I'm Maureen Johnson. But then, if you didn't already know that, you've obviously been living in a hole.
And if you know me personally, you'll know that I'm what some people call bohemian, and others call free-spirited, liberal, or sometimes hippie. Well, whatever. I don't like labels anyway. Can't I just be Maureen?
I'm an actress, but you probably knew that too.
Sometimes when I'm thinking about who I am while I'm pretending to be someone else, looking up into bright lights and the faces of strangers, I wonder how I became who I am. I know myself – I know I wasn't always this way, and I know that I was once even… dare I say it? Conventional. So how did I turn out to be me? How did I go from Maureen Lillith Johnson of Hicksville, Long Island to Alphabet City's own Mo Johnson, who gets flowers from her loyal bohemian supporters whenever they can afford tickets to these high-quality performances? (Note the sarcasm.)
No – actually, if these were the upscale productions my parents think they are, it would make more sense. I mean, I was raised upper-class in a Long Island community – an only child, with a lawyer father and a therapist mother. Anyone would expect I'd go into some high-paying career. Who would suspect that I'd be here at one in the morning, twenty-three years old, gazing lovingly into the stage lights of a smoky lot home to hundreds of homeless Manhattans?
How did I go from spoiled brat to bohemian princess?
The truth is that I don't know. I can guess, though, and my guesses can be pretty fucking accurate when I think hard enough. So my best prediction would be that I turned out this way through the influences of different people. Well, a ton of people – too many to name, really – but seven in particular.
Can't you guess?
They go by the names of Angel Dumott Schunard, Mimi Marquez, Joanne Jefferson, Mark Cohen, Benjamin Coffin III, Roger Davis, and Thomas Collins.
Mom and Dad are the only ones who don't know about my current world and lifestyle. According to them, my friends are Angel Schunard, an anatomically female fashion model (at her own request); Mimi Marquez, a professional ballet dancer; Joanne Jefferson, a lawyer in a firm specializing in corporate law; Mark Cohen, my adoring boyfriend (my oh my, aren't Mom and Dad behind the times!); Benjamin Coffin III, owner of many of Manhattan's most prestigious buildings; Roger Davis, still the same musician Mom and Dad knew back when I was in high school; Thomas Collins, the anarchist teenager they remember from my high school days – now as far as they know, a philosophy professor at Barnard University.
It's not that I'm ashamed of my friends. No, far from it. (To tell you the truth, I'm much more ashamed of my parents than I am of my real family.) It's just that I'm sparing Mom and Dad's feelings. You know – telling them what they want to hear, which is that their baby is now perfectly financially stable, having the grand old time she always wanted – shopping, cruising down the highway in a red convertible, and changing boyfriends more than underwear. Well, except for that last one, because Mom and Dad are still safe in the (inaccurate) knowledge that I have been dating Mark for over a year. He still pales when I say this, either because he still likes me and thinks I'm teasing him (probable) or because he is really, really disgusted by the thought of dating me. (Doubtful. Have you seen my ass?)
Anyway. Back to reality.
Did you know that the sound of applause makes a person temporarily believe that they really are who they're pretending to be? And it takes a moment to just clear your head and think – no. Wait. I'm not that girl. Or guy, as the case may be.
So the same goes for me. When I hear people calling me by a name Mom and Dad would never have allowed me to go by – "Mo," for example, or some mock-derogatory term referring to my lesbianism – I forget who I used to be. So just so I don't do that, let's take a look back at who I was.
And that, my friends, began in sophomore year of high school. A certain student was in his third attempt at passing senior year, and when he caught my eye, some kind of chemistry happened. Maybe it was destiny, or maybe I had something stuck between my teeth – who knows? All I remember now, in my intoxicated state, is that our eyes met. Later – after this performance, after the "party" at the loft that's really just an excuse to get drunk – I'll remember the rest. For now? I'm just Mo. As for who I was before, well, sometimes you just have to give someone time to remember how exactly she first went about making nice.
