A Few Things.

Things get stuck in my head that I want to blog about, and they stack up because I don’t have time to write as often as I want to.

C and I watched the PBS production of Company with the New York Philharmonic and Neil Patrick Harris, when was it, last week? I alway say that I don’t like much of Sondheim except Sweeney Todd which I love love love but the rest of it, except for a song here and there, no.

I shouldn’t make pronouncements like that, because I had never seen Company or really even heard much of the music, except I guess I saw the clip of Elaine Stritch singing ”The Ladies Who Lunch” from the Pennebaker documentary and, well, Elaine Stritch, so of course it’s great. And in college the song that everyone wanted to sing was “Being Alive” because we were all obsessed with our own sense of how marvelously we suffered. And it’s a great song.

Anyway, Stephen Colbert? He’s really good. Everyone, really. Patti Lupone is a monster. She chews that shit up and spits it out and give me more.

I’ve probably said this before a few times, but I love actors. How do they do that? It’s what I always wanted to do, did it as a kid and in high school I was in every musical, and I studied acting in college, but somewhere back then I got afraid, got beaten up by my insecurity so I took a turn into directing which led me to painting which led me to songwriting which led me back to theater, and I love what I do, I love writing, I love it to the end of me. But there’s something about acting. Jumping off that ledge night after night knowing that some nights the audience and the other people on stage and the band and the lights are going to catch you and some nights you’re going to fall splat on the pavement. It’s heroic.

So, I love Company. Who knew? (Smoking a bowl beforehand helps, too.)

Also, as I was watching, I was thinking about this new thing where Sondheim is revising the show to make the main character gay, an idea I love. And perfect timing, because if you make that character gay, the story becomes quite explicitly a story about the coming of age of gay men in America. It’s a journey from exclusion to inclusion, from false to true, from promiscuity to marriage. It’s going to be the gay marriage show, mark my words. Being Alive? It’s the ultimate anthem for the gay marriage movement. Let me get married because only in marriage will I become truly human. I mean, c’mon:

Someone to crowd you with love,
Someone to force you to care,
Someone to make you come through,
Who'll always be there,
As frightened as you
Of being alive

The other thing that happened recently is that I got a check from TUTS, the regional theater in Houston that produced LIZZIE last month. It was for the writers’ royalties in excess of the advance we were given. I know that sounds kind of legalistic, but what it means is that, in order to get the rights to do the show, the theater had to give us a lump sum of money, a couple thousand dollars (to be split between the 3 writers after our attorney was paid his percentage), and commit to a small percentage of the gross ticket sales, the lump sum being an advance against that percentage.

This is the first time in my career that ticket sales have brought in enough revenue so that the small percentage of writers’ royalties exceeded the amount of the advance. It wasn’t a windfall, but it was enough that I can replace my computer I destroyed last week by pouring a cup of coffee on the keyboard (yes, I know, thank you, shut up). Maybe it doesn’t sound so impressive, but it’s a milestone for me. I am 52 years old and this is the first time I have been paid royalties in excess of the advance.

A cautionary tale for all you youngsters out there embarking on a theater career. You will not make a living. You will be over the moon about the smallest sums of money.

More Thoughts, Less Organized.

Our friends and families reacted to last Sunday's post with sadness and relief echoing our own. I keep examining my own feelings, from this angle and that, defensively, because I have expressed such strong and mostly negative opinions about the shift in gay culture toward normativity mostly in the form of marriage and children and here I found myself in the thick of both. I keep coming back to the position, unassailable to my mind, that choices people make about relationships and family, at a personal level, reside in a place protected from the kind of criticism one might bring to these phenomena when speaking more broadly about politics and culture. Still somehow I want to be certain, as if anything ever is, that my decision to adopt was not selfish and exhibitionistic, nor was my decision not to.

Life is always more subtle and complex than politics want to allow.

I do feel sadness and regret, but those are not unfamiliar feelings. There are so many versions of me that I grieve for, not just the one in which I am a father. Every choice to me feels like a thousand things I didn’t choose. I daily, hourly, regret that I don’t paint, that I don’t play the cello, that I don’t teach high school, that I don’t live barefoot in the desert studying Vedanta. And on and on.

As it began to require more and more effort, more and more money, more and more attention (at the expense of other things, naturally), the project of adoption started to feel especially out of sequence, not quite right. My career is gaining some traction, my mother is fighting cancer, our friends’ kids are starting high school.

And yes life is strange and unpredictable. Things don’t happen in the order you think they should. But adoption is not something that just happens, like when my mother had two babies in the first two years of her marriage because she learned birth control from a Catholic priest. It takes stamina, fortitude, superhuman strength. So of course the big fat question is, "Why?"

The Future.

I realized last weekend that we’d made an important decision and then kind of kept it to ourselves. We were in North Carolina with C’s family and one by one – first C’s sister, then his mother, then his aunt – asked us how the search for a baby was going and each time we were like, “Uh…”

Weeks ago –I don’t remember where we were or what had just happened but we were in a car in a parking lot for this conversation so it must have been out of town because we don’t have a car unless we’ve rented one to go somewhere – we decided, or I guess really I decided (we'd gotten a call or email from the adoption attorney with what seemed like a very unlikely prospect of a potential birth mother and she wondered if we wanted to follow up on it and C pressed me to say whether or not I wanted to and I struggled to say no even though I knew in my heart I didn't want to but I didn't want to disappoint C or our families and friends who wanted this so badly to work out for us), I decided to give up, to stop looking for a baby.

We had spent, by that time, about $25,000 between the agency fees for the home study, the cost of the profile we had designed and printed, the fee for the consultant who took out classified ads in newspapers in several states, the cost of the ads themselves, and the lawyer’s retainer. What we got in return was 1 phone call in response to our ad (a hoax or miscarriage, we’ll never know), 3 phone calls that were not in response to our ad but the consultant passed them along to us when the couples who received the calls rejected them because the birth mother was either black or a drug addict, and one baby we took home for about 20 hours until her mother changed her mind.

When C and I met we had both long since come to terms with the fact that we would not be parents. We both wanted it when we were younger, but our lives didn’t take a shape that would accommodate children. Then when we met our life together did take that shape. At first it felt too late. I was nearly 50. But we talked. And talked. And finally decided, “Okay, maybe it’s not too late but only if we do it now.”

We gave ourselves a year. We said, “We’ll put everything into this, and, at the end of the year if we don’t have a baby, then it’ll be too late.” And we’ll be fine either way. We’re fine without a baby now, we’ll be fine in a year without a baby if that’s how it turns out.

But, you know, in the meantime … Why is it so hard not to see it all spinning out into the future, how excited we’d be and our families when we called with the news, why is it so hard not to rehearse all those moments, imagine those long days at home with the baby, all those conversations with Alice (if she was a girl, after my great aunt) or Oscar (if he was a boy, after my great uncle), and how my heart would crack wide open when C would come home from work and hold the baby till she stopped crying and fell asleep on his shoulder. I still, every time I open the freezer, imagine the tiny containers of baby food that I was going to make, pureed spinach and carrots and bananas, all lined up and labeled with a Sharpie. I would have been a wonderful mother.

So in that parking lot in a rental car, wherever it was that we were that afternoon, I told C that I was done. I wanted to move on. Our year was not quite up, but, to continue the search, we would have had to pay several thousand more dollars for another round of ads in hopes of a better response. After such disappointing results the first time, we were both fairly certain we didn’t want to do that. We knew going in that adopting would be expensive, but neither of us had any idea what a money pit it could easily become. The ease of that decision – to stop spending money on it – made it clear that our desire for a child had limits, that this was not an obsession, that our life together would be complete without a child, that – despite the fact that we would have been amazing parents – we don’t need a baby.

So, the children in our lives will be our siblings’ kids, and without children of our own we’ll have more time and money to indulge them. And now we can get back to saving for a downpayment on a bigger apartment with a guest bed so our nieces and nephews can come visit and we'll take them to Broadway shows. (Still spinning out the future...) Kids need gay uncles. Surely, if homosexuality is a result of natural selection, its adaptive advantage must have something to do with gay uncles.

Back to Life.

It’s noon and I still have a nasty headache but my fever is creeping down and I don’t feel nauseous any more. Yesterday when I woke up I was very sluggish but not unusually so after only 5 hours of sleep. At work I started to feel more and more queasy and threw up in the bathroom twice. On the way home, I broke out in a cold sweat, head pounding, stomach churning. I found a seat where I could put my head between my legs and got home without passing out or vomiting on the train.

I spent the whole evening in bed. C heated up some chicken broth with rice for me, and grilled himself a steak. (I had thawed 2 steaks for our first dinner at home together in 3 weeks.) I went to sleep before 10, set my alarm, but when it rang I took my temperature and it was still over 100 so I texted work to say I was staying home. I slept on and off all morning.

I don’t know why I got so sick – not because there’s no reason but because there are several. Sunday afternoon when I got home from Houston I ate a ton of really spicy Chinese food and drank a bottle of wine waiting for C to return on a much later flight. So, it could have been a hangover or food poisoning. I was also really wound up from the excitement of the great LIZZIE reviews. Whether it’s good stuff or bad, if I get in a heightened emotional state it goes right to my stomach. And Monday, yesterday, my mom started another round of chemotherapy. Her cancer has returned.

Five years ago, she was treated successfully for ovarian cancer. Surgery and then chemotherapy. At the time, I was unemployed, rudderless, and living off the generosity of friends in Austin. It was easy for me to go to Indiana for the summer, help around the house, cook for my mom and dad during the treatment, which made her tire easily but otherwise was not a big deal. It felt good to help, and it was also just really nice to spend that time with my parents.

In the meantime, she’s been healthy and fit, but now it seems this mysterious abdominal trouble she’s had recently is related to a return of the cancer. Though it’s been a relief for her to finally know what the trouble is and have a plan to treat it, cancer is never the news you want.

My mom is not a worrier. That trait must skip a generation. She’s upbeat and optimistic, ready to get this done and get on with her life. I’m doing my best to take my cues from her, but it’s my mom and I’m furious that she has to go through this, and scared.

Men and Women and LIZZIE.

All the talk about Miley Cyrus didn’t strike me as relevant to me in any way, but this morning, reading Amanda Palmer’s letter to Sinead O’Connor in response to O’Connor’s letter to Miley Cyrus, a bell rang in my head (I admit I’m a little slow, but I’m also really busy and preoccupied!). That’s a conversation that absolutely DOES pertain to me.

Among the many things LIZZIE is, it’s part of the conversation about women in rock, about sexuality on stage, about celebrity, and women celebrities in particular and how we treat them.

So, I have about 20 minutes before I have to leave for the Hobby Center. We move into the theater today! It’s our first "10 out of 12" day, and we’re all very excited. But I wanted to dash off a quick post to say that we are very curious to know what our audience, our fans, think of what we’ve done with the Lizzie Borden story. We’re not unaware that this is a show about women written by 3 men.

For us it as, among other things, an homage, a tribute to the women rockers (writers, singers, players) who have shaped us. The show grew out of our love for these women and what they do. I repeat this list over and over: Patti Smith, Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Grace Slick, and on and on. Sinead O’Connor.

Yesterday at rehearsal, Tim and I noticed that there were 4 women on stage and a line of about a dozen men watching them: the writers, director, designers (except the costume designer, who is a woman), the band. Our stage manager is a woman, but otherwise when we rehearse it’s a bunch of men behind a table and a bunch of women being looked at and evaluated. It’s weird. And the show is in many ways ABOUT how men see women and how they deal with women's power.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on this when I have more time to write, but I’m also curious. What do you think?

Alarm.

More adventures. This morning at 4, I was awoken by the smoke detector in my room. It wasn’t really “going off” or whatever the expression is; it was chirping. Intermittently. It took me a minute or two to even figure out where the sound was coming from, owing to the fact that it was 4 in the morning and I was alone and not in my bed or anywhere near home. Ever since those years of living on the road, I wake up – not infrequently – disoriented, not having any idea where I am or what time of year it is. It feels almost like amnesia, and sometimes lasts for several minutes.

I got my bearings, but I so did not want to get out of bed and investigate.

I stared at the round plastic thing on the ceiling for a while, figured it was probably just low on battery power since it wasn’t ringing loud or long enough to motivate anyone but enough to keep me awake. I thought about ripping it out of the ceiling, but then I thought, “What if it’s detecting carbon monoxide and if I go back to sleep I never wake up?” Jesus fuck. I have such a hard time getting back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night, which is pretty much every night. And I do not like to be dragged out of bed.

I called the front desk and it rang a dozen or so times. Eventually someone picked up. I told her what was happening. She said, “Can’t you turn it off?” I said, “Well, I suppose I could, but I’m slightly concerned about going back to sleep in a room where the smoke alarm is ringing.” She said, “There’s no one here but me, and I’m in the laundry room.”

Well, I’m sure the laundry is more important than me dying in my sleep. I didn’t say that. By then it wasn’t beeping any more. I told the woman it had stopped, and I went back to bed. Just as I was drifting off, it started again. I called again. The laundry woman said she’d meet me at the desk and let me into another room where I could sleep and someone would check out the alarm in the morning.

So that’s what I did.

I did not sleep well or much. I had a dream in which I was watching a high school friend portray a tragic but funny drunk in a play, and another in which I ran into an old friend whom I haven’t seen in years, and she had gained about 500 pounds. She was so fat I couldn’t reach her face to kiss her.

I’m glad to know I’m staying in a hotel where, if the smoke alarm goes off at 4 a.m., there’s no one here who can do anything about it.

Kolaches.

Houston is trafficky. It took me an hour and a half to get back to the hotel from the Hobby Center last night. I could have walked faster and enjoyed it more. I’m exaggerating; it’s 8 or 9 miles, so it would’ve taken me twice that long to walk and it’s 90 degrees out so walking would have been very unpleasant, but the drive was excruciating, inching along Westheimer with the sun in my eyes. The one good thing about how long it took is that eventually the sun disappeared behind some buildings so the last 15 minutes of the drive was slightly less painful. My commute to work in Brooklyn is roughly as long, but I can sit (usually) on the train and read. I hate driving. Hate it.

Its still very hot here, but the outside temperature is almost irrelevant. I’m rarely outside, and the rehearsal studio is like a walk-in refrigerator. It can’t be even 60 degrees in there. We step outside for a few minutes on our breaks to thaw out. The music director asked yesterday if we thought it had maybe gotten a little warmer in the room, and I said no I think that’s hypothermia.

This morning at 9, they asked us, all the LIZZIE folks, to drop by the TUTS staff meeting so they could check us out meet us and say hello. There were boxes of donuts and kolaches, and it was the first time I’d seen kolaches since I left Texas.

There are many kinds – kolaches are basically filled yeast rolls not unlike donuts. They can be filled with preserves and other sweet things, but the ones that stand out have hot dogs inside. They’re like hot dogs with the bun baked around them. I know they sound weird and maybe sort of awful, but they’re pretty good. They’re soft and warm and hot-doggy in a good way, and they’re for breakfast! I know you don’t believe me, but I managed to not eat one or two or five. I just enjoyed the smell.

I felt pretty proud of myself. Traveling always makes me think I can eat whatever I want and it doesn’t count, but when the gig is 3 weeks long it kind of (not even kind of) does count. And, well, free donuts (or kolaches) is definitely permission to indulge, in fact it’s almost really a command.

I guess I’m well trained in “no, thank you” by my Brooklyn workplace, which, as I’ve said before, is a virtual conveyor belt of candy and donuts and pizza and burgers and cookies all day.

But we’re only 3 days in, so …