Angel Visitation Number One (revised)

This story was originally posted on 24 October 2011 and has been re-worked and edited below in preparation for a follow-up story. The Corn Stand Caper should be ready in the next few days. Reading this will be beneficial to the continuity.

There have been three separate times when angels interceded in a particularly dark point in my life. Before leading you to believe that I am referring to wing-ed creatures of the cherubim or seraphim variety, I am speaking of a flesh and blood real person who happened into my world when I was in need, and disappeared after a brief time in a mysterious sort of way. Their visit altered my life’s course dramatically. There was nothing ethereal about any one of them. In truth they were acutely human, but there was a mystical aura about each one that still causes a sense of wonderment to this day.

My first angel came to me my sophomore year of high school. I grew up in West Buttfok, Ohio and had the pleasure to attend West B. Elementary School, where I enjoyed learning with some of the finest teachers I have ever known. I loved school and adored learning. I would cry on the final day of class and rue summer vacations, ticking off the calendar until Labor Day when fun would return to my life. All that changed with junior high and adolescence. Suddenly athletics and hoodlums were the focus of the curriculum. Neither my father nor my older brother ever taught me even the basics of any sport. This did not make for popularity with the other boys as I attempted to socialize with my junior high peers. If you could not throw a football or successfully make a basket, you were a hopeless outcast, destined for failure at West Buttfok. The only option remaining was to become one of the bad boys, who sometimes garnered more attention and esteem than even the captain of the football team. They were actually looked upon as heroes by a large portion of the student population of greasers, the most popular group in our school. I knew my parents would never allow me to be bad, so a life of crime was something I’d never pull off.

After serving a dismal two-year stint in junior high, I accepted the fact that high school could only be worse. I became what I later diagnosed as severely depressed. My older brother had joined the Air Force and moved away. The only semi-bright spot in my life was that I inherited his room. It occupied the entire finished attic above our tiny, two-bedroom 1950s bungalow. I would retreat to my garret space the minute I left that malignant academy and spend time writing in journals (still extant), reading Keats and Shelley and consciously attempting to “wish” my parents dead. In elementary school I had dreamed of going to college and becoming a teacher. No one in my family ever went beyond high school. My father had only finished the eighth grade. Now, in my great funk, I had no desire to be anything. I had no interest in the future – my own or the planet’s for that matter. The prospect of four more years of school and a life in West Buttfok was enough to make me want to kill myself. Luckily I was too despondent to bother going through with it.

I got this truly uninspired English teacher my freshman year and so for the first time, even English class was a hateful experience. How much further could my life go down the toilet, I wondered? Freshman year came and went and in my numbed state I remember little to nothing about it. Tenth grade arrived and I was placed in the Honors English section. There was a new teacher to the school system. We’ll call him Mr. Allen. He was young, came from a tiny town in southern Ohio, and had been teaching only a few years. He seemed like an odd duck, but thankfully did not fit in with the rest of our vacuous faculty. If you took him apart feature-by-feature he was not remarkable, but there was an intriguing something there that made me sit up and feel an attraction I’d never known before.

We began the year reading ROMEO AND JULIET and WEST SIDE STORY in tandem. We learned early on that his degree was in theatre and he would be taking over the school drama club. Prior to Mr. Allen, plays were directed by everything from pregnant Phys.Ed. teachers to Home Ec. flunkies, but never anyone who knew anything about the drama. They chose things like TIME OUT FOR GINGER or those awful ‘high school plays’ written “for a cast of thirty or more between the ages of 12- 16″. I had never seen any great drama, yet I knew about Broadway and that there was a world of professional theatre out there somewhere east of our fetid little town. I became mesmerized by this energetic teacher. He tended to talk down to us those first weeks, feigning shock we had never read O’Neill, Williams, Miller nor ever seen any professional theatre. His quasi-condescending attitude turned many of the students against him. They resented being treated as uninformed and unworldly, but it worked in the opposite way for me.

He would mention a play or an author, and I was at the Cleveland Public Library that following Saturday morning, taking home volumes to pour over. The following Monday I was ready to use my new-found wealth of literary wisdom, and instead he would name-drop another author or cite a different play. And in the frustration to prepare for his classes, an incredible new world of literature was being opened to me. We were all starving, and I was one of the few being nourished by his teaching method. Years later I realized he was conducting ours class like a college course, and these West Buttfokians had no idea how lucky we were to experience real education. It was something that never existed before in our provincial school system.

He appealed to me in a way I had no words for. He was able to tap into a natural curiosity that made me want to know about those things I should have been interested in. I didn’t realize that much of what I was doing to keep up with his class, I was doing to please him, much the way you strive to gain the attention and favor of someone you are falling in love with. A few of us in class were now Mr. Allen fans and he’d already begun his silent campaign to draft us, one by one. We were tapped to volunteer doing the ugly girl jobs of theatre production: set building, publicity, tickets sales and the like. He gave the roles in his first production to mostly juniors and seniors, which was how it had always been done before.

By coming together, all of us seeking his attention formed what I later referred to as “Allen’s Misfits”. He had gathered all the psychologically wounded and “ The Group” was formed, two girls and three guys: Deb Mae, Billy, Selma, Eddie and me. Even though he was newly married with a young baby, we were the ones he took out on weekends. We went to plays at The Cleveland Playhouse, college productions all over northeastern Ohio, and afterwards to restaurants where we dissected what we had seen, discussed what life meant, and what we planned to do when we got the hell out of West Buttfok. We none of us dated, because we were all of us dating Mr. Allen and I think he knew that we’d fallen in love with him, long before any in The Group had an inkling. Suddenly my life - all our lives - had meaning and there was purpose to the Universe. It was uncanny the mark his influence had made on his collection of faithful followers.

While he finished his Masters’ Thesis the following summer, his young wife directed a summer children’s theatre program where we all got a chance to act ourselves. We were bubbling with the prospects of our junior year when we would be ready to audition for some real theatre. We were doing Moliere’s TARTUFFE and ANASTASIA. I knew neither play, but I just assumed, because he thought so much of me, of course I would get good roles, and he did not disappoint. I got the title role of Tartuffe, and the Yul Brenner role in Anastasia, where I got to smoke real cigarettes on stage. How cool was that, and how cool was I? No more than a year before, each of us had been looked down upon as unimportant, out-of-it geeks, and we were now just about as glamorous as you could get in West B. – that is, in our cliquish estimation. We were all planning on what colleges we would attend and who would get out of Ohio first. Mr. Allen was enjoying it too, because as much good as he had done for each of us as individuals, he needed our unbridled adulation in order to be satisfied himself. There are negative effects to these symbiotic student/teacher relationships as well.

The summer before our senior year, one weekend in late June, he took us out because he had something important to ask us. It was wonderful news for him. He’d been offered a teaching position, creating a drama department in a small college in southern Ohio. The contract was to begin that fall. He actually asked if we wanted him to turn it down so that he could remain with us for our senior year. We already had a season planned. I remember feeling like a door had been slammed shut on my future. Deb Mae and Selma sat there bawling uncontrollably. No matter how much it would hurt, we knew we could not hold him back from this opportunity because of our selfishness. We told him we would be disappointed if he didn’t take the job. The Group would go on without him somehow. It was a sad, sad end to our summer. We learned they’d hired a new drama teacher who was from California, but we’d still have each other to get by, regardless of this new outsider.

Mr. Allen came back for our first show, which meant the world to us. We were doing THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, just like he’d planned for us. I was playing Mr. Frank. He saw the show opening night, and came to say goodbye before the matinée the next afternoon. I remember him coming into the boy’s dressing room. I wanted to cry. It was heartbreaking and for some reason it seemed harder to say goodbye than it had been the first time. I hoped to be able to speak with him privately, to thank him for all he’d done for me. I watched him in the mirror as he talked back to my reflection, avoiding a face to face. It was probably easier that way. I can’t remember what was said. I turned to see him walk out the door and got this feeling in my gut that I would never see him again.

And I didn’t. None of us did. Less than two months later, his wife called Selma. He’d had a heart attack, suddenly, a massive one. He died instantly. He was gone at age 28. All of us were devastated. We drove to the funeral that weekend, but it was still impossible to comprehend. The Group stood together, literally holding one another up, feeling as though something incomprehensibly enormous was missing. We came back to West Buttfok in a near silent automobile. But yes, somehow we still managed to have a great time our last year together. We went out in our Group as we always had before . We did some good theatre, despite the loony woman who attempted to replace him. We dedicated our last production together to Mr. Allen’s memory. His death forced us to mature individually and as The Group, but it never was quite the same. We missed him, the man who found five outcasts and made them each into something wonderful through the magic of theatre.

My Big Break Into Show Biz

30/06/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in NYC 1972-1983 Tags: audition, bruised ego, dinner theatre, gay actor, Lovers and Other Strangers, Mount Airy Lodge, Mount Pocono PA, New York City 1970s, theatre 2 Comments

At the end of my last semester at University, a good friend gave me a Saint Genesius medal as a bon voyage gift, telling me the story of the ancient Roman actor turned patron saint of theatre. It was a neat little treasure and although a lapsed Catholic, I nevertheless had great faith in charms and trinkets, trusting anything might help launch my acting career. I wore it around my neck to every audition I went to my first few months in NYC. No luck – it wasn’t even bringing me call-backs. Deciding it might heighten the powers, I tucked it chain and all into my shirt pocket, closer to my heart, but this brought no detectable changes. Every several weeks I relocated him: right front pants pocket, left back pocket and so on and so forth. Still at each audition I was just another face, a dark brown, curly-haired, big nosed “18 to 25-year-old” skinny guy who showed up, as did dozens of a remarkably similar description for the same ONE role. I didn’t seem to elicit anyone’s interest - could not stand out from the crowd.

I had auditioned for what seemed like every non-union dinner theatre from New Jersey to Kansas. I sang out brightly when it was a musical, or acted (quite possibly over-acted) scenes from the many popular contemporary comedies which were the typical fare of this popular American theatre genre. To paraphrase a dear friend who made a lucrative living during these times, dinner theatre was most often a bad smorgasboard interrupted by two hours of mediocre entertainment where the rolling in of the dessert cart got more applause than the curtain call. I wanted at least a chance to judge for myself, please Saint Genesius.

Somewhere around month five or six in my life in The City, I spotted an ad in Backstage for an audition for replacements in a production of “Lovers and Other Strangers” at Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos, the honeymoon haven. I believe it was for ten or twelve weeks and it alternated with another production of a similar comedy during each week. Casting would be by a guy with a name like Jerry Silver or something, a supposed comedian who I don’t think anyone but a Borscht Belt aficionado might possibly have ever heard of. I reminded myself that this time could be the time and I remember struggling with leaving my questionably not-so-good-luck medal home, in the event it might be working against me. As I put my key in the door to lock the apartment, an uncomfortable sensation went down my spine. I shook off the feeling and ran back in to grab Saint Genesius. I closed my left fist around him, where he stayed the entire trip uptown, opening my hand periodically to focus on his martyred face. Once I entered the rehearsal studio, handed in my picture and resume and got an audition form to fill out, I had to put him somewhere, so I stuffed him into my sock against my ankle where he’d never been before.

In from the hallway bounded Jerry Silver or Something, a small, slight man most probably mid-forties, radically thinning hair brushed back in the hopes of still being considered a pompadour and what was there a noncommittal grey. His face was unmemorable even then. He acted hyper, but was using the energy in hopes of coming off zany and effusive and funny. He was none of these things. What he was, was the man with the jobs, which all of us actors instantly understood and so politely we chuckled at his sham. He was dressed in a beige or brown pure polyester blazer with some uncoordinating colored trousers and a very noteworthy paisley print shirt. The entire ensemble looked as though it had been slept in numerous nights. For certain he resembled none of the directors I had become used to seeing in my brief audition experience. Typically they were hip looking, or had some wacky ‘theatrical flair’. This guy could well have been mistaken for a Soviet refugee.

He explained the show had been up and running for several weeks, but some actors were leaving for other commitments. They were looking for one guy in his early twenties and two women. The resort was also putting together a new brochure and they would be using the younger actors to model as honeymoon couples, paying a separate per diem modeling fee. Surveying my competition, there were no Robert Redfords, thus I felt I stood as good a chance as any of them. There were many more women than men, so each of the guys got to read several times before being given the “thank-you-you’ll-be-hearing-from-us-soon” spiel. By the end of the afternoon it got down to about a dozen women and five or six guys. He asked that we come back the following afternoon. I promised myself to not say a word to anyone or get my hopes up the least little bit, yet my heart was doing a little song and dance inside about what a great job I must have just done.

I told only my roommate about the call back, though wrestled with calling my parents in Cleveland. If I did call and then wasn’t cast, it would have stung even the harder. I longed however, to make my theatrical un-career seem more plausible for them. The next morning seemed to take an eternity, but as it turned out, I needed the time to put together the best possible wardrobe to make myself look believable as a “straight” newlywed. Lines in a script I knew how to interpret, but this honeymoon brochure thing had me a bit concerned. Whatever I ended up wearing, it also included Genesius tucked back into my sock, because he truly must have possessed powerful magic to get me this far.

Waiting for Jerry Silver or Something at the studio, I recall chatting with a couple of the actor wannabees outside in the hall. They were questioning his competency. No one had ever heard of him and the image he projected, or lack thereof, was also unsettling to say the least. We all came to the same conclusion, that being, a job is a job and ten or twelve weeks is hardly a lifetime. He arrived manic and as disheveled as the day before – same jacket and pants, different ugly shirt. We read scenes, changing partners as he carried on his tired banter and delivered new, bad one-liners. He temporarily excused the women and asked that the guys remain in the room.

He announced he wanted each of us to tell him a joke before we left. We looked at one another, thinking this was the joke. It was absurd; we weren’t stand-up comics. My thoughts raced when I realized the only jokes I knew were filthy and most of them trashy gay ones. He called on each of us like an elementary school teacher. No one’s joke nor their delivery was terribly funny and each was excused once he’d finished. It left me the last man in the room. “You…..are a funny guy”, he delivered at me like Jackie Mason. “I could tell the minute I saw you. Come on”, he beckoned curling his fingers towards his face, “make me laugh”. I had decided on doing a joke an uncle used to tell when I was a kid. Now my uncle was not a terribly funny guy, but he could make the entire family roar whenever he told the joke about “this guy who saves up his money and buys a custom-made suit”. It’s an oldie that requires the teller to stand and do a lot of physical, body-posturing, but I was desperate and had pulled it out of my ass at the eleventh hour. Jerry Silver or Something went hysterical, just like the first time my eight-year-old-self had when Uncle Mike first performed it.

“You could be a tummeler!” he announced. “A what?”, I questioned, not knowing if that was a word or perhaps just a crude noise emanating from somewhere in his gut. A tummeler, he went on to explain, is a funny guy who works the hotel lobby or the dining room before the show, warming up the audience and creating interest to sell tickets. “You…are a natural. You would be bee-oo-ti-ful” he added, obviously trying to sell me on his idea. He told me there was no role for me in the other production, so this would justify my hiring for the people paying the bills back at the resort. I had the role in “Lovers and Other Strangers”, the modeling brochure gig and the tummeler job – $175 a week, room and dinner nightly. It happened just like that. I was beyond elation; I floated out the door. Saint Genesius, having worked his way down my ankle, now rested between my heel and my sock. I tromped on him with every other joyous step I took to the subway home.

Within one hour’s time I told: my roommate, my downstairs neighbor, the guy at the deli, my super’s wife and my handful of New York friends. I called my parents that night, telling them I was off to Mount Pocono, PA in less than two days. My mother didn’t want to talk too long, not because I was calling collect, but because she needed to start dialing the rest of the family in Cleveland. It was as though I’d won the Nobel Prize, only better. There was now a professional actor in the family. I had to take the bus Sunday evening to be there bright and early Monday morning to meet the man who signed the checks and the rest of the cast to start rehearsals. I would be on stage the following weekend. To this day, I can still summon a flavor of the euphoria and excitement I experienced by landing this job.

All the way to the Poconos I tried to envision what this honeymoon lodge might look like. I had never stayed anywhere except an economy hotel in Manhattan (twice) and a few cheap roadside motels in Ohio and surrounding states as a kid with my family. I didn’t expect Vegas style splendor, but I decided I would settle for no less than semi-posh. A banged up van was waiting to take me to the resort when I pulled into town that night. I remained positive during the short drive to the place. In the dark, lighted up in the distance through the trees, it looked quite promising. It was overdone for sure but thankfully not a run down dump. Once inside the lobby and walking to the front desk, I got a better sense of the flavor. It was very sixties – lots of dark, faux wood paneling and fake beams with an abundance of glittery lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling and mounted to the walls. I was shown my room and told I should meet the other “entertainers” in the dining hall for breakfast the next morning. Both the public areas and my room had that lingering heavy odor of stale cigarette smoke and mustiness that simply opening windows would never clear away. The place did not live up to its name; Mount AIRY it was not.

It was easy to spot my fellow actors at breakfast. Taking-over one end of the dining room and crowded around two tables, a cloud of chain smoke hovering over both, they were the ones looking half asleep and slightly hung-over. As I introduced myself to the group, they sat me down and immediately began to fill my ears with advice and complaints from all directions:

“Don’t sign anything. This gig is the pits.”

“Our checks are never on time and when they are they’re post-dated.”

“The resort hates the shows and is trying to get rid of all of us!”

The best came from this silky, long-haired beauty – sultry, tall and lean: “Get your ass back on the same bus that brought you here and go back to NYC where it’s safe!” And at that moment Jerry Silver or Something magically appeared and asked me to follow him to the office of the Big Boss. I wanted to believe the actors because they had no reason to be anything but truthful with me, but I needed this job to fulfill my dream of so many year’s waiting. Nervously following him down the dark hallway I called him Mr. Silver or Something and warmly he asked me to just call him ‘Jer’.

We entered a tiny hole-in-the-wall office, windowless and very dark, barely wide enough to accommodate a large wooden desk, laden with piles of receipts, bills and invoices. The figure who sat behind it, hunched over this mess of papers was so acutely round-shouldered his face could not be seen. “Close the door”, he barked at us. “I wanted you to meet our tummeler”, Jer cheerily announced. He also explained I was replacing actor X in the first show and would probably work well in the skiing shots for the brochure. At this suggestion, the Big Boss jerked his neck to twist his head up and I was able to this time glimpse just a portion of his face. He was reminiscent of an illustration from WIND IN THE WILLOWS or Lewis Carroll – a shrew-like, bespectacled animal dressed in men’s clothing. Leering at me for only a millisecond, he dropped his head back down onto his work. “He’s wrong”, he growled and my stomach knotted in disbelief. “But he’s a funny, funny guy”, Jer began in my defense, “and he’s gonna’ work really well in the scenes with …”. Cutting him off mid sentence Big Boss definitively repeated “He’s wrong”, never shifting focus from the papers before him.

Once again Jer began justifying why I was such a good choice, however Big Boss continued working, now as though neither of us were even in the room. I was growing uncomfortable both with my situation and the fact I was being discussed in the third person as though I were either absent or invisible. “Sir”, I entered into the fray, “can you tell me why I’m wrong?”. He snapped his head up abruptly and glared at me as best he could with his tiny, close-set eyes. “Yer’ ugly”, he stated with neither venom nor hostility, but rather as one might state any great truth such as the earth is round or fire is hot. My question had been answered and I had been dismissed with two words. Worse than that, as quickly as Jerry Silver or Something had handed it to me, Big Boss had taken away my job and killed my dream.

I remember so much of my distant past, and yet the bus ride back to Manhattan that same afternoon is a total memory void. I can only guess it was tearful and long and lonely and all those things that were the antithesis of what the ride to Mount Pocono had been the day before. I do remember being back in Manhattan, embarrassed to face the people who had cheered me on only days before. And totally letting down my family and the countless people wonderful motor-mouthed Mom had bragged to in Cleveland – people I didn’t even know. Once back among the living and facing the reality of what had all gone down, there were times I blamed Jerry Silver or Something and other times I cursed Genesius and the entire Catholic Church. The worst was the sting of that gnarled little man’s succinct diagnosis, “Yer’ ugly”, which had fractured an already tenuous ego. Here was truly one of the ugliest creatures, both inside and out, telling me it had nothing to do with talent, or timing or anything I could have changed, but simply how I was perceived. In time I went to plenty other auditions. He hadn’t dampened my desire. Still I carried his words with me as baggage for years after.

Elizabeth, May 4, 1970 and me

07/05/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in College 1968-1972 Tags: 1970, Cambodia, draft lottery, first time, Kent State, May 4, parents, ROTC, Tartuffe, The Cellar Theatre, theatre, Vietnam 4 Comments

Unless it’s a birthday or an important anniversary of some sort, May 4th probably comes and goes like any other day in your life, but for anyone who went to my University, it is our Pearl Harbor. I attended Kent State University, and in my sophomore year 1970, my fellow students and I found ourselves thrust into the pages of history in a matter of a few days and thirteen seconds of gunfire. Before May 4th, if we traveled anywhere outside of the Cleveland/Akron area and people asked where we went to college and we responded “Kent State”, most often they would question: “Penn State?”. And after May 4th, the question became: “Really? Were you there then?”. It happened late in the school year, when the long Northeastern Ohio winter was finally gone and spring was crawling towards summer. It became a horrific ending to what had been an incredibly wonderful and magical year in my life at age twenty.

In fall of 1969 the school year began with Nixon’s Draft Lottery, the only big contest I’ve ever won. I drew number 33, and my draft board would be calling up thirty numbers per month, beginning the following January. Even though I had a deferment, this roulette game did not sit well with any of us boys of draftable age. War was hanging heavily all around us and death counts of soldiers and innocents were being tallied with the same nonchalance that we watch gasoline prices escalate today. Being born so soon after the end of WW II, my childhood was peppered with pictures about trench and jungle warfare. The thought of reliving it firsthand had frightened me more than my scariest horror movie nightmare. The daily footage from Vietnam, played out each night on our TV sets in living color, only fed my fears and fanned the flames for any reasonably intelligent person to see how wrong any war was, let alone this senseless one. Despite all this, I still was not terribly politically engaged at this point in my life.

One year of dormitory life had been way more than enough for me. This year I was living in a brand new apartment complex called College Towers, two seven-story buildings just off campus with in ground pools and full gyms, wall-to-wall carpeting and air conditioning, yet close enough to walk to campus. I was sharing a one bedroom with an old friend from West Buttfok High School. In my sophomore year of college I was living with more comforts than at my parents’ house. I even got a cat named Sarah to satisfy my passion for pets and make it feel more like home. I had found a comfortable niche in the theatre department, getting roles in some good productions and assembling a circle of friends that I enjoyed spending time with. In the middle of fall term I began seeing Elizabeth, the first and only woman in my life and I fell in love with her and fell in love even harder with love itself.

Elizabeth was jokingly the “older woman”, one year my senior. She sang like an angel – a lovely soprano voice and would often burst into song for no apparent reason, like an unbelievable character in a musical comedy. She was playfully witty and had perfect comic timing both onstage and off. Her naturally blonde hair that she wore in a short-cropped pageboy, she coaxed a few shades lighter. Pink and pretty with big, round, blue eyes, her lips were almost always either parted in a toothy smile or opened to let out a hearty, giggly laugh that was truly infectious. She was not very tall, but womanly round and was self-described as rubenesque. Without being corny, I would describe Elizabeth as a doll.

We went from seeing each other to being with each other nearly 24/7 in a matter of weeks. We were rarely apart. She had an apartment literally across the road from mine in an older complex with two roommates, so we spent nights after rehearsals (we were both always either in rehearsal or doing a show) at my place. My roommate often worked late nights giving us time alone. Most evenings we camped out on my College Tower living room floor. We did manage to have the apartment totally to ourselves on that fateful night when we finally “did it”. I’d had this romanticized vision of my first time being as close to movie perfection as possible, and that called for a bed with clean white sheets and it did happen as I’d always imagined. Elizabeth was a patient and tender partner. I had absolutely no idea how to make love to anyone except myself, but she put me at ease and somehow made it all possible. I can’t image that I was a very good lover, but I certainly enjoyed trying to improve techniques with her. We went at it every chance we got.

Christmas break I went home to West Buttfok, and she to Youngstown. We were apart for nearly three weeks, and we called and sent each other cards and missed each other like crazy. I drove to see her one night at her house, and we ended up going to a movie and then necking in the car afterwards because we couldn’t do anything with her parents there. It took this very special young woman to finally make me feel a man. We both of us were ready to get back to Kent and continue our life together.

Once back for winter term, I began directing a production of Moliere’s Tartuffe in The Cellar Theatre, a small student stage and Elizabeth played the ingenue role. She also did costumes, which was a huge undertaking for this period play, as we were very limited in what we could borrow from the university and only had a teeny budget that needed to be used for sets, publicity, and the like. Elizabeth and I spent hours, often into the early morning, sitting at sewing machines long after rehearsals were over trying to make the impossible possible. The program also gives her credit for wigs and makeup – she was involved to the max. After the first dress rehearsal, as I gave my notes, I concluded with: “And Elizabeth, you look like a big blue jellybean”. Everyone laughed hysterically, especially me for recognizing my own particularly brilliant wit. Everyone except Elizabeth, who ran out the back of the theatre in tears. It took an hour to calm her down.

In early spring we planned a weekend in West Buttfok to “meet the parents” and I was hesitant because I didn’t know what to expect from my mother and father. I knew Elizabeth was a natural at impressing other people’s parents. I had seen her work her charms on our friends’ parents and no one could help but love her. However, these were my parents. It had taken me twenty years and still I could barely deal with them, let alone turn them loose on unsuspecting prey, especially my beloved Elizabeth. Only about a week before our scheduled trip, she gave me the news that her period was late – very late. Maybe it was just the anticipation of our upcoming weekend, she’d hoped. Maybe it was just the fact that we were not using any sort of contraception. Oh my God, I was scared shitless. Elizabeth took it all in stride. I was in love with her, for sure, but having a baby was totally not on my to-do list.

My parents came Friday afternoon to pick us up. Sitting in the backseat of my Dad’s boat of a Pontiac, I rehearsed how I might break the news to them that they were going to be grandparents. We didn’t know for sure that she was pregnant, yet already I was experiencing morning sickness and I wanted to puke. Of course, just as I’d hoped, my folks were totally delighted by sweet Elizabeth, even before she began clearing the dinner dishes and started filling the kitchen sink to wash them without saying a word. My mother was mesmerized and I was shocked that she had allowed her to take over her kitchen without a word of protest. The next morning, as Elizabeth came out of the bedroom she’d slept in, to give me a kiss, she whispered “Congratulations! You’re not a father”. The remainder of our visit was sheer joy for me. We ended our stay by going to the Cleveland Art Museum. It has always had an incredibly wonderful collection. In a small room we paused before a huge painting by David entitled “Cupid and Psyche”. We stood in front of the larger than life-sized recumbent nudes, taking it in with our mouths gaping. It looked as though the two of us had posed for it and Elizabeth was the first to say it aloud. It is a vivid, personal moment the two of us shared that I can still summon all these years later.

So we come to May – Friday, May 1st. The evening before, Nixon had admitted that “we” had begun bombing raids into Cambodia. It ignited like wild-fire and I remember seeing banners hung in dorm windows and people in small groups throughout the sprawling campus, gathered around impromptu speakers debating the spread of the government’s useless war. This was a state university with 20,000 students who were cutting their teeth on the issues of the day in a truly chaotic and super scary world. It is almost surprising that only about 500 rallied at noon on the Common in protest. I didn’t go, nor anyone from my immediate group of friends. Everyone sensed that this was not going to blow over with a few signs and a demonstration. That night there was some trouble downtown, an area with a concentration of bars. Some windows were broken, the cops called in and bars were closed early. This caused concern among even the most apolitical. Drinking 3.2% beer was a popular pastime and curtailing students by denying them access to their beer did not help ease any tensions, so the original small crowd grew in numbers and the police used tear gas for the first time that night.

The following day, there were meetings galore all over Kent with Campus Admin, police and city officials and finally the National Guard was called in. I remember we stayed close to home that day, just going between my apartment and Elizabeth’s. We listened to stories from somebody who talked to somebody who knew somebody… I was becoming uneasy and didn’t know quite what we should be doing. We were all growing angry, watching our government, that most of us did not trust anyway, slowly take over our perfect little world in our insignificant university. For the first time I heard my circle of friends change the topic of conversation from Broadway and musical comedy to global issues and their own personal beliefs about politics and war. Being in College Towers, probably two of the tallest buildings in Kent, I remember hearing helicopters in the distance that evening. We learned late that night the ROTC buildings were burning and students were hindering firefighters from putting out the fires. We knew this would not be good for any of us. It turned out that some friends we had been in shows with were right there and had tasted the tear gas themselves.

Sunday the Governor held a press conference railing about the unrest and the damage that had been done to the state’s University. A curfew was put in place by the mayor. We had planned, before the weekend’s turmoil, to go to a student production that evening in a theatre in one of the churches off campus. There was a group of about eight of us going. I think we all were ready for a distraction from the tension which only grew worse by the hour. If memory serves me, the curtain time was moved up to comply with the curfew. I have no recollection of what the play was that we saw. I only remember the walk back home. It was dark, probably after 9:00 p.m. and the group of us was traveling up East Main Street towards campus. Knowing us, we might have been singing something, practicing harmonies, or just laughing and joking our way home. Out of the darkness above, the frightening thunder of a helicopter overhead stopped us, as a piercing beam of intense light shone down onto us. The noise was deafening, the copter blades hovering so close we could almost feel the moving air they displaced above. A booming, megaphoned voice cut through the chopping noise calling us from above “Students, you are considered a mob. Disperse at once and return to your dormitories”.

The temperature instantly shot from apprehensive and disturbing to sheer terror. Without uttering a word, our panicked harshly spotlighted faces questioned one another as to what we should do. Elizabeth let out a shouting kind of scream and ran across the street and immediately I followed her lead. A couple of others crossed to our side as well. The helicopter turned off its light and our hearts began to resume their regular rhythm as it flew off ahead, towards campus. We quickly continued our walk home, keeping the distance of the street between us. All the while we shouted back and forth to each other “Do you believe this shit?” What are we supposed to do now?” “This is fucking crazy!” We went back to my apartment and all of us began planning possible scenarios to follow. Some who had cars on campus might have even left for home that night. Neither Elizabeth nor I had a vehicle, although we had concerned parents who could be at our door in an hour or two’s time to get us out of there if need be. I was staying put. Monday was the beginning of a new week and I was going to plan on life as I knew it continuing just like always.

I don’t know what we argued about, but I doubt it had been either the war or campus strife. All I do know is that Elizabeth and I were not speaking on Monday, May 4th when we got up. Later in the morning, we continued the argument and she left in anger with a door slam. I was getting dressed to walk to the Common where an art student in one of my classes was going to take some photographs of me for his portfolio. We were to meet up at 1:00 p.m. As I left my apartment and started walking to the elevator, I saw Elizabeth’s horrified face running towards me. “Jimmie, DON’T GO OUT THERE! They just shot some students”. The two of us hugged, holding onto each other out of fear, not passion.

She was getting a ride from someone to go back to Youngstown. I should try to find a ride to Cleveland. Elizabeth and I kissed goodbye and in moments, doors started opening up in the long hallway as students collected outside their apartments. News of the shootings was just reaching our building. Neighbors, who before were only faces to me, suddenly became fellow victims of the disaster. I ran back to my apartment to try to call someone to arrange a ride, but the phone lines were overloaded and I couldn’t get a dial tone. And then I heard once again, the chopping monster helicopter blades flying over College Towers, so close now, they almost didn’t need the loud-speaker. This time they were shouting “All students report to your permanent address at once. Repeat. All students to your permanent addresses”. I remember stumbling into the kitchen, grabbing black plastic trash bags from the counter. I had no idea what I was doing. I only knew I had to get the hell out of Kent before more people got shot. We hadn’t heard for sure yet if anyone had been killed. The fear level was palpable. We all had our apartment doors wide open and people were calling out city and town names where they needed to go, or where they were willing to take others. Into one plastic bag I shoved some text books and clean clothes - in another dirty laundry and toiletries. I scooped up my frightened kitty, Sarah and was out of my apartment and down in the lobby in minutes. Chaos reigned. I never saw so many students move so very fast in all directions at one time. But there was also a strange order to our evacuation. I stood in my lobby calling out names of neighboring west side suburbs of Cleveland, desperate for a ride, a garbage bag stuffed under each arm and poor Sarah clawing at my neck and chest, terrified – nearly as terrified as me.

I had to settle for a ride to downtown Cleveland. I don’t remember who the person was that gave me a ride, but prior to the moment I threw my trash bags into his car, he had been a stranger and after our ride I never saw him again. There were others in his car, again no faces or names register. We were all operating in a great fog of confusion and fear and disbelief and we wanted out and some sense of safety. What I do recall, quite vividly, was driving down West Main Street and seeing military jeeps and soldiers in helmets on our pretty front campus lawn and guns with bayonets pointed at the caravan of our cars slowly exiting the small, verdant “Tree City” that was Kent, Ohio. It was like living a nightmare or being stuck in a very bad movie. Once out of town, the car ride with my fellow refugees is a total blank. It took hours before I was safe in Mom and Dad’s house. I had never been happier to be living in their home before or after that horrific day.

By midweek they announced the term was ended. The University would most probably reopen for summer session. On that Friday, I asked my father to drive me to Kent. I wanted to go back to my apartment and pack up my things. I became very bitter; the shootings of May 4th had ended a great happiness in my life. I was having this incredible year and all of it revolved around Kent, but now this ugly black cloud had descended over everything, killing it all for me. Selfishly I made the tragedy not about the four dead students or the nine wounded, but all about me and my personal contentment.

In order to get onto campus, I had to go through a security check and actually sign in with the police or the military, I can’t remember which. There was still a strict curfew in place. My father dropped me off at the check point and was coming back on Sunday to take me and my things back to West Buttfok. As I left Kent the end of that weekend, the remnants of my life stuffed into the trunk of the car, it was hard to believe only one week had passed, yet my whole world had been radically transformed. My relationship with Elizabeth didn’t make it through the summer. I cannot blame that on May 4th, but it certainly contributed some to its demise. I was so angry and depressed that summer of 1970, I seriously considered not going back to Kent. In fact, I didn’t want to go back to school at all. Had it not been for Vietnam and my deferment, I certainly would have taken a break from life altogether. The carpet had been pulled out from under my feet and I’d landed hard on my skinny young ass.

My Baptism Into Theatre

11/04/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in Childhood Tags: costumes, first grade, grandmothers, Little Rascals, Red Bird, theatre Leave a comment

Theatre was born from the Greeks, or so claimed the first sentence in my high school drama class textbook, but my personal introduction to it came quite surreptitiously in the spring of first grade. Mrs. Young was my teacher and I adored her. How could you do anything short of worship the person who taught you how to read? My parents both had been reading to me since birth and I recognized many familiar words and could already even sound out simple ones on my own before starting school. Somehow, while passing on to us the astounding ability to read, Mrs. Young had instilled in me a real passion for words.

Our class of probably just under thirty students was divided into three groups for reading: Red Birds, Blue Birds and Yellow Birds. Immediately upon being separated that first day, I easily deduced that Yellow Birds were the slow group, because it was obvious these kids really needed help. They were light years behind the rest of us in everything we attempted. It wasn’t as easy to differentiate between Red and Blue Birds, but I was praying that we Red Birds were the smartest. I didn’t want to be thought of as one of the dummies. The irony of our reading group names was that Mrs. Young looked very avian herself. She wasn’t very tall and was super thin with skinny legs, a pointy beak of a nose and tiny dark eyes set far apart.

I loved the Red Birds’s book, which was entitled TAKE OFF, with the characters Kim, Wendy and Tike (their dog) and Mother and Father surnamed either Smith or Jones. That tidbit has slipped from my memory. I listened intently each day when the Blue Birds had their turn and by the time we Reds got to compound words, (something was our first example), I was positive I was in the smart group and breathed a huge sigh of relief. I so wanted to be one of the best in the school.

Mrs. Christianson was the first grade teacher next door to our classroom. A big lady with dyed dark hair and lots of red-red lipstick on her over-sized mouth, she drawled a slight southern accent. She wore colorful clothes – long full skirts like we had seen on Mexican women in our social studies book and oversized noisy jewelry to match. She was very out-going and quite popular. On the playground at recess, if someone got hurt or upset, they would run to Mrs. C and she would hug them like their mom might. Mrs. Young reminded me of a secretary on a TV show because she dressed smartly, in suits most days. That’s why I liked her, because she was quiet and very business-like in a first grade teacher sort of way.

The elementary school I attended in West Buttfok was brand new the year I started first grade. It was a two-story sprawling modern building with a gorgeous library filled with brand new books right across the hall from our classroom, a music room, well equipped art room, and a combination cafeteria/gymnasium/auditorium. I loved how clean and new our school always smelled, even when I left it after sixth grade. My attendance was near perfect. I hated the thought of not being there, in case I missed learning anything that might set me behind everybody else. It frightened me when Mrs. Young told us that there would be a school vacation of nearly two weeks for the Christmas holidays. What in the world would I do at home without my desk and all our books? I worried that after so long I might possibly forget everything I had already learned and would need to start all over again.

Once we got back to school in the new year 1957, our class started an activity together with Mrs. Christianson’s that I understood to be called simply “play”. We would get together for an hour or so a couple of afternoons each week in the empty cafeteria. It was very much like how we played in my neighborhood, which we called “pretend”. At home I was the one who usually created the situation, but here at school, Mrs. Young and Mrs. C told us how the story would go. In my neighborhood, being the only boy and quite didactic as well, I gave the girls orders as to who they would be in our pretending time and what we all would say and do. Of course our home version of the game revolved almost solely around me. I picked the best clothes to wear and created the most important role to portray.

But at school we were doing the exact same thing every time we played. I would sit in a big metal folding chair in the center of the stage in the cafeteria/auditorium. Two boys from Mrs. C’s class stood on either side of me. I was called King Winter and the boys were named Helter and Skelter. They were told to behave silly, making believe that the floor under us was icy so they would fall and slide around and I would have to reprimand them. Sharon Collins, the prettiest and one of the smartest girls in Mrs. C’s class was Queen Spring. She would come in and eventually sit next to me. All the while we were on the stage playing with Mrs. C the other first grade boys from both classes would be marching around to music in one corner, while the girls, in the opposite corner, would be learning a dance with Mrs. Young directing traffic. I felt sorry for all of them, because it didn’t look like they had as much to do as we did up on the stage. They didn’t get to say anything at all! It seemed like they all were just Yellow Birds.

This special play time must have gone on for nearly a month I would guess. It got to the point where Sharon, the two boys and I could do and say everything Mrs. Christianson wanted us to automatically. Sharon might have been smart and pretty, but she had such a soft, quiet voice, Mrs. C said she was afraid that nobody would be able to hear her. I could hear her fine and so could Helter and Skelter. None of us knew what Mrs. C. was talking about. Mrs. Young gave me a paper to take home to give my mother. It had all the things we said when we played on the stage. I had no idea why my mom would be interested in playing our school pretend at home with me. In fact, I was sure she would say she was way too busy and had no time for playing pretend.

One day soon after, my Gramma was at our house when I had gotten home from school. This was a big thing, because she had to take three buses to get there. She was the first person to actually come clean and explain this whole thing to me. She was a seamstress by trade and had this incredible king’s cape she’d made for me to try on. It was pale ice blue satin with a huge stand-up collar encrusted with mother-of-pearl colored sequins that came down into broad panels on either side with a healthy sprinkling of rhinestones for good measure. I don’t know that I ever had a more sumptuous costume to rival this first one in my entire theatrical career. As she measured to mark the hem, she told me I was going to be in a show and that I had ”the most important part” and kids from the school and mommies and grammas would come to see me and she would be there too. Suddenly it hit me, and rather than being apprehensive or frightened, I was totally jazzed to do this thing. Being a Little Rascals aficionado, I had seen Spanky, Alfalfa and Darla do enough shows to know what the business was all about.

Now that I understood it was not just a game of pretend, I studied until I knew my lines flawlessly and made sure everyone would be able to hear me when I spoke, not like quiet Queen Spring. I now remember only one line which was: “Helter! Skelter! Fetch me some ice. Quickly!”. My older brother explained to me that they were like my slaves, so I barked the line imperiously. That last week the marching boys and dancing girls left their corners in the cafeteria and joined us onstage. The boys were Snow and Ice and would wear silver foil collars and march in formation in rows behind my throne to Mrs. C banging on the piano in the wings. The girls were Tulips and Daffodils. They would wear ingenious crepe paper costume creations of red and yellow petaled collars and leaf green skirts. They danced around both Sharon and myself to an insipid English gavot that Mrs. Young was responsible for playing on a record player. I can still hum the tune to this day. Queen Spring had a dark green dress and matching short cape her mother had sewn for her – nowhere near as nice as my Gramma’s costume I proudly strutted about in.

The afternoon of the performance I remember everyone getting ready. The boys were in my classroom, every one of us in white shirts and dark pants. Mrs. Young and some of the mothers were arranging foil collars on each one, instructing them to not horse around or they might tear. The girls were next door in Mrs. C’s room, white blouses and dark skirts and loads of mothers to dress them in their paper floral gowns. They were excited because they were also getting lipstick and rouge. I remember thinking how lucky they were because they did look like flowers – sort of. The boys just looked kind of dumb with tin foil wrapped around their necks. Helter and Skelter were in some variation of white long underwear with clown white on their faces.

They took the boys down to the stage first, then the girls. That left Sharon and me. She was scared and shaking. Mrs. Christianson talked to her quietly and said she could sit in her desk chair while she waited. She asked me if I was nervous. I wasn’t savvy enough to be scared. Then she said she’d better put some lipstick on me too. I told her I didn’t think my mother would want me to wear lipstick and Mrs. C. laughed hysterically as she smeared the dark red tube around my tiny mouth. I was sure I must have looked just like her now. She told Sharon she would come back for her when it was her time and then she walked me down the hall to the stage. She said “You’re going to do just fine. You’re our King!” – all the pep talk I needed.

I remember the sound of the heavy curtains opening slowly, exposing the big cafeteria lined with bleachers in the front and all the second and third graders filling them. I saw the rows of metal folding chairs with moms and grammas I didn’t know behind them. I recall the sound of my own voice echoing back at me as I shouted to Helter and Skelter to fetch my ice. There were the stomping foot steps keeping rhythm to Mrs. C’s piano march, then the crunching, swooshing noise the crepe paper tulips and daffodils made as they danced around Queen Spring and me. And I can still remember the screechy, nervous squeaking that came out of Sharon Collin’s mouth, trying to speak loud enough so everyone could hear, and now I could barely understand what she tried to say. Most of all I remember the sensation that came over me from performing to a sea of dark and strange faces and the odd power I was feeling that I was unable to name. It was a kind of magic I had never felt before. I only knew it felt absolutely wonderful being King Winter and a Red Bird.

The Year of Living Transiently part one

01/02/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in NYC 1972-1983 Tags: Arthur's Tavern, dinner theatre, East Village, gay relationship, Mabel Godwin, theatre, West Village 1 Comment

Even in New York City, the period after Christmas and New Years can be a downer. There isn’t much to look forward to until Spring, the weather typically stinks and it can be far too easy to catch a case of the blues unless you are careful. I felt fortunate for not falling victim because I was busy trying to figure out this acting career thing and planting myself more firmly into the soil of Manhattan. After giving Matty $75 for my half of the upcoming February rent, my little nest egg was down to under $400. That still seemed like a lot of money to me and I had absolutely no fear of running out. I was being frugal, monitoring expenses yet still doing fun things and acting as though I had lived my entire life in the Village. I seldom traveled any further north than 14th Street except for auditions, which were typically held either midtown in the Theatre District or on the upper westside.

I would rush out weekly to buy the latest copy of BACK STAGE, a newspaper listing ads for all the upcoming auditions. Most of the jobs were for dinner theatres. Some were for six weeks or so, many were dinner theatre tours for months at a time, traveling all over the country in some fairly dicey venues. I had already heard some incredible horror stories, but what a thrill it would be to actually get paid money to work acting on a stage no matter where it was. Just before the end of January, Matty was offered the role of The Boy in THE FANATASTICKS for a dinner theatre tour in the midwest. It was a mid-run replacement role, as the original actor had gotten a national tour for a big Broadway musical. Matty had only a few days notice before he’d have to leave. We were all excited for him.

Jacob was still in the city, having decided to stay and Matty asked me if I would mind if he moved in while he was touring. That way Jacob could share expenses with me (Con Edison and food) and Matty wouldn’t have to pay his half of the rent. It was at this point I first learned that technically, I was an illegal tenant. It made me a bit uneasy, but he assured me the landlord had no idea nor cared who lived in the building as long as he got his money every month. The super was in charge of two other buildings on the block and lived in one of them. Just to be on the safe side, he asked Jacob and me to give him the rent for March so he could prepay it before he left. He wasn’t sure how long he would be gone because there was a good chance the tour might be extended. Come April we would deal with April. So it was go from the end of January through March. It felt good knowing I wouldn’t have to worry about major expenses as my resources began to dwindle. Before he left, it was agreed that Matty would call us to check on the apartment and things back in the city every Monday evening at Ron’s apartment, one of the few people any of us knew with a telephone. He was a man who was fast becoming a good friend to me.

On the romantic front, I could say that Richard and I were beginning to cool off, but we had never heated up enough for that to be the case. I had suffered from unrequited love a few times before, but for good reason: either the guy didn’t feel the same for me, or he had someone else who he was already involved with. There were no impediments to prevent our relationship from growing as I knew it could, except for Richard himself. I was becoming so sexually frustrated it was like I was back in Ohio living in my parent’s house. Truth be told, I’d managed to have more sex there than I had in the liberated West Village at this point. I was horny; we hadn’t consummated this relationship, yet he was all I’d thought about since we’d met that first time in the fall. It wasn’t as though I was fighting off hoards of hot men who were chasing after me while I waited for some move from Richard. I simply was not interested in anybody else but him. It was one of those things you feel in your heart and your head and your gut and your loins.

“Give him time”, my new friend Ron advised me, “a decent guy isn’t easy to find in this city”. I valued his advice because he was a man nearing forty years old in a solid relationship with his partner of more than a decade, which seemed a lifetime in gay years to a novice like me. It felt so comfortable and warm being with Richard. At the bar or one of the cozy restaurants where we ate, he was always so attentive, instinctively taking my hand at quiet moments and putting his arm around me whenever we walked on the street. Yet he hesitated to go beyond our obligatory evening’s parting kiss and avoided being together much in anywhere but public places. I think he came to the apartment only a few times to pick me up. He lived and worked in the East Village as a cook in a Japanese restaurant . His wacky work schedule didn’t leave us much time to be together, and with me not working, I found myself with tons of free time alone to sit and stew about our situation.

One night he suggested we might stop in at Arthur’s Tavern, a small bar literally next door to Marie’s where they played live jazz. It had to be a Monday night, because The Grove Street Stompers were playing and it was a slice of another style of Village life I had never tasted before. Looking around I didn’t see any other gay faces in the crowd and we were definitely some of the youngest as well. We sat at the bar and the music awakened something in Richard that was visible on his face and the whole of his body. He grinned like a little kid, nodded his head to the beat and swayed to the smooth jazz sound.

Suddenly I realized he couldn’t possibly have enjoyed the brash, campy, over-the-top renditions of show tunes garishly sung at our bar next door. What in the world drew him there in the first place and why did he persist in returning? I remember posing the question to him during one of the band’s breaks. It came down to the comradeship and safety that the non-threatening gay scene afforded him. I understood, yet he certainly was comfortable here in a very ungay crowd, more himself it seemed than anytime I’d seen him before. I was having the best time enjoying the music and his company. I think it surprised him that it was possible for me to like something not directly connected with theatre. It was all I continually talked about and he would patiently listen to me go on about it, yet never tire of my monologues. “If you enjoyed this”, he said as we walked out the door later that night, “you’re going to love Mabel”.

Mabel was Miss Mabel Godwin, a singer-slash-piano player who was a fixture at Arthur’s on weekends. She knew all the jazz standards and naughty tunes too, Gershwin and Porter and songs I’d never heard of before. Underneath a shiny black wig and oversized thick glasses she was at least my mother’s age but you couldn’t tell when she was at her keyboard. Her delivery was smooth and sexy, singing about broken hearts and men who had done her wrong. I adored Mabel instantly. When she’d finished the song she’d been singing as we came in, she looked our way and said into her microphone “Good ta’ see ya’, Richie”. He smiled back. “Richie?” I thought to myself. This cool, old, black lady knows Richard by name. Man, I don’t know this guy at all! It was a quiet night and she chatted with us on and off, once we’d moved closer to the piano. I was mesmerized by Mabel’s style, her extensive repertoire and the level of performance she delivered as effortlessly as my Gramma turned out a meal in her kitchen. I was hooked.

Very shortly after that night, one rainy, dreary mid-winter afternoon, I somehow worked my way into Richard’s tiny studio apartment in the East Village. It was my first visit to this end of town and it was a very low rent district at that time. His studio was tinier than Matty’s, barely room for anything but his bed and some bookshelves and a table with a lamp in the corner. It wasn’t that I just showed up there one day; he invited me, though probably only to stop my incessant badgering to see his place.

And that afternoon, sometime, during or after my very first cup of Japanese green tea, it happened. I cannot remember how, but Richard and I finally ended up in his bed. The memory is the kind I call a movie scene remembrance, because when I recall that afternoon, it is as though I were viewing it through a camera lens and not my own mind’s eye. I see myself as well as Richard, the unmade bed, his dark room, the grey hazy light trying to filter through the small, dirt-streaked window. I see our naked bodies and his white-white hairless, boyish flesh entwined in mine. He was passionately intense and I remember we neither of us spoke a word. The only sound was a steady wind-driven winter rain pounding at the window and the two of us breathing. I have no idea what we said afterward. I know I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut about our relationship and just savored the moment and this enigmatic man who continually kept me wondering. We lay in his bed together until it began to get dark. I walked with him to his job and continued on back home, getting drenched, but unphased by the elements, relishing my long-awaited euphoria.

to be continued

NewYorkNewLifeNewYear 1973 Part two

09/01/2012 By gaydinosaurtales in NYC 1972-1983 Tags: family celebration, New Year's Eve, theatre Leave a comment

I moved the TV set onto the floor and eased the crooked mini spruce into the central section of the wire milk crate, holding the tree in place. Stepping back a bit, well, as far back as I could step in my compact cloister, I studied it sadly. Of course I had no lights or ornaments and I certainly wasn’t about to go back downstairs to look for any, especially since I was living like Swiss Family Robinson minus the family. I gathered up the two dozen or so Christmas cards I had received and began placing them into the tree, artfully displaying them as best I could. This was my first tree on my own and with it I was celebrating so much more than the holiday. I had never ever spent so much time totally alone in the world, nearly ten days, and had accomplished that feat in the busiest, most crowded place I knew of on this planet. It was awesomely frightening, yet I really wasn’t afraid. I would have given anything to have someone next to me in this shitty apartment to pass Christmas Eve with. I would wake up tomorrow morning, Christmas morning, and be okay.

Feeling much healthier, I woke up rested. I knew Santa would not have delivered any gifts, even though there was a tree to leave them under, and now in the little bit of daylight that the small window allowed into the room, the hopeless-looking tree was laughable. At 12:30 p.m. I had to be at my phone booth to call the family back home. They would all of them be at my Aunt Fran’s house, nearly twenty familiar faces, beginning to gather around a long series of tables butted together in the basement for dinner. My grandfather demanded that he be at table, fork in hand and eating by one o’clock sharp or there would be hell to pay. Gramma, Auntie and Mom decked out in Christmas aprons, would still be slaving in the kitchen upstairs, filling bowls and platters and every available serving dish with wonderful traditional food that said we had all come together again for another family celebration. All but me, absent the first time in history.

Armed with a bag of quarters, I wedged myself in the glass booth and tried to make myself as comfortable as I could while I listened to the long distance ring of the phone on the other end of the wire. I cleared my throat, preparing my voice as though what was about to begin was a theatre piece, a scene in a play of my own crafting. I was a little tense, queasy in the stomach like you get just before the lights come up onstage. Auntie’s bright “N’yello, Merry Christmas” was my cue that the show had begun. “Merry Christmas”, perhaps a little too animated I shuttled back at her. “Is everybody there now?” I asked. “Everybody but you. We miss you. Where are you gonna eat your Christmas dinner?” I did not fabricate any invitations. It would have been much easier on me to have come up with a whirlwind of wonderful parties to attend, but I opted for the truth instead. I started to explain that I’d been sick, (as a prelude to why I wouldn’t be doing anything special today) to which she immediately over-reacted with something to the effect of “Oh my God NO!!!” which set in motion Gramma and Mom to begin keening and wailing in the background as pots and pans clanked “What happened…..Is he okay……What’s wrong?” What began as an uncomfortable phone call had instantly become unbearable, and there were at least a dozen more mournful relatives in line yet to deal with. “I’ll let you talk to your Mom”, Auntie said as she passed along the phone.

Once I was able to assure my mother I only had a three-day case of the flu she was relieved. She then promptly assumed a very stoic role, like she imagined Rose Kennedy would do if she were in the same situation, being strong for the family, bearing up nicely even though her middle son was not celebrating Christmas with the rest of the family as he should be. I allowed her to steal the scene from me, because it was easier than fighting long distance, as God knows we certainly were capable of doing, but I didn’t want to ruin her day or mine. And then the phone began its journey from cousins to uncles then father to brothers to nephew until it landed on Gramma who was so obviously crying, trying not to, but far too emotional and real to hide anything from me, her special grandson. She melted my heart as only Gramma could do. I think I pretty much went through the whole damn bag of quarters, hung up and blew my nose, not from my lingering flu, but from melancholy and sadness and the reality that something truly huge had just transpired.

I headed back to the apartment, not yet ready for a meal and not sure of what direction to take for the remainder of the day. As I climbed the many stairs to the top floor, I noticed a body at my door, only the legs visible from my angle of approach. If it had been nighttime I might have been scared. Even a friendly mugger at this point would be welcomed. It was Jacob, a friend of Matty’s from Ohio and only my solitary state could make the sight of him bring a smile to my face and a lilt to my final steps. He was an extremely boyish eighteen-year-old, who’d been a groupie of Alena and Matty and a few other local Youngstown “theatre stars”. I’d met him about a year before with Alena at a party and she brought him to a summer theatre show I’d done in Cleveland. He was attractive enough, but way too cutesy for my taste. He cloaked himself in naiveté and purity and in truth he was neither. He was the first teenager I had ever run across who admitted he was gay, and had been out to his parents since he was sixteen. Perhaps jealousy played a small part in my prejudice against him. Gay had in no way been a struggle for this boy. It wasn’t that I disliked him, I simply didn’t trust him. There was a definite Eve Harrington thing going on there that made me quite uncomfortable. But today was Christmas and he was my guest.

Jacob explained that he had seen Matty back home at a party on the weekend and he’d told him he could stay at the apartment while he was away. Jacob had just finished his first job as temporary Christmas help at a Youngstown retail store and had some money, so he left Christmas Eve on a late bus to the city and didn’t know how long he would stay. He ‘kind of thought maybe he might just move, but his life was up in the air’. I still wasn’t thrilled it was him, but he would be company for a few days and he knew people here, many in theatre and I was up for making any connections I could to possibly get a job. Another reason to put up with his doe-eyed innocence was that he always had, or could get ahold of, good smoke and I hadn’t been stoned since Matty left. Then Jacob accidentally dropped a bombshell that spoiled the secret – Alena was planning on surprising me by showing up for New Year’s Eve. Knowing that tidbit made me so excited I could have put up with sharing the apartment for a week with Nixon.

Alena and I had first become friends four years earlier, my freshman year at University, when we both were cast in a student directed musical. I was playing the teenage little brother and Alena my old maiden aunt. She already was quite the actress in the theatre department and I was a fan. Both of her parents were Greek-American, but Alena was not at all what you’d think of as Mediterranean looking. First thing in the morning, with sleep still on her face and a cigarette dangling from her full, pouting lips, she looked like a forty-something-year-old housefrau getting ready to take out the garbage, then carpool the kids to school in the family station wagon. But she was quintessential theatrical; each day could bring a different role for her to dress and make-up for, no matter how insignificant the event might seem. She had a scholarly look, hippie student, mad artistic genius, femme fatale, girlish coquette and dark brooding wacko. Unfortunately, the later most probably mirrored the real Alena that was cowering behind all those other faces. When she just pulled on jeans and a sweater or shirt with no make-up and hit the pavement as herself, she could be described, (as she was by another friend’s dad when she visited for a Sunday dinner at their home), as a dirtbag. Regardless, I adored her insanity and the bizarre ride it was to inhabit the same little planet where Alena lived.

One weekend I went home with her as her “date” to attend a huge Greek dance held in a magnificent old hotel ballroom in Youngstown. We stayed at her mother’s house and the night we arrived, we were up until after 3:00 a.m., as Alena, her mom and aunt taught me half a dozen traditional Greek dances. At the dance she wore a vintage forest green velvet deco dress, long evening gloves and her dyed red hair pulled back into a small knot. Her makeup was old Hollywood glamour and she was absolutely stunning. We literally did have a ball together that night, and many, many times before and after. My final year at University she did not return to school. She had some sort of life drama – some great crisis the made her so angry at the world that she was taking it out on the rest of us. I thought she would just cool off a semester and come back mid-year, but she didn’t. I finally wrote her since she stopped taking anyone’s calls, convincing her she was being an ass and eventually she came around and renewed our friendship my last year in Ohio. Now I was thrilled at the thought of bringing in the new year 1973 in NYC with this incredible character and long-time friend.

She arrived that Saturday afternoon with Matty, who decided to come back a few days early. It was great because the three of us had never been together in the same state at the same time. Her belated Christmas gift was to take me to Radio City the next afternoon to see the Christmas Show. “What till you see the fucking camel walk across the stage and take a shit!” which I believe were her words verbatim. She also insisted that the only way to see the show was from the third or fourth row, totally stoned, so that when the Rockettes danced downstage in their high kick line, it was “like a real life Busby Berkeley movie”. And she was right, it was and the fucking camel did take a dump almost center stage. She was staying close by at a friend’s apartment that everyone knew. He was stage manager for a successful off-Broadway show and a really nice man named Ron. He and his long-term partner were having a party New Year’s eve and we were all going. We also had to stop in at a party at a friend of Jacob’s, where he was now staying since Matty was back. As a young kid I learned that the way you spend New Year’s Eve, is the way you’ll spend the next year. My parents always stayed home and we’d all watch Guy Lombardo on TV and I had remained in Ohio, bored in front of my television set for far too many years. Maybe finally this year would be different.

As we got ready that night, it was fun catching up with Matty. He complained about family and friends in Ohio and I filled him in on the little I knew about people from the bar. He was concerned about me having been sick here alone, and thought I still looked too pale. He suggested I use some bronzer to give me color. He then brushed on some blush to give a little “pop” to my cheeks. He said that the parties would be dark so, “why not”. I agreed and let him make me look healthier. I must admit, studying my face in the mirror, it was nicely done and barely detectable. We left for the first party and after twenty minutes I realized Jacob’s friend was just a semi-grown up version of Jacob. No wonder they liked each other. I was glad that we left a few minutes later for Ron’s party on West 8th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

It was about 10:30 p.m. and Alena was waiting for us, already totally blitzed out of her gourd with weed and champagne. It was a great crowd. The apartment was good-sized, large for The Village but crammed with people, most of them in their 30s and 40s. It was a nice mix of gay and straight. We were enjoying ourselves, but Alena was traveling somewhere beyond stoned and approaching weird. I had seen her like this before, but in a smaller setting with fewer people and always on home turf. I asked her if she wanted to go out and get some air. It was unseasonably warm in New York that year, perfect weather for a walk. She thought that was a good idea so we headed out the door. The minute we hit the street, I saw panic strike her body, and knew in an instant this was a bad move. The sidewalk was filled with foot traffic, people heading towards Fifth Avenue and Washington Square Park where a crowd was gathering. I suggested we go back in and she seemed ready to do whatever someone else decided for her. Once inside I made signs to Matty that he should come help. He moved in and took her into the small bedroom now loaded nearly to the ceiling in coats. He motioned me to close the door which I did, leaving them alone.

I wanted to join the party in progress, but was preoccupied with Alena, nervous for her and her escalating condition. Within a half an hour, Matty came to get me, saying she seemed better, and why didn’t I stay with her a bit. She didn’t want to leave the bedroom. She kept looking blankly at me, mumbling that I had changed. It was now about fifteen minutes before 1973. I sat on the bed next to her, talking softly, doing everything I could to keep the anxiety at bay. She was more in control now, but there wasn’t a glimpse of any of her many fun selves I so enjoyed. We could feel the mania growing in the rest of the apartment, tension naturally building as we neared the countdown. Because the bed was covered in coats, we were sitting thigh to thigh with each other. As we heard them begin, we joined in 8 -7 -6…. At Happy New Year I leaned in to give her a kiss. She pulled her head back to take in my whole face in her glance, registered a painful grimace on her own and wailed “You’ve got on more make-up than I do!” and with that she leaned back and slapped me hard across the face, just like in a movie. She started up from the bed, left the room and disappeared into the party, lost in the crowd. Matty came up to me, asking what happened. I told him what just took place, not knowing what had happened at all.

Matty thought it would be a good idea for all concerned to get the hell outta’ there. We said our goodbyes to Ron and his partner and left only minutes into the New Year. We went out to the street again, and found a place to get something to eat. We both of us knew the many moods of loony Alena, but nothing like we had just experienced. Her slap came out of nowhere and I still felt its sting on my face an hour later and the loss in my heart for many months thereafter. I remember it was just after 2:00 a.m. that Matty and I made our way down Sixth Avenue back to the apartment. There was a time and temperature sign on a bank we passed that showed the temperature was over 50 degrees. We giggled, remarking that even the weather was weird this New Year. And then, from out of nowhere, a large upholstered wing chair plummeted down from the sky about eight feet ahead of us, crashing onto the sidewalk only steps away. Looking up, we saw a cluster of bodies hanging out of a window three or four floors above, grinning and waving and screaming hysterically. Howling with laughter until I feared I might wet myself, I threw myself into the shattered chair on Sixth Avenue and wondered if this New Year’s Eve was any indication of how I would be spending the rest of 1973.

The Boys in the Band

02/10/2011 By gaydinosaurtales in College 1968-1972 Tags: Boys in the Band, closet, coming out, gay, theatre Leave a comment

It was my junior year of college when I finally figured out, in my head at least, who and what I really was (or who I hoped to be). I was a theatre major and had become a member of a sort of underground group of gay guys who hung out together. I say underground, because not many of us were officially out, nor had we fully come to terms with what was simmering deep inside us. We might have had sexual experiences, but most often they had to be done covertly; certainly not in the open like our straight friends. We socialized with the entire theatre department and despite what you may have heard, not all theatre people are gay. In fact, there were far, far more straight people than gay in our department.

Regardless of our sexual proclivities, we all of us enjoyed the same things: (1) doing theatre, (2) getting together to celebrate theatre that we had done and (3) smoking dope. We did a lot of all three things and some friends actually also found time to go to classes as well. At this point, I was not one who put in much classroom time, unless it was theatre class. I was having way too much fun playing onstage and off to care about mere academics. I did just enough to keep my draft deferment status, because this was 1970 and thus Vietnam, you see.

We did a lot of theatre in a school year. Besides the University main stage shows, there were several very good student theatres where we were beginning to stage productions that would sometimes draw bigger audiences than the University shows. Early this particular school year, auditions were announced for The Boys in the Band. It was still running in New York and the movie had just been released the summer before. It was difficult to get the rights, but the student director managed and Boys was all the buzz in the halls of the theatre building. There were more guys auditioning for the nine roles than I had ever seen before, especially for a student production. It was the most grueling and drawn out audition I ever went through, but I got the part I so badly wanted.

The play deals with thirty-something-year-old gay men struggling with aging and dealing with the futility of a homosexual lifestyle. It is a very dark and dismal take on being gay, but at the time very true to the reality of the generation before ours. Here we were, all of us boy-men, barely twenty and most of us just discovering and experimenting with our own sexualities. It was an amazing theatre experience, but more so a personal psychodrama for me and many of my fellow actors. Of the nine of us, six were gay. Of the six, three came out during the course of the production.

It was a huge success. All in all it was a damn good production with some really fine acting. Audiences were huge and receptive. We actually sold standing room tickets and had to turn people away. If memory serves, we added extra shows. We were performing in a make-shift theatre space in the Newman Center. Can you imagine the Catholic Church giving a home to a production of a gay play? But it was the 1970s, when even the Church had a heart, I guess.

It was an example where I saw, first-hand, how theatre could move people-not just an audience, but everyone and everything around it. Bringing the play to our University changed that little world for the better. It forced people who had no idea that homosexuals were a part of their world too, to sit up and take notice. It put a face on what had been, for so many, just this idea out there that they knew existed, but was not yet a reality for them. And our straight peers in the theatre department looked at us a bit differently too, even though they had always been accepting of us, even when they didn’t know exactly who/what we were either. It was as though a huge theatre curtain rose, and a gay world was exposed in all its glory to everyone all at once. Now people could begin putting two and two together and realize “Oh, that’s why my cousin….” or “Do you think Uncle Whoever never got married because…” and “I always thought maybe Mrs. So-and-So my eighth grade English teacher…”

And the best part, selfishly for me, was that the closet door that had only been open a crack here and there, on and off for what seemed a lifetime, opened wide and blew off its goddamn hinges.

gaydinosaurtales

Musings and recollections by a gay man of a certain age

Tag Archives: theatre

Angel Visitation Number One (revised)

My Big Break Into Show Biz

Elizabeth, May 4, 1970 and me

My Baptism Into Theatre

The Year of Living Transiently part one

NewYorkNewLifeNewYear 1973 Part two

The Boys in the Band

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