I'm So Mean.

I was really mean to Kim Kardashian in my previous post about the Celebrity Nullification Game. I'm sure she's a very nice lady. I think I'm just allowing her to embody the kind of TV celebrity most of us love to hate. Hey! They put themselves out there. Jeering from the sidelines is part of the show, isn't it?

So I was mean. But it totally subverts my angelic sweet guy image.

In acting class, I learned that I've not been speaking with my real voice. That what I think is my real voice actually sounds like a phony voice and me speaking in very low tones is actually my real voice which sounds like my fake voice (to me). It's a trick that played by your cranium.

That's why we hate recordings of our own voice.

So, I need to find my true voice! It's so weird to think that my real voice is not my real voice, but a phony voice that's hiding the real voice.

Today, we were at a memorial service for a Broadway actor named Kevin Gray. I didn't know him. But there's a kind of communal spirit in theater that's similar to church. Traditions they hang onto that tell them who they are. These memorial services are done sparsely. Usually in an afternoon. By permission or even a donation by the theater owners and performers. No one is ever "introduced" before coming onto the stage. They just come to the mic and speak: co-actors, friends, family.

The story they told of Kevin was that he was a most fearless and powerful singer/actor/dancer who changed a lot of people's lives in the theater by being a generous actor, and hilarious and fiercely professional. The stunning revelation was a video of him with Marie Osmond in The King and I. She was fantastic! And there's a clip where she talks about how he really just made her so comfortable. In the clip, I saw it. The way his King was more aggressive in taking Anna's waist. Pulling her closely with a strong jerk. Taking control. Brilliant.

When your entire life depends on going from show to show, stage to stage, as a gypsy, you find these rare people who simply make you happier because you get to be around them. A community is passed on, one person at a time. His death was shocking. A heart problem. He was still young and about to go into teaching, and he dropped dead shoveling show.

The heartbreak in the room was palpable. This was one of the good guys.

While waiting for Jim, who was having lunch with his Character Man team over a bowl of soup at the Polish Tea Room, I paced in front of the Majestic Theater, and like a prayer, recited my Richard II scene in my low voice. I sent Jonathan Marro an email about it and he said he was also practicing his very low tones. We're both looking for our real voice and we're gonna find it.

I wasted time and now doth time waste me
For now hath time made me his numbering clock

Yes! Do it now! 

Death and Life.

I've recently gotten emails from a guy named Thomas. He and I are going to have lunch together today. And I got a phone call with some very, very sad news.

As we've been putting together plans for a new TLS concert performance / staged reading (June 23! Put it in your calendar!), I suddenly got several notes from him.

For newbies, The Last Session (TLS) was the show we did back in 1997 in New York containing all the songs I wrote about my struggle with AIDS. These are the songs that saved my life.

Well, it seems Thomas has been listening to the cast album every single week since then. He wrote me a passionate note about how the CD was stolen from his car and so he started looking around to find a new copy. And he stumbled onto my blog.

In this day of constant connectedness, I was kind of shocked to discover that we had a fan out there that I didn't know about, especially one so very passionate about the material. He is an athlete who teaches karate and tai chi and probably a dozen other things, and he lives here in New York.

So, after a few emails back and forth, we're going to finally meet face to face. I told him, "Hey, I thought I already knew everyone who had seen TLS." But apparently not.

In a way, it's very exciting for me because now that we're going to do this concert, I've been thinking about the material a lot, and remembering back to the beginning of TLS, which is also the beginning of real public access to the Internet.

1996. So many of us in the early days were housebound because of illness or other disabilities, so we all made very quick connections. That's what I mean by finding a "lost" fan out there. His passion for the music and the message is really overwhelming to me.

But it's great, because it is allowing me to reconnect to the material in a new way, seeing it through his eyes. He even told me that a friend of his, this week, suddenly went into cardiac arrest. Thomas brought him his ipod with the song "Save Me A Seat."

Here's what he wrote:

a dear friend of mine is VERY sick in the hospital.

He's an 88 year old man who has practiced Karate for nearly 60 years !

2 days ago, he went into cardiac arrest and died for 20 minutes.

The doctors were able to bring him back, but he's brain damaged and they

will probably pull the plug this week. Very sad.

On Monday, I told him about you and your story and that I was able to connect with you.

I brought my iPod to the hospital and let him listen to "Save Me a Seat".

I typed out the words for him to read along with the song. He had a tear in his eye

and he said, "You better be careful, because if I follow you home, I'm going to see

you naked !". LOL Humor was always his way of "hiding".

He asked me to leave him my iPod so he could listen to it alone.

The following day, he told me that he listened to "Save me a Seat" nearly all night long.

It moved him deeply. He said that he hopes his wifes spirit was at her wake and remains with him.

They were married for 65 years !

He told me to tell you, "Thank You for writing that beautiful song FOR HIM".

Anyway, he's now in a non-responsive coma like state. It doesn't look good, but he's

hanging in there. He's one hell of a tough man. I'm happy that "Save Me a Seat" was

the last song he heard in his life. :) I'm praying for either a miraculous healing or a

quick painless passing.

And, of course, that brought me right back to the death of our dear friend, Dick Remley, who also was in his death coma, but came back out of it just long enough for all of us around him to say goodbye.

It pleases me to no end to know that the music from TLS still holds the same power it held 12 years ago.

Meanwhile, we had a phone call from our friend, Heidi, that her husband, Tom, had suddenly died back in Los Angeles.

WHAT??? We knew Tom had been dealing with some health issues, but this was sudden and totally unexpected. Heidi and Tom are two of our closest friends. We have cruised together. We call each other every night during Jeopardy's final question.

Really? Can this be? It's impossible!

The passing of Tom is really a shock to us all. Emotionally, it hasn't hit yet because it doesn't seem real to me. For me, he's still at home, trying to beat Jim at Jeopardy and trying out new foods. (Tom is, was, a gourmand, who loved trying anything weird and exotic to eat).

So, here's to Tom, one of the sweetest guys in the world. And to Heidi, whom we love like a sister.

A Tragedy On Our Block.

I've been having a bit of soreness in my left knee, which is not good for walking up and down stairs, something we do a lot here. So, a few days ago, Saturday or Sunday because it was a matinee day, I decided to go look for a walking stick. A cane.

Don told me there might be one at the St. Clement's second hand store around the corner, or at an old watch repair/pawn shop on 43rd.

I left St. Clement's walking west toward 10 ave.

A few blocks down I saw, on someone's stoop, two lighted candles and a spray of flowers. I almost took a picture of it, but something told me not to. I don't know why.

Then, Tuesday night, Dan Wackerman, one of our associate producers, told me that there had been a murder on the block. I think I even saw something about it on one of the gay blogs. But still, with everything going on with the show, it wasn't registering with me.

Then, yesterday, I had sent a note to Rev. DeChamplain about the Sunday morning service, asking her what she wanted from me, i.e. song titles, etc. And, strangely, I didn't hear anything from her. "Strange" because she's usually very prompt.

Last night, during act one, I checked my email using the box office computer when I saw that the flowers, the memorial, the murder, the young man, was named John Lea. That he was a very beloved person. Mitties had been asked if she would help conduct a memorial for him, something non-denominational.

So, out of respect for their feelings and their painful mourning, she spent the day learning about him, and then wrote up a memorial which was held in a big room in an office building, which she described as packed.

I did a search and found the story on Towleroad. The story is that John Lea was a very generous person, and he was allowing an ex, who was "down on his luck," to stay at his place for a week, which turned into a month until, a friend of his said, he was going to ask him, that night, that he'd have to leave.

I see now that the man they believe to be the murderer has been picked up in Vermont and charged. He stupidly stole John's bank card and used it to hire himself a car for the getaway.

My knee is doing a bit better, but I still have to take it really easy on the stairs. I didn't find a cane. I wish, though, I had taken that picture of the flowers and candles.

A Hard Death To Take.

I hadn't seen him in 35 years but the moment his wife, Annie, finally found me and delivered the news that Dwight Franklin of Buna, Texas had died, hot tears slammed out of my eyes and burned my face, turning me into a total wreck. Hell, I don't even have a picture of him.

But when our family moved down into the deepest part of the east Texas woods, one of the few persons who kept me sane was a grumpy, long-haired, intolerably sexy guitarist singer named Dwight Franklin who was only a few years older than me.

I wrote about him once in the diary, back when I found out he had throat cancer. I can't say it better than this:

Dwight Franklin is the coolest person I ever met. He never actually tried to be cool. He simply is/was the embodiment of cool itself. And not cool in a dumb, street kid way. No, Dwight was smart. Dwight was a musician. Dwight was one of the first persons I ever met who made me realize how much I didn't know. He made me curious.

Dwight lived out in the woods near Buna, Texas in a place called Gum Slough (pronounced "sloo"). He lived in a big ramshackle house at the end of a road that wound through the slough.

When I arrived in Buna in the middle of my sophomore year of high school, it was the late 60s/early 70s. The Vietnam war was raging and my life's goal at that time was to become a hippie and live in San Francisco. However, since I was in 10th grade and the Baptist preacher's kid, the best I could do was wear Indian moccasins and engage in the ongoing Haircut Wars with my parents.

Dwight was a year older than me and I don't even remember how I met him. I think I met him because he was friends with Butch, a bass guitarist. Dwight, with his long hair, ever-present electric guitar was a god to me. I took one look at his home made studio, his ability to play the best blues and rock songs, and did everything I could to just find excuses to hang out at his place.

He even drank beer, which was very exotic to me. (I never indulged).

I think he could tell that I was a smart person but he also laughed at my naivete and goaded me into smartening up. For instance, one time he asked me if I liked jazz music. My response was that, well, at Disneyland I kinda enjoyed listening to the...

He interrupted me. "Not that kind of jazz. That's dixieland for tourists. I'm talking about real jazz."

I shrugged. In one question I learned that there was a "jazz" out there that I knew nothing about.

He also liked to read intense science fiction novels, the kind written as almost literature. He gave me one to read -- Stand On Zanzibar. It was unlike anything I had ever read at that time and it made me thirsty for smart writing.

After I left for college, I lost contact with Dwight except the occasional visit. At one point, he had a terrible accident. He was working as a lineman for the county and got involved in a bloody concussive accident with the power line that cracked his head open and left him in a long recovery. I then lost track of him, but recently we hooked up again because he's been battling cancer in his throat.

His wife, Annie, dialed my phone the other day and forced Dwight to speak to me. He was crying. He spoke to me and his voice was so weak. In his voice I heard myself back when I was near death. I guess for two singers like us, it's all about the voice. Back before The Last Session was on the boards, I tried recording a demo. On that day I couldn't reach the high note because my voice was just too weak. I didn't have the power. It was when I first really felt the touch of death hovering over me.

Immediately I realized what he was going through. We talked for about 20 minutes. I did get a few laughs out of him. Other things we said must stay between us -- and I sincerely hope this entry doesn't make him feel bad, but it wasn't until all this started happening that I began to remember what Dwight Franklin meant to me. He was part of my escape from a world I didn't feel I belonged to.

Thank you, Dwight. And by the way, it doesn't matter how weak you may feel or how much indignity you might suffer through your recovery, in my eyes you will always be the Coolest Human Being on Earth.

I hate that he wasn't famous and that you, reader, didn't know him. But I do remember what it felt like to be in Dwight's presence, and as long as I live, I will strive to be the smart, engaged person he thought I could be.

Thanks for waking me up, Dwight. Thanks for making me see that there really is a big, big world out there -- and that it's not scary. I miss you so much already. And thank you, Annie, for taking care of him.

The one good thing is that I got to tell him how much he meant to me. And he got to see that diary entry, too. Bye, Dwight. Gone but NOT forgotten. Never.

Beloved AIDS Bahama AIDS Activist Wellington Adderley Murdered.

My Bahamian HIV positive musician friend, Andrew Jones, has informed me that the very beloved AIDS activist Wellington Adderley, administrator for the AIDS Foundation for the Bahamas, has been found murdered. Andrew, who is traveling right now, is devastated.

Wellington was one of the first persons with AIDS who freely came out both with his disease and being gay, and who has worked tirelessly, both at the community level and in the media to bring attention to the disease in the Bahamas.

He's the kind of person who cannot be replaced. His work and the respect afforded him in the Bahamas was legendary. Here is the link to the news story.

I also did a little poking around on some of the Bahamian discussion boards and discovered that there is a level of anxiety and fear in the community as he's the third murder of a high profile gay man in recent times. On the street, they think there's a serial killer, but the police are saying there is no evidence the crimes were related. However, these three killings happened within blocks of one another.

Still, it is not easy to be out in the Bahamas. So, Wellington's courage stood above most others as he presented a face to the people of the island and fought vigorously for education and care. There are places on this planet where visibility can mean death.

According to the article:

Inspector Wright said there was no evidence that the murder was connected to the November 2007 murders of fashion designer Harl Taylor and College of The Bahamas Dean Dr. Thaddeus McDonald.

The bodies of those two prominent Bahamians were also found in their homes, which coincidently are not too far away from Delancy Street.

Mr. Adderley was regarded as a well-respected HIV/AIDS activist in the community and in the Caribbean region.

In addition to serving as the administrator for the AIDS Foundation, he was director of the Bahamas National Network for Positive Living.

Some of Mr. Adderley’s relatives and colleagues were on the scene when authorities removed his body from his home.

They wept at the site.

"He was the greatest person to work with and a jewel," said Nurse Rosemae Bain, an official at the Bahamas AIDS Secretariat.

Still In Mourning.

I was telling my friend, musician and singer Norman Anderson that I haven't really cried over Thurber yet.

I have some real life things that are stressing me out just a bit and I just haven't allowed myself, for some reason, to really mourn over him. But I feel this pall. I don't want to inflict it on others, so when I tell them about Thurber having died, I don't make a big deal about it. It's okay with me that some people aren't "pet people."

And I don't know if I'm ready for "the big cry" yet. For instance, as I'm writing this, my face is starting to burn hot, my nose is beginning to water and my eyes are starting to hurt. Do I need to plunge in and just get it over with? And when you do that, does it help?

God, I just remembered, as a child, picking up our dog, Tippy. (TIPPY??). Hit by a car. Dead in the street. My brother Dave was there. He has a better memory for these sorts of things. He always accuses me of dramatizing everything out of proportion, which I probably do.

I have some stories from the cruise that I didn't tell you about, and can't pull myself to do it. One is with the Night Crew. Remember them? They were all there and events regarding the Night Crew videos mushroomed until we were all the TVs in the staterooms with a brand new video.

I also met a military man who is directly involved in the anti-insurgent strategy in Iraq. We had a long, fascinating discussion.

So, I will get to those. I promise.

Death In Venice

When we arrived home from our trip to Europe, there was an urgent phone message from Dick (Dickie) Bell, one of Jim's lifelong actor pals. The message was simply to call. We left a message for him, saying we'd be up and that we wanted to hear from him ASAP.

Jim looked at me and said, with horror, "It's Jimmy Rilley. The last time Dickie left me a message like that, George had died." (George was Dickie's longtime partner).

When Dickie finally called, he confirmed the news. Jim wept softly down in the living room as he received the news. I was up in my loft, so I could hear him but I had no feelings about it. My heart felt dead and my eyes were dry. I wasn't even poked in the chest with sadness or recognition. No shock. No feelings whatsoever.

I chalked it up to the fact that I was so dead tired. 12 long hours of a plane trip from Germany, making it about 3:00AM by our bodies, had left me emotionally and physically numb.

Turns out he died the day we left to go on our trip 20 days ago. But Jimmy's partner/husband, Bart, instructed Dickie to wait on giving us the news, so that we would just enjoy our time on the ship and in the Mediterranean.

"It's so funny," I heard Jim say, "but he was on our minds the whole time. We even shot a bunch of video just for him, addressing things directly to him -- 'If only Rilley were here.'"

Jim was singing selections from "Do I Hear A Waltz?" while standing on the Rialto bridge in Venice or sitting at a open air cafe drinking latte on top of a cliffside city in Sicily. Our plan was to make a whole video just for him because he has been physically disabled for a number of years from a horrible massive stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.

For a long time, he had been able to move slowly using a cane, so he was still able to go from his home in Westchester to see his beloved New York theatre.

Rilley was the ultimate show queen. His favorite musical was Sondheim's "Follies" of which he saw nearly every performance of the spectacular original production.

But unlike the lead character in the new (and totally hilarious) Tony-nominated sensation, "The Drowsy Chaperone," who plays a record and "sees" his treasured shows come to life in his apartment, with actors springing from walls and entering from the refrigerator, when Rilley told you about his favorite musicals, he would perform he entire show himself -- all 300 and some pounds of him -- by grabbing sheets, towels, pillowcases, lamps, and other assorted props and draping himself in them, perfectly recreating the costumes AND the choreography.

There's a legendary (and true) story about Rilley and "Follies." It was the 70s. I think the show had long ended its brief, commercially unsuccessful run. And Rilley decided he was going to schedule a performance in a friend's apartment -- "scheduling" being a formal term for what was more like, "Are we drunk enough to do 'Follies?'"

(The other term for these little costumes events was "Sheet Class.")

Rilley is literally doing all the roles, which consist of a number of show girls who walk around the stage like ghosts. He remembers every single dip, turn, head tilt and wrist twist. You have to picture this enormous man dressed in sheets and towels to simulate tall ghostly looking dead show girls. The cast album from "Follies" blaring.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

A voice, "I heard 'Follies' was here tonight."

In walked Michael Bennett (the celebrated man who directed and choreographed 'Follies,' and, later, 'A Chorus Line').

My Jim said Rilley looked petrified. Here was Michael Bennett himself.

He walks into the room, plops himself down in front, and says, "Start it over from the beginning."

Rilley starts over. He doing the actors, he's lip-synching the songs, he's hopping all over the place trying to do all the chorus girls.

Suddenly, Michael Bennett leaps up and shouts, "Stop! I won't let you do this any longer!"

Everyone froze.

"NOT WITHOUT ME!!" And he jumps up, grabs some sheets and joins in on the choreography. He couldn't believe Rilley remembered every step.

Rilley was like one of the graceful hippopotamuses you see in the Disney cartoon. He had all this bulk, but he could almost go up on point and make you think he was the most graceful man in the room when he danced. It was impossible to be in a room with him and not be laughing and joyful just at his very presence.

But then it happened. He was at a friend's apartment alone when he fell. It took him forever, but he had to crawl across the floor and reach up to unlatch a bar that had been placed in front of the door to keep it from being opened. The police and emergency units were trying to get in.

By then, we were already living out in California, so we had no chance to see him on any regular basis. Once, when Jimmy was doing something in New York, I took the train out there myself just to sit with him. He had great courage, and he spent a lot of years fighting for life, going through physical rehabilitation exercises -- always painful, always intense -- which always seemed to fail and leave him a little worse off every year.

Last time couple times I spoke with him on the phone, he said to me, "Stevie, is it okay to want to die? Did you ever want to? I just don't think I can keep going like this."

He had just fallen again, and was now completely incapacitated. His lover, Bart, ever faithful, always by his side, never waivered; never faltered.

I loved their relationship. For the longest time, Rilley was having love troubles. He blamed it on being fat or being unlovable. But Bart. This totally sweet little Jewish guy just fell for Rilley like a ton of bricks. I had said that Rilley added glamour to Bart's life. Whatever it was, I adored them as a couple and I adored how much Bart really l0ved and cared for Rilley.

The word is that he had another massive stroke. Bart was there.

The thing that makes me sad and, finally, brings tears to my eyes is not so much the fact that he has died -- everyone is going to die someday -- but that he struggled so much in his final days. For a guy who was so light on his feet, who loved being physical, who loved musical theatre, who never failed to throw just a bit of glamour and class into every room he walked into, it only broke my heart to hear him telling me how difficult it was, how heartbroken he was that he simply had no power over his legs and hand anymore.

He would speak to me on a heart level. "Steven," he would say when got serious and it was just the two of us on the phone, "you've been through this. You know what I'm feeling here."

I would tell him that I did, but I don't know if anyone could. I could tell him I remember being so sick that I could have imagined wanting to pull the switch. But I don't think I ever was in his shoes. Not really.

I'm sorry, Rilley. I couldn't really know what you were going through. Right now, as I sit here typing away, my eyes are starting to burn. It is dawning me what this world will be without you. We have some old videos and things somewhere around here. Was it the one where you recreated all the costumes from "Coco" while Jim Brochu sat there lip syncing for Katherine Hepburn? Or was it your brilliant and almost chilling recreation of Bette Davis in our 3-minute version of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" Or do we still have that murky tape of you doing "Follies" over at Midge's house? Or the gypsy dance performed with 20 shirts tied to your waist with a belt?

I think what we'll do is cut them all together, put you back up on your feet and watch you dance again.

A Jimmy Rilley Film and Dance Festival.

Here's to you, Rilley. You were there on the SS Galileo the day Jimmy and I met 21 years ago this weekend.


You are an icon of theatre for me. No star looms in my mind larger than you and your brilliant creative spirit. I cannot imagine what it must be like for you now to be hanging out with Michael Bennett, the man you idolized. Dance across the stars, my friend. We who are bound here on earth salute you.