Post 441 - February 11, 2022

Day 713…

It’s just a number.

I had a birthday yesterday and it was a big one. Not in any real regard, mind you, except for the number itself.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a lovely day. I slept in. Did a little work. Went for a walk. Did a little more work and then met up with friends for dinner and then we all saw a performance piece. Michael was shooting an episode of Law & Order, so he ended up missing dinner and only got to the piece about halfway through. That turned out to be fine because the three of us who were there all dozed off during it at one point or another. That wasn’t a result of age, but of content. In fact, one of the three of us is a couple of decades younger than the other two.

I know that it’s just a number, but a milestone birthday can’t help but be a point at which you pause and take in the time that has passed and conjecture about the time ahead. How much of it will there be? What will I do with that time? What haven’t I done with the time that I’ve already traveled through?

I can remember when I turned 10 how happy I was to be in double digits. I didn’t feel like a little kid anymore. I remember when I was 16 thinking that the perfect age to be, would be 32. When I turned 32, I thought that I was right. 32 was a great age. I was no longer the youngest person in the room, but I wasn’t the oldest either. In many ways, I feel like the person that I am, came into being in my 40s. It was during that decade that I met friends who broadened the scope of my personal thinking and taught me the strength to leave the relationship that I was in and figure out who I was. It was during that decade that, armed with that new knowledge, I met Michael. Then I turned 50 and that’s when it all started to feel like it was moving too quickly.

My 50th birthday was spent in a drag club in Dayton, Ohio. My dream had been to spend it at the Taj Mahal in India, but work and health conspired against me. I had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and had tried to figure out the best time to be operated on amidst all the work that I had. So much for India. Not long after that extremely fun night in Dayton, I went under the knife (or laser beam) and started on the lengthy road to recovery. The rest of that decade up until about two years ago was spent in non-stop work.

We are right about now, 100 weeks into the pandemic. 100 weeks. It’s just a number, too, but sheesh, it’s a big one. We were in double digits but now we are in three. We will never not be in less than three as we move forward.

COVID-19 is apparently here to stay. The Governor of New York just announced that state-wide mask mandates will stop soon. It will be up to individual businesses and municipalities to decide whether they want to keep them up. The NY Theatre League has said that they will still require them to be worn inside Broadway theatres at least through the spring.

I have been riding the subways in New York for months. I still have friends who won’t do it. Whenever the lifting of these protocols was going to happen, it was going to be too soon for some and long overdue for others. I, for one, am ready to start inching my way back into the pool. Almost.

I know that it’s just a number, but a milestone birthday can’t help but be a point at which you pause and take in the time that has passed and conjecture about the time ahead. How much of it will there be? What will I do with that time? What haven’t I done with the time that I’ve already traveled through? It used to be that there was a Starbucks on every corner, now there’s a Testing facility.

These are the dark days of winter when there are, even at the best of times, few tourists and it feels like the city is on pause. There are plenty of New Yorkers out and about especially because the last few days have had spectacularly perfect weather. The subways are the fullest that I’ve seen them since we shut down 100 weeks ago.

Restaurants seem to be thriving. It might be that more than anything else that is letting us ease off our mask-wearing. After a while, it starts to seem ridiculous to wear your mask while you are walking to your seat or to the restroom, but then take it off when you are seated. Two of the main factors that encourage the spread of the virus, time and proximity, both come into play at a meal eaten out. We’ve gotten used to that, so it really will only be a matter of time before we get used to doing it in a theatre as well.

I don’t pay as close attention to the news these days as I did during the first two-thirds of this past 100 weeks. I am aware of the noose tightening around the necks of our former President and his supporters. Rudy Giuliani, in particular, seems to be in an inescapable dead end. The recent news that the former President routinely mishandled classified and top-secret documents even going so far as to clog White House toilets with them is hardly surprising. The level of hypocrisy in the so-what response by the GOP is almost hilarious given their adamant condemnation of Hilary Clinton’s email server. On one level hilarious, on another, utterly chilling. Nobody paid much attention to Hitler either, when he was in prison after the Munich Putsch. As much as it feels good not to be glued to the television set, we can’t ignore what is going on completely.

I did make it to India a year or two after that night in the club. In between some work in Singapore and then in London, I squeezed about five days out of my absurd schedule and made it to the Taj. I was one of about 10,000 loud and selfie-taking visitors that day. It was beautiful but not the magical experience I was hoping for. I took my own selfies and called it a day. That night I went back again with the promise of a “private” midnight viewing under a full moon. The magic that night was again thwarted, this time by about 50 drunken Russian visitors. Many of them never even glanced over at the fabled building because they were too busy telling jokes and falling over each other.

As I was leaving the next afternoon, I went back to my hotel room nearby and resolved to spend the morning before my pick up at the pool. I slept fitfully and at about 4 am decided to make one more try and get there at sunrise when they let the first people in. I got dressed and walked out of my hotel over toward the entrance and was sad to see that there were already about 30 people on the line. Oh well, I thought, I’m here. I’ll just stick it out.

Just after 6 am, the sun started to rise, and the gates opened. By then there were thousands of people on the line behind me. What I hadn’t counted on, though, was that each person had to go through rather extensive security to get in. There wasn’t a rush inside - just a very slow trickle. After I got through security, I walked very quickly past the 30 people who had gotten in there before me and completely bypassed the main viewing platform where they all stopped mesmerized by the view. Once out of their sight, I ran as fast as I could over to the completely other side of the Taj.

For 30 minutes, I had the place completely to myself. I sat on the cold marble of an adjoining Mosque along the Ganges River and watched as the sun slowly rose behind that magnificent building. All around me Calls to Prayer echoed through the misty Indian morning and gulls screeched out over the water. It was perfect. It was exactly the way that I wanted to turn 50. I was a year or two late, but I finally got there.

I didn’t have any grandiose plans for turning 60. I started being aware of the impending rolling over of the counter when I turned 55 and found myself further away from 50 than I was to 60. I was then hyper-aware of it when I turned 59. Here we go, I thought.

Now that I’ve quietly arrived, however, at this ripe old age, I do have a lot of plans FOR my sixties. With a new show on the horizon and the impending publication of my book (yes, it’s coming - stay tuned for the announcements) there is plenty to do that I am very much looking forward to. My very good friend Charles Chessler is responsible for this picture of me. (Thank you, Charles) I am going to be pursuing voice-over work and this is, you guessed it, my new headshot. Here we go, indeed.

Thank you to everybody who reached out yesterday. I’ve read all the posts and texts and emails and appreciate each and every one of them. It was a perfectly lovely day and wouldn’t change a minute of it.

One of the friends that I had dinner with last night has his birthday today. He is turning 59. Happy Birthday, mate. Don’t sweat it. After all, it’s just a number.