Nasty

I’ve had some doubts about even posting this one, but I keep referencing the drama group being corrupt, and I may do it again, and I feel like I need to give some background so it is not like I am just maliciously slandering everyone who participated in a play.

When “Cruel Intentions” came out, I remember the reviewer saying the way in which it didn’t really work is that the kind of casual sadism where you wreck people’s lives just because you can doesn’t really happen with teenagers—it takes the kind of cynicism that you don’t acquire until middle age. I’m not sure that’s true.

These are the things that I think about when I think of high school drama. I remember A being obsessed with S, but knowing he couldn’t have her, so using C, not caring that she adored him, and how excited she was to be getting the attention, and how unfair it was.

I remember the same S putting a different A’s hand on J’s butt, comparatively innocent, but mortifying for both of them.

I think of N watching her friend’s first time from the stairway, like she was stoned. (Well, she could have been, but alcohol seems to have been the drug of choice.)

Those are just the things that should not have resulted in assault charges (which I can’t talk about, even using initials, but that’s a long list). Those are just the cases where I know specifics, as opposed to just knowing that one person really messed up another.

When the athletes would talk about sex (mainly the soccer team, and no, I don’t think they knew I could hear them), it was about things like what to do if you have gas when you’re having sex (make a lot of noise, let her think you’re doing a good job).

I believe in chastity. I believe fornication is a sin, and that’s why it tends to end up in heartbreak so often, even when no one has any bad intentions with it, and I guess my point is that you can have a good heart, and feel love, and still do it.

So yes, there were wrong things happening in other places, but I associate drama with mean-spiritedness and debauchery—not always at the same time, but often enough.

I know there has to have been people who did not participate in it, maybe lots, but I don’t remember anyone telling me about how they built great friendships, and how everyone was so supportive either. I hear people say that at the ten year that everyone was still competing and trying to one-up each other, and that they don’t really want to see those people again. Probably a lot of those people are fine now. I know S is. I hope N is. But yeah, I can see how they don’t have the fondest memories.


22 minutes walking outside
Pushups
2nd Nephi 17 – 2nd Nephi 9