emotions.  I needed to channel those emotions into positive outlets, and work towards living the life I always thought was being deprived of.

I am doing that.  I can prove it. 

See that picture to the right?  I look pretty sharp, right?  (Well except for the face I am making.  For some reason, I hate my smile, so whenever I take a picture, I make this stupid face that is really just saying "Umm, I dunno what the fuck to do with my face here, so um, here is a stupid face instead.  Bah.)  But yea, I look sharp.

If you took a picture of me, 5 years ago, it would look exactly the same.  

I wore that shirt, and those pants, in that body, at that weight for three years.  I did.  Its what I wore when I was a property manager, and its what I weighed back then.

The thing is, while the body maybe the same.  The mind has changed.

I feel so different.  I feel so happy.  Not all of the time, mind you, but a lot of it. I looked at that picture and I was amazed.  The same image, taken 5 years apart can be completely different.  It can change. 

So now when I hear "People never change..." it scares me because if it is true, than this is just a flash in the pan.  Something that I am doing for now, but that eventually I will fuck up.  What if I haven't changed at all.

Today, at the weigh in, I found that I lost another 2 lbs.  That brings the total up to 24 lbs lost in the last 5 weeks.  I weighed 313 lbs.  I weigh 289 lbs.  

My body has changed.  However, I dont think that my body would have changed, if I hadn't changed too.  I'll find out soon enough.  

After all, you know what they say...

Bridge

Some days I am not so sure what side I'll end up on.  

Then I remind myself that at the very least I am on the move.