July 10, 2003

Back in 1995 I spent the summer in Princeton, acting in Much Ado About Nothing and The Real Inspector Hound. It was a dastardly hot summer that year, topping out at 102. I was sharing a third floor room at the theater company house with my girlfriend of the time, and all of the whirring fans we had running just made us cook faster and dry out, like beef jerky.

So the cast spent a lot of time outside, or in the theater, which had air-conditioning. A popular spot was the plaza out in front of the International Studies building on the Princeton University campus, because it had a great big honkin' fountain in front of it, long and rectangular with a bit of tangled modern sculpture in the middle, over and through which water splashed and burbled. Most of the fountain was about two feet deep, and illuminated, so that it glowed blue and inviting in the stifling evenings.

One night, as a group of us sat along the marble benches along one side, I saw a fellow in a business suit approach the far edge of the fountain. He carefully stepped in, one leather-shoed foot at a time. He sat on the edge of the fountain for a moment, his dark pants swirling in the water, and then lowered himself the rest of the way in, up to his neck, stretching his legs out. His tie floated atop the water, pointing straight out from his chin, undulating like a very flat, striped sea snake. I nudged whoever was next to me and pointed him out, just to confirm that I was, in fact, seeing what I was seeing.

I decided that I simply had to know why this fellow had just dunked his business-suited self into the fountain. I got up from the bench and walked over to him, but by the time I got around to his side of the fountain he had already emerged soaking from the water, and headed rapidly off into the shadows of the modern-columned facade of the International Relations building, leaving a trail of sopping shoe prints. I decided against pursuit, reasoning--quite logically, I felt--that there was every possibility that he was insane. Besides, it was too hot for a chase.

Later that same night, an acquaintance from my old Boy Scout troop showed up on the plaza; I hadn't seen him in years. He was tripping on acid. So when he saw me from across the plaza, he shouted "Ian! Holy shit!" and ran in great circles around me going "Whooooa!" I told this wide-pupiled fellow the story of the Fountain Businessman. He couldn't figure it out, either.

That evening has always stayed with me. I was freshly returned from Mexico, I was onstage, in a houseful of loopy actors I hardly knew, and I was 100 pounds thinner, to boot (it's amazing what amoebic dysentery will do for your waistline). It was a good time, a good time to be me. I should figure out a way to arrange the thirty-something equivalent of that summer in my life, now...

For Nostalgia Corner, I'm Ian Wood...thanks for watching.

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