October 7, 2007

Sultry evening in Ohio, unlike the autumn it is meant to be. Drove to Cleveland last night, down empty Carnegie to the Cleveland Playhouse to see Man of La Mancha. Actually, I went to see Patrick Porter, who was in Man of La Mancha, but the one was conjoined with the other. I enjoyed the show, but I couldn’t see why it had been such a sensation, why it had become one of the permanent lights of the Broadway firmament. Patrick later told me that the experience of acting in it was rather disappointing, that some of the directorial choices were unexciting and that the rapport of the cast was not exceptional, and maybe it was these things that crept into the experience of the night. Patrick also reports that Don Quixote ripped a major fart in his death scene, and everyone was fighting off laugher, which I did not actually notice, but which did underwrite my impression that the show was running on pure professionalism and not much juice. It was great to talk with Patrick, and to hear about his life as a Rugby Star, and to hear he is fully committed to Edward in May. His partner told him he had never been in a better show than Edward the King, and had never been better in a show. Late supper at Stages, very light, so I slept unperturbed.

Interstate 77 between Cleveland and Akron is incredibly dark.

Wandered around Akron today, feeling strange emotions. I drank coffee and wrote at Angel Falls Café, listening to the intelligent conversation of people I might have known. Went to Akron U and found niches in the quite vast student union to write in, and study my lines. I went to a production of Lanford Wilson’s Fifth of July put on by the Akron U theater. I have heard about the Talley series for years, but this is the first time I saw one. It is certainly workmanlike playwriting, but I think a little too busy, a little too anxious to cram in as much picturesque character detail as possible, even those which begin to veer from the plausible. One audience member had been at the Cleveland Playhouse last night, and when asked by his friend how the show was, he shrugged exactly as I would have done and said, "It was all right. The first fifteen minutes were hopeful, but it never made good on its promise." Rather as I felt and Patrick said.

The whole time here I have been besieged by the strangest emotions. I try to call them "regret," because they should be regret. But they aren’t, or aren’t exclusively so. More vivid, more immediate than regret. Tonight I walked to the elementary school, as I did twice a week day forty five years ago. The landmarks are still there. I could walk it with my eyes closed. I stood in the dark in front of Billy Bigelow’s house, thinking that all would be well if I could imagine him finding my house some dark, solitary night, standing before it and remembering. To school was a considerable walk. We must all have been in excellent shape. But as I walked I wondered what exactly was I feeling. Why were the emotions so chaotic, so inappropriate for my current age and station? Puberty was for me exceptionally forgiving and graceful. There was no trouble with the authorities, no temper tantrums, no emotional tempests, no overt rebellion (though my parents probably thought so, totally misjudging the firmament of rebellion from which they were spared), hardly any acne. It was so in part because of extreme covertness on my part. The emotions I was feeling, and, mostly, the objects of them, could not be acknowledged at that time, and so I hid them with what I believed at the time was cunning success. But nothing that must be manifest can be kept unrealized forever. Maybe the divine Bestower decreed that I should go through puberty in Akron, Ohio. I did not, and I thought that was a victory for my secretive and proud nature. But all emotions that are meant to be will be, and it crossed my mind that the chaos inside my heart right now is puberty, not so much late as interrupted, forbidden, and therefore ferocious, the part never let out, which should have run its course forty years ago, and will, by God, run it now. It is a bewildering thing. The brain spins, helpless, realizing the solution lies not within itself. That the solution lies not within one heart was the problem forty years ago. The doors of love cannot be opened by one, do not open one way. There was no one on the other side, bidding me welcome. It would be fitting, it would have the outline of a fine old story, if I were unable to continue with my life until I have an affair with someone in Akron, as I was meant to have done long ago. Yet one cannot image that happening. My mind ran all night on the faces of boys I loved, but I didn’t really know how I loved them, nor what it would lead to, nor what it would forbid. There was no way of asking them to join me in this, even if it were possible the answer would be yes.