Howdy, Nick

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was hot enough to actually remove my shirt on stage.

Just kidding. Actually, long ago, in a time far, far away, I did a production of Martin Sherman's Bent that pretty much changed my life. And required me to remove my shirt on stage. It awakened me, politically, to LGBT issues, and marked a turning point in my acting career from "little funny guy next door" roles to actual dramatic roles.

During that production, I worked with some really great people, some of whom I'd never, ever met before. One of those people was Nick.

I only mention this because I'm going to see Nick for the first time since, I think, 1995 or '96, when I visited him in California, where he moved not long after we did Bent. Nick decided that acting wasn't for him and moved onto other things. I've only had sporadic contact with him in the ten years since, though I've always wanted to stay in closer touch. He's such a nice guy -- and smart too -- that he's generally the kind of person I like to surround myself with.

Nick's recently grown weary of the Bay Area, so he's decided to check out New York, and he's crashing at my place. The exciting part is it's nice to have a friend in town who's going to force me to do things that I wouldn't do on my own, like go out to bars and generally indulge myself in the scene. I'm feeling adventurous.

If you don't hear from me, it's because I've turned into a bar slut.

Stop laughing, you.

Ghosts & Origins

Not long ago my brother sent me a picture of me as -- I'm guessing here, 'cuz there's no date on the picture -- an eleven or twelve year-old boy. I can't be sure, since I'm pretty awful at guessing my own age in pictures.

If that's the case, though, it can't have been very long after my brother Bill died, which kinda explains why I look so very -- there's no getting around it -- unhappy in this picture.

I hadn't thought about this much, but you really can see the difference between photos taken before and after Bill died. I go from being a pretty care-free, happy-go-lucky kid to a really somber, withdrawn one. The Trifecta of Poopiness™ that was my life -- having my brother die, entering puberty, and coming to the realization that I was gay -- made for an interesting span of years.

It wasn't until a few years later, probably about the time I started forcing myself to be social with the new folks I was meeting in high school, that I realized the value of putting on a happy face even when you feel craptastic inside. Tears of a clown and all that.

The thing that it makes me think of most, though -- tell me if I'm crazy here -- is this: I think that dividing line also marks the last time in my life I was completely unselfconscious in a photograph. A lot of it has to do with a performer's vanity ("Is he getting my best side?"), and a lot has to do with my own insecurity ("I hate the way I look in pictures"), but I wonder to what degree those early tragic events made me want to examine every moment, every action for its consequences. To completely control the world's perceptions of me. To stare down a problem, or to be thunderstruck by it.

A work colleague recently used a phrase in describing another: "Analysis paralysis."

I'm nothing if not self aware, and have always known this is one of my own traits/faults -- I just never knew from whence it comes.

The Good, the Bad, and the Badly Photographed.

Just a quick reminder of why I shall always hate pictures of myself:

And how cool it can sometimes be to know people with roof access:

The Ultimate Unavailable Man

I was talking to someone the other day, and we got on the topic of when/how we first knew we were gay.

I hadn't thought about it in a very long time.

Fact is, I don't know if there was ever a moment when I said to myself, "Whoa, I'm gay." I wish I could point to a moment in my childhood when a cartoon piano had fallen out of the cartoon sky and landed on my cartoon head. Alas, no go.

But upon reflection, I did remember the moment when I knew that nothing was ever going to be the same again. I was probably thirteen or fourteen years old, and my family had been broken up among various relatives after the sale of the house I grew up in, but before our new house was ready for moving into. My mom and dad and I were staying with my Aunt Barb and her family -- among them, my slightly older cousin, Tom.

I was an impressionable young child...

Okay, I was a hopeless, friendless nerd.

And I sort of glommed onto Tom, who, being older, was, in my eyes, automatically cooler. So I appropriated all of his tastes. I stole his taste in music (he was, unaccountably, going through a phase of obsessive admiration for The Beach Boys and Frankie Vali and the Four Seasons). And, most importantly, I absconded with his love of comic books.

Late one night, I was reading one of his Conan the Barbarian comics, trying to get to sleep. I don't know if you've actually read comic books, but they tend to idealize the male body, and very often these superheroes are kinda scantily clad. In this particular comic, Conan and some equally barbaric guy who was his nemesis (only blond... I remember that), were battling it out, and in one particular frame, the baddie got Conan into a bearhug and was trying to squeeze the life out of him. I remember the lurid descriptive text: "breast to breast, belly to belly."

Needless to say this all had a suprising effect on me. One that caught me completely by surprise and -- how to put this delicately? -- had to be cleaned up afterward. It was the first time that had ever happened (when I was awake), and was a clear embarkation on my career as an homosexual.

Among the boyfriends of my youth were Aquaman, Spiderman, and Namor, the Submariner. This might in some way explain my ability to crush from afar on completely unavailable men.

My love affair with comics eventually petered out (forgive the pun) after we moved, but not my fascination with how the comics tended to portray the male body. Today's superheroes remind me of body-building gym queens; too muscly for my tastes. But clearly, the way comics are drawn didn't affect just me. I suspect the had a profound affect on a whole generation of gay boys. Witness the work of Joe Phillips.

Tell me he didn't read some Conan as a child.

Swag. Booty. Haul. Treasure.

For a guy who doesn't actually work for The Corporate Giant, I do pretty darn well. Granted, I make temp's wages -- and not even temp's wages near the top of the range I'm used to -- but still, I do okay.

Especially when it comes to perks, as has been previously noted.

Having gifts heaped upon you can tend to blind you to the fact that the gift-giver is, in the words of the Evil Financier, a money-wasting Conglomerate, but what the hell; I've accepted gifts from shady characters before.

What's inspired all this is that, recently, there were some spare copies of movies laying around the office, and one of my colleagues gave them to me, so I've been having a little Tim Burton film festival at home this week.

I really like Tim Burton's work, even though much of the time I feel just as creeped-out as I do amused by his visuals. He weirdly scares me on some sort of subliminal level, and I'm not entirely sure I forgive him for The Monkey Movie. But still, I find his oddball heroes affecting, and I invariably end up rooting for them and getting pulled into the worlds he creates.

Early this week, I got to see his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has sent several of my friends -- rabid fans of the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka all -- into frothing, spittle-slinging hate seizures, but you know what? I really liked it. It hewed more closely to the tone of the book, I thought. But hey, color me crazy. I really enjoyed Deep Roy's oompa loompas. That man deserves a hardest-working-man-in-show-business award or something.

I also got to watch Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, which I also enjoyed, though not, I think, as much as A Nightmare Before Christmas. I love his stop-motion stuff, and if it weren't for him and Nick Park & pals, it'd be a lost art, one suspects. Then again, I know nothing about the state of stop-motion animation, so I should probably just keep my trap shut. Hopefully it's not going the way of hand-drawn animation.

Googlemania

You all know how much I love Google's occasional logo change to celebrate some special event.

Well, they've gone hog wild over the Olympics in Torino. Here are a couple of my favorites:

There's also a cover article on Google coming out in this week's TIME magazine. I haven't had a chance to read it, so I wonder if they'll address the whole "knuckling under to Chinese censorship" thing. They're stained in my eyes. However, just 'cuz your golden idol has a scuff mark on it, doesn't mean you necessarily chuck it in the trash.

Inappropriate Crush #418

Every once in a great while at work, some of the folks I work with who're responsible for having goodies around for executives to give away will clean out their stockpiles by inviting other members of the department to raid their stash.

Recently, access to this Holy of Holies was granted to yours truly, who, being the maniacal West Wing fan that he is, immediately snapped up the first four seasons of the show on DVD.

I was, to say the least, in Hog Heaven. Even though I have no idea what that phrase really means, or where it comes from.

I don't remember exactly when this bounty fell into my lap -- I think it's over two months ago, and probably before the holidays -- but I've been slowly savoring the series, bit by bit.

This past weekend, I came across an early episode from the fourth season called "Debate Camp," during which there were flashbacks to the staff's early days in the White House. In one storyline, Donna is punk'd bigtime by the guy who's held her job in the previous administration.

I'd remembered this episode from the first time it'd aired -- this whole fourth season was one of my favorites -- and I'd particularly remembered the actor who'd played the guy who pulls one over on Donna. Now that I have the pause button at my command, I could find out a little about the actor, whose name is Jeffrey Pierce.

Which brings us to my latest Inappropriate Crush. He's cute as hell in that West Wing episode, but he's even cuter these days. Apparently last year he starred in a sci-fi series called Charlie Jade . It's on TV in Canada, but not in the USA. Go figure. I've seen a trailer, and wouldn't mind seeing it for myself.

Manchimp

I don't remember where I got this, but it makes me laugh out loud. So much for my evolving buddhist philosphy of compassion, huh?

Record-Breaking!!!

Someone told me today that there'd been 29 inches of snow in Central Park. That just amazes me. I wish I'd made it to the park to take some shots, but, alas, I'll have to settle for the ones I captured while I was on my way home Saturday night, and on my brunch date Sunday morning. I was, unfortunately, in a black and white mood earlier in the day, and didn't realize the camera was still set to black & white mode.

We reached a high of 67º a week ago. Cuh-razy:

Topher's street -- before it really started coming down.

About three blocks from Topher's apartment. Already the trees were covered.

The park across the street from my apartment. Untouched by human foot. Except, of course, mine.

The New Leaf Cafe in Ft. Tryon Park, where I was meeting my date for brunch on sunday morning. It's 11 a.m. and still coming down. By the way, if you find yourself in Ft. Tryon Park, I recommend the restaurant heartily.

Pass the Salt

Okay, that'll teach me to mock meteorologists, no?

Ghosts

I've become a ghost of myself. At various points over the last few years, I've kinda wondered where I've gone.

I don't seem -- at least to myself -- to have the same spark, the same joie de vivre I remember from my youth.

I see it in my writing, becoming obsessed, as I have, with the struggles of getting by, of being poor, of the conflict between having what I've always wanted -- the life of a working actor -- and missing the things sacrificed for that goal; the creature comforts I so enjoy. I'll be the first to admit that I miss being able to just go out and have dinner on the town without even giving it a second thought.

Nostalgia is a tricky thing, though. It is -- like much of memory -- essentially a lie. A re-organization of the facts to make the present more palatable by giving me something to look back upon fondly. A suggestion that the present is somehow an aberration, that the past was good, now is somehow not, and the future will be good again.

I'm talking about me here, not you. I don't pretend to know what's going on in your head. Though it seems to me it's, if not universal, a widespread belief. If it's not, how do people who use that logic keep getting elected to high office?

Anyway. I'm learning -- sometimes it's annoying how painfully slowly I seem to be doing it -- that I'm not the man I used to be. There's no way I could be. There's no way I should want to be. That man was young and cute, yes, but he was also kinda stupid, and callous, and even more self-involved than I am now, hard as that is to imagine.

So here's to the present. Here's to growing. Here's to not being the man you were. Here's to saying goodbye to ghosts.

Defiance

Because I'm sick and tired of hearing about how awful winter storms are going to be and then discover they've only lightly dusted the grass, I'm shaking my fist and giving big raspberries to the meteorologists and their talk of the Bilzzard of '06.

Fie on you, say I!

Mom

So, today is my mom's birthday. Rough year for my mom. She lost her husband of fifty-five years. She lost her older, beloved sister. She fell and fractured her hip and has spent the last six weeks slowly eeking out a recovery.

One good thing's come out of it all, I think. It's all brought the family closer together. And it's proven once and for all that no matter what the craziness, no matter what the history, it's your family that you turn to; it's your family that sustains you.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Things That Aren't There.

You'd think that living in New York City would provide no end of blog fodder, but lately -- and I'm a little wary about jinxing myself by admitting this -- things have fallen into an almost depressingly normal routine.

I think at least part of it has to do with the neighborhood into which I've moved myself. It's not exactly crackling up in Washington Heights, at least compared to midtown or downtown Manhattan, or even Brooklyn, for that matter.

I think I'm missing my friends at Total Wine Bar. I know I'm missing my old neighborhood.

And since I'm a "missing things" kinda mood, here are some other things I miss:


1. My mom. I don't see her enough. It doesn't help that her 76th birthday is coming up and I won't be there for it.

2. The Lagemæ. Kevin is working and going to school, and Kirsten is thinking about switching jobs. And they're house-hunting in Pittsburgh. And I miss seeing them every weekend.

3. Being on stage. It's been 4½ months since I've worked. To suggest that I'm freaking out would be a bit of an understatement. My friends in Corporate America should in no way take this as an indictment of their lovely company. It's just that my soul is atrophying. I'm just saying.

4. Milkshakes. Can't remember the last time I had one. Wait, that's not true. I had more than one while I was in Pittsburgh last summer. Yummy chocolate milkshakes. From Jitters Cafe on Walnut Street. Sometimes in the company of Jason.

Hmmm.

Focusing on things that I miss doesn't seem to be making me very happy. Perhaps I should stop thinking about this.

Et Tu, Jene Tona

In this, the Age of Subtlety™, it's good to know that even spammers are the veritable epitome of restraint.

Inappropriate Crush #416

Now that I've got not just cable TV, but DVR as well, I've become a slave to my television. Granted, I'm a slave who gets to be a thrall on his own schedule, but still.

All of my high-brow friends are going bugshit over the latest series on Masterpiece Theatre, Bleak House. I've DVRed it, and I'm enjoying it, but I have to say, I'm not entirely sure what everyone's going so crazy over. I'm not that big a fan of Dickens (now, before you start pelting me with rotten fruit, it's not that I don't like Dickens, it's just that I've never been bonzo over him like some people.)

Anywho.

I'm slowly getting caught up in the story of the young Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. Sadly, I'm getting more caught up in my latest inappropriate crush: Patrick Kennedy, the actor who plays Richard Carstone.

Dreamy, no? I have a feeling I've seen him in something before, but I can't remember what. I know he was in the BBC program Cambridge Spies, which I've seen, but I don't remember him.

I'm trying not to be freaked out by this, but I've seen a marked increase in the number of incidences of obviously gay men in public who look right through me.

You'd let me know if I were disappearing, right?