Welcome reader back on the cyclone of my life and the Coney Island of my mind. As you may noticed I have written in two years. All this will change on June 30th when I leave Briggs-Pra. I will have all the time in the world to write!

The entries are organized in chronological order. The earliest entry will be found at the end of the list. My latest writing will always appear a the start. I think I have grown as a writer so please excuse some of the earlier jejune writing. I am in the process of re-writing them. Your comments are most welcome. Please Subscribe (right button) to receive my future postings –

Alexander Hamilton Napoli

This is the  speech I gave at Valbella Restaurant at the conclusion of our fantastic 41st Carnevale  after we had seen the Broadway musical, “Hamilton.’  

**********************************

Tonight reminded me of the phrase – “On such a night as this”
From Shakespeare’s, The Merchant of Venice – Act V scene 1.
I was always struck by the 1973 production, directed by my mentor, Ellis Rabb at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center. He placed the two lovers on the Lido in Venice, 1960’s Jet-set Italy – very Felliniesque.  Lounging on their hotel beach chairs the two lovers look up at the night sky and try to verbally outdo each other with classical allusions:

The moon shines bright.

On such a night like this,
when the wind blew the trees

so gently that they didn’t make a sound,
me thinks Troilus climbed
up onto the walls of Troy
and sighed for Cressida in the Greek camp.

On such night like this,
Thisbe saw the lion’s shadow
and ran away in fear.

On such night like this,
Dido stood holding a willow branch
on the seashore, begging her lover
to come back to her in Carthage.

On such a night like this, Medea gathered magic herbs to rejuvenate old Jason.

On such a night like this, did Loretta steal away from Appalachia
Driving her way from Romney town to the City of Churches
all the way to Garfield Place.

On such a night like this, young Anthony swore he loved her very much, stealing her heart with vows of love, but not one vow was true.

On such a night like this, handsome Gary, in a bad mood, said outrageously wrong things about his husband lover, and he forgave him.

On such a night like this, family and old friends have gathered round
On a cold winter’s night, for two score years in masks of revelry and
Ribald play.

I would out-night you more,
With my perhaps clever verse and bastard Bard iambic pentameter but time has come to bid a sad adieu.

So let us dance a merry last dance –

On such a night as this!

“The Best of Times” occurred at a fantastic party on Sunday February 17, 2008 as Gary and I celebrated our 25th anniversary. Sixty of our dearest friends and family trekked to the Bronx for a gala afternoon.

The guests gathered at Trattoria Zero Otto Nove on Arthur Avenue for home made Pizza Margarita baked in an authentic brick pizza oven by a pizzaiolo direct from Naples. All this was washed down by a very special red sparkling wine called Gragnano from Salenero.  Forty-five minutes into cocktails, a eight-piece band from the Feast of the Giglio in Brooklyn marched into the restaurant and invited the group to parade down Arthur Avenue to Roberto’s Restaurant for dinner.

CLICK HERE FOR A VIDEO CLIP

What a sight this was! An Italian street band leading our family and friends laded down with gifts laughing and clapping in a festive mood all the way around the corner. Pedestrians gawked, patrons stuck their heads out of various ristorante, and cars honked their horns as we strolled down the mean streets of Belmont. My cousin, an avid movie buff, commented that it reminded him of the Sicilian wedding scene from “The Godfather.” He guessed one of my inspirations; the other was the final scene from Fellini’s “8 ½.”

Roberto’s, one of the best restaurants in New York City, was the scene for nine-course Sunday supper and very special presentation. My second inspiration for this part of the evening was the Broadway Revues of the 1950’s that commented on the social scene of the day.  Gary and I welcomed our intimate gathering explaining that the evening program of music of Broadway Show Tunes would reflect aspects of our relationship and comment on our lives together for the past twenty-five years.  The surprise hit of the evening was our opening rendition wish custom lyrics of I Remember It Well from the movie, “Gigi.” There was not a dry eye in the house.

CLICK HERE FOR A VIDEO CLIP

Four song segments punctuated the many course Italian dinner of hot/cold appetizers, two pastas, risotto, veal and lamb, and desserts. Three Broadway performers sang music by the great composers of Broadway: e.g. Rodger’s Some Enchanted Evening; Styne’s Just in Time; Porter’s Always True to You Darlin’ in My Fashion; Gershwin’s They All Laughed and Kern’s Don’t Ever Leave Me..

The finale ended in a toast to us with a sing-along to the Jerry Herman tune, The Best of Times from “La Cage aux Folles”. This erupted into dancing to the Disco Classics from the 1970’s.  Prosecco and Limoncello and “La Comedia e finita”.  All of our guests received a CD of the Show Tunes perfomed along with traditional Italian Wedding “Confetti.”

The warmth and love from our family and friends still fills our hearts.

Gary:      We met at nine

Tony:      We met at eight

Gary:      I was on time

Tony:      No, you were late

Gary:      Ah, yes, I remember it well

               You cruised me dear

Tony:      No you cruised me

Gary:      I sat alone

Tony:      You sat next to me

Gary:      Ah, yes, I remember it well

That dazzling April moon!

Tony:      There was none that night

And the month was June

Gary:      That’s right. That’s right.

Tony:      It warms my heart to know that you

Remember still the way you do

Gary:      Ah, yes, I remember it well

How often I’ve thought of that Friday-

Tony:              Monday

Gary:      Night when we had our first rendezvous

And somehow I foolishly wondered if you might

By some chance be thinking of it too?

That taxi ride

Tony:      I walked you home

Gary:      We went upstairs

Tony:      No, you sent me home

Gary:      Ah, yes, I remember it well

We had some rain

Tony:      No, it was fair

Gary:      Those Donna Summer songs!

Tony:      Sung by Cher?

Gary:      Ah, yes I remember it well.

You wore Jeans of Levi blue

Tony:      Chino’s LL Bean

Gary:      Am I getting old?

Tony:      Oh, no, not you

How cute you were

How young and gay

A disco queen

In every way

Gary:   Ah, yes, I remember it well.

Both:      Ah, yes, we remember it well

John Lahr has written an insightful portrait of Sir Ian McKellen in the August 27, 2007 edition of the New Yorker magazine. One aspect of this wonderful actor that goes unnoticed is his daring coming out and his great contribution to gay rights in the UK.

However I cannot think of a single American in the entertainment industry who has been as courageous as a spokesman. We have had no one to lead or stand up for us with the authority that being a celebrity incurs.

We can only revere the dead icon of the crucified Rock Hudson who by his death made Elizabeth Taylor, the Virgin Mother of Aids. Or laugh at the closeted minstrels of Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly. If only we could have looked up to the example of the of the “marriage” between Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. Or if Garbo really would have talked, Dietrich sang and Tallulah laughed at the “love that dare not speak its name”.

Would that John Travolta and Tom Cruise would blast out of Scientology and fess up. Where is our Martin Luther King? It is time for Kevin Spacey to step from behind the Paramount bar and lead us into the Promised Land of equality. “I have a dream” girls.

In between my Off -Off Broadway directing jobs, I paid my rent as a teller at Bank Leumi, an Israeli establishment on Fifth Avenue and 47th Street in Manhattan.  I would work there from 9 to 5 and then direct showcase rehearsals from 6pm to 11pm. It was a long day and a long subway ride home to my place in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Ars gratia artis

As a stood at my teller window in front of a wall of the skyline of Jerusalem made out of cut-up pieces of carpet, customers would que up on one long line and then wait for the “Next Available Teller.”  There was one particularly good-looking Israeli boy who somehow always got to my window. I caught him a couple of times letting other people go ahead of him while he pretended to be fumbling, filling out a last minute deposit slip.

We would demurely exchange pleasantries as I slowly counted out his large deposits, delaying our transaction as long as possible. Soon enough, our hands would ever so lightly touch as I handed him back his receipt. He would finger the diamond ring on his pinky finger as he sweetly whispered thank you then look deep into my eyes and coyly say Shalom. It was like a prison visit of some white trash girl visiting her man at Sing-Sing as they stole a forbidden kiss as the warden watched on. Or a scene from “Midnight Express” where I was the young American captive and he was the handsome swarthy Turkish guard.

My prisoner of love was named Sol, short for Solomon and he worked in his family business in the Diamond District on W. 47th Street across 5th Avenue. He hated his job but was compelled by his strict Jewish Orthodox father to assist him at the Exchange. He longed to open up a floral shop. He always smelled of lavender scent. Our exchanges went on for a half a year with the visits becoming more brazen and our conversations longer. I gave good customer service.

One frustrating morning visit, Sol asked if I would meet him for a drink on Saturday night after Sabbath was over. I hesitantly agreed. He suggested we meet at a bar called Camp David. That seemed like an ironic place for our rendezvous since Israel and Palestine were negotiating peace terms at The White’s House’s Camp David. I wondered excitingly what negotiations he had in mind to bring us to détente.

Camp David was located on the fashionable Upper East Side on Lexington Avenue. I soon discovered it was a gay bar. I was 26 and surprisingly I had never been to one and was very scared about going to one now. I was sexually precocious in many ways but not “out.” I was socially inept at meeting guys in public outside of illicit places. That Saturday afternoon I almost backed out in going if it were not for my roommate, Loretta’s insistence that I grow up and go. Should she have said, “grow out!”

Showered and coiffed, I hopped into my metallic chocolate brown, Toyota Corolla and drove into Manhattan taking the Brooklyn Bridge and up the East River Drive. There was no anticipated traffic; I got there so early I had to walk around for an hour before our meeting time of 8:30pm. I circled the block may times to see who was going in and out. I didn’t know then that NYC gay bars didn’t start hopping till much later so I saw no one go in or out.

 I finally got up the nerve to enter the bar. It was a small place, dark, clean and contemporary in style. I took a barstool at the far end of the bar by the TV as All in the Family” was just about over  – “Those Were the Days.”

An older mustachioed bartender in white shirt and black tie brought my requested cocktail. There were a couple of guys at the back of the place sharing a table and quietly chatting, all very civilized. I was not set upon and stolen by a homosexual white slavery den. I downed the first gin and tonic quickly and was on to my third in no time.

It was 9:15pm and I was playing with the lime and stirrer in my fourth gin and tonic when the door opened. A sexy woman decorously dressed in a gray skirt and blouse with black pumps walked in. She was clutching a leather handbag as she peered into the darkness; I didn’t think lesbians came to this bar. I only knew the Park Slope flannel and denim variety lesbian. Guess this is what they called a “Lipstick Dyke.”

She slowly sidled down the bar as she moved closer to me. Of all the empty seats, she took the stool next to mine. I hurriedly pretended to look discreetly away as to not to have to interact with her. The final moments and theme song of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was playing on the TV.

“Who Can Turn the World on with Her Smile?”  I froze as I got a whiff of lavender.

 “Hi Tony, sorry I am late.”  I quickly turned in disbelief to see… Sol.

 “Hey Sailor, see anything you like?”  I dropped the lime on my lap.

I held tightly onto my empty lime-less glass and stirred as I looked down at his pinky ring. It’s a wonder the glass didn’t explode in my hands.

 “H-h-hello Sol,” I finally stammered.

“You can call me Sheba, tonight” she laughed lightly.

But her laughter, amplified by my surprise, fear and nervousness, seem to fill the bar. Were the bartender and that couple at the back laughing too – Laughing wildly, wild strawberry lipstick mouth agape, handle bar waxed mustache bouncing up and down like some Ingmar Bergman surrealistic sequence I might have seen at the Thalia.

I did not know what to do. The G&T and the lavender were going to my head as if to swoon-

So I escaped….

Without a word, slapping down a few dollars on the bar, I ran out onto Lexington Avenue, jostling an East Side doyenne and her poodle. I had my keys out before I got to my car. I almost flooded the carburetor as I pounded the gas pedal. I sped down the F.D.R Drive and through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, having to pay a toll to get home faster, safe and sound.  Thank God, Loretta was out on a date. I jumped into bed, turned off the lights and pretended to sleep till I finally did.

Sunday morning, Loretta sat on my bed and asked me how my date was. I said it went ok but it didn’t work out. She made breakfast for me and a Latino guy named Ronnie she met the night before a at a disco. The three of us making an odd sight. I am sure the guy thought I was her lover and was ready to pounce on him for a threesome. I was so frustated that maybe I did give off that scent. Loretta had good taste in men.

Later that afternoon the thought of Monday sprang up! What was I to do tomorrow when he showed up at my teller window? So of course, I called in sick.I went to work on Tuesday and waited all day for the siren’s call.  Sol did not come in that day or the rest of the week. He never came to my window again; fumbling on line if he had to, so he could avoid me. Eventually, he stopped coming to the bank and another runner for his company made deposits.

Looking back at Solomon and Sheba that night, of course I knew I acted silly and not wise.. I had behaved like a silly little girl in the big bad city. Of course, it was a shocker seeing Sol as a She but I could have at least stayed a bit and got out gracefully.

It was not till fall that year that I dared to go to another gay bar. I was tired of tricking on the streets. So I picked a safe haven to return to the scene of the crime. Julius, a bar in the Village was not so threatening since it seemed like a place where the old queens went to die. I could be a chicken and not chicken out.

Eventfully I graduated to other bars for the living and the quick: Uncle Charley’s, Wildwood, Tys and Boots and Saddles.  I wised up pretty fast as the Bicentennial year started in 1976. I reveled in a newfound freedom of liberation. I was ready for any drag queen that came my way. It was a time to throw my hat in the air, spin around and start living…

“Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don’t you take it
You’re gonna make it after all
You’re gonna make it after all”

The summer of 1974 was the start of my Disco years in New York City.

I had just completed my MFA thesis at Brooklyn College and was now on my own. I was staying temporarily with my good friend Dennis who was the set designer for my graduate production. He lived in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn before the lesbians, yuppies, chic shops and million dollar brownstones – the Park Slope of Irish Bars, Chinese Laundries, Food Coops and middle class teen rednecks.

“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”

Dennis was a tall and lanky, very bohemian, sensitive artiste – straight. He was very generous and open to let me room with him in his tiny studio until I figured out my life. We shared a pullout sofa bed in a tenement walkup on Seventh Avenue and First Street, facing a noisy public school yard. It was a platonic relationship even though I wouldn’t have minded a bit of “gee was I drunk” one night since he was handsome Pole with a kielbasa to prove it

“Ah Memories, Light the Corners of My Mind.”

Armed with my recently acquired MFA in directing from Brooklyn College, I was ready to take New York by storm and become a famous Broadway stage director.  For the summer interim however, I received a scholarship to study directing at the Shakespeare Institute in conjunction with the Stratford Theatre Festival in Connecticut.

Lodging and classes were at the University of Connecticut at Bridgeport. Evenings and seminars with the cast were held at the theatre in Stratford.  Bridgeport was an iconic 1960’s urban renewal mess of a city. One side faced the then polluted Long Island Sound, one side faced the PT Barnum Museum, and the other side faced ghetto squalor.

“Livin’ Just Enough for the City”

Loretta

I Discovered Disco and Loretta in the summer of 1974. Loretta was also attending the “institute,” as we mockingly call it to this very day. Loretta was a 22-year-old English Major from the hollers of West Virginia, a girl destined to escape her Mennonite ancestry and blossom into a then unknown Hilary Clinton-like dynamic woman.  She was a demure high school English teacher in the one-stoplight town of Romney who fell in love with New York City and soon fell in love with me. We became the Disco version of Scott and Zelda as we escaped the “institute” every weekend for madcap escapades in the city.

“I Can’t Help It, If I Am Still in Love with You”

Our favorite hangout was The 82 Club in the East Village on E. 4th Street. The pre- “Rent” East Village and The 82 Club were the height of depravity. This hideaway was as close to a cabaret of the Weimer Republic as one can imagine with drag queens, chanteuses, superstars and us.

Like Sally Bowles and Christopher Isherwood we played on Saturday nights at being totally decadent and in love. Early Sundays mornings, we would crash on Dennis’s pull out sofa, all three of us exhausted in drunken abandon. Dennis was usually the first to rise, and he would get up and moan, “I need my coffee” and make us the first cappuccinos we ever tasted. On Sunday night, Loretta and I would sleep in each other’s arms all the way back up to Bridgeport on the local Metro North train, waking up at every stop to chant with the conductor: Stamford!  Darien!  Westport!

“You’re My First, My Last My Everything”

The beat, the drive, the rhythm of Disco turned me into a dancing fool. I never was the teenager who watched Dick Clark’s American Bandstand dancing around the living room or went to the school dance. I don’t remember the exact song or moment it possessed me but suddenly at 26, the music swept over me and took control of me like the ballerina in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Red Shoes or like a manic Sicilian girl with twirling skirts, dancing herself into a trance to the Tarantella trying to ward off the malocchio.

“Rock the Boat Baby”

I bought a portable record player (the boom box of the day,) and became a proselytizer of dance, a young Pan, a Disco Dionysus. I spent money I did not have n 48’s and LPs. I had to have the latest extended DJ version of a song, which you could only buy at a store on Carmine Street in the Village.

I had Disco parties in the UConn cafeteria after our studies or after we retuned late from an evening performance at Stratford. We danced at Club 82, on the beach of the Sound, in the scene shop at Strafford and on the hardwood floors of Dennis’s apartment. Loretta and I even danced to our own inner beat on the empty D train as it crossed Manhattan Bridge high above the East River.

“Dancin” in the Street”

The Disco beat was steady and pulsing. It’s trance like mantra released my inhibitions. It was if I took an elixir and turned me into an impish Puck/Donkey of Midsummer Night’s Dream or a devilish, grinning Mr. Hyde. You didn’t need to know dance steps and the movement was sexy and fluid. You could be dancing with anyone in the swirling crowd around you. I sometimes pretended Dennis was my partner as I danced around an unsuspecting Loretta as we all spun around her “Disco bag” she had recklessly thrown down on the dance floor of Le Jardin, ourr own Arden Forest.

“Get Dancin’”

We studied Shakespeare all summer and we all had to present a project for accreditation. In retrospect I must have been unconsciously inspired by my dancing craze and summer love.  I directed a choreographed/acted version of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. The poem was accompanied by the music of Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night – a very Anthony Tudor/Agnes DeMille dance/drama piece

Venus and Adonis comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ovid told of how Venus took the beautiful Adonis as her first mortal lover. They were long-time companions, with the goddess hunting alongside her lover. She warns him of the tale of Atalanta and  Hippomenes to dissuade him from hunting dangerous animals, he disregards the warning, and is killed by a boar.

“Must Be the Night Fever”

I also fell “a little bit in love” with the director Michael Kahn, while assisting at Strafford. This was the season of his “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with Elizabeth Ashley, Keir Dullea and Fred Gwynne. He also directed a beautiful production of “Romeo and Juliette” set during the Risorgimento in Italy. I dreamed of becoming Michael’s assistant and protégé and lover. He never did and I never told him.

“If You Love Me, Let Me Know,”

The dancing stopped one night in August. After our cafeteria dinner, as we listened to “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” from Elton John’s new album.  Someone turned the TV on and we froze like figures in a game of “Statues” as we gathered around to hear the rumored news.

“Good evening.

This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office, where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this Nation. Each time I have done so to discuss with you some matter that I believe affected the national interest. I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.

Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.”

“Shame Shame Shame”

We all listened in silence as President Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974. And the sun did go down over the Long Island Sound.  I can’t say August 8th is the “day the music died.”  Even though it was the last days of the “institute my inner beat and Disco were about to explode.

We danced and danced all though that hot summer nights in Manhattan, Stratford and Bridgeport. Loretta and I became beloved friends and soul mates. A woman I could love without fear or responsibility and expectation – a masquerade, a pas de deux, and shadow play of Romeo of Juliette. How fitting we were studying in the hometown of PT Barnum, appearing in our own Midway Freak Show with acts of curiosity and sideshow romance.

Sam, Barry and me

“Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”

Loretta returned to Romney, West Virginia only to move in with me the following year with a her friend Fran. I returned to Park Slope and started to notice an influx of women in overall and flannels. Thirty years later, straight Dennis came out. Timing is all. He now has a lover who looks curiously like me. Ahem.

Garfield Place

“Rock the Boat Baby”

The Disco Years had just begun with nights at Studio 54, Peppermint Lounge and the Sanctuary. The era of liberation and sex was dawning – poppers, pot, polyester shirts, and potluck Disco parties in my first apartment on Garfield Place. I rented it with Dennis’s younger brother, Robert and “gee we did get drunk”.

 I was the “new boy was in town” – not Tony Manero of Saturday Night Fever strutting down 86th Street but Tony Napoli strutting down Broadway like a character in Fame.  I was dancing down the street and catching the night fever, dressed in platform shoes, white tight pants, Nik Nik shirt with gold chain bracelet or Puka Bead necklace and blow-dried styled hair. I was ready to take NYC by storm.

“Stayin’ Alive”

Loretta, Fran and me

The Freshman & Sophomore Years

1966 -1968

In the fall of 1966, I attended Cathedral College, a preparatory seminary for the Archdiocese of New York.

Cathedral College was based on the old 6 year school system of 4 years of high school combined with college freshman and sophomore years. The final 6 years of junior and senior college years and 4 years of graduate work would be at St. Joseph’s Seminary up at Dunwoodie, Yonkers, NY. The school itself was on the corner of West End Avenue and W. 87th Street.  The dorm, known as the Bishop Ford Residence was on W. 86th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West.

The West Side was not what it is today, the residence of the up and coming sophisticate. It was a raucous, dangerous, teeming collection of artists, pimps, drug dealers, Bolsheviks, liberals, homeless, struggling actors, musicians and students. The avenues were lined with decaying storefronts of Irish bars, Flea Market Thrift Shoppes, Chinese Laundries, Greek Coffee Diners, Jewish Dairy restaurants and SRO hotels. No one ventured above W. 72nd Street then known as Needle Park unless you lived up there.

After graduating NFA, Newburgh Free Academy, I enrolled myself for the study of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Of course, this was a big step for a boy to take. My mother, who you think would be ecstatic about being the mother of a priest, was not. She wanted me to get a job and contribute to the household. I had higher aspirations, priesthood or not and this conflict would escalate with her in the coming years.

The Bishop Ford residence was set up for the students from the upstate counties of the diocese. Classes were held Monday to Friday and we were free to go home on weekends.  The residence was a classic five -story limestone townhouse -first floor was parlor and dining room, second floor chapel and the upper floors were the sleeping rooms.

Since I was a freshman and sort of upper class to the high school attendees, I got to share a dormer room on the top floor facing 86th Street. My two roommates were Bob and Charles. Bob was in the top bunk, me on the bottom and Charles had his own single bed. There was a sink in the room, one closet and one communal bathroom per floor.

The day my mother dropped me off was very emotional. My father waited in the car since he could not come in due to his Parkinson’s disease.  My mom came up and as I dropped my valise on the floor we both burst into tears.  It was the first time I would be away for any extended period of time.

 My roommates were great guys. I am still in touch with Bob who lives in North Carolina. Every night, Bob would hop onto his top bunk, reach down and shake my hand and say good night when it was lights out. I dreamed of Charles in his single bed and longed to be next to him. I lost touch with Charles years later after an intense homo-erotic friendship.

Me, Dad and Mom

I was so excited to be back in New York City after my forced exile in Newburgh. I didn’t need a car to get around and I was free from my parents glare. The subway was my chariot. During the first week of classes I snuck out to see my first Broadway show at a Wednesday matinee.  For $3.75, I saw “Funny Girl” starring Mimi Hines who was great and had just replaced a then unknown to me, Barbra Streisand. I became a Broadway Baby and attended theatre at least once a week.  As a freshman, I got the keys to the front door so I could sneak in at night after curfew.  Some of the shows I saw that first year were:

Fiddler on the Roof

Man of La Mancha

Hello Dolly

Cabaret

The Rose Tattoo

Marat/Sade

Annie Get Your Gun

The Apple Tree

Right You Are, If You Think You Are

I Do! I Do!

Ilya Darling

Galileo

Hallelujah Baby!

Mame

Royal Hunt of the Sun

The School for Scandal

Cathedral College was a great place to study. I received a classic education of Latin, Greek, English Literature, Philosophy etc.  I had 32 classmates from all walks of life form Staten Island to Saugerties. They were mostly middle class immigrant sons: Irish, Italian, Polish, Puerto Rico and one Negro. We studied hard, prayed a little and played a lot in Central and Riverside Parks.  We wore jacket and tie to school and prayed in the chapel before dinner every night. Our Irish cook and sort of den mother, Mary prepared wonderful home-style meals on the first floor dining room of Bishop Ford. The two priests who resided with us never ate with us. In the evenings, sometimes we pulled all those college pranks what adolescent boys are wont to do from shorting of sheets to water balloons to snapping of towels in the showers.  We night we entirely dismantled a freshman room and set it up

in the basement.

To save the five dollar round trip bus fare to and from Newburgh, I stayed the weekends at my grandmother’s for the first few months. I would take the R train to the last stop at 95th Street in Bay Ridge Brooklyn.  My Polish grandmother would make dinner for me and my two uncles at 7pm. My uncle Eddy owned a fruit and vegetable store in the Sunset Park section and my Uncle Joey was a night watch man at Metropolitan Life. By 8pm both were gone for the night, one off prowling and drinking with his doll and the other uncle off to his nightshift.  I was alone with my hard of hearing grandma who went to bed at 8pm.

The first weekend there I turned on the radio after grandma went to bed and listed to very first opening night of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. Since grandma was asleep and deaf anyway, I turned up the volume way up and listened to Samuel Barber’s, new opera, “Antony and Cleopatra”.  It was difficult opera but Leontyne Price was in glorious voice.  I fell asleep on the kitchen table listening to Cleopatra’s final aria: “Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.”

On Saturday, I helped my uncles in their store while my grandmother washed my clothes by hand and hung them out to dry from the 3rd story clothesline strung across the alleyway. It was an old fashioned fruit and vegetable store. The Old Norwegian ladies would select their produce and I would weigh it on a big white enameled scale that hung from the low ceiling. I would calculate the price in my head and write the amount on a small brown paper bag and put apples, potatoes or turnips in it. After all the weighing was done, I grabbed a brown shopping bag, took the pencil from behind my ear, licked the point and wrote all the amounts down ant tallied them up. I made change, put all the purchases in the shopping bag and handed the bag to the lady. I always was courteous and remembered to thank them very much and wish them a good weekend. Sometimes I delivered the packages and got a quarter tip.   My uncles gave me 5 dollars and I used this to see my beloved Broadway shows. The store was closed on Sunday as were all the stops except for the drugstores.

Before Saturday supper, my grandmother would polish my Uncle Ed’s shoes and  in a childlike game sort of way, he would say , “Thank you Mama”, and  give her a one dollar. She would then hand him a white stiffly starched shirt and he was off gallivanting around. I was alone again and I would often be susceptible to Saturday night fevers. Sometimes I went to the Harbor Theatre on Fourth Avenue to catch a double feature. Sometimes I walked under the Verrazano Bridge looking for love.  I never found love by the Straight and Narrows.

Sunday was 10am mass at the neighborhood parish church, St. Patrick’s.  We all ate a full Sunday dinner at 2pm that grandma had been preparing since the day before. At 3pm with my little suitcase filled with clean clothes and sheets, I   made a dash on the R Train to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to sing Vespers with the rest of my classmates. That night I usually went to the movies in Times Square with Bob. Sometimes it was a road show presentation with assigned seats and intermission – “The Sand Pebbles” or “Hawaii.”

I was intensely lonely that fall on the weekends. I was so happy when one my classmates, Paul asked me to come with him to visit his folks in Brewster New York one weekend. His parents were very Waspy so I felt I was visiting the set of “The Donna Reed Show.” I did my own laundry for the first time in their basement as Paul and I fooled around a little.  We did manage to catch the movie “Valley of the Dolls” that weekend. Wow did that movie affect me.

“When did I get, where did I
Why am I lost as a lamb
When will I know, where will I How will I learn who I am”

My love of theatre crossed over to the other side of the boards. I was assistant director on our school production of “Inherit the Wind” and “Murder in the Cathedral.” Every Christmas tide, the graduating class hosted Gaudeamus. This was a musical celebration held on the last day before we all went home for the holiday. I wrote and directed our musical satire based on “Damn Yankees” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” In my version of the musical mélange, we made fun of our Greek professor Father Wilders who is tempted by the devil and goes back to classical times to coach the Olympics! The highlight was a filmed sequence within the play which I edited ala Richard Lester. The cast got dressed in togas which I borrowed from my Sacred Heart Parish Passion Play costume collection and did a madcap version of the Olympic Games farcically reenacted in Riverside Park.

After Christmas break, I began going back home to Newburgh for weekends. I would grab my weekend suitcase, rush out of choir practice class at 2pm, catch the Broadway IRT Downtown local, ran like a banshee through the underground connecting tunnel to Port Authority to catch the 2:45pm ShortLine bus.

My parents picked me up at 4:45pm and dropped me off at my weekend job at the A&P. I worked in the Produce and Deli Dept. till 9pm and worked all day Saturday till 7pm. I was lucky to have this standing weekend arrangement with the A&P Manager, Mr. Smith who had take a shining to me. I was a very good employee. Of course, this was money to pay for the bus fare and all of my theatre going.

After work and a quick bite to eat at home, it was usually a movie with my Mom at the local Squire Cinema on Saturday night. I was slowly turning into a surrogate husband and I could feel the jealousy of my mother growing as I escaped every Sunday back to the city. That winter was when I first saw the film, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I had heard or seen nothing like it before on the screen but the tensions, language and the dynamics eerily reminded me of my parent’s many furious arguments.

Martha: What a dump. Hey, w-what’s that from? “What a dump!”

George: How would I know?

Martha: Oh, come on, what’s it from? You know!

George: Martha…

Martha: What’s it from, for chrissake?!

George: What’s what from?

Martha: I just told you. I just did it. “What a dump!” Huh? What’s that from?

George: I havent’t the faintest idea.

Martha: Dumbbell.

So was the beginning and the end of my first two years of college. Bob would leave the studies for the priesthood after we graduated and go on to Marymount College up in Riverdale to become an engineer. He married a lovely nurse, moved to North Carolina and they had three handsome boys.

In 1969 Charles and I continued on to St. Joseph’s Seminary and continued on….like the symbiotic relationship between Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo in “Midnight Cowboy.” Continued on, little white, valise in hand… continued walkin’ on…

“Everybody’s talking at me. (click)
I don’t hear a word they’re saying,
Only the echoes of my mind.
People stopping staring,
I can’t see their faces,
Only the shadows of their eyes.

I’m going where the sun keeps shining
Thru’ the pouring rain,
Going where the weather suits my clothes,
Backing off of the North East wind,
Sailing on summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone.”

(To  be continued)