Graham Norton Made Me Cry

La Cage aux Folles was the second "Broadway" production I ever saw, or rather Broadway by way of a touring company to downtown Phoenix, in 1985. (The first had been 42nd Street starring a blowzy Dolores Grey.)

I didn't register the gayness, or didn't feel much for it. Odd considering I was a fourteen years old going in knowing each showtune. There was no "I Am What I Am" because I loved musicals without shame and no one told me that I should feel any other way. My parents and sister were with me, in fact.

Peter Marshall and Keene Curtis starred. (Turns out Keene was the first gay man to play Zsa Zsa, playing his first gay role, which I just found out while reading my program from a revival - nearly 25 years later, 500 miles away from Phoenix, on the bank of the Thames.)

Tonight I sat in the third row, on the far aisle, as Graham Norton sang "I Am What I Am" and then stormed off the stage, past me and directly out the side door of the theater onto the honest-to-goodness street.

As the lights went up for the interval I wiped away my tears. I had already been crying intermittently, involuntarily in that way that feels embarrassing for a grown man to cry at a Jerry Herman musical.

It's a brilliant production, don't get me wrong. It's been stripped of it's glitz and it's stopped apologizing for itself. The men don't rip off their wigs at the end of a song to shock a complicit audience. No self-respecting drag queen needs to trick the audience into believing she's a woman. There's no trickery necessary because a drag queen would be the last person to deny she's anything other than herself.

Graham Norton cannot sing so much, but he owned his part. His Zsa Zsa was not what we used to patronizingly refer to as courageous. He played his part with aplomb but, so much better, his performance was matter-of-fact. Thank you to Sean Penn for his courageous Harvey Milk, but no one except a gay man can sing "I Am What I Am" with the integrity of a real live homosexual. So, thank you Graham Norton for playing her with no more affection than one would expect from a French drag queen in a Jerry Herman musical...and no less.

When gay Arthur Laurents first directed La Cage, written by gay Jerry Herman and gay Harvery Fierstein, he said he couldn't have the leads kiss because half the theater would walk out. He wanted to finesse the audience into acceptance. This revival - some 25 years later, long enough for someone to be born and grown into an adult, this revival ended with a middle-aged gay couple kissing as the curtain slowly went down.

And the audience still leaped to it's feet.

Time Out New York - Letter of the Week!

Click on the image to enlarge.

My Letter to the Editor of Time Out NY

From Time Out New York / Issue 693 : Jan 8–14, 2009 /
What your personal trainer is really thinking

Worst breach of gym etiquette you’ve ever seen?

“Two people having sex in the sauna…but that’s a tie with the two people I caught having sex on a stretch table when I still worked for a facility.”

“Putting gum under benches”

“This dude smelled like a garbage dump. It was so bad, people would leave. The owner of the gym stepped in and actually suspended his membership. This guy smelled so bad, I’m getting sick thinking about it.”

“Too much unsafe gay sex in the steam rooms.”

“Guys wear very tight spandex shorts from the ’80s and you can see all the sweat coming from their ass and their penises sticking out. I even saw some members coming from the locker room and working out naked like nothing happened. The gym manager had to come on the floor and bring them back to the locker room.”

Dear editor,

Re: "Worst breach of gym etiquette you've ever seen?"

It's always fun to see gay sex show up in a list of something titled "worst." In fact, two of the five offending acts are attributed to the frisky gay men of New York's saunas and steam rooms!

Unsafe sex is never cool, I agree. But your garden variety mutual masturbation or oral sex in the steam room may be against the rules (and also the law), but it's hardly a breach of etiquette in New York City. It's the set up in a lot of porn, in fact. The proper etiquette would be to join in, look away, or take your uptight self out of there.

For me, as a gym-goer, the worst breach of gym etiquette usually involves a trainer and his/her client occupying too much space or monopolizing one (and ofter several) pieces of equipment at once. I once went up to a trainer at my gym to ask when she'd be done with a machine and she said, "Oh, we only have about a half hour more." They'd been using it exclusively already for 30 minutes.

Kind regards,
David
Brooklyn, NY

Liza Minnelli Made Me Cry

Liza walked upstage to the piano and gripped it like a prizefighter going to the ropes. Tired and worn, she gathered her spirit - not her strength, wiped her face with a towel and came back downstage.

I had last seen Liza Minnelli during her last comeback, produced by her then husband David Gest. That had been stressful viewing. Back then, she would approach one of those big notes by screwing her legs into the stage, punching the air with her fist, while the voice would wobble out. "Please make it, Liza. You can do it," I would whisper each time.

Liza at the Palace was different, I had heard.

My friend Mitch emailed me: You have to see this. He'd never done that before. The show appeared on both 2008 top ten lists in the NY Times Arts & Leisure year-in-review. Then on Monday, Dec 22nd my best friend Bob called up to tell me that four seats, fifth row center had just magically appeared on Ticketmaster for xmas eve! We bought them, just knowing our husbands wouldn't want to miss this.

...and she was FANTASTIC! Her voice was no longer the clarion it had been. She sacrificed that too much pills and liquor. Still, she sang strong and steady. She danced. She mocked her age, making a shtick of it like a pro.

After twenty plus songs, she stood center stage, fingered the microphone with one hand and shook out her wet hair with the other. She quietly said, "A few years ago a terrible thing happened. Some people tried to hurt us, hurt our city. But, but they did not succeed. We came together as a city, as a county. Stronger. Yes. Stronger."

Tears had already starting rolling down my cheeks.

As she launched into "New York, New York," I cried. Steady streams released from my eyes.

I had been vulnerable, for sure. The holidays are hard - melancholy, demanding, tiring. My guard had been weak, but - to be true - I love New York City and I love a showtune. Liza created a pitch perfect storm.

God bless her.

LGA to ATL to DFW: a comedy of errors and mishaps

Went to wrong airport.

Scrutinized at security.

Flight delayed.

Missed connection.

Left package with gifts in overhead.

Waited 30+ minutes on hold to talk to Delta's lost & found. They will call me if they find it.

Everyone tells me it could have been worse.

It's good to be here, nevertheless

Holiday Humbug Harumph

Via email, from me to my mother:
Would you prefer something that smelled like Lavender or Lemon & Coriander?

Her reply:
No

My reply:
What do you mean no? That wasn't an option. It either or b.

She wrote back:
Still no

It's Nice to Be Noticed

craigslist.org >> Missed Connections >> M4M

Date: 2008-11-30, 3:19PM EST

i was leaving the gym as you were headed in (about 2pm)

you: taller than i am, dark hair, red Coney Island tee shirt. possibly the hottest guy i have ever seen me: 5'11, dark brown hair, brown jacket, rushing out the door

if there is a chance your the type of person that reads these things any of it sounds familiar shoot me an email.

* * * * *

I am the type of person who reads these things.

That Saturday I had worn my "I Survived the Coney Island Cyclone" T-shirt that I had slept in the night before. A constellation of red splotches formed a mini-dipper across the right side of my face. (The effort to pop some pimples had left me worse off.) My hair looked good. I had gone to bed with Khiel's Drawing Paste on my forehead and the residue that got into my hair and made it look thicker.

When I shared the posting with my husband Mark, I pointed out that I am "possibly the hottest guy (this guy had) ever seen."

"I know that already. Why do you think I married you?"