So last night was the final performance of The Good Woman of Setzuan. We got all the costume changes without hitches, and that made me very happy. Also, this year people seemed to adore us. It’s so nice to be appreciated. Actors kept telling us how much they loved us. Just after the show, Sam from set crew gave me a hug that lifted me off the ground for several seconds. Shelly, the stage manager and an old friend, kept saying how wonderful we were. Lizzy brought us flowers, bless her. Not wan half-wilted roses from a grocery store, but red and white tulips that must have been from her own yard.

Last night a freshman came into the costume room while Kathleen and I were just putting the last towels on the shelves. (I like Kathleen. She is big and practical and has a button on her jacket that says "I speak Russian" in Russian.) The room was beautiful: every single box had been sorted and shelved, leaving an expanse of gray concrete floor. “You are gods,” said the freshman.
“Goddesses,” Kathleen and I corrected simultaneously.
“Oh,” he says. “That’s right. The female version.”
Version? I thought. As if there were some costume gods floating around here someplace, and we were second editions?
“What other kind is there?” said Kathleen. I could have cheered.

It’s interesting seeing how the attitude of the costume department toward gays and such is changing. Carol was Costume Goddess (that really is the title) my freshman year, and she was among the sweetest people you will ever meet. But a costume room is a place where actors and other drama people sit around with time to chat, so its second title is the Gossip Room. And when there’s any doubt as to the sexual orientation of anyone in the show, you can bet it gets discussed.

At one point when people were wondering aloud whether Joe really was gay, Carol shook her head sadly and said, “Well, they choose to be that way.” Heads all over the room turned. I had never actually heard anyone say that before. A senior named Liz just said, “Oh, no. I don’t think they do.”

Alex has been head of costumes for the last two years.And this year, we have Carter playing one of the male leads. Carter, who used to be Katherine. (I know if I were going to pick a boy’s name, I wouldn’t pick Carter. But that was his choice.) At one point when Lizzy and Carter’s characters have just met, he strokes her cheek. Their position on stage meant that Alex and I, standing just offstage, could only see Lizzy’s back. “Are they kissing?” Alex whispered to me.
It was hard to tell. “I don’t know,” I whispered back.
“That would be so gross!” she said, scrunching her face. I was amazed. I don’t think of Carter in the same way that I do other boys, but I certainly don’t think of him as a girl. What’s in the mind is more important than what gender your innards say you are.

But Alex is quitting, so next year I will be Costume Goddess, and I will preside over the Gossip Room. I know I can’t change what other people think, but I will never, ever make disparaging remarks about anybody else “refusing to shave her legs.”

As I was going to bed last night, the moon was getting low in the sky. I woke up around eight (stupid internal clock won’t let me sleep past 8:30) and lay half-dreaming in the sun. When I became fully conscious, my first thought was that I needed to get notes from Shelly and fix Yang Sun’s sleeve, because it really was noticeable that it was coming unsewn. And then I realized that there were no more shows, that tonight was the cast party and not a performance. I sat up and looked across the street at the just-green trees in the neighbor’s yard. And for the first time, it felt like spring.

March 16
April 6