On Sunday I helped Prometheus move some new furniture into his house, and afterwards he took me to lunch around the corner at La Mediterranee in the Castro. We found a shaded table out on the sidewalk. The restaurant was employing a bizarre, tag-team style of waiting tables; every time we looked up, a different waitress was giving us menus, taking our order, pouring our coffee, leaving the check. It was a bright, warm day; the fog had burned off by noon. Across the street, among the lush greenery of Café Flore, there were new outdoor tables with bright red parasols. When the waitress overfilled my glass, I let the spilled water on my forearm dry. I heard not the words but the confiding tone between the two women seated nearby. They were my mother’s age, dressed in layers of lycra and sweatshirts, meeting for lunch after the gym. When Prometheus sneezed one of the women blessed him. I had my back to Market Street, but every now and then I’d glance over my shoulder at the streaming mass of people. I watched an acquaintance emerge from his apartment with another new boy at his side, both of them blinking into the sunlight. I watched cars compete for a valuable parking spot, secretly rooting for the boy with a basket of laundry in the passenger seat. I saw, with a pang of regret, a couple who were once better friends of mine, back when they were both still sober. I watched with envy as they strolled arm-in-arm with other handsome men. I pictured the fun and release awaiting should I ever need to be a boy again, forgetting the cost I paid, if only for a moment. We sat there for an hour, talking. It seemed that all the people walking by were holding hands.

///

Last week I was invited to a screening of a rough-cut version of the film I worked on this past spring. I went alone to Dolby Studios down on Potrero Street, and took a slow elevator to the third floor. The doors opened and everyone was gathered in the lobby, munching on hor d’oeuvres and sipping from bottles of water. There were about fifty people there, many of whom I knew from working on the film. But a curious sort of social physics occurred in which all of my conversations took about thirty seconds, and everyone moved on to other conversations with other people. I let my social awkwardness take over and spent the better part of twenty minutes leaning against a table in the corner, watching everyone talk, staring out the window at a slice of the downtown skyline and the Bay Bridge stretching across the water. Thursday is the only night of the week that I usually have to myself, and I was a bit resentful, showing up out of obligation to the director, not especially looking forward to seeing myself on the big screen. My introversion needed its batteries recharged, and later as I watched the film I felt even more the sense of being spread thin, flayed open for public consumption.

Sometimes acting satisfies me in a way that writing can’t. I’ve been lucky enough to work with talented directors and actors in well-written plays, when the energy from the audience swelled within the theater, carrying us along in its buoyant stream. There’s nothing quite like it; the immediate, addictive quality of applause and excitement. Unlike writing, acting is almost always part of a group effort. Because of that collaborative nature, there’s always the danger of putting yourself in the wrong hands. I once appeared in a horrible production in Minneapolis where it was misery forcing myself on stage each evening. After that experience I vowed I would rather not act than act in something I didn’t enjoy.

So I was a bit wary when I first read the script for this film. It wasn’t badly written, but the story itself didn’t quite move me. It was a simple matter of taste. There was a surreal, Cocteau-esque quality to the story, and I’m usually drawn to more straightforward narratives. There was one scene that I particularly disliked, which involved my character, David, sitting on a toilet while the main character, as a ghost, delivers a monologue that David can’t hear. I’m rather squeamish about bodily functions; even bathroom humor makes me a little anxious. So the thought of being captured on film (or, rather, digital video) taking a crap was less than thrilling. But I didn’t want to disappoint the director, who wanted me for David, and I wanted the experience of film acting, so I took the part. I held out hope that the scene would eventually be cut.

Filming the scene itself was torturous. We had been working all day, at the end of a long week, and I was worn out. I sat on the toilet with bright lights focused on me, trying to look lost in thought. “Mikey, can you try not to blink so much?” the director asked. But asking me not to blink is like asking me not to think of a white elephant. I was trying so hard not to blink that all I could do was blink, my eyelids fluttering in protest against the lighting and my exhaustion.

Last week, as I watched the scene playing on the big screen, I couldn’t get past the hard, mean look on my face, as well as the mole on the side of my nose, which I normally forget is even there. There were funny jumps in editing, and the main character’s monologue sounded so trite; the epitome of expository dialogue. It had been hard enough watching the sex scene, which I did shirtless. That was several months ago, and in the intervening time I’ve put in many more hours at the gym, but those hours aren’t committed for all time on film. I was failing miserably at watching with a detached eye, focusing entirely on my insecurities. I made it all about me. I slid down in my chair, wincing at the sound of my own voice.

I cheered silently when one of the audience members, in the post-film feedback session, said the monologue in the bathroom seemed extraneous, and suggested cutting it. Naturally somebody else said they loved the monologue. The entire feedback session played out like that, each opinion canceling out the others. I kept my mouth shut, feeling too raw. And biased. Afterwards I left quickly. I wanted, as I often do after acting, to go home and hide for a while.

Maybe that’s why I’ve refocused my efforts on writing in the last couple of years. Alone with the page, I am free to create my own little world. I do not work for another person’s vision, merely my own. When my work is less than successful, however, I have nobody else to blame. But apart from issues of control, writing is just more natural, for lack of a better word. Writing, as opposed to acting, complements my introversion. I’ve been writing several years longer than I’ve been acting. Long enough that it’s an inseparable element of my character, like a virus, flowing through my blood, resistant to all cures or forms of medication.

I don’t think I will ever officially quit acting. I will probably always hold out hope that some marvelous little project will fall in my lap. I was reminded of the power and beauty of live performance when I was in New York City in June. I went with him to see De La Guarda, a sort of downtown circus act, as if the cast from Rent took over Cirque du Solei. The show had been running for a long time, and even I could tell that its heyday had passed, and it was now attracting a bridge-and-tunnel crowd. But the show was new to me. I was tired, having worked all week at the writer’s workshop, and then coming to New York City to try and decompress amid the chaos of Gay Pride weekend. And when I’m tired my emotions boil just below the surface. For the show everyone was horded like cattle into a large, dark room without seats. Then the show began. Above us there was a low ceiling made of paper, and lights flickered above it while shadows of people flew overhead. Ethereal, pygmy-like music played, as tiny balls poured in rivers above the surface of the paper. The shadows of people flying above multiplied and they spun faster and faster, and then little by little the performers began to tear their way through the paper, teasing the crowd, showers of foam balls falling around them. Suddenly the entire sheet of paper was torn away, and the impossibly tall ceiling of the hall was revealed. And there were performers strapped in harnesses and cables, flying above us. The music shifted, and a pounding, throbbing, tribal beat filled the hall, and then suddenly there were two girls, each strapped in a harness, and they were literally running up the side of the wall, in tandem, their footsteps synchronized to the frantic beat. They flew up and down the wall, zigzagging across and back and somehow never getting caught up in the cables. The music thundered and I suddenly got choked up. I started crying; I couldn’t stop. That happens to me sometimes. It started when my mother died. It has something to do with loss, of wishing so fiercely that she was still alive, so that she could see such beautiful things. But it’s also about passion and excitement; seeing young people doing what they love, creating something physical and crazy and wonderful, there in New York City. I cried and cried, watching those girls race up the wall.

I left the theater exhilarated and even more exhausted. He wasn’t as impressed with the show. But I’ve always been a little sensitive to these kinds of things.

Like everyone else I get older, and each decision takes me farther away from other paths. It saddens me a little to think that I may never do something like that; fly above a crowd to thundering music. I’m not twenty-five anymore. I don’t like having to choose between two passions. That’s the tyranny of choice; all those possibilities of youth, each demanding to be lived. For a while I wanted to be a famous film actor, with several edgy independent films under my belt. But sometime in the past year I’ve come to realize that whatever talent for acting I might possess, I would probably always be a more natural writer.

Last week at the screening I sat at the back of the theater, listening to the audience members voice their opinions. I was struck again and again by their intelligence and articulation. Words spoken by people who were clearly in their element. People who obviously lived for film, who understood good filmmaking and the art of telling a story through images. I was impressed, and a little intimidated. Then I realized that I, too, have my element: I come alive in writing classes and workshops. I felt a little better about my decision.

///

In the summer in San Francisco the fog begins to roll in from the ocean every afternoon. It moves in over the Richmond and the Sunset neighborhoods, and then crawls slowly over the crest of Twin Peaks. If you’re standing in the Castro and look west, you can see the white cloud of fog pour along either side of the valley. I never tire of the sight, even after six years. Like writing, like introversion, it fits my temperament.

Last night the fog lingered into the night. I parked my car at the end of the street and walked up past the eucalyptus trees, their leaves dripping. I took my time, the mist cool against my sunburned face. I think of you when I walk up the street at night, as I do when I see the things I want to show you.

We were just saying we would volunteer to be fluffers for this scene,” says Bob. He and the art director are standing in the kitchen drinking Cokes.

“I don’t think it would make a bit of difference,” I say. “This has to be the most un-erotic environment possible. I could never do a porn.” I choose to deflect the implied compliment, moving over to the counter where three delivery pizzas lie waiting. It’s nine-thirty p.m., we’ve been filming the sex scene since five-thirty and we’re nowhere near done. The guys on the crew are coming down the stairs behind me. I grab a slice and head out onto the back deck, into the cool night air. All weekend I’ve been looking out over the amazing view of the city from the deck, during quiet times between scenes. I never get tired of looking at this city.

The cameraman takes his slice halfway down the stairs leading to the backyard, where he can be alone. He calls someone on his cell phone. His quiet words drift up to me. “Hey, I’m going to be late…I don’t know…okay…bye.” The director and the rest of the crew have joined me on the deck. We all stand silently with our slices of Marcello’s, all of us facing the view of downtown, the Bay Bridge extending beyond the skyline into the night, towards the dark hills of Oakland. There is only the quiet noise of men eating. From the houses on the hills above the Castro there is the sound of traffic and Saturday night parties. Music echoing over the hills, voices, laughter. Hearing them reinforces the sense of dissociation I’ve carried since the filming started; caught up in a strange little world outside my normal customs; the normal hours of my day job, my usual AA meetings at night, dinners with friends; everything has fallen away as I go about the work of pretending to be someone else in this house on 19th street.

I’ve been at the house since 10 am. The lead actor, the kid, sits behind me on the deck, munching his pizza. Both of us are introverted and we’ve had only the briefest of conversations. There are other actors and crew members I’ve known for awhile, from plays we’ve done together. Their presence is comforting. The director seems to believe in me, and has given me the role despite my complete lack of on-camera experience. I’m learning as I go along.

“Let’s get back,” the director says.

I eat a banana to clear some of the pizza taste from my mouth, out of respect for the kid, whom I have to kiss repeatedly during the scene. I keep my tongue in my mouth. Besides, he’s a smoker. I chew a piece of gum as I walk back upstairs.

Upstairs the bedroom is lit up like a ballpark at night. They’ve positioned three floodlights outside on the upper deck. They shine through the windows, across the bed. The bedroom still reads as dimly-lit on camera, where it counts. As the crew settles on the other side of the room, I perch on the edge of the mattress. I look at the floor, away from the harsh lights. The kid lies on the other side of the bed. We’ve removed our clothes six or seven times by now. Fortunately they’re only shooting us from the waists up. We can keep our underwear on. I look over at the others. I can’t help but notice there are more people watching than usual. The director, the cameraman, the lighting man, the sound man, the art director, the continuity girl, the director’s boyfriend, and the owner of the house we’re using.

“Nice sheets,” I tell the art director.

“Yeah, just don’t get anything on them, I have to return them.”

I laugh.

“I’m not kidding,” he says.

During the filming I open six or seven condom wrappers with my teeth. The first couple of wrappers take at least two or three bites. One small corner gets trapped under my tongue. I am feeling very un-smooth, a failed Lothario captured on camera for all eternity spitting tiny pieces of foil condom wrappers onto the floor, doing my best to avoid the sheets at all times. The director is kind enough not to yell “CUT!” in the middle of my fumbling. The kid lies patiently beneath me. I’d say he has the easier acting job at the moment. After one or two takes my fingers are coated with a slight film of lube, which only aggravates the problem. Somehow I manage a couple of good takes. By now I’ve accepted that whatever the mostly straight crew thinks of all this is totally beside the point.

Later, after our attempt at fucking fails, the script calls for me to roll over, sigh, and light a cigarette. Being an ex-smoker and someone who can become addicted to anything, anywhere, I’ve asked for some herbal cigarettes without nicotine. It’s my only high-maintenance movie star request. Somehow I only get two of them, so for the six or seven takes of me lighting a cigarette, I have to re-light each about three times. They certainly smell just like cigarettes. I don’t think the owner of the house is too happy with the air quality of his bedroom by now, but again that is beside the point.

Despite the lights and the quiet audience and the new sheets and the camera and my Midwestern modesty, the sex scene is my favorite, if only because my character, a morally ambiguous asshole, gets a second or two where the real guy underneath all the crap is revealed. And that’s why I love acting.

The director is happy. He comes over to my side of the bed, lies down next to me and puts his head on my chest. “That was amazing. That’s gonna be the most beautiful scene in the movie.” I can only take his word for it. He gets back to his feet. “Go home,” he says.

I put my clothes back on for the last time. The crew is out on the deck smoking. The director’s boyfriend is bringing beers up from the kitchen for everyone. A beer sounds so amazingly delicious right now, but I don’t do that anymore. Now that the scene is behind me I am exhausted, all the tension leading up to tonight is spent. I can barely manage a wave good-bye to everyone, but that hardly matters. I have to be back in the morning.

We were just saying we would volunteer to be fluffers for this scene,” says Bob. He and the art director are standing in the kitchen drinking Cokes.

“I don’t think it would make a bit of difference,” I say. “This has to be the most un-erotic environment possible. I could never do a porn.” I choose to deflect the implied compliment, moving over to the counter where three delivery pizzas lie waiting. It’s nine-thirty p.m., we’ve been filming the sex scene since five-thirty and we’re nowhere near done. The guys on the crew are coming down the stairs behind me. I grab a slice and head out onto the back deck, into the cool night air. All weekend I’ve been looking out over the amazing view of the city from the deck, during quiet times between scenes. I never get tired of looking at this city.

The cameraman takes his slice halfway down the stairs leading to the backyard, where he can be alone. He calls someone on his cell phone. His quiet words drift up to me. “Hey, I’m going to be late…I don’t know…okay…bye.” The director and the rest of the crew have joined me on the deck. We all stand silently with our slices of Marcello’s, all of us facing the view of downtown, the Bay Bridge extending beyond the skyline into the night, towards the dark hills of Oakland. There is only the quiet noise of men eating. From the houses on the hills above the Castro there is the sound of traffic and Saturday night parties. Music echoing over the hills, voices, laughter. Hearing them reinforces the sense of dissociation I’ve carried since the filming started; caught up in a strange little world outside my normal customs; the normal hours of my day job, my usual AA meetings at night, dinners with friends; everything has fallen away as I go about the work of pretending to be someone else in this house on 19th street.

I’ve been at the house since 10 am. The lead actor, the kid, sits behind me on the deck, munching his pizza. Both of us are introverted and we’ve had only the briefest of conversations. There are other actors and crew members I’ve known for awhile, from plays we’ve done together. Their presence is comforting. The director seems to believe in me, and has given me the role despite my complete lack of on-camera experience. I’m learning as I go along.

“Let’s get back,” the director says.

I eat a banana to clear some of the pizza taste from my mouth, out of respect for the kid, whom I have to kiss repeatedly during the scene. I keep my tongue in my mouth. Besides, he’s a smoker. I chew a piece of gum as I walk back upstairs.

Upstairs the bedroom is lit up like a ballpark at night. They’ve positioned three floodlights outside on the upper deck. They shine through the windows, across the bed. The bedroom still reads as dimly-lit on camera, where it counts. As the crew settles on the other side of the room, I perch on the edge of the mattress. I look at the floor, away from the harsh lights. The kid lies on the other side of the bed. We’ve removed our clothes six or seven times by now. Fortunately they’re only shooting us from the waists up. We can keep our underwear on. I look over at the others. I can’t help but notice there are more people watching than usual. The director, the cameraman, the lighting man, the sound man, the art director, the continuity girl, the director’s boyfriend, and the owner of the house we’re using.

“Nice sheets,” I tell the art director.

“Yeah, just don’t get anything on them, I have to return them.”

I laugh.

“I’m not kidding,” he says.

During the filming I open six or seven condom wrappers with my teeth. The first couple of wrappers take at least two or three bites. One small corner gets trapped under my tongue. I am feeling very un-smooth, a failed Lothario captured on camera for all eternity spitting tiny pieces of foil condom wrappers onto the floor, doing my best to avoid the sheets at all times. The director is kind enough not to yell “CUT!” in the middle of my fumbling. The kid lies patiently beneath me. I’d say he has the easier acting job at the moment. After one or two takes my fingers are coated with a slight film of lube, which only aggravates the problem. Somehow I manage a couple of good takes. By now I’ve accepted that whatever the mostly straight crew thinks of all this is totally beside the point.

Later, after our attempt at fucking fails, the script calls for me to roll over, sigh, and light a cigarette. Being an ex-smoker and someone who can become addicted to anything, anywhere, I’ve asked for some herbal cigarettes without nicotine. It’s my only high-maintenance movie star request. Somehow I only get two of them, so for the six or seven takes of me lighting a cigarette, I have to re-light each about three times. They certainly smell just like cigarettes. I don’t think the owner of the house is too happy with the air quality of his bedroom by now, but again that is beside the point.

Despite the lights and the quiet audience and the new sheets and the camera and my Midwestern modesty, the sex scene is my favorite, if only because my character, a morally ambiguous asshole, gets a second or two where the real guy underneath all the crap is revealed. And that’s why I love acting.

The director is happy. He comes over to my side of the bed, lies down next to me and puts his head on my chest. “That was amazing. That’s gonna be the most beautiful scene in the movie.” I can only take his word for it. He gets back to his feet. “Go home,” he says.

I put my clothes back on for the last time. The crew is out on the deck smoking. The director’s boyfriend is bringing beers up from the kitchen for everyone. A beer sounds so amazingly delicious right now, but I don’t do that anymore. Now that the scene is behind me I am exhausted, all the tension leading up to tonight is spent. I can barely manage a wave good-bye to everyone, but that hardly matters. I have to be back in the morning.
He’s fearless. He’s rich, made himself rich. He’s the kind that walks into a room and he’s all you can see,” the director says.

I stand with my script in hand in another actor’s living room. I’ve been in this room many times, have spent hours, weeks here, rehearsing for plays. Tonight I’m rehearsing for a film. In 36 hours I’ll report to a house in the Castro, where for the next three days I will work 12 hours a day, pretending to be someone else.

I nod so the director knows I’m listening. I stare at the floor near his feet, imagining what fearlessness looks like, what fearless people have I known? A man I dated awhile back, Mr. Type A from that night at the Stud a couple of weekends ago. The way his chest led the rest of him as he entered a room. His unwavering eye contact.

“He knows the game, he’ll play the game if that’s what it takes, but he doesn’t really care.”

I really need to get these lines down. I won’t own them till I know them. And until then, it’s all fumbling.

“Let’s take a break.”

In the kitchen Scott fills a bowl with the soup he’s made. White beans and carrots and slivers of ham. It’s a little too hot, I lift spoonfulls to the surface of the soup, turn them over as the steam rises. The director and the kid are out front smoking. All I’m thinking about is the next half hour, the scene waiting.

The director and the kid are back. “I want to show you guys a scene from Querelle,” the director says.

Somehow I know which scene he’ll show. We gather in the back bedroom, he has it on DVD. I make a mental note to get a copy. I sit in a chair next to the bed. The kid stands next to me. The director presses a few buttons on the remote, cues the scene. Sure enough, it’s that one. Brad Davis the sailor losing a bet to Nono. The sailor getting fucked on a table. I wonder if the kid is straight, and what he thinks of all this. The scene makes me sweat, every time. I kind of wish everyone would just leave the room.

The director points the remote, the TV darkens. “No nudity,” he says. “All that heat, no nudity, just the connection between them.”

The kid hasn’t said anything. Then again, neither have I. I check his profile, his bright blue eyes blinking behind his glasses. We clutch our scripts in our hands. I’ve taken off my shoes.

I sit with my back resting against the railing at the foot of the bed. The kid sits on the edge of the mattress while the director pages through the script. He settles into the chair. “I’m still trying to figure out how this is going to work,” he says. This makes me a little nervous. I thought he had this all story-boarded or something. “For the purposes of rehearsal, when the script says “kiss’, just touch your cheek to his, Michael.”

“Okay” I relax a little.

We try a few positions on the bed. Sitting side by side on the edge of the mattress. Sitting, one of my legs curled around him. Lying side by side.

“That works,” the director says. Okay, so you kiss him, he resists. It’s too much for him, too intimate. You get him to roll over on his stomach.” He pauses. “Now, how do we get his pants off?”

We try a few maneuvers; settle on one that’s a little more fluid than the others. I pretend to take my shirt off, back to the camera. I reach over and pretend to take his pants off. I climb on top of him.

“Here we’ll frame you as you grab a condom from the nightstand, waist up. Tear it open with your teeth and spit it out.”

Then the failed fuck. He turns over.

I sigh, roll over, grab a cigarette from the nightstand. I motion and the kid settles against me, my arm wrapped around him.

“Okay,” the director says. “Let’s save the rest for the camera. Unless you guys want to run it again?”

Nope, we’re fine. Let’s call it a night.

The night air is cool, the lights of the restaurants on 16th street washing over the sidewalks. I roll the script up in my fist as I walk to the car.

“I thought there was no nudity in this movie,” I tell the director.

“There isn’t.”

“What about that scene where the kid looks over at the mirror in my bedroom and sees me lying on top of him?”

The director taps his outstretched hand against his waist. “Only to here,” he says.

“Oh, okay.”

Yes, kids, bare-chested Dogpoet captured on film (er, digital video) for all time. Having a shirtless scene in a movie ( er, short film) and a potential visit from the space monkey next month has been very good for my short-term gym goals. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time till we hit Sundance. Apparently the film festival in Turin, Italy is already requesting a rough cut. I’ll be huge with the Italians, just wait. Unless they like the kid more. You know, the beauty of youth and all that.

I warm up a piece of left-over peach pie in the director’s microwave while the other actors discuss Robert Deniro.

“I was watching Godfather II the other night, he’s really amazing in that. I think it’s his best work.”

I cut into the pie. Maybe I should rent that again. Maybe I should act like Deniro next week. No, wait, that’s stupid.

“There’s that scene where he watches his baby and from that moment on he just gets more and more confident.”

“Almost like his body gets bigger.”

I’m trying to imagine how I’m gonna pull this off. The beauty of theater acting is that when you get on stage, you just go, and the play goes, and you and the audience are on a ride. This movie stuff, with the lights and the camera angles and the cuts and the jumps in time; there’s no flow there. Just lots of people holding equipment, holding their breath, as you act natural in a pool of hot light. Not that I’ve tried it yet. Just, you know, it’s what I imagine.

Excuse me, I have to work on my lines.

“I fucking love this place!”

“I fucking love this place!”

“I fucking love this place!”

Yeah, I went there. Sorry.

It’s probably just a matter of time till they write me up. I started the week by making a woman cry on the phone. Ha, I fucking love it. I sat there, cold as stone as she sobbed about her miserable life. Granted, she had just been very rude and patronizing and defiant, as in adopting a dog from us Sunday, and by Monday wants to break one of the conditions of the adoption by dropping out of her obedience class. “Because my dog is already perfect and I know everything there is to know about training dogs.”

Lady, everybody thinks they know everything about raising a dog, so why does this shelter even exist? “This is our profession, ma’am, this is what we do for a living. There are reasons we ask you to take the class. It helps you bond with your dog, and frankly it greatly reduces the chance that you will return your perfect dog in three days. This is what we do.”

“And how old are you?” she asks.

I close my eyes for a moment. “Ma’am, please do not do this to me right now.”

“I’m just telling you I’ve had dogs all my life.”

“Well, it sounds like you’ve made up your mind.” Frankly I don’t care.

“Well, I have, but I just want to make sure you aren’t going to try and like, take my dog away from me.”

“We can’t do that. But you did sign the contract, you agreed to the conditions.”

She starts getting snivelly. “But what was I supposed to do, not adopt her?”

“Well, you could have adopted from a different shelter if you didn’t like our terms.”

“But I was supposed to have her! She needed me! She looks exactly like my last dog!”

Ooh, now I really can’t stand her. People who try to adopt the same dog as their last dead one are seriously unbalanced and setting the new dog up for complete failure when it turns out to be, surprise, a different dog.

Then she started crying.

I hate my job. I can’t deny it anymore. I hate the phone, I hate rude people, I hate being on the front lines. I hate everyone telling me they know how to raise a dog but then they abandon their under-exercised, neglected dogs with us. People so chickenshit they’ll tie their dog to our fence in the middle of the night. People who abandon their dogs when they get hit by a car because they don’t want to pay the bill. Within two months this job has become everything I was trying to avoid when I started two years ago. Introverted, oversensitive artists like myself should not be answering phones all day. Worse, it has made Dogpoet cynical about dogs. I like dogs, I do, I just don’t want to build my life around them. The writing is on the wall, I know it’s time to leave. My writing is drying up as fast as my sense of humor.

But I am one impatient mofo who cannot wait. An impatient mofo who doesn’t know the next step, who wants the next step illuminated in million-watt floodlights because I need it that way.

Yes, this is a problem of luxury. As most of mine are now. I made it through hell and now I’m ready for more, I want more from life. None of these clothes fit. Growing pains the space monkey says when I call. “Yeah, well fuck them,” I say. It’s actually exciting to witness, it means you’re hungry. “Glad you’re enjoying the show,” I say. I’m being contrary because I can, and because it’s very sexy.

Later I meet up with the cast and the crew of this little movie I’m going to be in, at the director’s house in the Castro. Some old friends, past directors and co-stars I’ve worked with. And a lot of new people, directors of photography and grips and gaffers and art directors.

“This movie has an art director?” I think. Cool.

I vent a little over tacos in the kitchen. Secretly loving the ground beef. Over the guacamole bowl I meet the young actor with whom I have a sex scene. “Oh, you’re the guy I’m going to pretend to rim.”

No, I didn’t really say that.

The Cala lilies are in bloom again…

I could have said that as I stepped onto our back deck, into the sun. I guess I did say it, to myself, marveling at the flowers blooming at the edge of our shoddy, uneven deck. To a kid from Minnesota the sight of white lilies uncurling in the bright midmorning sun in February is just another confirmation that I won’t be moving back to the Midwest any time soon.

It’s President’s Day and I’m home from work, writing on the back deck for the first time since I moved in last summer. There is the sound of hammering and buzz saws echoing over the hills, from the houses of people rich or lucky enough to afford construction in this economy. There are birds singing, a dog barking, two hummingbirds dueling or flirting among the branches of the tree off the deck; the sound of their wings like a hand flipping quickly through the pages of a book.

///

This morning I pick up the Stanislavski book on acting from the corner of the bathroom sink, where I had left it the night before. Something falls from its pages and I look down at the envelope addressed to me in my mother’s handwriting. I can tell from the shaky edges of the “M” in Michael and the “C” in CA that it was written after the onset of her symptoms. And by the postmark, September 2000, I know it was when we still thought she might have Parkinson’s. In six weeks, at the end of October, we’ll know she has ALS instead.

It’s the size of a small greeting card, and certainly not heavy enough to warrant the two 33 cent stamps stuck in the upper right hand corner. One stamp shows a lacy pink heart, a Victorian valentine with pink roses blossoming along its edges. The other is a child’s drawing; a bright red rocket in a dark blue sky, headed for a pink moon. Below the rocket the child has scrawled, in yellow lettering, “Mommy, are we there yet?” On the edge of the stamp, in tiny letters, it reads “Morgan Hill, age nine”.

I carry the card and the book and a cup of coffee back with me to bed. I throw the comforter over my cold feet and rearrange the pillows, and then open the envelope. Simple gray cardstock with a line of silver letters: “Wishing you wonders great and small”. I open the card and there’s a silver star shooting across the surface of the card. It takes me a moment to realize that the card is backwards; the star should be on the front, the greeting inside. The back cover, with the card company’s name etched in silver, is folded against the front cover of the silver shooting star. Above the star, in her handwriting that has just begun to unravel, it says ” Hi Michael, I’m really happy you’re in the play and working two jobs. Love, Mom”.

Short and terse, unlike her usual cards and letters, which were always full of weather updates and travel plans and training schedules for the marathons she and Lee used to run together. Today, years later, I realize that it was probably Lee who urged her to send the card, perhaps even bought the card. As the illness progressed my mother withdrew from me, and from others. Of course, we didn’t know much about the dementia then, either.

The play she refers to is “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid”; not really a play, actually, neither a novel nor a collection of short stories. Written by Michael Ondaatje, the author of “The English Patient”, it read more like a collection of dreams and nightmares and images, written in Ondaantje’s vivid, visercal prose. I had been cast in the lead role, Billy, and she and Lee would visit me soon and see the performance.

It’s funny to still feel the kick of resentment, the phantom pain of anger towards her. It was just like her to talk about work all the time. Towards the end, the only question she’d ask me on her own initiative was “How’s work?” As if some shitty job title; the organic grocery store stock boy, the coffee shop barista, the paid-under-the-table office clerk; as if any of those mattered to me then. “Fuck work,” I wanted to say, “You’re dying.” I wanted her to say something, anything, about the important shit. Just a few words that weren’t about work. Something about illness, about the sudden shift in priorities, about the value of love and friends and family. I wanted wisdom, I wanted what everyone thought I’d get when they recommended that fucking “Tuesdays with Morrie” book to me. I wanted golden afternoons with my dying mother in which we talked about life’s most important lessons. But Morrie didn’t have the rare type of ALS that included dementia. And the author of that book spent an hour a week with Morrie, he didn’t have to wipe up drool or help Morrie cough over a sink when food got caught somewhere among the weakening muscles of the throat, like I did with my mother. Also, as she once pointed out, “Morrie was in his goddamned seventies already. I’m fifty-three.”

I didn’t get golden movie-of-the-week moments, I didn’t get a thin strand of her pearls of wisdom. I got a mother who answered every question with one word and who could only ask of me, “How’s work?”

Caught somewhere between the dementia and the stoic German work ethic of her father and the Catholic guilt of her mother, my mother seemed to feel that as long as she kept moving, the disease couldn’t catch her. When she lost her job over the illness, she’d never let herself relax. She’d wash loads of laundry everyday, run the dishwasher half-empty, dust the spotless living room. She’d grasp the broom in her weak fingers and sweep the back patio. Afterwards she’d sit with me for a minute at the window, until one leaf would detach from a tree and fall gently onto the perfect patio, and she’d go for the broom again. It all made me very tired.

///

I haven’t acted since Billy. After the play ended I moved back to Minneapolis for a few months to be with her. Even when I came back to San Francisco I avoided auditioning, knowing that any day I could get an urgent call from home. None of the small companies I performed with had the budget for an understudy. But now she’s been dead for a year, so I can’t use her as an excuse anymore.

Billy was very tough. I was very very raw, sober for like thirty seconds, taking on a role that one critic said had more lines than Hamlet. I was very unsure of myself. I was out of shape and dreaded the scene where I wore nothing but a towel onstage. Our boots walking across the floorboards of the set echoed all over the converted gymnasium in which we performed; the audience would sit forward and strain to hear us over the noise. The reviews were mixed. I remember one review in paticular, from a free weekly newpaper that everyone in San Francisco reads. The critic said I lacked the charisma for the role. That morning I wanted to drive around to every kiosk, steal all the papers and burn them in my fireplace. But I didn’t.

Looking back I understand the criticism. I didn’t feel charismatic then. I was thin-skinned and overwhelmed, and even the wonderful reviews I received couldn’t change that. It was such a relief when the play ended, and I guess you could say that I haven’t wanted to be that vulnerable since.

Recently one of the crew from Billy asked me to read the script of a short film he’s directing. The character he wanted me to play was an asshole, but that didn’t bother me much. I like playing assholes. That’s why they call it acting.

But there is one scene where my character has sex with the lead character, an underage boy. More partial nudity, this time on camera. I’ve never acted on film. But really, I asked myself, how many people will ever see a 30-minute film? At least, one that’s not a porno? Also, I look better naked now. I said yes. It’s scheduled to film next month. One scene will be shot in the bar where I used to work; the one I call the gateway to my own personal hell. It’s where I pick the kid up and bring him home. I find that very funny.

///

The first time I auditioned for a professional acting job, I was fresh out of college and didn’t even have a head shot. I got the part, beating out 100 other guys. They paid me $300 a week just to act. I worked with one of the most brilliant directors I’ve ever met at a great little theater in Minneapolis. The play ran for three months; I performed six shows a week. I played Martin in Fool for Love. For my entrance I would run onstage in the dark and tackle the leading man as he fought with his sister. Then the lights would come up, catching me as I held his collar in one hand and cocked back my right fist for another blow. One day we punched a hole in the plaster wall of the set. It was great.

A year later I auditioned for a part in a dance/theater piece with a very funny, very talented choreographer. After her first choice was deported over visa issues, she gave me the role. I got paid again, and at the end of our run she was invited to bring the show to New York. We got paid to dance and act crazy at DTW off of Eighth Avenue. Before we left Minneapolis she told me that she was happy I got the part.

During the day I would wander around Manhattan, returning each evening to Chelsea, where I would meet the others and warm up in a cramped dressing room backstage. The choreographer was also presenting a piece that featured just the women dancers. I would watch from the backstage, as three women in Catholic school uniforms prayed reverently in a spotlight to “Ave Maria”. Slowly, as the song played, something poked from between each of their lips, and then dangled lower and lower over their throats. They were rosaries, drenched in saliva.

///

I was feeling a little apprehensive about this whole film thing, so I decided to re-read my books on Meisner and Stanislavski, which helped get me into the groove a bit. It’s nice to be old enough to know that I don’t have to believe everything I read, either. Then later I turned on the TV and Bravo was having a marathon of Actor’s Studio, so I watched Michael Caine and Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore and Martin Scorsese. And that helped, too. And I daydreamed about what it would be like to be Meryl Streep’s best friend. And then Julianne Moore’s friend, the one she takes the subway with to the gym or whatever. As if all that acting karma would sorta rub off on me by osmosis. And I will admit that sometimes I picture myself in the chair opposite James Lipton, and he’ll have a stack of blue cards all about my life, and I will pretend to be amazed at the thoroughness of his research, and humbled by his proclamations of my acting genius. Then I will also pretend not to expect the famous quiz invented by what’s his name for whatever that French place is at the end of the show, so that all of my answers appear hilarious, deeply moving, and completely spontaneous. Then, in the intimate question-and-answer session with the students I will be very generous and spend lots of time with them so that they’ll think I was the coolest actor ever.

What, like you don’t daydream about this kind of shit?

It sucks being your own worst enemy, letting fear keep you from the things you love, letting it tie you to mediocrity. Haunted by ghosts who only value work. But the ghosts are dead. I’m alive. I don’t need a lot of money, or my name in flashing lights. I just want to do what makes me happy. I want to write and I want to pretend like I’m other people and I want to get paid a little money for it. Is that so wrong?

People who need people

Last week a reader wrote me an email expressing some exasperation over my junior-high school sentiments regarding Ski. I told him he was right, I have been acting like a moony adolescent girl, drawing elaborately detailed signatures of Ski’s name on the back page of my Social Studies notebook. It stung a bit to read his reaction, at least at first.

I don’t really know why I’ve kept my feelings for Ski under wraps when I’m in his company. Fear of rejection, sure, but it seems to be more than that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationships with others lately; the ties that bind. On Friday night I spent some time with a friend of mine and a group of guys he’s recently started hanging out with. My friend was originally trying to set me up with one of the guys, and though I heard he was smitten (it’s my boyish charm) he looked disturbingly like me, and really, I’m not my type.

But I’ve gone to see a couple of movies with my friend and the group, and I’ve decided that I don’t like them, and I don’t particularly like my friend when he’s with them. Maybe that’s unfair. Before the first movie, when we were waiting for everyone to show up, one of the other guys mentioned all the homeless in San Francisco, and said in all seriousness that he thought someone should pass out poisoned muffins to them all, and that would solve the problem.

Then, this weekend, one of them makes a comment about the race of the guy in the booth of the parking garage. Afterwards they’re driving me home, and I live in a neighborhood that makes some people uncomfortable. My friend has said he feels unsafe walking to my house. I think he’s a pussy. Anyway, we’re sitting in this huge, garish SUV at a red light when my friend, in the back, says “Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look,” and of course we all look and a car with a few latino guys pulls up next to us. They’re not even looking in our direction and one of the guys says something about migrant farmers and then my friend says “It must be strawberry-picking season.”

He’s a very loyal friend, very different from me in many respects; enormously extroverted, loud, flirtatious, boy-crazy (emphasis on crazy). When I’m in a quiet mood he annoys me. When we’re out in public he invariably draws as much attention to us as possible, both by his good looks and his loud jokes and laughter. I have fun with him.

But I’m pissed, questioning the very nature of friendship, of all my relationships. It’s not a matter of being politically correct; I think unapologetic racism is just plain ugly. I think joking about killing the homeless is ignorant and dangerous. I think any of this coming from priveleged, sheltered white gay boys is ridiculous and fucked-up.

And I don’t want to be around it. Maybe I’m naive, maybe my expectations for friends and lovers are too high, maybe I need to stop looking only for people whose insides are the same as mine. Maybe I can keep a real friendship with someone whose views differ from mine. It’s about seeing outlines; realizing where I end and someone else begins. I’ve blurred those lines, often. Am I really Ski’s friend, harboring what I do?

I’ve stayed pretty single this past year, trying to quietly train my eyes to see the lines, to know them by heart, to trace them accurately, even in the dark. It hasn’t exactly made me the most pro-active guy.

Last week at an AA meeting this woman was speaking, describing a conversation she had many years ago with a friend who told her “…maybe the reason you’re attracted to unavailable men is because you’re unavailable. Hello!”

Ouch.

///

I got an email this week from my mom’s partner:

Michael, I have decided to travel this year.  Your Mom wanted me to, but I felt, I don’t know, not right about it.  But two friends have asked me to join them and a few others to go to Patagonia this Nov.  It is where your Mom and I had planned on going before she was diagnosed.  After much thought, I have decided to go.  It is a trekking trip and the folks going are great, though much younger than me.  Why don’t you join us? Please, think about it.
And, how are you doing?  Plans? Move? are you happy? (I’m not).
This is all sooo hard isn’t it.  It comes up so unexpectedly and with such sorrow.  I know it is hard for you also.  We really lost a good woman, mother didn’t we., and her life was so short.  So undeserved.
well, I am kind of going on here.  Let me know how you are.  Think about joining me for some travel.  So many people ask about you, and I think of you all the time.

What, like I wouldn’t want to go to on a trek?

///

The guys who produced and directed a play I was in during the fall of 2001 edited the video footage they had of the show, and had the cast and crew over to see it on DVD yesterday. I have mixed feelings about my performance in the play; the role was, well, humongous, and it came at a particularly raw time in my life; very newly sober, worried about my mom, feeling way over my head. Someone who knows theater said I had more lines than Hamlet, and it took me till dress rehearsals to simply get the memorization done. I got mixed reviews, when previously I had always garnered praise. I continually felt the weight of the entire production on my shoulders, felt amateurish in the company of veteran actors. My voice didn’t quite hold up. I had a shirless scene that felt like a walking nightmare.

So it was with apprehension that I sat with the others to watch the past flicker before our eyes. And though there were many scenes I would do differently, though I’d work harder today, though I’d like to think I’d bring more life experience to any role, there were also some very nice moments. And it reminded me why I love acting; why the dream life for me would be to write during the day, and act in the theater at night. I stayed away from acting mainly due to my mother’s illness, wanting to be free to leave town suddenly. And I don’t enjoy acting just for the sake of acting; a bad play is torture both for audience and actor.

But I miss it; the long nights and the measly pay, the energy from an audience engaged, the deep pleasure of bringing another writer’s work of art to the stage. The opportunity to take on a more extroverted or devious personality, the challenge of pulling it off.

One of the other actors told me afterwards, “You’re depriving the world of your talents by not acting.”

That was kinda nice to hear.

Typecast

My buddy at Kaliyuga Arts, the theater company that produced the two plays I’ve appeared in here in SF, emailed me yesterday concerning a script they’re considering for the future. Apparently he thought of me for the part of “a wheelchair-bound paraplegic virgin named Puppy who writes gay male stroke books with gratuitous political content.” Naturally! He never gives me something easy to do. I’ve already started research; two days post-squat workout (the first in a long time) and my legs are useless. Watch me navigate a flight of stairs; fun for everyone!!

The best dreadlocks in jazz, a “smokey” contralto, and a improvised sound studio in a Mississippi boxcar: I’m so there.

Wasn’t Blade 1 enough?

Favorite musical moment of the day: the Icelandic princess pitching a cry, high: I luf him I luf him I luf him I luf him.

///

The bus slides through the morning drizzle, containing sleepy commuters. In whose heads I could guess are dreams and lists, hunger and hurt pride. In senior seating someone’s mother leans slightly against me, with each green light a gentle pressing against my shoulder. The umbrella dries in my lap. Last night the dream was desolation, and it was no absence or hollow pit. Bigger; an excavation in my heart, a yawning yearning. The bells of my lungs swept out sobs, so loud that had you been sleeping with me, I would have woken us both, and you’d shush me and run a hand through my hair, and I’d be with you and without her.