P.B.J. Needs Prozac

Two drama queens find best-friendship amid the dementia of the Pimp Acting Teacher's classes.

My new best friend Pam is under the same spell as I am. We think Carol, the Pimp Acting Teacher, is supernaturally gifted and will make us world famous. It seems a very reasonable expectation to us both; a comment on our mutual insanity.

Pam is an older woman. I am twenty and she is thirty. Pamela Brenda Jacobson (P.B.J.) which stands for her initials as well as her favorite sandwich. Pam and I actually served time at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts together without really knowing one another well. But we don't really become close until we are studying with our magic woman. We meet up after our restaurant shifts in separate restaurants most nights at a place on 88th Street and Second Avenue called Cronie's. At two o'clock in the morning we have buffalo wings. I drink scotch. She drinks vodka. During the day we hang out in Greek coffee shops dreaming about the future, reassuring one another how unfair and temporary it is that we aren't being recognized by the world for our essential fabulousness.

Somewhere along the way we start talking about real stuff. We take turns trying to top each other for which of us has the most abuse-filled childhood memory. It's pretty much a draw. Maybe that's the source of our mutual adoration. We're both freaks. Her parents have been in the process of divorcing for something like fifteen years, with her mother accusing the father of creating a secret cabal of judges to cheat her out of what should be rightfully hers.

Pam remembers her father touching her. She is very articulate about how confusing it is, since she remembers loving the attention, loving the physical sensations, loving feeling so special. Then feeling so ashamed.

People don't pop antidepressants yet, not like now, where you aren't eligible to join the Writers Guild without a note from your psycho-pharmacologist.

We don't know how depressed we are. A couple of deaths will change all that.

Comments? Questions? Email me.