End of an Era ... Again.

(Cross-posted on The Bilerico Project.)

This morning in my regular blog reading, I came across this news that the owners of the trendy (again) restaurants, Indochine and Acme, are going to take over the space on First Avenue that housed Lucky Cheng's and, before that, the Club Baths. The history of this building is particularly fascinating in the way that it illustrates a certain history of the city as it intersects with LGBT history. You don't have to venture too far from the topics of AIDS and gentrification to cover most of what's happened in and to New York since the late 70s.

The old Club Baths was the first gay bathhouse I saw the inside of.

When I was 20 and a student at Parsons. I met a guy very late one night at the Ninth Circle on 10th St. (I lived on East 10th, and, when I had a few bucks to go out, I always went to the Ninth Circle. I hadn't yet discovered The Bar on 2nd Ave. and 4th St., which would be my haunt for the rest of the decade). We were both drunk and he was hungry, so we went to that gay restaurant on Christopher, the name of which escapes me. He tore through a steak and a bottle of wine, fell off his chair, yelled at the waiter. We were "asked" to leave, which at the time, for reasons I can't remember now, I found very sexy. I had a roommate and Jean, that was his name, lived on Staten Island, so he suggested we go to the baths.

Jean paid for a room and a locker. He left me to change in the locker room and meet him in his room. I took my clothes off and wrapped a towel around my waist, but I couldn't work up the nerve to venture into the hallway and find him. I knew I was in a strange land with a complex protocol of mostly unstated rules, and I was, as I am still 30 years later, too often terrified of doing something wrong and being humiliated. I'm working on it.

Eventually Jean came and got me.

Either because thinking about public gay sex while you're talking about eating out is gross or (more likely) because our collective memory of the East Village for the most part does not extend pre-Tompkins Square riots, when the NYPD rode in on horseback with riot shields and cleared that shit out to make the neighborhood safe for people who might think drag queens are a good laugh, but junkies passed out under your stairwell is taking local color a bit too far, this building always seems to be referred to as the former Lucky Cheng's, rather than the former Club Baths. (And what was it before it was a bathhouse? Just another New York Lower East Side tenement building, probably.)

So I did a little googling and found this post on Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, a wonderful blog that I can only read occasionally because it has the same effect on me as actually visiting the East Village, which is that I end up feeling disoriented and sad about New York, my past, missed opportunities, and aging. It's a quagmire I try to avoid.

Anyway, Jeremiah's condensed history of the building takes you back pre-Lucky Cheng's with an evocative description of the baths, then through the late 80s when the yuppies came and ruined everything, and the late 90s when Sex and the City came along and ruined everything else.

Pet Peeve.

We saw the new production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? last night. Because we’re saving money for a down payment on an apartment (it will probably take about a year and a half) we’ve tried to cut back on our theater-going a bit. We kept our membership at Signature Theatre, which is fairly inexpensive and we get to see some incredible stuff, like the beautiful new productions of The Piano Lesson and David Henry Hwang's Golden Child, and the Roundabout, which I think is hit or miss, but the hits make up for the misses. Oh, and Playwrights Horizons because they're always doing great new stuff. But that’s it for this season.

Well, except for 3 shows: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, all revivals that seemed too important to miss, and we were able to get discounted tickets for 2 of the 3.

As expected, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was great, a sort of prosaic interpretation that was surprisingly more shocking because it wasn’t as big and loud as you expect from this play. It felt ordinary, real. I guess I’m talking mostly about Amy Morton’s low-key performance as Martha. Riveting.

Still, as gorgeous and powerful as this production was, I have to register a complaint – and this has become a pet peeve for me because it’s not by a long shot the first time it’s happened in the last couple years at a high-priced Broadway show: our seats were in the left-hand section of the orchestra, not extreme left, not cheap “obstructed view” seats, just a few seats off the aisle, yet about 25% of the playing space was not visible to us.

In fact, C couldn’t see the bar from his seat. The bar! In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?! I don’t know just what we missed, but I know that lots of stuff was going on the opposite side of the stage, the side we could see but clearly lots of people over there could not. I would guess all told there were several dozen seats from which large chunks of the stage were blocked from view.

It’s a shabby way to treat your audience. We didn’t pay $500 for premium center orchestra, but we did pay about 90 bucks for what should have been very good seats. I don’t know how else to see this as but a failure in directing and set design. Sightlines, for god’s sake. It’s theatre 101.

Debate, with Myself.

I didn’t watch the last debate, I was surprised to find that I just didn’t want to. (I watched all the Republican primary debates and I was excited to watch the first two between Obama and Romney. I love this stuff.) I thought I was probably just reluctant to stay up till 11 when 9 is my bedtime, or that I was burned out and needed a break from worrying about the election. I taped it and thought I’d watch it Tuesday, starting earlier so I could get to bed early.

But even on Tuesday I still didn’t want to watch it, and I realized why: it was the foreign policy debate and I didn’t want to watch Obama boast one more time about how he “took out” Bin Laden. I didn’t want to watch all the strutting and posturing about our strong military and how you don’t mess with Americans or you get your ass kicked.

I’m trying to feel good about Obama. I think it’s important to get him elected because Republicans with free reign are obviously obviously worse. But when you start talking about foreign policy -- besides the fact that at least if we elect Obama we don’t have to be embarrassed about our president like during those interminable 8 years of Bush -- when you start talking about foreign policy, you land smack-dab in the middle of everything about Obama’s administration that makes me want to vote for the Green Party.

I felt good about voting for Obama in 2008. Really good. I was confident that, though it’s never going to be a perfect fit, his worldview overlapped with mine about as closely as you could expect from a guy running for president. I should say that I had similar feelings when I voted for Clinton in 1992, but I hadn’t done my research. If I’d looked at Clinton’s biography more closely I think it would have been clear that he wasn’t to be trusted. With Obama, I made a point to be better informed, and nothing in his background indicated that he would seize the power to detain people indefinitely without trial or to kill American citizens suspected but not convicted of “terrorism.” Nothing prepared me for his enthusiasm for drone strikes that “take out” civilians including children.

I’ll admit I’m a peacenik. I’d prefer to live in a world where people weren’t constantly killing and maiming each other like dogs fighting over who gets to control the backyard. It’s heartbreakingly stupid how this just goes on and on and people think that perpetuating it (if we just kill this bad guy…) will somehow make it stop. It’s immature and it’s stupid. But I understand that we don't live in that world, and that most people think it’s absolutely crucial to continue killing people all over the world. One of the things people elect presidents to do is to fight wars. I’m not naïve.

But this new executive power to basically kill anyone anywhere in the world with no checks and balances crosses a line for me. To be honest, it disgusts me.

Lately, we liberals spend a lot of time aghast at "what's become of the Republican party," what with "legitimate rape", etc. But can we spend a little time pondering what's become of the Democrats? This stuff strikes me as much more insidious because Democrats have a reputation for being more reasonable, compassionate, educated than your average Chick-fil-A Tea Party hillbilly.

I can’t imagine how depressing, how horrifying a Romney presidency would be. So I support Obama in this election. And, because the polls are so close, the enthusiasm of “the base” is important. We need every vote. So we put aside our objections for the time being. During the election season, we try not to talk about drones. We try not to get into conversations about detention and execution without trial. But ignoring these things in order to re-elect a president so that he can continue to do them (because we have not objected, after all) is a moral compromise I have a very hard time making. It’s a dilemma.

Sunday, Sunday.

Good day:

I got up at 8 (getting up at 5 all week makes 8 o’clock sleeping in), made coffee, and read the Sunday Times in bed for 2 hours. Then I had a long phone meeting with the LIZZIE people. Can’t give any details until stuff is signed, but it’s likely we’ll be doing something this summer, and maybe something else this winter or coming spring, both things fun and exciting. After that, I spent half an hour on the elliptical machine again -- it was much easier than yesterday. I’ve lost 10 pounds. I figured out a way to approach the solo piece I’m writing in a more organized way, so it’s starting to make some kind of sense to me now. (Reading Spalding Gray’s journals helped, as did listening to Fairport Convention while I worked out today.) I made chicken and green chili tacos for dinner yesterday, they were fucking awesome, and there’s enough stuff left to make them for dinner again tonight. And it’s Sunday, so I can have a glass of wine at 3 o’clock in the afternoon if I feel like it, and I do.

I’m just going to enjoy these last few hours of the weekend before Monday comes down like a hammer on the thumb of my equanimity.

I'm So Hungry!

As you know, C and I are both making an effort to lose weight and get into better shape. I don’t know if I mentioned that we’re doing the P90X workout. I’m a little squeamish to admit it because now it’s so closely associated with the ultra-repulsive Paul Ryan, but whatever, it works. So far. We’ve done 3 weeks out of 3 months and I’m much stronger, though my legs are very tired all the time.

And we’re dieting, which just means eating much less and not eating a lot of stuff that I love to eat (cheese, dessert, pasta, bread, lunch). Not that we were such terrible eaters before; in fact, we ate very healthy meals, which is why it pisses me off that we have to so radically alter our diet just to lose a few pounds. In fact, this last week I had to cut our intake in half again to practically nothing because we both sort of plateaued after losing steadily the first 2 weeks. Seriously, we’re exercising hard for an hour every day, eating next to nothing, and it’s still difficult just to get back to feeling comfortable in my 34 pants?

I’ve been wondering (of course) since we started doing this, how it ends up. I know I’m not willing to keep up this austerity plan the rest of my life. The workout is 3 months long, after which I don’t suppose we’ll just stop exercising, but I know we won’t do anything as intense as we’re doing now. My parents are in their 70s and they ride their bikes and walk a lot. They inspire me. And we live in New York where we walk a lot by necessity. But, one, I won’t give up food I love for long (I’m a firm believer in the health benefits of pleasure), and, two, walking a few miles a day isn’t enough to keep my weight down. As soon as I go back to eating a normal amount of food (not excessive, just normal) and not doing a crazy workout every day, my weight will creep back up. It just will.

Is there a point at which is doesn’t matter to me that I’m big around the waist? It doesn’t seem to matter to C, and to be honest, his extra few pounds don’t matter to me, but somehow we worry about our own bodies.

Is it like when I grew my hair long after Jay and I separated. I had worn it long in high school and then again in the 80s, but I wore it short the whole time we were doing Y’all. I felt like I wanted to have it long once more before I died, once more while I could still pull it off, and then I’d be happy with it short. So I grew it practically down to my waist for a few years but then cut it off when I moved to Texas because it was just too damn hot for long hair.

So I'm wondering if maybe I just want to be thin once more in my life and then I’ll be okay getting old and fat.

Don't Jump.

Either my alarm did not go off this morning or it went off but didn’t wake me up because I had earplugs in because C was snoring or it went off and woke me up and I turned it off and went back to sleep and don’t remember doing that. Regardless, I woke up at 5:48. Even when I get up at 5, those 2 morning hours (I have to be in the shower by 7 or I won’t get out the door in time, about 7:40, to catch the train that will get me to work a few minutes before 9) feel way too short to get any serious writing done because it takes me about an hour to clear the fog enough to see what’s in my brain and try to get it onto the page in front of me.

So instead of writing I’m blogging, which is writing, yes, but it’s not writing.

Years ago, a friend was studying to become a life coach and needed guinea pigs to practice on so I volunteered. This was during the year that I lived in Jersey City after Jay and I separated and I began editing Life in a Box. One piece of advice she gave me – because I’ve always had such a hard time integrating all the exigencies of life (making a living, mostly, but also things like being a good friend and partner) was to read biographies of successful artists I admire to see how they did it.

It was good advice and I’ve learned lots of things that have helped me manage the dilemma, but, maybe because I have a tendency to dwell on the negative, off the top of my head I can’t think of any. What occurs to me recently is that the danger with this advice is that so many of these stories don’t end well. The first two I read were Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote.

This is on my mind because I just finished reading The Broken Tower, a biography of Hart Crane. I barely knew who he was before I read it, but I was interested in gay life in the early 20^th century. Crane struggled for years to make a living and make work and then at 32 -- even after being widely recognized as one of the greatest living poets -- broke and practically homeless, he jumped off a ship into the ocean and drowned.

And yesterday I started reading Spaulding Gray’s journals. One book was not connected to the other. I was interested in Crane’s life because of the milieu and Gray’s life because the piece I’m working on is similar in style of presentation to his work. I just have a stack of books here because I buy them faster than I can read them, and these two happened to be next to each other in the stack. 

I knew this but had forgotten: Spaulding Gray also jumped off a boat after undeniable artistic success and recognition. Great. (The other strange parallel is that both Crane’s and Gray’s mothers were Christian Scientists.)

California Ban on "Conversion Therapy" Is Not About Consumer Protection.

Why is it every time a minority makes some small progress toward getting the rest of everybody to get off their fucking backs and let them live their lives, some straight person or white person or male person jumps up and says, "What about me?" I get bullied too! Everybody gets bullied, and what about reverse discrimination, and what about my religious liberties? Why do you get special treatment?!

This guy thinks "conversion therapy" is being unfairly singled out by California's new ban. I guess it's not a new idea that the most interesting characteristic of privilege is that it works whether or not you recognize that you have it:

"Whether government banning of such procedures is the most appropriate response is worth debating, however. There are a number of therapies out there which have been empirically demonstrated to range from useless to outright harmful."

Um, it's not banned because it's useless or even just because it's harmful, it's banned because it is by design used to harm a group of people for who they are. You can't compare it to "rebirthing" therapy, etc., except to say that both are based on quack science. But we're not talking about consumer protection here. We're talking about protecting kids. The author barely mentions the fact that the California ban only applies to people under 18. It is not meant to protect us from quacks; it's meant to keep kids safe from their Christian fundamentalist parents. Rebirthing therapy is a wrong (ineffective, harmful, fake) solution to what could be a real problem. Conversion therapy is also ineffective, harmful, and fake, but the patient doesn't have the problem - the parents, the families, the church people, the culture has the problem.

Not that I don't feel for adults whose experience of their sexuality is so twisted by shame that they would enroll in one of these programs, but it's kids who are most vulnerable to the abuses of religious fundamentalism. The law protects minors from parents who have such deep contempt for their children that they would imprison and shame them in an effort to transform them into something they deem lovable.

Of course it doesn't work - you can't make gay people not gay. The most you can hope for is to fuck them up emotionally and psychologically for the rest of their lives.

Just because banning conversion therapy might "drive it underground" isn't an excuse to tolerate it. Should we legalize wife-beating because making it illegal forces people to do it at home and not talk about it? Obviously, people are compelled to treat each other in all sorts of horrific ways, and they'll continue regardless of whether it's legal or not, but that doesn't mean a society should just throw up its hands.

Cross-posted at Bilerico.com.