Vengeance is MINE!!

Tomorrow and Next Wednesday, I spend the day on suicide watch for the medical study. This always makes me so apprehensive, as when it isn't the placebo...it's hell. By the end of the day, all I want to do is just cry myslef to sleep...but I get $200 for my troubles and free health insurance...so I can't complain too much.

The first part of the study involves me filling out a bunch of paperwork. Today's was asking questions about feelings of guilt. The way the question was worded was "do you feel guilty for things you have said, thought, or done?" Wow...well duh! Of course I'm going to feel guilty. I was sent to Catholic School for years. That being said...I really haven't "done" many things to feel guilty about (that coming back on you 3 times over scares me out of doing things), but I have sincerely wished for some truly mean things to happen to some deserving people.

But when my emotions have completely taken over me, I have done some truly mean things. This morning I remembered something I did in college that was pretty low. All theater majors at the University of Colorado at Boulder are required to spend 135 hours working in the scene shop and 135 hours in the costume shop before they can graduate.

While working in the costume shop, I was in charge of sewing costumes for a show that was opening in 4 weeks. The costume designer asked that I take the measurements on the actors and actresses as they stopped in so that the costumes would be appropriately fitted. This was a large show of 30 cast members, and they all came in during one afternoon.

Now I realize that nobody likes giving out their measurements, and many women feel very uncomfortable, let alone letting a man take the measurements. Being as sensitive as possible, I would ask women to drape the tape measure across their breasts and I would measure from the back their chest sizes. Additionally, I would measure hip size from the side, and inseam was measured by the actress holding the tape measure themselves while I measured the distance to the floor. In other words, I kept things professional, business like, and to the point.

So imagine my surprise when one of the actresses, Rachel, went to the department head and complained that I had touched her inappropriately, while making sexually suggestive comments. It took the intervention of the costume shop supervisor (who witnessed the whole event) to prove that she had been either overly sensitive, or lying.

Unfortunately, I was just pissed to have gone through the whole thing. The designer was just as angry (we gay men have to stick together sometimes), and every time the subject came up, he would go on a tirade. I won't say if he did it for certain, but he made sure that I was to sew her costume.

Those of you who sew know that you generally sew seams with a ¼" of material. When I sewed Rachel's costume, I sewed all the seams with 1 ¼" seams, making the entire outfit about 2 inches smaller all around. When Rachel came into the costume shop for her fitting, the designer gave her the outfit to try on. She tried on the pants and blouse, walked out from the dressing room, and stood in front of the mirror in the shop. The seams on her pants were stretching and pulling at the material, and she mentioned that she had difficulty squeezing into the pants as the hips and thighs were a bit tight. This was very apparent as it looked as if she has squeezed her size 12 body into a size 8 dress.

The shop supervisor took one look at her, and asked, "Have you put on weight?" He pulled out the measuring tape, and started to take her measurements again, all while he just stared at me, smiling. Rachel left the shop, dejected, and he handed me the costume. All he said was "fix it." I took the inseams back out.

I found out later that she was determined to loose a bit of weight before the show opened the following week, and went on a massive crash diet and exercise plan. The night of the dress rehearsal, her costume fit fine, and that thankfully was my last show I worked on from a costuming standpoint.

I wonder what Rachel is doing now? Jenny Craig?