After an hour or
so of secretive emotional outpouring, I walked back to my room in a haze and
crashed on my bed. But when I woke a
little while later, I was a new young man.
I felt great about the fact that I had no idea who the hell I was. That’s what college was for, after all. You go there to figure out who you are. That’s what I was always told. Of course, the truth is you still have no
clue who or what the fuck you are til long after college, but let’s not tell
the kids that. Let them believe there’s
a reason to take out all those loans! At
that point I was going to walk out of that dorm and take on that school with a
new attitude. If I didn’t feel a
connection with people so what? I’d make
one. I harkened back to the days when I
was that strange kid from Chicago thrown into a
Christian school in Milwaukee.
All I had to do was make a little
mystery, get them all wondering.
In one of my boxes
I found a Harley Davidson bandana my parents had given me. I stared into the mirror noticing how much
long my dark hair was after my first summer post high school, where
well-trimmed hair was the rule. I
wrapped the bandana around my forehead. My long bangs fell around the sides as I
tightened it behind my head. If you feel
different, then by God be different. I
put on sunglasses and headed out to see what the afternoon had in store. It sounds crazy, but that day things changed. I started talking to people. I started just saying “hey” to people as we
passed along the sidewalk. At dinner I
actually engaged people, and started telling stories and opening up. Soon after people were approaching me,
especially in the Fine Arts building, which as a Theatre major was my second
home. Generally I was being engaged by
the other eccentric, quirky art majors and other would-be outcasts, but that
was fine too. I would get invited to go
out for coffee, or to hit a thrift store, even to play Frisbee golf with the
hippy kids. It even led me to a role in
an independent play that sadly never happened.
I walked into the
Fine Arts building one afternoon, wearing some black t-shirt, a denim shirt over
it with the sleeves cut off and my ever-present bandana around my brow. I should add I’d started growing my goatee
the day we got to school, facial hair also verboten at Highland Christian. At this point we had begun rehearsals of
Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. I was
going early to sit in the quiet and study my script. I ha dbeen cast as the jeweler, Angelo. It wasn’t a big part, but had a fair amount
of stage time. Still, admittedly in the
midst of my own crisis of personality, I was having a difficult time finding
the character in my character. On the
page it felt like a bland part, to say the least. I needed to find my take on it.
There on a couch
in the lobby was Chip, another cast member.
Chip wasn’t actually a student any more.
He’d graduated a couple years prior, but Lane our director had asked him
to come back to play a part in the show.
Chip played one of the two Dromios, twin servants and the second
largest parts in a play. It would take a
whole chapter to explain the show, but in a nutshell it involves two sets of
twins both separated at birth. Two are
rich masters, and the other two, the Dromios their respective slaves. Chip was older than most of us but very
affable and funny. While I was pretty
stand-offish to most of the cast at first, I liked him right away. I was actually intimidated by him. He was like a younger (and much thinner) John
Candy. He’d graduated from the program
I’d just entered and was out in the Chicago
theater world trying to start his career.
His claim to fame at the time was he’d been Jim Belushi’s stand-in on
the lesser know John Hughes movie Curly
Sue.
But there he sat
by himself also looking over the script for the show. He and I hadn’t spoken much. Chip was pretty chummy with the upper
classmen in the show and he and Lane got on like brothers. Being the unknown freshman I just watched and
listened. Chip was often the center of
attention, even when he wasn’t on stage.
He made little asides or facial expressions that often caused us all to lose
it. Once he flubbed a line in a way that
gave it an unintended double-entendre and, embarrassed, he mimed wiping
something away from his mouth. A lot of
people laughed, being in on the real joke.
I too cracked up, while at the same time completely missed the “wiping
cum from my mouth” implication. Remember,
I’d just come back from 4 years in conservative Christian Wisconsin-land. But I still recognized funny even if I didn’t
quite get why.
Chip looked up as
I came in, and I could see him watching me walk towards the lobby. I couldn’t just pretend to not to notice him
there and walk by, although I considered it.
This was way before the days of whipping out your cell phone and
pretending to take a call. Up to this
point Chip and I had never had a direct conversation. Sure I was the new me, but that was around
fellow students. Chip was now a “real
actor.” He called out to me and nodded
hello with a funny look on his face. Not
bad, just weird like the wheels in his head were turning. Trapped, I crossed into the lounge area and leaned
against the couch across from him, wanting so badly to look cool.
“That is so weird,”
he said. And I lost what little cool I
had.
“What?” I asked,
self-consciously.
“I’m writing a
play,” he said. “It’s about this guy who
had this strange relationship with his dad, among other things. The dad is dead, but he comes back as a ghost and they have
conversations. But the dad appears as his
younger self. He was a wild partier who abandoned
the family. He dresses kind of like a
biker, but not like a Hell’s Angel type.
Anyway, when you walked in just now, it was totally like the dad’s ghost
walking into the building.”
I’m pretty sure my
response was one of confusion. Not
really sure what to say to something like that.
“When I finish
writing this thing,” Chip went on, “you’re going to play him.”
“Definitely,” I said. Suddenly I was a lot more comfortable with
this situation. I sat down and Chip and
I started to talk. He told me more about
his play. Then we discussed Comedy of
Errors. He cued me in to some secrets
about the cast and the school. The funny thing
is I don’t remember him ever giving me advice or criticism about my
performance. And he certainly could
have!
In fact the only
advice he would ever give me regarding my performance came weeks later during
dress rehearsals. And it wasn’t critique. There came a point about halfway through
preparations for the show that Lane, our fearless director had seemingly checked
out. One afternoon we all began to file
into the theater for rehearsal. We had
been hearing rumors that Lane and the stage director had been working on the
sets and it was possible at least some parts were finished. It was exciting to think we could begin
blocking the show now. When we entered
the room, one by one each just sort of stopped and stared with confusion, as on
stage stood crude pipe work frames covered by black plastic trash bags cut into
large sheets. We all looked back and
forth hoping to see someone laughing, giving way that it was some joke. All we saw was our fellow cast members mouths
hanging with a look of “what the fuck is
that?”
Were they cleaning
out the storage closest and using our stage to stick shit until a dumpster
could be acquired?
Suddenly the heavy
wooden door opened behind us and there was Lane beaming. He ushered past us and climbed up onto the
stage. With half-hearted Shakespearian
flourish he gestured towards these poor examples of modern art before us.
“Ladies and
gentleman,” he announced, “I give you our set.”
The
general consensus was one of confusion and bewildered optimism that he was still
somehow just kidding. But no, it turned
out he was quite serious. He gave us a
line of bullshit about minimalist theater, etc.
The truth was Lane already knew he was about to receive his walking
papers. Even if he didn’t, he was
probably planning on bolting soon anyway, tired of fighting the conservative
powers above year after year. The bottom
line was Lane had grown too disillusioned with the place to put any time,
effort, or money into a real set for the show.
I think it was meant to be one last fuck you from Lane to the
administration who had been slapping him with constraints and censorship
throughout his tenure at Euphegenia. And so
for his grudge, the ancient Greek city of Ephesus
was to be represented by stretched-out Hefty bags. For this, we were paying $7,000 a year.
As
a cast we all came to a general consensus that whatever we did, we couldn’t
fuck this show up any more than it already was. We began to go full-tilt with our characters,
from the leads to the supporting cast. If the show was a joke we were going to make the funniest shit anyone had ever seen. Even still I couldn’t really find the essence
of my part to make me stand out. Then
came our costumes. Togas sewn together
from pastel bed sheets. My costume was a
peach colored toga, and a sort-of muted aqua shoulder wrap. It was clipped together by a handmade clay
broach in the shape of a dollar sign. Yes, very period. Not too mentioned it looked like it was
molded out of dough by a five year-old before being baked and spray painted
gold. It looked ridiculous. However while being fitted for the first time
I spied a box of costume jewelry in the prop closet. Well, I was playing a jeweler, and if he was gouache
enough to have a dollar sign broach, he’d surely be adorned with a number of
his own wares! I decided to make Angelo the
jeweler a walking self-promotion and put on a shit-ton of rings and chains. Then I took my already longish hair and
combed it all forward, like DeLouise in History of the World Part 1.
Suddenly
I was finding my character. And oh boy
was I finding him! I began to break out
of the confines of conservative Christian upbringing and nervous high school
theater and started talking with my hands and gliding around that stage. I found the edge of the Shakespeare bubble,
then I burst the shit out of it! Yes, something
in my subconscious turned Angelo the Goldsmith into Angelo the flamboyantly gay
jeweler. It started subtly enough, and
with every little tweak, every flip of the wrist, every slight lisp on an S,
the cast and crew would laugh a little more. Ask any actor, when you find something that
makes people laugh, it’s like a drug. You
immediately crave more. So you push the
envelope a little further, and litter further, seeing how far you can go and
make them laugh harder. It was actually Chip,
ironically, who encouraged me to go farther.
After
our opening night performance, as we were all cleaning up and changing in the
men’s dressing area, I was openly questioning some of my choices. Chip was the one who said “Hey man, go for
it. The audience liked it. It worked.”
By
the night of the final performance I’d turned Angelo into a cross between Jim
J. Bullock and Charles Nelson Riley! And
the Baptist stiffs in the audience were eating up. They loved it. I thought I was just being entertaining, but
in retrospect I proved a sad lesson. I thought
I was just milking the laughter teet for every sweet drop! Until I left the stage after a particularly
over-the-top performance, exited down the stage steps, right past the audience
and out a side door. I passed laughing
face, laughing face, and then Lane who was not laughing at all.
His
face, which was always friendly, even if patronizingly so, looked angry, sad,
and just disappointed. I knew in that
instant I had pushed the envelope too far.
The audience might have been laughing, but they were laughing at
the portrayal, not with it. There were
always rumors that Lane who was married to a woman was actually gay or
bisexual. After all he was sweet, kind,
and taught theater. Clearly he was gay! In truth I came to realize he was just a
really nice, open-minded and open-hearted human being and yes, he stood for
equality and acceptance of all people. I
don’t know if he harbored a secret sexuality or not. Don’t much care. He was and is a good man. And I knew in that instance what I’d done was
hurtful.
If I may paint
with a broad brush (but one based in reality) Conservative Christians love to
laugh at gay people (or what they perceive as gay.) They consider them lesser. They’re inhuman. They’re “choosing” a lifestyle that will send
them to Hell. So they’re foolish and we
will make them our foils. It’s
frighteningly similar to the way whites used to laugh at Amos & Andy and
Stepin Fetchit. Hollywood
has made millions on turning gays into court jesters. Movies like The Birdcage, which is a great
movie but in some scenes it’s clear we’re simply laughing because the
characters are effeminate or worse In & Out which was a 90 minute gay joke.
It never really bothered me back then,
but as I would befriend more gay people throughout my life, I became a much more
sensitive to the fact. I like to believe as a society we're getting better. After all this was the early 90's. Take a look back at the election of
2008, a scant 4 years ago. In the same night that Barack Obama
made history as the first Black president, those “crazy liberals” in California, the place I’d
been told as a child was “the land of fruits and nuts” voted in Proposition 8,
once again banning the rights of gays to marry.
And believe you me, while thousands of gays who only wanted to be fully
equal were crying in defeat, the conservatives were laughing their asses off. I was in California that night, in the gay Mecca of
Palm Springs, and I witnessed it. And now we're weeks away from another election in which one candidate and his brown shirt running mate want to strip away every right the gay community has fought & died to achieve. Rights that should be guaranteed by God, not asshole politicians anyway.
Regardless, that look on Lane's face will never leave my memory. It has informed my actions everyday since.
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