Ethan Mordden - How’s your romance

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Contents

To Gregg and the Boys

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my agent, Joe Spieler; to copy editor Benjamin Dreyer, relentless in pursuit of Fowlers sturdy indefensibles; to production editor Meg Ive never seen a book without italics Drislane; to my editor, Keith Kahla.

I NTRODUCTION : I N W HICH N OTHING H APPENS

I WAS RECRUITED DURING INTERMISSION at a performance of South Pacific at the Brandywine Music Circus in Concordville, Pennsylvania. My father, a building contractor, had taken me along on an inspection trip of his sitesthe motel outside Waretown, New Jersey; the torpedo plant in New London, Connecticut; rest stops along some turnpike; and the new courthouse in Concordville.

These trips were great fun because of the incidentals, such as amusement parks, afternoon tea-dancing at the hotels, and especially summer theatres, generally in the round inside a great tent. These are virtually extinct nowadays; however, decades ago summer theatre was a mainstay from Maine to Virginia and from Long Island to Minnesota, most often featuring the so-called package tour. This offered some show-biz star or merry has-been leading a company of unknowns in new plays or old musicals. Tallulah Bankhead never missed a season; she always claimed it was this or debtors prison. At various times, Dolores Gray, Kitty Carlisle, and Jane Morgan tried Lady in the Dark. Norma Terris and Allan Jones exhumed themselves and operetta. Gypsy Rose Lee took over Ethel Mermans role in Happy Hunting. To a Broadway veteran like me, this was a hodgepodge. Still, a musical is a musical.

Anyway, Concordville had one of those tents, and our visit coincided with a week of South Pacific starring Don Ameche and Betsy Palmer. My girl-in-every-port father saw a dating opportunity in depositing me at the Brandywine Music Circus, and I was alone in my seat waiting for the second act to start when a non-descript but dapper character slipped into the place next to me, set a new sheet atop his clipboard, and asked, Name?

Now, I should warn you that South Pacific is a Joshua Logan show, Logan being the co-librettist and director of the original production. A lifelong hibernating gay who was unwittingly out to everybody but himself, Logan habitually dressed his musicals with shirtless hunks in, for example, a swimming-pool scene and even a physique parade in a college football teams locker room.

South Pacific s hunks are Seabees, one of them, by Logan tradition, a Hercules. I was trying to decide which one I preferredyes, even then I knewwhen the clipboard guy joined me. He asked for basic data only, yet was clearly weighing my answers. I said, Whats all this about?

Your contract. Last question: who do you like the most?

Impulsively, I made my mind up: The blond on the end. With the shoulders.

No. In the world.

Oh. Barbara Cook.

You made it. Sign here.

I signed, he handed me a carbon, and he bustled off to quiz an avid youth sitting across the aisle in a Peter Pan collar, surrounded by aunts.

Looking over the contract, I was mystified by all the sexual boilerplatewhat was rimming?but I wasnt too young to see the immense advantage in two exemptive clauses, one from marriage and the other from military service. There was a rider advising that wearing green on Thursday was now optional andmost interesting to mea kind of sermonette at the end on the importance of friendship.

Its interesting because while gays supposedly have a lot of sex, what most of them really have is a lot of relationships, including odd ones. My odd ones are uncountable, but my close odd ones are with the former Little Kiwi, now known as J., and Cosgrove, the two juniors in my personal gay family. Playmates, business partners, and allies against the world, they sometimes turn into rivals in a competition whose prize is unknowable and whose rules are unclear. Tension can break out at any moment, so let us proceed to another intermission at a musical. For his birthday, J. had asked me to take him and Cosgrove to Les Misrables. Most people pass the interval just sitting there, finding the bar, or visiting the belasco (my mothers euphemism, when we were kids and out in public, for the toilet). J. spent the time testing Cosgrove on the plot, and what he thought would happen next.

What if I dont know? Cosgrove fearfully asked.

You must understand what each story is about, said J., if you want to learn how life is.

Its about love, said Cosgrove, none too sure.

Everythings about love, replied J., with a patronizingly reassuring smile. Lets be specific. Guess who divides. Guess who conquers.

I butted in and offered J. fifty bucks, silvershine on the barrelhead, if he could recount the shows plot thus far. He couldnt, of course. Hugos novel has tons of plot, tons even that the musical had to omit, including a touching relationship between the street urchin Gavroche and two homeless and very young brothers whom he temporarily takes care of, none of them aware that Gavroche is in fact the boys brother, too. I shared this bit of intelligence with the kids, who were fascinated. How come they didnt know? Cosgrove asked.

They are all progeny of the novels villain couple, les Thnardier, who only raise daughters. The boys they dispose of.

Did Gavroche and his brothers ever learn the secret? Cosgrove asked.

Gavroche is killed during a battle between revolutionaries and Authority, and Hugo leaves the other two fending for themselves in the great monster, Paris.

Cosgrove was quiet, but J., irked at my crabbing his act, huffed out, I dont see what all that has to do with a trip to the theatre.

Theatre is education, I pointed out. Thats why gay boys are born theatregoers. To which I added, Theatregoers and runaways.

How so? asked Cosgrove, as J. decided to study the actors bios in the playbill and make angry little fooing noises.

Well, I said, like Gavroche and his brothers, were cut off from our families of origin and the social system they champion or simply stooge for unthinkingly. We make our own families, invent our system. You need smarts to do that. Soeducation. The older among us kind of take care of the fledglings.

J. turned a page of his playbill so brutally that it ripped.

Well, dont we? I asked.

Did anyone take care of you? Cosgrove asked.

I didnt need it, because of all the theatre Id logged. But if I had been needy, someone would have seen to it. It can be an informal thing, you know. People looking out for you without your even noticing. Or it can be very structured, as with you and J. Have the two of you ever had sex, by the way?

Cosgroves eyes widened, and now he, too, began touring tensely through his program.

Ive been wondering from the beginning, I went on, and there would be a kind of symmetry to it, as everyone else in the family has had carnal knowledge of the rest of us at least once that I know of. And well, runaways will do that when they first meet, if only to what? Discover the size of the commitment?

Heres all about the plays that were seen in this theatre eons ago, J. announced.

I now know who the wardrobe supervisor may be, Cosgrove put in.

Youve had plenty of opportunity and a bond of spectacular proportions, I went on, rather enjoying myself. This is weight-lifted love, or at least it was.