I’m known by students and by actors I’ve directed onstage to display contempt for the notion of “the character”. I often find myself saying: “How would you behave if this were really happening? Is this you? Or is it someone you’re imagining yourself to be?” If you’re trying to be someone else, that could account for most of why the behavior looks false. False can mean fake, but it can also mean too thin, incomplete, lacking the behavioral complexities of listening, processing, and responding that are present in life.

In life we wear masks. Every day. Some, we know we wear, and others have become so much a part of who we are that we’re no longer willing or even able to remove them. And we don’t always swap them out either, trading A for B. Often we go ahead and keep wearing A, and then we put B on top of that. And then C on top of the other two. Are these masks part of our character, part of who we are? They sure are. What we pretend, or hide, or avoid in our lives, becomes part of what choices we make in each moment, and then, what behavior results from these choices.

What separates an actor from a regular Joe or Sue is that the actor is equally interested in nobility and depravity. Whatever judgment he or she may have of any human experience must be secondary to a hunger to understand it. And the depth of that understanding, when and if it is reached, determines the specificity of the behavior, and the power of the portrayal.

The reason I state so unequivocally that there is no character is that actors tend to think of a character as putting something on, putting on a series of masks. No! Great actors do exactly the opposite. They ask themselves: What masks do I have to remove to be this other person? When I know an actor thinks and works that way, I have no problem with the idea of a character at all.

If you are playing Richard III, for example, you have to remove the “I don’t wish my enemies ill” mask that we all wear. The “I could be king (or the hottest actor, producer, director, writer, gofer, etc. in Hollywood) if only he or she were dead” mask. If you don’t have those kinds of fantasies, those wildly inappropriate daydreams, you’re not an actor.

Or perhaps you do have them, but you’ve become used to suppressing them. Used to living in the real world instead of the world of your imagination. Cut it out. Those wild thoughts and feelings are good for you. (Even if you’re an accountant really, though much less useful in that profession.)

Watch Helen Mirren in The Queen. She’s playing a character we all know. The imperious monarch of England, Elizabeth II, with a very entitled view of the world, a giant stick up her royal ass, and a truly bad wardrobe. Then watch Ms. Mirren in an interview with Charley Rose, being “herself”. You can see much more of who the actress, the person Helen Mirren really is by watching The Queen.

Is there such a thing as “the character”? Of course there is. Of course it’s not you. Just because you’re an actor doesn’t mean you have to be nuts.

Elizabeth II is the queen of fucking England. You’re not. And all the acting you can do won’t make it so. But if you let the audience see, as Ms. Mirren did, her own passion for order, her own terror of what chaos can ensue from lack of propriety, her own regret at having been less kind to someone than she might have wished to be after the person’s sudden death, and her own sensible desire for sensible shoes, and, provided  you’re dressed and made up just like Liz, then the audience may just believe you are Liz.

What differentiates the actor from the character, (besides the clothes, the pitch of the voice, the spine, or, all the physical things that are much more, ultimately, about mimicry than good acting) and what can eventually bring the two together, is what they care about. Elizabeth II doesn’t give a crap about the film director Taylor Hackford. He’s Ms. Mirren’s husband. So if you are going to play Helen Mirren, what are your concerns? Mr. Hackford’s well being, what great script may next be coming your way, a wardrobe fitting you have today for a film you’re shooting next month, keeping in shape, world peace, etc. If Liz wants to play Helen, then she has to care about those things too, and spiff up her wardrobe.

The colloquial translation from the Italian is Love At First Sight but I think it's actually a lightning bolt of lust, and then if you end up spending the next 5-50 years together you see it, looking back, as Love. But the only way to tell the difference for sure is in retrospect. Lust obliterates everything else for awhile, and it's very tough to tell what else may be going on while it's happening. 

In The Godfather, Michael Corleone sees a gorgeous young Italian girl out for a walk one day, a virgin named Appolonia, while he's hiding out from the opposing mob in Sicily, and is struck. Staring and following her around like a robot, he attracts the attention of an old woman in black from a nearby village who says to her old-lady friend, “The thunderbolt!” The second old lady nods sagely. Michael courts the girl, wins her father's permission, and marries her as fast as he can. There is no long or even short pause for reflection on his part as to whether or not this is love, as his desire for her is so intense it makes anything but penetration ASAP seem completely beside the point. 

The “pal” factor is invariably absent from the most intense love stories, and they frequently involve even two seemingly mismatched people whose desire for each other overwhelms all reason, from Romeo and Juliet, to Lady Chatterly and her outdoorsy roughneck, to Loretta and her fiancé’s brother in Moonstruck.  

The Italians think of The Thunderbolt as something that strikes men, but I’m sure there are plenty of women who have felt its power. The big lie is that women want sex less than men do. I don’t believe that they want it less. I do know many more women than men though, who pretend to themselves that it’s not a priority, and they pay an awful price for the pretense. There are few things in this world sadder and more self-deluded than The Un-fucked Wife who has talked herself into a life of “companionship” with no passion. (The Un-fucked Husband has a tendency to stay un-fucked for much shorter periods of time, or, if he is faithful to his pledge of monogamy, to rapidly become a near-zombie.) 

Another huge lie is that men are less willing to commit to relationships than women are. Their publicity on this is wildly exaggerated. The truth is that they are very willing to commit, just not as quickly. Given the unlikelihood that the first few candidates who show an interest and fit the laundry list of requirements for a partner that both sexes tend to carry around in their over-analytical heads will be “the one”, men are much more apt to remain aware of their range of options as regards future prospects. Women, like some over-eager little-league batters, get up to the plate and swing at every pitch, and so, then, logically, whether or not they hit the ball is often, sadly, more dependent on the quality of the pitch than on the quality of the swing. 

And by that I don’t mean that women aren’t picky. They are. But as soon as they find a guy who looks good on paper, (that’s what I’m calling a pitch) they often focus only on him, at least until he fucks things up. Men, on the other hand, are likelier to think, Hey, she looks great on paper, this is a genuine candidate, that’s good, but who else is still out there? Is that an unwillingness to commit? Or just a smart shopper? 

I met a beautiful young man in a bathhouse in Amsterdam once, in my late 30s, who was about ten years younger than I and about 10 times prettier. He had a standard-issue white towel tied around his tight, willowy stomach, and I couldn’t breathe. The Thunderbolt. I was tripping on space cake from a local hashish shop and I remember, with luminous clarity, later, kissing his neck, shoulders, and chest for what seemed, in my heightened state, like hours. He was visiting from Germany, spoke very little English, and stopped me at one point, taking my face in his hands, staring as deeply as he could into my pupils, (which were probably fucking huge), to say in his thick accent: “Vik-tor… zis iz not sax… zis… iz… luff-making.”  I remember looking back, deep into his eyes, knowing we would not see each other again, as I brushed my lips and cheeks against his trembling stomach: “Yes. It is. Yes.” 

We spent the afternoon in each other’s ecstatic embrace, which for me was layered with passion, loss, and relief. My partner of 5 years at that point, Scott, was asleep in our hotel room, exhausted from his ongoing war with AIDS, after a long, wonderful morning walk exploring the city, and after having urged me to get high, to find a man to my liking, to enjoy some sex, and to be back by 6 for dinner. “Go. You deserve it. I love you. I need a nap. Go fall in love for the afternoon.” 

Wouter (that was the name of the German boy… Walter without the L) and I were entwined in grateful repose after the fireworks, and I told him about Scott when he inquired about the flashes of sadness he had observed in me, while he hugged me tightly and kissed my eyes, cheeks, neck and mouth. It felt strange and easy to hold this stranger in my arms after making love. He was young and strong. Scott would be dead in just a bit more than a year, his powerful body had become a little bag of bones. We had several more forays into passion in that year of his life that remained, whenever his body unexpectedly surged with sexual need and prowess, but that day in Amsterdam, he was exhausted and happy and even eager for me to find a surrogate to whom I could transfer the overwhelming feelings of desire he simply hadn’t the energy to reciprocate, and which he understood, as a man, and an unconditionally loving one, that begged to be expressed. 

Did I fall in love with Wouter? Yes, at least for 4 hours. Does that sound flippant? I sure don’t mean it to. Our connection had been profound. Did I fall “out of love” with Scott for those 4 hours? Definitely not. Was Scott in my head and my heart and my balls for those 4 hours? For some of it, yes. But not for all of it.  

What was the difference between the thunderbolt that hit me when I met Wouter, and the thunderbolt that hit me when I first saw Scott, riding his bicycle on the lakefront in Chicago, wearing an ugly black helmet that could make no secret of his beautiful face and the chestnut hair spilling out around the edges in sweaty curls, and with whom I spent 6 too-short years? None at all. Except in retrospect.

I know that sounds ridiculous to a lot of you guys,“Be honest with women”, but here’s the deal. There are two kinds of women: The kind that have a standard idea in their heads about how men should think and behave, and the kind that actually want (and are willing) to get to know YOU.

The first kind is the kind you see and meet everywhere, the kind to whom the diamond and the wedding mean everything. They require you to call and/or text them several times a day to assure them you care, and you have to do it, whether or not you want to, in order to show them you will play by their predetermined female rules. These things are not negotiable. You must never speak of your sexual longings for women to them, never admit what a deep, core part of you is your urge to experience the female body in all its varied and amazing forms.

These are the same women who are constantly urging you to get in touch with your feelings and to share them with her. She wants to know how you feel about your boss, your mother, your friends, your brother, your self. But of course she doesn’t want to know anything to do with your feelings about wanting women, unless it’s about wanting her. She also doesn’t have a clue that your feelings about yourself and almost everything else are rooted in your most intense feelings about women and how their bodies make you feel.

Can you even imagine having a guy friend (even if you never talk much about it) who doesn’t know how much of your brain and heart and guts are tied up with the sight, smell, touch and taste of the female body?  The majority of women, the vast majority, fall into this first, densely-populated, garden-variety category.

The second group of women, though, which is admittedly much smaller, actually wants to know you. Yeah, they really do. They actually mean it when they ask you to share your feelings. They value honesty more than they value hearing the answer they prefer, or the diamond ring. These women in the second group live much more in the moment, they feel their own sexual urges more urgently, and they are not nearly as threatened by your insanely active libido as the women in the first group. They may still, ultimately, want or require you to be faithful. But they love the honest negotiation, because they did not auto-buy the farm called Monogamy Equals Happily Ever After, like the first group, and because when you are inside them, they can feel that they really know the guy to whom they have granted access, even if it eventually turns out to be temporary access. They value freedom and fun, not just security and longevity.

Trust is NOT about making promises you can’t keep. It’s about keeping a promise to be real. Authentic.

And before we go any further, let’s also be clear that what’s good for the gander also goes for the goose. If you want to be honest with her and let her have a look at who you really are, then you must be willing and able to let her do the same. Your woman is much more aggressively horny than you may realize. Possibly (even probably) more than she may realize too. Underneath that carefully crafted, appropriately feminine (read: much too controlled) exterior beats the heart of an unbridled animal who wants nothing more than to give into her wildest primal instincts, to feel her clitoris absolutely on fire, and to take you along for the thrill ride of your life (if you’re willing to hang on).

But first, you have to remove the removable impediments, and they are all fear-based. (Well…not remove them so much as accept and integrate them into the moment while you’re eating her.) It’s her own judgment of her sexual self that she listens to, her own judgments that limit her ability to express herself sexually. (By comparison, she doesn’t give a hoot about yours.) Her boundaries for sexual self-expression were mostly formed by the input from her parents (mostly her mother), her siblings (mostly her sisters) and her friends (mostly her girlfriends). And that means mostly one thing: Be a good girl, not a slut. 

But you want to bring the bad-girl factor into play, right? Fuckin-A.

So you have to give her permission that she may not feel unless she gets it from you. And the best permission you can give her is a long, intense orgasm. Women are taught that it’s only truly appropriate to be fully sexual when they are in love, or if a man they are attracted to forces them out of control with lust. In this second case, they may feel terribly guilty (read: slutty) about it tomorrow, but they’ll give into it tonight if it feels fantastic.

Women also like a guy (whether they know it or not) who can take them up to the ceiling and leave them there for a while, so don’t hurry to make her orgasm, especially if you can quickly. (If you’re at all wary of getting too excited too fast, keep your pants on while you’re exploring her pussy, and if she questions or teases you about it, tell her it’s insurance for her pleasure.) Tease her, take her up and down, tell her how hot she looks when she’s flushed with desire (the truth, in other words), talk to her about anything you like that will get her hotter and closer to the edge (your plans to take her car in for an oil change tomorrow, for example), make lots of eye-contact, let her see how vulnerable and how powerful you feel in the face of her increasingly moistening excitement, and how much you want to rush her to orgasm, but then don’t rush.

The longer you can leave her on that last plateau of helpless desire before you push her over the edge, the more likely she is to forget all that ridiculous nonsense in her head about the perfect wedding dress (which is probably based on something Barbi wore to her fucking prom in 1965) and to come pounding on your door in the middle of the night demanding more cunnilingus and feverish intercourse, like the crazed she-beast she really is.

It’s fun to talk sex with you guys, but remember that… of course you still have to treat her with total love and respect outside of the bedroom whether you’re in it for the long haul or not. (If you are a single, straight man PLEASE RE-READ that last line!) Men who mistreat women, who lie about their intentions, who manipulate, who withhold, and who have no loyalty to the truth, are not men.

And HEY! Be clear on this: When I say you should share your longings for women with her, I don’t mean describing some girl in a tight short skirt you saw on the street to her every time that happens.

Instead, give her an honest and fully expressed idea of how your body really works, and how it often rules your brain and your heart, (even if you don’t fully understand it yourself). That is not only the key to finding the extraordinarily special woman you want, it’s also the key to understanding yourself, and who you are. And that can only bring you closer to her.

So what is it? What matters?

Your kid? The book you’re writing? Aunt Ruth’s inheritance (which is coming any day now that the nursing home called to say her liver is failing)? The meeting you’re having next week with the friend of a friend who has pledged to give you some free advice on how to start up your turquoise jewelry business on the web?

If you consciously arrange your priorities once and for (fucking) all, what are they? And what takes precedence over what? Your physical safety? The avoidance of pain? Food on the table? Your partner’s fidelity? Painting that sunflower outside your bedroom window when the morning light is just right?

Do our priorities arrange themselves according to what matters to us, or according to what doesn’t? Same thing? How do we assign meaning? Or does it assign itself?

I’m making a big mountain out of a molehill, don’t you think? I know exactly what determines meaning. Proximity. What’s closest to us matters, and what’s far away doesn’t.

Does it matter that millions are dying of starvation and slaughter in Africa? Of course not, they’re half a world away. Would it matter more if they were white? Probably yes, but they’d still be far away. The combination of far and black is absolutely lethal. We just don’t give a shit.

Does anybody on the cultural right care about the rights of gay people? Yes. But only those who have a gay family member. Proximity. Otherwise, we’re barely even people to them.

Fix health care? Why? I have health care.

 The bottom line message of Jesus Christ was Care about the other guy as much as you care about yourself, or, actually, Care more about him than you do about yourself. Which is always why I tend to laugh or choke when I hear America referred to as a Christian Nation. (The absurdity makes me laugh and the hypocrisy makes me choke.) The Golden Rule is a thinly disguised, secular re-write of Christ’s perfect message. (I say perfect even though I do not, personally, believe he was divine.) The message is divine though: Treat others as you’d like to be treated. 

But does that include anyone in Darfur? Or does it only refer to those in close proximity to me? Am I to forgo the $8 per-slice carrot cake with the heavenly cream-cheese icing because millions of kids go to bed hungry every night in this country and all over the world? I may as well eat it if I’m not sending them the money.

Please don’t think I’m raising these questions for you, but that I’ve given myself a free pass, I haven’t. I lay in bed most nights wondering how to live with my understanding of my own myopic view of the world. No that’s wrong. Actually I do see things clearly that are far away. So my own problem isn’t myopia at all, it’s an unwillingness to take action as regards what I see, unless the things are close to me. I do have a great deal of contempt, I admit, for those who cannot or will not see, but ultimately we exist in the same state: stasis.

Perhaps what I’m really arguing for is more self-loathing in America. Yeah, that’s it. I feel just as helpless to do anything about the state of this nation and this world as anyone else, but I also feel a good, strong whoosh of self-directed anger about it every day. Does that make me a superior being to those who cannot see farther than the end of their own noses? I truly wish it did. I must secretly envy them, (though now my secret’s out).

My life has become all about pain management. It’s Priority Number One. On any given day, my first concern is all about the stopping, the stilling, the postponing, the minimizing, the deflecting, the ignoring, the rejecting, and ultimately, the embracing of pain. And I am in a huge majority of people on this planet, an overwhelming majority. And I am actually lucky that my pain is in my body, where I have at least some choice about how to deal with it. I wouldn’t want my pain to be about how to feed my five kids, or how to keep them from getting gunned down by the gang that roams my street. I’m grateful for that.

“For better or for worse.” Well, no one has problems with the “for better” part. They just throw that in at the ceremony because they want to seem at least partly optimistic about what may be in store for the happy couple. Everybody who’s watching knows damn well it’s the “for worse” part that will cause the divorce, if it comes, swiftly or slowly, as the case may be.

The boundaries of relationship are defined by the sharing of pain. Marriages implode when a business goes bankrupt, when a partner gets sick, if a child dies. Suddenly the intimacy of the shared pain becomes too much for one or both to bear and the union must be dissolved. Remember Newty-Newt Gingrich dumped his wife and took a mistress when she got cancer? (I love to pick on the Republicans of course, but many a Democrat has deserted a spouse when the going got tough, remember J&E Edwards?)

Scott had a close friend who deserted him when he got sick. Suddenly Bobby just wasn’t around any more. The sicker Scott got, the more invisible Bobby got.

Scott was hurt by it, deeply, no question, though he rarely mentioned Bobby. He understood that Bobby lacked the willingness, or, perhaps, simply, the capacity, to share in his pain. The rest of Scott’s friends, all of whom were fiercely loyal and would have done anything for him, were witheringly critical of Bobby and spoke of him in tones ranging from disapproval to shame to condemnation. But not in front of Scott. Not about his friend.

It was tough for me to understand, because the sicker Scott got, the more loving he got, the more he opened his heart, and consequently, the more privileged I felt to be his caretaker. The tougher his day, the more treasures it seemed to hold for us, the more we appreciated our roles in each other’s lives. I felt so proud and happy to be The One making soup for him. (And I make fucking good Italian-boy soup.) I was the one who shared his greatest fears, his worst nightmares, and his most wretched fevers. I was the one who got to hold him if he broke down. And on the rare occasions when I broke down (the crying thing wasn’t usually my style, especially in front of him—typical man) he would hold me and stroke my head and say, “Let it out honey, go ahead and let it out.” And because of all the shared pain, I also got to be the one who shared his greatest joys: his sweetest kisses, his most grateful smiles (which lit up a room like fucking fireworks), and his most riotous laughter. For worse, or for better!

A few days before his death, Scott asked me to go over his will with him, as there were a few precious items he wanted to make certain there would be no hesitancy on my part to distribute according to his wishes. Chief among them, a beautiful 36” x 48” landscape that had been part of his grandmother’s art collection. It was a truly lovely depiction of a delicate waterfall splashing over a field of greens: forests, emeralds, chartreuses. It hung directly across from his bed. He fell asleep every night with that vibrant terra firma in his eyeline. It was to go to Bobby.

I wanted it to go to Irwin, and had lobbied Scott for that. Irwin had been loving, loyal, and present. No, Scott said, there was another painting for Irwin, (which I knew), a tiny little painting of a fishing boat in a New England harbour. The landscape was for Bobby.

Yes, I said. Yes. For Bobby. And Bobby received it.

I too have a close friend who has deserted me, whose limits for the sharing of my pain have fallen short of my expectations, and my friends and loyalists, like Scott's were, are appalled. But I am not the man Scott was. I am not as patient, not as forgiving, not as willing to accept the loss of a trust I wrongly believed would continue.

But I will get there. And I will get there because I am still, and especially, grateful, fourteen years after his death, to have Scott’s example to follow. That beautiful guy.

And far, far beyond the reconciling of this small disappointment in the greater scheme of things, I am grateful (stunned really is more accurate) by the unconditional affection and the loving support for my autonomy, and for my sanity, from the other fifty? sixty? friends and students and family, who seem to have either no limits, or an astonishing willingness to keep pushing their limits farther and farther away, stretching their boundaries to share my struggle, and to show me their love, regardless of how it may hurt.

You affirm everything I have believed is good and true about the nature of acceptance and the limitless possibilities of unconditional love. And that feels fucking good. Really and truly gooooooooood.

Well OK, it’s a little more complicated than that, but intense suffering is as much a staple of great comedy as great drama. Comedy thrives on serious conflict, and conflict results in pain. But how do you invite an audience to laugh at your pain? Your pain; that’s the key. First you make it authentic, and very, very personal, so the foundation of the work is the same as if you’re playing Hamlet. And then, it depends on the right attitude, the right rhythm, and hopefully some great, witty dialogue to ride on both.

In Midnight Run, Charles Grodin, hurt and frustrated with Robert DeNiro’s callous treatment, and indulging his own impulse to psychoanalyze, pointedly offers: “You know, you only have two emotions: silence and rage.” DeNiro, fuming, snaps back: “I’ve got two words for you. Shut the fuck up.”

These are some of my very favorite comedy performances in no particular order. Some of the very best, funniest moments in each happen when the character is in the most pain, caught between a rock and a really hard place, struggling in vain for deliverance:

1.  Bette Davis, All About Eve

2.  Cary Grant, Arsenic and Old Lace

3.  Diane Weist, Hannah and Her Sisters, Bullets Over Broadway

4.  Madeline Kahn, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Paper Moon

5.  Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie, The Graduate

6.  Gene Wilder and Cloris Leachman, Young Frankenstein

7.  Gary Shandling, The Larry Sanders Show

8.  Jim Carrey, Liar, Liar

9.  Judy Holiday, Born Yesterday

10. Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Dyke Show

11. Vivian Vance, I Love Lucy

12. Jackie Gleason, The Honeymooners

13. Diane Keaton, Manhattan, Annie Hall

14. Maggie Smith, A Room With A View, California Suite

15. Jennifer Tilly, Bullets Over Broadway

16. Penelope Cruz, Vicki Christina Barcelona

17. Margaret Rutheford, The Importance of Being Earnest, The V.I.P.s

18. Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night

19. Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson, Terms of Endearment

20. Leslie Ann Warren, Victor/Victoria 

Note on 11: Watch Vivian Vance in the episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy picks a birthday present for her because Fred isn’t up to the task, and gets her a pair of diamond-patterned hostess pants instead of the toaster Ethel badly, badly wanted. Thinking Fred picked out the hideous garment, her crushing disappointment quickly turns to incredulity, then to outrage, and then to absolute intolerance in a truly flawless bit of comic acting. Ms. Vance often makes Ms. Ball look like a hack, because everything she does is not only perfectly precise, but also honest, and organic. Unlike Lucy, she never makes faces to go for the cheap laugh.

[Oh! And by the way, I can’t believe I left James Gandolfini and Edie Falco in The Sopranos off my list of great drama performances. Continuing off the subject a moment: Here are a few Hideous Full of Shit Fakers, or My Very Least Favorite Actors Ever: 1.Julie Andrews 2.Kevin Kline 3.Kathleen Turner 4.Christopher Plummer 5.Helen Hayes 6. Kenneth Brannaugh]

Why do you have to break your own heart to be a great comic actor? Charlie Chaplin started the ball rolling. In order to get an audience to laugh at you, you have to make yourself truly vulnerable, which invariably means an acceptance of pain and loss. We almost certainly know the happy ending is coming (we’ve seen the previews), so we can laugh at the very same things that would not be in the least funny if death or disfiguration were the outcome instead of (99 times out of 100) love and marriage.

In addition to breaking your heart, you have to be willing to look like the fool as well. It’s impossible to play comedy without a willingness to reveal all the human foibles that we may want to try and hide from ourselves and others in our lives: vanity, selfishness, inappropriate lust, parsimony, greed, jealousy, arrogance —the list goes on and on and on (and on). Comedy especially requires a look at all the little, embarrassing, unattractive insecurities that really make us tick.

But again, as in drama, the audience is impressed by our bravery as actors, our willingness to reveal ourselves as the terribly flawed creatures we really are, risking humiliation while we seek to illuminate want and need, all the while having not just the audacity but the courage to ask for laughter as a kind of forgiveness for all of us, for being human. 

What else but Love could you possibly argue for? Money? Sex? Power? Work? Career?

There’s no joy in any of them, unless they bring love. The only two that ever worked for me were Sex and Work. I loved sex when it was an expression of love (otherwise I was fairly indifferent, even with the now-famous hard-on), and I loved work when it was creative (read: an act of love).

The others just always seem like a means to some other end. So many people with money and power are unhappy. Certainly not a new idea, and certainly true.

Here are some love substitutes that invariably lead to unhappiness, usually by the well-worn route of self-delusion: Duty (read: I should, and if I don’t want to, I’ll pretend I do), Commitment (read: I must continue, as opposed to I want to continue, probably out of fear of re-negotiation), Possessiveness (read: You can’t love more than one person at a time, sexually or otherwise), Deception (read: If I let you see who I really am, you can’t possibly love me), Fear (read: I’ll end up alone if I don’t keep pretending to myself and/or you that this is actually love).

Why is Love the Big Kahuna? Because when there is love, everything else that is good and true follows after it.

Here are some Love clinger-afters: Trust, Empathy, Understanding, Growth, Forgiveness, Joy, and that lovely glowing skin everyone tries to sell you out of a bottle on late-night infomercials.

Here are some Duty clinger-afters: Resentment, Bitterness, Victimization.

Here are some Commitment clinger-afters: Indifference, Ritual, Boredom, Repression.

Here are some Possessiveness clinger-afters: Jealousy, Insecurity, Co-dependence.

Here are some Deception clinger-afters: Betrayal, Blindness, Denial.

And lastly, the Fear clinger-afters: Lack of Experience, Lack of Adventure, Lack of Life and Lack of Love.

VIC’s LOVE Q & A

Q: How do you create love in your life?   A: Give it away to others.

Q: What’s the difference between unconditional and conditional love?  A: This is a trick question: If it’s not unconditional, it’s not love. Conditional love isn’t love at all, it’s barter.

Q: So you’re saying the phrase “unconditional love”, or UL, is redundant.  A: Yep, I am.

Q: Why is it so hard for me to give unconditional love?  A: Probably because you never got any, so you have no one to model when attempting to give it. But don’t despair! Just because you didn’t get it doesn’t mean you can’t learn to give it.

Q: How do I learn to give love when I never got any myself?  A: Start by pretending you’re giving it to yourself. You want it bad, right? So, grab a big armful out of thin air, and throw it up above you, letting it flutter all over you like passionate confetti. Do this several times, perhaps many, many times, and then one time, when you’re just about to feel it come tickling down all over you, jump out da way, and grab the arm of someone standing near you, pulling that unsuspecting soul into the spot where the love is raining down.

For Extra credit: Watch your love rain all over them, and take as much joy in it as when it was raining on you. Rinse and Repeat.

Q: What if I give someone unconditional love, but then they treat me like shit?  A: Just keep giving them the love, but remove yourself when they are handing out their shit. You don’t have to accept their shit, you just have to keep giving out your love.  Remember this is not an exchange. Unconditional love is given freely, without caring what you get in return.

Q: But why would I give love to someone who gives me shit back? Don’t you have to be Jesus or Buddha or Mia Farrow or somebody like that to pull that shit off?  A: No, actually, you don’t. That’s a convenient excuse if you don’t really want to give UL. The act is of giving only, not of giving and getting back. If that feels to you as if you are getting cheated, or being taken advantage of, perhaps a career in finance may suit you better than that of lover. But if you keep giving, past the shit, you may notice the shit can start changing into something more like fertilizer, and as you keep giving the love, then the fertilizer may morph into top soil, and before you know it, there could be some Calla-Lilies beginning to bloom.

Q: OK, OK, but I’m an Actor. Can I give unconditional love? Or is narcissism the silent killer of UL?  A: Not at all. (You must be unintentionally modeling John Cassavetes in Rosemary’s Baby.) As an actor, start by trying to give your UL to the script and forget about the other actors for now. Figure out why the writer wrote it in the first place, where the passionate idea that drives the thing IS, and get behind it, no matter what your own, personal, possibly even petty reaction might be. Fill in all the ideas with your own experience of life, love, courage, sex, and fearless vitality.

Q: Isn’t all this talk about unconditional love really just a bunch a baloney?  A: No, asshole, it’s not.  Q: Well how come I’m not getting any then? Why are you calling me an asshole, you UL hypocrite?  A. My mistake, I’m sorry. I just get a kick out of the A-hole word. You look scared. Come over here. Relax a minute. I’m just going to put my arms around you.  Q: Why? I don’t want— A: Can I just try it?  Q: Well—

A holds Q. 

Loosely at first, so as not to exacerbate fear or suspicion.

Q begins to relax slightly, as A envelops Q with a hug learned and then perfected from her Aunt Fran on her 12^th birthday.

The Lights dim slowly, as Q slowly rests his head on A’s shoulder, humming softly, in spite of himself.

Governor Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina) is the latest high-profile politico to follow his cock to a remote location with a woman not his wife. The media is shocked! His speech about how darn sorry he is that he has “let down” his wife, his four sons, his friends, and his constituents sounded like every other speech you’ve ever heard from the same tired yet inevitable asshole. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to hear someone actually tell the truth about one of these garden-variety sexual debacles?  

How about this…..? 

“I was sick and tired and bored with the sex I was getting from my wife even though she is a loyal and lovely woman. I was craving danger, the smell and feel of a hot, wet, new female, and the kind of explosive orgasms that had long since become a dim memory in my marriage. Of course I’m sorry I got caught because if I hadn’t, I’d still be fucking her every which way but loose. When she had my cock in her mouth I couldn’t even remember I have four sons. The sexual drive in a man like me who is on the brink of becoming old is so deeply intertwined with my naturally narcissistic power-hungry personality and my waning testosterone levels that my dick has become far, far more important to me than God, Country or Family.” 

Refreshing huh? Don’t hold your breath. The truth is extinct, or at least on the heavily endangered list. 

Perhaps we should start a campaign to bring Truth back. It would be costly, but maybe, in the long run, worth it. Restoration of respect for The Truth would immediately resurrect The Theatre, (which has been dead for many, many years) and immediately destroy Religion, which is thriving on bigotry and war all over this bigoted, war-torn planet. (I don’t equate Religion with Faith by the way. Faith is about Hope. Religion is about Fear and Manipulation.) 

“Up With The Truth” would have to be a grass roots movement though. That would be pretty fuckin cool, doncha think? Each of us would have to start in our own small way, in our own little lives. Pretense would be banished in favor of authenticity, and blunt openness would overtake politeness. Very scary stuff. Think of all the clichés we rely upon every day that would suddenly be unavailable to us. No more could you answer the check-out clerk’s query of “How are you today?” with “Fine”. Instead you’d have to say, “Well, being a Percocet addict, and having had an extra one this morning because my lower back hurts like a motherfucker today, I’m actually even a bit foggier than usual, and a little crankypants too because Percocet prevents me from getting a hard-on. I would ask you how you are dear, but I truly don’t care, as I’m completely self-absorbed. Ciao!”  

Rude? Certainly. But a helluva lot more authentic than “Great!” 

That’s only the bottom rung of the ladder though. Telling the truth to your spouse? About everything? To your children? To your parents? The very idea is preposterous, frightening, impossible, no?  

But all of that prospective terror is a piece of proverbial cake compared to the true bottom line: Telling the truth to yourself. 

You’re thinking: He’s written about this before. Forgive me. Our human fascination with self-deception continues to fascinate me. Following are a few of my favorite truest quotes about Truth from some truly Googleable heavyweights.  

If you linger on each for just a few moments, I promise a door will open somewhere that will illuminate something you have long avoided or wrestled with, but have never seen or solved. Linger even longer, and that opened door can lead to a corridor that opens on a field of light. (Hey! I made that up! Pretty fuckin poetic huh? But I believe it to be true. Nothing is truly sadder than a closed door.) 

OK, here are my top 11 pics….. 

ONE. A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and truth.  (Henrick Ibsen) 

TWO. As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.  (Josh Billings) 

THREE. Pain is the doorway to wisdom and to truth.  (Keith Miller) 

FOUR. There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself: an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.  (Antisthenes) 

FIVE. There is no poison on earth more potent, nor half so deadly, as a partial truth mixed with passion.  (Michael J. Tucker) 

SIX. In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.  (Willie Brown) 

SEVEN. What motivates me in art is the ugly and beautiful nature of the truth.  (Corin Nemec) 

EIGHT. We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.  (Pablo Picasso) 

NINE. I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.  (Jeanette Winterson) 

TEN. The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.  (Adolf Hitler) 

ELEVEN. During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.  (George Orwell)

It’s so easy to pick on people for being self-deluded. It’s like picking on dogs for rubbing their assholes on the carpet. It feels good, so we do it.

Perhaps there’s no greater self-delusion than the belief that after death, the wrongs of this world will be righted by a god who obviously sees no need to do anything about them at the present time. Our need for comfort in a cruel world makes perfect sense. Practically everyone I know takes an anti-depressant. And most feel ashamed of it to some degree. But the rest of us are depressed too, even though we may not choose drugs to manage it. And we feel shame too. How can one live in a human body on this small planet we call Earth and not feel shame?

I loved playing a game (that I thought I invented) in college, called The Would You Rather Game. It’s played by giving someone a choice of two things that they either long for, or that they long to avoid, and then having them choose. (The standard reply from people who don’t like this game is “neither”.)

Would you rather have the power to cure all disease, or to end all hunger?

Would you rather spend a drunken, naked evening with Hillary Clinton or Oprah?

Would you rather fuck Barak Obama or Daniel Craig?

Would you rather have your 10 fingernails pulled out with pliers, or eat a quart of shit?

You get the idea.

The game can be made more textured of course by adding additional circumstances, or by negating certain assumptions, for instance: Can I have anesthesia while my fingernails are being yanked out? If so, what kind? Advil? Percocet? Heroin? Whose shit is it? My own? Dick Cheney’s? Can I hold my nose while I eat it? Can I drink something strong afterward to wash it down?

Isn’t life kind of like an ongoing Would You Rather Game? Except in life, you actually do the thing.

Would you rather stay in the crushingly dull marriage, or face life’s trials alone?

Would you rather buy the new furniture, or call the number on your tv screen and support the starving orphan?

Would you rather go without the condom and feel every nerve ending, or risk getting her pregnant?

The self-delusion comes in when we make one choice and pretend we’ve made another, or when we invent reasons for the choice we made that have nothing to do with why we actually made it, and then continue to make it everyday. Self-delusion means avoiding the truth, and when facing the truth leads to fear of consequences more painful than those caused by embracing a lie, then the game is on. 

I saw Elizabeth Edwards telling her story about her husband’s infidelity on tv the other day, and she was suddenly transformed from the fierce, intelligent woman I had always respected and admired, into a foolish, self-deluded object of ridicule.

She shared a bittersweet recollection of her desire for “just one gift” from her husband when he proposed, the one thing she asked him to promise her was that he would always be faithful.  I wonder why she didn’t ask him to eat only oatmeal for the rest of his life, or never to cut his hair, or only to sleep while standing up. It doesn’t really seem that absurd for a virginal young girl in love to make that request of her husband to be, or even for her young husband to be to think he’s telling the truth when he makes that particular promise. I’ve no doubt that when he’s 20 he fully intends to keep it. And women cheat too, it’s not about men vs. women, it’s about refusing to grow up. For Elizabeth Edwards, in her late 50s, still to believe in the tooth fairy? That’s willful denial of reality, or to re-interpret the words of Bill Clinton, it’s a refusal to see what IS is.

I sat there shaking my head watching E.E. while she calmly and in a ladylike manner so typical of her ilk, expressed her self-righteous rage at being betrayed. I wondered if she is also furious that it rains, and pissed off that when you drop something, it falls to the floor.

When her husband confessed to her that he had been unfaithful, he told her he had sex with this woman only once, and, for a long time she believed that.  Now, presumably, his story is that this other woman is the only other woman he’s ever had, and so now she believes that. And all of us watching are to believe that no one knows anything about whether John Edwards is the father of the child the woman birthed 9 months after their affair.

Yes, reality can be quite painful, but it also makes a certain kind of “realistic” sense. Mrs. Edwards was/is articulate, quiet, chubby, dying of cancer, and familiar.  The other woman was/is cynical, aggressive, skinny, bursting with anorexic “healthiness” and an unknown.

As Mark, a sexy, caustic, deceased love of mine, used to say—“Oh those wacky heterosexuals.”

It’s not just heterosexuals of course. I know several homosexual men living in the closet, and the closet has many levels. The bottom level, the deepest layer of the lie in other words, is the one that embraces complete self-delusion. This kind of homosexual does not acknowledge, even to himself, his attractions toward men. God only knows what he thinks about on the rare occasions when he ejaculates. As men, we know it’s impossible to get off without getting aroused, and to be aroused, there must be some communion with the arousing image or idea, even if it’s only in our heads for the last few moments before we squirt it off. The top layer of the closet (and there are several in between top and bottom) are the ones who have frequent sex with men (living on the “down low”) but pretend to their wives, their co-workers, their friends, that they’re straight.

Hey, whatever works. If something is painful we look for a way to sooth that pain, and we usually have a choice. Personally, I prefer taking my pain up front, usually from the acceptance of a difficult truth that I cannot control, and that makes me feel powerless to some degree, but if you’re the type of human being that likes to postpone, the road to denial is paved with our human need to avoid our fear and shame at being human.

Hello!

[For best results, please take a moment to remove all filtering devices before continuing.]

I want to be clear, first, that to me, this isn’t such a big deal, but I said “revelation” because I know I’m in the minority on this (what else is new :o)

Quick essential background: For the past 15 years I’ve had lower back pain, but a year and a half ago my neck became a bigger issue (this follows a year after a diagnosis of stage IV follicular lymphoma in my bone marrow that was temporarily but effectively halted by six chemotherapies) and my neck’s gotten worse. I’ve had a bunch of procedures in out-patient clinics at both Cedars-Sinai and UCLA (I have another next week) and I’ve seen Lots of Doctors, Two Chiropractors, An Acupuncturist, Masseurs, and A Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Skip all the snore-inducing detail, as it’s beside the point.

I’m planning to end my life. (Yes, that was it.) Though I haven’t settled on a time frame yet.  If particular kinds of unwanted decline occur with the neck it could possibly be as soon as the end of this year, but likely not for several more years, (or until the cancer returns), or until I’m unwilling to continue integrating whatever pain level I’m at. On a 1 to 10 scale of 1 being Life Is A Precious Gift!, and 10 being Goodbye Grover’s Corners!—as I write this today, I’m at about a 7.5 - 8. (The 1 to 10 scale is invaluable to bypass relying on words, which are slippery when being used to convey meaning.)

I’ve evolved during the last two years into an understanding and acceptance that this decision suits me like an expensive custom-tailored shroud, and that the natural span of my life feels right at maybe 55 years, give or take a few in either direction. And rather than being scary, it’s become a comfort, more a relief than a sadness. But there WAS an important part of it that was really troubling me, that was making me anxious and resentful. And I couldn’t think of a way to solve that part. I knew that many people I rarely or never see, PEOPLE who love and respect me, would hear through the grapevine that “Victor D’Altorio committed suicide!”

“Suicide” is the ONLY word in our English language for the voluntary ending of one’s own life. We don’t require more than ONE WORD for it because we only have ONE WAY of thinking about it. The word suicide conjures up indelible images of a tortured, misfit teenager hanging from a rope in the garage, or an alienated husband and father, full of suppressed rage, excusing himself from the dinner table and blowing his head off with a shotgun he’d kept hidden under the sofa in the basement.  I knew a lovely sweet woman in her 60s when I was in college, who had me to Thanksgiving dinner one year. At age 20 I perceived her as gracious, intelligent, and too controlled.  She shot her head off with a revolver in her attic a year later.  When I heard the news, I heard confirmation that I had only seen her surface. 

Suicides are rash, violent, self-hating acts that almost invariably look like the giant “Fuck YOU” that they are to the people left behind.  Suicide is favored by people who keep a strangle hold on intense emotion for years, and then can’t handle the pressure they’ve put on the valve. And news of a suicide either comes Out of the Blue, or after a Cry for Help and maybe even a Failed Attempt.  Regardless, it’s a terrible, unsettling SHOCK. 

BUT, suddenly, I got this terrific, freeing, fucking idea to go PUBLIC with it. That was the obvious solution that had eluded me. I had just weeks before set up this blogsite without the slightest intention of writing about anything but Acting. But my naturally and unabashedly prone-to-self-revelation style of communication suits this confessional blog format. So now if you disapprove after hearing my personal, detailed POV, that’s ok too, because at least my departure won’t be news that came at you Out of the Blue.

Some of Those PEOPLE who love and respect me, (that I referred to earlier), are former students who’ve told me (sometimes repeatedly) that my class had been a catalyst for some type of important change of direction in their lives. So—to you artsy types (read: actors) who love me, (but certainly not excluding those others of you who love me for entirely different and equally valid reasons)—if you’ve been in my classes over the years, and you had a great, view-altering experience there, you remember me with affection and admiration and respect.  (There are plenty who don’t, I’m sure, but no need to address them, as they’re not reading this. If they are, they’ll be tickled to hear I’ll be gone soon.) 

Well, guess what? I have affection, admiration and respect for you too. 

I LOVE YOU TOO. 

I’m not writing to ask for your sympathy, or your approval. When I got this idea, I felt an instant release, a weight lifted. I’m writing to prevent you from feeling shocked, hurt, and maybe even betrayed by An Event so easily seen in A Much Too Conventional Way.  I feared your reaction would be: Oh my god, I can’t believe it! How could he do such a thing? Was everything he said in class a lie?!  I didn’t know him at all.

Nope. You knew me, and know me.  I’m the same guy.  The values I’ve been teaching in my classes for 20 years are what?  Truth (The big one). Freedom. (To embrace your own instincts and to behave (onstage and off) in accordance with the freedom they can provide and its boundaries.) A Disregard for Politeness and Conventional Behavior (pretense).

Why am I ready to move on?  Is the pain that bad?  Well, bad enough that I can honestly say it sucks dead moose cock. But in perspective with The Vast Array of Human Suffering, my gosh it’s not even a blip on the radar. But life is always a trade-off.  If you have this, then you can’t have that.  If you stay with the adoring guy who’s an emotional zero Charlotte, then you don’t have to experience an orgasm, or your terror of being unloved, or alone. If you keep playing that badly-written role on that wildly popular TV show Mike, your soul will shrink, but you can have 3 houses and beautiful women fucking you 24/7. Everything comes with a price, with an upside and a downside, and there’s always a choice to be made. So, in my case, the physical pain sits on one side of the scale, and “life’s pleasures” sit on the other.

There IS a downside to unconditionally loving parents btw. They prepare you for a world that doesn’t exist. Which also has an upside and a downside. (See drawings of Martin Escher.)

The Avenues That Remain Open to me (some personal, some professional) are of no interest any longer as they’ve been duly and fully explored. And The Avenues Of Some Remaining Genuine Interest (some personal, some professional) are closed.  These are truths to be accepted. Magical Thinking in the Face of Reality doesn’t work for me. If you have a fantasy at age 50 that you’re going to become A Movie Star or A Rock Star or The President of the United States, that’s actually a lovely, wonderful thing (no sarcasm) as long as you’re still enjoying auditioning, or singing in bars, or running for office. My discarded fantasy?  The artistic directorship of A Small but Moneyed Regional Theatre.  In spite of all the Cheap Sentiment in the cliché that “There’s just nothing to come close to the thrill of great, live theatre” I still feel it. It was my first and deepest love. But at this point, I might as well be dreaming about a ride on a flying Unicorn.

For at least six months or so I’ve discussed my thoughts about My Life As My Own with my two sisters, who are unconditionally loving, (as my parents were—more about them later if you like acute suffering-before-death stories), and also with some friends, and several doctors (easily the freakiest part).

Of course, as people tend to do, these Responders fall into TWO distinct categories when they hear a POV which is painful or difficult to understand and accept.  BOTH types respond in a way that’s part of a larger, familiar pattern. The way someone deals with an uncomfortable truth is about them, about who they are, it has nothing whatever to do with the particular uncomfortable truth.

The First Group goes into denial.  They’re not in the least impressed with what I consider to be the thoughtful Authenticity of My View.  Some characteristic responses: “You don’t mean that” OR “You’re just depressed, it’s a phase” OR “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk”(a big one) OR “Have you thought about taking a pottery class?” (You can substitute any activity you imagine I may have overlooked in my quest for meaning [Origami, Snorkeling, Anti-Depressants, Collecting Salt & Pepper Shakers] that would suddenly reverse my instincts and before I knew it, I’d be blowing out 80 candles on a cake wondering Where did the time go?!) 

So this first group handles what’s difficult, to some degree, by staying on the Surface (and degree is the key, or, as the politicians are fond of saying, “the Devil is in the details”). In extreme cases, these people pretend that the thought or event causing the pain isn’t really taking place at all.  This group pays a really high price for the patterned avoidance in their lives, missing opportunities to grow and change, sometimes realizing they’ve been in denial much later on, sometimes never seeing it at all, depending on how much unexamined fear they have of the related facts.

The second type LISTENS. Even if they feel frightened, sad, confused, angry etc. they listen.  They may express back how they feel, or they may choose to keep it to themselves, but they’re more interested in HEARING than Judging, Labeling, or trying To Fix, Persuade, or Convince.  (There’s nothing really wrong with the latter btw if it comes from love, and as long as it follows listening.  If it precedes listening though, or if it’s a substitute for listening, that’s a problem that usually comes back to bite em in the ass later on.)

My amazing friend and roommate Ann Marie started out as the first type, and has evolved, slowly, into someone who is now much closer to the second, I’m proud to say, partly as a result of terrific discussions of these issues for hours on end between us over the last several years.  Her transformation was a difficult struggle, having been raised by parents who hadn’t the slightest concept of personal autonomy. She is (in her own words) very grateful to have evolved out of her old way of seeing.  Her love and support of me has been a gift in my life. (She insists I add that the same is true for her.)

Living in THIS body that I’ve loved living in for the last 25 years (the first 25 were spent in the closet, not in my body) is no fun at all anymore.  Are there other people on this small planet we call The Earth living with much, much worse?  Oh MY GOD YES. Clearly any POV is rooted in expectation: What we’ve become accustomed to, What we may never have had to begin with, and What we’re willing (or not) to do without. 

There are A Lot of People who are just plain Afraid to Die, or afraid that ending their lives will carry the same punishment as if they had gone on a killing spree at the Mall. I asked a woman in the waiting room of the Pain Clinic at UCLA if she had ever considered suicide, (hadn’t said anything about me) and she said, “Oh, yes, many times” but that she couldn’t do it because it was against her religion, and then eyed me with pity and a bit of suspicion, adding that she had “heard that if you kill yourself you’re doomed to keep coming back as lower and lower creatures.” Fear of Hell can be a powerful reason to get up each morning.

It was absolutely the reason my 87 year old father struggled onward for years in the face of bad, constant back and neck pain and congestive heart failure (which is what killed him. The back pain never would have. FYI, I moved back to Ohio in 2002 for 4 years to take care of him and prevent the nursing home ending.) If I had a nickel for every time he said to me, in bad pain, “Oh Victor, I just want to die” I’d have about ten dollars. One day, wondering if he actually meant it, I replied, as you would to a small child that you don’t want to frighten, “Dad, you can die whenever you want if you’re really done. All you have to do is stop taking the 15 medications that are keeping your body alive WAY past the point where it’s capable of sustaining itself on its own, and you will die. I can make sure we get good pain meds for you so that you won’t suffer while your body is shutting down.”  His pleading reply: “Oh Victor, I can’t commit suicide.” 

What could I say?  To see that as suicide was TRULY A Trip Through The Looking Glass for me into a world of complete and utter absurdity also know as The World We All Live In Everyday In America.  Just because forcing our bodies to keep living far beyond what’s natural happens to be the PARADIGM for Dying in this Country, that doesn’t make it any less twisted.  Our health care system is collapsing partly under the weight of keeping alive the barely alive.  Dad was raised, of course, strict Catholic (read: Ritualized Insanity) and was terrified to die.  This isn’t me extrapolating btw, he told me this many times.  He believed that at his death he would be judged by a God who would punish him rigorously for his unforgivable sins, which he would not reveal to me. And certainly not for my lack of prodding him. Sins of Infidelity, I guess. What else could the guy have done? He ended up spending the last year and a half of his life in a nursing home anyway because he was so fragile he needed 24 hour care.

My mother died under very different circumstances.  Circumstances which made my father’s look like a stroll through the park on a summer day. Her body was pretty much healthy until the very end, but she fell victim to extreme short-term memory loss and a crippling anxiety that resulted from an almost constant, innate awareness of what was actually happening to her.  This process took about six or seven years, got bad about halfway through, and the last two years of her life were like something out of Edgar Alan Poe.  Trapped in the best nursing facility we could afford for her that was crammed with some of the most heartbreaking human beings I’d ever seen, she descended slowly into an existential, Alzheimer-ish anguish that you wouldn’t wish on your worst fucking enemy.

The woman accepted my homosexuality (as did my dad) as if it were a gift from the fates designed to teach her to understand things about human experience she could not otherwise have learned.  At age 26, when I brought home for Christmas my first love, my mother insisted that he and I sleep together in my parent’s bed (which was king-sized) and she and my dad spent those two nights sharing the double bed that had been mine as a kid. “Oh, that bed isn’t big enough for two grown men!” The night we arrived, we sat in the living room stuffed with her Italian Holiday Dinner for Company. Kevin and I were on the couch, maybe two feet of space between us, while we chatted with my parents.  Early on my mother said “Sit closer together you two, put your arms around each other, I want to see you act like you do in your own home, you’re in love.”  Kevin started to cry.  He couldn’t believe it, as his parents were like most: blind. My mother shattered his paradigm for “mother”.  How did a little Italian woman, raised Catholic in the 1920s and 30s manage to actually SEE us?  She was a cool chick.

The night before she had to leave her home of 40 years because it was simply not safe for her to be there any more, I was absolutely wracked with guilt because I wasn’t willing to go into her bedroom and end her life in some painless way. It should have been easy to do with drugs. We put animals to sleep painlessly. And she wanted that, as she told me so many times over the years, not joking in the least, to please put her out of her misery if anything like that kind of fate befell her.  In the end, I chickened out even though I knew that it was not only the right thing to do, but a way of repaying the unconditional love she had always shown me on instinct.  I chose, selfishly, and absolutely out of fear, not to risk going to jail for murder, which could easily have happened, especially in Ohio.  I felt RAGE at a system that prevented me from sparing my mother this obscene, horrific loss of her sanity and her dignity. Rage.

And here’s another thing.  What is it about longevity that we prize so highly? I don’t see dying voluntarily at 55 as any sadder or less fortunate than dying in a nursing home at 80. In fact I see it as more fortunate. So I’m not feeling sorry for myself in this.  I actually feel like a bit of a maverick, as much as I hate to have to use that word. I’ve always been a Quality-not-Quantity kind of guy (except with doughnuts).  Scott, my sweetie-pie number three and partner for six years, was an amazing man: beautiful, sexy, much smarter than I, articulate, funny, opinionated (to put it mildly) and also the most truly even-tempered person I’ve ever known.  He challenged me in every way, tickled me, captured my heart, made me rock hard, and when he died in 1996, he left me a better guy for having spent those six years with him.  I knew he was going to die when I met him. I had no idea if that would take 5 years or 20, but he was the point. Did we have to go on for decades to be a good thing?  It was an amazing six years. Think of all the people who stay together because they’re too frightened to part, or care too much about what other people will think, who don’t make each other happy any more (maybe never did), but they’ve bought the “forever” farm. 

In our culture you can’t really say “I love you” and expect to be taken seriously.  You have to say “I love you AND I will continue to love you FOREVER”. How on earth do you know that?  What a dumb, short-sighted thing to promise. Things happen, growth happens, people change. I think that’s a good thing, even if they part. Growth is not nearly as highly prized in America as longevity.

I don’t have to make The CHOICE to have the last third of my life be all about hospitals and the pain of disintegration, which is where I’m headed, (faster than some, slower than others of course). I can choose my own path, as I always have. (When you wanted to do something because your friends were doing it, didn’t your mother ask “If they all jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” [Mothers learned these lines at a School for Mothers they all attended.] Well, for me, Jumping Off The Bridge equals Losing Control Of Your Life and ending up with No Quality Of Life At All in an endless loop called Our Healthcare System, and then perhaps in a nursing home. Elvira (do you love that name? I couldn’t make that up) should be proud that just because everybody else is doing it, I’m not jumping.)

I prefer to accept my desire to get on to whatever fate has in store for us next.  For better or worse, we’re all headed there, and procrastination has never been a comfort for me. Quite the opposite. I’ve never done my best work under pressure of a deadline.  In college, I was fast asleep at midnight the night before the paper was due, having finished it days earlier. My roommate, like almost everyone else, was typing into the wee hours.  I can procrastinate if something’s optional, but if I have to do something, I’ve never found comfort in putting it off.

I hope you can hear both the consistency and the authenticity of my POV. I’ve lived my life for me. I’ve had wonderful, close years of intimacy with four different amazing men (three are gone, the first is still my dearest friend), and some other shorter, but in some ways, equally terrific times with maybe four or five others who were great, loving guys.  I’ve acted and directed and taught classes in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and enjoyed most of it enormously (though I won’t pass up the opportunity to say that the greatest exception was being directed by, in Hamlet for god’s sake, the truly talent-FREE Charles Fee.) If you were ever in my class, you certainly remember me gleefully expressing my opinions (just like here) and encouraging you to do the same, and then to go farther. I loved teaching and I think it always showed (though currently I’m not missing it).  So don’t cry for me Argentina.  My departure of choice isn’t a tragedy in the least.  I look back on my life with no regrets about any of the choices I made.  Of course I had goals that I wasn’t able to achieve, (who doesn’t other than Barak Obama?) but that’s OK, I’m a person, not a crowned prince, I don’t have to have everything I want.  And it’s easy to be ok about it because I’ve had SO much.  I have no regrets about what I should have tried, and missed.  I just can’t think of a thing.

FYI, When I experimented with LSD in the 80s I had some spectacular, unforgettable visions.  I remember riding my bicycle fast, in city traffic, shirtless on a sweltering hot day in Chicago, sweating, testosterone pumping, Hyper Aware (Heaven for me) of the finely tuned workings of both machines at maximum power, tripping my brains out and having the time of my life.  No, certainly not everybody’s cup of tea, but for me it was a real highlight. A flagrant flight of reckless youth and an experience absolutely off the charts for sheer exhilaration and defiance of death. I also had sex on acid with my second squeeze, Mark, a math professor at University of Chicago, who looked like the cliché of an academic or librarian (but with a much sexier body which he dressed in the ugliest clothes I had ever seen on an adult male homo, and which I loved.). If you took off his glasses though, his inner beast was released, and all bets were off. At the time we were passionately in love so the sex was already A+. But on LSD—well, the only way I can explain is this: from the time it takes effect, every square inch of skin on your body feels like the skin on (for girls) your unbearably engorged clitoris just prior to “The Big O”, OR, (for boys) the head of your throbbing cock a few seconds before you squirt it off. (It’s not my intention here to recommend the drug, just to share a fond recollection.)

Ultimately your reactions are about you. (Sorry to get all Deepack on you but it’s true.) I don’t mean that flippantly or as a challenge.  I, of course want you to be happy for me, to feel happy that I won’t have to face years of pain.  Rather than burden your heart, I want you to help me celebrate my choice with a fresh look at an old standby. A good analogy would be how you might feel for a close co-worker who took a much better job in Europe. You’d miss him but Hey, good for him! He’s off to something better!

You see why this is about YOU.  What we imagine After Death is such a private tunnel for each of us, having been raised in a culture that lives in Denial of It.  Religion, Superstition, Fear of the Unknown, Hollywood Movies, Old Wives Tales and the like. It’s a kooky, sticky, thorny jumble of fears.

I don’t fear it.  I don’t know why, I just don’t.  There ARE things I fear, (living in pain, the effects of Denial, Republicans), but death? not so much. If THE VOID is coming, that’s fine with me. NOTHING-ness sounds like a Heaven too good to be true. On the other hand, if the judgment of a vengeful god is coming, I’m completely fucked, but so are all of you.  And if a merciful god awaits, we’ll all be forgiven for everything, isn’t that what mercy is? My personal instinct about “what comes after” is consistent with my belief that God As Creator is myth. I wonder if maybe the energy in our bodies (spirit, if you prefer that word), may continue on in some form once the body dies. I imagine the memory of one’s Human Identity is gone in almost all cases, so the energy, finally freed of the flesh, becomes part of a larger pool? Maybe? (I’m not putting any money on it, it’s just an idea if I’m forced to speculate. On the 1 to 10 CERTAINTY Scale, I’m at a 2 on this.)

But beware the notion of a god with human-style boundaries for forgiveness.  To me that god has surely been created by people who need Him to resemble THEM (it’s always a man of course, unless a 70s-style feminist is using humor to make a political point).  How will He judge the various cases before him? Will the girl who threw her baby into a dumpster on prom night be forgiven?  Will the circumstances that led her to it matter to Him at all, or will He stick to a firm NO dumpster/NO Heaven rule? Will Jeffrey Dahmer (evil incarnate, I think we can all agree) be forgiven?  Certainly God, of all people (!) should understand that that pitiful, twisted, bloodthirsty creature was absolutely compelled to cut the heads off living things. He started doing it when he was, like, four. Certainly GOD would understand that, and punish the demon that compelled him, rather than the unfortunate man possessed.  Or is that just too sensible an image of a merciful god?

Congratulations on making it to The End, and THANKS for listening.