Forever the Fat Kid: How I Survived Dysfunction, Depression and Life in the Theater (10 page)

It was less than a week later that Wally’s birth mother called to say that she’d had a change of heart, and that Wally was better off staying with us after all. We later found out what caused her sudden change of heart. Apparently, Wally’s birth father changed his mind about setting up house with her. Their brief reunion, just like the one with her husband, was short-lived. She remained a single woman for the rest of her life.

MY FIRST BROADWAY SHOW

Steven, my newfound friend from the Saturday acting class, was a transfer from catholic school. Not terribly handsome, he was straight (as far as I know) but somewhat effeminate and, like me, he was teased, cast out, and made to feel an outsider in the world of public junior high school circa 1969. He also happened to be open-minded, exposed to far more of life, and far more intelligent than most of the other kids in school. We bonded through our love of the theater, as well as a shared disdain for gym class, and became great friends, finding that we had much in common. Without sounding conceited, the fact that we both embraced who we were despite the pressures of being different from most of our peers made us better people. I’m not sure where the courage to do that came from, but I’m glad that it was there.

By the end of the six-week acting course, my thirst for theater was unquenchable. I was hooked. This was the beginning of my fascination with New York City. Every kid in the acting class had seen a Broadway show except me. It became my main goal in life to rectify that situation. I had to see a Broadway show, and I didn’t care which one it was. I didn’t even know what was playing at the time. When I would mention shows, musicals in particular, that I was familiar with and wanted to see, the same answer kept resonating: “that show is no longer running.” I wasn’t aware of the fact that shows eventually close, and that even the biggest successes don’t run forever.

Needing a partner in crime, as well as someone who knew a little something about the Broadway district, I convinced Steven to sneak into New York with me and see a show, and he was more than happy to oblige. So one evening, after telling our parents that we were going to a party, we hopped a bus for New York. We walked around the theater district and ended up buying tickets to a revival of the play The Front Page. We were almost kicked out midway through the first act because I wasn’t aware that during performances of Broadway shows “the taking of photographs is strictly forbidden.” In the middle of Act One, I pulled out my instamatic camera and snapped a shot of Peggy Cass, who I recognized as a regular from the TV game show What’s My Line. The ushers descended upon our area of seats like a flock of hungry pigeons to discarded bread, but by then I had stuffed the camera back into my pocket and had joined the others seated nearby in looking around to see who had done the dirty deed. This was at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on 47th Street. On the same block was the Biltmore Theater that housed the musical that I really wanted to see that evening, but which was sold out, the rock musical, Hair.

THE AGE OF AQUARIUS

After my first taste of acting, I become involved in school musicals and community theater productions; my love for the theater grew stronger with each passing day. However, being awestruck didn’t erase my awareness that professional theater was a very white affair. I wasn’t so naïve as to not realize that there wasn’t much demand for a young, fat, somewhat black individual like myself on the Broadway stage. Of all of the professional shows I saw–play or musical, comedy or drama–there wasn’t a soul in any of them that looked anything remotely like me. This was in the days when non-traditional casting meant placing an ingénue in a character role and drawing wrinkles on her face to age her. A few weeks later, on a solo afternoon trip into Manhattan, I secured a rear mezzanine seat to a Saturday matinee of Hair. My life would never be the same.

Hippies, rock music, and nudity! All live on stage! You have no idea how intoxicating I found the rock musical, Hair. This show, that took Broadway by storm when it first opened in 1968, was also the catalyst for my decision to pursue a theater career. At the risk of sounding corny, Hair changed my life. I saw the Broadway production more times than I can remember and, even though I was only fifteen years old the first time I saw it, the show spoke to me. It was wild, funny, crazy, moving, exciting and–like me–different from everything else. Even if I hadn’t already worn off the grooves of the cast album from repeated spins on my record player, I would have still recognized many of the songs, as they had become pop radio hits. The music was great! The cast dressed the way that I liked to dress! They smoked pot! They advocated free love and sex of all kinds! And to top it all off, they got naked! Can you image what this was like for the fat kid from New Jersey whose only exposure to musical theater had been of the Rodgers and Hammerstein variety? But what thrilled me the most about this new and exciting piece of theater was the realization that if I was a few pounds lighter, and a few years older, I could very well be cast in this show! Hair let me know that there was, in fact, a place for me in the world of professional theater.

BROADWAY RELIGION

In the fall of 1971, another rock musical came to Broadway. Jesus Christ Superstar was the hot ticket of the season, and since Tom O’Horgan, who had also directed Hair, directed it, I was dying to see it. When I told a friend that I wanted to see it but wasn’t sure if I could get tickets, I learned yet another valuable piece of information about Broadway theater: the cancellation ticket. Apparently, even when a show is sold out, you can stand in line on the day of the performance and purchase tickets that someone else is unable to use…on a first-come, first-served basis. I immediately picked a date and headed to New York to get myself such a ticket for Jesus Christ Superstar.

Arriving at the theater alone, as I figured I had a better chance at a single ticket than a pair, I asked the man at the box office how to get one of these cancellation tickets. He directed me to a line of about a dozen people outside of the theater. I took my place in line behind a woman who, like me, had come alone. A thin woman of about fifty or sixty years of age, she struck me more as someone who should be attending the matinee of a sophisticated drama or comedy with her bridge-playing buddies than someone you’d find waiting in line for a Friday evening performance of a rock musical.

I arrived about two hours before the scheduled curtain time, and brought a book along knowing that I would have time to kill. Everyone else in line was paired up and in conversation; everyone except me and the older woman that I was now standing behind. After about twenty minutes, she turned to me and asked what I was reading. We were soon into a conversation as deep as any of the ones around us. It’s amazing what total strangers will end up sharing when they find themselves in situations like this. By the time they started selling the cancellation tickets, about ten minutes prior to the start of the show, I had learned that she lived in Connecticut, was recently widowed, had no children, and that her one true love in life was theater.

I told her that I, too, loved theater and that when I arrived here, I recognized the theater where Jesus Christ Superstar was playing because I had been here once before. She asked what I had seen, and I told her that it wasn’t a play or a musical, but a dance performance. I had come here with Ruthie and Annette years earlier to see Les Ballet Africains when I was nine years old. Ruthie became a big fan of the dance troupe after seeing them perform at the 1965 World’s Fair. I told the woman all about the trip in, how much fun it was, and how excited I was to be included in that particular outing. I did, however, conveniently leave out the part about how, in one number, the female members of the troupe were all topless, and it was the first time that I had ever seen female breasts live! About ten pairs, if I remember correctly.

When we reached the box office window, there were only two cancellation tickets remaining for that evening’s performance. A pair of orchestra seats, fifth-row center. I wasn’t aware that cancellation tickets were only the top-priced tickets available, and had come hoping to get a cancellation in the balcony, and only had enough cash for such a ticket. After the woman whom I had befriended purchased her ticket, I stepped up to the window and asked about a cheaper cancellation ticket. The man in the box office simply said, “Sorry, kid,” and motioned for the person behind me to step up to the window and purchase this last remaining ticket. Before I was even aware of what was happening, the woman (my new-found friend) had reached into her wallet and shoved the cost of the second ticket under the box office window. Taking the ticket, she turned to me and said, “You came all the way from New Jersey. I’m not going to let you go back without seeing this show.”

Totally shocked and not knowing what to say, I thanked her profusely and offered her the money that I had brought to buy a cheaper seat. “No,” she said, “keep your money. It’s worth it to me to have another theater lover like myself to enjoy the show with.” And with that, we entered the theater and settled into our prime location, fifth-row center seats. At intermission, she did ask one thing from me in return for buying the ticket. She requested that I walk her to the subway after the show was over, which I did gladly. Surely, she was more than capable of walking to the subway alone; I think she just wanted her generosity to seem less of a charity case.

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

The year of Broadway’s Jesus Christ Superstar, and my new baby brother, was also the year that my parents’ respective spouses died, leaving them free to legally marry. Jamesie was anxious to tie the knot after almost twenty years of shacking up, but Ruthie wasn’t so hot on the idea. Although she knew that this was the man, for better or for worse, that she would most likely be spending the rest of her life with, she refused to go ahead and make it legal. It was clear that she wasn’t going anywhere, but she still wanted to know that she had the option of walking away if she chose; I think that I inherited that particular trait from her. There’s been a marked history of lack of commitment in my life. In any case, they did not marry and I remained a bastard child.

DELORES

Being a couch potato and a television addict, I got hooked on several shows growing up; especially variety shows. Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, Flip Wilson, Hee Haw, the list goes on and on. One of my favorites was the short-lived Della Reese Show. In 1970, the Pre-Touched by an Angel Della Reese hosted her own variety show. My favorite part of the show came at the end when Della and her co-host, Sandy Baron, would do “improvs” just like the ones I had learned in my Saturday acting classes. Taking suggested situations from the studio audience members, Della and Sandy were quite good at this theater game. There was something else that happened on one particular show that impressed me.

Tuning in to the show on that particular evening, Della announce that one of her guests on the show was a member of the Los Angeles cast of the rock musical Hair. You can only imagine how my ears perked up upon hearing that. The guest was a short, black girl with two long braids on each side of her head. I guessed correctly that this must be the actress playing Dionne, the role that Melba Moore originated in the Broadway production. Her name was Delores Hall, and when she opened her mouth to sing, it was as if my world shifted from black and white to Technicolor just like in The Wizard of Oz. The woman had a kick-ass voice like none I’d ever heard. Della closed the show that week by inviting Delores to join her in a rousing rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” By the time the final credits were rolling, I had already begun plotting a way to somehow get to California and see this woman perform live. As fate would have it, I was able to save myself the trouble and expense of such a trip.

In late 1970, the Los Angeles production of Hair closed and some of its cast members were sent to New York to join the Broadway production of the show. This coincided with my fourth or fifth time seeing the show. Among those Los Angeles tribe members joining the Broadway cast was Delores Hall, who had so impressed me on The Della Reese Show. Delores sang the opening number “Aquarius” and brought the house down; I was even more blown away hearing her singing live. The woman had a voice that defied description. On my next trip to see Hair an announcement was made prior to the start of the play: “At this performance the role of Sheila will be played by Delores Hall.” My mouth fell open. That was the female lead! I spent the next thirty or forty minutes eagerly awaiting “Easy to be Hard” which was Sheila’s solo number in the first act. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed! And neither was anyone else in the theater that afternoon. That was the day that I experienced what “stopping the show” meant–in all forms of the phrase. When Delores finished singing “Easy to be Hard” the applause went on for what must have been two or three minutes while everyone on stage sat there waiting for it to die down. I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would soon have the honor of calling this incredibly talented woman my friend.

A SURPRISE PHONE CALL

As I entered high school, four years had passed since Annette’s death. We were still trying, without total success, to function as a normal family–whatever that is. Adopting Wally helped, but even though things had taken on some sense of normalcy, there always seemed to be a dark cloud hovering somewhere overhead. Not quite obliterating the sky, but always managing to block out a fair amount of sunshine. It had, by now, been well over a year since we’d had any real contact with Annette’s children, and it seemed that we might never have a relationship with them again. Then came the phone call.