Art Museum

Once a month or so my father would take me to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

We would wander the galleries and dad, a scupltor/engraver for the US Mint, would explain things to me, answer questions or just let me wander.

I had two favorite galleries. I loved the suits of armor, swords, helmets and other assorted sundry of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. I thought chainmaille was the coolest thing in the world, unless displayed in Cher's Sanctuary catalogue or International Male. I was obsessed with jousting. I wanted to live in a castle and be king. Or princess. And I firmly believed in dragons. To that end, I watched the movie Dragonslayer religiously. Only recently did I realize that the lead in that movie was Peter MacNicol who moved on to something else I would watch religiously, Ally McBeal.

Anyway, I wasn't really interested in the facts behind all these things. I was more intent on making up wonderful stories of the men who wore/used them and the many accomplishments they achieved. I would start to create these stories and then go home and live them out with my Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark figured in my bedroom for hours.

My favorite painting at the museum was an enormous canvas painted by Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders. Measuring 95 1/2 x 82 1/2 inches, the painting hung on a wall entirely on its own. The title of the painting: Prometheus Bound. In it, a huge eagle whose wings span almost the entire length of the painting is on top of a nearly naked Prometheus, tearing his liver out. Prometheus is nearly naked, laying on top of blue and white silk. His muscular body is writhing in pain as the bird feasts on his bloody organ. The eagle has one claw holding down the hero's head and another pressing on his tightly muscled stomach. The two are making intense eye contact.

Now how could I lie and say that there was not something sexual about this picture? It certainly stimulated something in my mind and I'm sure triggered thoughts that have followed me to my work today. In my directing, I'm often driven to work that explores the close relationship between sex and violence; how they go hand-in-hand sometimes, and spiraling out of control at other times.

I would stare at this painting for hours. Wondering what it felt like to be dominated by that bird. Wondering what it was like to be as strong as Prometheus. Wondering what it was like to have your liver ripped out.

Ironically enough, there would be echoes of this painting resonating in my life at a later date that even I didn't see until after the events played out.

Upper East Sider

When the Present Ex moved here from Philly, we went from never living in the same city together to living together. Yikes.

The first few months were a rotation of good and bumpy. Mostly good, but really bumpy.

Our one bedroom apartment was on 72nd between 1st and York. No Man's Land. It was on the first floor in the back of a five or six story building. It was cute. You walked into the living room/kitchen area. The bathroom was to your left. The bedroom was big and we painted it a grey blue.

I wanted a dog. I had always wanted a dog but Present Ex was dead set against it. Until one day he called me and said he had walked by a pet store on Lexington and saw the cutest Shih tsu in the world. I was working as an AD on a Broadway show at the time and I told him I would try to get by to look at her as soon as I good. Present Ex, at the time, was working at a mortgage company in Mineola, Long Island. He would wake up at the crack of dawn and reverse commute every morning. Pain in the ass.

So the next day, before rehearsal, I stopped at American Kennels on Lex to take a look at the puppy. She was the cutest dog in the world. Unlike most Shih tsu's her face didn't look like she had just run into a wall. She had an extended snout and was full of love. So I put a down payment on her, told them I'd pick her up after work and called Present Ex to say that someone else had bought her. He was devastated.

When Present Ex came home that evening, he opened the door and I was sitting at our tiny, 2 person kitchen table that we bought at the local framing store on the corner, with the little pup on my lap. Present Ex started to cry. Happy anniversary, I said.

We named her Chloe. I can't remember how we got to that particular name but it took about a week of trial and error.

With Present Ex leaving so early in the morning and coming home so late at night, Chloe and I took to taking looooong walks around the Upper East Side or, Yorkville as the cab maps called it. It's a neighborhood I grew to adore. It was Manhattan, but not. There was almost always sky. I could walk to the river. It was quiet. It was home.

One evening, Chloe and I had made it all the way up to 86th Street and pretty far west when all of a sudden she started tugging hard at the leash and pulling me. She was retracing our steps and she wanted to go home asap. For once, she didn't stop to sniff anything or stop and look up at people for attention. She just moved as if on a mission. We rounded 72nd street and up ahead, not far from our apartment, a group of people had gathered and something was making an inhuman moaning noise. Chloe slowed down but kept moving forward. I tried to make out what was happening. I passed a woman and her dog a few feet from my apartment and she said , "Awful. Just awful." I passed her and the apartment and peered around the assembled group of people. There on the ground was a tiny Asian woman holding a big white dog and moaning, screaming and crying. The dog had just dropped dead. She was inconsolable and no one knew what to do. I instinctively picked Ripley up and hurried inside to Present Ex and our safe home. But that woman's wailing has stayed with me ever since.

Flashback

Before it became a semi-Broadway hit, there was a movie musical that touched my heart more than any other.

Heaven is a place on Earth.

Like most people, my ideas of love and romance were formed at an early age. Unlike most of the kids I grew up with I was severely overweight with an extreme aversion to any physical activity whatsoever. While most of my “friends” were playing street hockey, touch football and wall ball I was escaping into the world of books and movies (while eating grandmom’s homemade meatball sandwiches). That’s where I lived and where I could do anything I ever wanted.

Summer of 1981. The Jersey Shore, Wildwood Crest. I was seven. This was the age that I first began to realize that I was different. My family always summered at the Crest and it was always a source of great anxiety for me. I could not swim so going to the beach or the hotel pool never presented much of a treat. That unsightly bulges and rolls that began to appear around my midsection right about this time also meant that taking my shirt off in these environments was a monumental effort. Whereas the other boys my age at the beach were sinewy and lithe, I was round, soft and chubby. You could usually spot me on the beach as the exceptionally pale boy in the white t-shirt. I could not run into the crashing surf without feeling like I had a bowl of jello strapped around my waist. I would much rather sit in a beach chair under an umbrella reading while eating a hot dog and an order of cheese fries washed down with a nice cold coke. A fudgecicle from the ice-cream man who warily patrolled the beach with lethargic determination was the only way to top it all off.

One night my parents decided we could go to the movies. That was vacation pleasure. Even today when I’m sitting in the theater and the lights begin to dim I feel the amazing rush of adrenaline that signals my entrance into another world. For this activity I could somehow find the energy to run. To see me run at this time must have been as amusing to strangers on the boardwalk as it is to me watching a baby zebra take its first steps. Awkward and unbalanced, heaven knows what my parents thought as I huffed and puffed my way through the crowds. However the thought of two hours of cinematic escape was enough to make my fat little legs scamper around the tram cars and cotton candy salesmen straight towards nirvana.
The movie theater in Wildwood is still burned into memory. It might as well have been the Ziegfeld in Manhattan. Daddy Warbucks could have been taking his little orphan to Radio City Music Hall for the first time. I shudder to think what it would look like to me now. Some things remain better as memories. Movie posters behind non-reflective glass and framed in running lights covered the entire wall. A huge marquis with yet more lights beckoned me from blocks away. I had never heard the title of this particular film before but it was foreign and exotic and promised to be nothing less than a gift from the gods because it was a musical. I waited with near-hyper frustration for my father to purchase the tickets. My mother patted my flushed face with concern while assuring me that we were certain to get in and get good seats. The line to my seven-year old eyes was never ending. My brother, with a look on his face somewhere between fear and boredom, chose to stare longingly into the window of the neighboring sporting goods store. Patience kept him going because he knew that before the evening was over he would have a new ball or catchers’ mitt or some other such toy as recompense for having to sit through this. He hated the movies. And although seven years older than me, he was still not of the age where he could be left on his own. We often caught ourselves looking at each other like one looks at a familiar stranger on the street, certain that we’ve seen each other somewhere before but not quite sure where. In any other situation we would just keep walking and forget about the incident. That’s the great thing about families. God decides to mix up the pot a little.

Finally my father had the tickets in his hand. As the doors magically swung open I was immediately assaulted by the smell of stale popcorn and artificial butter. Heaven. The carpet was a lush powdered blue and woven into this luscious fabric were huge golden stars that emanated rays of brilliant orange and red. The walls and ceiling were painted a color not entirely dissimilar to that of the stars and then painstakingly sponge painted with the same red and orange of the rays. Obviously this theater was designed by a master craftsman for this was the epitome of glamour. One entire wall of the lobby was painted with black and white caricatures of famous movie stars: Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall. I had no idea who these people were but I knew they were stars if they warranted such a tribute in this most sacred of places. I had no idea how much their work would actually affect my life. At the time, however, I couldn’t stop and stare as I made a b-line for the snack counter.

The order with my family was always the same: a large popcorn with butter and salt to be shared by my mother, my brother and myself; a small popcorn, plain, for my health-conscience father; a soda for everyone. My heart about to burst with pleasure and anticipation, we finally make our way into the auditorium. Again, the order of family member is the same: my mother, then myself, my father, and then my brother. In order to properly appreciate a movie I insisted on being sandwiched between the two people I loved most in the world. We still view movies like this today. At the time, however, this provided certain obstacles because it meant my brother had to break my concentration from the movie in order to grab a handful of popcorn. There was no way anybody was taking my hands off of that bucket. It was my night.

As the lights began to dim a stranger might have thought I was about to suffer severe cardiac arrest. I began to sweat as my heart beat unnaturally fast. What if something went wrong with the film? What if I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie? Why will those people up front not STOP TALKING? Why such a big deal? This was not just any movie. This movie starred the most talented actor of the generation; a performer who made acting an art form. The person I aspired to be. Someone who could act, sing and dance. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life (sorry, Mom): Olivia Newton-John. Why her picture was not painted on that wall outside was a crying shame.

The movie was Xanadu.

Xanadu is the perfect movie. It has Olivia Newton-John, roller skates, dancing, singing, punk rockers, and Gene Kelly as a retired, lonely, romantic clarinet player. It tells the story of a young album cover painter (Sonny) who is tired of “selling out”. He finds himself unexpectedly falling in love with a cover model who happens to be one of the nine Muse daughters of the gods Zeus and Hera. Entertainment, culture and education put onto roller skates and zapped into the local cineplex. Sonny, played by the brilliant but now seldom-seen Michael Beck, fights for the love of Kira, as embodied by Olivia Newton-John, and does not give up until he sees his dreams come true. It’s a story of romance, love and hope.

There is one scene in particular that makes Xanadu the truly great film that it is. It is an animated sequence, kind of like a music video, in which Sonny chases Kira through the wilderness, including a flower patch, a pond and even the sky. You see because they begin as cartoon versions of themselves they can also magically transform into fish and birds as well. This must be one of the many powers that Kira possesses. Kira, however, insists on playing very coy and makes Sonny work his ass off to win her love. Love, obviously, was something that needed to be desperately pursued and fought for. While the lovers run, swim and fly the Electric Light Orchestra performs a soaring pop ballad of longing and sorrow told from Sonny’s point of view. It’s called ‘Don’t Walk Away’. The glory of the sequence is that you know (from the soaring pop ballad that Olivia sings when we first see her skating alone in an abandoned warehouse) that these two are destined to be together.

And if all your hearts survive
Destiny will arrive.
I’ll bring all your dream alive for you.

The filmmakers attention to detail is most apparent in this scene because no matter what form Kira takes (human, fish or bird) she is wearing little, pink leg warmers. Brilliant.

But fate steps in the way of the young lovers. In the very next scene Kira must reveal her true nature to Sonny and tell him that although she has very strong feeling for him there are rules to be followed. She must obey her God parents and remain loyal to her Muse sisters. She and Sonny cannot be together. Destiny has dealt poor Sonny a bad hand. She is a demigod and he is a mere mortal. Sonny, of course, does not believe her story. In order to prove herself (as if her superior roller skating abilities weren’t enough) Kira provides a number of examples. First she makes the television turn on without even touching it. The late night movie is some film noir, Humphrey Bogartish fare only there, on the screen is Kira. She and the other actors in the scene turn to the camera and address Sonny directly, just breaking all conventions of realism. Sonny, bewildered, turns the television set off and rubs his eyes in disbelief. For her next trick, Kira has Sonny look up the defintion of “muse” in the dictionary. It ends with a personal address to Sonny that goes something like ‘Do you believe me now?’ As if all this wasn’t enough to convince him she finally just disappears from his apartment.

Sonny is heartbroken and distraught. He has finally found what he has been looking for and it is being unfairly taken away from him without him having any say at all. So he straps on his roller skates and goes to confront Zeus and Hera. The meeting does not go so well. Ultimately, the gods have a change of heart and let Kira and her Muse sisters come down to Earth for one more night. This night happens to coincide with the opening of Sonny’s roller disco Xanadu. Sonny is overjoyed and the girls put on a spectacular, unrehearsed floor show that combines many costumes and styles of music: country, pop, hard rock, etc. Their finale is the title song of the film. Rules are rules, however, and so at the end of the number Olivia’s outfit is transformed into the more appropriate and god-like toga dress with matching baby pink leg warmers, sans skates. She is then beamed up to wherever it is that gods live. It must be an amazing place because all they need to do to get from one location to another is either beam themselves or roller skate. Although saddened by her departure Sonny has found peace in himself and his roller disco. His heart is somewhat mended.

The filmmakers haven’t played their last card though. It seems as if all is over and the end credits will start rolling when the keenly disguised voice of a waitress is heard asking Sonny if he would like another drink. Sonny looks up and sees that the waitress is (gasp) the exact double of Kira. The gods must be crazy. Sonny has found his Heaven on Earth in his man-made roller disco called Xanadu.

As the lights came up I was crying tears of joy. My parents exchanged a knowing look. My father woke up my brother who took one look at me and said, Stop crying. Boys don’t cry. He then headed off immediately in the direction of the sporting goods store to claim his prize. I took a deep breath and pulled myself together, grabbed my mother’s warm hand and wondered when we could go see the movie again. Then we were back on the boardwalk. The world looked different to me. Everything was magical. My boring old sneakers became roller skates in my imagination. Shuffling on top of the wooden slats I tried to mimic the complex choreography of the film. As I made my way past the sporting goods store I saw a pair of roller skates spot lit in the window. My brother and I both made out that night. I was not allowed to put the skates on though because I had never been on a pair and my parents were afraid I would fall and hurt myself. Didn’t they know that I would intuitively know how to use them? I was convinced by this point that I was a Muse and that my god parents had somehow misplaced me. They would soon realize I was gone and beam me up to roller skating heaven to be with them and my eight sisters. There, I would be magically transformed into my truly beautiful self and find true love. At the age of six, in a movie theater in New Jersey, I discovered what hope was. I also discovered what love meant. Love meant fighting for what you wanted. It meant going after it even though fate says you’ll never get it. It meant sad songs and tortured, long nights of roller skating alone down deserted city streets. It meant inner anguish and turmoil. It meant anything was possible – because if you couldn’t have the one person in the world you truly wanted, another carbon copy of that person would appear. It meant magic.

This definition of love was only reinforced the older I got by the scores of novels I would read, songs I would listen to and sing, and movies and television shows I would watch. Love was never easy but it was worth having because it completed you. And you almost always got it. It made you a better person. In some cases, it made you a completely different person. From my adolescence to my early twenties I wanted nothing more than to be a different person. But Zeus and Hera never came back to claim their forgotten child. My roller skates were eventually replaced by roller blades, this time for actual physical exertion. Olivia Newton-John hasn’t made a movie in years. Cigarettes and coffee have replaced popcorn and soda (except on rare occasions when I’m feeling down and it’s all of them).

Hope, however, is like a malignant cancer inside of my soul. It grows stronger and more powerful every day and it is beyond treatment. It makes me want to fight for love. It makes me believe in magic. I have the creators of Xanadu to thank for that. The little boy who tried to roller skate in his sneakers on the boardwalk in New Jersey that summer night during the summer of 1981 is still alive.

Singledom

This is an oldie but goodie. I wrote it after I found myself unexpectedly single on this lonely island and I ventured into the world of internet dating.

I have so much to tell you. I had the craziest weekend.
I went on three—count ‘em—three Match.com dates yesterday.

I know, I know. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just that I’m crazy busy this week and it was the only way I could do it, you know, fit them all in, I don’t know what I was thinking but I don’t recommend you do it. It’s exhausting.

Plus, everyone’s been telling me to “get back out there.” And I felt it. I thought maybe they’re right. Maybe it will help me forget.

So the first guy, ugh. I was supposed to see him last weekend but I cancelled. I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t ready. I was walking over the bridge on my way into the city the day of the date, weighing the pros and cons. Thinking, “Well, maybe I’ll like him enough to sleep with him.” I check my cell when I get into Manhattan and I saw that I missed his call and he left me a message:

“Hey. It’s Randy. It’s such a beautiful day. If I had known it was going to be like this we could have made plans to go to the beach or something. Why don’t we meet in Battery Park, have some coffee, and then maybe we can go to a movie or something after that.”

Woah. Woah. Woah. Easy does it, Randy. Beach? Movie? What the fuck? We haven’t even met yet. Let’s start with coffee. 45 minutes for the first date, that’s what I’ve told myself. That way if you don’t like him, it’s long enough that it doesn’t seem rude and if you do like him, it leaves you wanting more.

But this? I can’t do this. So I sent him a text message, passive-aggressive I know, but I gave him like five hours notice. The guilt over canceling on him slowly begins to grow as the day progresses. When I finally get back into Brooklyn that night, I feel bad and I call him. We decide to talk the next day and make plans for later in the week.

Oh, did I tell you? He’s 43 and he’s an actor. But he’s also in real estate. I was hoping he was more in real estate. And 43? I don’t know what I was thinking. My mom called me last week. She and my father had just come from dinner with the gay mailman, his partner and a friend of theirs. My parents are the token straights wherever they go. More to the point, they collect gays. My mom is like the Mother Theresa of South Jersey. Dad is the same way.

My dad went to this workshop on tolerance at his job one day. They had signs all over the room. The leader told them to go and stand under the sign that you felt was closest to your heart. So my dad goes and stands under the sign that says, “YOUNG GAY MAN.” And there are all these burly guys looking at him like he’s a pedophile or something. He’s crazy.
Anyway, mom and dad are at dinner with the gays and they’re, obviously, discussing my love life. Or lack there of at the moment. They all decide collectively that I need to date someone older, which I totally agree with, someone in his 40s.

Woah. “40s, Mom?”
“Yes. Someone who’s together. Settled.”

“I don’t want to settle mom.”

“That’s not what I said and it’s not what I mean.”

“Ok. Fine. I know what you mean. Mom. But I don’t want settled. That’s boring. Besides The Mormon was older.”

“How old was he?”
“36.”
“Oh.”
Score.

So Randal is 43. We’ve exchanged a few emails. Played phone tag. But I can tell already that there’s something…off about him. Something not quite right. And maybe it’s the desperation of being a 43 year old gay man in New York City. Anyway. One date. I committed and I guess that’s why I signed up for Match in the first place.

So the next day I’m waiting to meet my friend for brunch when my phone rings. It’s Randal. I put it through to voicemail thinking I’ll talk to him later. Said friend is running late so I check the message:
“Hey. It’s Randal.”
I don’t like the sound of his voice. It’s too controlled. It’s too actory, too spot-on. And is it Randy or Randal? There’s a big difference.
“It’s almost 2. It’s weird that I haven’t heard from you. I thought we were going to meet up today and do something. So this is weird. Well, I’ve already made brunch plans so that can’t happen. And if I don’t hear from you soon I’m going to make plans for tonight. This is weird. Call me back.”

What the fuck? I said we’d talk today and make plans for later in the week. This guy is crazy. So I get home later that day and there’s an email from him:

“What happened to you today?”

Sigh. So I email him back:

“Sorry. There must have been a miscommunication. It was my understanding that we were to talk at some point today and make plans for later in the week.”
Almost immediately I receive:
“We agreed we were to talk this morning do something today. The plans were loose but they included us meeting today to do something. I was very clear and you sounded clear. It sounds like other plans came in for you and you took those instead without letting me know. I hate to start anything with such flakiness and miscommunication. I am not comfortable carrying forward at this point.”
Ok. Fine with me. Then almost immediately I get:

“I may not have been clear last night. But I wanted to do something with you. I have had so much flakiness with the guys in NYC I am really wary. Please do not contact me if you are not sincere and cannot follow through. I have a real issue with that. Otherwise, I love the way you communicate and like your interests and the way you describe your low key sort of home life which I totally identify with.”

Uh huh.

“Randal. I think maybe we should just let it go. I am not flakey but I feel like this is already too complicated. I wish you luck out there.”
You’d leave it at that right? No. I wake up the next morning to another email from him.
“Can you please tell me what I did wrong…blah blah blah…I’m trying to work on my communication skills. “

You know what. I think it’s great that he’s working on his communication skills. He wants to know what he did wrong, well, I’ll tell him. So I type up an email about how I felt he was reactionary and it put me off and I’ve had people like that in my life and I’ve gotten rid of them because I don’t like it. And how if there was already that much drama before a date I don’t want to pursue it.
So I get an email back! Enough already. Basta. Fini.

“Thank you for being so clear, kind and concise. You are a very good writer. And I am a very good guy. I’d like you to get to know me. Will you please consider getting coffee with me?”

I hastily type back: “Let me think about it.” And I let it go.

Meanwhile, I’m emailing back and forth with two other guys. And I make plans with them for Sunday. They both seem nice. I don’t smell desperate or crazy on them. Yet. But we’ll see.

So I get an email from crazy Randy later in the week: Please just meet me for coffee.
God. Ok. “I can meet you any time on Saturday after 10:30 and before 5. Sunday is busy for me.”

Almost immediately, “Saturday is not so good for me. I have a meeting with a director first thing in the morning, then I’m going out of town to golf…blah blah blah. I have church Sunday morning at 11am.”
This is ridiculous. So I write. “Ok. Coffee. Sunday. 9:30. Before church.”

I figure he’ll say “no’ because who wants to have a date at 9:30 on a Sunday morning?
“9:30, it is.”
And, I couldn’t be any meaner. “Ok. I’ll probably be coming from the gym so I won’t have time to shower and I’ll be sweaty.”

The other dates are much easier to schedule. So I have a 9:30 in Chelsea, a 2 in Williamsburg and a 7 in the West Village. It’s a good thing I scheduled auditions for 10 years, I’m good at this.

Sunday morning roles around. All I want to do is cancel on Crazy. But I don’t. I don’t make it to the gym. But I go in my gym clothes so that I can go immediately after, I have a feeling I’m going to have to.

I get into the city early, as usual. So I get off the train at Union Square and walk. My iPod on and the streets so still and quiet at this early hour that I can sing along, out loud as I make my way to 23rd Street. Then the song comes on. The song that kills me. And he’s there with me all of a sudden. The Mormon. I can’t push him away and I wish I felt the way Cyndi Lauper sings about in this song:

I don’t want to see your face.

I don’t want to hear your name.

I don’t want a thing, you just stay away, baby.

Don’t want to know if you’re alright.

Or what you’re doing with your life.

Don’t want to hear you say that you’ll stay in touch, maybe.

I’ll get by just fine.

So if you’re going then, darlin’, goodbye. Goodbye now.

Don’t call me in the middle of the night no more.

Don’t expect me to be there.

Don’t think that it’ll be the way it was before.

I’m not over you yet

And I don’t think I care.

And I don’t want to be your friend.

I’ll forget we ever met.

I’ll forget I ever let,

Ever let you into this heart of mine, baby.

You just gotta let me be.

You gotta keep away from me,

Cause all I wanna be is just free of you, baby.

Don’t you come around

And say you still care about me,

Go now. Go now.
Don’t call me in the middle of the night no more.

Don’t expect me to be there.

Don’t think that it’ll be the way it was before.

I’m not over you yet.

And I don’t think I care.

And I don’t want to be your friend.

You take it casually

And that’s what’s killing me.

Don’t call me in the middle of the night no more.

Don’t expect me to be there.

Don’t think that it’ll be the way it was before.

I don’t want to be your friend…
But I don’t want to let go. Aye, there’s the rub.

And I seriously just kept repeating it over and over and over again. Singing it out loud, not even caring about the people who walked by me on the street. This was probably not the best way to start a day of dating. But I didn’t want to be dating. Not these guys. No.

So I order a green tea and I sit at my table and I pull out a book and I wait. 9:35. 9:40. And I think, “What’s the college rule about class being canceled? If your professor is more than 10 minutes late you can leave?” Does that hold for dates as well?
And me? I’m dressed in total work out gear; a powder-blue muscle t, khaki nylon cargo pants, an orange baseball cap, a jacket on top of it. Pretty much an outfit strategically put together to say, I don’t care. I didn’t even wash my face.

And just as I’m about to pack it up, he walks in.

I can tell it’s him immediately and I don’t like what I see. It’s that older, Chelsea gay man look. He has a nice body. He obviously takes care of himself. Small, tight muscles. He’s wearing a salmon-colored polo short, khaki shorts, and loafers with no socks. Like we’re in Sag Harbor. The entire look says control. I hate it.

He sits down and launches into his life story. And he talks in his “actor voice”, so controlled and modulated but not registering any emotion whatsoever. I can only image what kind of actor he is. And he talks and he talks and he talks for 45 minutes. I felt like I never even got a word in. Nothing. Fine by me. We walk out and say goodbye and I’m really careful not to say, “See you later” or anything else that could be misconstrued as me showing even the slightest hint of interest.

Date number two is better. He’s a nice guy. Smart, funny, my age. He’s a writer. An hour plus flew by but there was just no chemistry. Talk about uptight. I wanted to shake him by the shoulders just to get him to relax.

The last one? The last one was surprisingly good. We met at his apartment which I thought was weird. On the elevator up I thought, “What if I was a psychotic stalker, or a serial killer?” For a moment I thought, “What if he is?” But I can handle myself.

The conversation was easy. It turns out we have a lot of friends in common. We went to Billy’s and sat outside and ate cake. It was really nice.

I walked him home and I kissed him in front of his apartment building. It was weird to kiss someone who wasn’t…Not better or worse, just different. He did make me forget about…him…for a while. That was nice.

What does the wife say in Scenes From A Marriage? What’s her name? The character’s name is Marianne. The husband is Johan. My parents are John and Marianne. Isn’t that funny. That just occurred to me. Anyway she says, “There are days when I hate you for what you did to me. And then there are days when I don’t think of you for moments at a time. It’s quite lovely really.”

I know we were only together for six months. It’s been over two since he broke up with me. He called six months “a blip” in the scheme of things. But not for me. It wasn’t a blip for me. I thought it was going to be forever, you know. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. I still want to. Six months. But I can’t measure love by time. Would it hurt more or less after a year, or two? I don’t give my love easily or blindly. And I can’t get it back. I wouldn’t take it back. He needs someone to love him. He, at least, needs to know someone loves him. And I do. I always will. It’ll change but there will always be love in my heart for him. I told him that.

I pulled my profile from Match. I’m not ready for this.

Gay Target #3

It's a cold snowy blustery Saturday in February.

Mom and Dad have travelled up from Philly to visit me. If Mom doesn't see me at least once a month the umbilical cord begins to throb violently. Mom who calls the dorm room at 8am from Philly to tell me it's raining there and so it must be raining 90 miles away.

We're walking south on Broadway into the wind and the snow. I don't remember where we possibly could have been going. Perhaps to Danal's for brunch? Perhaps to Pottery Barn to shop.

Dad has wandered ahead of us as usual and Mom has her arm through mine, we're chatting about school and I'm probably wearing a scarf and figuring out how to hide a hickey from a late night game of truth or dare.

A youngish man is walking towards us. He looks exactly like Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers. I can feel his stare from over three feet away and we make eye contact briefly but then I, shyly, look away. As he passes us, on Mom's side, he grunts and says, "It's too bad you're with your parents."

There's a pause as he continues on and I hold my breath and will myself not to look back at him.

My mom stops for a second and takes her arm out of mine. She opens her mouth, "What did he -- Oh."

She shrugs, puts her arm back through mine and we continue walking south into the wind, cold and snow.

Gay Target #2

It's Spring in New York circa 1994.
I've almost finished up my second semester at NYU. I'm happy. I'm getting good grades. And the weather is beyond beautiful.
So I hop on the subway, by myself, and head up to Central Park.

I get off the N/R at 5th Ave and Central Park South and plunge in ready to explore. In my backpack is the National Geographic magazine entirely devoted to CP but I figure I can wing it and only refer to it as necessary. Besides, I have on my Superman T-shirt, acquired in a St. Mark's Place comic store (I did eventually find St. Mark's place to be crazy, yes, but an unending source of fascination) and I'm unbeatable.

I wander through the winding walkways. I climb a rock or two. Something keeps pulling me forward though and I find myself unable to stop until I reach the large staircase that brings me down to Bethesda Fountain. This was my first time in Central Park but I felt as if I'd been to the fountain many times before. There was something awe-inspiring yet familiar about it. I felt at home here. I walked around the many-tiered structure taking in the tall, regal angel with her spread wings. Water poured out of it and I wished for a second that I could reach in a drink it but the half naked toddlers jumping and splashing around made it certain that I shouldn't.

I walked around the fountain and to the lip of the stairs that enter down into the lake. A man was throwing a frisbee into the lake a large black lab would splash in to retrieve it.

People were everywhere but I didn't mind them so much here. I liked watching them. And I liked being on my own.

I sat on a bench a little bit away from everything just to take it all in. Before long someone came and sat down next to me. I turned and there was an older man, mid 50s to early 60s, short, pudgy, stumpy legs sticking out of cargo shorts. He was staring intently at me.

"Hello."
Hi.
"Are you a student?"
Yes. NYU.
"Great school. Great school."
Thanks.

I looked back out at the fountain. I didn't want to be rude but I also didn't want to be disturbed. The sun was shining brightly, it felt wonderful on my face and I was completely relaxed.

"What are you studying?"
I'm sorry?
"At NYU. What's your major?"
Oh. Well. I went in as a journalism major but I'm really a singer/actor. So I think I'm going to transfer programs next year but I'm not sure yet.
"Great. That's just great. How long have you been singing?"
About 5 years now, I guess.

There was a long pause. He didn't make me feel uncomfortable or anything. He was too old to be a threat to me. Maybe he was just a nice guy.

"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"
Yes. Perfect.
"I teach singing, you know?"
Oh, really?
"Yes. I live right over there," he pointed to one of those beautiful, tall buildings that surround the park on the east and west sides. "I give vocal lessons out of my apartment; to Opera singers, Broadway performers, amateurs."
Wow. That's really great.

He leaned in a little.

"Yes. My technique is highly controversial."

I leaned away a little.
Oh?

"Yes. Whereas most voice teachers...how many have you had?"
Two or three.
"Well, I'm sure they all told you to breathe from your diaphragm. Is that right?"
Yes, of course.
"Of course? No. You see, I think all breath control -- and I'm writing a book on this, by the way -- I think all breath control comes from the...location of your sexual organs."

I leaned away a little more.
Oh.

"You see, what happens when you get sexually excited?"
Your breathing speeds up?
"Yes! And it deepens. My theory is that you can use the breathe from there to control the singing voice."
Oh.
"And, like I said, I'm writing a book about it and I'm looking for subjects, as it were, to write about as part of this process. Why don't you come over to my apartment for a lesson? It's right over there." Again, he points to one of those beautiful buildings lining the park.
Oh. Uhm. I don't think so. Thanks.
"It wouldn't cost you anything. It'd be my research."
No really, thanks. I don't think my voice teacher would appreciate...
"How old are you?"
I'm sorry?
"How old are you?"
Oh. Uhm. 18.
"That's perfect. You're just beginning to enter your sexual maturity and this is the ideal time for me to show my work. I can assure you you'll see a drastic change almost immediately."

I stood up.
Thanks. It was nice talking to you but I have to head back downtown now. I'm meeting some friends.

"Let me give you my number. The offer is open. Any time you'd like a lesson.."
That's very...thanks. But, like I said, I don't think my voice teacher would like anyone else giving me lessons right now."
He stood up on his squat, little legs and he was smaller than I was.
"Good luck to you, young man."
Thanks. Uhm. Good luck with your book.

And I took off so fast I almost knocked him over.

I noticed I was breathing more quickly. But I wasn't in any way sexually excited. Some Superman I was.

Gay Target #1

One evening, my freshman year at NYU, two friends of mine and I decided to go see a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream presented by the Ridiculous Theatre Company. I can't imagine what motivated this. I've never been the biggest Shakespeare fan. In fact, my favorite Shakespeare production remains Gorilla Rep's production of Midsummer that took place in Washington Square Park. I would go by almost every night at some point to see where they were. All the performers wore white. The show started at dusk. Each scene would take place at a different location in the park so the audience ran along with the actors from the dog run to the skateboarding mounds, etc...It was great fun and really well-performed, directed and acted. When it was finally dark, the actors not performing would pull out flashlights to light the scenes in progress.

But I digress.

This particular night, we were off to Ridiculous. We went to the box office to pick up our tickets at some theatre that I believe was located at the infamous Christopher Street triangle. I don't think it exists anymore but I could be wrong. We had time to kill and ended up at a little restaurant on West 4th called Bagel Grill, or some such.

The Bagel Grill was a long, narrow space with seats and tables on the right as you walked in and a counter and open kitchen on your left. The front was made up entirely of glass; glass door and large, glass picture window. My two friends and I took the very last table on the right. My back was to the wall, directly facing the front door. We ordered, duh, bagel sandwiches and waited as the place began to fill up.

I was deep in conversation with my two friends, both women, when I glanced over to the front door. There stood a very large, very fat, bespectacled African American man. He was probably in his 30 or 40s and he was licking the glass. I should rephrase that. He was making love to the glass. Bending over, he would start about 2 feet down and then lick his way all the way up to standing. Then he would repeat this. I looked away. And then looked back. And then I looked away. And then looked back. He wasn't stopping.

I had to alert my friends to his presence and an uncontrollable bout of giggling began. By this time, most everyone in the restaurant had noticed the strange behavior. The waitress brought our drinks and disappeared before we could say anything. After a few more moments of licking, the door opened and the Licker entered the restaurant. A hush fell over the place. I'm not kidding. I've very rarely been in a situation where a hush falls upon the room, but this was one.

The man, being very large, started to make his way across the room. People had to push their chairs in to let him continue on his journey. My eyes were securely fastened to the coke in front of me. The man finally came to a stop, of course, next to me.

"I was doing that for you, you know." He said in a voice so deep I felt it in my chest.

I looked up helplessly at my friends but there were intently studying the drinks in front of them. Girls. Useless.

"Uhm, thanks." I mumbled.

"Well..." And there it hung in the air, followed by more silence.

I looked up and all eyes were on me. Why was the waitress not coming over to help? Why wasn't someone coming over to DO something? I reached over and grabbed one of the girl's hands and said, "I'm with someone" so unconvincingly it might as well have been uttered by Chloe Sevigny in any movie.

He looked from me to my friend, a frown on his face. He looked back at me and licked his lips. He licked his lips.

I looked back down and held my breath. Finally he began to walk away, causing the same commotion as last time. Everyone who had pushed his chair away from the table to get a view of the proceedings had to push themselves back in to let him pass. The Licker stopped about halfway through, turned back to me and at the top of his voice yelled, "I WAS OFFERING YOU FREE SEX, YOU KNOW!"

How does anyone respond to that? I just nodded my head staring at him like a deer in headlights.

He left the restaurant but not without a final lick.

Did he really think I'd want his tongue anywhere on me after licking the outside of a dirty plate glass window?

Then he walked away.

Our bagels arrived and I had, unsurprisingly, lost my appetite.

I don't remember much else about the evening. I remember being terrified to leave the restaurant for fear that the Licker would be waiting among the crown to pounce on me and carry me away and lick me to death. I sent the girls out first to case the street but there was no sign of him.

This island is inhabited by crazy people.

Walking

"Do gay men take lots of walks?" Harper asks in Tony Kushner's amazing "Angels in America."

This play was required reading for all incoming students my first year at NYU. We discussed it in depth during the first few days of orientation, as well as in class. We were also offered $10 orchestra seats to go see the production. Well, I was blown away. I was not familiar with theatre like this and for the first time in my life I realized that theatre could do something more than just entertain.

But back to the question on the table: Do gay men take lots of walks? Yes, Harper, they do. At least, gay men in the closet. Or, at the very least, this gay man in the closet.

I was electrified by New York and was certainly one of the many who couldn't sleep in this city. There seems to be an overwhelming feeling of desire that permeates the air of this city. Everyone wants something or someone. And I too was caught up in it. Mostly, I wanted to let the gay out but I didn't know how. So I took lots of walks. At night.

I was terrified to do anything but I wanted to be around gay men. The only way I knew how to do this was to leave my dorm and walk west on 10th Street. West past University Place and the drunken underaged NYUers. West past 5th Ave and my favorite view of the World Trade Center past the Washington Square Arch. West past 6th Ave and the beautiful brownstones, one that to this day, has a stuffed gorilla in the window with a big bone in it's mouth. West and then south on Greenwich past the big iron gates of the public library, half a block to Christopher Street.

Christopher Street, to this young boy, was gay. There was no way around it. It felt gay. The street right below this intersection is, in fact, Gay Street. This is where gay men went, I believed. I wasn't wrong. As soon as I hit Christopher my pace slowed but my head went down. I couldn't look these gay men in the eye. What if they saw that I wanted to be one of them? That I was one of them? What would I do if they talked to me? So I walked slowly, head down, letting myself feel what was around me.

The top of Christopher Street is fairly quiet and residential. There are a few bars and a few upscale stores. But then I would reach the huge intersection of Christopher, West 4th and 7th Ave. This is where the city was truly alive. I would walk past the screaming and laughing patrons of Stonewall, where I knew something important happened but I didn't know the details. I walked past the little park in the intersection and its white statues of gay men and women hanging out and being gay. I walked past the Duplex and the sounds of someone singing showtunes at a piano.

Crossing 7th Ave without looking up is next to impossible. I passed men in leather pants and vests with bushy moustaches and goatees. I wasn't that kind of gay man. I walked by drag queens who would hoot and holler at me and call me "chicken." Is it that obvious I'm afraid, I wondered. Not yet knowing that "chicken" has different connotations in the gay world. I walked by the many stores selling sex toys, videos, magazines and other assorted items of an erotic, exotic sexual nature. Did one need all of these things to be gay? Crossing Bleecker Street was like entering Oz. All of a sudden it was all gay, all the time. The atmosphere changed dramatically. Here, every other store was a bar. Men walked hand-in-hand. Music came pouring out of every open doorway. The sidewalk smelled like booze. And I was terrified.

One night I was just about at the Lucille Lortel theatre when a car honked and I unwittingly looked over. An older man, probably in his 50s or 60s, was driving a beat up, tan Lincoln. He had a thick beard, glasses and a blazer on. He could have been any one of my professors. He was driving very slowly, matching my gait. We made eye contact and he winked and began to pull his car over. I quickened my step and turned the corner onto Hudson and lost myself in the crowd. Again I was terrified, but also fascinated and exhilarated. Was I attractive to gay men?

One of the other exciting aspects of being in this part of town was being so close to the river. Feeling the wind on my face made me really aware of the fact that this was an island. But I had a long way to go before I settled it.

Crazy

I was 17 when I first got to the island.
It was, at the very least, incredibly overwhelming.

I took the train from 30th Street Station to Penn Station by myself. I was going to be here for a week working with NYU's OUTREACH Program, a community service organization. I figured I could continue the community service work I had participated in while in high school as well as make some friends.

As the train left Philly I had tears in my eyes. I kissed Mom and Dad goodbye. They'd be up the following Saturday with my things.

The train ride was short. As NYC came in to sight I stopped playing whatever was in my CD player (most likely Indigo Girls "Rites of Passage) and put in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Song and Dance" starring Bernadette Peters. I knew every word by heart and had often acted out the entire show in my tiny, row-home bedroom in South Philly. The opening lyrics were more than appropriate:

"I can't quite believe it,
I'm actually here,
The one place on earth I want to be.
New York is just short of perfection they say.
The one thing it lacks is me.

It's all so amazing,
The size and the noise.
Why it's still alive at 5am.
And that drive in the eyes of New Yorkers (the original line is "New York girls" but I had to change it)
Oh I'd like to be one of them."

So as NYC rushed toward me, I listened to this music and I cried.

When the train finally pulled in, I grabbed my bag and went in search of a taxi. Everything was overwhelming. I had never been here before on my own. It seemed as if every direction I walked in was exactly against the flow of everyone else. I didn't understand the signage and I ended up in a dark passage between Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. I threw myself on to...some street and found a taxi.

As the taxi rushed from Penn Station down to 10th and Broadway I tried to take in everything I could. Remember: 34th Street is Macy's. Remember: 14th Street is packed with people and cheap looking dollar stores. Avoid at all costs. And so on. Actually, I think for the first few days my list consisted of places that I was scared of and vowed never to return to; 14th Street and St. Mark's Place being my number one destinations.

This anxiety quickly passed. It had to mostly because of the nature of the OUTREACH Program. I spent a day working for God's Love We Deliver in Harlem. We spent the morning preparing and packaging the food and the afternoon delivering it. I found that afternoon to be completely eye opening. I saw neighborhoods that I still, after 15 years, have never returned to. Luckily we were being driven. I naively expected everyone we delivered food to to be filled with thanks, respect and politeness. I knew these were AIDS patients and needed this food. No. Most of the people barely looked up as I dropped off the food. Some of the apartments were overrun with personal items and smelled like piss and rot. Some were neat and particular. All were distinct.

Another day was spent working at a Senior Center in Greenwich Village. This was a joy. I couldn't help but think of my grandparents. They wanted to engage all of us in talk about where were from, what we were studying and how we decided on NYU. At the end of the day they wanted us to sing with them. We converged in the rec room and someone wheeled out a piano. We sang showtunes and standards. Then there was a huge request for a song called "Twisted" that I only knew from Bette Midler's sophomore album:

"My analyst told me that I was right out of me head.
The way he described he said,
You'd be better off dead than alive.
I didn't listen to his jive.
I knew all along, he was all wrong
And I knew that he thought I was crazy.
But you know I'm not. Oh no."

And I wasn't crazy. I had made the right decision coming here.

We got lost in the crazy, nonsensical streets of the West Village on our way back to campus. We stopped and asked a woman carrying a bouquet of flowers for directions. She moved the huge spray from her face and, voila! ROSIE O'DONNELL. She graciously pointed us in the right direction and welcome us to New York. We stood in awe as we watched her ascend a steep set of steps to a brownstone and disappear inside.

This island was mine.

Uniforms continued

My brother, being a high school student now, goes off with my father in search of a suit jacket. No longer restricted to the uniform of St. Theresa and the Bleeding Sisters of Chastity he can get something more stylish, more trendy. He also gets to pick the clothes out himself, with Mom’s final approval of course. He trails behind the slim salesman and my father with his newfound high school swagger. As my mother and I mount the stairs, my hand turning white from gripping the faux brass banister so tightly, he turns and catches my eye. Quickly looking around to make sure that no one is looking he winks and then flips me the middle finger. He is so cool. He’ll probably find a Z. Cavaricci jacket. My eyes well up with tears. I stop on the middle of the staircase and try to control myself. Choking back sobs and rubbing my eyes furiously to stop the tears from falling I tell myself that Indiana Jones would never cry, not even if his girlfriend died. My mother, on the second floor by now, turns and looks down at me.

--Let’s go. We don’t have all day.

I nod and once again look at my brother who is laughing hysterically now as the salesman slips a handsome tweed jacket that perfectly hugs my brother’s slim adolescent frame over his shoulders. My father, oblivious to my emotional state at the moment, is heatedly discussing the pros and cons of buying an all-white sedan in the city. I take a deep breath and continue up the stairs.

To the casual observer the second floor of Silverberg’s in the same as the first. Suit jackets hang along the walls and on racks along the floor. But as we head to the back corner of the room I try to prepare myself for what is about to happen. A sweaty, fat man sits on a stool in front of a mirror, smoking a cigarette. In shirt sleeves, a half undone tie and gray slacks that more than hug his ample frame, he looks like a poor man’s Santa Clause – gone to the dark side. He looks up as he hears my mother and I approaching. He gives us a defeated smile, takes a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and wipes the sweat off his forehead. Sitting and smoking takes a lot out of a guy. He stubs his cigarette out in the ashcan next to him and then begins the arduous process of raising himself off of the stool. How the little stool is able to hold his weight is a mystery to my unscientific brain. I hear it creaking and cracking as he sways from side to side trying to find his center of gravity under all that heft. If stools could sweat this one would be drenched. This exertion only causes the salesman to drip even harder. His breathing becomes short and heavy and, in an instant, he reaches out his stubby, hairy, sweaty arm. I watch in horror as my mother unconsciously reaches her own petite arm to grab him and with a show of strength that I would have though impossible she heaves him up onto his feet. Unfortunately, neither the man nor the stool expected this to happen. The stool topples over to its side, miraculously unscathed and seeming to enjoy the rest. The fat salesman tries to find his breath and his legs while staring at my mother bewilderedly. Her show of strength is pure adrenaline. She wants this over and done with. Finally, the man pulls himself together.

--How can I help you?
--Yes, I need to get my son here a uniform for St. Theresa and the Sisters of the Stigmata.
--Right. We can do that. As he says this he begins to take the long measuring tape from around his still sweaty neck with his big, sweaty sausage link fingers. This man produces more water than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life. He starts to walk toward me, all the while huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf. The sweat is once again glistening on his forehead and I can see beads of it forming on his too hairy chest underneath his unbuttoned collar. I look around for some sort of escape route but my mother, knowing better, has miraculously appeared behind me to stop me from bolting.

--Let’s see what we have here, the salesman says as he wraps the tape around my chest. We are now eye to eye. I can smell his cigarette breath as every sharp intake of air hits my face as he kneels on the floor in front of me. The combination of his sweat and cigarettes is making me nauseous. I feel myself begin to swoon so I try to distract myself. The only place I can look though is directly at him. His skin is yellowing and long lines have formed on his face creating a map that leads to his eyes and his mouth. As his hands reach around to measure my waist I can see a look in eyes permanently trapped somewhere between insanity and indifference. Maybe they are not so far away from each other. The corners of his mouth hold crumbs of something or other in the creases and his teeth are yellowed beyond repair. In a second I flash forward thirty years and see my future right in front of me. I become this fat, unhappy man kneeling on the floor of Silverberg’s measuring some fat, ungrateful kid for his grade school uniform. All of my dreams reduced to cigarettes, pizza and chocolate and a job that pays the rent. I come back to myself and start to cry. I can’t hold the tears back this time. They burst forward like water out of a dam and I can hear my mother, as if from a long way off, asking what is wrong. How can I explain that I just saw my future and it scared the shit out of me? I try to find some words but the only sound that comes out is a choked sob. I cry even harder. The salesman drops the tape and pulls away as quickly as he can almost falling backwards as if my tears sting his bulging, polluted skin.
--I didn’t do anything, lady, he cries out desperately to my mom while struggling to get onto his feet. He stumbles and begins to tip forward in my direction. Through watery eyes I can see a look of panic cross his face and I imagine his body landing on top of me, smothering me underneath mounds of wet, smelly flesh. I cry more. Some force of God lets him recover his balance preventing his fall.

--I know you didn’t. He’s very sensitive. She says this with a certain amount of exasperation and uncertainty. Sometimes he just cries and we have no idea why. This is followed by a short, constricted laugh.

My mother revealing this particular, undefinable weakness of my character to a complete stranger sets me off again. She shoots a quick glance my way and then puts a hand on the salesman’s shoulder to put him at ease. How can she touch him? He has sweat his way clean through his shirt and I can see the hair on his back straining to break free of the light cotton, polyester white fabric.

--Now while he finds some way to control himself, I assume you got al the proper measurements so you can go pull out a few uniforms.

The salesman looks uncertainly between my mother and me. My eyes are red and swollen, snot drips out from my nose. My mother is calm and collected, clutching her purse in her right hand and smoothing the hem of her skirt with the left. The choice is obvious, he walks off with my mother. I can hear them talking as they leave the wounded animal to heal itself.

--He’s a big boy, ma’am, but it’s early enough in the season that I should still have some jackets available in—

I hold my breath and wait for the word that I’ve been dreading since the moment we got in the car to come here.

--husky sizes.

The tears come again.

When I think I have myself properly pulled together I take a deep breath and prepare to go try on my “husky” sized jacket. I turn around and find my brother standing directly in front of me, a box of Lotto’s clutched under his right arm. I try to smile casually and walk around him but he blocks my way.
--Crying again?
--No. I snivel.
--You cry too much. You cry more than any girl I’ve ever met.
I look at him as if he was the priest at Christmas Day Mass uttering the most profound guidance of God himself. I’ve never had anyone talk to me like that before in my entire life. I have spent my entire life looking for a sign, a gesture, a word from my brother, anything that would assure me we were friends. This is it.
--Yeah? I ask.
--Yeah, he says not unkindly. Stop it.
He throws his Lotto box at me.
--Dad says come down and he’ll get you a pair too. Where’s Mom?
He grabs my head and gives me a noogie while pulling me down the aisle. I laugh and begin telling him about the fat salesman and how he almost fell on top of me, leaving out the cause of the situation. We follow the smell of cigarette smoke and find my mother standing impatiently next to the salesman. She looks bored and restless and if I didn’t know any better I would have thought she wanted a cigarette herself, any sort of distraction. She darts daggers at me and if I hadn’t just had a nervous breakdown she would most definitely be putting me in my place. However when she sees my smiling, laughing face her entire body softens and she reaches out her arms encircling me in warmth and safety.
--You OK, boo? She asks sweetly.
I nod and give her a peck on the cheek.
--Can we just hurry up? I ask.
She smiles and the salesman starts lumbering toward me clutching the husky-sized jacket in his fat, sweaty hands, a newly-lit cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. My body tenses and my mother, noticing this, reaches out and pulls the jacket out of his pudgy grip.
--Here, I’ll do it.
As she slips the jacket up my arms I see my brother standing behind the fat man, puffing out his cheeks, smoking an imaginary cigarette and pretending to fall over. I bite my tongue this time trying to hold back the laughter but I can’t help it. Soon my brother and I are in hysterics and my mother, having caught sight of my brother’s antics, is soon laughing as well. The three of us are convulsing with pleasure as the fat salesman stands bewildered in the middle of the three of us with smoke pouring out of his nose.

Uniforms

I was not a pre-teen fashion plate.

The end of summer brought on yet another sick feeling in my stomach because it meant back-to-school shopping. I went to a co-ed Catholic school called St. Theresa and the Sisters of Perpetual Chastity (or something like that). It sounds more like an eighties punk rock band than a fine religious learning environment. Actually, it was neither.

We were all required to wear uniforms. The girls wore maroon jumpers with white button down, sailor-collared shirts underneath, maroon knee socks and sensibly unfashionable black loafers. You could tell how old and/or slutty a girl was by how far above her knee she dared to put the hem of her jumper. Knee high was regulation. The school emblem, which was St. Theresa standing in front of a bleeding heart, was sewn securely over the left breast – or what would one day be a breast, again depending on the girl. No piercings, jewelry or accessories of any kind were allowed, not even watches.

The boys’ uniforms were similar in tastelessness and design: gray wool slacks, a maroon blazer (with emblem sewn over our heart), a black or maroon tie of regulated length and width, sensible black loafers and black socks. We were like the children of the damned only less fashionable and Arian looking. Our Italian and Irish blood pumped feverishly through our growing bodies with steely determination. Only there was no outlet. However, our fiery temperaments, deeply ingrained in our genes, meant we could kick the shit out of those blue-eyed, blonde haired freaks. Well, I couldn’t but most of the girls in my class could have.

There were only one or two stored in the city that catered to the uniforms of the Catholic schools. And there was only one where I, in particular, could shop. It was called Silverberg’s Men’s Clothing and Apparel: All Tailoring Done on Premise. I thought that was the full name, and it still sends a shiver down my spine to hear it. Silverberg’s was a huge red brick building that stood menacingly in the middle of a city block. The mannequins in the windows sported all the latest fashions from parochial schools around the city, as well as other the more popular look sweeping my neighborhood at the time: Z. Cavaricci. Anybody who was Anybody had Z. Cavarricci pants, jeans, shirts, whatever. They were a more stylish version of MC Hammer’s parachute pants. High-waisted, with all different kinds of buckles, snaps and zippers in that particular area, you often needed to give yourself an extra half an hour to get ready to go out to make sure everything was buckled, snapped and zipped correctly. (I remember how my mother used to go crazy doing the laundry having to check every zip-up pocket in the pants to make sure there was no loose change or anything left about.) These pants, Cavaricci’s came in pleated or un-pleated slacks and jeans, were constructed so to hug the waist, then flair out at the hips and thighs, eventually tapering down in a gentle slope to the ankle. If you were built like me, you looked rather like a pear.

The other fashion craze sweeping my neighborhood at the time, and available at Silverberg’s, was Lotto sneakers. Lotto was the first company to take full advantage of the velcro fad. Not only did their sneakers velcro open and closed, no, they also had a Lotto symbol on the side (which looked very similar to the number sign) which would velcro on and off. The cool thing about this was that when you bought a pair of these Lotto’s you also received extra, different colored Lotto side velcro patches. You could therefore match almost every outfit in your limited pre-teen/teenage wardrobe. If you were “funky” you could even mix and match. It really did not get cooler than that. People were known to change the colors of their Lotto’s ten times a day. The epitome of cool meant walking down the street in your Z. Cavaricci jeans with your new Lotto sneakers.

My trips to Silverberg’s in late August never involved buying Lotto’s or Cavaricci’s. And as I stood looking longingly at the fierce mannequins in the window my stomach was raging and churning inside of me because I knew what was in store. My mother would grab my hand and pull me through the front doors all of a sudden the picture of an efficient, determined modern woman. She was all business in these situations perhaps because she disliked them almost as much as me. Once inside the store my heart would sink even lower. It never changed. The smell of moth balls and sweat hung in the air. Although sleekly redesigned sometime in the seventies Silverberg’s still felt like it belonged to another time. Amber light was hidden somewhere in the ceilings and cast ghostly shadows against the red brick walls. The fluorescent lights in the center of the room never seemed to be working all at once. The first floor was one huge room filled with suits, jackets and slacks of all colors and sizes. These garments hung along the walls as well as on standing racks which formed aisles throughout the floor. At any other time I would have been running and diving through these racks pretending I was Indiana Jones being chased by evil Nazis trying to take the ark of the covenant away from me. Not today.

A tall, slim man stylishly dressed in a timeless gray suit comes over to help us. His slicked back hair does not conceal the fact that he is prematurely gray and balding. My mother immediately steps up to greet him.

--Hello. We need a few things: a suit jacket, a few ties and some dress socks for my older boy. She indicates my brother. And for my other son—where did he go?

I was shivering and sweating not two feet away trying to hide behind a grossly, unhuman looking mannequin and wishing I could disappear. If I were closer to the wall I would try and pull out each brick, one at a time, looking for a secret door that would take me out of there into the sewers where I would battle through puddles of slime and rats until I came up in some distant foreign land. Indiana Jones would have found one. Or he would have used his whip to knock the mannequins over thus barring the path of attacking salesmen, their greasy hair falling in their face. Knocking over racks of suits to further impede their progress he would reach the front doors of the store, a sly smile forming on his face. Hitting the street he would whirl around, pull out his gun and shoot the neon sign screaming Silverberg’s that hung over the entryway. It would fall just in time to pin the suits underneath its weight, letting off sparks that would eventually cause the entire building to burn down.

I could only shiver, sweat and hide.

My mother, without even looking, reaches out her arm and found my shoulder, pulling me out from behind the mannequin. She smiles politely through gritted teeth and a tense jaw at the salesman.
--My other son will need to go…upstairs.
The salesman looks me up and down, nods and smiles knowingly at my mother.
--I understand.

Yeah, I understand too.

Master Class

In the winter of 1997 I was preparing to graduate NYU.  In order to receive my diploma in May I needed to complete an oral exam/thesis with a panel of faculty from the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies.

The Gallatin School allows its students to take classes in almost all of the other divisions and branches of NYU.  The final oral exam is one in which you present a thesis topic and then defend it with a series of books you've read throughout your time in the program.  I was fascinated by this final endeavor and approached it with great relish.  I loved to read and so I assumed it would be an easy task to pick 20 or so titles to defend my thesis.  The problem was, what was my thesis?

After three and a half years at NYU I felt as if I was just starting to get on my feet.  I had only recently discovered the art of directing and knew that this was something I was good at and wanted to do for the rest of my life.  Well, I knew I was good at it.  Directing encompassed all of my interpretative and analytic skills while allowing me creative freedom.  As an actor, I had always been outside of myself, judging my performance but never really living it.  As a director, this Brechtian remove proved to be an advantage!

But I was about to graduate and what was I going to do with this new found knowledge...skill... art?

Luckily, I happened upon the Broadway production of Master Class, written by Terrence McNally, directed by Leonard Foglia and starring Patti LuPone.  I knew nothing about opera at the time.  (My knowledge of the art is still horribly lacking).  I knew little of McNally, aside from having seen "Love! Valour! Compassion!" with my parents.  But I knew all about La LuPone.  I had seen her in "Anything Goes".  I had watched every episode of "Life Goes On" and I had every beat of "Evita" memorized.  So I couldn't miss her return to Broadway as Maria Callas -- whomever that was.

The production blew me away.  Not just because of the script, or the direction, or LuPone.  No, it was the combination of the ingredients speaking to me at that time, in that place, as an artist. Yes, it was about Maria Callas but more than that it was about pursuing a life in the theatre.  In the arts.  It was speaking to me.  "Master Class" had given me a voice.

"You must know what you want to do in life, you must decide.  For we cannot do everything."

I memorized and presented that entire final monologue at my oral presentation.  I can remember very little of it now.  But it's true.  You must know.  You must decide.  I had to hold on to that at the time.  I still hold on to it now but perhaps too closely.  Or maybe it's just that what I thought I knew I wanted to do isn't really what I should be doing.  You know?  Good.  Cause I sure as hell don't.  But I'm figuring it out.

Forever ingrained in my mind is the image of Patti LuPone as Maria Callas standing center stage, reliving one of Callas' triumphs at La Scala.  The harsh Juilliard classroom walls slowly began to melt away into the box seats of La Scala.  Slowly the music rose as LuPone explained each and every trill, every moment of that evening.  The other actors on stage disappeared and the lights got lower, more intense.  The music continued to rise as did LuPone's voice.  It was sheer ecstasy.  A perfect marriage of performer, part and directing.  The lights came up and I was in tears.  I had found my voice.

Unfortunately, I seem to have dropped that voice somewhere on this crowded island.  If you find it huddled in a corner or begging for change on the subway do me a favor and return it.

Hello, Pippin!

So the other night I pulled out my dvd of "Pippin."  About once a year I feel the need to commune with the man looking for some sort of direction in his life.  The Loved One wasn't home when I started watching it and, when he did arrive, looked at me like I had four heads for watching it.  That's ok.  I love it.  He loves Madonna.

I was first introduced to "Pippin" by my high school AP English teacher in junior year.  I was home over some break with chicken pox.  The first few marks started to make an appearance and I wasn't feeling well.  I pointed them out to my mom who immediately knew what they were but my dad, convinced I was faking, said they were pimples.  Let it be known, that I was a fan of playing sick for years because I didn't like school all that much -- except for English class and play practice (which we adults now call "rehearsal").  I especially didn't like school if I hadn't translated our daily 25 lines of Virgil's Aeneid or The Frogs by whatever Greek guythat was (brek-ek-ek-ek-koax koax) and later turned into an awfully dull Stephen Sondheim musical at Lincoln Center.

The chicken pox came at a most unfortunate time because I was about to start practice for our spring production of "Hello, Dolly!"  Yes, even though I went to an all boy's private high school the genius behind our drama club decided to do a show in which a female was the lead.  I had fought hard for the role of Vandergelder.  Unfortunately, although I tipped the scale at a whopping 200lbs, I had a baby face and a nice temper.  I had yet to touch the anger dwelling too-deep under the surface.   So I was cast in the ensemble and as understudy to Ambrose Kemper, the painter.  I was understudy because the boy playing the role (Skippy Something-or-other) was on a family vacation for break and I was to fill in during that time.  Glamorous.  Meanwhile my best friend, as always, was cast in the lead.

So I'm at home covered in pox and missing my one big chance to prove how good I am.  High school teacher recommends I watch "Pippin", among many other things.  So I do.  And I fall in love.  Having seen the Debbie Allen revival of "Sweet Charity" this is not my first introduction to Bob Fosse's work.  But it's the first time I get it.  My hormones were going crazy and the pure sexuality of the production was eye-opening.  And I felt an immediate connection to the boy who didn't know where to find a home.  It didn't hurt that I also had a crush on William Katt who ran around half-naked most of the time.  So I sat on the couch watching the video over and over again.  When it wasn't playing I was wondering what kind of fun my friends were having at practice and what I was missing.  Would I ever be able to catch up and fit in?  What if the choreography for "It Takes a Woman" was especially complicated?  These thoughts kept me up at night.

Finally, after about two weeks, I was well-enough to return.  And guess what?  I was bumped up to PLAYING the role of Ambrose Kemper.  Me and Tommy Tune, twins.  Yes, it seems that Skippy's lack of dedication to the Cape and Sword was too trying on our director and he needed someone more dependable.  Well, roles have been won on much less.  And now, Fosse choreography duly memorized, I was certain I would be an asset to this production.

I was.  I was fantastic.  And I got to wear a pink suit.  Because Ambrose was an artist.

New Year/New You

New who?  New me.

Well, it's not quite that simple.

I haven't been writing much lately because I haven't been working and that's really the ideal place for me to write.  I find when I'm home I'm so busy doing things I enjoy that the need to write isn't quite so strong.  I should probably find that problematic.  However, truth to tell, there are a thousand things for me to accomplish on a daily basis around the house and pretty much nothing to accomplish at work.  Which, yes, is totally frustrating.

The holidays are officially over and we had a swell New Year's Eve party with lots of friends and even more booze.

On Friday night Jan. 2nd, after therapy (and that was fun after almost 2 weeks away, let me tell you) The Loved One and I went to see Liza's at the Palace.  This trip was two-fold: one, The Loved One asked and two: my friend, Jim Caruso, was in it.  I know Jim from year's ago.  I was working on Cabaret as the Associate Director and he was good friends with Joely Fisher who I had put into the show on tour.  Jim, Fish and I used to hang out and cause trouble quite a bit.  And now here he was making his Bway debut!  He is an old friend of Liza's and runs a weekly show here in NYC called JIm Caruso's Cast Party, to which -admittedly - I have never been.  But I'd go see him on Bway!

I saw Liza's last show at the Palace a few years ago, Minnelli on Minnelli.  It was...fine.  Liza wasn't in the greatest shape and the choreography mostly consisted of chorus boys rolling her around on a wheeled-chair most of the time.  The stories were fun but the songs, dancing and patter were lackluster.  So I wasn't chomping at the bit to see her again.

Things started out very badly.  In an effort to preserve funds in this, our great depression, I purchased cheap seats on-line.  Cheap being the last row of the mezzanine and still too expensive.  Between the balcony overhang and the rustling of patrons and the talking of ushers directly behind us, we could hardly hear the show.  Poor Loved One had some tall guy stationed in front of him, leaning forward, with his arms perched on his knees the better to hold his opera glasses with.  Annoying.  During the first act, Liza looked amazing but we had a hard time hearing her, especially during any uptempo number.  The director in me was wishing for a through-line in regards to the storytelling.  But there wasn't one.  It seemed like, "I wanna sing this song here..."  So she did.  A funny moment occurred when she said to the audience, "Remember how I used to sit in the second act?"  People laughed.  She walked stage left to the proscenium and pulled out a director's chair, "Well now I sit here."  She sat and gave us a lovely rendition of "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret.  It was the first point in the evening where I understood every word and she sounded incredible.  The second time was the act closing: "Cabaret."

The lights came up.  I was unimpressed.  And where in the hell was Jim?  The lady next to me turned and said, "Hello, stranger.  I don't know you but can you tell me why that last number was the first I understood?"  I shrugged my shoulders helplessly.  Then I turned to The Loved One and said, "Let's move down some," as there were empty seats scattered around the sides of the mezz.  So we did.

The second act started and it was a totally different show!  Liza opened with "And the World Goes Round" making me think she is perhaps the premier interpreter of Kander and Ebb.  And then she got to the meat of the show, a reinterpretation of her godmother's, Kay Thompson, act.  And there, finally, was Jim!

Our seats were now in the seventh row of the mezz.  Liza was closer.  The sound was better.  There was no fidgeting among audience members, no opera glass users, no obstructions.  And Liza looked and sounded amazing!  It was a completely different show.  Also, Liza seemed to be having more fun.  In essence, the problem with the first act is there is no focus.  The second act springs to life because there's a story to tell and people to help Liza tell it.  It made me wish the first act was about her career or the songs that influenced her growing up or something...

We left elated and it was well worth the discounted ticket price.  And now, along with nine other shows, Liza closed yesterday.  More to go as the month goes on.  I keep wondering how my job is not at risk.  And if it is, the sooner let go, the better.

Saturday we saw Revolutionary Road.  I was expecting a movie as painful and devastating as Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage but it wasn't quite there.  DiCaprio surprised me.  Winslet is always amazing to watch but I was unsure of what she was doing at times here.  Mendes did a nice job and I wonder what his obsession with American suburbia is about.

I did my best to stay off the island during my time off from work and only came in on Friday for therapy and Liza.  Being back today is not a welcome experience.  I miss the warmth and safety of our little, cottage-like abode and the dog sitting next to me on the couch as we while away the hours in cooking, cleaning, reading, movies, whatever.