ANYWAY - Buckle Up for the junior high -- high school -- and college years.
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...^..... LEARN OR DIE? ....^.....
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Early on, I was told I was smarter
than the other kids.
Because of that, they skipped me through the second grade.
Problem was, I was more sensitive, too. For that, I had to do 4th grade
twice.
Sensitivity makes life hard, but at least you can keep it a secret.
Being smart will cause much more pain -- and make you feel it more acutely.
What a gift.
I had two choices:
Use my brain and be an egghead
outcast, or
Dumb it down -- but be accepted.
I'm still not sure which one I went with.
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ANYWAY - Buckle Up for the junior high -- high school -- and college years.
Man, that's a lot of face.
9th grade - age 14 or so - and I had no idea who I was (thus the
propensity
for self-taken, fish-eye distorted Wanted Poster photos).
In high school? My identity crisis
was so severe that during tests,
I'd usually ask whoever was closest,
"Psst -- Ay! What'd you put
for 'NAME'?"
16, 17 or so, in Provincetown. Mass.
I was SO ready to be queer. Just didn't know who to...be it with.
Note the ceramic rainbow pin. That store there, (Chrysalis -"a shop for dreamers"-- ), sold everything rainbow. No, I mean everything.
Jewelry, clothes, kites, utensils,
toilet paper....
In my defense, this was long before the rainbow took on either of the cloying
stigmata stapled to it by both Jesse Jackson and a band of misguided, color-blind
homosexual trendsetters..
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I borrowed this habit from my sister
(just like nailbiting and needless sarcasm).
She had worn it to an earlier costume party, having borrowed it
from an actual nun -- Sister Mary Robert deNiro, I think.
Angela thought it would be funny to dress up
as a dour, single, frustrated, cloistered woman
who would be willingly deprived of the
company of men for her entire lifetime.
Hey - who knew?
(below)
Maggie Wiener, an anglophile romantic with a nasty Jennifer Grey nose bump,
had a "20's party". Limited options for guys, but what the hell...
(High school was one long party. Still is, I hear. except now there's a
weapons check.)
That lanky blond in the middle? Gary K., one of those straight jocks who
randomly wander into the high school drama department and align themselves
with the assorted
freaks, weirdos and outcasts in hopes of balancing their own attention deficit
checkbooks. He had the greatest ass, and I wanted it bad.
But - siiigh - the only time I ever saw it was when he was changing
in and out of his tights when we were both cast in a staged concert of "Peter
and the Wolf".
He played Peter. I played the Duck. (I wish he'd played
the Wolf, at least he would have had to eat me.)
Not one to be outdone by Fate, I
arranged a sleepover at his house. We were talking and reminiscing, both
of us in our undershorts. I was so close I could taste it. Well, smell it,
practically. My hand was resting on his leg. I was pretending it was there
by chance -- and so was he.
Everything was perfect - and then.... and then......
His Mom & aunt burst in -- in
hysterics.
His grandmother had just died.
The women flung themselves up and down the narrow hallways of the house, wailing and sobbing like viragos. Gary got bummed and cranky, but mostly because he wasn't more upset about the whole thing. I think.
Me? I got driven home.
Never saw him again.
Fate wins.
<-- Mom & Dad at the 25th Anniversary
Party thrown by my sister Angela at some tacky catering hall. I gotta give
her credit, she defied history and opened her wallet for it -- though we
had to beat off the moths. My Mom had an expression for people like my sister:
"She's tight as a crab's ass." "She has every dollar she
ever made." was another hot one. Mom hated cheap people - very telling
since she was one.
Hey - I may be going out broke, but at least I knew how to have great time.
And I did. Woohoo!!
Before we leave? Note my Dad's short-lived male-menopause-inspired beard.
Goes well with them there hair transplants, don't it? Sure, they're not scary here, all grown in, but when he first got em? He looked like Barbie with an unfinished West Village scalp shave n' shine.
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Now -- maybe you're thinking I sound a bit cranky
about this party. 
Well, see, there I was in my NYC apartment, laying around with with a trick
who hustled part time but came to me for free (gotta love that) -- when
Angela called to announce the party.
I winked at my pal. "Can I bring someone?"
"You can bring a date," she said.
"You mean a friend?"
"No. I mean a date."
Subtext received loud and clear, Princess. No boys allowed.
So I asked Gretchen B., this lovely
albeit wacky babe from my acting classes, who had never made secret of her
mini-crush on me (despite my preference for, y'know, dick) if she wanted
the part. She jumped on it.
And me.
What a night. When anyone asked "So - is this your girlfriend?", she'd kiss me and giggle. No, I mean literally giggle, y'know, practically actually pronouncing "Tee hee!". She called me "Sweetie" all night. She even got me up on the dance floor where we Jitterbugged as the band played "In The Mood". (We slayed 'em. Every good Lucy and/or Bette Midler fan knows how to Jitterbug).
I actually kind of got into it. It was my present to my parents -- my part of making this a memorable evening of fantasy, illusion and celebration.
(Emphasis on fantasy and illusion.)
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<-- Guy Sherman's apartment in NYC
Cast party for a terrible play I directed, Lanford Wilson's "Tira Tells Everything There Is to Know About Herself". The "terrible" part wasn't the playwright's fault. My director's hand was about as subtle as Boy George's bathroom.
That's Dad's old dinner jacket. I wore it like it was made for me. Love that daffodil boutonniere.
Alert visitors will note one more classic addition ... the ceramic rainbow pin.
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That's me and this lovely
French gal, Stephanie S., from my Strasberg Institute acting classes. Anna
Strasberg thought it was a big kick for all us "kids" to see how
the other half lives. We're posed - and posing - in front of Marilyn Monroe's
famed white piano in Lee & Anna's enormous NYC condo. That white suit
- man, I got a lotta mileage outta that thing. Wore it as Bobby in "Company",
Judas in "Superstar", and in sooo many other roles as...
myself, as you can see.
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Same party, a few glasses of champagne later. Snuggling up to Lou Poppe, who viewed homosexuality as a means of breaking into "the business". A big Bowie fan, but only in the "Hey. I can do that" sense. He found a band, and became its androgynous front man (despite the fact that everyone who met him said he was a ringer for deNiro -- not exactly the Divine Androgyne). What Lou didn't get was that Bowie was expressing a conflicted inner self onstage. Lou on the other hand was... well he was also expressing Bowie's conflicted inner self onstage, and it just wasn't as marketable the second time around.
Meanwhile, all year he was fucking Laura K., this beautiful girl who I adored I used to jack off thinking about a three-way with them, but that fantasy stopped when I couldn't get her to leave . And that's okay - I love strong women. heh heh
You may notice that I've
used initials for everyone's last name -- except Lou's.
That's because I've heard this rumor that he now works for the FBI... and
I don't much care for the FBI.
... If this page suddenly disappears, you know why. ...
Working at the Pink Pussycat Boutique, a sex shop on
West 4th and 6th Ave.in the Village.
All employees had to be EST graduates. I was. What a bunch of psychobabble
junkies we were.
The Mission Statement sign on the door read: "The purpose of the PPCB
is to allow people to discover
and explore who they are sexually. No personal checks under $20."
What I remember most of all about working there is cocaine. Cocaine, Quaaludes,
the lingering sweet and sour scent of freshly cast latex mingled with nitrous
oxide, and pocketing money before it made it to the register -- enough to
take a vacation to Provincetown on my own for the first time. Shhh...
Holy shit - another costume party. John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. (The button: "Shoot the Bee Gees".) I told you I got a lot of mileage out of that one white suit.
That beauty to your left - not me, the one with
the rack - That's my good, good college friend Christine - later aka "Chriss",
for all the right rock & roll reasons.
She went as a Wasp. I didn't think it was all that clever 'til she started
talking through her clenched teeth about getting away from her "ghastly"
place in Connecticut this summer to her "summer hideaway" in the
Hamptons. She served up a huge pitcher of Tanqueray martinis for everyone,
pouring triples into huge water glasses, calling us "dears" and
"darlings" as she did.
And suddenly -- Ohhhh, DUHHHH. I got it.
Not a Wasp... a WASP.
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