I’ve been meaning to apologize for the corny aspects of the poem I dashed off below in a matter of minutes (excuses, excuses) since I am striving to wrench any corniness from the first couple of chapters of the novel on which I’m working right now. I called Peter Staley, one of my most unsentimental friends, and asked him to read the poem and tell me if he thought it were too corny. He called back and said, “Yeah, it’s corny. You knew that. That’s why you called me. But it does tweak your interest as well. So keep it on the blog.” Since I haven’t been “tweaked” myself in a while, I followed his advice. But just wanted to let you know that I rolled my own eyes while writing it so read it with the same spirit.

To change the subject completely, something that I didn’t find corny was an editorial I wrote for my high school newspaper when I was sixteen years old. Sixteen! One of the joys of having written my memoir and continuing to write these posts on my blog is that people from my Mississippi past have contacted me. One of those people was a schoolmate from Forest High School, Robert Bliss, who is still one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in a life of meeting smart people. He had saved one of our old school newspapers and thought I’d like to read it. Here is the editorial I wrote in 1973 regarding amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers, which was a hotly debated topic during my teenage years, just as amnesty for illegal aliens is such a heated topic this week in Washington. Some things never change. But I thought you’d like to read how uncorny I was as a teenager. I’m trying to get back in touch with that uncorny teenager that could come up with something like this. It’s so unsentimental, so uncorny, I wonder if I could have plagiarized it. But I don’t think my journalism teacher, Judy Lewis - where are you Judy? I’d love to hear from you. You are acknowledged, by the way, at the beginning of Mississippi Sissy - would have published it if it were or she had any questions that I had not written it myself back then. I was always a bit precocious, especially in my liberal leanings in that still paleoconservative state of Mississippi. Anway, here is an excerpt for that long editorial that could perhaps still speak to us today.

The editorial:

The other day I heard two women talking at a local drugstore. The conversation went something like this.

Mrs. X: A few short years ago most of us supported the war.

Mrs. Y: I supported the war.

Mrs. X: While most of us today oppose the war.

Mrs. Y: I oppose the war.

Mrs. X: And according to the polls, think it’s immoral.

Mrs. Y: I think it’s immoral.

Mrs. X: So the question is what to do with those thousands of young men who thought the war was immoral years before we thought the war was immoral and deserted to Canada and Sweden - shouldn’t they be granted amnesty?

Mrs. Y: ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!

Mrs. X: Why not?

Mrs. Y: Premature morality.

That discussion was held a few weeks ago, before the peace announcement. But now that peace, or at least peace for the U.S., is apparent, the amnesty question has become a greater issue than ever. Let’s look at both sides.

First of all the word itself is from the Greek “amnestea,” which means “forgetfulness.” The first recorded amnesty was granted by Athens in 403 B.C. to most of those who had collaborated with Athens’ Spartan conquerers after the Pelopponnesian War. The Romans, on occasion, continued the practice, which they called “restitutio in integrum,” and many other states since then have granted amnesty to achieive reconciliation after a civil war or a period of internal strife.

But the question did not take on major popportions until World War II. Sixteen months after V-J Day, President Truman responded to public pressures and established a three-man amnesty board to determine whether those who had been convicted of refusing to fight should be punished. The board was less than lenient, partially because WWII had wide popular support. Of course, of the more than 15,000 cases considered, only about 1500 men were pardoned, most of them on religious grounds. “Intellectual, political, or sociological convictions” against the war were not accepted as excuses and clemency was not granted to those who, in the board’s words, “set themselves up as wiser and more competent than society to determine their duty to come ot the defense of their nation.”

This amnesty question, however, is a complex one with no clear-cut historical precedents that would apply in blanket form to the present problem.

The deep and violent divisions of the Vietnam War have left the United States with this unprecedented problem of what to do about the estimated 30,000 deserters and between 70,000 and 100,000 draft evaders.

Many bills providing for various forms of amnesty have been introduced in Congress and both candidates for the presidency in 1972 made it a campaign issue of deep and explosive emotional content.

Many ask the question: Would it be fair to those who fought to forgive those who refused? This is the emotional crux of the problem. But maybe that is just the problem - we look at this question of amnesty too emotionally. Maybe if we were more practical about it.

One of the most practical reasons for opposing amnesty has been: How could the U.S. ever field an army of draftees again if it established the precedent that draft evasion will be forgiven? Well, the Nixon Adminstration has gone so far as to do away that reason by doing away with the draft altogether.

Also opponents argue that while amnesty might reconcile one group, it would embitter many Americans. Healing some wounds, it would exacerbate others. Sentator Robert Taft, Jr., a Republican with impeccable credentials who went so far in December of 1971 as to introduce a bill to grant amnesty to draft resisters with the stiff provision that it be coupled with three years in compensatory military or civilian federal service - can attest to the bitterness of those who oppose amnesty. He asked one protester what should be done about draft evaders if his plan was to be rejected. The answer: “Shoot them!”

But since the Vietnam War is like not other war in our nation’s history, perhaps no precedent should be sought in history. Many Americans had been against this war, but because they were ineligible through age, sex, or infirmity, were not forced to back up their beliefs with their lives and careers. Why persecute those, who, because they were young and eligible, did put their lives behind their convictions? Those now in exile or in jail include some of the most intelligent, the best eductated, and the most passionately concerned men of their generation. Most of them are a gain for their homes of exile and a great loss to the U.S> Why should this country so willingly, even perversely, suffer such a drain on its talent and spirit?

…..

In short, no other action except amnesty could be as effective in persuading us, the young of our country, that once again we can trust the humanity of our government. In this sense, amnesty would serve its traditional function: healing angry wounds.

But still, after all the arguments are made, both pro and con, two questions remain - one moral, the other practical. Does the individual have the right to decide which laws or which wars he will support? If he does, can any government survive?

“Human law,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas, “does not bind a man in conscience, and if it conflicts with the higher law, human law should not be obeyed.” But also one might quote Socrates: “In war, and in the court of justice, and everywhere, you must do whatever your state and your country tell you to do, or you must persuade them that their commands are unjust.”

Yet there are some laws, even in a democratic society, that are so unjust that any man of conscience cannot obey them. Segregation laws are the best recent examples. Opponents of the war would say that service in Vietnam is another. But Ghandi and Thoreau and Martin Luther King, as examples, decided that unjust laws must be disobeyed but at the same time had to accept the penalties for disobeying them in a civil society. The country can appreciate the courage of those who have evaded the draft just as it can appreciate the courage of those who did not, but can it excuse the former brave young men from the consequences of their choices just as the latter accept the consequences of theirs. Maybe the draft evaders could perform some kind of service, as Taft suggested, in a poverty program or in the peacetime military.

As I close, I am reminded of a TV commercial that I saw a few days ago. It showed different portraits of different families as you heard a voice say that a certain man went to war and died for his country. That man’s son grew up, went to war, and died for his country. His son grew up, also went to war, and died for his country. Then the voice continued: “God had a Son, but He didn’t go to war. He chose another way to peace. If your son, like God’s Son, chooses another way, will you understand?” It’s funny, maybe the sponsors of that commercial should have been addressing that commercial to America itself - perhaps they were - instead of parents. It take that back - it’s not funny - it’s very sad. Bring all our sons home.

I haven’t posted in a week
because I’ve been working on my new novel’s first chapter.
So if you’ve logged in for a peak
at my life, please be patient for I guarantee you’ll soon be rapt or
titillated, at least, by the love story I’m writing.
It’s not set in Afghanistan. It’s not about kiting.

This much I can tell
you about it so far since it’s just beginning to unfold in my mind.
It’s about an ex-stripper named Emelle
who is overburdened, overweight, and overly kind.
Any more info would just be conjectural.
Though it is set in Ptown. And the love is hetero as well as textural.

Right now its title is “Cock and Load,”
yet I realize that could lend itself to a lot of Provincetown lore
on its own. So before I get too far down the narrative road
I might change it to another title that would fit: “Soul Whore.”
Which of the two do you find more resonant?
I’m not sure I like what either says or not

About the love story I’m trying to write.
Emelle heads to Ptown to spread her son’s ashes from their urn
and meets Doyle, a housepainter, whose daughter, always ready to fight,
has recently been killed in the war in Iraq. Together, they learn
how again to walk along a beach
as well as the lessons only dead children can teach.

Don’t worry, there is a drag queen
or two in the story also. The main one, in fact, is named Nan Tuckit.
So rapier wit and raunchy mean-
ness abound with words like “suck it” and “fuck it”
thrown around with a bit of zest and much, much verve,
since everyone in Ptown - even middle-aged heteros - is a bit of a perv.

Okay, the novel is now demanding attention
so it’s time to put words in the mouths of Nan and Emelle, and Doyle
and other characters too numerous to mention
in a sprightly little poem. I must also be careful. I do not dare spoil
any more of the plot residing in my imagination.
Plus, I’ve reached - thank God, huh - my rhymester limitation.

So, let’s see what’s been happening since my previous post ….

Last Friday night I met my old (boy)friend Peter Staley, who built this site for me, for dinner and then we went to see The Hoax. I’ve always been interested in Lasse Hallstrom’s work - he was the film’s director - ever since he directed My Life As A Dog, which was a movie about a boy who had lost his mother, a film that touched me deeply since I will always be a motherless child myself no matter how old I am blessed to be. The Hoax is the story about Clifford Irving’s bogus Howard Hughes biography back in 1971. I was 15 then and remembered all the media hubbub about it. I enjoyed reliving that time in my life up on the screen - the sets and hairstyles and clothes and old-media world. Having experienced a bit of publishing hoopla myself with the publication of Mississippi Sissy, I could appreciate as well the rarified desperation of editors and writers and publishing pooh-bahs that the film depicted so well. Richard Gere plays Irving. I’ve become a fan of the latter-career Gere. I thought he was great as Irving. But, as usual, Alfred Molina, as Irving’s best friend and amanuenses, steals every scene he’s in. My first mentor in New York, Henry Geldzahler, who was then the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York under Mayor Koch but had been the curator of 20th Century Art for the Met for years, once told me, after we had met the young Gere at the theatre one night at a John Osborne play as part of the Roundabout Theatre season when the company presented its plays at the Hudson Guild Theatre, “Poor thing. I think he’s destined to be the Farley Granger of the ’80s.” Henry was seldom wrong, but he was wrong about Gere. He’s developed into a really good character actor with remnants of his leading man demeanor lurking about onscreen. Gere was the second cover story I ever did for Vanity Fair - my first was Madonna - and the first thing he said to me when we sat down was, “So what’s your agenda?” I thought that was too cynical by half and always held that comment against him. But now that I’m probably too cynical by half myself, I can understand his distrust of a VF writer back then. I told people my impression of Gere was, quoting the poet John Ashberry whom I had met with Henry at yet another cultureklatch party we attended together when Ashberry spoke of another of our acquaintances, that he was “a storefront of knowledge.” I take that back now. I think Gere had done wonderful things with his life. Perhaps it’s his devout Buddhism but I think he not only has developed into a talented actor, but also an honorable man with more than a storefront of knowledge of the world.

Saturday a friend of mine was sitting shiva for his father who died last week. I had never been to someone’s house while the family was sitting shiva. The female rabbi from his mother’s synagogue in East Hampton led us in the Mourner’s Kaddish. It was a beautiful service. I was moved by all of it, especially the words first spoken by the rabbi: “When cherished ties are broken, and the chain of love is shattered, only trust and the strength of faith can lighten the heaviness of the heart. At times, the pain of separation seems more than we can bear; but love and understanding can help us through the darkness toward the light. Out of affliction, the Psalmist learned the law of God. And in truth, grief is a great teacher, when it sends us back to serve and bless the living. We learn how to counsel and comfort those who, like ourselves, are bowed with sorrow. We learn when to keep silence in their presence, and when a word will assure them of our love and concern. Thus, even when they are gone, the departed are with us, moving us to live as, in their higher moments, they themselves wished to live. We remember them now; they live in our hearts; they are an abiding blessing.” I thought of my father and mother and my grandparents and all those friends of mine I have lost to AIDS when those words were read. I also thought of my friend’s father, a total stranger who in his death brought my own family and friends so close around me, hovering with love and concern and a kindness that seemed in those prayerful moments in no way ephemeral and ghostlike, but present and everlasting.

Brandon, the kid I mentor out in Brooklyn, woke me up with a 6:30 a.m. phone call on Sunday to make sure I had the directions to his baseball game that day. After a long subway ride and a walk through a housing project, I sat in the bleachers in the project’s park - the only white guy there as far as I could tell - and enjoyed the game and watching all the mothers cheering on their sons. The only men there seemed to be the coaches and the umpire. The mothers furnished lots of delicious picnic food for everyone - fried chicken and mac’n'cheese and green beans and collard greens and barbecued ribs. It was like a bit of Mississippi there in all that Brooklyn concrete. I was touched by all the maternal love about me. I talked to Coach Butch - yep, that was his name - who said he’d been coaching boys - and now girls - like Brandon and his friends for over 20 years. “We gotta save some lives of these kids. We can’t save all of’em. But we can save some of them by doing this and showing them discipline and how we much care about them. Plus, these are the best ribs you’ll ever eat,” he said, laughing and making me take a plate. Brandon’s team lost but I’ll be back to cheer him on again. He plays catcher, still getting the hang of staying alert there behind home plate. “I get to control the whole field,” he said, not knowing yet that nobody really gets to do that in life. But it sure feels good when you’re his age - he’ll be 13 in August - that first time you think such a thing is possible. I guess that’s what Coach Butch and the good men who are his compatriots do by coaching these inner-city teams: they put hope and confidence in these kids lives. Many of the boys and girls came up to me and asked “Are you Brandon’s daddy?” that last word spoken with such longing it, more than the kaddish the day before for a dead father, made me miss my own, a coach himself who in his own tough yet tenderhearted way instilled me with hope and confidence.

I called upon both those paternally bequeathed attributes when I took the train down to Philadelphia to do a couple of radio interviews for Mississippi Sissy and do a reading/signing at Giovanni’s Room, the city’s landmark gay bookstore that has been open for over thirty years. The store is named for James Baldwin’s masterspiece, his second novel published in 1956, which was the very year my mother, who died when I was eight, gave birth to me. The novel is about a homosexual expatriate coming to terms with his true self after his own mother dies when he is five years old. My appearance at Giovanni’s Room was my last scheduled reading and signing outside New York for the book so I was curious as to what it would be like, how would the end of this journey play out, who would be the last person I would meet at a signing. The first hour-long interview on WHYY, conducted by the erudite and empathetic Marty Moss-Coane (she was so good at her job) went well and was broadcast nationally via satellite radio and on television. (When I walked into the Barnes and Noble on beautiful Rittenhouse Square, a man walking out said, “I just saw you on tv. You were great. I just bought your book.” So that was nice.) I was also interviewed by Robert Drake, another smart and charming Philadelphia radio personality, for his show on WXPN. I wondered around downtown Philly for the rest of the day. I had only been there twice before - once when I was doing Equus with Tony Perkins out at Playhouse in the Park (I remember going to see a matinee of Network on one of my afternoons off there, that’s how long ago it was) and the other time was to do the first part of an interview with Sylvester Stallone on the set of one of his sequels to Rocky before meeting him later in Cannes to finish up the interview on a yacht after Helmut Newton got through photographing him. We all got seasick.

When I arrived at Giovanni’s Room there were only about ten people there for the reading in an upstairs area next to a fireplace and hearth. It was a bit too cozy for my tastes but I sat in the highbacked chair in front of the other chairs and engaged the small crowd in conversation so we all could relax. There was one woman there on the front row. She was sitting next to a cute young guy and I thought she might be his lesbian buddy or straight friend or sister. I heard her whisper something to him and thought I heard a slight southern accent. Always ready with a pun, I thought to myself, “I’ll just think of her as the Liberty Belle in this group.” I began the reading as the setting sun from one of the windows beat down on me. I pretended it was a spotlight and read on. At the end of the reading, two of the young men there told me how much the book had been a gift to them. I really appreciated that and was touched by their response to the book. We all had a great discussion afterwards. The people who had shown up were really smart and interesting. The woman and her friend lingered, waiting for everyone else to leave. It turned out that they were husband and wife and had flown up from Nashville to Philadelphia for 24 hours just to hear me read. She had two books with her. She asked me to sign one of them to her. She then asked me to sign the other to her son. “But you don’t look old enough to have a son old enough to read my book,” I told her. “He’s eight,” she said. “I want you to sign a copy to him so I can give it to him when he is old enough to read it.” She then handed me a three page letter she had written to me and inside was a picture of her son dressed as the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz for Halloween when he was four and five just as I had gone dressed as the Wicked Witch to my own Halloween carnival so long ago in Mississippi. He wrote to Julie Andrews after seeing the Sound of Music and Mary Poppins and Thoroughly Modern Millie and she wrote him back. He now is crazy for Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe and Betty Hutton. “He is my Tennessee Sissy” she said, her voice breaking as she began, quietly, to cry. “You have no idea what this book has meant to me. Just like those two guys said who were just here, it is one of the truest gifts I have ever received. It has made me a better mother.” She was one of the truest gifts I have received. As I said, I had wondered when the day started who would be the last person I would meet at this reading since it was the last official one on my schedule outside NYC. I could not have prayed for a better experience. After she left, I put my head in my hands like that stutterer back at the Potomac School in my posting below and had a really good cry - from exhaustion and from thankfulness that this book really has touched the people I hoped and prayed it would touch. I pray it will continue to be found by the people who will understand the spirit with which it was written. I’m going to frame the kid’s picture - he’s name is Isaiah - as the Wicked Witch so I can be reminded every day of all the little sissies still being born out there in the world who are fortunate enough to be have a mother - and a father - like that young couple from Nashville as well as those who aren’t so fortunate. On the ride home that night on the train I decided to send him every Playbill I get at the theatre from now on. My inscription to him that he will read one day: “For Isaiah - This is a book about maternal love as much as anything else. You are very lucky to have a mother who loves you so.” I was lucky too. Indeed, I felt my own mother’s loving presence when that Nashville mother and I hugged each other upstairs in a place called Giovanni’s Room as the sun’s beautiful rays, so like a mother’s love itself, illumined us. It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday. Hug your own mother if she’s still alive. And if she’s not, summon her maybe with the words of the Kaddish above. Or just have yourself some fried chicken and collard greens after a kid awakens you with the directions of how to get to a place you’ve never been before where you can watch him, full of hope and burgeoning confidence, as he takes his position on the uncontrollable playing field at a place called home.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while but have been taking a few days off from thinking about Mississippi Sissy to concentrate on the inchoate novel that’s increasingly making itself known in my already crowded thoughts. So I have been trying to clear away some space for it - in my head, on my computer, during my days, bits of my dreams, and a large chunk of the emotional acreage I guess I can call “hopes for the future” now that Sissy, a book about my past, is itself slowly becoming a part of that also.

A week ago today I took the train down to Washington D.C. for a reading/signing at Lambda Rising off Dupont Circle. When I first arrived at the store I have to admit I was a bit depressed by the surroundings. There was really no space in the store to stage a reading. There were no chairs set up for an audience, etc. I crossed the street to a Starbucks and had an expresso and some madeleines - which always can raise my spirits if only from the caffeine and sugar - and by the time I got back to the bookstore the place had filled up with - no choice here because of the lack of chairs - a standing-room-only crowd. I cleared some books out of the way in the window of the store and stood up there as if it were a stage and did my reading. The crowd responded well and I met a lot of transplanted southerners there in D.C. Among them were ex-Mississippian Joe Stewart and his lovely wife Rachel. Is there really such a thing as an ex-Mississippian? Once you’ve been born there it’s always a part of your DNA. Willie Morris once said that if you’re a native of the state that “you will always love Mississippi but it doesn’t always love you back.” Joe and Rachel are two big fans of my book who have been so sweetly supportive of me and it through this blog. It was great meeting them in person. They are each wise and witty and Joe is full of Mississippi stories of his own. Also, T. Michael Womack, a senior Cataloging Specialist at the Library of Congress on the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages Team of the Social Sciences Cataloging Division (only in D.C. could all that be on a business card), showed up to buy a book and have me sign it. When he got to the table he also had - ever the archivist - a folder of programs from some of the plays in which I starred at Millsaps College in Mississippi and a few of the newspaper clippings of reviews of those plays with photographs of me when a had a full head of shoulder-length hair. It was a nice surprise to be reminded of my youth when “hopes for the future” was an emotional landscape with less constricted acreage.

A dear friend of mine - Andrew Sullivan, who, in my opinion, is the best blogger out there in the blogosphere - was also at the reading and we went out to eat afterwards to catch up with each other’s lives since we had seen each other last. We both live up in Ptown during the summer and are longing for our days there this year. We met an old Millsaps pal of mine, Diane Wiltshire, at the restaurant. Diane moved back to the States from Tokyo years ago when she met her husband, Dick, there where he was posted at the American Embassy. She had been married to a Japanese businessman and had two sons with him who are now in college. (The older one is my godson.) Dick also had a child from a previous marriage who was her younger son’s age and they raised their blended family out in the leafy suburbs of Virginia, where I stayed with them on this trip. Andrew and Diane and I had a great time talking about our disparate lives and, in this Bush league age we live in, our increasingly less disparate politics. The interesting thing about being in D.C. - it really is a lovely city - is realizing that the more Bush and his Rove-ing henchmen have tried to divide us in this country for their own selfishly nefarious political reasons, they have, in fact, brought so many of us closer together politically in opposing their nefariousness. Hey, I was in D.C. so I should be allowed some politics in this posting.

Diane and I drove back to Virginia after dinner. She had arranged for me to read to an 8 a.m. combined ethics/drama class at the Potomac School where her sons had metriculated. It is a tony private school where - speaking of bringing people together, toniness has a way of doing that also - many Kennedy children attended as the Cheney grandchildren do now. The interior of Potomac’s new upper school building was more like a ski lodge than a school. (Bill Clinton was a guest at its official dedication yesterday.) When Diane and I arrived last Friday many of the kids were hanging around the stone fireplace in the soaring atrium. I immediately began to feel like that young sissy back in Mississippi when we entered the high school, especially around the ruggedly lovely lacrosse players roughhousing before classes began. I averted my eyes and read a poster up on the wall about a charity event the kids were spearheading, DONATE TO DARFUR. Suddenly Modest Mouse blared from the speakers after the chimes rang for the school’s first class of the day. “That’s Chimes for Charity,” the guidance counselor, who also teaches the ethics class, told Diane and me. “On Fridays we let the kids donate money for their favorite charities in exchange for playing their favorite music between classes.” She led us into a lecture hall where about thirty kids and faculty members were assembling for my reading. It was quite an experience having to summon the energy and emotions to read from my book at that early hour. Plus, I didn’t know exactly how 16 and 17 year olds would react to the reading. But the kids could not have been more attentive or sweet or, judging by their questions afterwards, any smarter. Of course, I let slip a “shit” and a “fuck” before the reading to get them on my slightly subversive side. One of them asked me if I thought it was easier now to be a gay teenager than it was “back in the old days when you came out.” I told them all it is always difficult to be different when you’re a teenager - whether you’re gay or your politics are different than your friends or you dress differently or you want to wear your hair in some other way or even if you stutter. Indeed, stuttering was more emotionally devastating to me as a youngster than my sexuality because it was constantly on display. When I said that, one of the most ruggedly handsome of the lacrosse players sadly put his head in his hands and his buddy, sitting next to him, began lovingly - yes, lovingly, not sexually - to rub his shoulders to comfort him. The physical empathy I had for that young lacrosse player in that sad second or two touched my heart with a deep recognition. The guidance counselor told me later that he was, yes, a stutterer and that she had immediately thought of him when I said that to the assembled kids behind her but that she didn’t dare look back at him. It is an image I can’t get out of my head though since I did finally dare not only to look at him but to see him too. I hadn’t dared even to look his way when he sat down in the lecture hall after having briefly glimpsed him earlier out in the atrium before averting my eyes toward DARFUR. The maleness of his beauty and demeanor intimidated me. But in that moment of comfort displayed before me - tactile, fraternal, unguarded - I realized how the blessings of this book I’ve written continue to unfold. I had dreaded getting up at 6 a.m. in order to eat breakfast and get to the Potomac School on time. But it is a morning that I will always cherish. I hope some of the kids who heard me read will cherish it too. Yet it is that hand on the shoulder of a stutterer that is the one unexpected image from all this book touring I’ve done that will stay with me for a very long time. I guess those are the best blessings we can ever experience: the unexpected ones.

That night Diane and Dick threw me a party at their lovely home. For the third time in 24 hours I did a reading from the book. Among their guests were some of the Potomac parents who had kids who went to school with Kennedy and Kane Kanagawa, Diane’s two sons. The men were graying preppy fathers who had been formed by graying preppy fathers of their own; their wives - one specific one an elegant and beautiful Persian who works for the World Bank - came outfitted in the slightly worn Chanel suits they didn’t mind wearing on a Friday night to a neighbor’s house. Other of the guests were some of Diane’s and Dick’s professional colleagues in the national security business. Their house is down the road from Langley, Virginia, so I’ll let you come up with the correct acronym. Suffice to say, they don’t teach at the Culinary Institute of America. Politics and Prose bookstore in D.C. furnished Diane with copies of Mississippi Sissy as well as the audio version of the book that I recorded and she sold a combined total of 50 of them. It was so gracious and generous of my old friend to open her home to me and give me a party. I don’t think those middle-aged heterosexual couples would have normally bought the book. It was an interesting night. The next day Dick, on his way to a “training session,” dropped me off at Union Station for my train ride home to Manhattan. Dick, when he was the age of those students back at Potomac, longed to be an artist but got sidetracked into drawing three-dimensional maps back in the 1960s which came from the images transmitted from our country’s secret sateillites. His work was seen not in an art gallery, but it was looked at very closely in the Oval Office. He later made his more dangerous professional chops behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War in the jungles of Cambodia and Laos. He had lived life completely and selfishly on the patriotic edge until he met Diane he told me on the drive to Union Station. “She’s taught me about patience and forgiveness and how to talk about tomotoes with my neighbors. I’m not kidding, I thought the first time I had to talk about growing tomotoes with a Potomac parent at a lacrosse game I was going to have to hire myself to assassinate myself. But you know what, now I love talking about tomatoes. I’m even going to get back to my art soon. I started out as an artist. I’ve still got the soul of one. Diane recognized that in me. She nurtured that part of me back to life.” I could not give you a better description of my old friend than the one the man who loves her gave me in the car that morning. I am grateful she has always recognized that I have the soul of an artist too even when I doubted that I did, that I do.

I arrived home Saturday and met my old friend Darrell Wilks at the Biltmore Theatre to see Lovemusik, the new Harold Prince musical about the love affair between Lotte Lenya and composer Kurt Weill, two artistic souls who nutured each other in rather Germanic, tortured ways. Michael Cerveris seemed to be channelng Weill as if he were giving us a three-dimensional image from his own creative surveillance systems. I’m a big fan of Donna Murphy but she seemed miscast as Lenya, though I’m sure she’ll get mostly raves. To me it was like watching a term paper on Lenya - she had obviously done much homework - yet I never felt as if she inhabited the character. But it was a Saturday evening performance so maybe she was tired and marking the performance a bit. It happens. I did love the renditions of Speak Low (lyrics by Ogden Nash), Surabaya Johnny (lyrics by Bertolt Brecht), That’s Him (lyrics by Nash), It Never Was You (lyrics by Maxwell Anderson) and September Song (lyrics by Anderson). The book by Alfred Uhry - A Pulitzer Prize and Tony and Oscar winner - seemed a bit too jokey and clunky to me. The whole production ironically seemed old-fashioned and out-of-date for a musical about Weill and Lenya and Brecht (a Borsht Belt version of him, alas), three progenators of a new-fashioned idea of the musical when they stunned the world with The Three Penny Opera. I’ll be interested to know what my old friend Hilton Als thinks of it. He reviews theatre for the New Yorker. Hilton was sitting by Darrell and me and before he got up to leave at the end of the evening whispered, “I’m going home to read your blog.” If you haven’t read Hilton’s own memoir The Women, you should do yourself a favor and get a copy. In it, he writes an astonishingly insightful portrait of the late Dorothy Dean, a Manhattan cultural fixture who held court in her fabulously scrawny and cantankerous way. There was a little Lotte Lenya in her and alotta Lena Horne.

Monday I took an old boyfriend, Danny Edwards, to see Coram Boy. It was a huge hit at the National Theatre a couple of years ago but the New York critics this morning did not know what to make of it in their reviews. I admit it was a bit melodramatic but the stagecraft of the piece was quite exciting and I was never bored. There’s even a kind of Borsht Belt version of Handel in the production (his Hallelujah Chorus plays a big part in the production) which bothered me as much as the Brecht protrayal a few nights before. But overall it was a stirring evening in the theatre. I remember reading a rave review of the original National Theatre production during a layover at Heathrow in the American Airline’s Admiral’s Club on my way back to Manhattan from a dinner in Qatar given by the country’s royal family. (I should write about that trip at some point.) Anyway, I loved the girls who played the young boys (you’ll have to see the production to understand) and any story that touches on father/son relationships moves me as those of you who have read my book can understand.

Feeling like a father with two sons at the table, I had dinner last night with two of my favorite new people in New York, Josh and Josh of the website Josh and Josh are Rich and Famous. They are so adorable and smart and sexy and full of bushy-tailed enthusiasm for New York City. (Hmmm … I wonder if their tails really are bushy.) I name-dropped for them and they acted impressed for me. Anyway, after spending the evening with them and being touched by the freshness of their attitudes like a comforting hand reaching out to rub my sad shoulder, it added a much needed hopeful acre or two to my emotional landscape. I’m not joshing, Josh and Josh, thank you for your sweetness. I didn’t talk about tomatoes with you two but I went home and, patiently, forgave myself for ever doubting in this process of publishing a book that I am artistically capable. I wrote a few more paragraphs in my novel. I downloaded some Modest Mouse.