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        My "back yard" is really a front entrance cement courtyard three fourths of the way closed in.  Getting a dog and having no other immediate place to throw a ball has forced me to get to know all the neighbors that I've been purposely ignoring for years.  We sneak in like spies quickly fumbling with the keys to our huge glass front door. I try desperately not to get pulled into the annual awkward Christmas party that happens right within view of our lobby. I always pretend to not see the sincerely nice folks trying to get my attention by frantically waving us inside.  "No Fucking Way!" my best friend Johnny will say to me. "Go go go go go....damn it...hurry up.....faster!" The front door jams and the key (as usual) feels foreign to the forty year old rusted lock.  My shaky hand betrays me under pressure and the idea of drinking mulled cider with people that have moved my wet clothes out of the dryer before they were done makes me feel jaded. 
       The reason we can all live here for so many years and not meet any of our neighbors is because our entrance is set apart and private from all the other tenants.  We inhabit a corner part of the first and second floors...a wing if you will?  I've never even taken the elevator before because roof access isn't allowed anyway.  Mail and laundry are the only reason I ever enter the freaky 70's John Water's lobby at all.  We've been the mystery men living in the five bedroom-three bath apartment of dreams with a constant stream of people constantly peeking in our down stars window to get a glimpse of the five singl(ish) ghosts that live here.  When the leaves fall off the trees just outside our front window you can see the sparkling water of the Hudson and the huge ships passing. This is my rented castle and I love it here.  It's all about locatione' locatione'.  What business do I have paying high New York rents in my unemployed state you may ask?  I can't answer that.  I hate that  I'm one rent check away from total poverty and disaster but there's no place like home I suppose.
         I compare my New York existence to a Salmon frantically swimming upstream pushing against the natural flow of absolutely everything.  It is as exhausting as it is exhilarating and I wonder how many years I have left in this tough city or where my motivation will come from to boost me forward.  Will I be here till I'm forty doing the same shit?!  Oh god the idea of still auditioning at that age for mediocre bit parts in regional productions makes me want to run for the country hills or the Hudson!  There is no way I can deal with this kind of rejection and instability at that age (or this age for that matter)!  I think I've had my fill of disappointment for a lifetime already by 31.  I already feel too old for shows like West Side and Hairspray and to young for Jerry Mitchel's latest thing.  Am I supposed to just add testosterone and water and poof I'm a leading man!?  I confess that I'm freaked because how does a 31 year old guy maintain momentum when the young kiddies are filling out of the musical theatre academies in enthusiastic droves and bus loads?  And it seems that all the good shows are going out non-equity anyway.  I don't want to throw in the towel before I've achieved my original goal...to do a Broadway show for more than six weeks and go home every night and sleep in my own bed!
           Right now I am blessed to have just finished a sweet little two month gig that helped fill up the gas tank a bit.  I can't believe that I can celebrate an opportunity to dance my ass off for four hundred dollars a week and have that be enough.  It was great to be working when I know how many of my friends were struggling to stay afloat during the hot city summer.  Even the regional gigs feel like a lottery these days.  There are so many gorgeous guys and so few jobs.  Every day on stage is the Tonys for David Tankersley!  Because I've been an off stage swing for three years it was so unbelievably special for me to have been first cast again (finally) and have someone else writing down my blocking for a change.  I'd almost forgotten the excitement that comes from a half hour call.....instead of tracking down the equity cot first thing for a sensible nap during the show.
        Speaking of equity cots makes me think of one of my major tours that was a nightmare for a couple of reasons. The stage manager was a cunty gay man straight out of the exorcist!  He was a passive aggressive bastard from hell that held an undefined grudge against me.  Let's just say that he wrote up the entire company because there was a traffic accident on the freeway!  The first act alone was an hour and a half...three hours in total and I wasn't allowed to leave the theatre even after the numbers I covered were finished.  Weirdness trickles down from the top.  If your Company manager is cool then your tour will be smooth and hopefully drama free. But then there's those jaded queens that slip through into positions of power and write up 35 people just because.  Doom and Gloom!  I'm not one to use his blog to smear a reputation but.......should his name come up on a list of production staff in a show I was cast in I would seriously consider not taking it even in my desperate state.  I wish I could choose the high road but I guess it's too late now.  I believe in karma and I'm sure this entry is setting me back a few lifetimes but nonetheless my fingers continue to type and have taken on a bitter life of their own.  In my next regretful incarnation I'll probably end up being his son!
          New York City can feel like a turtle neck that's three sizes too small when you're enduring long stretches of unemployment.  I end up being a total insomniac because the idea of waking up, improvising, and filling yet another long day makes me not want to shut my eyes in the first place.  I've got to rethink my approach because I'm nursing a cancerous depression.  I can't tell you how frequently the sun rises on my denial of the coming day.  This perspective is eating away my courage.  I seem to be on vampire time and my DVR list is my Antichrist!  No Law and Order has gone unwatched....no case gone uncracked.  Night after night my counterproductivity thickens and calcifies until I'm rendered useless the next day.  It's a domino effect of disastrous proportions....snap out of it Tank!!!
       My other brother John Sexton wrote a fantastic line in one of his songs that says "Dreams are easy to make....it's time to follow through!"  Interior design.....massage therapy......?   So what's the back up plan?  Perhaps I should become a high end escort or "happiness consultant"?  Nothing sounds more like a slippery slope to disaster I'm thinking.  Nor am I rocking some kind of sweet trust fund like a couple of my friends.
       I never wanted this blog to become some poor me masturbatory sob story of a boy unsalvagably interrupted.  That was never my intention at all but I wont deny that treading water is my full time hobby here in the 212.  Survival is a success.  I'm still here damn it!  But it's time for this "journey" to arrive at a mother fucking destination already!!  I think all cliches expire when you turn thirty don't you?  I don't want to be like the 50 year old guy I saw at the Mama Mia dancer call wearing a peachy-flesh colored unitard and black character shoes and long black socks!  This was disastrous denial and I was embarrassed for him a little bit......if not totally.  I wanted to ask him if he was ok.  Will I recognize my swan song when it's time to hang up the dance belt?  Did I miss it while I had my earphones in or was playing Wurrdle on my IPhone?  There are some dudes that need a reality check and I'm at the front of that line.
       The business of show is infamously inconsistent and unloyal unless you're in Wicked.  I'd never leave that show if I booked it.......possibly ever!  They'd have to call security to escort me out of the building at gun point before I'd let them pry my white knuckles and teeth from Elphaba's broom.  Wild horses couldn't drag me away from a juicy pink contract if they tried!  I would rock that green reality till my crows feet turned to stone and my muffin tops hit the floor.  I would have to be wheeled out of the Gershwin theatre on a stretcher where I would be immediately rushed to an old folks home and put on a regiment of pure oxygen, intravenous fluids, prune juice, and memories.  Some people need to bounce from show to show like a ping pong ball but not me.  Give me a gig that lasts longer than two months and I'd be living the f*n dream!
        An equity card seems to be a hindrance these days because everything good seems to be going out non-eq.....wah wah wah (insert descending tones here).  Que the violins and tissues.  Sometimes my Broadway dream feels like a fading cell phone that's got one tiny bar of service with no outlet or charger in sight....beeping dangerously low on power.  Run thin?  Yes.  Regretful?  No.  There is definitely nothing to regret for me because I've always followed my heart all these years and I'm proud of what I have accomplished in regards to the great American musical.  I've threaded over 12 years of sweet shows together like a candy necklace and I take tiny little bites to remember.  My shows are just geographically challenged that's all.  Off off off off off off off off Broadway if you will?  Just being surrounded by such outrageous talent in glamorous downtown Little Rock elevated my soul and reminded me that it's worth it.  It's a risk I'm still willing to take.  I'll look back in a few months when I'm nine hundred and remember the extreme glamour of gigs like West Side story in Milan, Japan and Beirut.  Security guards and traveling massage therapists......rock star moments frozen in my mind. But the awkward grey areas of unemployment must also be honored.  And I have found undeniable artistic fulfillment from doing great work no matter what the zip code!
       I'm not a cubicle kinda guy and I know my choice to quit competitive figure skating was a big one but I've accepted that path.  I just think that money buys happiness contrary to the popular belief and chorus work leaves me financially dazed.  But I'd rather be a chorus boy with no lines in a Broadway show or the thirteenth dead body from the left on Cold Case than ice skating every day at 5:20AM with no life, no friends, no vices, and puking into trash cans overwhelmed with competition nerves! I literally gag when I think about those freezing early morning freestyle sessions and endless four minute programs that began hours before dawn.  Pair skating for the boys meant cutting the fingers off your gloves if you were allowed to wear them at all!  Oh my god to describe that endless cold is impossible. It hurt your eyeballs.  I wanted to be a performer eight times a week instead of having three major skating competitions a year.  You can't enjoy that.  Each performance felt like I was at gun point with absolutely everything to loose.  There is no relaxing into that life my friends. In fact, it was an absence of life.  When those skaters fall on TV my heart breaks because I know the devastation is irreparable emotionally.  Either you are in Stars on Ice making ten grand a night or you are doomed to becoming a pair skating jelly fish on the Finding Nemo traveling ice show for two hundred dollars a week (in Europe)!  Or you become some washed up skating coach teaching kids in Central Park that couldn't care less about doing a double toe loop or a sensible camel, much less going to nationals.  No thank you!  Anyway there will always be some Russian diva sending money back to his home land that can do quads for tuppins! 
        Evita in Arkansas rocked and the daily rehearsal fed my hunger for excellent choreography and flawlessly calm direction.  I never wanted the show to open because the process was so truly sweet that I wanted it to last forever.  It also gave me the high that comes from putting something on it's feet and being part of a group that talented.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to feel fierce for a few weeks and give that ghost town a Tony worthy performance every time.  Despite the tumble weed blowing through that no horse town I had more fun there than I'd ever expected to.  But it's because of the work itself and my show wife Ann Stonehengeningaengine of course!  She alone made life worth living!  I truly loved this stage left ASM and this Webber show more and more every day.  It was meant to be and it makes me realize that I'm on the right track despite the abhorrent inconsistency of the biz.  This is where I belong......smack dab in the center of the stage on zero.