On Making Off: Misadventures Off-Off Broadway (6 page)

In our wandering, we happened across a building that housed a recording studio. Stephanie, seeing it as a sign, decided she needed to take the elevator up to the front desk and ask for a job. She didn’t come back down for an hour. While I waited on the street, drinking coffee and chain-smoking, she was up on the 29
^th
floor flirting with some rapper/engineer dude.

They didn’t have any jobs for her at the moment, but the rapper/engineer had a home studio up in the Bronx. They instantly started dating and, a week later, Stephanie moved in with him to lay down her record. Now that’s focus.

My focus wasn’t coming as quickly. But I too had started seeing someone, someone who would be my first significant relationship. I’d dated a little in L.A. and had a few flings in New York, but nothing meaningful ever materialized.

C.J., as everyone called him, was a handsome, fair-haired guy my age. An aspiring writer, he worked for an Internet company. In the late ’90s, everyone seemed to be working for an Internet company. With ridiculous amounts of money being thrown at start-ups left and right, C.J. figured he just needed to put in his 12 years and he’d be ready to retire at 35. It seems laughable in retrospect, but to a 23-year-old at the turn of the 20th century, this appeared fully achievable, a goal shared by many bright-eyed youths.

I didn’t have any designs on retiring young. I hadn’t even really started my career yet. Besides, I firmly believed that retirement was a post-war concept designed to keep the worker bees happy. To me, it was the dangling carrot that justified doing something you didn’t really like instead of following your bliss and living in the present. Ironically, my job at Blah-Blah Big Bank was to package and sell 401(k) plans to mid-sized companies.

“
So, she just moved out?” C.J. asked me after I had told him about Stephanie’s departure.

“
Just like that. She said something about not being comfortable at our place,” I said, getting comfortable in his bed.

“
This guy is practically a stranger. She’s going to be more comfortable there?”

“
So she says. And I guess this guy is some kind of rapper, or he runs in those circles. I don’t know. It all sounds kind of fucked-up, but she really wants to make an album. I think she’ll do just about anything to make that happen.”

I pondered the dedication she possessed, which made me question my own drive. C.J. must have picked up on this.

“
Would you do anything to act?” he asked me, propping his head on his hand and looking down at me.

“
I don’t think so. Obviously, not anything. But…” I paused, because the conversation was getting scary, but I pressed on. “I don’t know if that’s what I want to do. I don’t know. I’m confused.”

“
If I asked you right now, what you want to be when you grow up, what would you say?” C.J. asked, playfully jumping on top of me.

“
Right now?”

“
Right now!” he said, pinning my shoulders to the mattress.

“
Happy.”

“
I love you.”

“
I love you too,” I replied.

Happy. That was a total cop-out answer if ever I’d uttered one, better suited for a soap opera than…wait…did we just say we
loved
each other? Suddenly, I felt crazier than Stephanie. Sure, she may have moved in with some dude she’d only known for a week, but surely she didn’t
love
him. I knew she had at least that much sense. What was happening to me? This was the first time I’d ever uttered such a thing. It felt good…and scary…and good…and dangerous…but so good.

Our 109
^th
Street vacancy was next filled a few weeks later when Big Rob made his journey east. At six-foot-six and a solid 250 pounds, Big Rob is a loud, gentle, offensive, and charming teddy bear. Unlike the rest of us, who came to New York to chase our dreams, Big Rob was here to sow some wild oats. His grandmother had recently passed, and he had decided to use some of his inheritance on a year or two fucking around in New York City. He just wanted to check it out, have some adventures, and hang with his friends.

Shortly after his arrival, he celebrated his 30
^th
birthday. To most of us, who were five or six years younger than him, turning 30 seemed like a very big deal. We really wanted to mark the occasion. And what better way to do that than to take the birthday boy to Lucky Cheng’s?

Big Rob had a thing for Asian women, and Lucky Cheng’s was New York’s premier Asian restaurant and karaoke bar. Actually, it’s New York’s premier
drag
Asian restaurant and karaoke bar. Sure, some of the waitresses aren’t exactly girls, and those that
are
girls weren’t exactly born that way. But they are all beautiful, so we figured he wouldn’t care.

During the dinner show, Big Rob enjoyed a lap dance, multiple crotch grabs, and a humiliating stage stunt involving whipped cream and a banana. This restaurant was tailor-made for an uncensored kind of guy like Big Rob. It wasn’t until we retired to the downstairs karaoke bar that the magic of the evening really took hold of him.

While in the middle of my signature karaoke song,
Puff the Magic Dragon
, I noticed a very tall woman—arguably, the prettiest one in the whole place—sitting on Big Rob’s lap. I recognized her immediately as the hostess that had Big Rob do all those stage stunts. She was now enjoying a drink with, or should I say,
on
the birthday boy. She had Big Rob in a trance. Just as I threw myself into the most dramatic and tragic part of the song, “
One great aye did happen, Jackie Paper came no more
,” I saw them lock their open mouths in a passionate exploration of dental hygiene. It wasn’t a romantic kiss. It was a sexual kiss, charged with a thousand volts of lust and curiosity. And before I could sing the final chorus, they were running out of the bar.

We didn’t see or hear from Big Rob for three days. He had been abducted by a six-foot Japanese transsexual waitress. We didn’t see that coming and weren’t sure what to do. I tried to find him, but a restaurant visit proved useless. There seemed to be some sort of Asian tranny mafia that protected the privacy of its members. They wouldn’t even tell me her name or if she had come to work lately. The more I searched, the more I imagined him trapped in some dungeon somewhere, enslaved by angry Asian-Amazonian transsexuals.

When Big Rob finally
did
come home, Bobby, C.J., and I attacked him with questions and angry instructions about how he needed to check in with us once in a while.

“
What have you been doing?” I screamed. Do you know how worried we’ve been? New York is a dangerous place.”

“
Who
was
that woman?” Bobby followed.

“
Was she a woman, or was he a man?” C.J. asked in his perfect grammar. Big Rob barely listened to our words, let alone our grammar. He just walked past us, exhausted from days and days of God-knows-what.

“
Her name is Megumi. She’s so sophisticated and poised. She has this wild laugh. And she’s got this really pronounced jaw, I guess because she used to be a man, but when she laughs it moves up and down. It’s like that Asian guy who always wins the hot dog–eating contest at Coney Island. You know who I’m talking about? The little guy. You know how his jaw goes up and down real fast as he pushes the hot dog down his throat? That’s what it’s like when she laughs. ”

We stood there in silence. It was quite a visual. He then stripped down to his baggy white Fruit of the Looms and plopped down on the couch. “That was the best birthday present ever!”

Poor guy didn’t know it yet, but it would be months before he heard from Megumi again. Their three-day love fest resulted in a month-long hospital visit for vaginal reconstruction surgery. No matter how advanced we think we are, mankind still can’t make them as well as Mother Nature does.

All was right with the world. Big Rob was free from the shackles of a medically constructed vagina. Stephanie was laying tracks with her rapper/engineer boyfriend in the Bronx. Bobby was actually sleeping now. And C.J. and I were curled up in my tiny twin bed slowly drifting to sleep. And even though I was still searching for my focus, sleep came easy. Sleep always comes easily when you’re keenly aware of your youth—when your dreams, if not your whole life, lie ahead of you.

PART II

THE BEGGARS GROUP

EAST FOURTH STREET

My first New York autumn introduced itself so subtly, it was mid-November before I realized we were best friends. Fall has always felt like a time for new beginnings. Because of the scholastic calendar, I associate the falling leaves with new challenges and opportunities. And, even though I’ve been out of school for years, I still get excited about the potential of something new happening as the season changes. That must have been in the air that crisp fall day when my buddy Chris and I settled into Swifts, a small East Village bar, to drink a few pints.

“
I think people want to be challenged,” I said. “This is a time of great prosperity, and Broadway is able to take more chances.”

“
What chances?” Chris asked. “Broadway doesn’t take chances.”

“
Sure, every time you produce a show, you’re taking a chance,” I replied. “It’s risky, that’s a given, but there’s a big difference between doing
Guys and Dolls
and
Beauty Queen of Leenane
. People are happy now. When people are happy, they’re willing to challenge themselves when they go to the theater. They want to explore the depths of the human experience. When times are hard, people want to escape into something easily digestible because they’re experiencing the depths of human experience on a daily basis. It’s a way of balancing ourselves. This is 1998. By and large, Americans lives are awesome. So, it’s Broadway’s turn to do the exploring.”

Chris looked unconvinced as he took a sip of his beer. “So, what kind of theater are you doing? How would you classify
Peep Show
?”

“
I wouldn’t call
Peep Show
easily digestible, if that’s what you mean, but it was definitely fluff,” I replied.

“
Fluffer theater!” he said, ribbing me on my New York debut. “But seriously, what are you doing next?”

“
I’m not sure. I’ve been a little lost lately. I’m not getting into the whole audition scene. I
have
started writing a play, though.”

“
Oh, yeah? What about?”

Now, I have a habit, at times, to talk endlessly about my latest project. It’s over-enthusiasm, I guess, but it usually bores the listener. So, when I’m discussing a new project, I like to break it down into three segments: the title, the tag line, and the description. Since everyone wants the title and the tag line, I give that first. And then, if there’s still interest, I give the full description, which, if done right, invites a good discussion.

“
It’s called
Testing Average
.” Title.

“
It’s an exploration of our society’s ‘not-so-subtle’ caste system.” My working tag line.

Chris still appeared interested, so I proceeded to the description. “It follows the life of a smart young man working his way through our society’s prescribed steps toward success: from honor roll to SATs to Ivy League to a good corporate job to a wife, some kids, and a house. But…”

“
There’s always a but,” Chris interjected.

“…
the untimely death of his mentally disabled brother derails his plan and sends him on a quest to redefine the meaning of success.”

Chris paused for a moment.

“
Wow, that sounds great,” he said. “And how does he redefine success?”

“
That’s the big question, isn’t it? And truth be told, I don’t know yet. It’s tricky because I keep getting hung up on the defining bit. According to the dictionary, success is the prosperous termination of endeavors. If you define success for yourself—money, fame, physical strength, whatever—you should be able to achieve it, like a goal. This is what I believe success looks like, and this is what I’m going to do to achieve it. But I’m not interested in defining temporary success. I’m interested in defining a successful life. And shit happens in our lives that forces us to change our definition of success constantly. And if that’s the case, success should be a fluid concept, and if we go with the fluidity, then a successful life is the journey as opposed to the task accomplished. It’s not point B. It’s the line between point A and B. It’s the looking back from your deathbed and feeling good about the journey, not necessarily the accomplishments. That’s part of it, too. But it’s not everything. And I think that, in our society, we put too much emphasis on the accomplishments and not enough on the journey. Why else do Americans take a quarter of the vacation time all the other industrialized nations do? ’Cause we gotta get shit done. And we’re gonna spend 95 percent of our lives getting shit done and 5 percent of our lives living.”