in grade 12 we were reading romeo and juliet and we were at the romantic-ass balcony scene and this hot girl in the class volunteered to read juliet’s parts and i put up my hand to volunteer for another part and the teacher goes ‘oh do you want to be the nurse, amanda?’ and i was like ‘no i wanna be romeo’ and the hot girl swiveled around in her seat to give me a Look™
she and i later ended up making out at a bunch of parties in university lmfao
in retrospect this moment was absolutely pivotal to my butch awakening but it was also just a lesbian power move
I too got a girlfriend over this play. In grade 10, I was reading the balcony scene to study with two other people (one guy and one beautiful girl) and I insisted point blank I had to read as romeo, because he had the most lines and I’m a dramatic little shit.
So the other two in my group are used to my antics by now. We’re all friends, so the pair of them decide that the one guy in our group gets to be the nurse. Now, my Juliet and I have been friends for a couple months by this point, so I decide to be a little more dramatic.
We put Juliet on a spinny chair, and pump it up as tall as it goes, and my baby, closeted lesbian ass crouches on the floor, ready to be as melodramatic as possible. Like, I’m about to do a rendition that makes William himself walk into the class and tell me to take it back a notch or twelve.
And then I look up.
And holy shit.
There she is, Juliet, haloed in the worst fluorescent light known to mortals across the globe. Light just streaming down around her, that weird off-green colour that it always is. And she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. My little gay soul is barely holding on as the words barely leave my lips, breathlessly. “But soft… what light from yonder window breaks?”
And Juliet was the sun. Romeo was not exaggerating that line at all.
Juliet and I have also been together for more than 4 years now. She’s every bit as spectacular as she was when I was a lovestruck teenage Romeo, kneeling on the yellowed linoleum floor of second block english.
I want to write an alternative version of Romeo and Juliet where instead of being a little ponce and trying to work things out for himself, Romeo asks his smarter friends what to do about the whole thing and Benvolio and Mercutio come up with the world’s greatest plan:
Marriage of convenience between Juliet and Mercutio.
Think about it.
Juliet’s parents want her to marry into the Prince’s family. Mercutio is a good compromise between no marriage and Paris.
Mercutio probably won’t get his inheritance if he keeps being HELLA FUCKING GAY ALL OVER THE PLACE so a beard is only a benefit to him.
They would probably get along great rolling their eyes at how adorably stupid Romeo is.
Romeo and Benvolio could get a “bachelor pad” right next to Juliet and Mercutio’s house. Every night, Romeo and Mercutio high five as they hop the fence to go bang their one true love.
The second half of the play is just all of them trying to keep up the charade and being “THIS CLOSE” to getting caught all the time. But everything ends nicely because true love conquers all.
