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(You know, there’s someone in this audience who looks so familiar and I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out who it is all night and it finally just hit me: It’s Sean Penn.
No wonder J.P. was acting so nervous before.
Sean Penn, his favorite director, is here in the audience for the big performance of his play, A Prince Among Men. J.P. must have told him about the show when they were talking on the boat at my birthday party. Either that, or Stacey did, since she’s been in one of Sean Penn’s movies before.
That’s awfully nice of Mr. Penn to come.)
Anyway. I know I’ve got to text Michael back. After all, I’m the one who said I wanted to meet him in person. I just left him hanging after that last text when he said that nice thing about how he did it for me and not my dad or Genovia.
But I don’t know what to say, exactly! I can’t tonight seems obvious since it’s after eight already.
On the other hand, people who’ve graduated from high school stay out really late, so maybe this wouldn’t seem obvious to him.
But Tina’s right. I do have to see him.
How about:
Hi, Michael! Tonight won’t work (obviously), and tomorrow night is Boris’s senior project (his concert at Carnegie Hall). Friday is Senior Skip Day. Are you free for lunch on Friday? Mia
Lunch is good, right? Lunch isn’t sexy or anything. You can have lunch and still just be friends. Friends of the opposite sex have lunch all the time and there’s nothing in the least romantic about it.
There. I sent it.
I think that was a good text. I didn’t say Love, Mia or anything like that. I didn’t get into the stuff about how he gave the CardioArm to Genovia because of me and not my dad. I was just breezy and casual, and—
Oh my God, he wrote back. Already!
Mia,
Friday for lunch is great. Want to meet at the Central Park Boathouse, lakeside, one o’clock?
Love,
Michael
The Boathouse! Friends don’t have lunch at the Boathouse. Well, I mean, they do, but…it’s not casual or breezy. You have to have reservations to get a table, and the lakeside restaurant is sort of…romantic. Even at lunchtime.
And he signed it LOVE, MICHAEL! Again! Why does he keep SAYING that?
Oh—everyone is clapping….
Ack! Is it intermission already?
Wednesday, May 3, 10:00 p.m., the Ethel
Lowenbaum Theater
Okay.
Okay, so J.P.’s play is about a character named J.R., who’s pretty much exactly like J.P. I mean, he’s a handsome, wealthy boy (played by Andrew Lowenstein), who goes to a fancy New York City prep school, which also just happens to be attended by the princess of a small European principality. At the beginning of the play, J.R. is very lonely, because his only hobbies include throwing bottles off the rooftop of his apartment building, writing in his journal, and picking corn out of the chili the lunch ladies in his school cafeteria serve him. This makes his relationship with his self-centered parents very rocky, and he is teetering on the brink of wanting to move to Florida to live with his grandparents.
But then one day the princess, Rhea (played by Stacey Cheeseman, who wears a blue plaid school uniform skirt in the play that, by the way, is much shorter than I’ve ever worn any of mine), goes up to J.R. in the caf and actually asks him to sit with her at lunch, and J.R.’s whole life changes. Suddenly, he starts listening to his shrink about not throwing bottles off the top of his apartment building, and his relationship with his parents improves, and he stops wanting to move to Florida. Soon, it’s all about the beautiful princess, who falls in love with J.R., because of his wit and kindness.
I could tell that the play was about me and J.P. He had changed our names (barely), and a little bit of the details, but who else could it be about?
The thing was, I’m used to people making movies based on my life, and with them taking little liberties with the facts about that life.
But the people who made those movies don’t know me! They weren’t there when the things they were showing actually happened.
