Holier Than Tao

             There is a woman walking her darling 3,500 dollar Goldendoodle with pride and a twist of bitchiness while signaling her lifeless doorman for a cab.  Sorry to be in the way miss. Don’t mind us passing because I’m sure you’re really busy right now. Power lesbians in action make me quake in my boots. Cubby Hole cuntessas rule the west village like female solders.  I indulge myself with the upswings of the ever changing New York minute mood. Take ‘em when you can get ‘em I say. It's the little moments of bliss that get you through the day like walking your dog. The hyper extremes that come with living in the city leave not much of a grey area. It’s all or nothing here and I tend to feel like the later category.

              I used to live in a lofted apartment with five Christian guys on 34th st in what is now a Wendy’s. I met this religious motley crew of denial through a rental situation. I could live there (in midtown) with my own space for the whopping price of 235 dollars a month! There was just one tiny requirement to secure this nonexistent rent.....I had to attend their church once a week out at the Jacob Javets center! Now this was around 1999 and I couldn’t have been more unstable financially or emotionally. This was also pre-musical theatre conservatory so I was a mess. I needed a place desperately so that I could get out of a bad room mate situation in Queens with a perverted ballet photographer that was borderline stalking me. You can still see him outside of Lincoln Center selling photos of ballet dancers in Pointe shoes and swans kissing. Beware dancer boys! I’d wake up and Vladimir would be standing in the corner of my room watching me sleep and smiling like a serial killer taking a moment before he suffocates his next victim! God New York is weird. All I know is that it was time to go before this toothless faggot killed me in my sleep or even worse...hits on me while I’m still alive!

         Attending a church, after being out of the closet for many years before I even moved to the city, was going to be my first major acting role here. I could’ve won an Oscar for how convincing I was as a Jesus loving Christian fraud. I’d already had a lifetime of practice pretending not to hate Jesus as much as I did because of all the trouble he'd caused.  Talk about publicity!  You couldn't buy it.  I hated god for blogging in the big book that he was sending me to Hell because I’d rather spoon a man......rude! I had no trouble morphing myself into an upstanding man of the lord.   But I'd much rather have been rocking it out (like I wanted to) until the wee hours of the morn in a tiny gay sssssssparkly tee shirt at the old Limelight!  No one was ever the wiser and I sailed under the radar for months and months and I thought I was home free. Then one day one of the guys came to me and asked when I was going to start dating one of the sisters in the church? Fuck, how was I going to wiggle out of this one? The broken heart theory can only last you so long before somebody starts to catch on. Also, I considered the ol’ long distance girlfriend excuse but knew that they would be onto me because I'd never mentioned her before. There was no way out. Either I came out of the closet again and risked loosing the roof over my head or I would have to consider suppressing my stomach contents (as to not vomit at the thought of taking five million steps back as a homo and start going through the motions of courting a fucking woman.....really for the first time!) I was trapped in a sickening situation and couldn’t bare the thought of going on some phony date with one of the “sisters” and asking “So....where you from?” or “How many siblings do you have....?” I think dating someone you want to fuck can be hard enough. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve always kinda wanted to sleep with a girl but I wasn’t about to start playing this dangerous game.  Plus, I could never be one of the millions of men out there that suppress their inner dick sucking tendencies only to lead some girl on in any way.  The positive side to this scandalous approach would be that at least I knew that I could drag the game out a long long time because she would never pressure me to get into her pants until marriage. But to be honest I just didn’t have the energy. How could they not be onto me when I was trying my damnedest to get into a musical theatre academy for twinky bottoms? Then another room mate came to me and asked me the same question....then another and another. I knew their suspicions were up and had talked and probably prayed about the direction my soul was going as an asexual member of the household of brothers. I was stuck in a wooden box with no way out except a little glory hole that would free only one part of me. I hate religious pressure. Was the fact that I was a good person not enough to let me live in the apartment?  Would these Christian boys let me stay? When the moment came to speak out or forever hold my weener, I stood up for myself and risked the fall out of these closet cases!

         Of all the judgment that was happening in that house there was one guy that I couldn’t help but love. He was a sweet Haitian man named Eddington who had survived unspeakable atrocities in his home land and was here trying to make a better life for himself. His journey was the stuff that major motion pictures are made of. Because of where he came from Eddington couldn’t have been bothered with the goings on of my sexual “issues.” His eye was on the real prize unlike the other brothers. One night we were talking and he told me that he would die to make his American dream come true, and in fact he almost did! He told me about his brother and how much he missed him and how close they were and it made me think about my little bro and our connection. The only difference in our situations was that with all the political unrest and natural disasters that plague his country he hadn't heard from his brother in months and couldn't locate him anywhere. It’s as if he fell of the face of the planet and no one could find him! That would make me ill every moment of every day not knowing if my beautiful brother was alive or dead. He broke down in tears when he described the gaping hole in his life without his bro. People have real problems way beyond who David Tankersley is putting his penis in. He said his little brother had joined a young militia of rising rebels with the motto “Freedom or Death!” The only thing Jason ever fought for was his grades and my image in a red neck middle school in nowhere Tennessee. American social security numbers are juicy reality for those of us that have them. What makes me love this country is that I don’t have to think very much. I ask him if he misses Haiti and he tells me that he was born there, grew up there, and that it’s all he knows. “God the view....I miss the view” he said.  I ask him if he will ever return and he tells me that it’s his dream but probably not. Then what good is a dream I wonder? As a citizen of the United States it never occurred to me that any dream I so fancied in my life might not come true. I don’t accept my limits even though I definitely have them. This man’s heart was heavy even after he achieved his freedom. He was a real person with an even realer story. “My friend built a boat and we sailed it for America years ago” he said. I couldn’t believe it. As a young, overindulgent, fat suburban kid I remembered hearing about immigrants slapping a boat together and trying to do that sort of thing. My parents would huff and puff in anger, while watching the evening news. “Damn illegals, coming over here and stealing all our jobs!” But from my point of view, the only jobs that were getting “stolen” from US citizens were the jobs nobody wanted to take anyway! You couldn’t fill all those hard working, seriously labor intensive jobs with lazy American couch potatoes if you tried. In fact I’d say they are saving this country in a way. What a Republican piece of shit I was almost raised to be. If I had stayed in the closet indefinitely I would’ve slid alllllllll the way over to the conservative right side of denial and never come out. Once the damn springs a tiny leak it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing blows.

              I then asked Eddington to tell me about how he managed to sail a rickety boat to American soil undetected. He was quiet for a few moments while he remembered that day. “Everyone drowned except me and my friend because nobody could swim when the boat over turned” he said with a mystifying chuckle. What?! He was nervously laughing while tears started to stream down his face. I’ve never seen such simultaneous emotion before. It was a disbelief mixed with a kind of questioning bafflement. He then described his inability to watch the Titanic movie without having a horribly traumatic flashback of the most epic proportion. He described people slipping under the surface one at a time exhausted and panicked from their inability to tread water. What a nightmare that must have been for him that day and what a dark thing to try to bury and move past. Forgetting is not really a possibility with something so extreme. Where is your god sweet and brave Eddington? Where is he now and does he judge me as the other brothers say he does? I’m a Southern survivor of hate crimes and endless childhood taunting and prejudice so I can identify a heroic spirit in a person when I see it. And this man was absolutely radiating the unbelievable experience of a life uncommon. He is a super hero of the likes of which my sheltered and spoiled world of Big Gulps and chronic super-sizing has never known.

            Working without those nine mandatory social security numbers was virtually impossible in the city and he was struggling terribly just to pay rent and feed himself. I was working in a coffee shop on the upper west side at the time and would bring him home all the unsold sandwiches and scones that were either going to go home with the employees or go in the trash. I’d leave him little post-it notes of encouragement here and there but there was too much pressure from the guys to cut me off and that came between me and one of the only friends I had in the world. That was the strategy; too freeze me out with Holy cold shoulders. I was way over due for my curtain call in the Jesus camp that was my apartment at the time. It was time for this dog and pony show to close! I know for a fact that several of them admitted during private men's prayer groups that they too had been struggling with homosexual tendencies themselves.........Oops! Or was I really getting kicked out because they couldn’t resist this and wanted to get a piece? I’ll never know why our “savior’s” guillotine came slamming down on me so hard at that exact juncture in my life, but I knew it would eventually anyway. The gig was up and I was busted and soon to be homeless by way of holy banishment. Tuppins for truth sir? Alms for the fairy? Sometimes I feel like Eddie desperately swimming for the shore with all his might with absolutely everything to loose. And maybe, by some miracle, I’ll reach the sandy shore one day and drag myself up onto the beach just barely finishing the starting line.

Jason Nation

           Every day I try and practice a little ritual my brother Jason taught me. Every morning, before you touch your feet to the ground and make your very first step, try and think of something you’re grateful for. It’s such an interesting concept. It’s like faking a smile. You force it and eventually you’ll end up smiling and it kind of works. In some small way this tiny little prayer alters your day by that one degree and it makes a significant difference. Try it sometime. I swear even the tiniest bit of gratitude in the A.M. flips a “glass half empty” perspective on its ass. It’s the little things that get me through sometimes. Now I’m not talking about some deep chime ringing ritual where you’re chanting “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” in an endless monotone loop for hours. I had an ex whose Buddhist meditation sounded like a dying moose right after it’s been fatally hit by a soccer mom in a mini van on the interstate. It was constant and grating and way too early for that shit!  It was a disarming sound that seriously made me crazy.  But I could certainly not object at the time because I was living in his apartment (in Chelsea) for free. I needed to meditate because I was so angry at his meditation. My method is short and takes no time or discipline. It takes all of two seconds. Just roll over and the second before your foot hits the cold hard wood...stop...and take a breath.  Then take another one and think of the first thing that comes to your mind that you are happy and grateful about (even if it’s just your warm Kmart slippers). Of course I suggest taking it to a deeper level than that but sometimes the beauty is in the basics don’t you think? I don’t need to levitate four inches above the ground in euphoric bliss or see into the future (Broadway excluded)!  And I certainly don’t need to burst into beams of light on a daily basis and channel the Dali Lama into an enlightening oblivion. I just pray for enough inner peace to prevent me from absolutely killing the bitch on the train that comes charging into the subway car the second the doors open, knocking directly into me before I can even step aside or exit! That gets me so steamed. Read my angry, pissed off.............look lady! I hate those spatially unaware New Yorkers that get all up in my personal space on the subway during rush hour, pushing and shuffling around like cows in a tight pen. If one drop of that triple venti-decaf-no foam-low fat-half soy-no calorie-cunt in a cup macchiato gets on these new white pants, I swear to god......I’ll f*n kill you lady! I’ll snap that blue tooth right off you ear so fast and smash it with my sandal before it's even 9:30!  Bring it New York!  Any divine blessing or sense of calm I'd achieved up until that point is obliterated by the time I swipe my unlimited metro card. One day I woke up and the first thing that came to my mind was how grateful I was for always being able to catch a cab 24/7. I kid you not. It’s an undeniable treat to be so spoiled in the transportation department here in the 212. Ladies and gentleman, may I introduce..........the man with helium in his hands! The second cabs started taking credit and debit cards I was in big, big trouble.

         

        I would love to see the world through my beautiful brother’s open and unclouded eyes. He’s the man. His spirit is light and free and seemingly untouchable. He is my teacher even though I’m the older one. This boy lived in a tent for six months up at the Omega institute for wellness and personal growth of the mind and spirit. He worked there on scholarship in order to attend the seminars that aren’t exactly cheap. He would plant flower bulbs throughout the grounds as a gardening assistant or be doing maintenance and general upkeep. Other times he would be serving vegan cous cous and fake tofu in the Shadowless cafe. Tank is an original that’s for sure. My words could never capture the rawness and the humor of this guy. He’s nothing but real. I’ve been asked before if I wished that my brother was gay to lessen the burden of being the only black sheep in the family. I have to say that what the world doesn’t need is another gay guy wearing angle wings and rubbing his gums with coke. What the world really needs is more open minded straight people to do the dirty work for us! That’s where the evolution comes into play, through the bridges that our brothers and sisters build.  It's the fabulous "straights" that really wedge the door open for us to comfortably come out. Who knows what kind of punk my brother would be if I wasn't gay?  Because of me and the life I ended up leading, my bro. was exposed to the dark side of what being in the closet can do to a person. He saw first hand what denial looks like.  I hate to admit that I was a monstrous, angry, misunderstood little homosexual from the time I was six years old and first begged my parents for ice skating lessons. It only took seven more years for them to give in and buy me a couple group lessons at the Ice Chalet when I turned thirteen. I had no one to relate to and no one to talk to about my “issues.” Any therapy I got was religious based and only made me feel worse. I thought it was hilariously ironic that years and years later I booked the skater track at Radio City where at the end of the show I got to play Joseph the father Jesus!  Jason was eating the bullet for me in our red neck disaster of a Tennessee public school. This turtleneck wearing, ballet dancing, figure skater never stood a chance against the hillbilly gangs of adolescent toothless wonders that ran our school. He would fight tooth and nail defending me by telling those bullies that his brother wasn’t gay even though he knew the truth. He knew that I was painting my toe nails Sally Bowles green and running around in my mother's pink beret and pearls pretending to be a spy. But he did love me enough to defend the game I was playing with myself and the world. Why was I the last to know that I was a big flaming queen?

      I never had the opportunity to come out properly. I came home one evening and my mother was in my room sitting on my treasure trunk full of all things private and sacred. It concealed things like bad drawings and melancholy poems and maps of places I was dying to go like Paris France. It was also where I hid my journal and the International Male magazines I used to jerk off to! They seemed to naturally fall open to the underwear section the same way a phone book opens right to the most flipped to pages.  Hmmmmm? When I walked in my mom had her head in her hands and was balling. "What will the neighbors think" she said?  I don't know ma....I 've never met the fucking neighbors!  She was sniffling and choking back the epic disappointment of her son’s sinful journal entries. Sodomy was not cool with the Lord.  I swear that I had just built up the courage to even write down the G word a few days earlier. “I.......think......I’m.....gay.” These four words (writen down) would screw up the next several years for me living under my parents' roof.  It presented me with a number of challenges worthy of a good reality television show. I was a straight A student with a sweet 3.8 grade point average and have a hundred other overachieving, brown-nosing details I could tell you about myself. Looking back, all my extracurricular activities and bonus projects were just another way for me to overcompensate for my secret inner “flaw” and the huge gaping hole in my heart. My brother was always there. He may not have totally understood the facts but I’ll never forget his decency and respect for the sad emotional roller coaster I was on way back then. In fact I wasn’t much of a human being till I was about twenty. I was a suppressed athlete that was crippled with an intense shyness and very, very angry inside. I wouldn’t have wanted to raise me either.

         I have moments of extreme claustrophobia down in the subway tunnels underneath New York.  When we are packed in like sardines on a busted, unairconditioned train car grateful is nowhere to be found! I feel like the heat in the sweaty summertime is cooking me from the inside out the second I take my first step into the sweltering train station. It feels like you’re walking into a hot, hot pool of sticky, heavy air. One thing I am beyond thankful for every time this year is my industrial sized air conditioner that I let blow on high till I can see my breath! I’m sooo grateful for the little arctic environment I'm able to create for myself in the middle of a sun-pounding Manhattan summer.

         Sometimes things don't always unfold exactly the way you planned and too much focus on it can leave your battery dangerously low with no charger in sight. Tank is my crunchy-munchy Tennessee guru teaching me the ins and outs of true happiness. He’s like a skinny, hand-standing Buddha with a permanent smile plastered to his face and white-boy dreadlocks made with tree sap! 

         As my stiff, sleepy ankles crack and bend for the first time in the morning, I get goose bumps from the cold hard surface of the wood floor. I’m thankful for Jason. We are the only two to come from the same hard-core Christian womb. And from my parent's history of sleeping in separate bedrooms, it's a miracle we were even conceived at all!  He gets it. And he gets me. Fond memories and thoughts start to oil my creaky, jaded joints and the idea of a fresh start doesn’t seem that far off. Maybe it will be a good day?  Jason will call me for my birthday and say “I’m so glad you lived another year.” He somehow finds meaning in the mortality of it all. I get that. A healthy understanding of death makes you make the most out of our "Earth-time." And even if this simple little morning meditation only lasts until you can get your toothbrush in your mouth you’ve made it further than most New Yorkers!

(T1)

Moth Meet Career

              There is a time in one's career when you stop caring about the journey so much as the actual results. Fuck the journey in twenty-ten I say! You come to an age as a thirty-something chorus boy and you start to wonder why you haven’t died on the barricade yet or danced wildly as an office worker with a staple gun while partnering a swirling coat rack in a Promises Promises office scene? And let’s not forget my triannual cut from Wicked shall we? Part of my year is getting cut over and over by the same people. There are several iron clad centuries standing guard, forming an impenetrable wall between me and the great Broadway stage. I’m thinking of one fierce frugging girl in particular! To her,  I'm a Chinese divider to the people she’s looking at and casting. She is the grimmest reaper, personally choosing who may and may not pass through the golden gates of the Emerald paradise. May this diva one day see me as fiercely as I have been seeing her all these years. My mouth to the Wizard's ears!  Part of me wants to work my ass off for the next five years and risk seeing what unfolds. While the other part of me wants to wave a white flag and immediately shoot an emergency flare of ensemble-surrender and become a massage therapist on the west coast (where I'd spend all my time smoking pot and hugging trees in the Red Wood forest and doing Bikram Yoga.)  I secretly want to remove myself from the possibility of any future failure in this business of show.

        A couple of weeks ago I ran into a guy I had worked with several years ago in a regional production of Cinderella at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey. The last visual I have of this kid was him bustling through the prologue opening scene as a happy villager dressed in some crystal meth inspired ensemble outfit of nightmares (not that I wasn’t wearing one myself!) He was, of course, playing a child. We were standing upstairs at the Ripley Grier audition studios warming up for a Chorus Line audition and he said something that knocked the breath out of me. He said “David Tankersley you look so much.................wiser.” It was like taking a bullet point blank in the stomach. My ego instantly bled out and I died on the scene! Resuscitation was futile. Who was this little twink-bottom from Hell to tell me I looked anything but fantastic, much less fucking wiser?! I’ll kill you sir with your own dance belt and throw your skinny little body to the hungry ballet dancers in the Juilliard cafeteria! Wiser? He is actually a really sweet guy and he meant it somehow as a compliment I’m sure but holy Christ.  I don’t know if my little “friend” here has that necessary filter between his brain and the tip of his tongue that's going to let him walk away from this little compliment session alive. This boy hasn’t aged a single day since our show closed all those years ago and it was pissing me off royally. In fact he seemed to be aging in reverse. It was so unfair. He’s the kind of guy that will probably be playing a high school kid in Hairspray until he’s forty-five years old. Does this little inappropriate Dove commercial fully understand the seriousness of his obviously undiagnosed theatre turrets? Casual verbal slayings are the norm in a competitive environment like this but Jesus Christ who’s got the time? I, on the other hand, have a Rockette kick line of crow’s feet pounded and etched into my face like little footprint waterfalls falling away from my outer eyes. I’ve accepted it and tell myself that guys get better with age. Salt n’ pepper hair and masculine smile lines are charming and very sexy in my opinion. Women I fear have a much harder time aging gracefully. They fight time tooth and nail with creams and Botox and expensive lady things, trying to deny the inevitable falling of all of our faces. Wear your tight dresses Now bitches!

       All these years I’ve been planting little theatre seeds in every casting office, with every Broadway bound choreographer, and with anyone casting a dancer who sings his face off. Fuck, I would sleep my way to the middle at this point if I could! I would bring my own casting couch in the form of a blow-up mattress into the room and blow it up nude if they asked me to. And as my hilarious room mate Danny always says “Tank, a hand job is still a job!” How right you are sir...so true. I need a safety net in this expensive city. Once I was approached by a guy who offered to represent me in the porn industry. I was so flattered but not ready to sacrifice my soul to the XXX gods of video and internet porn. That's for later.  It’s a public sex adventure that results in fast and furious instant cash. Despite my near brushes with financial disaster throughout the years I have somehow threaded together more than a decade of shows that I’m really proud of. Twenty seven shows in twelve years are what I consider a personal success. Just like I think surviving this long is a success in itself. But my D-list dancing career leaves me disenchanted with the close calls and what ifs of the biz. What if the first Broadway show I was cast in wasn’t closed right before rehearsals started? It was called Masada and was going to be choreographed by my idol David Parsons the infamous modern dance bad ass! But even though the show was canceled I ended skating the world premier of a duet that he choreographed on me and a fierce Olympic French girl named Line Hehhad.  She and I had teamed up for several years doing different pieces for the Ice Theatre of New York at Chelsea Piers and Rockefeller Center. And from the ashes rises a phoenix ice queen!

        I was working some spoiled Jewish boy’s bar mitzvah in New Jersey when I got the call. That night was a particularly humbling night for me because I was hired as an enthusiastic crowd dancer, who’s job it was to get awkward teenagers up on the floor to dance. Excuse me, but I need a moment to unsuppress this memory and my stomach contents. It makes me feel like throwing up all over this screen right now! Half the time I was a cracked out dance promoter. The rest of the time I was fully covered and painted like a space alien. Kill me! It was the kind of party you wish you'd had a loaded pistol in your backpack, cocked and ready for that one guest that puts you over the edge. But more likely I would’ve been the one eating the bullet. Parties like this are humbling beyond rescue. I was at one point instructed to stick my head through a hole in the middle of the greeting table (as an alien head!) and scare people as they walked up to pick up their seating arrangements and name tags. I would break from my extraterrestrial freeze and say “Wel...come....to...Marzzzz...please prrrroceeeeed...to the table correspon...ding to the galaxy... onn yourr card.” With no ego in sight I finally got the dreamed of 212 call! Broadway had finally called while I was kneeling under a card table with my head poking through a drilled out hole. Oh god the shame of having ten pubescent Jewish boys with curly dark brown and black Hassidic tendrils, throwing gum and hard candy at my face and poking me to see if I was real. Nothing is worse my friends, nothing I can recall. God save the failed actor! It would be a hilarious commercial in my opinion; an alien on the clock at a barmitzvah...working a double shift and horribly hung over from a night of drinking. And Poof.....in comes a truck load of Excedrin to save the day! The universe had mercy on this rollerblading gay space creature that day and I finally got the call. Under the suspended planes of the New Jersey Aeronautics Museum this chorus boy had just booked his first Broadway show and nothing could stop the tsunami of tears upon hearing the missed voicemail! And wild horses couldn’t stop the tears from exploding from my eyes when it was unexpectedly “canceled indefinitely.” That night as I did hip hop to Brittney Spears for all those Jews (while wearing glow in the dark paint-splashed overalls and a bandanna) I thought my life was a'changin. And as bad as it sounds the most painful situation for me in parties like this was just walking around and mingling as some awkward slow moving statue or a 40’s keystone copper. Or worst of all.....a mime!

        There is no god when you are catering and handing out wine and hors d'oeuvres to gentlemen you’ve dated and slept with. They pretend to not be shocked to see you standing there with a silver trey of mushroom truffles or salmon and goat cheese lollipops. Times is hard and it’s transparent for all the world to see when you’re passing out plastic cups of warm chardonnay and shame. “So what are You doing here Mr.?” they say awkwardly, knowing the answer already which is....nothing! What the fuck do you think I’m up to? I’m standing here in khaki pants and an unfitted Bloomberg tee shirt on gay pride/shame day. The soundtrack for my career would be a field of Tennessee country crickets singing a chorus of just kidding.

         I feel like my crystal ball is broken when it comes to my post audition psychic abilities. I used to be able to predict if I was going to book something and when I definitely was not. I had a sixth sense that was pretty spot on. I would walk out of an audition and my gut would tell me that I was going to get it.........then I would! Or I could detect a lack of fierceness in myself and know that the entire morning was a graveyard. Nowadays I’ll be sure that I'm going to book a particular job and Monday comes rolling around and it’s just more crickets. It’s hard for me not to check my phone in vein for a call that’s just not coming. Sometimes I’ll book a show that I didn’t even remember auditioning for in the first place. Or I’ll forget and screw up the steps of a combination and totally bomb the dance call and a few days later somebody will drop out and my name happens to be at the top of the pile. It’s all a jumbled up circus of chaotic phone calls between agents and interns and agent interns. It’s soooo in your face when you’re not successful here in New York, very much like I imaging it would be for a struggling TV actor in Hollywood. Oprah says that success happens when preparation meets opportunity. And she’s right of course. But we all know how many talented and prepared people there are in the city not working! Broadway is a lottery that a select few ever get to taste consistently.

          Over the last decade I’ve been preparing an elaborate smorgasbord of workshops, classes, and endless auditions. This professional pot roast of sorts has been simmering and cooking for twelve years and is now charred and crusted black from waiting for the dinner guests that never arrived! Must I be forced to strip at a Broadway Bares event? Is it the only way to join the club officially? How does one ever stand out in a world of gym-bunny Pecs and pin me down and fuck me arms(PMDAFMA as by bestie Michael calls it)?! There are guys that look like me, sing higher than me, kick higher than me, and are 21 years old, straight off the most recent Greyhound bus from Iowa. Go home you little Billy Elliots...I know you are here to take over the world!

           My second shot at the great white way was when I was in the final running to be cast in the Pirate Queen. I incorrectly assumed that I’d be divinely plucked out of the pack of hard working workshop dancers that had invested weeks and weeks into it for free. I took any Broadway choreographer’s class anywhere I could and did countless free rehearsals and non paying gigs in the name of hope. Then came the ultimate dream. I was called in as an emergency replacement in Xanadu, a show I’d been involved with since it’s beginning down on Mott st. in the west village reading years ago. Being the skate coach and dance captain, I somehow missed the casting boat that sailed on without me. That show was a dream come true for me but always came with a little cigarette burn. There was always a twist. I ended up teaching my own replacement auditions about four or five times! And that took some serious digging and spiritual effort to scrape up enough divine inner peace in order for me to recast myself. It all came down to the fact that I’m a medium to terrible tapper. Tapping and tumbling beyond a cheese mat (with a spotter) elude me.

         Soon, after getting my Broadway ink on that resume, I made an appointment at the Dragon tattoo parlor in the Chelsea Hotel to get Grecian wings on my feet and ankles to celebrate the long-long journey that led up to my debut. After the Du's security escorted me out of the building, I took a tour. Soon after Playbill announced that the My Fair Lady tour that I was on was coming to New York. It was too good to be true of course and it resulted in more fucking crickets! At least I got to roller skate over my first theatre district stage and finally got my credit. Why do you have to be the 29th runner up on American Idol just to play Mark in some regional production of Rent for $300 dollars a week? And why are the Tony winners this year hugely famous movie stars that couldn’t even be bothered to know who to thank....Denzel? Where is the justice there? When Katherine Zeta Jones sang “Bring in the Clowns” like a dying baritone homeless cat watching a tennis match I threw my hands up. It seemed she was being startled by ghosts during her performance and it left me underwhelmed and very uncomfortable. Theatre’s gone to Hollywood and TV stars. Please, like Scarlet Johansson needs a Tony award sitting on her mantle....really? Give it to the girl whose career would skyrocket instead of someone who will barely even notice they were blessed with such a huge honor. And where’s the best dancer in a musical category I want to know?

         I am a man that has been branded the “Swing King” and I seem to have fallen into the dangerous trap of what is known as ye ol' understudy rut! But it aint no rut if you're the universal swing of that little show based on the Dorothy and her dog....I cant remember the name of it?? I dream of being first cast again and not having to take on the painstaking task of writing down dance and tracking up to fourteen people on paper. Multi tasking at this level makes me want to vomit. This offstage-cover bubble is leaving me cut off from the joys of rehearsing and putting something on its feet. After a while there is a performance anxiety that starts to build up after too many years standing in the wings mouthing other peoples’ lines. I want to swim freely in the pool from which these dancer boys are being picked, just a tad pole in the pond of a thousand bottoms. I am championing the American tragedy of a chorus boy interrupted.

photo of Roberta Spegne's Hamlet

Central Percs

          Sheep’s meadow is on fire tonight with thousands of blinking lightning bugs everywhere you turn. It’s quiet and the light from the day is slowly melting into a Manhattan dusk. These little white Christmas lights are draped in mid air like a low fog that sits a couple of feet off the ground. They're temporary jewels randomly flashing a brilliant light symphony. Only this popcorn chorus is silent. No crickets.....just the sound of angry cab drivers laying on the horn just outside the park. Harley is fiercely chasing through the field in a vein attempt to catch one mid twinkle. By the time she gets to the spot where she saw the flash the tiny bug was long gone. Puzzled, she cocks her head to the side wondering where it could've gone. Then she bolts off to catch another unsuspecting bug. Her schizophrenic ballet makes me laugh. Ahh...to see the world through my dog’s eyes!
           Catching these little creatures and putting them in a mason jar was a past time for me and my little brother growing up on a horse farm in Tennessee. We were up to no good as usual. We would run through the blueberry patches behind our house with empty jars trying to fill them with as many warm glowing prisoners as possible. The lightning bugs were the lucky ones let me tell you. Animal activists everywhere would've totally flipped if they knew we were held up in our parents’ basement pushing hamsters off self made ramps in small plastic cars.  Don't worry, we made them wear those tiny football collectible helmets. Let’s just say I have a lot of animal karma to repay ok? I used to enjoy stepping on an ant and having that control. Now I practically fall over trying to avoid it. Who am I to decide if this little dude deserves a free pass? I mean he’s really busy right now, urgently going somewhere way more important than me. Unlike me, he’s not unsure about what he’s doing here in the big city. In fact, this little urban ant is just burning with purpose. I no longer kill......just because. I won’t lie to you. If I see a cock roach crawling around in my kitchen I will exhaust myself trying to end its disgusting little life. I don’t give a shit about its purpose! How does one ever in a million years make penance for shooting a country mouse up in a rocket only so it can parachute down instead of the little green plastic soldier? Fievel never had a chance people. But let me assure you that he was securely rigged into a mouse safety suit. You see we were very responsible actually. I mean we thought his chances were good considering the expertise we had in constructing sky diving rodent gear from scratch. Then, there was the shameful exchange of a real live poodle named Skippy for my neighbor’s Super Mario Bros. 2 Nintendo game. My brother rightfully accused me of having no conscious or caring soul. And at the time he was right. It would be years before our rein of red neck terror would end. What can I say? I wanted to be the floating princess and Skippy never skipped anyway.

            Looking back I know that I owe my puppy eternal loyalty and respect, all the things she brings to my life. She is my highest priority and I couldn’t adore her more. But it’s a fine line between being a pack leader and a man servant. Most little dogs can get away with murder because they are camouflaged in cuteness. My buddy Dave’s pit bulls are so much better behaved than the raging, screaming little Chihuahua that comes tearing out of my building every day charging angrily for my Achilles tendon. That little fucker could end a dance career! Warning: do not be deceived by this seemingly sweet looking little stick of dynamite. There were insect genocides throughout my early childhood, not to mention all the unlucky tad polls that ended up frozen individually in ice cubes and served to the ladies that attended my mother’s bible study prayer meeting........Ooops! There’s no excuse for red neck hamster hijincks or cow tipping (which we never did). And there’s never a good time to TP someone’s front yard either. I think a lot of bored country kids in the south are probably running from the insect ethical police as well.

           I have flashbacks of me holding a glowing fly-swatter covered in the guts of countless squished lightning bugs. I was acting the part of the country king, marching proudly into my kitchen (to my mother’s horror) waving a golden radiant septer of death. Let’s be honest, my bother was the king. I was the ferry sprite princess frolicking around doing sickled tour jetes and scenes from Giselle and Manon. Let's just say that there were self-made Pointe shoes involved ok? This bloody wand represented why it really sucks to be poor and bored in the country after being born in New Orleans. I was a city kid moved to the middle of nowhere to a town called Sevierville!  I kid you not. You’re telling me it was a huge shocker that I ended up being the homo that I am today? Nobody saw the signs...really? I was the only kid that begged for ballet class and got a package of six figure skating lessons for my thirteenth birthday. Come on people, there was no mystery here at all. I was the kid that was getting his head slammed into lockers by hillbillies named Misty. Looking back I should’ve gone against everything I knew at the time and punched that cunt in the face! I’m sure she’s still a toothless wonder, pregnant with her father's third baby, and still living in the same double wide she came from. But I’m not bitter or anything.

         As an adult I didn’t eat meat for several years as I worked through the guilt. And I wasn’t a smart vegetarian either. I barely ate anything with a shadow. I found myself weak and tired all the time, starving myself for a greater cause while reading animal activist books and seweing my mouth shut (probably protesting my past as the abuser more than any mission I might be on). I began focusing on the doom and gloom of the food industry and it made me loose my appetite in every way....every day. I only focused on where and how the meat actually came to be in the little freeze dried packages and didn’t supplement my diet with healthy things. I tossed and turned while having nightmares of the sweet little veal calves dangling just off the ground, suspended in harnesses and unable to ever walk the earth like god intended them to, even just for a little while. Couldn't they be let out for even a couple of sensible turns around the barn yard like incarcerated prisoners making the most out of the one hour a day they have to experience the sun on their face or anything social? I guess we could consider these little guys "Range Free" couldn't we?  I was burning at the stake for all those alien almost-chickens that get crammed into metal crates with their beaks cut off, never seeing the light of day either and en route straight to the chop shop that makes our chicken Mcnuggets. An the hard core books on my shelves definitely fueled my no-harm hunger crusade.
        Flash forward several emaciated years and I find myself catching the whiff of a hot dog cart outside of Radio City. I don’t know what came over me or why I instantly began salivating at the idea of tasting the scariest meat on earth....the dirty water dog! I stopped in my tracks and couldn’t believe it as I found myself turning around and getting in a line for a fucking hot dog. Any will power flew out the window when the guy asked me if I wanted ketchup and mustard, two things I’d missed terribly and had no use for over the past two years. God how I love condiments! I love the miscellaneous drawer in every New York kitchen that is overflowing with little left over take out packages of soy sauce, mustard, and salt and pepper. I closed my eyes and slowly started eating my first hot dog in forever. Nothing, I repeat, Nothing has ever, ever, ever tasted better than my first bite of the city’s finest mystery meat! It was blissful for all of three minutes. After about ten feet of walking my stomach seized up in a horrible knot so painful that I crumbled over in the worst stomach cramp I’ve ever experienced in my life! Of course I didn’t start with a little chicken broth. Nooooo, not David Tankersley, it's all or nothing,  That, in fact, would’ve been wise. I can only equate the experience to feel a lot like what I imagine it feels like to being shot in the stomach at point blank range. Today I’ll eat the ass end out of a fillet mignon wrapped in bacon....don't threaten me!

        In New York I’ve noticed how expensive it is to eat healthy. My conductor friend Joan is rocking her new body this summer because she has been eating only raw food exclusively for the last year and boy is this bitch glowing. If I cared (and could afford it) I would eat raw and work with a personal trainer every day if I could. But for now it’s going to continue to be an epic challenge to consider healthy living up in Harlem where every day I slip on a chicken bone or dime bag. Finding healthy food in the Bermuda triangle of imigration lawyers, fried chicken joints, and bail bondsmen is virtually an impossible mission. I can’t even identify some of the crazy looking things that are sitting in the greasy windows of those mobile Spanish van/kitchens that flip open and become an instant empanada stand. What should be a Dagistinos is instead a family-run Carniceria that looks like a city health inspector’s worst nightmare. There’s no avoiding the curse of the Harlem diet, cross my heart and hope to live.

The Dog House

            A teeny tiny Chihuahua is tip toeing gently in my direction on the wood chipped ground. This little princess chooses every delicate step like she's negotiating an explosive mine field, every single step a calculated choice. Dog parks are so interesting to me because of the matching of the dogs and their owners. Some dogs are the size of those thumb sucker diamond rings we all wore and sucked on as a kid. They sit incognito like peas in a pod in their mommy's fanny pack just hanging out like a little baby kangaroo. Other dogs are so gigantically mammoth, like the Old English Mastiffs, that I have to wonder how big can their owner's apartment possibly be? I mean how is that working out for you in the square footage department sir? Who could afford an apartment that could suffice for the shear size of this medium sized pony? For instance, the hugely obese woman sitting on the park bench across from me is accompanied by the tiniest of miniature Chihuahuas I'm guessing on earth. This little squirt is quite literally able to hide deeply inside her mama's 32oz. McDonald's sweet tea cup.....now on sale for $1! I'm a very Southern boy I should know. I was raised drinking tea so sweet we were all on a diabetes watch 24/7. "Ola" she says waving frantically like we've known each other for years or perhaps she was even expecting me. She's all smiles and giggles like a happy Buddha with her little short haired lucky charm clad in pink. It was a match of extreme contrast but totally, almost ridiculously perfect!

             Dog owners go one of two ways in my book. Type one: The person that not only walks down the street talking to their dog (of which I'm completely guilty of myself-being busted at 31 years old in public using words like Potty!) This person is actually hearing nonexistent responses from a dog who's inner monologue would really be "Urine!.....old....Bird!.....more pee....hey a stick....YUCK.....was that a Squirrel?!" I swear dogs get their bearings from the scents they engage. "Just checkin' the time miss Harley?" I say, probably aloud, as she leans in for a fresh whiff of a glistening, newly soaked plant stem dripping from a previously uncurbed dog. There she is, the little dog that kisses me on the face, totally enchanted by this shiny sopping New York piss plant. Sometimes Harls will pee a little dollop and then drag her tail through it like a painter dipping a brush. It makes me gag and thank god for sanitizing pet wipes! In the first category of interrupted, strangely social introverts is almost always a single unmarried woman living in Harlem alone with her killer protector, usually a Rottweiler or f*n Pit bull! These dogs walk like Roman centuries down Riverside drive escorting their Hamilton Heights queen at arms length. Great ladies, live the law suit dream with those walking snorting death machines. Just make sure you have that beast under control when me and my nosey little Cavalier King Charles try to pass! I turn into an angry Spanish girl whenever my baby is threatened. These dogs are usually way out of the control of these good Samaritans who have opened up their homes and hearts with the best intentions of giving these damaged animals a second chance. This unkempt Jane Eyre is a classic single lady being walked herself by her disastrous Pit bull rescue....foaming at the mouth and looking at my poster puppy prancing straight ahead like it's a juicy little piece of Sashimi! Hold please. We are holding the curtain for Cesar Milan to come rollerblading to the rescue to guide this growling nightmare past my sixteen hundred dollar designer "puppy mill rescue." That's my new phrase...puppy mill rescue. It saves me so much grief and sounds much more heroic than telling people that I bought Harley from a cunty, high end pocket puppy boutique in Chicago! It's a rationalization that is sending me straight to h. e. double hockey sticks. It's my stonewall defence to all those judging me for Not rescuing a dog from a shelter. That was my original plan but traveling for work brought me out of town right up to the front door of this heavenly little store. This heaven was busted mere weeks after I bought her for selling very very weak and sick, poorly bred miniature specialty dogs with all kinds of problems. The person that bred my little girl probably had one goal in mind...to get these regularly 25lb. Cavaliers down to "pocket" size. The cuter the sicker it seems. Of course the genetic defects and unhealthy shortcomings would eventually surface with such a high turnover of Maltipoos and Yorkipoos and Everthingpoos and other such crushable munchkin dogs.

           I saw her as I peeked in the front window for the first time. She was poised in the top right kennel that didn't look at all like a dog crate, but rather resembled a Bvlgari jewelry case. The store was clean and white and could've easily been mistaken for an upscale ladies boutique on Columbus ave. Her head was cocked curiously to the side not seeing me and not knowing that I was the one and how she was about to change my life! My casting notice would read: "Seeking a life partner for approximately 15 years....Callbacks in the weeks to follow." So I dumped a huge pool of Purell into my palm and disinfected up to the shoulder and my little dancer was taken out of her red and white display case. Her audition was amazing, bouncing and running around an invisible obsticle course like a crazy little monkey making a break for the nearest tree!  Awww....she's soooo cute!" says some girl moving in for a closer look at the dream puppy I already had dibs on. Step back Missy she's mine....I think. Two hours later I got out of the luscious fire engine red love seat (shaped like an oversized pair of lips) and walked away crippled with indecision. I thought about all the complications a dog would bring to my life as a performer with all the traveling involved, the apartment I share with cat-owning room mates, and all the unknown details that would follow my blind plunge into love. I'd be back because that little King Charles Spaniel had melted me completely and consumed my thoughts for the next couple of days. Two visits (or callbacks as I like to call them) later, and two payments of $800 dollars on my Visa, my little unnamed puppy was in a sassy, yet discretely masculine, dog bag off into the unknown together starting a new chapter in both of our lives!

               I was getting too much shit from people I met on the street asking me where I got her and why she was so small for her breed.  I'd lie right to their faces. Some people question her cuteness and can't imagine how a dog could possibly evolve into such an unusually sweet face. People always think their puppy is the cutest but I actually know this to be true! These probing questions and suspicious looks make me feel like I'm in an interrogation room in the climax of an underscored Law and Order. This particular New Yorker is talking and talking on and on, jabbering on in what seems like the beginnings of some kind of psychotic damn slowly cracking and spouting little leaks, about to break open from the pressure of waaaaaay too many years in the city. 212 turrets? Or just another classic case of what I call the Manhattan Snap! These touched neighbors we all know and don't love are the ones you hurry your dog around the corner of your building and let's say (hypothetically) duck into the closest doorway or alley, or pretend to talk on your cell phone so you won't get stuck talking about her dog's latest surgery to implant a glass eye into her one eyed Wimereiner! Or worst of all, truly my most feared topic with a stranger, the frequency and consistency of their dog's bowel movements!!! Kill me Harley! Kill me now because that woman is rounding the bend and you know ol' homeschool hasn't said a word to an actual human in days...maybe even weeks! You can see the nice, sincerely well intentioned inner blurb of dialogue building and bubbling behind her desperate eyes and gardening visor. She is literally a waste of time with legs. The only people that can get away with talking about excrement are brand new mothers and dog people. And not even then in my opinion. The mismatched dog walking couture that you can almost bet looks like a jumble of Hawaiian print meets I haven't been touched in years. This owner looks like they got dressed in the dark or perhaps is blind. Not that I'm runway worthy taking ol' Harls out first thing in the morning, throwing on my closest pair of shorts and a tank top, pockets stuffed with little expensive blue bags with coffee in hand. In truth, my fashion crimes result in a look that consistently reads tired athletic....gay guy gym attire....unemployed....acting like it's the crack of dawn at twelve thirty in the afternoon....lives in Harlem and has no boyfriend to impress! Would this clothing line be called Disaster of Upper Hamilton Heights? The logo would be DUHH!I might care more about being cute for my busted morning walks if I lived in Hell's Kitchen....otherwise known as the dance belt!
         Type Two: This would be the type I hopefully fall into, since I created the basis for the two categories. *A person that doesn't live exclusively for their animal but includes them in every way in an active shared life.
*Someone who nurtures quality relationships with human beings while having the constant presence of your best friend.
*Someone who doesn't withdraw into themselves and get trapped in the antisocial animal kingdom that is now your apartment! It's a slippery slope to the dark side of owning an animal.
           I never realized how social walking a gorgeous puppy down the street would make me. My dog attracts the attention of them all...from gross homeless dudes to Williamsburg chicks with huge stretched earlobes. My girl melts the most unsuspecting of Wall Street hard ass stock brokers into smoochy woochy baby babble. The truth comes out when cute comes walking by that's for sure. But mostly Harley attracts the attention of rich looking 5th Avenue ladies, middle aged cougars, and fashionistas who come running out of fancy stores or carelessly cross the street in stilettos just to ask me every dog question in the book...and if there is a web site!? These women seem desperately in need of a real and uncomplicated friend. Then there's the younger professional girls in Manhattan running around with demanding hours at a job or internship, working their manicures down to the quick with never enough time to dedicate to the perfect little Elizabeth Taylor. Nothing compares to opening your front door or dog crate at the end of the day. It's like unwrapping a little furry Christmas present overjoyed with sloppy licks and excitement. After all, it's that eternal and quiet lack of judgment that animals bring to an isolated New York existence.

          Room mates or not we are people alone in littlish apartment boxes stacked on top of hundreds, thousands of other boxes full of people with different lives. Trains rattling underneath packed full of more people squished together. A little piece of me dies every time I jump off either the 2 or 3 express train at 96th st. to catch the uptown local home. Ten express trains to one fucking local number 1!? This station dumps hundreds of sweaty New Yorkers out onto a platform so crowded that it feels like the volume of bodies getting off the express train might actually push the people waiting right onto the local tracks! We are ants in cement tunnels singing the siren song of curse words and heads shaking in unison at disappointment in the MTA. It is estimated that if you were to cut New York City like a cake and slice one city block all the way from the east river to the Hudson that there are approximately 10,000 people per slice! Every day we are spinning in swarms of strangers in a city that churns nails and dynamite into butter and Broadway shows. The city can and does get to the best of us. I guarantee that somewhere deep in the subway tunnels is a yoga instructor who is running late for a class and is just as pissed off at the world as any of us on a shitty day. Everything pulses at a dizzying pace where, if your not careful, you can end up talking to yourself like the very woman you're afraid of getting stuck next to on the train! I don't want to be a boy in a bubble. I don't want to become someone that never engages people's eyes anymore and always expects the absolute worst from others. I catch myself saying sorry to people that bump into me! I'm a thirty one year old man saying sorry to someone that runs me over from behind. I guess I'm just generally sorry. Walking through Times Square with a forgiving and loving heart is the greatest challenge I know of.
          I have hundreds of friends on Facebook but how many of them do I actually ever see? Getting a group together here in the city can be such an ordeal with all the schedules involved that it never happens enough. I feel like I've won the lottery when I actually get all the VIPs in one place for a dinner uptown at my house. When the New York cyclone of phone calls and texts finally settle you're left with a honey glazed ham, a few cancellations, and a rain check or twenty! I get it. I do it all the time. I'm well versed in the role of flaky New Yorker. I should win an Oscar for my role in the movie called Perpetually Late (one man's struggle to have a social life living uptown!) At the end of our dinner parties Harley happily helps me clean up by keeping me company in the kitchen and scouring the floor for any and all bits of food that may or may not have been "accidentally" dropped. My dog is the center of my calm, my sincerest joy, and my access to the curious side of life. Now I have a lot to learn about being a pack leader because little dogs can get away with murder because they are so damned cute. Not this time. Her only requirement is to be absolutely perfect!  Is that too much to ask? Don't worry, we don't have another JonBenet on our hands.  My Animal Planet show would be called "The Dog Screamer" instead of Cesar's Dog Wheeeeeeeesperer.
          Socially, walking Harley forces me into talks with people I would normally walk right past without a single thought. All of a sudden you're talking to a man who has two shockingly connected eyebrows......now one.....wearing Crocks and a shroud of loneliness. What seels the bond between the woman I see almost every day with her three yappy disgusting Schnauzers? These three angry, dander-ridden Charlie's angels come screaming down the street like howling terrorists all tied to one knotted up triple leash. Are they her white noise filter? Do they drown out the city for her? My dog fills the in between spaces and enriches the grey. She gets me outside and keeps me from growing roots to the couch in my unemployed state. She's my own personal reality show preventer, keeping me from being sucked into pointless TV shows full of talent-free people getting famous by making fools of themselves. "God I hate these mean housewives" I say sitting frozen on the couch unable to free myself from the trashy trance of these menopausal back stabbing cunts. A scratch on the foot from Harls translates to "The sun is shinning daddy....let's go get crazy with the Frisbee!!!" Beyond my own experience, it's proven that an animal connection lowers the blood pressure and actually promotes health.

            The dark cloud that formed over me when I turned 30 was slowly dissipated by the love I found in this dreamy red and white Blenheim. What I call my quarterly life crisis propelled me to buy a motorcycle and look for a furry friend online.  When I came across her profile picture it was all over.  There was no denying what must be done. These are two telltale signs of a middle aged gay breakdown! I was rebelling against the demons that sit on every chorus boy's shoulder about to cross the finish line of his third decade. I found that putting a cap on your twenties is not an easy thing to do as I tried to imagine stepping into a future with no new revelations or grasp of what's to come next. It feels like a blind folded approach into a hazy fog of what the fuck!?! I've been here for the last twelve crazy years. That's an accomplishment in itself. So what's to inspire the next ten I wonder? I can't keep moving forward making the same mistakes and running in the same circles. When will my chaotic urban hamster wheel break or rust to a complete stop? And where has all that once untamable momentum gone? I have doubts about my theatre career, financial stability, and love and the possibility of finding it here in an age of Grinder profiles and face pics. There is literally a sex GPS that can determine how many feet you are from your nearest interested booty call and their exact location! Danger my friends.....it's either the beginning or the end of romance as we know it. It's like standing in front of fifteen shelves of toothpaste in the Duane Reade with hundreds of choices before you. Being a person at times crippled with indecision, I can't decide if I should go whiter.....brighter.....or with the foaming bubbles for those hard to reach places? So many choices and so much pressure to find everything in one man.....in one tube of toothpaste! The statistics of finding a soul mate are daunting for any single someone looking for companionship beyond a puppy.  With personal profiles unfolding like cyber biblical scrolls slapping you hard across the face, it's a wonder I can even get out of bed in the morning.  Maybe it's time to delete my account and go back to the basics? Maybe I should start sending smoke signals and tying messages to pigeons? It looks like it's going to be a slow sexy summer after all with a pimped out doggie bike basket, a sensible Kong Frisbee, and me and my Harley girl.