Attack of the Theater People

by Marc Acito

  Marcus gestures to the crowd with the same haughty disdain he exhibited as Hotspur in Juilliard’s production of Henry IV, Part One. “Baby, look at those T-shirts,” he says. “Every one of them an ad for Citibank and Coca-Cola.” He throws back his head, unleashing four years’ worth of voice and speech training. “Pawns! Corporate tools!”

  Marcus inherited these convictions. The grandnephew of Nikolai Sokoloff, the Russian director of the Federal Music Project, he is also the son of Martha Hopkins, the distinguished African-American soprano and civil rights activist. As a result, he possesses the kind of pure, socialist contempt for capitalism that only a trust fund can buy. He wears his usual uniform—a white undershirt and jeans—to demonstrate his solidarity with the workingman.

  “I don’t understand you,” Paula says, snapping open a lace fan and flapping it over the canyon of her cleavage. “How can you be opposed to corporations donating money?” She looks to me for confirmation, but I don’t have the energy; it’s partly depression but mostly the heat, which makes me feel sticky and fat. Nominally, I suppose I’m slender, having burned excess calories this semester through sheer panic, but my body is still soft, like an unbaked pie.

  “I’m opposed to corporations, period,” Marcus snaps. “We shouldn’t have to throw a continental block party to help the homeless.” Aggression radiates from his taut, coiled frame like a furnace, and the passengers next to us inch away. Marcus tends to have that effect on people. Both his personality and appearance remind me of sandpaper, the latter due to an unfortunate set of pockmark acne scars.

  “Well, I found it exhilarating,” Paula says. “Didn’t you, Willow? Will?”

  Willow turns and looks at us as if she’s just realized there are other people on the train. She shrugs her freckled shoulders, which look like they’ve been dusted with cinnamon, and starts to sing:

  We are the world…

  “Oh, no. Don’t you start,” Marcus says, but he’s drowned out by Paula.

  We are the children…

  A pair of senior citizens in shiny tracksuits chimes in, and soon all the people advertising Citibank and Coca-Cola are swaying and singing. No one knows the rest of the words, so they just la-la-la all the way to Jersey. I look at Marcus, feeling as saggy as my bag of laundry.

  “‘What fools these mortals be,’” he mutters.

  The bar is packed when we arrive, and not just with people. Lucky McPuddles is the kind of claustrophobic restaurant-pub where they nail as much crap to the walls and ceiling as they can and call it atmosphere: street signs, bowling trophies, rocking chairs, carousel horses. It looks like the set of Cats. Add in all the high-haired Jersey girls dancing around piles of purses like witches at a coven and you can barely see the band.

  And the band is the reason we’re here. Otherwise I wouldn’t set foot in Jersey. Not that I’ve got anything particular against my home state; I oppose all smug, complacent suburbs. As a result, I am not in the habit of eating mozzarella sticks while listening to a Bruce Springsteen cover band called Almost Bruce. But tonight is different. Tonight is the first time any of us will witness a performance of Almost Bruce’s new lead singer, Doug Grabowski.

  Doug.

  Doug, Doug, Doug, Doug, Doug.

  I take some credit for the direction his life has taken. For it was I who first sensed that Doug yearned for a creative outlet beyond the Paleolithic pleasures of football. And it was I who convinced him to audition for Danny Zuko in the Wallingford Summer Workshop production of Grease, opening up a whole new world to him. But it was Doug who went to see Springsteen’s Born in the USA concert, which inspired him to follow in the rocker’s footsteps by dropping out of community college, taking up the guitar, and wearing very tight Levi’s.

  There are worse things he could do.

  Willow and I lose Paula and Marcus in the crowd as we push our way in. I still can’t see the stage, but I can hear a growly baritone that sounds just like the man Jerseyites simply refer to as Bruce.

  This gun’s for hire,

  Even if we’re just dancing in the dark.

  I’m not a Springsteen fan. For all the hype about Bruce’s lyrics being poetry, it bugs me when he mixes a metaphor (“This gun’s for hire, even if we’re just dancing in the dark”?); that is, when I can understand what he’s saying at all. Bruce Springsteen’s mush-mouthed diction makes Bob Dylan sound like Henry Higgins.

  No, as far as Jersey boys go, Springsteen may be the Boss, but Sinatra is still the Chairman of the Board. When Frank dances in the dark, he waltzes in the wonder of why we’re here, looking for the light of a new love.

  Now, that’s poetry.

  But since my failure is imprinted so firmly on my psyche, even Sinatra’s music is spoiled for me. Just thinking of those classic Capitol recordings (easy to do—I know them so well I don’t actually need to listen anymore) reminds me of Juilliard. You see, in order to pay for school, I kind of stole Frank Sinatra’s identity. Well, not stole. More like borrowed. On the dubious advice of my cheesehead friend Nathan Nudelman, I used Ol’ Blue Eyes’s name to create a scholarship as a vehicle for laundering money so I could embezzle funds from my father when he refused to pay for acting school, which resulted in my actually embezzling the money from my evil ex-stepmonster, because she was embezzling from my father in the first place. That scheme didn’t work out so well, forcing us to move to plan B, which entailed drugging my stepmonster and taking blackmail pictures of her passed out beneath Doug’s absurdly large penis.

  Y’know, just good, clean teen fun.

  Memories of Doug naked—and of the one time we were nearly together—loom large in my imagination, so much so that I often question my mental health. Surely it’s not normal to obsess so much about a straight guy. Not to mention pointless. And self-defeating. And humiliating.

  And there he is.

  Three

  Doug shouts “Hey, baby!” and several women rush the stage. Suddenly there’s a clearing in the bracken of Big Jersey Hair, and my heart stops beating, presumably because all the blood has traveled to my groin. Doug’s outfitted in Bruce’s trademark checked shirt with the sleeves cut off, a bandanna wrapped around his head, and a pair of 501s caressing his thighs so tightly I momentarily forget my troubles, as well as my name and Social Security number. With his cowlicky hair dyed darker, he bears a surprising resemblance to Springsteen, all flashing teeth and sparkling eyes.

  As a saxophone wails, Doug grooves to the music, his whole body swaying to the beat. The smile on his face is unmistakable—he’s drunk with the pleasure of performing—and he beams at the audience, flinging pheromones with each sweaty strut.

  It’s not just the heat he generates that infatuates me; it’s the light he shines. Most straight guys are too macho and mumbly ever to express this kind of six-hundred-watt joy, but Doug’s not embarrassed to share the Pan-like pleasure he takes in performing. He seems so at home in his skin, so effortlessly comfortable in the world, so assuredly, maddeningly heterosexual. That’s the thing about guys with big dicks: They can be stupid, homely, poor—it doesn’t matter. They still have that confidence about them, that cockiness that says, Guess what I have in my pants?

  To the shrieks of the hair down front, he extends a veiny arm into the crowd and pulls a slender woman in a pink ruffled miniskirt onto the stage. She spins around once, twice, three—whoa—four times, her square-cut cotton shirt rising to reveal her flat belly, her blond ponytail flying, her pale pony legs rippling. She looks like a cross between a gazelle and Giselle.

  Willow leans in to me. “Isn’t that your old girlfriend?”

  I nod.

  “What’s her name?”

  Kelly.

  I’m not surprised to see her—we planned to meet here, after all—but watching her rock out onstage with Doug gives me a pang. Last summer, when Kelly and I both worked at Six Flags Great Adventure, I didn’t mind that she got cast in the revue while I spent two months baking inside a character costume. After all, s
he’s the Bennington dance major, not me, and I’d like to think I brought something new to the interpretation of Chuckles the Woodchuck. This past winter, however, we both auditioned for summer stock and, well, I was under a lot of stress at school and was fighting a cold, which means Kelly’s got her Actor’s Equity card and I’ve got plenty of nuthin’.

  I’m happy for her. Really.

  I mean it.

  No, really.

  Okay, here’s the thing: Kelly and Doug were like my protégés. I’m the one who lit that flame inside them. Now they’re both three-alarm fires and I’m burned out.

  Kelly bobs like a piston, each limb throwing off sparks of enthusiasm. She shimmies at Doug, like she did when she played Sandy to his Danny in Grease, and he laughs in recognition. They look so comfortable together onstage, so free, so uninhibited.

  It makes me want to shoot them both, then myself.

  The song finishes and, as the crowd cheers, I hear a man’s voice behind me say, “They look good together, no?” The accent is indeterminately Continental, which either means Lucky McPuddles has been discovered by Euro-trash or I’ve been discovered by Ziba.

  I turn around and there she is, literally the height of fashion. Her new hairdo extends upward like a skyscraper, adding another five inches to what she refers to as her five-foot-twelve frame, making her look like a very startled Cleopatra. I try to hug her, but am impaled on a pair of earrings shaped like Calder mobiles.

  “Come,” she says, tickling me under the chin. “I can’t bear watching Kelly flirt with men.” To Ziba’s endless frustration, Kelly continues to experiment with heterosexuality.

  I leave Willow, who’s dancing alone with her eyes closed, and follow Ziba through the crowd, which is easy to do because she’s five-foot-seventeen and wears a pleather tube dress and patterned stockings.

  Once we’re in the bar I’m pleased to see I’m not carded. There’s nothing like bitter disappointment to lend you an air of gravitas. I order a pair of tequila shooters, both for myself. Ziba observes me, her face as unreadable as the Wall Street Journal.

  “You look awful,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I mutter as I knock back my first glass of liquid amnesia. “I feel awful.”

  She retrieves a cigarette from a sleek silver case, tapping it on the lid with the assurance of someone who’s watched lots of black-and-white movies. “Well, at least you’re consistent.” She dangles the cig between two fingers, the Internationally Recognized Signal for “Light me, darling.” Or, to be more precise, “I’m too pretentious to light it myself.” Or maybe, “I refuse to let you wallow in self-pity. It’s not good for you, and you know how excessive displays of emotion make me uncomfortable.”

  I pick up her lighter and increase her chances of lung cancer. “You should quit, you know.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, exhaling a long stream of exhaust. “No one likes a quitter.”

  Ziba.

  “Besides,” she continues, “if I’m going to quit anything, it’ll be the Fashion Institute. You don’t know how lucky you are to be out of school, Edward.” Her voice drops an octave as she adds, “I’m so bored.”

  I remind her that her rigorous schedule of partying with other expat Persians actually prevents her from attending classes.

  “That’s why I’m so bored,” she says. “I need a project. I called Nathan to see if he has any ideas, but his roommate said he was at home and his parents said he was at school. Have you heard from him?”

  Of all of our high school friendships, none is more unlikely than that of the five-foot-twelve Persian lesbian and her five-foot-four Jewish sidekick. It’s the Ayatollah Khomeini’s worst nightmare. “I haven’t seen Natie since New Year’s,” I say, nor do I want to think about what kind of trouble he’s gotten into. Nathan Nudelman is like a headline—all bad news. “Maybe he’s been recruited by the CIA.”

  Ziba exhales a dragon’s breath of smoke. “No, he’d tell me if he were.”

  Just then, Kelly appears, breaking through Ziba’s cloud like the sun.

  “There you are!” she says, giving me an I-haven’t-seen-you-since-you-got-kicked-out-of-school-but-I-love-you-anyway-even-though-you’re-a-loser hug. Or, at least, that’s how I interpret it. She brushes my bangs out of my eyes, which is hard to do when they’ve been moussed into submission, and gives me a moist, soulful gaze. Her eyes are made up to camouflage her heterochromia, a condition that causes them to be two different colors, one favoring blue, the other brown. Kelly read somewhere that Vivien Leigh didn’t actually have green eyes and that the effect in Gone With the Wind was accomplished through skillful makeup and lighting, so now she’s got this complicated Bloomingdale’s-makeup-counter regimen. Even with Monet’s Water Lilies on her eyelids, there’s no mistaking her pity. And I won’t be pitied by anyone. Except, of course, myself.

  From the other room the band starts up again. “C’mon,” I say, feigning enthusiasm. “I love this song!” I don’t, but I’ve got to get out from under the weight of her kindness. Grasping Kelly’s hand like a lifeline, I squeeze into the back of the room, where we watch Doug perform with acrobatic abandon—jumping up on the amp, sliding across the stage on his knees, leaping into the crowd—and my body begins to ache. Not just for Doug, although that’s easy to do when so many of the songs are addressed to love objects with androgynous names like Frankie, Ricky, and Terry and have titles like “I’m Goin’ Down” and “Ramrod,” but also for myself, for the person I used to be. Back in high school I was the madcap bon vivant who cavorted onstage and off, a puckish Pied Piper who led the parade of the Play People. But two years of being told I perform too much—that I push, show, and indicate—have made me timid. I went to school to learn how to act and I’ve become inert.

  After the show we snag ourselves a table, but, having drunk four (five? okay, six) tequila shooters, I find that the print on the menu keeps rearranging itself into kaleidoscopic patterns, like showgirls in a Busby Berkeley musical.

  “Whah goes wid tequila?” I ask Ziba.

  “Blackouts.”

  I look across the room, which tilts like the deck of the Titanic, and see Doug surrounded by Jersey girls seeking autographs. Autographs! Back in high school he didn’t know a whole note from a fried egg, and now he’s signing autographs. I resist the urge to march across the room and pull his fans off of him, screaming, “Back off, bitches, he’s mine!” Instead I order another shooter, wishing I could arrange for an intravenous drip.

  I turn back to the table, where Kelly’s telling everyone what it’s like to join Actor’s Equity.

  “They’ve even got a newsletter,” she says, pulling it out of her bag.

  Marcus sneers. “You carry it around with you?”

  “I brought it for Edward,” Kelly snips, then, turning to me, adds, “I figured you could use it, now that you’re…Well, it’s got a lot of great inside information.”

  I flip through pages of casting calls, obituaries, and apartment notices, all of them swirling in formation, then fold the newsletter in quarters so it’ll fit in my back pocket.

  “Fanks,” I gurgle.

  There’s an awkward silence, as silences are wont to be. A quick inventory of the participants doesn’t bode well for conversation: Marcus is in a mood, Ziba’s aloof, I’m drunk, and Willow is, well, Willow. That leaves Paula and Kelly to do the heavy lifting.

  “So where are you working this summer?” Paula asks in a cheery, talk-show tone.

  “Akron Under the Stars.”

  We all nod like we’re impressed. Kelly tries to downplay being cast as Dream Laurey in Oklahoma! by explaining that she looks like the woman playing the regular daytime Laurey. Her success has nothing to do with me, I say to myself.

  Eventually Doug struts over to our table. As usual, Paula takes charge. “Can you sit with us? Come, sit. Edward, let him sit. Pleeeze, sit, sit, sit.”

  Fine, I think, just stop saying “sit.” I start to get up, a little miffed that I’m
the one being asked to give up my seat, but Doug just nudges me over, sharing it with me. On the sound track in my mind, a thousand violins begin to play.

  Paula continues as hostess. “Doug, have you met My Boyfriend, Marcus?”

  If this were acting class, Marian Seldes would tell Paula she’s telegraphing the subtext: “My little bird, don’t show us that you’re uncomfortable introducing your current boyfriend to a well-endowed man you used to sleep with recreationally. Be uncomfortable.”

  Doug and Marcus each give that upward nod of the head that guy-guys do, two alpha dogs.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  Paula gestures to Willow. “And this is our roommate Willow.”

  Willow just laughs, as if someone told a joke only flakes can hear. She hands Doug a bar napkin. “Can I have your autograph?”

  Doug reaches into his back pocket, his hand brushing against my thigh, and a shiver crosses my face and down my neck, making the hair on my arms stand on end. But then he pulls a pen out of his pocket and I feel myself die a little. Having autograph seekers is one thing; being ready is another. As he signs, Willow says, “You’re a sweater.”

  Doug looks confused, a near-universal response where Willow is concerned. “I’m a what?”

  “A sweater.”

  “Ya’ mean, like a cardigan?”

  “No. Like a big, wet, sweaty mess.”

  Doug Grouchos his eyebrows at me, the Internationally Recognized Signal for “The redhead’s a freak, but I’d still bone her.” If he does, that’ll leave Marcus as the only person at the table with whom Doug hasn’t had a sexual encounter.

  I look down at the napkin, which he’s signed, Doug Grab.

  “Where’s the-owski?” I ask. “Ya’ need anudder napkin?”

  “Doug Grabowski sounds like a teamster,” he says. “Doug Grab is a rock star.” He looks around the table. “Whaddya guys think?”

  “It’s a bit aggressive,” Ziba says, swirling the Courvoisier in her glass. “But so’s rock ’n’ roll.”