Hi you all, I love you.

I didn’t want to tolerate the ongoing pain any more. I’ve left my body behind and I now live in a bodiless state! That sounds fantastic! In fact, heavenly. Forget about the streets paved with gold and all the other stuff, to be free of this body will be amazing and enough. I feel the approach of relief, of release, and also sadness and some shame that I couldn’t adapt to the pain to keep you from your sorrow.

Ending my pain is not a negation of my love for you. It’s only proof of my love for me.

Telling the truth about it to you, for the past year, in these blogs, on the phone, and face to face in so many cases, is proof of my love for you.

For all of you who have understood and loved me as I needed to be loved, you’ve given me the greatest gift I can think of. For those of you who had not the inclination to understand my choice and accept it, please try and forgive me. It was never my intention to hurt you. I understand that you wanted me to continue until the pain was more clearly unbearable, and I wish I could have given you that, but I didn’t have it in me.

I came out at twenty-five because I’d reached the limit of my willingness to deceive myself, and the people I love. I know where I’m headed, (more pills, more procedures, more pain) and it’s just not a fit for me, like heterosexuality never was, or a 9-5 job/life.

Fear of death might have stopped me, as it does with many, but I don’t have any. I don’t know why. I suppose the certainty in my gut that whatever’s coming, especially nothing (nothing means no pain too) is better than continuing in this body that always hurts.

I choose to follow the example of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which MTM took off the air before it got crummy and unwelcome in our homes. I still laugh a lot every day. I’m still myself, still Vittorio. The last chapter of my life is this one, The Struggle, not the one called The Guy Who Used To Be Vic, about a humorless man always groaning with pain and in complaint.

If you didn’t get a goodbye call from me, it’s because I felt strongly it would make my departure more difficult for you than it already is. That to know I was going a few days or weeks before I went would subject you to a deadline kind of anxiety, waiting days for the final news. And also, even though I feel certain about it now, I’m keeping open the possibility that I’ll change my mind at the last minute, and if I do, it would be so rude to subject you to days of dread, and then not to go. I’d be like The Boy Who Cried Wolf on steroids.

Certainly everyone agrees I’ve given more than ample time, emotion, and explanation to making my view clear and my feelings understandable. I’ve had so many long, long, outrageous, funny, difficult, comforting, contentious, honest, provocative, nutty, spiritual, unique, stream-of-consciousness conversations with so many of you, planning for my departure. These talks were a peeling away of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual layers for me, (as I guess they were for you too), which I truly, truly loved. Maybe it’s in my DNA from generations of nosey Italians who want to know the bottom line about everyone.

I spent some time work shopping my play, by the way, with a few wonderful actors who are also wonderful people, and ultimately decided not to go forward because Vic the director just didn’t have enough passion for the script, and Vic the writer didn’t have enough passion for rewrites. I’m not sad about that at all, though I hated disappointing the actors, and I really enjoyed working on it for a few weeks. They were so sweet about telling me how much they learned in the process, and then it was a big relief to let it go.

Friends have offered money to produce other plays as well, but my pilot light seems to have gone out. It’s a torch I just don’t have any real desire to try and carry any more.

Please be kind to Ann Marie and support her in her mourning. She has a fuller understanding of my view than anyone else. Not only have we talked intimately and often about everything, but she has shared with me the losses I’ve had since the chemo, and the pain in my body. She gets it.

You’ll discover if you talk with her that she doesn’t feel betrayed by my departure, nor does she see it as a broken promise, or as something that could have been prevented by psychiatry or anti-depressants, or as a mistake of fate. It makes sense to her for me, because she understands who I am, who I’ve always been, how I’ve lived my life, and what happened with the cancer, and then the back and neck pain. She understands the last part experientially.

Don’t misunderstand, she’s very sad to lose me, but she and I agree that we came in and out of each others lives in a way that seems miraculous, and because of our love for each other, which is huge, part of her is not sad, but happy for me, and proud to have supported me on my way to a place of no more pain.

Both of us acknowledged an unwillingness to live with ongoing pain when we negotiated, from the first conversation we had almost 7 years ago, what we were willing to pledge to the other, and what we weren’t. When we made that pact, we both expected to be healthy forever of course. I couldn’t feel right about the decision to go if I was breaking a contract I made with Ann, but this was something we were both explicit about not promising.

Ann is an amazing person who kept all her promises under very unexpectedly tough circumstances for us both. I never doubted she would, as we know each other’s hearts. We’ve had a rough time with all the stuff we’ve gone through, with me as the patient and Ann as the advocate. I played the advocate role, both with Scott and my dad, and it’s harder than being the patient in many ways. Ann has done it wonderfully. I love you sweetie. Thank you for meaning what you said, and for walking your talk.

If you want to contact Ann Marie, her email is: annmariebuydos@yahoo.com  She may be blogging from this site in the future as well.

If y’all find yourselves missing me some evening, rent Lars and the Real Girl. It’s become my favorite movie lately, it’s wonderful, and it’s about love.

I LOVE YOU !!!!!

Vic

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.

Google gives you a neato-keen link to the statistics for who reads your blog. I have a smattering of people who are reading in Europe and Asia. I get a huge kick out of that. I think it must be because I sometimes use words like pussy, cock and squirt, and they’ve done a search. Whatever their prurient reasons (it takes one to know one), I’m tickled that 10-15 people on those two continents are reading me. Hi you guys! VAGINA!!!

An old friend was urging me to get back into therapy a few weeks ago. Her intentions were spotless. She wants me to keep living, and to rediscover my passion for living. I maintain I never lost it, and that I know what’s in my head and my heart. She told me I was arrogant to believe that. No doubt she’s right. I told her she was. And I love her for saying that. She came knocking on my door with a bag of food and a bunch of determination to get me to a shrink (after I had emailed her to tell her not to visit and bring lunch on that particular day). She said she’d be glad to pay for the therapy. How can you argue with an intention like that? A sweetie. An arrogant sweetie, but a sweetie. Well, it takes one to know one. For hours we talked about lots of things besides my assertion that therapy would surely do the opposite of what she intended and hasten my demise. She stuck her nose in where and how she could. After we talked, she smiled at me with warm affection while I gobbled up the food she brought me, along with 2 of the 3 desert choices. When she left I felt not criticized. I felt loved.

But of course I was raised in the school of Stick-Your-Nose-In love. People are great aren’t they? The ones that love you. They listen, and argue, and laugh, and reveal themselves in all their nutty humanity. If only I had a buck for every time someone said to me: I’ve never told this to anyone else. I know some great, juicy stuff about people that would flip your frosted sugar cookies right out the window. I’ll never tell any of it (unless you’re my dead father), but so many people have told me stuff nobody else knows. Mainly, I think, because I ask. Specific questions. Specificity is key.

I was driving my (then 85-year-old) Dad to an outpatient procedure in downtown Cleveland about 5 years ago, which was a bi-annual check of his pacemaker, and as we turned a prominent corner he said: “Hey! This is the corner where I used to pick up girls.” He was referring to behavior that took place in the late 1930s and early 40s.

Me: Girls? You mean prostitutes, right?

Dad: (with a smile that means duh!) Sure, what do you think.

Me: Good girls wouldn’t do anything right? Regular girls.

Dad: No. They didn’t do much.

Me: They’d hang out on this corner?

Dad: (warm smile) Uh-huh.

Me: How much did it cost?

Dad: Two dollars.

Me: Wow, that’s a real bargain.

Dad: You think?

Me: (offended) Don’t you?

Dad: (sheepish) I guess.

Me: What did you get for the two bucks?

Dad: Huh?

Me: What did they do for two bucks?

Dad: (again, duh!) What do ya think? They’d screw ya.

Me: Anything else?

Dad: (momentarily distracted, looking out the window) What?

Me: Would they suck your cock?

Dad: Sometimes.

Me: Sounds good to me.

Dad: Yeah. But you couldn’t ask for it.

Me: Oh.

(Dad shakes his head signifying it would have been a terrible faux-pas to ask for it)

Me: Why not?

Dad. They’d do it if they wanted to, but it was up to them.

[Needless to say, I absolutely LOVE the notion of the prostitute being offended by the request for a blow-job. Who says things never change?]

Me: That makes sense. Did they usually do it?

(Dad looks pensive)

Dad: Sometimes. Yeah.

Me: So it was a real compliment if they did.

Dad: I guess.

Me: Well if they didn’t have to. That meant they liked you.

Dad: I don’t know.

Me: Then you’d screw em.

(Dad throws shade meaning What else?)

Me: Did you kiss em?

Dad: (surprised) Yeah. Sure. Of course.

Me: Oh, I rarely kissed a guy if I was having casual sex. Sometimes but not usually.

Dad: But you kissed your boyfriends?

Me: Well of course.

Dad: I thought so, yeah.

Me: That was love.

Dad: I know.

Me: Were they pretty?

Dad: Oh yeah.

Me: Did you see the same ones more than once?

Dad: I think so.

Me: Did you have a favorite one?

Dad: Oh…

Me: Yeah?

Dad: There was one girl who was beauty-ful…she had red hair…I think...

Me: Did you date her too?

Dad: (startled) Huh?

Me: Did you ask her on a date?

Dad: (an Are-you-crazy? look) Noooooo.

Me: Why not?

Dad: Victor. They were whooores.

(pause)

Dad: But she was a real nice girl. She was real friendly.

(pause)

Me: Where did you do it?

Dad: (thinking) They’d take you to a room.

Me: What was the sex like compared to sex with mom?

Dad: None of your business.

Me: What do you mean?

Dad: You speak English.

Me: You’re not offended?

Dad: Why should I be offended?

Me: Then tell me.

Dad: You want to know everything.

Me: Well that’s not news.

(Dad laughs)

Dad: You’re too nosey. I’m not talking anymore.

Me: If you don’t tell me I won’t feed you anymore.

(Dad gives his trademark matter of fact laugh with a shrug)

I don’t know how far away I am from the release from this body. I’m not being tricky using that word. “Death” doesn’t seem appropriate or applicable as it sounds like a bad thing. A thing you wish wouldn’t happen. A thing to be avoided if possible.

In my late 20’s, when I assumed I would die of AIDS at some point in my 30s, I used to have dreams that I would die a hero’s death. I would hear an anguished cry for help and rush headlong into the road to save a child who’d stumbled in front of a speeding car, or, impulsively dive into the freezing water under the brittle ice where some hapless kids had unwisely skated out too far onto a lake after dark. My muscles would propel me towards the thrilling resolution of the fateful accident, bypassing any concern for my own safety, to snatch from death this lucky kid who would surely grow up to be the next generation’s Shirley Chisholm or Henri Matisse. (I would be dead as a result of the rescue, but covered in glory, not Kaposi Sarcoma lesions.)

What a drama queen, no? And, could one’s life end any more romantically than that? Talk about turning lemons into lemonade.

To give freedom or free movement to something: release. That’s lovely, isn’t it? You picture thousands of doves gliding up into a blue sky on the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., or the sudden, desperate joy on the faces of two young female journalists as they are unwittingly ushered into an unknown room by their North Korean captors to find waiting a gleaming Bill Clinton.

My body is North Korea now, and I dream, daily, of escape. I fantasize about a bodiless state of being unanchored to the fucked-up vertebra in my back and neck. But in addition to captivity in my body, I’m also a prisoner of love. And so I also fantasize about being un-loved. I dream of a life where no one cares about me, especially whether I live or die. What if everyone who loves me were suddenly indifferent? Divorced from their affection for me. Bliss. Or if I suddenly stopped loving all the people on this little planet we sometimes pretend to ourselves we don’t see as the center of the universe. Sheer heaven.

Because with love come responsibilities. Rights and responsibilities. With divorce comes freedom. Loneliness perhaps, and freedom.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and feeling about the people with whom I am in love. Ann Marie and Marge and Chelle and Kerin and Sherry and Moira and Ellen and Patrice and Marlene and Debbie and Laura and Carol and Susan and Janice and Kay and Mona and Melissa and Amanda and Bibi and that’s only a partial list of the women.

I say in love because they love me back as passionately and completely as I love them, not because of any sexual dimension to the relationship (god forbid). Meryl didn’t make the list because I love her more than she loves me.

There are two men though that I do have to list. They are, when push comes to proverbial shove, the actual reasons I am still here. They are both in their twenties and they have both begun to feel to me like what I imagine sons would feel like. I’m proud of who they are in a way that really takes me by surprise, since I had nothing whatever to do with shaping who they are. Their names are Bill and Brendan and they’re both made of a fiber that impresses and humbles me. They seem to me to grow every day with their struggle to understand what it means to be an artist, a partner to the woman that each of them loves, and a citizen of the world.

I see myself so clearly in both of them, and I’m flattering myself in saying that. The world they live in as the young men that they are is so much more predatory than the one I remember from my twenties. They are so much more aware than I was at that age, and what they may face in the years to come makes me want to punch in the nose anyone who may interfere with their future happiness.

Bill was originally a student of mine, is now my friend, and is about to begin the process of raising money so that he can produce a play that I have written, which he wants me to direct, and in which he wants to play one of six very challenging roles. I am trying to talk him out of it. Brendan found me through a close mutual friend and has begun making a documentary film about me and my (in his word: rational) relationship to my own death, which fascinates him, and which, by his own admission, he now hopes will not take place anywhere in the near future.

When I think about causing pain to either of them I feel a terrible despair. I have been absolutely honest with them both about the precariousness of my relationship with my enemy—my body, and I do not want them to be burdened by having loved me when I’m gone.

I also want my pain-free body back. And I know that both are impossible.

When I push them about their emotional stake in these projects (and I have, quite hard), they insist they are not trying to keep me alive, but that it’s just a good fringe benefit of a more selfish desire on their own parts. I believe they believe they are telling me the truth. And I suppose they are, finally. But unlike a parent who throws himself in front of a speeding car, or dives into icy water to save his son from harm, I have the oddest and most acute awareness of being not just the parent, but also the harm. I look forward to my body becoming ash.

It’s strange to feel that way about my own body now. The problem is I don’t feel quite that way about my life. But we only get the one vessel. And the way that the one impacts the other is cruel. My life has become about dealing with the dysfunction of my body. Certainly not an original story. But I still don’t know if I’m a heroic enough character to press forward in spite of the pain. When I say “stay tuned” I’m talking as much to myself as I am to you.

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.

I like to know every detail of my friend’s sexual lives. (What a shocker, huh?) I have asked many of them, most actually, at one time or another, if I could watch them having sex. They always laugh as if I’m joking. I tell them I’m not, then they take me seriously, freeze for a moment, laugh some more, and say No.

It happened often in my life that men (and a woman or two) wanted to watch me and my partner (each of the 4 of them) do the deed, and I can count the total number of times I said yes on one hand. Being watched was never my thing. So I get it.

But I also want to watch everyone shower, pick their noses, fight with each other (especially about the things that truly, truly hurt), accept or reject their fears, check out their poop before flushing (as we always do) and wash, peel and chop vegetables for a big dinner salad. 

 The way we do these things, and how we feel about the doing of them as we do them, reveals character. Much more than what we say. And especially if we don’t know anyone is watching, which is why there is nothing more defeating to an actor than self-consciousness. Because it distorts the way we do. 

And nothing drives us in a more primary way than lust. Or lack of it.  

The reason I love the idea of watching almost anyone having sex is that sexual behavior contains the core truth of who we are. (My God! wouldn’t it be fantastic to have a camera in the bedroom of Barak and Michelle Obama?! Or in almost any nursing home in America, where women outnumber men, like, 12 to 1? Apparently many old-folks homes are fervid looney-bins of lust. Disgusting you say? Well, hotness is not much of a factor in my interest, I have a more anthropological view of the nasty.) 

Human beings can’t get off unless we connect to something real. Something that really floats the boat, regardless of gender, age, or orientation. And sexually, what’s real in that moment can be the deepest soulful kind of intuitive lust-driven love (that would be at the far left end of the scale), or, a need for a complete sexual negation of the other person (which is all the way on the far right end). Of course there are millions of permutations in between, but the core truth of who we are lies right between our legs.

How shallow! How sad! How male! say the 70s feminists (and all their unfortunate disciples), and a whole host of other sexually disconnected folk whose sexual lives exist mainly in their own heads. Show me an unhappy marriage and I’ll show you a sex life that doesn’t meet the physical or emotional needs of either partner, and is laden with unconscious, lust-defeating behavior. Show me an actor who isn’t in touch with his or her own sexual response, and I’ll show you an actor who fakes almost everything.

The only industry in America which boasted steep, ever-climbing revenues throughout this entire Bush-driven debacle of an economy is Pornography.

Art (which, importantly, includes porn) tells the truth about life as it is, and as it should be. (Politics: No. Jimmy Carter told the truth about the coming Energy fiasco in the 70s, and nobody wanted to hear it. Ronald Reagan, a.k.a. Pollyanna, followed, and ushered in the disastrous era of the giant gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle with his preposterous and self-serving trickle-down economics, and everybody wanted to hear it.)

Why is SEX the driving force behind almost everything? Well, men run almost everything, for one thing, but sex is really about the only thing I can think of that gets better the more you give up control of it. Women get that because their bodies are designed for surrender. Which doesn’t mean they can’t have a great time taking the lead, but I have never met one woman in my life that enjoyed being on top until she knew her man could take charge of her first and get her off by forcing her to submit. (And by forcing her I mean of course with her enthusiastic permission.)

All the men I ever slept with who were dreadful in the sack were stuck on the same issue: control. They either insisted on having it, or insisted on giving it up. Both of which are total bores. What makes sex sizzle, and then keeps it sizzlin over time is an ebb and flow of the chemistry of control between the partners.

As mostly a lifelong homo, I was known as a “top”. I really didn’t like having the other guy’s hardon up my ass. But it was a lot of fun when he threw me down, and urgently impaled himself on mine. I was technically still “on top” being inside him, but in those moments of demanding self-impalement, he was running the show. I knew how it was going to end, but seeing how we were going to get there together was half the fun.

I also had lots of sex where penetration was not on the menu. For me, ass play only resulted (with a few thrilling exceptions, granted) from deeper love feelings, wanting to be joined with the other person. I understood completely when everyone was freaking out during the Clinton era that young women all over the country were confirming Monica and Bill’s assertion that without insertion it really wasn’t sex. I’d still call it sex, but to me kissing is much more intimate that cock sucking. I’d classify playing the skin flute more as mutual masturbation, with hands and mouths.

Pleasuring the female orally is a much more complex and ambitious undertaking, as we all know (or at least all of us who have pleasured both sexes). And the payoff is not only much more potentially explosive with the ladies, but much longer lasting. When I was pleasuring women, my rule of thumb was Just Keep Going Until She Begs You To Stop. Otherwise, I could never tell when it was over, and neither, it seemed, could she, most of the time, which, to me, was amazing and envy-making

But back to the boys I went. I surrendered control of my desire.

The actor must be fully capable of switching on his or her own sexual response without any help from the fellow actor. Of course it’s easier to play a love scene with a person you’re really attracted to, but you’re being paid to make us believe, not to get your own rocks off. (If you can do them both at once, Salute!) But, this is why so many actors who choose the confines of an unfulfilling monogamous relationship, or choose the closet, for fear of being exposed as gay, make a tragically misguided choice. They cut off their ability to feel real desire in their lives, and so, are forced to pretend it in their work. As they don’t really know any better, the pretense feels real to them. But what about the audience?

When I was eight years old, she taught me this song…

There was a goat from Darby Town whose legs were far apart  / And every time he took a step he blew a little-- / Hoke-ly-poke-ly-deedle-ee-oke-ly makes me think a lot.  /  There was a goat from Darby Town whose horns were made a’ brass  /  One stuck out of his shoulder, the other stuck out of his--  /  Hoke-ly-poke-ly-deedle-ee-oke-ly makes me think a lot.

My mother loved to talk about things most people shied away from. She had a real penchant to speak her mind, and she was opinionated on all subjects, including sex. She could be an incredible pain in the ass. She saw no reason to keep her views to herself. Consequently, people tended to adore her or stay away from her. Anne Sexton wrote:“A woman is her mother. That’s the main thing.” I think this applies to homosexual men as well, though over the years I’ve also found it a bit alarming how much I resemble my father, both physically, as well as in matters of the heart.

Here’s a typical Elvira story. My godparents, Aunt Flo and Uncle Hank, had a pretty rocky marriage, and apparently sex was at the root of the problem. For her day, Flo was quite a looker. Hank was the opposite. He made Ernest Borgnine look like George Clooney.

Well, Hank got good and fed up with the fact that Flo had no interest in fucking him. As I understood it from my mom, he was completely devoted to her, but after trying everything from Catholic guilt to scented candles, he gave up, moved out, “took a bitch” to handle his sexual needs, and set the woman up in an apartment. (I guess this chick’s willingness to fuck the poor bastard made her “a bitch” according to them, go figure.) Well, Aunt Flo was not happy about the turn of events, and called my mother to commiserate, but Elvira was having none of it.

I only heard my mother’s side of the conversation, on the telephone. “Flo, what do you expect from the man? You won’t sleep with him, so what, you expect him to do without? He’s a man Flo, and he’s your husband. You’ve either got to sleep with him, or let him go, those are your choices. He loves you. You married the man. Go to bed with him. Go to bed with him, or stop complaining. If you don’t want him, why can’t she have him?” Well, Flo took him back, and presumably anyway, started fucking him.

Even at 10 or so, it sounded like pretty good advice to me. My mom had a strong belief that sex was an important part of marriage and that it was not a woman’s duty to make sure her husband was satisfied, it should be her pleasure.

When I asked my mom why she married my dad, she answered that he was the only suitor she had that turned her on. She said she didn’t know why exactly, but that she thought of all the others as just friends. My dad was very clear on what he wanted, had apparently been hit by what the Sicilians call “the thunderbolt” the first time he saw her, and pursued her with fervor. He had taken her out in a rowboat one afternoon, she said, and had kissed her. I can’t remember how she described it exactly, but she had literally swooned, fainted, at least momentarily, and she took that to be a sign that this was the right guy. She trusted her instincts.

They went dancing a lot during their engagement, and my mother’s nickname for my dad was “Pup-tent Vic”.

I wanted to know what a virgin was.

Mom: It’s a woman who has never had sex, and waits until her wedding night.

Me: Were you a virgin on your wedding night?

Mom: Of course.

Me: Was dad?

Mom. Your father? Oh for heaven’s sake no!

 Me: Didn’t you want him to be? Since you were?

Mom: Oh god no. He had lots of women. I didn’t want some guy who didn’t know what he was doing poking around down there!

They went to their local parish priest to arrange the wedding, and took some “Catholic instruction”. One of the questions they were asked was “Do you intend to practice birth control? Dad looked at the floor and Mom said “Absolutely”. The priest said that he could not marry them in that case. My mom got up, got her purse and said, “OK, we’ll go across the street to the Protestant church then.” Suddenly the rule was not as firm as it had been a moment earlier. Apparently being married by Heathens was worse than pulling out at the last minute.

We had a priest who ran off with a woman (yes, a woman) in our parish when I was a kid. Father Charles. What a cutie. He looked like Jake Gyllenhall with black hair. My mother’s response to the news contained no hint of scandal: “Good for him, I guess he realized he has blood in his veins.”

But the big story happened the summer before I went to kindergarten. My parents sold their home, and much to their surprise, it sold in one day. The house they bought wasn’t going to be ready until September, they had unwittingly signed a contract to be out in two weeks, and so we had no place to live over the summer.

My mom had two sisters, Lou and Louise (I couldn’t make that up, or that she also had a step-sister named Loulabelle) and my two Aunts offered to take us in. My two sisters were teens, so one aunt would take the girls, and the other would take my mom, dad, and me. Then, halfway through the summer, we would switch.

Well, the Aunts were like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale, one kind, one evil. Long story short, the bad sister, Lou, had a nightmare sex life with her husband, my Uncle Mike. The disastrous pattern had begun on their wedding night. Apparently he had a big problem with spilling his seed in a matter of moments after lift-off, and as my mother explained years later, according to Aunt Lou, this took place before he was even (ever) able to enter her, his wife. They never fixed the problem, (god only knows why, at that age you can do it three more times in one night) and eventually took to separate bedrooms, where they remained for the rest of their long, macabre marriage. Both their behavior profiles were perfect reflections of their awful sexual secret. It turns out Aunt Lou wasn’t evil at all, she was the classic unfucked wife.

Before we switched Aunts halfway through the summer, and moved in with them, Lou told my mother not to have sex in their house while we were staying with them. My mom was flabbergasted, but knew if she told my dad he would hit the fucking roof, (he had never been a big fan of his sister-in-law) so Mom lied and told him she felt embarrassed doing it under their roof. They had no money for a hotel, and the arrangements were in full swing as the Aunt switch was immanent. My lucky sisters were off to Carl and Louise’s, where my parents and I had been happily staying for the first half.

As an adult, again, years later, when I discussed the whole thing with my mom (we always talked and joked openly about sexual stuff) the conversation went like this:

Me: So, did you and dad not have sex for the rest of the summer?

Mom: Oh, NO, of course we did. Your father is a man.

Me: Well, where did you do it?

Mom: (pause) Oh, we went on…picnics…and things…

Me: Picnics??? Where?

Mom: In the park, you know, we’d park the car, and then kind of spread a blanket on the other side…

Me: You fucked dad in a public park??? Why didn’t you do it in the car?

Mom: We did that too. But it was a little confining…

Me: Where else?

Mom: Oh Victor, do you have to know everything?

Me: I don’t have to, but yeah, where else?

Mom: Well, we had to be creative. Sometimes when Lou and Mike would go out, we’d do it in the house anyway. Dad got a kick out of that.

Me: But where was I?

Mom: Oh, you were watching TV, or asleep…

These discussions about sex didn’t usually involve my dad, he would laugh and leave the room, but if he was in a certain kind of playful mood, he could be drawn in too. When they were in their seventies, I was home on a visit, and one night I caught them both just in the right frame of mind after teasing my dad about his cock size and praising his genes. I had a memory from showering as a kid with him that his thing was pretty big, and wanted to find out, once and for all, if I was a chip off the old block, or if I had been randomly touched by the Divine.

They were sitting on the couch together in the living room, trying jointly to remember it’s exact size when fully hard, both looking like little old fisherman, measuring the imaginary one that got away with their fingers, laughing, enjoying the absurdity of the whole thing, and from what I could ascertain from their joint pantomime, I did owe it all to dear old dad.

I remember him coming home from work when I was a young teenager, they were in their early fifties. Dinner was on the table, always, when he walked in, and there was sometimes teasing and some grab-assing of my mom when he chased her around the table a bit. Apparently Elvira walked her talk.

When I told my mom I was gay, the first concern she expressed was for my sexual happiness. Because she couldn’t imagine two men making love, she was saddened that I’d have to settle for what she imagined would be a second-class sex life. The reason I had come out was because I’d fallen in love with Kevin, and the sex, after years of self-delusion and performance anxiety with women, was dizzying. I explained, with limited detail, that her fears were unfounded. She looked hopeful, brightened visibly, and then asked me a series of incredibly direct and specific questions about what we do, as men in love, in the sack. I answered each one and she seemed satisfied and happy. When she met Kevin, (Dad too), they loved him. It wasn’t long before my mom stopped going to Mass. She never stopped believing in Christ, but she wouldn’t accept my love for Kevin as wrong, and wouldn’t be preached to any longer by people who felt it was.

The last sex-talk I can remember with my mom was when my dad was almost eighty, and they had gone to his doctor for a check-up. He’d had a dozen surgeries, too many ailments, and took way too much medication for all of it, but as told by my mom afterward, the doctor asked him if he was still ejaculating. They both laughed and said, No, not much anymore.” The doctor’s reply was, “Well, Vic, if you can, every once in awhile, you should, because it’s good to keep things moving down there, reduces the risk of prostate cancer and other stuff.” Elvira was clear.

Mom: Well, Victor, I heard that, I took him right home and jerked him off.

I burst out laughing.

Me: No blowjob?

MOM: (laughs) Oh, that’s filthy! You urinate from there!

Me: Well, you can wash it in between if you want to mom, but, did he enjoy it?

Mom: (sly smile) Well, he didn’t complain.

Pause.

Mom: Oh my god, and Victor, you would not believe what came out of that man!

If you’re quite sure now that my relationship with my mother was completely inappropriate, that’s ok, because it was really fun.

Behavior tells the truth. The line may not.

If he or she says I love you, but he/she never looks you in the eye while you’re doin’ the do, or worse yet, never seems to want sex much at all, he/she may still love you. He/she’s just not hot for you. Whether he/she is getting it somewhere else is anybody’s guess, but if the lack of heat doesn’t matter to you either, then you’ll hear his/her “I love you” as the truth, and you’ll be right. If you want or expect arousal and passion to be an ongoing part of love, you’ll hear the I love you as a lie, and you’ll be right.

So, also, with actors, if you watch the great film performances, behavior tells the story. The dialogue rides on the behavior, not the other way around. The line will never and should never tell you how to behave. The line only tells you what the person says. Think about life for a moment, fuck the script. How often in life do you say exactly what you think, feel, mean, and intend?

See what I mean? Behavior is the Coin of the Realm.

Watch the way Gregory Peck holds his daughter on the porch swing in To Kill A Mockingbird. The behavior is tender, protective, sad, defiant, calm, and full of a great need of comfort for himself, as well as providing comfort for her. Heath Ledger’s performance in Brokeback Mountain is a really interesting counterpoint to Gregory Peck’s, in that they are both playing good, honest, moral, and basically inexpressive men. But Peck is playing a man with self-awareness, perhaps typically quiet and calm for men of that generation. (Watch George Clooney in any interview he’s ever given. It’s the same quiet, cool, restrained behavior. Some kinds of male and female style rules for behavior never change.) Heath Ledger is playing a man who doesn’t express feeling in BB, but he is also playing a man victimized by the world in which he lives, a man filled with loss and rage, and his entire life becomes about suppressing the rage. Watch him in the scene where he pummels the man making lewd comments at the 4^th of July picnic, and also in the scene where he gets pummeled by the man he punches who’s driving a truck. In both cases, the “character” seems to have a clear and surprising moment of acceptance of the anger he has become accustomed to repressing before he unleashes it. And mixed with that anger is a desire to feel physical pain and also a relief at the momentary opportunity to lose himself in emotion. (In the picnic scene his wife is aware of the rage about to be unleashed almost before he is.) Ledger’s dialogue is often mumbled, muffled, lacking in volume and consonants, but it’s not a weakness in the performance. We hear everything he says that we need to hear. His body tells the story, not what he says, and we may strain to understand a mumble that no one in the guy’s life was ever intended to hear either.

On her 52nd birthday, just minutes after lying about how it’s only her 50^th to the family doctor (who has rudely and clumsily called her on the lie in front of two other men who want to date her, but to whom she’s not in the least attracted), watch the way Shirley MacLaine climbs the 4 or 5 stairs leading to her next-door neighbor Jack Nicholson’s front porch having made the decision as a result of this humiliation a few minutes earlier, to ask him out for lunch, in Terms of Endearment. This is a man who does attract her, enormously, and her behavior is exhilarated, frightened, decisive, playful, aggressive, sad, sensual, whimsical.

These descriptions contradict each other. Human behavior is filled with contradictions when it’s fully true and fully alive. And an actor’s behavior must be fully alive even when the “character” is less than expressive. Gregory Peck is playing a man of great restraint and more than a little repression in TKAM. This is not a guy who ever wears his feelings on his sleeve, but we can see every nuance of every thought and need and want and feeling in his body.

There’s a brilliant comic sequence in All About Eve (among many others) where Bette Davis as Margo Channing, aged 40, is in a combative fit of aggressive jealousy over the attentions of her very young protégé, Eve, mid-twenties, played (effectively if not always honestly) by Ann Baxter, towards Bette’s younger, aged 32, lover, Bill Sampson, played (sometimes charmingly but mostly with hideous actorish self-consciousness) by Gary Merrill. They’re in the living room of her swank NYC apartment, waiting for guests to arrive for a welcome-home party she’s giving in his honor, and she has, in mid-fight, a sudden urge for a chocolate bon-bon. She lifts the lid off the candy dish, chooses a chocolate, picks it up, looks at it, then wisely for the moment, changes her mind after a quick but instinctive assessment of the possible outcomes, puts the lid back on, and walks away. After a few more heated exchanges with her lover, she returns to the candy dish, lifts the lid off again, considers again, puts the lid back on, fights with him some more, then urgently returns again, succumbs to temptation, lifts the lid, plucks a chocolate from the little pile on the dish, and pops it into her mouth. All the while involved in a bout of very active listening (to his harsh recriminations that she’s a paranoid, insecure female), her reaction to what she is eating is a mixture of self-directed anger, satisfaction, and surprise bordering on alarm that it’s chewy instead of creamy. She instantly considers spitting it out, then relents, effort-fully chews some more, and proceeds to a regretful, eye-popping swallow that’s a perfectly balanced comic mixture of horror and relief.

Clearly the actress has made a lot of very specific decisions about how she’s going to play this series of moments, this little flight of absurd chocolate-driven compensatory sexual behaviors, but it works precisely because you can’t see her working it. She is absolutely at the effect of, (read: in response to), first, her lover, whom she (falsely) suspects of wanting Eve, and then, unwittingly, the elasticity of the caramel inside the chocolate. It’s a miniature acting class in The Reality of Doing, Staying in the Moment, and the Art of Comedy.

As the overwhelming majority of acting classes are worthless at best, and destructive to your talent and the potential freedom of your acting instrument (you) at worst, I suggest joining Netflix and watching the greats. You can learn more about acting in two hours of watching Spencer Tracy or Helen Mirren than you can in months of a lousy class. (And they’re always designed to make you feel good, or to make you feel like shit if that’s your particular actor neurosis. I wish I had a buck for every student I ever had who asked me to abuse him or her. I’d have about 50 bucks!)

Does behavior ever lie? Sure, though not nearly as often as the line does. But, when behavior is a lie, there’s always an element of self-manipulation in it, so, as in poker, there is also a “tell”, a bit of behavior that tells the truth, which is that the behavior is a lie. When we know it’s a lie, either in life OR in art, then suddenly the lie can illuminate the truth in a new and powerful way, because then we can also see what is being withheld or repressed, and that fear-driven mechanism is the key to what lies at the very bottom of the well, what is absolutely core to that person’s character. The “tell” might be a slight strain in the neck or jaw, a too-casual or too-stiff stance, a holding of the shoulders, a tapping of the foot or shaking of the knee, depending on the distortion of the truthful response of the particular perpetrator (read: particular liar).

Of course the whole thing gets much trickier when the lie is self-directed. When one sees one’s own character in one way, (and now I mean character as the combination of qualities in a person that makes them different from others, not as a fictional person an actor may portray), but it really is something quite different, the behavior can become a veritable cornucopia of assorted self-delusional smoke and mirrors. Invariably, some simple (or mind-bendingly complex) truth is being scrupulously avoided.  Consider the male and female stereotypes: Bart sees himself as strong, manly, and a Man of Few Words: The classic Speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick Type. Betty sees herself as empathetic, loving, supportive, and kind: The classic non-aggressive, empathetic female. In reality he’s repressed, inexpressive, indecisive, and badly hen-pecked. She’s actually judgmental, prudish, jealous, competitive, and much hornier than anyone would suspect.

Bart and Betty have a picture in their minds of who they are, but somehow they have morphed that picture into a self-image that is almost wholly out of adjustment to reality. How can they be so wrong, so totally out of adjustment to the truth of who they are?  You’re kidding, right? We all know our Barts and Bettys, (and their many variations). The behavior they exhibit, layered with false intentions and shrouded in a self-deceptive mist of self-produced anesthesia, is mostly unconsciously designed to fool the world (and themselves) into believing in the myth they’ve created, which can make the final gymnastics competition at the Olympics look like an afternoon nap.

What’s my bottom-line beef with deception, both self and outwardly directed? Well, in life it ruins relationships (which is none of my business really, unless they’re my own), but onstage it destroys great (and good) plays.

And I take that very personally. Which is my particular neurosis.

When your own character is a lie, how can you possibly play someone else without spraying your own lies all over the person you’re pretending to be? One layer of well-intentioned pretense (for the play) is quite enough, and difficult enough to handle anyway, but when you add another unintended layer of evasions and/or misrepresentations, the thing becomes so distorted it’s absolutely unwatchable.  The two great goals of actor training should be self-awareness, and the freedom to respond and express fully, freely and spontaneously. Talent takes care of your ability to believe in an imaginary circumstance.

Go to the theatre sometime with the same expectation for the acting with which you go to a great film. And make sure to bring a big box of Kleenex, because it will seriously break your heart if you have any love for the institution. The theatre is dead, and tragically, right at the moment when it could provide the kind of courage and truth in art we can get nowhere else. As much as I completely enjoy fast-forwarding to the good bits from The Bachelorette, it’s not ever going to fill my deep, deep, empty Uncle Vanya hole.

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.