Lilly's

 

July 1, 2025

Home, planted upstairs in the blast of my fan. My last night in New York proved sweet. A little stroll (one block off 8th Avenue and it’s a neighborhood, sedate and picturesque) supper at Lilly’s on 9th with a waiter, Michael.  from Dublin. Incredibly, a firefly flickered and fluttered in the Paramount Hotel bar. My bartender was an immigrant from Bangladesh, who said the problems in his life were caused by the people poorer than he, who sucked away resources which might otherwise go to him and his struggling family.  The Republican strategy of making the poor blame the poorer rather than turning the right direction and blaming the rich has worked utterly, unaccountably. I couldn’t even form a sentence to counter him, so passionate and ingrained was his conviction. Quite dark dreams before waking and taking the plane, with minimal event, home. My body aches with a not quite definable ache– maybe just exhaustion. Lawn has not been cut. Hope Tony was not seized by ICE.

 

June 30, 2025

Walked north to 5th Avenue yesterday morning to attend mass at St. Thomas. Magnificent, as usual. I was not in a worshipful mood, but all was glorious as it had been before. Attendance not much better than All Souls. Attended the final performance of Old Friends, a review of Sondheim’s greatest hits, with some of Broadway’s brightest stars, like Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga. Some trick of having booked only a few hours before got me in the front row, where I do long to be. I could have reached out and touched Bernadette Peters’ shoes. Did not do so. Peters spent a surprising amount of time looking at the front few rows– at me, I fantasized– while others kept their eyes on the back of the balcony. Was she expecting someone? Had she always been that way? Was it a gimmick to involve her audience more personally? Matthew and I met a portion of the cast at the Glass House across the street afterward, and one of the boys– the most beautiful onstage– apologized for spitting on me, so I know he too scanned the front. I assured him it was an honor to be spat upon. The show was quite wonderful– overpowering, even, sitting that close to the tip of the action, close enough to note every gesture was precise, sharp, readable, no slack moments on any face. Peters was a little delicate and past her prime, and there were a lot of crepey bare arms onstage– the cast being”legends” after all–but the energy was a blast furnace. I expected to be a little patronizing and above-it-all at such a spectacle, but assuredly was not. It was their final performance, so everybody got weepy onstage and all the backstage crew had to be introduced and applauded. Matt came down from Washington Heights to meet me afterward. We retired to the Glass House where, as I say, the younger portions of the cast gathered to celebrate loudly. I met them, praised them with extreme praise which was, nevertheless, fully warranted. Two of the main boys looked towering onstage, but were actually not quite as tall as I. The one I mentioned before was unimaginably beautiful, with the affect of kid right off the farm. He said he’s waiting with fingers crossed for his next role, having done a number of auditions. You never know for sure, but I think he has stardom written on his brow. Matt and I talked mostly about teaching, writing, and how much we hate Trump. I fell on the bar steps, and had to be levered up by Matt and the hostess. After Matt left, I retired to the Rum Bar and chatted with the giant Albanian bartender, who told me how to say “stupid” in Albanian, and that the word is also the word for a kind of flute. A couple from Columbia seated across from me were almost unnaturally beautiful, as though they had been chosen and set there by a theatrical director.  

On the street were mostly boys in glittery costume returning from the Pride Parade. V offered me a place on the Riverside Church float, but riding the streets of gay New York in the heat was not on my agenda. Besides, I had nothing appropriate to wear. Maybe somebody would have lent me a boa. Stopped answering V’s phone calls after the first one went nearly an hour, with lists of his acting credits and genealogies extending back to the old country. People look remote and dignified until you get them on the phone. 

PM: After a series of subway mishaps, wove my way through Union Square and Washington Square, sweating profusely. It was a mistake, based on the theory that Tuesdays are easier travel days than Mondays, to add this day. I wanted to be home the whole time, staggering here and there out of a sense of duty to fill each hour. 

Bryant Park

 

June 29, 2025

Yesterday spent largely in and around Bryant Park, dwelling, writing, watching, taking it all in. Trying to imagine what I would do and be had I chosen to live in New York City. Weaver finches took dirt baths at my feet. 

I do think my walking and wandering around is no less than it has been in the past, which is well, but at greater cost, which is a controllable variable.

Hiked down Broadway to 28th  to see night two of the play festival, only part two this time, my play and two others. Drank something sweet at the Milk Bar. How ludicrous I must look tottering about alone and adventuring at my age! Again, my team and the audience’s response fully satisfied. The other pieces (and those I heard through the curtain, having arrived early} were almost unbearable.  Like Mozart, I’d heard them but once and could practically recite them word for word. Nylon Fusion is a lively and popular enterprise, and I was honored to be part of it. I wish them well in all times to come. 

28th Street

 

June 28, 2025

Big Friday. Hauled off to the Frick, newly remodeled and newly opened, which meant crowds and lines, as the demand for tickets was great. Arrived early, sat in Central Park watching the passing show until my entry time. They were filming a fashion shoot which involved a statuesque woman and a dog walking across the street in a provocative way. The dog maintained his dignity. The first painting I saw was El Greco. I burst into tears. Wept through pretty much the first half of my tour, as one profound statement succeeded another. El Greco moved me; a big Corot landscape, practically monochromatic, moved me. Turns out I remembered my long-time favorite, Bellini’s St Francis, backward, as he faces left instead of the right in my memory. The crowd eventually got to me, and the clever way it was arranged so that if you veered off to the toilet or to get a coffee you could not return for a second look. Kept the crowds moving. 

My taxi driver from Central Park, an immigrant from Ghana, mistrusts both progressives and populists, insisting that virtue must find some middle ground. 

The part of town where my play is (W. 28th and environs) is fascinating and even, by the lights of the City, homey. Arriving early, had time to cozy in and get comfortable at a table on Broadway, sucking down some intricate juice. I worried about taxis and such, but when I arrived, I found a subway entrance (which would whisk me to Times Square) on the same block as the theater. Everyone and everywhere reeks of weed. Nylon Fusion is, by the way such things are judged, long-standing and surviving. The TaDa Theater, which they rent, I guess, is squalid outside but business-like inside, almost indistinguishable from the theater where Jack and Bruce did my plays farther Uptown. In an evening of brief plays, you expect some OK and some better, maybe a clinker or two, but you also expect that in New York the quality would be uniformly higher. It was, but only by the merest fraction. They didn’t know me from a haystack, and yet chose my play, so I know the selection process is upright, but, still– these were all they had to choose from? The end of that observation was that my piece was by levels of magnitude the best. It got tremendous laughs (I didn’t know it was that funny), and, as I sat in the front row, I could see the exertions my actresses put themselves through to sell the show. My gratitude, ladies. They read the room correctly. I wanted a little archness, a little more subtlety; they correctly came as close to burlesque as they dared. They were, for that moment, right. 

Heading home, stopped at am open-air wine bar on Times Square, right beside the lighted flag, to sip Prosecco and take in night at the center of the world. I compared it to sitting by night alone on my front porch. There were resonances I could not in the moment explain. 

NY, NY

 

June 26, 2025

Eleventh floor of the Edison, overlooking a Mordor of industrial rooftops. 

Arrived at the Asheville airport on the day it opened its new and hugely enlarged facilities– got to use the new upstairs bar for the first time, damn near its first customer. No liquor license yet, so a good-luck bloody Mary was off the table. When I sat down the bartender cried out my name. He is a kid active in the local theater scene until COVID blasted his professional plans and turned him into the father of two daughters. Fate guided him well. He was less dramatically beautiful, but clearly happy. He is also whom I thank for my single worst on-stage experience– the laugh-riot King Lear at NC Stage many years back. I didn’t mention it. Perhaps he never saw it that way. The tide rolls in and the tide rolls out. 

Hobbled to The Joyce to see Pilobolus. I first saw them in Baltimore the year of their inception (or very close; it must have been 1973) and have done so at intervals since. They are less conceptual and more dance-y than they were, some of their gestures frozen into formula, but still marvelous to watch. It was better, or at least different, when they were all male. Some of the frisson is gone. They traded their odd glamor in to become an institution. Last night’s dancers didn’t really become their stage presences, as performers often do, but remained muscle-y boys who had learned a technique flawlessly while staying recognizably themselves. “Look what I am doing without actually being.” I think that is fine. 

When I caught myself in the last second from a fall down the Joyce Center balcony steps, I foresaw my end. It will probably be a fall, as my legs do not work, without my being able to say exactly why they do not. Took the subway to the Joyce and back. This was itself an adventure and a victory, for I imagined the subway and myself would not meet again. The steps were a tribulation, but minutes later my breath returned and I went on. The City was once the exhibit of my stamina, how I would run down the streets and conquer the subways and be ready for more. In the two days I’ve been here I have done what I would have done in past time, but very much slower, hardly able to move at the end of it. I’m glad tonight’s adventure is but two blocks away.

Drank my way back from the subway stop. The bartender at the Iron Bar was happy about the recent Democratic primary. “Anybody but Cuomo,” she said. The bartender at the bar that’s in the Paramount but not part of the Paramount said she preferred the devil you know (presumably Cuomo) to the devil you don’t. At the Iron Bar, a girl– very loudly– declared to the boy she was with that he couldn’t possibly understand her, as he was neither black nor female. She discoursed on her uniqueness and the unknowability of her experience at some length, and volume. Even most black girls couldn’t understand her due to qualities of her hair and complexion. One nods and agrees when people say that people who are not them cannot understand them, but I wonder if it’s actually true. What about empathy? What about the penetration of the eye of the artist? “You don’t understand” is one of those statements which cannot be corrected or even discussed, because all data are deliberately concealed. Yes, dear, I do understand, You just don’t like that I do, that anyone can.  

Fighting the terrible blast of the room air conditioning. Brought no jacket, anticipating the heat wave forecasted by the media. 

The hotel’s complimentary breakfast costs $6.50

 Bought a watch at the Times Square Swatch, as I have done for half my life. This is the third, at least. Somehow they don’t remember me from decade to decade. 

Hiked to MOMA. Ate incredibly overpriced salad on a balcony overlooking the sculpture garden. 

Evening. Attended Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum. Somewhat unexpectedly, a glorious evening. Cheap laughs became consequential ones. 

 June 24, 2025

Lovely supper with Mike G and the Moseleys last night, a perfect light summer repast, much talk of the University and old times. Mike’s retaining wall came down in the hurricane and has not yet been replaced. 

Worry about going to New York tomorrow, when every outlet shrieks news of a dangerous heat wave. Sitting here in the blast of my fan, I may not take proper account of the peril.

From the Nylon Fusion webpage:

This Round On Us:

Life In Transition

June 27th-28th, 2025

featuring the captivating theme of

"The Gilded Age/Cage."

at 15 West 28th Street, NYC 

Featuring New Plays by New Plays by John Patrick Shanley (A Dreamer Examines His Pillow), Lyle Kessler (Orphans) Migdalia Cruz (Fur), Nick DeSimone, Scott Carter Cooper, James McLindon, Sarah Congress, Ellen Abrams, David Brendan Hopes, Andrew Phillips. 

Spirits

 

June 23, 2025

Cool morning of what is expected to be a torrid day. I’ll be flying away from an Asheville expecting to hit 100 degrees to a Manhattan expected t hit 95. The task is to pick out clothes that can be sweated in without showing. The task is to beg the skyscrapers for their shade. 

The concert at the New Hope church turned out well, in some ways our best, as the pressure was off. Informal gathering afterwards to share insights and emotions-- really quite sweet, if not the kind of situation where I am comfortable. 

For two nights now I have meditated on my porch naked– or half naked, as the slats in the chair do not accommodate full nakedness. It has been lovely. One seldom feels like the animal one is blessed to be. I’m invisible from the street, and as much as I might long for it, no one ever turns into the drive to visit me. Wide thoughts, that are difficult to put into words on the morning after. Last night a great meteor appeared in the southern sky, pale green trailing into blinding white. It seemed so close I expected to hear a sound. Afterward, a spirit visited me that I recognized as Sweetboi. I recalled standing on that porch, and his flying toward me as if he were going to land on my shoulder, and in the last second veering up over the roof. I thought it was play. He was dead two days later. Now I think he was trying to tell me something; it was a signal, a warning I could not read. His spirit came into me by night. I spread my arms in the dark to accommodate his wings. He gave me strength, youth. May it hold.