Memory isn’t just a Throwback Thursday sentimental indulgence. Often it’s a backward glance that can propel us forward.
In the summer of 1985 there were two and-and-coming, celebrated male actors at one of the world’s most popular East Coast Summer Stock theater companies. Both were in their twenties, both got coveted roles on the main stage opposite the likes of some of Broadway and Hollywood’s biggest stars, and both couldn’t have been further apart in type. Both were also gay.
“Robert,” who came direct from Prestigious Drama School and who I didn’t know well and who was never polite, was effeminate onstage and off, stereotypically so, like Nathan Lane working out to Richard Simmons tapes. I never thought he was particularly talented, but the founder of the theater company adored him. Relentlessly so. He was pampered, nurtured, sauntering around that place like a court jester or the King’s pet. I half expected a revamped, camp version of A Streetcar Named Desire to be staged so Robert could play Stanley complete with lisp and feather boa and bitch-slap finale with Blanche.
“Joe” was a sexy leading-man type, six-feet-plus with thick dark hair, whose gritty Philadelphia street smarts accentuated his New York method-actor punch. He came from nowhere, with no college or money, but knocked out the stage when he made an entrance. Joe was immediately cast opposite a bevvy of leading ladies, all of them hotshots. I remember the morning he walked into the production room and one of theater’s biggest stars fawned all over him, insisting he call her by her nickname when he replied. Another one gave him her phone number and insisted he call her back in New York. He never did.
If I remember more about Joe than Robert, it’s because we were also sleeping together. We met about two weeks after I arrived, a bottom-of-the-barrel apprentice taking a break from college. I was determined to meet Joe the first night I saw him onstage, but it wasn’t until he sided up to me at the local bar, shot glass in hand, and called me a “cocky son of a bitch” before turning away that I really fell for him. Worked like charm.
The founder of this particular summer stock company was notoriously homophobic, at a time when you didn’t much hear that phrase, and if word got out you were gay, and actively so, you were bumped off from leading-man contention. Robert was about as sexually provocative as a squid, but he made a perfect Aunt Tom for macho male theater producers. His casting director was no better, a woman who favored Abercrombie & Fitch model-types, provided they didn’t “act” like male models. If the rumors were to be believed, she had an active casting couch. Her favorite actor was an exceedingly good-looking, terrible actor named “Tom,” whom Joe had slept with his first night, and who had then called it off for fear someone might find out his true proclivities.
Despite what we too often like to believe in this age of “gay enlightenment,” it’s easy to forget that we’re discriminated against every day for as many reasons as there are types of gay men. And this was the 80s.
|
The first sign that all wasn’t right in ethereal bliss was subliminal. Joe and I were assigned to different dorms, and I generally left his room in the early hours to run back and get ready for breakfast. Around 4 a.m. one morning, an actor saw me in the stairway and did not seem pleased. The next time I saw Joe he told me we had to be more secretive about meetings because someone had complained. I was incredulous, and chalked it up to some gay-hating actor.
Still, Joe and I obeyed as best we could, and I stopped mingling with him in the main theater or in front of the other actors or at cast parties.
When a drama instructor wanted to talk to me after class not longer after that, I first assumed it was for something exciting, like maybe a call to audition for the main stage.
The teacher told me that there had been much discussion among the staff, and I needed to “tone it down.” I knew what he meant but it still stunned me. My being gay at summer stock seemed about the safest “different” quality I could possess. I wasn’t flamboyant or aggressive about my sexuality—I don’t think it had ever come up and I didn’t discuss it with the my peers—and back in 1985 I wouldn’t have known a rainbow flag if it swatted me in the face.
I was myself, and if that meant my arms were sometimes overly expressive or my antics too playful for the satisfaction of superiors, a theater company’s board wasn’t going to change that. Nor had they, until that moment, given me any reason to think that perhaps I should. I asked my teacher if I had missed out on any opportunities. He didn’t answer. I asked him again before I left and he said no.
To this day I have no idea how my “gayness” affected me that summer, but I spent the rest of the season working behind the scenes and was never asked to audition or be seen for anything. I was not invited back.
I do know how it affected Joe, because he never worked after that day. He became a summer stock actor in absentia, somewhat despondent, whose low point came the afternoon everyone at the festival was “invited” to Robert’s Equity Card Ceremony. Joe wasn’t invited back the following summer either. He never again saw any of those people who had so loved him at the beginning of June. Most of his peers are still on television and in movies and Broadway. I see their names and faces all the time.
Rob went on to conquer the theater world. Did he “butch it up”? Just the opposite; he filled the role of gay queen perfectly at a time when that caricature was exceedingly popular on stage. To slightly misrepresent a famous Seinfeld quote, “there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Joe was a lot of things in regards to acting; consummate, professional, devoted to everything theater-related. He was not a game player, and it destroyed him. His summer stock ascension ended because he was gay, sexually gay, gay by definition of being attracted only to men. But maybe he seemed threatening because he used his looks and personality and charm and voice to get men into bed. Men like me. If he had been heterosexual, they would have said he had charisma.
◊♦◊
Despite what we too often like to believe in this age of “gay enlightenment,” it’s easy to forget that we’re discriminated against every day for as many reasons as there are types of gay men. The first agent I ever saw in New York told me he’d never work with me because I crossed my legs during the interview. We were friends outside of the acting world, he was gay, and I didn’t think it would matter. He was also one of the most effeminate gay men I’d ever met, and perhaps I felt there would have been a sense of solidarity in being proud of who we are. I was wrong.
We all have aspects of our personalities that we hide and censor and edit before we allow the world to get a glimpse.
|
That was the late eighties, and things have improved immensely, but when I finished writing my last book, in 2012, a simple coffee table story about how a dog lifted me out of depression, my first proposal went to a huge openly gay literary agent at one of the biggest publishing houses in New York. He emailed me back, saying no one would buy the book because only women over 40 read stories about dogs and depression and they won’t buy one from a gay author. I emailed him back and asked him if I should go back into the closet—if you’ve seen my resume, you know that’s pretty much an impossibility—and he didn’t respond. I don’t think he wanted the paper trail stating “yes.”
My book found another publisher, thankfully. Did my being gay hurt sales? Probably, even if the only gay references in the story involve pronouns that match my back-cover biography.
In the past month I’ve witnessed people jump at an openly gay actor’s comments about being grateful he didn’t turn out effeminate, perhaps because it might have hurt his acting career. The articles and uproar and out-of-context quotes read like sharks at a feeding frenzy. Most of the tweeted responses were far more offensive than anything the actor wrote.
I don’t condone gay men negatively labeling other gay men’s attributes anymore than I condone the false utopian viewpoint too often taken toward gay actors’ prospects. Up until a few years ago, almost every gay man in Hollywood started out technically straight. Ditto the music industry. Adam Lambert didn’t start out gay, neither did Zachary Quinto. Ricky Martin began his singing career singing about women, and Neil Patrick Harris kept his true self safely hidden beneath his magic hat. A lot of these guys were scolded for waiting too long to come out, but you have to wonder how, say, Doogie Howser fans would have reacted years ago if they knew their favorite teen doctor was pining for the Prom King at night.
More pointedly, while Hollywood’s always the easiest target for hypocritical gay labels, everyone in the working world makes compromises to keep their jobs, move up the ladder, or just stay safely secure.
We’re all careful about what we say in professional circles, be it a political bent or something as benign as a movie review, lest a perspective boss or hopeful supporter disapprove. In the film and TV world, I know many people who will happily endorse the latest pistol-packed, blood-spattered, sex-capped thriller, even though they abhor guns and violence and obligatory nudity, because they might need the aid of the production company or developers or actors for a future project of their own. Or they might just be job hunting.
Anyone who works for the corporate world knows that opinions are often best left to themselves, political and otherwise: Posting a smiling bathing suit picture on Facebook might be deemed scandalous in one profession, a bonus in another. If you’re gay and work in the gay industry, bully for your pulpit. If not, keep those constant left-leaning posts and Black Party photos at bay. HIV-positive status and addiction recovery are touchy subjects too, even if all of your close friends know and love you even more for your honesty. Yes, those are diseases, making them trickier subjects to deal with publicly. But you don’t need to browse the Internet too long to know how many people still think homosexuality is the world’s biggest of ills.
If you’re a journalist with an opinion to sell, it’s essential to understand that editors might be reluctant to allow certain references to go to print, for fear of upsetting the publishers or, far worse, certain advertisers.
We’re all careful about what we say in professional circles, be it a political bent or something as benign as a movie review, lest a perspective boss or hopeful supporter disapprove.
|
It’s simple to call the above examples “common sense” or, depending on your profession, moot, but they are all aspects of our personalities that we hide and censor and edit before we allow the world to get a glimpse. No one outside our immediate circle sees the real us, so before we turn a working, leading, openly gay, successful male actor into the worst person alive, look in the mirror and remind yourself of the reflection you keep hidden from the rest of the world.
Would I have changed my own demeanor in 1985 had I known it might be costing me professional work? Hell yes! I’d have checked every word and movement, monitored my voice, and kept Joe as hidden from view as a hard-on in gym class. Anything to get the part.
◊♦◊
In 1986 I returned to that summer stock theater to visit a few friends and see a show. The founder was still there, the casting director was still there, and, when I went to see a production, there was Tom, that other actor, on stage, front and awful-acting center. Bravo for him.
Visit my Huffington Post Blog
Find my latest book, DJ: The Dog Who Rescued Me
Photo: Victor/Flickr