mid-week weekend

I got an email on sunday night from Dan Hurlin asking if i was interested in joining he and a few friends at his home upstate for a residency to build his new show DISFARMER. I dropped everything, asking my boss for two days off -- I told Dan that I'd give an arm to work for him. Almost literally. He is one of the most fantastically talented people I've ever met and an opportunity to work for him is rare -- i jumped at the chance.

I took the train up from pennstation on wednesday morning, arriving in Hudson around noon thirty. He was waiting for me, warmly, in his rav4. We drove through the town and ran a few errands before he brought me to his home -- a church he had purchased five years before and had spent years remodeling. A stunning edifice of a building, with towering, vaulted ceilings, and the original stained glass windows. Needless to say I was astonished, thrilled, flattered and honored to be there. I met friends of his BRIAN SELZNICK and his partner and a friend of theirs. We made puppets from cardboard. We gossipped. We watched youtube. We had witty faggy banter. We drank spritzers. We drank wine. After working for a few hours that afternoon we all piled into his suv and drove down the way to the home of another friend of dan's -- a performance artist and his partner, a photographer. it was a lovely, quaint home, on a lake. We sat on the docks with gin and tonics and chatted. I WAS IN HEAVEN. again, we drank, we gossipped, we had witty, faggy banter. There is nothing. NOTHING i'd perfer to do than drink with some old, gorgeous queens in their home on a lake and talk about the arts.

A few things i took from that dinner:
- gay people CAN be happy and successful and find love and stay together.
- the new york times is a critical mess
- dan likes to drink
- i am NOT a horrible failure at life.

It was one of those miraculous, carthartic vacations. In the best sense, I returned knowing who i was, knowing that I CAN DO IT, and that frustration is normal but cannot become habitual. Working with such talented people, being held as a trusted equal, basking in glorious country air, knowing that people DO do it. Oh god, I just want to be happy with what I'm doing and feel like I'm not just getting through it. I haven't felt this inspired to make great work ever in my life.

I made a radio:

it's been a week and i have many things to say.

first: i performed last weekend in the 8th international toy theater festival with great small works at st. ann's warehouse in DUMBO. and had a marvelous time. my nerves were astounding: i had forgotten what stage fright felt like and really was not at all prepared for the scope of the festival. i walked in a suddenly felt a rush, knowing, somehow, that my work was contributing to this enormous event.

yesterday in the Wall Street Journal: Big Concepts on Tiny Stages. For those of you who do not click that link:

"For 'Duncan, Part One, or the Boy with a Bird in his Heart,' the compelling Hunter Kaczorowski, fresh out of Sarah Lawrence College, produced a potent vignette around the early life story of the painter Duncan Grant, whose color sense and artistic sensibility helped illuminate this doll-house-size depiction"

I'm suddenly famous and much cooler than you, by the way.


second: I finished Valley of the Dolls. I wasn't so much disappointed in the ending as i was personally disappointed with Neely's behavior. SHE WAS MY FAVORITE. Some thoughts (spoilers): i wasn't nearly as astonished by Anne's drug use as i think i was supposed to be. Evidently, this was supposed to signify her final collapse into failure but I sort of saw it as her acceptance of having to deal with her life herself. Neely and Jennifer had realized that pills were the way to deal with their problems (obviously this isn't true to life, but perhaps true to their world) and Anne's decision to fall into that sort of just represented the fact that she was not living in a fantasy. Lyon was terribly written, i thought. Clearly the men of this novel have NO IDEA. None whatsoever.



third: I started reading Teleny a novel attributed to Oscar Wilde which is quite possibly the first "Gay" novel of the English Language. a review can be found here. It is beautiful, erotic and languid -- flowing in and out between reality and fantasy. The history of the book is equally interesting, likely coming from an underground round-robin of the gay late-Victorian literati. Oscar Wilde's handwriting is clearly evident on the original manuscript so it is assumed the at the very least he contributed to it and at most godfathered the project.

"...How can i express all that i felt from the contact of Teleny's hand? It set me on fire; and, strange to say, it soothed me at the same time. How sweeter, softer, it was, than any woman's kiss. I felt his grasp steal slowly over my body, caressing my lips, my throat, my breast; my nerves quivered from head to foot with delight, then it sank downwards into my reins, and Priapus, reawakened, uplifted its head. I actually felt i was being taken possession of, and i was happy to belong to him..."

(50th post)

This weekend: Duncan, Part One: or, the boy wit ha bird in his heart comes to St. Ann's Warehouse. Click here to order tickets. I'm terrified.

Since our show closed at the theater, a renter has come in to take over the space and strike our set. From western ct. state u. -- frat boy queens basically -- and basically yesterday at work was me and rico and scotty chatting about boys, guessing who was gay, calling dibs.

which brings me to what i really want to talk about -- the term "straight acting." I recently recorded on the facebook that i thought this term was the devil. an interesting prospect: it sets up several embedded value statements. none of this should be news to you. not only does the term imply that there is a "gay" way to act and a "straight" way to act, it also sets up an implied hierarchy of gays -- why is it so preferred to act straight? it makes my skin crawl (i think you need to forgive my poor sentence structure here; i'm not in the mood to write yet i do have an urgent need to talk about this). Scotty showed me a picture of a boy he's going on a date with that he met from manhunt (another set of embedded problems there...next post). not only was this person "gorgeous" -- aka beefy, hairless, white, giant pecs -- but he "sounded straight on the phone." i was probably going to puke. this, ladies and gentlemen, is the royalty that we have crowned. likely repressive, likely living in steadfast adherence to social pressures, likely unhappy. do i need to mention to you that there is no way to act? that there is no appropriate manner to behave? that social codes are only validated by the people who carry them out and maintain their power.

after posting this on facebook, i got a message from a former boss of mine (also on facebook...next post) saying that i'm not straight acting, but "straight appearing." i assume he meant this as a compliment -- just as fags everywhere are supposed to be honored by the association with "heterosexual behavior" -- but he actually completely missed the point. of course i understand that certain behaviors tend to go in step with sexual orientation but to perpetuate these assumptions are actually counterproductive. even if we dont mind when men wear nailpolish -- if everytime a man wears nailpolish we assume he's gay, we haven't gotten anywhere. let all men wear nailpolish and let it be nothing but a vehicle for personal expression. personal expression that in no way is code for sexuality.

jesus. sorry. i'll post something pithy in a bit.