Have a 'Mary' Little Christmas

I hope you had a great weekend too! Except for the part where I got drunk and said horrible things to Rolf, which wasn't good. . . well the getting drunk part was good. . . , all it all, it was great! . . . except for the no sex part.

We went to the 9:30 club! (Yay me!) That was Friday, to see oh. . . oh. . .wait. . it'll come to me. . .time after time. . girls just want to have fun . .oh what is her name? Cheryl Ladd? Sheryl Crow? Carlaaaa mmm! CINDI LAUPER! With Sandra Bernhardt, and . . . Jill Sobule (I Kissed a Girl, and I may do it again. Ring a bell?) Great great time. . . except when I goosed Rolf with my cell phone, repeatedly, and he told me to stop it. . .in, if I may defend myself, an unkind way. I thought I was just having fun, but I hope it was only because I was drunk that I shouted in his ear "Wrong Answer, Asshole." Now I'm on restriction.

For a rehearsal I had on Saturday morning, I sounded like Lou Rawls. I was rehearsing with Mrs. Walker for her christmas party that night. Which was just smashing. Women in jewels, men in jackets, every once in a while people were heard talking about their places at the shore or in the city - and they meant NYC! Oh well. I like them, and well a little pretension is good, isn't it? IS it?

SUNDAY we went Christmas Shopping! Yay!

by the way, Mrs. Walker and several of the cast from Tommy made it into Jesus Christ Superstar! And guess what? Mrs. Walker is going to star as Judas!

I could just die.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing You Plaid Tidings

Hi -

I had my first rehearsal last night for Forever Plaid. I am really excited. I wonder what they thought of me. I was really quiet. Plus, I did have some difficulty with a passage. But, harmonically, my part is the hardest. If you are a musician you'll know, but if not you might relate if I said that a major chord is made of three pitches (on a 1-3-5 ratio, or every other note to the fifth note.) Well, my character, Frankie sings a fourth note, that doesn't exactly fit. It's the tension in the music . . . and it's delightfully difficult!

As the "Eternal Teenagers", I think we're all too old. And three of us are too fat. I really hope I can lose this weight. It's a constant struggle. The guy who is playing Jinx is attractive. Very tall and slim, with a barrel chest and furry arms. Just the type for some. He's done this show extensively in the past, so with two having done it before, the whole show should rise to a higher level.

Let me also mention the Music Director. He is also just the type for some. I know when Bemmy meets him, he's going to be infatuated. But, besides the nice package, he is a going to be a great music director. This is very challenging music, even for the accomplished singer. He's right on the money for catching tonal variances and out and out wrong notes.

So, here's a question that begs to be asked. What do you think about this: Since two of the Plaids are . . . from follicle challenged to just plain bald, do you think it'd be ok for one of the "eternal teenagers," (ie: me) to have grey hair? Or do I really have to color it again.

Of course I do.

Vig

Make the yuletide gay: (Fa La La.)

Christmas makes you feel emotional, It may bring parties or thoughts devotional . . .

Rolf and I had a beautiful weekend. Our home shimmers with Christmas Lights. There were parties galore. Mom and Dad came for dinner last night, Bemmy was home from camp too.


We haven't done a bit of shopping.

All best wishes to you for a happy holiday.

Vig

Glad Tidings For Comfort and Joy

"You’ve heard others say it, maybe you’ve said it yourself. 'It was the best thing that ever happened to me.' The 'it' to which these people are referring is a crisis. Some sort of meltdown."

That's how the sermon started. . .

"We all know what it’s like to experience a crisis, to be forced to the bedrock of our existence as our world comes crumbling down around us. " he continued.

It wasn't long before I was wiping tears off my face, as he talked about losing his father at a young age and how good that was, and then I was wiping ropes of snot onto the back of my hand and wiping it off on my socks. Yeah, you think I would have used my sleeve, but I had a really pretty sweater on.

One moment I thought I was going to break out into sobs, and I took a deep breath and some spit got into my lungs so I had a coughing fit instead.

Comfort and joy, my eye. Oh, and after slipping back in to my own vacant pew, once I'd settled myself in the men's room, I started all over again just because it was communion Sunday. In addition to anything else, that means an extra organ piece. Mama's an organist too. Has been for about a hundred years . . .

It was awful. Next time I see the pastor, I'm going to stick my tongue out at him.

After that, and a couple of glasses of wine for lunch. . .ok, three glasses of wine . . . I went to the command audition for Forever Plaid. You know that crying your eyes out does nothing helpful if you're trying to trick directors and producers into thinking that you might, maybe with the right lighting, pass for a twenty-something. But it didn't matter because it was just a formality. There was nobody else being considered! Yep, I was cast without auditioning.

I still had to go though the motions though. I sang my song, as if I couldn't have cared less . . . of course I didn't care at all. I just wanted to get stoned.

Then I sang with the other cast members, and, oh my God, was it good. Heaven perhaps. The bass wasn't there, maybe we can just do the show without him.

"So. . ." they say, "let's have him read. . .what the hell." So everybody up, stage manager reading for the bass, and it's Frankie's final speach. It's huge. It was great. I could tell that they all thought it was amazing how much I got in touch with the emotion of the scene, at an audition! Ha! I wonder if any of them knew how much crying I'd done. Yeah, I blew them away.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Good Morning. . .is it Friday yet? Here I am, Thursday morning, late to work as usual, and still trying to tell you the funny story that happened last Friday! It’s just the finish of what I tried to tell you yesterday before my melt down.

Last week, I’d been keeping my fingers crossed that the news wouldn’t be too bad and that I could audition for Forever Plaid at Reston. But, as my family comes first, I sent a note to the producer with my best wishes; and a caveat that if they needed a back-up after auditions, I might consider coming in.

And then I get this call from Mom, (which has nothing to do with the above, but whatever . . . you’ll see.)

“Hi Vig. It’s Mom. What are you up to this evening?”

“Dinner with friends, and a show. Why? What’s up?,” I said.

“Oh well,” she said, a newfound sadness in her voice that I hope I don’t have to get used too. “I was thinking about coming up and decorating your tree.”

(I don’t think she said “help you decorate . . . ,” but she could have.)

“What about tomorrow?,” I offered. (I’m all about helping her to keep busy, you know?!)

“Well. . . I have choir rehearsal in the afternoon for the ‘Hanging of the Green’,” she said. “Would you be willing to do it in the morning?”

“That’d be fine; I’m usually up by nine anyway. What time were you thinking of?”

“Oh about 10:30.”

“That would be great!”

Then she says: “I just want to be sure that all the ornaments, lights, and extension cords are all out so we don’t waste anytime. Can you do that?”

“Mama?,” I said, “I’m at work right now, and after work we’re going to dinner with Puck and Memae, and then to a show, and then to the cast party afterward. I’m sorry, but I can’t get those things out of storage until tomorrow.”

“Oh ok,” she said, taking a moment to think before saying: “I just want to be sure that all the ornaments, lights, and extension cords are all out so we don’t waste anytime. Can you do that?” Again! Wow, how weird is that? I wanted to laugh so bad.

So patiently and without patronizing, I said “What we’re going to have to do, since Rolf won’t be home until lunch time, is I’ll get the ladder ready before you and Daddy get there. Then while you hold the ladder, I’ll hand things down to you and Daddy that we’ll need . . . since I’ll be going to dinner, and a show, and a party tonight.”

“Oh, ok. . .”

“????,” I thought. Is she going to say it again? When did she get old?

I’ve been really working on the house during this fall break from theater. So when they got there it looked good. Not to mention that the view of the lake is so different each week that it’s such a joy . . . even if it really is only a mud-puddle.

“Hello?!” she said opening the door and walking right in. By the time I had padded down the hall, she was holding the door for Dad as he shuffled up the steps. They even brought Mindy, their little American Eskimo dog (basically a toy Spitz.)

By the time Rolf got home from his errand, one tree was about done, and the second was under construction. Mama was powering through the decorating, while I was looking for stuff she asked for: tree hooks, extension cords, coffee. Daddy’s little dog likes to sit in his lap. Our greyhound, d’Ohgy, loved all the excitement too.

Before we took a break for lunch, I had a call from the producer of Forever Plaid. Yeah. “We just don’t seem to have the right mix. . .”

“oh dear, yay me, oh shit, what to do, what to do, crap, hooray . . .,” I thought.

“I couldn’t rehearse more than 3 days a week on average until tech week. I can’t rehearse on Tuesdays,” (so I can still go to dance class with Joy,) “My family is here now, I have to talk to them about it . . . but . . .I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Nobody seemed to be surprised at lunch, or even have an opinion on whether I should go to the call-back or not. So, what the hell, I’ve done this role before, so has one of the other boys, it could be fun and easy.

Mom kicked it into overdrive. Daddy checking his watch every five minutes and saying:

“Chicken? You’re not going to make it to rehearsal if we don’t leave soon.”

Mama puts her head down in determination, picking up three or four ornaments at a time, not stopping to look at him and says:

“I just want one of these trees done before I leave.”

Five more minutes go by . . . “Chicken? If we hit any traffic, you’re going to be late.”

“Almost there,” she says.

“Chicken? I’ll get you’re coat and you’re purse,” he says and she’s still in decorating overdrive has he shuffles across the room to get her coat and shuffles back toward the door where he holds the coat for her . . .

“Chicken?” he says. She stops and looks at him holding her coat, looks back at the tree; it looks good.

“You’ll get this finished up before I come back here?” which is less of a question than you’d think. I just laugh, and don’t answer.

And there is laughter, hugs, and kisses.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Soon it will be Christmas Day

Friday, Mom called me at work.

“Hi Vig. It’s Mom. What are you up to this evening?”

“We are going to dinner with friends, then to a show. Why? What’s up?,” I said.

“Oh well,” she said, a newfound sadness in her voice that I hope I don’t have to get used too.

“What about tomorrow?,” I offered.

“Well. . . I have choir rehearsal in the afternoon for the ‘Hanging of the Green’,” she said. “Would you be willing to do it in the morning?”

Oh, I should tell you that I didn’t get a tree up last year. Mmm hmm. Yeah. She was not happy with me at all. Another time, a few years ago, I dragged in the tree that Rolf and Bemmy and bought weeks before, set it up, and threw a set of white net lights on it and called it done. You would have thought I’d slapped my mother in the face when she found out. So the next year, my family is my guest for Thanksgiving. And dag-on if Mama didn’t walk in and look at the food and say “Why, it looks like everything is under control in here. Why don’t you let Joy, Shannon, and I get started on your tree.” Whatever. It turned out what they created was more long-lasting than just a beautiful tree; the many fond memories of their discovery of each ornament they unpacked, the joyful sounds I remember as I basted the turkey, made it a day to treasure.

Well, I was busy last year, with plans for my directorial debut of Ruthless! The Musical mostly. I managed to get the artificial tree and boxes of ornaments out of the attic, and the furniture rearranged, the tree assembled . . . and one or two strands of lights that broke. Yeah. The tree was never finished, the boxes never put away until the day after Christmas when we packed it all up for another try this year.

This year didn’t get off to the start I anticipated either. Plan was: outdoor lights up by Halloween (not on, just up), Christmas Cards, and only 50 out by last weekend. . SHITFUCKSTRESSDAMNWHATTHEFUCKEVER

Anyway, Joy gave me a lighted tree that her soon-to-be-ex-husband had gotten last year. My new plan was basically to put it in the bay window in the living room, the lights through the window being the only outside decorations . . .but the damn thing was too tall. The end. I’m really getting tired of Christmas all the stress stupid requirements have to look good be sociable buy stuff receive stuff I don’t want need or store go to my in-laws fuck fuckdk

So, back to the funtimes. (It’s Wednesday Morning now, and I’m not having a good day.) I’ll try this again later.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Let my heart be light

Shannon joined us, so, we kept the talk of cancer to a minimum. We did go back to the Italian place, which had a big fountain in the middle.

Neither Mom nor I cried at all, and Daddy and Shannon kept the tears to a minimum. Daddy started it. I don’t know how or why he started to preach, but he loves preaching. Once he gets a topic, off he goes. We just watch, smile, and nod. He gets so animated, with his “preacher voice”, clearly and passionately stated thoughts . . .and he just looks like the sweetest and gentlest old man sitting there in clothes you know he got at Goodwill, twenty years ago. (He’ll never wear anything new. His mama taught him how to get by in the depression, and that’s how he gets by to this day.) He always wanted to be a preacher. But since he never got out of the eighth grade, he had to settle for being a brakeman for the railroad.

Again, I don’t know how we got to this, but here’s the sermon as best I can remember:

A wife asks her husband to join her in a marriage improvement exercise. She wants each of them to take a pad of paper and write down everything that the other says or does that is irritating. So, reluctantly I think, the husband agrees. Every time she wrote something down, he would think for a moment and write something down himself: until they had filled a whole page. Somewhat fearfully, the wife handed her page to him, and he to her. She was breathless when she read what he had written. For every transgression she had listed; he had simply written “I love you.”

And that’s when they choked up, Daddy first, then Shannon, both grabbing paper napkins to dry tears before fully flooding. I thought it was funny, and Mom looked irritated.

The point was supposed to be about Jesus Christ forgiving every sin . . . but he didn’t make that point very well.

After dinner in their kitchen, we did talk about cancer. Shannon went downstairs so the adults could talk.

“Well, Mom, Dad says that the doctor’s don’t think the prognosis is very good.”

She is so sad. “No, he said I may have two years,” she said while pressing the wrinkles out of the poinsettia table cloth.

The details are still unfolding. I suggested that the Doctor may have meant that she would be in treatment for two years, after all this type of cancer (Carcinoid, it is called) is supposedly very manageable. I doubt she thinks that’s what he meant, but she just said “Maybe.”

As I was leaving, when I was on the front step, she said: “Just so you know, I don’t intend to sit around and talk about this all the time.”

At home Rolf held me, sat next to me, held my hand, caressed my hair, and let me tell my story. And cry.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer

I don’t know where the weekend went. As I lay my head down last night, all I could think was that I was too tired for the weekend to be over. Even so, I got back up and took a sleeping pill.

Thursday, I rushed out to grab a quick bite when I called Mom. It was to give comfort, not to find out the news. I had already expected that the news from her doctor would be bad. I was standing on the street corner, wind whipping my coat; her voice betraying the deepest disappointment (deeper than when I was 10 and she told me Uncle Harry had died, or when I was 16 and she found out I was gay, or when I was 17 and she found out that Puck was gay too, so there was no chance we were getting married,) because the doctor said she was going to die within two years.

She only hinted at “bad news,” she didn’t tell me that, giving me details about the three tumors that they found. I was brave because I still thought that the news was on par with, well, Aids. The type of cancer she has is supposedly manageable, though deadly. I was counting on the prognosis to be ten years, and I was hoping for fifteen or twenty.

I skipped lunch and went back to work, wrote you a note, packed up and headed to Woodbridge to give comfort. I tried to find a place to get a drink before I got to their house, but it was only 3:45 so no bars were open. Standing in one bar (the pub side of an Italian restaurant) when I found it didn’t open until 4:30; I pretended I was only there to pick up a carry out menu.

I went in the back way when I got to their house, because Mom was teaching piano in the living room, and I didn’t want to disrupt. Daddy was watching TV, the volume loud, his dog on his lap. That’s a sweet part. He adopted the dog when my (soon to be ex-) brother-in-law abandoned it along with the rest of his life. Once my sister, Joy, downsized to a townhouse, she was dropping Mindy off with my dad while she was at work. And it got to the point where Mindy didn’t want to go home. So, she stayed. Now she follows Daddy around and keeps him much more active, even if much of it is from his chair. Along with his hearing, and general thinking, his mobility is becoming challenged. He’s a real hard worker, and loves to get out and walk, cut down trees, ride his little tractor with a trailer full of leaves up to a gully in the back, stuff like that. He’d like to build stuff too, but he can’t cut straight to save his life. He loves to build sheds. He’s got two at this house. One of them is beginning to look like a white trash estate with all the additions he put on. Crooked roofs, precariously balanced support beams are the hallmarks of his current building style. To which, when faced with such a sight, my mom sighs and says “Oh Billy. . .”

This one time, when Rolf and I had been together for ten years, but didn’t even get to spend Christmas together, Daddy was handing out presents from under the Christmas Tree. And he handed me this big box and said “This should really be to both of you. I don’t know why it doesn’t say that.” And his eyes misted over, just like mine are now. It was towels.

We wanted to watch the “Hee-Haw” DVD I had bought him for Father’s Day. But he didn’t know how to do it . . . honestly, as rarely as I go downstairs in my own home to use the DVD player just to find that I have to pick through 5 remotes, I understand that it isn’t easy. So he yells for my mom, who’s on the other end of the house with a piano student.

“Chicken?” he yells. That’s what he calls her: Chicken, Pet, and Honey.

“Yeah?” she yells back.

“Come’ere, I’ve got to ask you something.”

So she comes in, calm and patient as the best little old lady piano teacher would be, with her Humpty-Dumpty-tummy arriving just a bit ahead of the rest of her.

It’s: “What do you want”. . . “We want to watch Hee-Haw and we can’t get the thing to work.” “Why hello, Vig, I didn’t know you were here!” “I thought I’d come and take you all to dinner. I found this great Italian restaurant just up the street."

As that all took about three minutes, and she had a student waiting for her, she set the TV on the right channel, and handed me two remotes with some rudimentary explanations saying I could figure it out . . . notably, she did not give them to Dad.

Her next student was pretty good. So, reminded of all the after school naps I took listening to music I’d heard hundreds of times; I fell asleep in her chair while Daddy watched Hee-Haw.

I dreamt I heard Mama teaching piano, and that Daddy was somewhere laughing.

That's all for now.

Thanks,
Vig

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

End of Part 42 - Advent

Saturday, November 26^th.

As we near Vig’s 43 birthday, we find Rolf and Vig having a Thanksgiving Feast: alone. The roommates are away, the mood is elegant, and the lovers are in love.

Vig’s Mom, 70, is waiting for test results to determine if she, again, has cancer.
Vig’s Father, 74, is proclaiming that he believes Mom is fine, and the test results will prove it: even as his own faculties deteriorate.
Vig’s sister, Joy, 50, two weeks away from her divorce, is keeping herself busy to avoid the feelings of loss during the holidays. At this time she is on vacation in Germany.
Vig’s niece, Shannon, 24, is happily settling into her second year of marriage, her new job at the Department of Defense, as well as a newly constructed apartment in Mom & Dad’s basement. There’s been no hint of bi-polar disorder for weeks.
Vig’s nephew, Russ, 23, has a girlfriend we all like and hope he will marry. He is very irritated that he has to help do everything in the house that his father had done, such as fix stuff and paint. But, even so, he’s a good kid and is glad to be a rock for his mom to lean on.

Neither Russ nor Shannon has seen their father since March. He has left scaring messages for them at times, and then called and left loving messages hoping for reconciliation. It has been traumatic.

Vig’s friends

Bemmy, 45, sometimes referred to as our Big Gay Son, lives downstairs in our house, although right now he is away at camp, or so it seems. Actually, he is Mr. Bumble in Oliver at Olney Theatre, and he is staying at the residence there (as it is an hour and a half away. Besides, every other time the phone rings at home, it is a creditor chasing him down.) He is presenting himself as though he’s finally taking care of his health. He is more than a several hundred pounds overweight. The last time we saw him, in October, he seemed to be committed to the diet program his doctor put him on. (This time.) It has been three years since he’s been “on the boards”, and as I, and most everyone who know him, would agree that he is a world class talent; we all hope that somehow he will get onto the world stage.
SMJ – (age unknown) Or StraightManJoe. . . or is he? . . . is a border in our house. At times it feels like we are living with Ghandi himself. Having survived a night on a mountain near Seattle while wearing only a sweatshirt and Converse sneakers, during which a freak snowstorm stranded him for several days (the result of which was the amputation of his toes and the pads of his feet, reconstruction of his nose which was frozen off, and 9 root canals in three days to remove the thawed out, but rotten pulp in order to save his teeth,) as well as surviving the loss of his wife, the mother of his children, to cancer; nothing upsets him. Upheaval, death, job loss, possible jail time for his brother: bother him no more than the smallest splinter.
Tomas – 45, who you might mistake for Oprah Winfrey in the big girl years if you saw him at Ziegfields – or, if he was out in the real world in his daily drag, you might think that what you saw was Queen Elizabeth herself pretending to be a fat black man: was told four days before he lost his job that he had to schedule surgery to receive the transplant of a new cornea.
Puck and Memae – 44 and 42 r., are settled into a wonderful townhouse now that they’ve relocated from Phoenix. However, neither has yet found a job, and the money from the sale of their house in Phoenix is only going to carry them so far. (Of all the wonderful things that have happened to me this year, including the award winning Ruthless! The Musical, appearing as Mr. Walker in Tommy, and a wonderful vacation in Provincetown – having Puck come back is the best of all.)
K. – 58, who was evicted from her apartment in June after being without a full time job for a year, settled into a two bedroom apartment with a (nearly) 50yr. old quadriplegic, Clark, who has cerebral palsy. He had moved from a one bedroom apartment to a two bedroom apartment in order to have someone there at night incase he had a problem such as a seizure or fall. As of last week, they are engaged. Now they are preparing to move back to the one bedroom apartment, much to the alarm of both their families.

Rolf - ever 29 (as is his mother) - is trying very hard to make me happy. Some rough edges had grown on each of us. The shearing is painful. He and SMJ are preparing to start a business that will either sell something or offer a service. . . I thought I knew what the something was, but then they switched to the service. . and I forgot what the original something was. . but now there back to trying to create and sell something or other.

Vig - 42 - continues in therapy with a therapist with such a funny name you would not believe. While the antidepressant would work better if he didn't drink every day, he is still elated that someone has given him some pot. His job is currently scheduled to end on March 5.

Here, in the dark beginning of Advent; part 43 begins.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

We need a little . . .

I understand that Mom has three tumors. Two are small and are in her liver, and one is not so small and is on her spine. They do believe that these are Carcinoid tumors, so it should be manageable. (Carcinoid is called The Slow Cancer. That's a good thing.) There is no prognosis yet. Research leaves the door pretty open as to what the survival rate will be, with lots of room for hope.

I'm going down there this afternoon and offer my assistance with the doctors. And when I get home, I imagine that I will be laying in Rolfs arms. I'll probably cry.