Bleeding For Your Art

So I'm 17 years old, playing Bernardo in a production of the musical West Side Story. It's opening night, with a full house (maybe 1500 people).

We get to the Rumble, which is the big fight scene at the end of the first act where my character (who is the analogue to Tybalt in Romeo & Juliet) fights Riff (Mercutio) and is eventually killed by Tony (Romeo).

Here's what's supposed to happen - I berate Tony and start pushing him around, but he won't fight me. Riff jumps forward, throws a stage punch at my face. I fall to the ground, jump up, check my nose for blood, pull my switchblade, and Riff and I start the choreographed fight scene.

Here's what actually happens - I berate Tony and start pushing him around, but he won't fight me. Riff jumps forward, throws a punch at my face. I fall to the ground, jump up, check my nose for blood...

... find blood ...

... find more blood ...

... realize I can't see out of my left eye because it's full of blood ...

... pull my switchblade, and Riff and I start fighting.

Now, I was kickboxing at the time, so I wasn't all that disturbed about having a bloody nose. (White guys tend to bleed a lot.) I was a little concerned about the whole blind-in-the-left-eye thing, but I figured I could worry about it when the fight was over and we went to intermission.

The guy playing Riff, though, had no idea what was going on in my head. All he could see was some dude with blood all over his face waving around a (fake, but still sharp) switchblade. Add that to the fact that he was really skinny (maybe 110 pounds) and that he knew I had the hobby of repeatedly punching and kicking people for fun, and you can guess that the poor guy had no idea if I was going to stick to the choreography or break him over my knee like a twig.

But I stick with the choreography. We go through the whole fight the way we're supposed to, but with one difference -- any time I get near the guys playing the Jets I toss my head and splatter blood all over their fancy costumes. Just for kicks, you know. Those pussy Jets just can't stand the sight of blood.

The good news is, around this time my left eye clears up and I can see again. Ah, the joys of depth perception...

Anyway, we get to the end of the fight. I stab Riff, and he goes down. Tony leaps forward and stabs me; I go down. The general rumble starts, with both sides trying to kill each other (and the Jets trying not to slip in all the blood I had left on their side of the stage).

So now I have about five minutes to lie on stage and play dead while the rest of the scene plays out. I'm in a fetal position on my left side, my head downstage.

I don't know how many of you have had bloody noses, but one of the first things you do is blow out a sharp breath to see how bad it is. I'm expecting either one or both of my nostrils to bubble, so I would know where the damage was.

Instead, I go blind in my left eye again.

Blinking, and starting to get a little concerned, I close that eye and trying snorting out again. I feel a warm splash on the outside of my eyelid, which relieves me that it's not an eye-socket injury. I'm still playing dead, so I can't move my hands to touch my nose, but I tilt my head a little bit so my nose is pointing more toward the ground, and I blow outward again.

A stream of blood squirts from the top of my nose (near where it connects with my left eye socket) and splatters all over the stage. And, I don't know about you, but I don't usually have an opening in my face through which such a stream could emerge.

By this time, the fight scene is winding down and intermission is about to start. I have a widening pool of blood around my head, maybe eight inches across, getting in my hair and filling up my ear. We weren't using a proscenium curtain, so I was just supposed to wait until the lights go out, and then run off stage.

The lights go down and a few grips run on stage to pick me up, having no idea if I was unconscious or what. I'm on my feet before they can get to me. I grab a towel from one of them, say I'm okay, and ask them to mop up the stage.

I go to the dressing rooms, surrounded by a bunch of Sharks who are concerned for my welfare and a bunch of Jets who are pissed about the whole blood-flinging thing. I look in the mirror and see a quarter-inch of bone sticking out of the top of my nose.

Two years of full-contact boxing to my name, and I get my first broken nose in fucking musical theater.

Fuckin' great.