The Rose Kid

HOW I GOT MY FIRST JOB IN THEATER

Make no mistake about it - not that you would - but I am not Binary (Is that with a capital "B"?). Never felt the call, but you can’t be in theater without knowing gay people - lots of them - so get over it. No big deal. I was used to guys hitting on me but physically not emotionally. Physically, just push them away, but, emotionally? How do you deal with that?

I was new to theater having recently bullshat my way into the position of assistant stage manager at the Cape Cod Melody Tent for the summer season, 1965 - ten weeks; ten musicals. I’d just finished my first year at Yale graduate school in playwriting and dramatic literature, looked around and believed I’d come to a crossroads. What were all those playwrights doing for work now that they've graduated? Writing in places without heat and a toilet down the hall is what I could determine. I could return to my home town to a safe job already waiting for me, or grab the opportunity to lie my way into a summer stock job and plunge ahead into a lifetime of insecurity.I took the plunge.

My roommate had just turned down the job, and I,half in jest,said tell them I'm available. Mind you, I knew nothing.They must've really been hard up because, lo and behold, a call came from NYC: could I possibly meet them for an interview? Sure!

Again, mind you, I knew nothing. How many productions and what was my favorite, was one of the first questions asked. Well, hell, I had never directed or produced anything,let alone acted, but I had sat through a year of directors doing their stuff at Yale so I rattled off Albee and Beckett and Ibsen and, of course, Shaw. My favorite? Uh, well, lemme see, uh, Beckett. OK? Lying through my teeth. I got the job.I was now an assistant stage manager except I had very little notion of what an ASM did. Consequently, midway through the season, long after it had become obvious how incompetent I was, I was nearly fired.How I turned it around I don't know, but I did. It was a tough learn, but it was a true learn, so, by the end of the season, I had a union card and a means of making a living in the theatre, which I’d come to love. And that’s how I met Joe Tremaine aka The Rose Kid.

One of the ten shows packing in that summer was West Side Story which meant two gangs of “gypsies” - the Sharks and the Jets - would descend on our tent for a week’s rehearsal and a week’s run. A gypsy in this sense meant a Broadway dancer of great skill and wild reputation, the theatre’s own visceral herd of show ponies. They moved fluidly from show to show. Hence, “gypsies”, their very daily lives a constant audition for A Chorus Line, which was decades from birth. Joe was one of them although he hadn’t yet begun to manifest his particular visions of empire, at least, not out loud. He would become an impresario - an international force in his field - but that was years in the making. When we first met, Joe was a chorus boy.

One evening I unlatched the door to the ramshackle shed that functioned as my office only to find a red, long stem rose on my clipboard along with an affectionate note signed by someone calling himself the Rose Kid. What it said it said softly and innocently. It was not salacious. It was not predatory. It was sweet and kind, really, simply, a request for friendship. My reaction was cruel and shallow. It was an affection for which I wasn't prepared, nor did I know how to react except to laugh and ridicule and make farce of someone else's feelings. I don't know what I did, but I might well have minced and lisped and otherwise performed some moronic mockery of what I would come to see as a dear dear act of caring and kindness.

"I would like to be your friend," was what the note said, was all it said."I would like to be your friend." It was signed, "The Rose Kid".

I remember Joe being mortified at this revelation and humiliated at the manner in which I revealed it - mincing and lisping and truly demeaning. I remember this tiny female dancer (Was she a Shark or a Jet?) unloading on me as the callous imbecile I was, shaming me in front of the other dancers, confronting my behavior and forcing me to confront it, too.It was the first time I realized a man could actually have a heart. I was suddenly so ashamed of myself and yet surprised (and embarrassed) that I felt such shame because one always made fun of guys like that, didn't one? What'd I do wrong? I was just joking. My cruel and callow prancing about had been rehearsed for years. I was just joking.

But that was then, and now is now, and the irony of it all is that Joe Tremaine and I became lifelong buddies. I don't know how, and I don't know why, however, in the instant our atoms collided, somewhere between his confession and my repudiation, we became friends deep down in the bones.

To this day our connection baffles me, but there it is, strong as ever. Although we rarely see each other - a handful of times in the decades following that season of stock - if I needed something, I believe Joe would be there as if we'd just spoken that morning.I'd make a pot of coffee, and we'd sit there and talk. Where I go Joe goes. He keeps me honest.