Creeping Into Love

The clean slate. It's starts by stripping away the scaffolding that's holds the meat and bones of your past together and starting over in little indistinguishable increments. It's easier said than done when someone moves on faster than you. While wondering about all the time I lost, racing circles in my brian and repeating the same mistakes over and over again, it seems that I forgot to take the car out of part. And when my crusty New York heart does finally unthaw from the glacial urban ice there may more crows feet than crows in Oz.

Letter to a Lesser Love

Through sorrow comes the tiniest understanding, a lesson learned too late sometimes. As I flail in your ambivalence I have to wonder if the seed ever rooted at all or why too long I danced the clown's part? There is no hope in you settling for me nor wondering if I was your fear's reward. Gradually loving less is a slow mercy for the most heart sick of broken men. Rejection erodes into wild obsession by loving you more. May the tides quickly level themselves steady and my soul complete itself alone and return to something new, something worth giving away all over again. 

Luck of the Drawl Ya'll

Unluck of the Draw

          Las Vegas, home of the 10Am gin and tonics and old folks tapping those blinking blissful buttons into the next morning. Nickel after nickel they click their retirement away one hopeful sip at a time. Hookers and heat stroke make up this dirty desert pop-up town that looks very much like a one sided Hollywood movie set. The hot wind burns my eyes the second I step outside the hotel sliding doors and I'm pissed I didn't bring my expensive eye drops. I guess I'm too vein to break the line of my skinny jeans with one extra thing in my pocket. God I'm sick of me sometimes! My contacts are singed and sizzling with the dry heat and immediately I begin to sweat bullets. I wish I had the money to sit my fat ass down right now at the nearest Figure Skating themed slot machine, smooth out a crumpled twenty, and kiss it goodbye forever, anything to not have to venture outside. But I can't bring myself to set what little money I have on fire at the moment. Unemployment doesn't taste good in my mouth especially here where the dice are always rolling and pent up soccer moms and homeschool house wives give themselves license to dress like cheap whores with tranny shoes. These ladies make that skin tight choice that NOBODY in this world needs to see. These are the rural ladies of 'Merica feeling sassy enough to strut their stuff in dresses they wouldn't be caught dead in back in their hometown of ol' Altoona Wisconsin.       

         Four AM waffles at the Tuscany diner are a dream but the daytime boredom makes me wanna climb the walls of this hotel because it's too damned hot to venture out mid day for any reason whatsoever. Night time is the only time of day here and midnight might as well be noon. Its a city of gambling addicted vampires and when you wake up from your cat-nap at ten in the evening you know its going to be a long night. The scorching sun blisters my pampered little pooch's paws on the side walk during our daily walks and she skips around like an excited tap dancer on a red hot plate. Poor little Harley is hating her life in the desert because she's either outside wheezing like she has full blown Mesothelioma and struggling for every breath, or she's stuck in the hotel room like Ann Frank all day. I've been known to pull one over on the housekeeping ladies as to avoid an astronomical pet "deposit". Occasionally mama slips through the cracks. She might as well be a fried egg on the hot asphalt that turns her perfectly groomed white paws into black hairy Gaga boots. The melting pavement is literally dying my dog into a different breed all together from the ground up. Black leg warmers are not part of this equation if you know what I mean? Let's just say a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel isn't known for it's desert temperament but more for lounging around like a furry accessory pillow on a 7,000 dollar Donna Karen denim couch on HGTV. I guess the apple doesn't fall far for my furry child since my idea of roughing it is finding out the Candlewood Marriott Suites doesn't have a pool.    

           I've watched my favorite people on earth stuff twenty after twenty into Gold Fish machines with little to no pay out other than the temporary rush of hope that comes from a dazzling spin with blinking lights. My favorite quote of the entire trip was a hustler who was promoting a free limousine ride to some obscure gentleman's club off the strip. "Warm titties in yo' face guys....free limo and warm titties in yo' face?!" My country Tennessee roots and fifteen years experience in Manhattan couldn't have prepared me for what lay in store on this cross country adventure to Vegas. The biggest and only obstacle has been filling this endless down time. Three days in Las Vegas.....Hell yes! Three weeks? Kill Me! My year has gotten away from me alltogether and seems to be slipping through my fingertips like a fine powdery sand. My personal control issues always allow me some form of a French retreat and a way out of almost any scenario but not this time. Have I given up or just given in to forces stronger than me leading me where I need to be?            

           This year an unavoidable foot surgery parlayed itself into forcing me to leave my show in Tennessee, something I've never done in my entire career. This was a true first for me. That break for surgery turned into a mandatory vacation/recovery period and from there into a three week trip to New York City to kill time. New York accidentaly morphed into four days in Amsterdam my favorite city in the entire world. The Amsterdam daze was followed by a huge wedding in Scotland and both were capped off just brilliantly with a horrible long distance breakup that dragged on and on with some seriously regretful aftershocks to follow. Sometimes the universe strips you of everything in one devastating blow for your own good even if you can't see it at the time like me. Being blindsided is an understatement in regards to my smoldering summer's emotional wreckage. But the grace in which we deal with the aftermath of such epic breakups depends on how tempered our reactions are to them. Needless to say mine were short, ineffective, and in fact paralyzing and did more damage than good. I couldn't find a graceful perspective if I had a GPS!       

            It seems Love is the most terrifying word in my vocabulary because it means that you allow the worst, most flawed parts of yourself to be transparent and hopefully accepted......or not. Dating and auditioning run a shockingly close parallel to one another and when I think about it I smile and a little nervous laugh pops out. After three months it's out there, all of you...the good, the bad, the frustrated, the elated, the bored. No matter how badly you wish you could get that first fart back that slipped out next to your significant other you can't! Just let it go friend....literally. If you think the romance and mystery is over in that exact moment get over it because it's quite the opposite. You have just arrived at the starting point of honesty, a beautiful place to be.  A perfectly fucked up, confusingly clean slate levels the playing field for you both. To forgive others I have to first forgive myself for my raucous twenties that are still a bit of a blur. And to be able to have a full cup to offer someone else I must cut loose all the baggage I'm dragging through my adulthood for no good reason. The guilt can't follow me forever right? Because it hangs and lingers in the air like a smoke ring floating over the black jack table. Hit me. 

This is War......This is SPARTA!

     Today I find myself standing before huge piles of my things heaped together on a filthy garage floor. The remaining ruble of yet another smoldering failed relationship burns before me and singes my nostrils leaving them ashy and charred. Wadded up a dress shirts still on hangers and precious personal artwork were urgently packed for me in an attempt to erase my memory as quickly as possible. Cue tips and band aids spill out of my picnic backpack along with all my medicine cabinet supplies proving it was a hasty and angry packing job indeed. It's a quick attempt to remove all traces of me, to be completely wiped clean of any and all painful remembrance. Its a shedding of the prickly snakeskin that my truest self so badly needed to wiggle out of six months ago and was long overdue. It would've eventually encrusted me into a false sense of self anyway and it had to loosen and fall off before even more damage was done to either party. Sometimes everybody looses in the gritty game of a love filled life and the risks involved. Old inspirational cliches just seem to fall flat to unsympathetic ears. How can you know when your time is up and movement is required? My stagnant Tennessee life has demanded immediate action and a facing of the beast herself...New York! I know the answers to all my stupid questions actually but I'll press on anyway because I so rarely have any comment at all. I figure I'll judge myself and edit later.

 

      I stand broke and vulnerable, open to my close friend's kindness. Their true colors have presented themselves amidst this cloudy confusion much like a rainbow after a heavy unavoidable storm. Ghosts of close VIPs have slipped into the shadowy background while trying to stay politely uninvolved while others have stepped forward into the light to show themselves as the radiant human beings they truly are. These are the people who are open and willing to listen and bleed with me and be patient. These are the kind of folks willing to help me see the forest through the trees when all I taste is bitter bark and anger. Kindness, in a emotional desert like this one, stands out like a mirage that tempts you to drink freely. But you blink and you're all of a sudden spitting out sandy mouthfuls. 

   

       My blind trust-fall back into the dirty city makes me freeze in my tracks and my spine tingles like Pop Rocks candy on my fat tongue. Paranoia and anxiety set in as soon as I realize I overslept and missed moving the car by 10:30 am before that merciless, hard bitch of a meter maid slaps a bright orange envelope on the pigeon poop covered windshield. Just a few days back here and my wheels are spinning out of control and my thumbs can't type fast enough. My gut is churning with the idea of high rents and weekly Broadway show rejection but it's not the same New York it was when I left because I'm not the same person. I've been still for the first time in my life in a good way. Best friends have moved away and gotten pregnant. I've lost people....grandparents and loved ones. Gorgeous, stunning babies came giggling and burping into the world this year while I was gone such as little Dawson, my butterball of a self proclaimed god son! Big Broadway shows I never saw have opened and since sadly closed. The blood and tears of my show friends stain the sticky subway poles with vein attempts at squeezing themselves into a role that couldn't be further from their type cast. I haven't written a thing in months nor cared to comment on the world or my questionable part in it. But something cracked me open that Jim Carrey said in a commencement speech on you tube, "You can just as easily fail at what you don't want, so why not take a chance on doing something you love?" Precisely my point Ace Ventura! 

 

      The subway crackles like fingernails on a chalk board, shocking my body into stark urban reality while the hot air from the train makes me want another shower. Getting the dirty subway under-arm sweats in the muggy summertime takes me right back to the good ol' times. My Tennessee detour was originally only supposed to be no longer than two months but ended up morphing into what has become almost three years now away from my friends and the city life I've known since 1998. You do the math! This blog has remained virtually dormant with not so much as glimmer of literary inspiration since I last hobbled around these city streets with my shin splints. I could've punched a Gerber baby right in the fucking face when I left three years ago and no amount of giggling infant beauty could've cracked this jaded gay exterior no sir! But now happily my NYC friends tease me saying that "Tank's lost his New York edge!" when I get taken for an idiot in a gypsy cab. A big piece of me smiles inside and knows that was my original goal all along, to loose that sharp edge that was quickly becoming a permanent mask that was all too real underneath. My quick-to-judge protective responses were becoming a problem. My Berlin Wall was flying up upon any weirdness which is totally unavoidable here. Weird is the norm in New York and almost a daily occurrence so get over yourself Tankersley and look into people's eyes again and acknowledge the human race before you because it's a beautiful thing. 

      A subway car represents a rainbow of colorful genetic DNA spanning through all the worlds nations and every possible race is represented in immediate eyesight. I've missed it. The best and worst of us all jammed on top of each other like sweaty summer sardines. It's dirty and real....the hug of human nature. Two years ago I would've tazed an old lady before she could've even formed the words to ask for my help across the street! It was certainly time for a serious intervention of sorts and some therapy that didn't involve H&M or my debit card. My Tennessee home gave me that chance to salvage what was left of my shipwrecked New York state of mind and allowed me to hit the long over due reset button on my life. My best friend in life told me one day that the goal in his own life was to make his anger-fuse grow longer with age instead of shorter.(Like mine) Wise words from a grounded and sound mind clear of pointless distraction. 

     

     Far too long have my fingers been absent from this notebook application. I've had nothing but time to write and gush out any and all things that flourish inside my cloudy, smokey haze yet nothing ever came. I'd wait every morning with coffee in hand for an actual family of bunnies to come hop-hopping across the front lawn for inspiration but still nothing. A blinking cursor on my touch screen has mocked me many a night with its modern dance and the silence around me just grew louder. The green Tennessee fields are brilliantly sprinkled with countless lightning bugs twinkling like Christmas lights strung up in mid air just for me. The scent of honeysuckle and pine wood burns from the neighboring chimney into my country soul but the city still calls me back like a deranged distant wolf. This is the necessary inner peace platform one needs before taking the blind leap into the unknown. Taxi honks and turnstile clicks bring me all the noise I need to fill that epic canyon of silence. What is it about this bustling hustle that makes my mind explode with creativity as the images and thoughts sizzle in the synapses of my brain, shooting like divine lightning through my finger tips and out into the universe? The freaky Japanese bubble teas, five dollar cinnamon muffins from the upper best side, and overpriced bad coffee seems to always set the world straight again for me. The panic is actually  part of that alive feeling that keeps me feeling young while welcoming daddy's crows feet with open arms like an express train when you're running late. New York.......where every stop is either delayed or a skip stop....no grey area. It's exactly where I wanna be. 

Biscuits and Davey

       I realize that my blog posts ebb and flow like the bi lunar ocean tide and that my moods change like an inconsistent weather radar reading during the stormy season. Hurricane David is by far one of the most dangerous types of atmospheric local chaos. Board up the windows folks and lock down the hatches. Whenever I'm stumped in my writing confessionals I tend to look back at the roller coaster of a ride I've been on for some time now. Could the silence of a rural environment actually be deafening to the point that I have to listen to a CD called 'Sounds of the City' a collection of horrible urban taxi honks and angry turnstile clicks and subway rumbles just to get myself to relax? I need a balance. Can the city of angels and demons be calling me back home after I wrote about my great escape for months on end?  Silence...Check. Quiet...check. Recording a CD...check! Finally paying off my Sallie Mae student loans that have been hanging over me like a cloud in the antidepressant commercials...done!!!
    Tennessee. It all started with a humming that morphed into words; words that evolved into lyrics to a country song and I'm taken away every single time. There's something new in me like a confidence I can't fully explain and I feel the need to not only acknowledge it but celebrate it with a dirty Actors Equity Les Mis call in Chelsea. My career won't be complete until I die on the barricade at some point. What's wrong with me? I have a beautiful one bedroom nest for dirt cheap...a rock star performing job at the biscuit ballet where I'm Rudolf Nureyev as far as the locals are concerned. But most importantly I've had the time to hear my voice clearly for the first time ever in my life without the oh' so familiar fall out of epic vocal judgement. Again I stand at the crossroads of leaving and it feels like I'm gonna throw up in my mouth a little. Or maybe it was the cherry cheesecake Yoplait Whip I just ate two days past its sell-by date I don't know? A pirate plank might be the best comparison (swirling sharks and all) to the rat race I'm considering doing a swan dive back into but it's worth it. It's a familiar tune I wish could forget the words to but I sing it in my sleep nonetheless. It's definitely time to reconsider a new approach to your career when your big Mary Poppins number follows a ventriloquist name Bob who literally uses a sock puppet! 33,000 dollars in debt paid off  in full to Sallie Mae can't justify poop and dick jokes to me at almost 35 years old. I mean an actual sock puppet in 2013 can you even imagine?! And I can't forget to mention the Stunt Dog Snickers I had to follow at my last gig. Is this success I wonder? I'd say yes without hesitation because of the peace I've found exploring the scary, untouched depths of myself that compare to the uncharted deep sea dives only black light cameras can catch. Daddy would take even a lateral move at this point.

Miss Understood

  

         The classic mystery of Monogamy...does it exist in the dirty dog-like inner workings of a gay man's DNA? Am I supposed to put that huge piece of me on a shelf to ignore every time I consider letting myself be open to a new relationship and the idea of love? Is it a theory or can you get everything from the same person? So many questions! I like to think that you can. The guy that inspires such blatant and carelessly dangerous consideration in my mind will make me french toast in the morning and spicy Bloody Mary's on a blustery and cold rainy east-side day; in between playing renditions of Claire de Lune on an slightly out of tune piano while I shower! Too much? Absolutely! Expectations too high you say? I know. But maybe I missed the boat in this case and that's all she wrote folks. I like to think timing is key when it comes to rekindling an old flame. Hopefully all the previous baggage can be set aside or forgotten and the lessons been learned already so you can take that first step all over again. Its not the great guys I'm falling for....its me friends. After all, I'm the only common denominator in all of my failed relationship attempts. So how long can I go on pointing fingers and placing the blame on everyone else but myself? I could have walked down the path more traveled and had the picturesque white picket fence with a beautiful show girl wife popping out pale, plump, red headed grand babies, making my mother bubble over with peels of grandmotherly delight. Should that be the case my life might look really good on paper. But alas sexuality is not a choice. I would've chosen invisibility and normalcy over anything on the check list. Don't get me wrong, my life has unfolded beautifully with twistsssssss and turnssssss that no one ever saw coming. Even with the understanding that I was genetically designed to color outside the lines, unfortunately my personal demons involving unnecessary jealousy have begun to cloud my already cloudy mind and eat away at the trust I've found with my new man and every man before him. I can dish it out but I can't seem to take it so to speak.

        The years are seriously flying by like subway stops on an express train. It was crucial for me to find peace in this redneck environment for my already fragile sanity.  Perhaps it's way too late for that. And since I find myself plopped down in the middle of the ridiculous American bible belt I proudly smooth out the little bubbles on the Obama bumper sticker I permanently placed on my conservative parent's soccer- mom minivan. Oops....It sits right above my dads sticker that says "Rim to Rim.........the Grand Canyon!" No kidding! Each corner of my presidential 2012 sticker has been frantically scratched at on every side by angry Republican hillbillies and scooter-bound ladies in the Walmart parking lot, desperately trying to remove my Democratic pride before getting caught "red" handed. Waves have been made with the locals inadvertently. Its my small attempt at a strangely successful rage. Some Romney sheep is going to definitely tailgate me now and lay on the horn or drag his angry key across the ol' Green Hornet's paint job that's been so good to me. It's a truly trusty war horse that has served me well for a very long time.  All driver's forgiveness aside, my trick to avoiding the impending parental backlash of my mother's wrath in regards to the Obama bumper sticker was placing an ugly inspirational Christian theme-park magnet over it temporarily for quick home visits. So far so good....until she finds the blog!

The Imaculate Misconception

     When do you tap out of the New York City fight I wonder? And when do you stop pounding the fruitless pavement and celebrating the occasional bread crumb mercifully dropped from a midtown casting agency? The thick 33 year old denial clouding my pursuit of genuine happiness reminds me of that Lunesta commercial where the cartoon character walks around all day with a dark little rain cloud tightly tailing her every move. That can’t be 34. I need to sit into my decision to relocate for two years, uprooting myself from everyone and everything I’ve known for the last 14 years I rode the one train uptown to Harlem. You don’t shake the city angst that easily. To this day I still get the shakes whenever I think about going to an Equity Principle Audition at six am and waiting outside in the biting New York cold hoping to get the chance to belt out at least 32 bars of some obnoxious musical theatre song I’m not entirely comfortable with anyway. 

      I always hang on way too long to all things broken if I know it or not, relationships, jobs, apartments, grudges, ideas. The urban adrenaline that used to pulse through my veins like lightning has hardened into a thick glue making it impossible for me to move or give a shit anymore. I want my ashes spread over the hard wood floors of Pearl Studios where daddy’s been getting cut from the dream countless times leaving all dignity in the room should the word “Improv” be dropped! Not to mention the ol’ hamster wheel of required six month Wicked calls...my dream. Little fish? Even a good Sex and the City marathon couldn’t blow a little life into my broke city soul and wallet these days. I like privacy and walking little Harley off leash without threat of getting run over, being ticketed by a bored New York City bike cop, or harassed by another homeschool fellow dog owner! For the moment I’d rather be stuck traffic hopelessly gridlocked than being smashed like sardines on the dirty train if it comes at all.  Among the long list of things that tip the scales, Im cool with saying adieu to the amputee legless guy that drags his torso across the filthy train floor begging for loose change with hands stained solid black with unspeakable grime. I'll never forget the pathetic crackle in his voice that took the saddness of it all to a whole new level. Or the homeless woman rubbing her invisible bed bugs all over my jacket as she forces her way through a tight rush hour crowd like a bull. No thank you. Other than barely coming up with my epically unattainable rent due by the first of the month and the eight AM Spanish mariachi band splitting my head wide open, inspiring an emergency run to the local pharmacy to grab a fistful of Excedrin Migraine, I think my list is almost done. SSSSSShhhhhhhhh New York. It’s quiet time.

       Now I’ve traded in my ghetto mansion on 156th street for the bottom floor of a house that sits in the clouds atop one of the highest points in Pigeon Forge. Scenic loop circle is private and picturesque and as far as I’m concerned it’s Cinderella’s slipper. The deafening silence makes me wonder if my hearing is going sometimes. No hospital ambulances racing past my bedroom window blaring sirens at all hours of the night or firecrackers being popped by little punks in the courtyard, startling the hell out of me because they sound like gun shots. I clearly watch way too much Law and Order. How about another rainy marathon Tankersley? I can still hear the clicking subway turnstiles and people screaming "TAXI!" penetrating my dreams the way I can hear Paula Dean's horrible accent even if the television is muted. That woman is a terrorist of the English language. No wonder my anxiety level floats at around the boiling point. Anger management alone was enough reason to run for the literal hills. It’s crucial for me to sit with this quiet and suck down the crystal clear Tennessee air that’s so pure my brain is actually thanking me.
      Friends and VIPs keep asking me when I’m coming back to the dirty thankless grind of screaming high G’s at ten am that get harder and harder to reach, much like my leg to my face! My answerer to these doubting Thomases is “Whenever my therapist gives me a hall pass.” All I know is that simplicity suits my 33 year old bones at the moment and having some semblance of quiet stability has been paramount in me finding any peace at all. My writer’s inspiration comes and goes like the tide and my fingers miss the fiery tap tapping away of all my sarcastic rants in the dry periods. The occasional threads of juicy thought all too often get caught in my widely cast nets of personal judgment and never see the light of this laptop monitor. Even if this blog contains waaaaay too much information it’s better
in the end to let it rip because it would be a crime if some of this shit was forever encased in my IPhone notebook App. The tomb of doom. So...........POST.