Ham (28 page)

And he lit up like a Christmas tree—with only half its bulbs working.

Knockout! Ding ding. Fight over!

Jerry invited me to come over to his house and hang out. We ate Hostess Ding Dongs and talked about school. He was thinking of dropping out. I said I thought that was a good idea and encouraged him to pursue comedy. He smoked weed and nodded a lot. He warned me that at school, or anywhere in public, he could never acknowledge me, but he knew we had a secret bond.

I knew, of course, that we had nothing in common other than the fact that we were both carbon-based life-forms sucking the same humid Oklahoma air.

It suddenly occurred to me that if there had been a public fight, things would be very different. I would already be dead. Jerry would have had no choice but to kill me, it was that simple. So I would be happy to keep our “bond” under wraps and play along with an occasional covert smile. Because I was alive and it was Jerry who was already dead.

•  •  •

Michelle dyed her hair a distinguishing shade of Julie Andrews cantaloupe, which framed her enormous, penetrating blue eyes, further accentuated by eyelashes that were so long they looked false. Michelle was outgoing and funny-funny, dry and sardonic, and possessed a wicked laugh that revealed a soul beyond her years. Finally, I'd found a kindred spirit. The closest thing to another me. Another who rode the social teeter-totter, managing to placate the popular and embrace the disenfranchised—but not really a part of either.

Michelle was an extraordinarily gifted actress who had created an entertaining, if not completely believable, fantasy life. She'd claimed her father was a famous radio announcer and often quoted her clever and doting mother. They supposedly vacationed abroad and were the closest of friends with all the society mavens of Tulsa, who constantly lavished gifts upon her.

As Michelle and I spent more and more time together, her masquerade slowly melted away and I gained scarce entry to the truth. Michelle's family was poor. Not the kind of poor that insisted on simplicity but didn't compromise pride. This was the poor of resentment and delusion. There was not a blade of grass behind the rusty, lopsided chain-link fence overgrown with suffocating morning glories that separated her house from other impoverished neighbors, where snot-crusted toddlers meandered in soiled cloth diapers, barefoot and unsupervised, sipping mixtures of beer and milk to keep them quiet.

The house was gray, inside and out. The tattered furniture was gray. The soiled carpet was gray. The light was gray. Michelle's father was, indeed, a radio announcer, with a euphonious voice and a masterful economy of language that betrayed his station. And he was crazy as a bag of hammers. He was a drug addict and a pathologically adroit liar who could talk anyone into anything, including giving him a position as an unqualified, uneducated psychotherapist at a home for troubled boys. He also considered himself psychic and read tarot cards for extra money, but didn't require cash to drop into a trance at any given moment.

Michelle's mother was short and round and ruddy and wore cat's-eye glasses and the tight, black polyester knit pants and mannish white button-down shirt required of all employees who worked at Bowden's Quick Stop Gas Station, where she managed the night shift. At home, she slept until midafternoon and spent her waking hours curled up on an unsheeted mattress—dragged daily to the middle of the tiny living room floor—on which she read paperback romance novels with erotically illustrated covers and ate fried SPAM sandwiches while she smoked Newports in swift succession.

I practically lived at Michelle's house, slipping into their grayness as if to claim it as my own, and we happily took charge of everything: We laundered and cleaned and helped her brother and sister with homework. We dragged the mattress and fried the SPAM sandwiches. We cooked dinner every night—mock chicken fried steak and mock apple pie made with Ritz crackers. We played mock house. We mock made out. And we genuinely laughed all the time.

As a little girl, Michelle had found a way to alter her reality and create a world in which she could survive—better than the circumstances, better than the truth. I joined her, and it helped me survive too. We acted as if, and so it was.

She was my mock girlfriend and I loved her.

•  •  •

Joe Allen Restaurant was Danny's and my hangout in New York. It was everybody's hangout in New York. At least the everybodys we hung out with. On any given night, at least a dozen familiar Broadway-ites and enough tourists to garnish an actor's ego could be found hobnobbing there. It was more like a speakeasy than an eatery. The club room for the club.

When I first moved to New York, I'd called to make a reservation under “Harris,” and the maître d' had glibly asked, “Julie, Rosemary, or Sam?” I already belonged and it was safe.

I had recently ended my stint in
The Life
on Broadway to complete my latest album, and on the day of its release, Danny and I were ready to celebrate at our favorite home away from home. We were welcomed at the door and shouted bubbly hellos to friends as we made our way down the brick-walled, bar-flanked corridor to our regular table in the back corner. The waiter brought my minipitcher of white wine without my asking and had already placed my order for the La Scala Salad and Danny's cheeseburger. There was comfort in our predictability.

We toasted to the CD's success. It was the end of a long, drama-laden undertaking, which had centered on a producer who'd answer his door in a pair of dingy, pee-stained boxer shorts and a tattered wifebeater, and who had attempted to destroy the actual recording tapes until Liza's man Friday, an ex-bodyguard to some Saudi king, went to the studio in a perfectly pressed suit and tie and politely threatened to kill him. Still the record had turned out well. Some of my best singing ever. We had a lot to celebrate.

Five men sat at the next table an elbow away. They were loud and happy and drunk. Really loud and really happy and really drunk. They took turns commenting on the Broadway shows currently on the boards, assassinating this one and lacerating that one. Stars of the shows, some of whom were in the restaurant and in earshot, were not spared.

Our waiter brought our food and apologetically rolled his eyes. He asked if we wanted to move to another table. We declined. This was
my
table and surely these guys would leave or pass out sooner than later.

The hit men continued their witty massacre and finally, annoyed to my limit, I turned in their direction and testily shushed them. Their table quieted for a brief moment. Then the apparent leader of the pack said, for all to hear, “Ooooohh. I've been shushed by a pathetic
Star Search
winner!”

At Joe Allen. My club.

In a single second I was back in the halls of Charles Page High School, someone had just called me “faggot,” and I was an outsider. The man was facing away from me, so, thankfully, there was no direct visual confrontation. I played deaf and buried my red face in a hunk of buttered bread and stuffed it into my mouth, followed by an ample swash of wine. I attempted to resume lighthearted conversation with Danny but he wasn't listening.

“A
Star Search
winner has spoken!” the man further proclaimed to the room. “Ssshhhh! We should all be quiet!”

Danny slowly rose from our table and steadily walked the two feet between us and the culprit. “May I see you outside?” he said, with threatening diplomacy.

“I don't think so!” the man slurred. “I'm eating my dinner!”

And then Danny grabbed the little brute around the throat in a headlock, hoisted him from his chair, and dragged him down the corridor past frozen faces at crowded tables. Roscoe Lee Browne sat perched in his regular spot at the end of the teeming bar. I loved Roscoe. He was an African-American classical actor and a master of cerebral eloquence who, in response to criticism that he sounded too white, had famously responded, “I'm sorry. I once had a white maid.” As Danny passed him with the kicking man in tow, Roscoe's rich, sable voice interrupted the stupefied silence: “New dancing partner, Danny?” And they were out the door.

Waiters swarmed to my table in celebration.

“That was amazing!”

“I can't believe he did that!”

“Someone finally put Michael Riedel in his place!”

MICHAEL RIEDEL?! The
New York Post
theater reporter and critic who, often single-handedly, decided which Broadway shows made it and which didn't? The guy who had enough pen power to make or break a Tony? THAT MICHAEL RIEDEL?

I was so fucked.

Danny had defended my honor. It was the kindest, most loving and heroic thing anyone had ever done for me. The only thing missing was a white horse. But now we would have to move from New York to the Midwest, where I would direct community theater productions of
Pippin.

The police came but no arrests were made, though both Danny and Riedel were guilty of assault. Danny remained outside to smoke and cool off, but Riedel returned and shuffled directly toward me, pulling up a chair and plopping down with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.

“I'm sorry,” he said with a casual impishness. “I'm with my friends. We're
all
journalists. And we were just having fun. Now, I know you and Patti LuPone are friends and I heard . . .”

I couldn't believe my ears. He'd been dragged by force from the Broadway bistro of all Broadway bistros and had returned looking for a scoop. No one could say he wasn't dedicated. I politely declined to provide the dish he sought and he left the restaurant with his friends, none of whom had so much as batted an eye during the entire ordeal.

When Danny reentered the place, he was greeted with applause. Our meal was comped and we were told we wouldn't have to pay for anything for a long time. Danny was a hero. My hero.

When we got back to our apartment, the answering machine message light flickered furiously and a touch of the play button was followed by “You have thirty-six new messages.” In the last hour, friends from both coasts had heard about the incident and were calling to offer their enthusiasm and condolences. My publicist, Judy Jacksina, was among them. “Darling!! It's
everywhere,
” she shrieked in her thick Long Island–ese. “
Everyone
knows. It's going to be in the
Post
tomorrow. This is
not
good. I'm dehydrated from the news and I had to put on
another
coat of moisturizer.
This is not good.
”

The next morning I threw on a pair of shorts, walked the two blocks to the corner bodega, and leafed through the
Post
to Page Six. I scanned the bold-faced names in the gossip column and found nothing, breathing a sigh of relief. And then I saw it. The skirmish had merited its own separate feature:

B'WAY FIGHT NIGHT AT JOE ALLEN!

The story recounted the conflict, pointing out that Riedel was overtaken by “Harris's burly companion.”

Danny is five-eight and 165 pounds. Burly.

The story ended with:

“I'm sure lots of people on Broadway have wanted to punch me in the nose, and I have to admire those people who actually try it,” says Riedel, who has nothing against Harris and has written favorably of him over the years. “Besides,” he says, “Harris's pal was clearly defending his honor against an insult. There are no hard feelings.”

If Danny had gone to school with me, things might have been a lot different. I might have had a boyfriend and a protector. On the other hand, if Michael Riedel had gone to school with me, we probably would have been best friends. He'd been thirteen once and most likely had his own version of the spider dream.

We were both misfits, besotted with Broadway, and we were just trying to fit.

Opryland USA was a theme park in Nashville devoted to musical shows. There were a few roller coasters and carousels, but it billed itself as “the Home of American Music” and it was a magnet for young talent. At sixteen, I was cast in a show called
I Hear America Singing
and was finally in a glamorous, hour-long singing-and-dancing extravaganza featuring music from the 1920s to the 1970s, multiple costume changes, and a live, eighteen-piece orchestra.

Jason, who had been my strip-poker buddy when we were both newsboys in the Tulsa Little Theatre production of
Gypsy,
was cast in another show at the park. We'd kept in touch, and he invited me to share an apartment with him and two other guys from Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, who'd been hired as well: Jay was a bookish prodigy pianist who could turn a simple tune, say “Jingle Bells,” into a lavish concerto. And then there was Scott.

Scott Pierce looked like Cary Grant. He was tall and dark and lean with spellbinding brown eyes framed by thick, broad eyebrows and a permanent five o'clock shadow. I was bewitched. And we were cast in the same show.

The first day of rehearsal was exhilarating and intimidating. The cast assembled in a giant wood-slat-floored dance room with one wall completely mirrored and the opposite wall affixed with ballet barres. Ballet barres! This was a whole 'nother league. And for the first time I was in the company of equally ambitious, dangerously driven performers, each of whom was dedicated to being the best.

We were fed vast amounts of material at breakneck speed—medleys, chorus parts, backup parts. Vocal solos were assigned and we were each taken to a private room to learn them, then immediately deposited back into the main rehearsal room to present them. Once again, I was the youngest, but I'd come to count on my voice as a social entrée. So when I sang “Stormy Weather” for the cast, it was as much an audition for friendships as it was a rehearsal. I belted my guts out, picturing myself in a trench coat and fedora, languidly leaning against a lamppost as if I were waiting for glamour photographer George Hurrell to show up. Ironically, I was told that's how the number would be costumed and staged. At last, fantasy and reality were becoming one.