I walked a mile in another man's glittery suit

Never Done: Wore Taylor Mac's clothes to dinner

I went to an industry screening of The King's Speech, after which the screenwriter David Seidler spoke. David Seidler is 74, and has been working for many, many years without ever getting his breakout film. Until now. He went to Hollywood at the age of 40, when, as he puts it, most sane people are leaving Hollywood, and after writing Tucker, imagined he could write anything he wanted. He didn't count on Tucker bombing. But by then he had started working on this screenplay about King George VI and his stutter, or as they say in England, his stammer. Seidler was also a stutterer, and had been deeply inspired to overcome his by listening to the king's speeches during WWII. So he started the screenplay about 30 years ago, but wanted Queen Elizabeth's permission. The Queen wrote to him that she would prefer that the film would not be produced within her lifetime, as the events were still painful. He thought to himself, "Well, she's 75 years old, how long can she live, really?" 25 years later, he was still waiting, and writing, and rewriting. When the Queen Mother died in 2002, the film finally moved forward. (Note to self: that is patience.)

One of the great benefits of living in New York, and working in my industry is that I get to go to things like this -- free screenings and productions where I get to listen to artists talk about their work. Sometimes I take it for granted, but more often I think they take it for granted. Seidler treated the event with great respect -- possibly because he doesn't take his career for granted -- and possibly because he had just that morning received his first Oscar nomination.

Jennifer Ehle, on the other hand, who is most famous in my book for playing Elizabeth Bennett in the BBC mini series of Pride and Prejudice, which I watched dozens of times with my mother in her last years, was annoyingly self-referential and elusive, and I believe has no more place in this post other than serving as a jumping off point to what came next.

I ducked out of the Q and A once the attention had turned to Jennifer, and I checked in with Taylor, with whom I had a date. I had suggested we go into Union Square and give flowers away to strangers, or set up an advice booth. Instead, he made a reservation (his treat!) at the Union Square Café and asked me to meet him at his apartment first. When I got there, he looked over my "outfit" of jeans and snow shoes, and said, "Well, I've seen people get in there in jeans. You'll probably be OK. It's usually the men they ask to leave, anyway." I thought for a second, and then realized he must have a wardrobe full of beautiful dresses -- so I asked if I could put on something of his. He took me right to the closet and held up the beautiful green and teal sparkly suit his sister made for him to wear to the Obie's -- and laughed. "You could wear this!" And so I did.

When we walked into the restaurant, I felt like we were walking into a black and white movie, only I was colorized. The entire color scheme of the cafe, including that of the customers, is subdued. The servers wear light blue and white pinstriped button-down shirts, and dark pants. The customers wear black, white, and tan. The walls are beige, the tablecloths are white, the chairs are dark. The entire décor is designed not to offend. And then I walked in, wearing an oversized glittery suit, and a silent rush of excitement swept through the restaurant. People stared but pretended they weren't. It was easy to tell that people were just a little bit scared -- maybe because they thought I must be Important, and maybe because they were being busted out of their comfort zone, but it was also easy to tell that people were relieved and welcomed the influx of color and energy to the room.

I also noticed that I was completely comfortable. I was much more interested in my time together with Taylor (who is about to go on tour for 4 months, and so we really wanted a good catch up) than my outfit or the other people in the room. But at the same time, I was aware that I meant something to the other people in the room, and that it was mostly positive. When our server came over, she immediately complimented my outfit, and said something about it being a welcome change, and that it added needed color to the room. OK, so I had been right about people feeling relief. When we placed our orders, she recommended a salad made from cara cara oranges, with fennel vinaigrette, fresh mint, and shavings of ricotta salata. While it sounded wonderful, both Taylor and I really wanted greens, so we both ordered bibb lettuce salads. When she brought the salads, she also brought an order of the oranges for us, and said, "Because I can." When she left, Taylor laughed, and told me that it is not uncommon to get free stuff in exchange for bringing joy into the room.

So I hereby promise to dance more on subway platforms, and wear more fabulous outfits, and generally bring more visual delight into the world, all while making sure I am comfortable with myself, and not annoying to others.

I got a henna tattoo of a friend's face by a man dressed up as a creek

Never Done: Got a henna tattoo of a friend's face by a man dressed up as a creek

I went to see Taylor Mac's new play, A Walk Across America for Mother Earth, and during the intermission, he had three participatory activities, and in the hopes that something would be something I'd never done, and I could write about it, and also in the general spirit of community building that Taylor works so hard to create in his theater, I did all three. 1) I got my photo taken with me holding a protest sign (We're here! We're queer! And we're not going shopping!") which someone is going to Photoshop onto a background and email to me, and 2) I ate popcorn with nutritional yeast on it (which I have done many, many times, but never as a recreational activity in a theater intermission,) and 3) I got a henna tattoo on my arm. By a man dressed up as a creek. His name was Alex Franz Zehetbauer, and he played a creek in the play, in a gorgeous costume made by Machine Dazzle. And when he asked me what I would like as a tattoo, I said I'd like him to make his depiction of Taylor Mac. He started, and then got called to sing an intermission song, so he wiped it off, and jumped on a makeshift stage, sang his song, and came back to me with renewed focus and creativity. He drew two glamour eyes with big long lashes, and a full mouth with a sweet smile. It was (is) a wonderful, wonderful portrait of Taylor, and whats more, while he drew it, we were drawn together under the paper, balloon, and fabric canopy of his creek costume, in an intimate moment while he drew our friend on my arm. Which is precisely what Taylor does best. He gives people opportunities to connect in safe little zany ways. And when we do, we're forever changed, and connected. Which is what happened for him when he went on the walk that inspired this play, although I'm not sure all the opportunities were safe, but they did connect him with people, and they did teach him to tell himself the truth, and they did change him forever.

That was a natural end to the post, but it's not the real end. Because Taylor's play made me remember (tshuve) a time in my life when I was also walking across America. Only I was hitchhiking across Britain, going from music festival to music festival with the Green Roadshow, which was the traveling contingent of the Green Party. We set up an environmental bookstore, and a steam sauna, and someone had a wind energy display, and my friends Loppy and Sheena and I had a little alternative tea house, where we served all sorts of herbal teas, and our motto was "We don't serve proper tea, 'cause proper tea is theft." It was a thrilling and heady time for me. It was 1985, and I was 22, and I was far from home, and I was started to define myself by what I didn't want to be (as were many of the characters in Taylor's play) and by what I did want to be, and I was falling in love with a woman for the first time, but it was unrequited (she was in love with a man) and I was smoking too much hash, and I was playing chess with the Pogues, and I was playing a lot of music, and I was busking (playing music for money) on the streets in between festivals, and doing anti-apartheid street theater, and I was on the inside, and that mattered to me -- not a paying customer, not a consumer of the festival, but providing something, a service to the people, camping and caravanning and muddy and at Glastonbury, Glastonbury! And also, I wasn't on the inside at all, because the people I was with were not taking me with them from festival to festival, but letting me hitchhike on my own, which was not safe, and which ... was not safe. Men I hitched rides with tried to hurt me. More than once. Even when I finally told my friends I needed help, and couldn't hitch alone any more, and someone found me a ride with a family, the guy in the family brought his wife and kid home, and then was taking me to the train, and stopped the car and tried to hurt me. I got away from him, but ended up on the road again, alone, and when the next car came by, I was too scared to get in, but I took the next ride, and that guy drove to a bar, got drinks, and drove me in the wrong direction and also tried to hurt me, but his pants were literally down at his ankles, and mine were on properly, which made it much easier for me to run, so I grabbed my bag and I ran, but I left my wonderful musical instrument from Greece that I had so loved playing, and I left some other stuff that I used to miss, but can't any more remember, and I got away safely, and walked a very long way in the dark, and finally came to a place where I used a pay phone and called my friend in London and said I was done. I had been on the road for about two months, living this alternative, radical, environmental, "community" life, and I wanted it to be right for me. I wanted it to be everything I believed in. But I was unsafe, and I finally admitted it, and I left -- first the Green Roadshow, and then the country. The only thing I remember doing when I got to London was going to a tea house and having "proper tea" -- black tea with milk and sugar. I remember that I savored it.

I was quite taken with the deep parallels between my 1985 journey and Taylor's play about his 1992 journey. The character Taylor plays admits toward the end of the march that he ate meat -- something I wouldn't do for another 2 years -- but for ideological little me, drinking tea was just as transgressive. It wasn't always safe for his characters, just like it wasn't always safe for me, but it taught me to tell myself the truth, and it did change me forever. A part of me is still the ideologue I was back then, so when Taylor creates a lobby full of radical love and connection, I say yes to his invitations, and I stand inches away from the glitter on Alex the creek's cheeks while he imagines Taylor on my arm, and now we'll always have those moments together, even after the henna fades.