I wasn’t 207 when it was said that gentlemen should no longer wear hats. This is an absurd position to take, considering the amount of rain that accumulates each year in New England alone. Nevertheless, other studies have proven largely correct: oxygen increases circulation, the sky can often be called a shade of blue, and donkeys still can’t talk. Such is the luck of the unwitting mascot. I don’t envy the donkey nor do I look down on it—the rooster and the hen are in a far worse position. I’ve stated my case on this issue many times, along with my cousin and his wife Monica (film editor). By this point you should know where I stand—as a Rooster.
But I shall become Actor. I’ve also already said this, but my greatest triumph was concealed until now. This all happened many years ago, and my time as a professional is long since past, opportunities and accomplishments faded away into the black hole of memory. Remember I’m not a writer, I’m an Actor.
My greatest accomplishment was in the Drama Studies Department at Soda Academy in South Brooklyn. We were trained the dialogues of humans as well as fish, cockatoo, and geese. Birds were obviously a major subject of interest for this particular teacher, Oskar Farnsworth. An unusual pedigree, I’ll admit, but he was what’s meant by a “straight shooter” more than anyone I’ve ever known. The man could draw a revolver on me and I’d still be entertained, enlightened, all that garbage you say to mean the magnificence of illumination through art and performance.
It was in this ecstasy that he taught, constantly, and many students found his physical gyrations and obvious oral fixation—he chewed on cloth napkins just like John Ford, going through four of them in a single work day—completely disgusting, and they dropped out. They subsequently missed out on some of the greatest instruction I’ve ever been audience to, and I’ve lived for thousands of your years. I’m by no means educated, but for a rooster, I’m alright.
One day in Mr. Farnsworth’s class, I read a passage from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost that made me spontaneously weep, and the text of the play faded away as my own poem poured out of me, and Mr. Farnsworth, sitting bolt upright, turned on his tape recorder and captured, at least in part, my divine inspiration: “Beavis and Butt-Head did nothing wrong.”
That’s not all of it, just the gist. But I started sobbing and everyone was very uncomfortable for several minutes before Mr. Farnsworth gently excused me from the room. He asked if I was okay, if I’d taken any drugs, if I was suicidal. “No,” I told him, “I’m cured.” He thought I was making a joke and quoting A Clockwork Orange, but I was sincere. He didn’t believe me. Mr. Farnsworth slapped me and I squawked like a movie hen and we kept walking into that milky blue night. In another world, we might’ve been partners, or enemies in another—but here, it was teacher/student, and afterwards I did my best to distinguish myself.
“Bennington,” he asked one day, “when are you going to make something of yourself?” I adjusted my posture, stood tall, and declared, “Too-MOR-RROW, TOO-MORROW!” I sang the rest of the song from Annie until he had me by the neck—but Mr. Farnsworth ate too much red meat, and as he throttled me, he collapsed of a heart attack and died. The rest of the class was too stunned to say or do anything. They were actors without a director, without a personality, voids on voids looking out for something to swallow. I got out of the room as soon as I could, for both practical and metaphysical reasons.
To this day it remains my greatest accomplishment. The tape that Mr. Farnsworth was destroying along with the rest of his effects shortly after his death. Nothing of his work or curricula survive. I, meanwhile, am still here.
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