Laid Bare: Essays and Observations (3 page)

This woman put an ad in the local paper to find Dan (the dog, not the prisoner) a home. The accompanying picture showed a dog with a face and body language that said, “Adopt me… don’t adopt me… makes no difference,” while his eyes pleaded, “Please, please,
please
take me home!”

My friend Cass succumbed and kept him for 6 of his 7 years. When she gave him to me--because she was traveling too much--she reminded me that Dan “has issues”. Don’t wear boots around him or he’ll turn into the Tasmanian Devil. Don’t try to pick him up the wrong way or he’ll turn into the Tasmanian Devil. Don’t try to scratch his back or… Well, you get the idea.

But, bring out his rope toy and he’s as playful as a pup. Scratch his tummy when he runs into the room and rolls over on his back and he’s sweet as taffy. And, first thing in the morning, whisper in his ear that it’s time to get up and he’ll let out a sigh and stretch just as far as he can, sometimes letting out a little squeak as he reaches across the bed to touch your nose with his paw.

Dan and I lived like country squires in my cabin in the woods. He’d lie contentedly in the sun on the front porch, or show his utter disdain for squirrels with a condescending bark. I was going to miss this little fellow being away for a year with the show. But, I knew he’d be okay. I was leaving him in the city with my boyfriend. What could possibly go wrong?

Three months into the tour my boyfriend broke up with me. Let’s say I carried 50% of the blame and leave it at that.

For the remainder of my time on the road I maintained a mostly one-sided correspondence with the boys back home. Dan and The Ex received Christmas presents and Easter goodies at the fifth-floor walkup on 10
^th
Avenue. I sent money to pay for a year’s worth of dog food and always reiterated my intention to have Dan back with me at the cabin when the tour was finished.

Toward the end of the year I got an e-mail from Cass that said, “I don’t want to sound paranoid, but ____ wrote me asking about the idea of implanting an I.D. chip under Dan’s skin.” She talked him out of it, but I had to assume my address was not intended to be on that chip.

It was starting to feel like a Hitchcock thriller starring My Dog.

I refused to believe it. It wasn’t a thriller; it was a romantic comedy. Boy meets dog, boy loses dog... Returning home from the tour at the end of summer would be the part where boy gets dog back again. Dan and I would walk up the hill to the cabin, stealing affectionate glances at one another, as the sun set and the credits rolled.

But things didn’t play out like they do in the movies. I attempted, without success, to get in touch with _____ through e-mail and phone messages. After several weeks of no response I began losing sleep; at the end of a month I was having recurring nightmares. As the leaves on the oaks and maples around the cabin announced the onset of autumn, I found myself at my wits end.

My friend Debby, always a source of solid practical advice, said without hesitation: “_____ must be in a bad place to be doing this. You have to think about him and do what’s best for him, and, in doing so it will also be what’s best for you. You have to give Dan to _____.” My heart sank. Then I remembered a proverb I once heard: “The things you keep for yourself are lost for good; the things you give away are
yours forever
.”

The course of action seemed clear. I wrote _____:

“
After much soul-searching I have decided I need to do what is best for you. And if that means making a gift to you of Dan then that is what I will do. I hope you will allow me to come and say goodbye to him.”

I never heard from _____, and I never saw Dan again.

I tried to feel good and angry about it all, but couldn’t seem to. Frustrated? Sure. Helpless? You bet. But, one has to be in a deep, dark place to keep someone from saying farewell to his own dog. I might as well have gotten mad at my ex-boyfriend because his eyes are brown and not blue.

The other day I took a load of rubbish to the town dump. Along with a broken lamp and leaky garden hose—other things I don’t need anymore—I left a water bowl with D-O-G stenciled on the side.

The bowl may be gone, but as the proverb says, Dan is mine forever.

HOWARD, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

I read that the Times Square Howard Johnson’s is closing its doors after almost fifty years. When I was 18 and moved to West Forty-Fifth Street in 1979, this last Howard Johnson’s was going strong. The food was mediocre at best, and none of the twenty-eight flavors of ice cream could match the richness of Haägen-Dazs.

Back then, 9th Avenue was something of a wasteland and HoJo’s was the only place to get a late-night snack or a cup of coffee and make “a couple of deals before dawn.” At that time of night, the restaurant was usually empty and I had my pick of seats, which was always the same booth in the window that looked out onto 46th Street and the Helen Hayes Theater. The orange vinyl seat would let out a sigh as I settled in.

Moving at a glacial, graveyard-shift pace, the waiter approached, and ignoring my greeting, he’d wipe the table with a wet rag and then place a glass of ice water on the table--overfilled and dripping—along with a laminated menu.

I marveled at the insouciant style this late-middle-aged African-American man gave to the place. He was a dressed in the regulation uniform of white shirt and black pants, but on any given night, he would be sporting hair from a large collection of toupees. There was the crazy Little Richard style and the Nat “King” Cole (neatly parted and slicked down on the top and sides). My favorite hairpiece, however, was The Nipsey. The Nipsey was a modest yet shapely Afro rising just slightly from the forehead. The waiter didn’t seem to choose a toupee to complement his personality, as he didn’t appear to have a personality, but I still liked The Nipsey best.

After ordering a dish of peppermint-stick ice cream, I took out a pen and started on the puzzle in the early edition of the Times. I rarely got very far before my imagination would begin to conjure up images of my own name gracing the marquees in the neighborhood. My plan was to be a Broadway composer by age 30. Across the street, at the Helen Hayes, there was a musical version of “Flowers for Algernon” (complete with mouse). So how hard could it be? With my chin in the palm of my hand, I sat gazing out the window into my future when the reflection of my waiter darkened the glass. He placed the metal sundae cup in front of me, filled with already melting ice cream. How did it melt between here and the counter? I didn’t care; it contained chips of real peppermint stick and had a fan-shaped wafer cookie stuck into the conical—not spherical—scoop.

I tasted a spoonful, took one last look at the retreating Nipsey, and returned to my 2 A.M. daydream.

I did make it to Broadway, but as an actor, not a composer. That dream is long gone, along with the old Helen Hayes Theater. So, too, is the Broadway that could support a musical version of “Flowers for Algernon." For that matter, so am I, having left Hell’s Kitchen over a decade ago. And soon Howard Johnson’s will be just a memory as well.

That’s New York, I guess.

THE BEAUTY CURSE

My friend Tim and I were browsing the profiles on BigMuscle.com the other day, consigning the especially attractive men to horrible fates: a fatal disease here, a terrible disfiguring accident there. You know what I mean—the kinds of things that guys imagine when confronted with particularly demoralizing beauty. This God-play knew no geographical restrictions; there seem to be stunning specimens of maleness in every region of the U.S. Heck, we even found a few fer’ners destined for the rack (once Tim and I take over the world, that is.)

I’d pull up a profile picture and wait for Tim’s reaction. “Oh, my god, he’s gorgeous. I hate him.” Tim would point out an attractive face or bicep and I’d respond with, “Amazing. Beautiful. His days are numbered.” Then we closed the Powerbook, sunk back on the couch and sighed in tandem as Tim opened another bag of chips and I reached for the remote to flip back and forth between Paula’s Home Cookin’ and the “Diff’rent Strokes” E! True Hollywood Story.

As another stick of butter melted away in Paula’s skillet Tim shook an accusing finger in the direction of the computer which lay on the coffee table and asked, “Those, uh, those
guys
on that website… Do you think their lives are just perfect? Do you think they’ve just got everything they need and are happier than shit?” My knee-jerk response was to say, “No, they’re just a bunch of fucking assholes and are probably miserable,” but after what that poor Gary Coleman went through I was feeling a little more charitable than usual.

I pondered Tim’s question as I licked the orange cheese dust from my fingers.

Yeah, I suppose the really gorgeous, Adonis-like guys have a leg up on some things in life. They may get served first at a crowded bar. They’re invited to hang out with others of their ilk on the beach. The shirt that looks great on the mannequin will look just as good on them when they get it home from the store.

But are their lives better simply because they’ve been graced with good looks? I don’t think so. We assume the Chelsea Boys and the WeHo guys lead lives far more interesting and exciting than our own because we
want
to think they do. Believing the pretty boys not only have fabulous faces and bodies, they also have fabulous lives in which to display them gives us yet another reason to resent them, to beat ourselves up about it. We almost
need
them to live wonderful lives to help explain the normalness of our own. We’d be just as special if we were that beautiful, too. Right?

But the majority of the beauties we see everywhere lead average lives. Why? Simply because most people are average. (That is, after all, why it’s called “average.”) They have attainable ambitions which they muse on in Ikea apartments. They have uninspired opinions on forgettable movies and possess a small shelf of books, all of which, besides “The DaVinci Code”, are emblazoned with a large “O” on their covers.

There’s nothing wrong with a life like this. It’s a life—with subtle variations--not unlike that of most Americans. When it’s lived by a Beautiful Man, however, a man who we expect to be a superior being—as superior as his physical appearance—it seems banal and meaningless. “That isn’t how someone who looks like a movie star lives! That’s how
I
live!”

We go directly from hating these guys because they’re better than us simply because of their looks to hating them because they’re
no
better than us even
with
their looks. We wouldn’t feel contemptuous of a bland looking guy who leads a bland life because we probably wouldn’t think twice about him in the first place. A bland person can be bland anonymously while a beautiful man is bland in a spotlight. It’s that variable of “beauty” that makes them susceptible to increased scrutiny.

I’ve seen a similar phenomenon at work in the porn industry. My own anecdotal research suggests that the principal assumptions about guys in porn is that they’re dumb. I would have to concur; most of the men working in the adult film industry are not brilliant. Most of the kids in the chorus of “42
^nd
Street” , in which I appeared (no, as a
principal
, darling) also were not brilliant. When I worked at Pizza Hut in high school none of my coworkers were sending rockets to the moon. Because (altogether now) most people are average.

But the guys in porn possess an even more volatile variable than the beautiful guys:
we masturbate to them.
For the ten or fifteen minutes (OK, the hour or so) we watch a porn flick we are so invested in the men in the scene that they actually serve as our sexual proxy. How could we lower ourselves to blow a load over someone who’s nothing but a big dope? In our minds we make these guys stupider than they really are to explain away our lust.

Are there good-looking, in-shape men who are intelligent and thoughtful, in happy, fulfilling relationships with jobs that further the welfare of mankind? Sure there are. And are there porn stars who are dumb as posts with nothing much to brag about other than a big dick and a flexible pelvis? Believe you me—they’re out there.

Tim clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and sighed. “But we shouldn’t assume anything about either of those groups because prejudging anyone about anything is unfair to them and counterproductive to our own self-esteem,” he sing-songed with the half-hearted enthusiasm of a teenager promising to have the car home by midnight.

“I guess so,” I shrugged.

“Oh great! Just as I was working up a really nasty punishment for ItalynMsclStud.

Sorry, Tim. Let’s assume from now on that the beautiful guys and the porn guys are just average fellows like us trying to get through the day in one piece. The beauty they’re cursed with really doesn’t make it any easier for them in the long run.

Those trust fund babies, on the other hand…

THE CHURCH OF ME

A lot of the guys I worked with in porn were ostensibly heterosexual. It’s something that has long puzzled me and, after reading a fascinating interview in the Dallas Voice with former porn star (and personal favorite, I hasten to add) Tom Katt, I’m even more confused. Katt, who now goes by David Papaleo (surely a name ripe for changing—who could remember that at the video rental counter?) is not only through with porn, he’s gone straight and—here’s the kicker—found Jesus. He’s even considering joining the clergy.

To give Mr. Popodopolous his due, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with homosexuals or bisexuals or the kind of sex those groups engage in, it’s just not for him. “’If you are naturally heterosexual and you’re having sex with men, well, first, you’re treating that guy unfairly,’ he says.” My friend Bradley, who enjoys being treated unfairly by straight men, would dispute that point, but I know what he’s getting at. As for Mr. Popinfresh’s current orientation, “I identify as heterosexual. There was a time I thought of myself as bisexual, and I never hide that fact.”