Outrage

Yes, outrage. Dear reader(s? Is there more than one?), last night the American program was caught up in a petty tete a tete. The former administrator of our program, reduced to English tutoring hausfrau, vs. our current Queen of Angels.

Notes, and sides, have been taken.

Let it be known: I do not appreciate lectures by the hausfrau about how we're not allowed to socialize (we are -- I have a copy of the sheet I signed and parties are not forbidden, only loud music after 11pm). I do not appreciate being guilted for using community property. I do not appreciate being manipulated.

Last night, I and my classmates were manipulated. An e-mail was sent to our headmaster complaining of happiness. We were making friends with the Russians, and the hausfrau didn't like it - nevermind the fact that at pervious parties (even more rowdy) she was seen taking shots and carrying on with us. So, she e-mails Anatoly Smeliansky complaining of ... what? The noise? - the party was on the 3rd floor and you couldn't hear it on the 5th.

Ok, so then not the noise. What was she complaining about? Ah, yes -- I took the speakers from our 5th floor community computer so they could be used on the 3rd floor at a party that the entire dorm was invited to. Ah, yes, that must be it. The hausfrau couldn't blare her indy Russian folk tunes, performed by her tone-deaf friend and former pupil Paulina (who spends way too many nights, illegally, in the dorm), at 1am. That must be it.

Yes.

We interrupted her schedule. And then she interruped mine: she felt it necessary to lecture me -- as I invited her to come and join us -- about how "American's are not allowed to have parties in the dorm." Wow. I mean, we may be Americans, but we're not second class Russians, are we? No. We're not second class anything.

We're students at the American Repertory Theater, affiliated with Harvard. Don't lecture me about your petty beefs. Don't treat me, a 31 year old man, like some undergrad who's drinking his way through Moscow. Do not involve me or my classmates in your trivial power plays. You don't know me. Anyone who does know me knows that I take this experience seriously -- no matter how mundane or difficult I may find it. These same anyones also know how I react to this kind of diminutive treatment.

And you don't want to meet that Joe. No, may dear hausfrau -- you may be a bitch, but, when provoked, I'm one queen you don't want to tangle with.