Crabb Town

Would: A House Out of Town

New York City is havoc. It’s brain is full of noise, and it’s disgusted me for several years now. Its subways, with their turgid, stinking platforms and black-mucus encrusted steps leading up to pot-holed, smog stained streets. It’s sidewalks, dotted with millions of grey, decades-old, chewing-gum stars. The entryways to it’s decaying walk-ups occasionally marked with red smears of what I tell myself are tomato juice stains, but are more than likely arterial sprays of thug blood. ¬

I live in Brooklyn because it feels manageable- physically and emotionally. But occasionally, some unforeseen event will take me above 14th Street. You might see me standing in the epicenter of some architectural urban disaster. Perhaps you’ll see at the corner of 42nd and Broadway, momentarily blinded by the pulsing lights of a garish, LCD “Lion King” advertisement as I consider placing my wallet in between my teeth in preparation for an epileptic seizure. At 34th Street and 7th Avenue, I might gather my shirt up over my nose at the odor of a legless burn victim with swollen, track-marked arms. Reclined in the glowing vestibule of another new Citibank he’ll scream at me that he’s going to “shit on my evil, white soul.” I’ll be visibly shaken by being insulted in front of the legendary Macy’s- where miracles used to happen. Or so it was said.

I moved here in 1999 as a bright-eyed, curious, 25 year-old art school graduate. I remember Manhattan 12 years ago- cleaner, friendlier, and more charming. I had big dreams and the moxy and verve to make them come true. I was going to be an established artist who lived in a land-marked Brownstone and brunched regularly with David Bowie and Iman. I was going to become the creature that I always meant to be.

So much has happened between now and then. And these things have changed me.

The day after 9/11 a toothless man in Payless loafers mugged me at gunpoint. In 2002 I was attacked by a sexually aggressive cabdriver who begged me to be his “wife” and promised to “show me things.” During a period of celibacy in 2005 I got crabs from a pair of overpriced slacks I purchased for 50 dollars from a “vintage store.” In 2006 I saw a terribly confused man at a wine tasting take a huge swig from what he thought was a carafe but was actually a spittoon. At a Burlesque show in 2008 I watched a menstruating woman pull 30 feet of bloody handkerchiefs from her vagina while singing a song she dedicated to her father. Two years ago I watched a wailing homeless man in the middle of 6th Avenue spin in circles while peeing through an exposed, loose-hanging catheter. Last year at a bar I saw a drunken man finger-bang his semi-conscious girlfriend as she vomited onto the booth beside her. No one stopped him. Not even me.

These weekly terrors are just par for the course now.
I’ve seen things. I’ve smelled things. I’ve “touched the void” as it were. And it’s sticky, the void. It’s covered in a quarter-inch thick layer of pigeon shit and bum urine. It’s grey and throbbing and full of cigarette butts and discarded, cum-filled condoms. It’s New York City… and I think I’m through with it.

Not long ago I took a trip to a quaint town in Pennsylvania, a magical Mecca of tiny cafes and privately owned shops.
It’s name is Doylestown. And it’s enchanting.
It’s a small town that doesn’t fall victim to conservative “small-town values” because its population is made up of so many New York-based lawyers, doctors and professional types. About an hour from the city, its streets are lined with massive rainbow-colored Victorian homes. They stand proudly on every block like gingerbread houses on steroids. Behind the walls of said houses live 45 year-old NPR-listening couples and their Honor Roll children. These are families who say “Hell no!” to McDonalds and Applebee’s attempting to open new stores along D-Town’s charming stretch of Main Street.

Lately, when I visit Doylestown I find myself daydreaming about a future there…

I would have the opportunity to redefine myself. How do I want people to see me in this new life? I had tried to rename myself “Jonathan” the summer before high school, but it never took. Renaming only seems to “take” when a bully does it against your will. Hence my 8th grade moniker, “Fag-O-Tron.” But now I would hold the reigns and I would build the mystery of my new adult persona.

My boyfriend and I would move into town on a glorious spring day. We would settle into our modest, one-story fixer-upper and go down to Main Street for paint, building supplies, and a decent Espresso. We would meet a myriad of local shopkeepers, hands-craftsmen and imported coffee experts. I would charm them effortlessly with stories of my younger days in New York and my knowledge of Artisanal cheeses. I would speak sincerely of my admiration for these small business owners. I would understand their plight to stay open as lesser-quality National chains like Pier One and Home Depot open in strip malls on the outskirts of town. My boyfriend and I would introduce each other as our “partners” in order to maintain an air of dignity and ensure that the locals understand that our commitment is “real.” We want people to think of us as men with excellent taste in wine who read the NY Times Arts section. Not circuit party trolls who snort poppers and inhale cocaine off of the young, muscular buttocks of Brazilian strippers.
I would introduce myself as “Jonathan” at all the local hardware stores.
And this time, it would take.

In a week, our home’s exterior would be completely renovated and Doylestown would start buzzing with gossip concerning the “handsome men on Decatur Street” and their “sea foam green with eggshell cream trim” one-story. We would invite a small group of neighbors over for an early cocktail hour followed by hors d’oeuvres. They would be surprised at how warm and casual our home was. A slightly overweight 48 year-old woman in a Chico’s crop top and scarf named Barbara would admit this to me over our granite-top kitchen island as I prepared another tray of mini-quiches.
“You know,” she mused while stripping a thin pink layer of casing from her salami, “We all thought that, because you were from the city, that it might be all monochromatic and steel in here.” What she would really mean is “Because you’re both gay we thought there would be a lot of black leather and erotic art all over the place.”

I would smile as she munched down another ham and endive quiche and say “We believe the interior of your home should reflect the calm and focus you desire in your day-to-day life.” On the way out of the kitchen I would explain the mechanics of Feng Shui to Barbara. This would blow her mind even more than finding out the quiches were homemade and not frozen. She would soon become my best friend on the block. My BFB.
I would tell everyone that I was years older than I am. Every day I would bask in the constant remarks about my youthful appearance. “But you look like you’re barely over 30!” “What do you use to keep your skin so looking so smooth?” “I just can’t believe you’re FORTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD!”

I would humbly smile and nod behind the counter of my new shop on Main Street- Crabbtown. The shop would carry an assortment of my favorite things- kitschy home items made of refashioned junk, science fiction movie posters, discounted 90’s dance music CDs, T-shirts bearing images of Morrissey and Depeche Mode. The locals would visit my shop out of curiosity at first. The ladies of Doylestown would come by on Sunday afternoons and comment on how “kooky” everything was, but how it “just wasn’t for them.”

But after repeated visits their interest in me (and my shop) would grow. “What is this jaunty music?” Sheryl MacDougal would ask as The Cure’s “A Forest” played on the stereo. “I can do my spin course at home to this!” Diana Hammond would start flipping through a book of 90’s Club Kid culture and become mesmerized. “These people were absolutely insane. Oh my Lord! That HAIR!” Putting 50 dollars on the counter she would giggle and exclaim “This book is gonna blow Jim’s mind.” Sandra and Bill Newton would be charmed by a set of coasters made from the cut out plastic centers of 12-inch records. “Well these are just darling!” Sandra would say as her husband handed over his Amex and gave me a suspicious look. I would pity Sandra and begin to berate her Pashmina in my mind.

It would be the men of Doylestown that would truly be my biggest challenge. At first I would be threatening, with all of my big-city culture, exotic cologne and theatrical buffoonery. But as my boyfriend, um… “partner” and I hosted more and bigger house parties, they would begin to trust me. I would tell them stories about New York like I’d lived in the Wild West; about the time I was mugged at gunpoint and drunkenly chased down the robber for my money, about the time I used my certified resuscitation skills to revive a girl that OD’d on the dance floor at The Tunnel, about “fighting the terrorists” by deciding to stay in New York after 9/11 as all my friends fled. They would soon see me as more than a gay shop owner with a broad vocabulary and an overpriced haircut (which I would regularly have to drive to Philly for). These men would come to view me as a new kind of Cosmopolitan hero. A man who fought to survive in the hectic, terrorized streets of the Big Rotten Apple. A man who survived addictions, poverty and violence but was evolved enough to come out the other side with good manners and an eye for quality skin care products.

But soon their respect would become displaced. They would lose track of what they initially found so heartening about my companionship. They would begin projecting their marital dysfunction and romantic loneliness onto me.

While showing Barry Solomon how to correctly work with styling clay in his bathroom, his gaze would fall intently on my face. “I desire you,” he would whisper as he grabbed my wrist. I’d say “No Barry. We can’t! Your wife. My husband.” A week later during a 4th of July party at the Steinberg’s, John O’Donnell would grind his pelvis against me as I leaned into the fridge for more Bloody Mary mix. “What are you doing to me?” he would ask, his breath warm with Michelob Ultra. “John, no!” I would say. “Your wife. My husband!” I would reject these and other men in as polite a way as possible. But soon they would become bitter. Their wives would start to gossip about their declining sex lives. Sally would weep to me over her Cobb Salad. “George just seems disinterested lately,” she would say. I would hold her hand and support her, knowing perfectly well that only 4 days earlier George had stood outside my bedroom window in the rain blaring Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight.”

I would tell myself that in spite of this new problem regarding the men of Doylestown, I was doing positive things there. I was building a community and inspiring people! Barbara’s initial interest in Feng Shui inspired her to open her own design studio. A goal-oriented businesswoman was born. Soon Barbara was inundated with clients and working non-stop. Once timid, she was now the toughest broad in D-Town. The woman practically lived on her Bluetooth and you could hear her coming a mile away.
“No! The Spanish tile I said… Listen you bastard. I said THE SPANISH TILE!”

But this newfound purpose had driven a wedge between Barbara and her husband Felix, who admitted at my “guys-only” Apples to Apples night that Barbara’s professional goals and financial independence was killing their love life. Felix had only last year admitted that he was both an Alcoholic and a dyslexic and he was still in a very tender, needy place. “Her schedule is just so busy now! She’s not attracted to me anymore.” He would bow his head and cry into his hands at the card table. But five minutes later he would surprise me in the downstairs guest bathroom. Forcing me against the wall he would whisper to me that I still made him feel alive “the way Barbara couldn’t.”
“But Felix. Your wife. My husband.”
Things would get out of hand.

The town would change. Diana Hammond would become obsessed with the book about Club Kids from my shop. Around town people would notice Diana, her cheeks would be redder, her hair unkempt, her clothes askew. Soon her garden would go to hell and she would get banned from a local coffee shop after offering someone what she referred to as a “special cigarette.” Skipping past the courthouse at 7 in the morning people would say that she appeared to be “covered in glitter.” At church they’d say she was spotted at the library talking to a potted plant.

That Cure CD would open a new world of Gothy, gloomy music to Sheryl MacDougal. She’d wonder through the park late at night, just staring at the grass with her headphones on. Her son would complain at school about his poorly-packed brown bag lunch, saying his mother had been “moping around the house and crying a lot.” I would say hello to Sheryl in line at Key Foods and she would barely look up at me through her shaggy, untamed bangs. Her hair seemed blacker. Her skin seemed paler. As she left I would notice lyrics from “Fascination Street” scribbled on her canvas bag.

Those 12” record coasters would only be the tip of the iceberg for Sandra and Bill Newton. Rumor would have it they were broke. A secure life slowly ruined by their newfound passion for knick-knacks was putting them in the poor house. I’d stop by to drop off Tupperware and witness firsthand the hoarding nightmare of novelty gifts inside their home- Kitty cat wall clocks, dashboard Hawaiian Hula girls, ceramic vases in the shape of guns, an assortment of Burlesque-girl ashtrays, huge lamps in the shape of giant light bulbs, a family room filled to the brim with Mexican Folk Art. It would be shocking but I would do my best to maintain my composure. Sandra would bring me a cup of coffee as a thousand Sombrero-wearing, empty-eyed skulls watched us from every corner of the room. She’d seem nervous and disappear into her kitchen through a doorway of hanging beads bearing an image of Tweety Bird.

In Bill’s office, I’d find him standing in the middle of the room, trembling with ecstasy and surrounded by tin cars, Lincoln Logs, wind-up toys and Whoopee Cushions.
“Hi… Bill?” I asked.
Bill’s ecstasy would become rage as he turned to me . “Leave my room. It’s MY ROOM!” He’d throw a Mr. Potato Head at me and it would barely miss my head, shattering into a million pieces against the wall behind me. Rushing out, I would see Sandra crying in her living room while dabbing her eyes with a collectible day-of-the-week Betty Boo handkerchief.

I would tell myself things were okay. But they weren’t. Over then next few days I would notice more garbage on the street. Businesses would open later than usual. I would hear more raised voices in the neighborhood at night. One evening in bed I would swear I heard screaming in the distance as Danzig’s “Mother” blared from a parked car stereo. I would call the non-emergency Doylestown police number to make a complaint. No one would answer.

The next day I would wake up and find our beautiful home vandalized with Felix’s handiwork. Our front door spray-painted with the word “HOMOSAXUEL!”
At the bank no one would smile. On the street impatient drivers would honk and scream from their car windows. At my favorite coffee shop my favorite barista would seem listless and annoyed as she made my short Americano “with room.”

I would arrive that evening at the local cinema to set up the “Rocky Horror” screening I’d arranged. A month earlier I’d organized a John Waters series and people in the community just loved it. Pat Canter, a 64-year-old schoolteacher, went so far as to say, “You know, “Polyester” really made me think about “womanhood” and what it means to be emancipated.” To be fair, two weeks later she also divorced her husband and moved to Reno with a woman from her bowling team. But at least she got something from it.
I was hoping this screening would bring the community back together. People would start to stumble into the theatre, some of them crept in wearily like zombies. But others were absolutely giddy with excitement, literally twitching with anticipation.

In the doorway a tall woman with fire-red hair would appear. As she approached I would realize her face was covered with paint and sequins. Her arms were covered in hundreds of rubber neon bracelets and she’d be wearing 6-inch heel hot-pink Doc Marten boots. She’d reach into a purple rubber-spiked backpack and pull out a foot long cylinder. Bending it in her hands, the glow-stick would suddenly come to life, emanating a warm orange light. She’d twirl the stick in figure-eights as she skipped towards me. It wouldn’t be until she’d thrown her sweaty arms around me and sighed into my ear that I would realize that this was Diana Hammond.

“I love you so much, David,” she’d moan wetly into my ear. “We are so much a part of each other now.” As she burped against my face I’d realize that she was no longer the Diana Hammond I’d wanted to be a “part of.”
I could feel a few sequins stuck to my cheek after Diana pulled her sticky face from mine. “Oh David, thank you so much for bringing that Club Kid book into my life. It’s fucking changed everything for me! See. I’m not even ashamed of that word anymore.” She gasped and then started jumping up and down in some invisible mosh pit in her mind. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!!!”

Beneath the layers of foundation and fake eyelashes, I could see Diana’s huge, dilated pupils vibrating in her eye sockets like they were battery-powered. “Diana, are you okay?” I asked.
Grabbing my shoulders, she exclaimed “Okay? I’m fucking ALIVE! Those kids all had it right. Better living CAN be achieved through chemistry. So I decided to spread the love.”
Diana will push “play” on the tiny Walkman attached to her belt and Deeelite’s “Groove Is In the Heart” would blare from the mini-speakers built into her backpack. She would break out two bags of pills and offer them forward. “Uppers? Downers? Pick your poison now before it’s all gone.”
“Diana! You’re dealing?”
“To anyone who wants is baby!”
She would skip into the crowd, indiscriminately throwing handfuls of pills out into the audience.

All of Doylestown would fidget and drool in their seats waiting for the movie to start. Upstairs in the projection room I would start the film and try to calm myself. Just then Felix would burst through the door in a vinyl codpiece and harness. Through his grey rubber gas mask I could barely make out him saying, “You WILL be mine. Tonight!”
He would hold me captive there for over an hour, force-feeding me pills and begging me “understand the depth of his love.” Angered by my rejection, he would eventually attack me while brandishing a giant yellow dildo and it would take everything in me to would fight him off. Woozy and unsteady on my feet, I would stumble downstairs and into the theatre. Rushing through the doors I would see it going up in flames. Sheryl MacDougal would be onstage in front of the screen in her “Disintegration” tour T-shirt. Her face would be a mess of smeared, black mascara and tears. She would be dousing the curtains in fire with a makeshift flamethrower she MacGyver’d out of a Zippo and a can of Final Net. She would be screaming “Oh I miss the kiss of treachery” and something about the “love for a younger meat” but I would barely be able to hear her over the bellowing Rocky Horrow sing-along of the audience.

“Don’t Dream It, Be It… Don’t dream it, be it…”

I would turn to the screen as flames engulfed it. The cast of the movie would be passionately tearing off each other’s corsets as they made out in a swimming pool. I would look out to the hundreds of Doylestown residents in to the crowd and see them doing the same, sloppily mimicking the far more youthful and attractive people on the screen, The room would grow brighter. The walls would begin to moan and buckle as the temperature rose around us. I would try to get everyone out but they would all be so high from Sandra’s pills that I wouldn’t be able to make them see danger.
“Someone listen to me,” I screamed. “We HAVE to get OUT OF HERE!”

At the back of the theatre a small orgy of Doylestown men would be having group intercourse as their wives writhed on the floor, passing a joint and laughing. As the screen burnt completely away, Frankenfurter would fall to his death. I would feel a tap on my shoulder. I’d turn to see my BFB Barbara holding a pair of scissors like a knife above me. Her face would be covered in tribal tattoos and a bleach blonde Mohawk would sprout from the top of her head. She’d be wearing contact lenses, one bearing the image of a question mark, the other a dollar sign.
“You bastard!” she’d scream.
“Me?” I asked, “You’re the one that looks like an extra from “Road Warrior”!”
“It’s YOU!” Barbara bellowed as she began to haphazardly cut huge chunks of hair from her head. “Look around. YOU did this to US!”
As she plopped out her freshly-pierced breasts and cackled up to the rafters, it occurred to me that she might be right.

I was the havoc.
My brain was full of noise.
I wasn’t just disgusted. I was disgusting. I carried it in me. I didn’t just touch the void. I was the void.

I’d been in New York too long. I’d passed the ten-year mark. It’s inside me now- the stench, the bitterness, the grit, the common vulgarity and rudeness. It’s an ugly flower inside me that will bloom wherever I go and whenever I speak, a slumbering Venus Flytrap ready to devour and destroy any simile of normalcy in my life.

As I looked around at the citizens of Buck’s County going up in flames, I’d realize the hell I’d wrought on these poor people. 60 seconds later Barbara would be almost completely bald, her scalp dotted with tiny scarlet wounds. She’d vomit a little and then throw another handful of tiny blue pills into her mouth. Diana Hammond would be hiking up her dress and mounting the Doylestown Sheriff as she squeezed drops of liquid LSD from a blotter onto his tongue. The men of Doylestown would be squirming on the balcony in a mountain of flesh, their ecstasy giving way to distress as they became gradually disgusted with each other. Barry Solomon will lift his head from Leonard Hampstead’s crotch and wretch. He’d look around mortified as a lucid moment of sobriety would overtake his drug haze. Felix would rise from the pile of man-sex and choke back an entire fifth of Jack Daniels in a single swig. Then he’d see me far below, point a blaming finger, and throw himself over the railing. Sheryl would barely notice his limp body crashing into the seats two feet behind her as she took a deep hit from a joint. Exhaling, she’d whisper, “I’m diseased, I’m diseased, I’m diseased” as flames crept up her burgundy velvet cape.

The theatre would be filled with smoke and the cacophonous screams of ultimate pleasure and unimaginable pain. Sandra Newton would shuffle toward me across the Royal Blue, popcorn graphic-emblazoned carpet. Backlit by a blinding wall of fire, she’d lift her head to look at me. We’d flinch slightly as a gun blast explodes somewhere in the haze of the orgy. With dead eyes and a crooked, sleepy smile she would try to speak. She’d stutter “I… I… I set Bill free tonight.” Sheryl would extend her bloody fist towards me as her fingers slowly unfurled to reveal a Donald the Duck PEZ dispenser.
“For you.”

A fire alarm will ring as sprinkler systems blast cold water onto the smoldering orgy of barbecued bodies below. It’s then that I will suddenly think, “Wait. I don’t want this. I NEVER wanted this! Small towns bore the hell out of me. I have no interest in cooking OR interior design! I hate crafts! And knick-knacks! And scrap-booking! Feng Shui is bullshit designed to sell books to impotent middle class white people who do Yoga incorrectly! I want to be poor and make art and complain to friends about bad foreign films over coffee. Why on earth did I buy a tiny Victorian fixer-upper in a town so lame they don’t even have a music store that sells vinyl records? I hate this place and all of these Vanilla, dead-end sellouts. What the fuck has happened to me? Get me out of here! I’m not 48. I’m 35!”

I’d look skyward, clawing at my face like a wild animal and scream out loud, “I’M THIRTY-FIVE!!!”
But where would I go, really?
Where was left for me to go, knowing what I carried inside?
In that moment, as the beautiful town I’d destroyed with my drug stories, house music, novelty calendars, and sexual liberation burns down around me, I’ll think to myself…

I’ve heard Southern California is beautiful this time of year.

Papa Was A Rodeo

When I was 11 years old, my father and I couldn’t have been more different. It was 1987 and my dad was a good old boy from Texas who wore trucker hats and tight Wrangler jeans. He was a fiber-optic technician who drove around the deep South in a huge tan RV, a loner following the beat of his own drum.
I was wearing Vision Streetwear zebra-print high-tops, sporting a Nazi-youth/skater haircut with long Sun-In’d bangs, and obsessed with the television show “Silver Spoons” starring Ricky Shroder. I would sit in my mom’s giant Papasan chair devouring handfuls of White Cheddar popcorn as I watched each episode and deconstructed it like a Godard film.

What’s going on with these jump cuts?
Is the obvious synthetic lighting intentional?
What does the choo-choo train really symbolize?
Why do they underuse the Alfonso character?
Why aren’t I making this show!?

I had found my true calling. I rang my dad and asked him for a video camera for my twelfth birthday. I was going to be a director. A few weeks later my dad bought me a “top of the line” VHS video camera. It was a hulking mass of plastic and metal. Using it was like carrying around an 8 slice industrial toaster on your shoulder. The sheer girth of it pummeled my scrawny prepubescent arms. After an hour of filming I was left with what looked like some kind of sex harness bruises on my shoulders. I chalked it up to the “life of a filmmaker” and the next day I began production on my first film- an overwrought psychological thriller about a disenfranchised, friendless 12 year-old boy abducted by aliens whose fear turns to joy as he realizes he’s not with “the other” at all, but back home with his own people who’d lost him as a baby.
It was deep stuff.

The first day of filming was a fantastic failure. The talent and crew didn’t get along… and both of them were me. I wasn’t the most popular kid and making this movie was turning out to be pretty much a “me, myself and I” endeavor. The set was my middle school’s athletic field. I struggled in the wind to balance a foam core cut out of a UFO glued to a yard stick. I started to worry, “What if this doesn’t look just like the final scene from “Close Encounters?” I was a perfectionist 12 year-old attempting to make a 10 million dollar film on a 14 dollar budget.
The experience was horrible. By the time it was over I had huge purple welts on either shoulder. My right forearm had atrophied and my wrist felt as if Carpel Tunnel Syndrome had set in. I stormed home that night and zipped up the camera in it’s case. Throwing it into the back of my closet I made sure to get the last word- “You’re an asshole and I’m never taking you out again!”
I really showed that camera who was boss.

I threw myself on my bed and cried. Craft services entered my room with a tuna fish sandwich and tried to calm me down. Craft services was my mom. I explained my horrible shoot.
“Mom, I can’t make movies. I suck at it and it’s just too much for one person!”
“What went wrong honey?”
“What didn’t?! I didn’t have a tripod. So I just sat the camera on the bleachers. But the wind kept blowing over! I lost the camera manual and my white balance board blew away! And I need to create the landing of a mile-wide UFO that about 100 humanoids come out of and I don’t know how to get that many extras! Even if I found them, how would I make them look like aliens?!”
“Well, honey. Are you sure you even want to make movies?”
“Yeah. Or TV shows like “Silver Spoons.”
“Hmmm. But I thought you wanted to be IN “Silver Spoons.”
A lightbulb turned on.
“What do you mean, Mom?”
“You always change your haircut when Ricky Shroeder changes his. And we got you that red jacket last Winter like the one he wears. Plus, you’re always telling jokes like him.”

Wow. Craft Services really knew me. I didn’t want to direct. I wanted to ACT!

My single mother had a zillion interests of her own and fully supported my dream of performing. Within a week I was enrolled in the John Casablanca School of Modeling and Acting. Located in a strip mall between a TCBY and an H&R Block. It wasn’t exactly prestigious. But to me it was the Lee Strasberg Institute. I was on the fast-track to living the eccentric life of a Thespian in New York City. Soon I was practicing my two-person scene from “Charles In Charge” and my dream of “directing” was long forgotten.

My father was infuriated that I ditched his expensive video camera and thought that trying to be an actor was absurd and hopeless, especially when my Guidance Counselor had described me to my parents as an “antisocial introvert with a complex inner life.” Which, once you’re older translates to “shut-in” or “hoarder” or “guy that travels across the country in an RV repairing telephone service.”

During this time, my dad had begun dating a Korean woman named Young who lived in Georgia. This was the most exotic thing that had ever happened to me. Larry’s last three marriages (and divorces) had been to the whitest women you could imagine. And although I loved (and hated) each of them in their own way, none of them were remotely “exotic.”

One night, my dad called from Savannah to introduce me to Young over the phone. Everything she said was indecipherable. I took the phone into the bathroom, hoping it was quiet enough in there that I could make out what she was saying. I would respond to her saying “I’m sorry I can’t understand you” or “Young, are you asking me if I wear socks?” But she would just prattle on, giggling as she “spoke.” I literally couldn’t understand a word she said outside of my name, which she repeatedly pronounced as “Dabid.” At one point as she attempted to describe what I think was a tea kettle my dad had bought her, I thought she said that it had “a big dong in the clouds of her potty.”

I really could have cared less what language she spoke or how well she spoke it. I was immediately in love with her and wanted her to be my new stepmother. She was foreign and cheerful and sounded just like Nancy Kwan, the host of my favorite infomercials for the skin treatment “Pearl Cream.”
My dad was dating a real-life Asian lady! I would daydream about what their time together was like. I could see them drinking Sake, cross-legged on the ground by a small pond surrounded by Bonzai trees. They would sleep at night on a hard wooden palette beneath bamboo chimes. In the morning Young would make my father dumplings and serve them on a dish decorated with Lychee blossoms. And then, as the sun set, my father would lovingly bind her feet.

I know… it’s awful.
But understand I was in San Antonio, Texas. There was only one Chinese girl in my entire school and my exposure to Asian culture consisted of Mr. Miyagi from “The Karate Kid,” the woman in the mall with terrifying fingernails who dyed my mother’s hair, and the TV show “Kung Fu.”

A few weeks after they’d started dating, my dad came home to visit and asked me if he could borrow the video camera. He was going to be taking a vacation with Young and wanted to film it. So he took the camera and hit the road again. Meanwhile, I continued perfecting my newfound craft with some very complex scene-work from “Kate & Allie.” When my father returned home on his next round, he gave me back the camera. I promptly gave it a dirty look and threw it in the back of my closet to gather the dust of my unrequited dream.

My father left in his RV early the next morning. Late that night he called me at home from Savannah.
“Hi Dad.” “Hello D.J. How you doin?”
His tone was strange, cheerful and forced.
“Um… I’m fine Dad. How are you?”
“I’m hangin’ in there. Hehe. Well, actually…”
He trailed off for a moment and then cleared his throat before settling into the most earnest tone he’d ever used with me.
“You know what? I like to think of us as friends. I know that you’re still young, but I like to think of you as an adult, as a young man. And even if you weren’t my son, I like to think that we’d still be friends.”
I braced myself.
“Well, I did the damnedest thing. I left a video in that video camera. And I just hope you can respect me enough, as your friend AND your father, to not watch it.” I tried to sound as disinterested as I could as I promised him that I would never watch the tape. In actuality, I was testing the laws of physics, stretching the phone cord through four rooms trying to reach the video camera in my bedroom closet. I had the tape in my hands as we said goodbye a few minutes later.

I hung up the phone and pushed the video into the VCR. I sat on the couch with the remote in my hand. Even at 12 years old and with all that curiosity eating my brain, I had a moment of doubt. What am I about to discover? Do really I want to know what my father’s life is like 3 weeks out of the month? I was about to watch something illicit, a secret, something I could never erase from my mind.

And then I pressed “play.”

Open on a hotel room. The camera is set on the nightstand between two full sized beds, aimed at the room’s opposite wall, where the TV and desk are. The room is empty. A trembling bar of tracking fuzz crosses the screen from top to bottom. Silence. I wait. Suddenly, from a stereo somewhere in the room, booms the nasally whine of Willie Nelson. “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys…” As the Country classic blares, my father strolls into the frame from the right. He is wearing the biggest cowboy hat I’d ever seen, a pair of shiny cowboy boots, and a pearl button cowboy short- the type with the gold threads in the fabric that catch the light and sparkle. He is singing into a rolled up magazine like it’s a microphone. He proceeds to, with more vigor and passion than I’d ever seen him do anything, perform “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” like he’s on the mainstage at the rodeo. He scans the room smiling and singing, taking little breaks in between the verses to talk up his stadium full of fans. He tips his hat and winks at a pillow as if it’s an adoring fan. “Well ain’t you a pretty little thing?” Then he points to a lamp and flashes a million-watt smile, asking “Where y’all here from?” He performs the entire song and finishes with a huge flourish, taking off his hat and twirling it above his hat before looking directly into the camera and screaming “Thanks for comin’ out y’all!”

As the song ends my father holds his triumphant pose for a few seconds, balancing awkwardly in his boots. His smile becomes a weird, frozen grimace.
Suddenly, he drops character entirely and runs toward the camera to turn it off.

I sat in the quiet fuzz of TV static for a few moments, trying to process everything I had just seen. It was immediately more unsettling than the bizarre, night-vision, sex tape I could’ve witnessed. Granted, seeing something like that would have been awful and life-changing. But this was just vulnerable and weird.
I gave the tape back to my father like we were involved in an illicit drug deal. Neither one of us looked the other in the eye as I returned the evidence of my father’s “complex interior life.”

I’d wanted to tell Larry several times over the years that I watched the tape. And that he was a good singer. And that he had great stage presence. And that he looks pretty suave in a ten-gallon hat. But I never wanted to embarrass him.
Then, last Christmas in San Antonio, Texas as I helped my dad look for new Western shirts, a familiar song came over the JC Penney sound system.
“Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys…”
The tune filled me with fond memories of my dad’s star-making performance all alone at that EconoLodge so many years before. As Waylon and Willie belted out the sad story of all their hard-drinking years on the road I decided to tell my dad the truth.
“Hey dad. You remember that time you left that tape in my video camera and asked me not to watch it?”
My dad looked at me genuinely confused. “Nope. Not really.”
At first I thought he was bluffing. “Come on, dad. You asked me not to watch that video of you singing alone in your motel room.”
“Huh? What on earth are you talking about?”
“Seriously dad? You were all dressed up in a big cowboy hat and you sang “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” at the top of your lungs like you were at the rodeo or something.”
My dad gazed off for a moment as if he was flipping through his rolodex of memories trying to access the correct file. He eventually shrugged and said “Huh. Sounds like something I woulda done.”

I was flabbergasted. My dad continued to push hangers down the rack, unfazed. How could this decades-old secret be no big deal to him? Did anyone else know he was a one-man Karaoke army? How many nights and in how many motel rooms had he’d performed Country Music hits in full cowboy regalia? Was singing into rolled-up magazines all alone in cheap hotels with a video camera some weird fetishistic obsession that was only the tip of the iceberg? Did he also perform scenes from Oscar-winning films and if so, was there a myriad of costume changes? Did he breakdance in Atlanta? Perform a Mae West-themed drag show in Charleston? Work as a Voodoo High Priest in New Orleans? Handle snakes and baptize sinners in Birmingham? What the hell was happening all those years out on the road? What DIDN’T I know?

As I considered all this, he hummed along with Willie and held a pearl-buttoned shirt on it’s hanger up against his chest. Then he flashed me that million-watt grin and asked “How do I look?”

Not Leaving

The weekend after 9-11 I worked at a French Bistro in lower Manhattan. On the 12th, I had called to check in on my friends and coworkers. I expected to find out that the restaurant, like almost every other business below 14th Street, would be indefinitely closed. Instead I was asked to work several 18-hour double shifts. The café was owned by a group of Israeli business partners who all took the WTC attacks very personally. Even though we couldn’t receive shipments and had a limited menu, my bosses insisted we not let the terrorists “keep us from serving the community!”

At the end of working several grueling shifts I had made 900 dollars. This was going to be the money I used to rent a moving truck and get out of New York. Most of my coworkers- totally rational people with jobs and homes and boyfriends and girlfriends- had just packed up and left the city they’d loved so much. And so would I.

As I took off my apron and counted my earnings, the bartender insisted I drink with him. His name was Yoni. We got drunk and discussed our lives with total strangers at the bar. Conversations the week after 9-11 weren’t about political topics. People didn’t discuss the looming war or national security. They talked about doubting their marriage or hating their career as a pastry chef or moving back to Ohio to have babies. They did this slurring over cocktails in candlelight with tears in their eyes. Osama Bin who?

At 3 in the morning as I left, Yoni handed me a huge magnum of red wine and said something in Hebrew I couldn’t understand. I leaned in and drunkenly asked “What?” He patted me on the shoulder and whispered, “Drink… to forget.”
That sounded good to me.

I was stumbling home through my dark, industrial wasteland of a neighborhood in Bushwick, Brooklyn in the same all-black waiter outfit I’d been wearing the last 5 days. I had forgotten to empty my pockets over the course of the last week and had all of my “Get-out-of-NYC” cash in my pocket. I could hear the nearby throbbing of music from the roof across the street. Someone was actual having a rooftop rave a few days after the attacks. So much for a dance party grace period I thought.

About ten feet from my door I hear “you got a cigarette?” I didn’t even question the request. The last few days had been such a communal time of people holding doors for each other and saying “please” and “thank you” that I instinctively looked down into my pocket without even thinking of my safety.

Suddenly this man was up against my back with his arm around my neck and something jabbing into my ribs. “You feel that?” he asked. “That’s a fucking gun. Gimme all your money.” I was terrified but numb at the same time.
What now? I thought.
I started digging through my bag beneath my giant magnum of red wine for something to appease my attacker. Then I quickly remembered that ALL of my money was in there- my “get out of town” fund. I peeked over my shoulder as the guy’s grip around my neck loosened and his arm dropped. His eyes darted around but he mainly kept them trained on the makeshift discotheque a mere 20 feet away. I could hear people laughing and hoped someone would leave the party and save me.

As I reached into my pockets and gripped my wad of cash I thought, “I am not letting this guy get my money. This is the money that can save me from a future of shit like this!” As he twitched and trembled I moved the cash from my pocket to my bag. He didn’t notice. He was nervous now and glistening with sweat. “Come on, man!” he grunted as I feigned the search for cash I knew I wouldn’t surrender to him. Seconds felt like minutes. He jammed the gun deep into my back and reached around into my left pocket, where I kept all my credit cards and ID. Right as he took his hand out, a group of 5 or 6 hipsters emerged from the building. He nudged me toward my front door, saying “Now go inside.”

And that was when I snapped. I turned around to see him casually strolling away towards Bushwisk Avenue, a busy street about 50 yards ahead. He was walking right at the same pace as the party group on the other side of the street. I started walking after him. I screamed across the street “hey! You see this guy right here? He’s got a gun and he just mugged me!” A girl yelped in fear as her friend started nervously laughing, as if I couldn’t possibly be serious.

As my attacker picked up his pace I dialed 911. I took out my huge magnum of wine and brandished over my head, like some urban caveman. “I’ve just been mugged!” I screamed to the 911 operator. She asked me what he was wearing. He was in this red and black striped sweater and all it once it struck me that he was dressed like Freddy Krueger from the “Nightmare On Elm Street” films. I yelled into the phone “He’s dressed like Freddy Krueger!”
“Excuse me?” said the operator as I broke into a full sprint.
“FREDDY KRUEGER! FREDDY KRUEGER!”
Later I imagined what someone must have thought seeing a drunk waiter running through the streets swinging a bottle of wine and screaming “FREDDY KRUEGER!” into the night.

We were in full chase mode now as the operator said, “Sir, please stop pursuing the perpetrator.” But I couldn’t. It was like all the fear and anger and rage of the last few days were spilling out of me and this guy was getting the brunt of all of it. If I caught him, I wanted to kill him. He looked over his shoulder at me with his massive junkie eyes and it was the first time in my life that someone looked at me and was truly scared of what they saw. And I liked it.
I was getting closer to him as we rounded the block. I was maybe 20 feet behind him when he disappeared into the darkness of a very dangerous park. Drunk as I was, I knew there were limits. And I couldn’t run into there. I stumbled home drunk. Going though my pockets, I realized that the only thing the guy got from me was my Texas driver’s license.

I didn’t end up using my getaway money to move back to Texas. I used it to get a new apartment in Spanish Harlem. I decided I wasn’t going to let 9-11 ruin my city for me. The same way I wasn’t going to let some junkie take my money. It might not have been the smartest thing to do, but I wouldn’t take it back.

A week later my mom called from Texas and said I’d received a letter. There was no return address on the envelope. I asked her to open the letter and in it, was my ID, scuffed and dirty. Attached to it was a post-it. Scrawled on the little yellow piece of paper was this:
Whoever you are. I hope you are okay. God bless you.

Bad Kid Fundraising

Hey ghouls,

If you can find it somewhere in your cold, black heart… I still need more dough for Bad Kid.
Mascara and ankh’s aren’t cheap. Seriously.

http://www.rockethub.com/projects/3051-bad-kid-the-show

Bad Kid fundraising site launch

Today we launched the fund-raising site for my show BAD KID, which opens October 28th. Axis Theatre is generously paying for the majority of the production, but there’s still stuff to pay for:
additional production costs, travel costs for my director, fees for press materials, a stage manager, etc. NO donation is too small. Even 5 bucks will mean the world to Bad Kid. No kidding.
(I was a cheap date as a 16 year-old Goth kid and I guess I still am.)

Check out the page here:
http://www.rockethub.com/projects/3051-bad-kid-the-show

Show page:
http://www.badkidtheshow.com/

Tickets:
http://axiscompany.org/mainstage.htm

Thanks so much friends. I’m really looking forward to October 28th!

Dark Thing #9

thedarkthings:

Our dark souls need no more nourishment than they need light.
Blackened hearts that pump no blood and flesh that withers in the sun.
Our food is the fruit of longing and despair, hanging low on the…
Wait… What?
WHAT?!
THEY HAVE MINI-BURGERS TODAY?!

Look. Do I need a hardhat or not? Jesus Christ!

I’ve never been one of those crazy, conservative, Tea Partying, immigration fanatics. That being said, I do think that English should be a language well-grasped by anyone writing warning signs on construction sites.

The Dark Things

GO HERE OR HAVE YOUR BLACK SOUL EATEN BY HIM.

http://thedarkthings.tumblr.com/

Phew! I’ve been looking everywhere.

BAD KID teaser website

The basic website for my upcoming one-person show launched today.
Behold!
BAD KID