The Best Year of My Life: An Epic Adventure In 12 Parts: July

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

July

For a birthday month I insisted would be low-key, a whole bunch actually happened in July.

After weeks of brainstorming and restructuring, Cuddy and I were all set to launch the re-envisioning of A Night of Oral Tradition, and I can take credit for the name: we were going to call it The Scoop, and position it as the premiere storytelling night in Cambridge. (I was unaware that there was an already-established storytelling night in Cambridge, and it was only on once a month. At exactly the same time as our show. These repercussions would become apparent much later.)

The night before my birthday, I slammed into the Rosebud with all my friends and I sang “Thunder Road” on stage. People bought me drinks and snacks. It was nothing short of bliss.

On July 18th, 2012, I turned thirty-seven. I didn’t feel it. Friends came over to my house and we had a small birthday party with cake. My friend Neil got me a shaving kit, fulfilling one of my New Years’ resolutions. After the party, me and Marty and Ian headed out to the very first presentation of The Scoop. I got onstage and told my story about chasing Bruce Springsteen across the Midwest with my uncle Warren and his Christian friend Kevin. It was well-received by the seven people there.

Speaking of music: the new Gaslight Anthem album, Handwritten, was released, and I immediately fell in love with it. Maybe not as good as American Slang, but few albums could be. Like almost everyone else, I've been guilty of growing more song-oriented, rather than album-oriented. So it's a good reminder, when someone like Bruce Springsteen or Drive-By Truckers or a relatively new obsession like Gaslight Anthem comes out with something new, I listen to the whole thing front to back and live inside their whole concept for awhile. Plus, they rock super hard, and that's awesome for the gym.

I wrote one review for FEARnet – on the second, more disturbing section of “In the Tall Grass” – and wrote two poems: “Duke’s Temper,” and “Imbalance.” In bigger writing news, I finished my rewrite of I’m On Fire on July 25th and almost immediately cried. It had a more nihilistic finish, stronger characters, better backstories. It had better writing than it had had before. Because I’m learning more about the aftercare of novels, I sent it along to my friend John Perich to beta-read, and I waited.

Near the end of the month, my long-term tattoo artist, Kelly, was back in town to ink his best customers for a couple weeks. I’d written to him earlier in the month and said, “Tom Servo?” He said, “YES.” Before there was Buffy night, before there was Angel night, before there was Desperate Housewives night, my friends and I would all gather round and watch MST3K. More recently, I’d been getting together with comedy people and watching old episodes and remembering how awesome they were, and how much fun could still be mined from them. Not to mention the fact that the show I was producing this month at Sketchhaus was an MST3K-type show called Director’s Commentary. Through enormous, crushing pain, I got myself a Tom Servo tattoo, and Kelly commented that I was looking jacked.

Those twice-a-day visits to the gym actually were paying off, something my oldest buddy Jim noticed when we went out to do a photoshoot out by the Port of Boston. Jim’s something of an old camera nut, so he wanted to not only wanted to shoot me, he wanted to try out his vintage cameras and hard-to-find film. The result was a series of pictures of me that were probably the best I’d ever taken, most in delightful black and white.

As it turned out, the rumors were true. Rocky Horror in Harvard Square was being shut down after twenty-eight years. All that time spent in my late twenties and early thirties going to the show every single week, poof, vanished. I wrote a whole blog post about how much Rocky means to me, but suffice it to say that it was a major, major part of my world for a long time, and I’d discovered (in Chelsea, of all places) that I never had to let it go, not entirely. The theater announced that they would have two farewell shows for the Harvard location, and sold out both nights. Weirdly, it was my friend Vickie – who’d never come to the show with me before – who decided to join me for both shows. On that last night, I swapped clothes with a chubby Rocky virgin on stage (I was wearing my I Heart Chubby Bearded Dudes shirt, so it wasn’t all that surprising). Vickie remembered some of the callback lines. And at the end of the night, they turned up the house lights and blasted “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and I blew out my voice singing along.

One of the most important things I learned in 2012 was that the stuff you love never really disappears. It just waits. And it eventually comes back.

Books Read: In One Person, by John Irving; The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams; and The Buffalo Hunter, Peter Straub

The Best Year of My Life: An Epic Adventure In 12 Parts: June

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

June

In mid-June, for the first time ever, a real publisher (Cemetery Dance) published my fiction. Not one but two of my books – the short-story collection This Terrestrial Hell and the poetry collection Surf’s Up – were released as ebooks and became immediate sensations. Actually, I don’t know how they sold. My royalty statements only come twice a year.

Seeing my books for sale by an actual, real-life, honest-to-God publisher overwhelmed me emotionally. For long minutes, I just stared at the computer screen, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. Sure, they were “just” ebooks, but that had a different meaning in 2012 than it had when I first tried e-publishing in 1999. I know for a fact that at least some of my friends bought at least This Terrestrial Hell (poems are a tougher sell, even though they’re scarier), and most who bought it said they liked it.

On June 7th, I took the stage with the Sketch Avengers in my first headlining show as director. For a full 45 minutes, every Thursday in June, the people I’d rehearsed with and directed and helped get ready got up and made real-life audiences laugh. Even I got into the act during one or two sketches, doing that screaming thing that I did. On June 21st, one of my actors had to go to the emergency room (he’s fine now) and I actually had to step in and fill in for most of his characters. I have no idea if I did a good job, but Jesus God, was it fun.

I began brainstorming with Chris Cuddy, who still ran A Night of Oral Tradition. Would she like to do a whole monologue show later in the summer? At once, she said yes, and suddenly I was stepping into the role of producer and co-director of The August Monologues. I assembled a dream cast and gave them free reign to make the monologues as funny or as serious as they wanted. We would start rehearsing in July. Cuddy, apparently intrigued by my drive, asked me if I wanted to co-produce A Night of Oral Tradition with her, too. Immediately, I said yes, and we got to brainstorming.

Stephen King and Joe Hill published part one of a long short story called “In the Tall Grass,” which I reviewed for FEARnet. I also wrote three poems: “Something In My Shoulder,” “Spine,” and “Puddles.”

My love of amusement parks stoked by Canobie Lake, I decided to travel out to New York and finally go to Coney Island. Because I apparently love assembling people from different parts of my life to get together and do stuff, I asked Mark, Duncan, Marty, Kristen, and my new friend Jeff to come along. I hadn’t seen Jeff since Reunion at Disney World nearly six months before, but we’d maintained a casual friendship online and I thought it would be fun. Five gays and a Kristen, what could go wrong?

Answer: nothing. It was a delightful sunny day. We rode the Comet. We ate on the beach. We bonded. As with most of my New York trips, later on there was Barcade, and karaoke, and of course Rocky Horror in Chelsea – something that was steadily becoming a tradition. (And a good thing, too; there were rumors that they were going to be shutting down the Harvard Square Loews Theater, and my local Rocky with it. We had no idea what the future would bring.) What’s neat is that I was at different stages of friendship with all these people, especially Duncan and Jeff. Because I was now coming to New York regularly, I was finally seeing Duncan on a consistent basis, and we were hitting it off. And Jeff, who I didn’t know very well at all, fit in so easily and was so fun, and it was the start of a really terrific friendship.

Oh, and I started thinking about a four-part sketch show that celebrated all eras of sketch comedy. But what to call it, what to call it…?

Books Read: Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck; The Halloween Tree, by Ray Bradbury

The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: May

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

May

May, the quietest month of my adventuresome year, whispered in with my completed manuscript of Stephen King Limited. Brian, my editor, proclaimed it too long for a chapterbook. So he split it in two and paid me for both. That’s how you do it, folks. Don’t double-space stuff or anything, but if you’ve dedicated yourself to a quality story, let it be as long as it needs to be. You will be rewarded. The book(s) went into their editing process, for physical publication later in the year. The collected ebook would be available in 2013. And I’d get royalties on that.

John Irving’s new novel, In One Person, came out. I slammed my money down and got the first copy.

I’m not quite sure when I started reading Archie comics – the Life With Archie stuff was really well-written, and I was happy they’d come out with a gay character with my name. But it wasn’t until this month’s Archie Meets Kiss that I really got into the weekly books. And AMK was so batshit crazy that I decided to start “tweetwatching” the comic, taking pics of panels and MST3King it (though sometimes I praised it, or fainted when Moose showed up). My friend Joe said that type of thing is one of the reasons he likes me so much, so I just kept doing it.

The Avengers came out. Shawn and I saw it opening night. On Sunday, he called and said he wanted to see a movie. I said, “Avengers?” He said “YES!” True love always.

I was so jazzed that Stephen King recorded himself reading The Wind Through the Keyhole that I asked if I could write a separate audio review for FEARnet. My editors were equally enthusiastic. I also wrote two poems: “Caution to the Wind,” and “Inside the Wall.”

Speaking of enthusiastic, my Cemetery Dance editor, Brian, asked me if I'd write an afterword to his and Bev Vincent's new book, The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book. Way back in 2009, I'd written a huge chunk of the Illustrated Stephen King Movie Trivia Book (which remained unpublished ... so far), and I guess they liked what I brought to the table. I wrote an essay called "Trivial Matters," and turned it in.

On May 9th, some of my lady friends – Vickie, Rachel, and Lynn – tweeted at me from the Rosebud Diner in Davis Square, informing me that there was a twice-weekly karaoke night there, and that the place was overrun (overrun!) with foxy hipsters. Well, this was something I needed to be a part of. Besides which – and not to get too weird or deep –karaoke actually means something to me. When we were all going to the Asgard every week, I had to get up there and show my stuff among actors and singers and people who actually use their voices. I forced myself to improve, to the point where it’s not just having fun while I’m up there, but it’s me trying to do an honest-to-God good job.

Maybe even more, though, is the fact that when the Asgard fell apart, I lost my weekly meetup with my buddies, and I’d been missing that like hell. Some things that were important to me – like Rocky Horror had been – had fallen away, and the unsettling truth of life is that sometimes the stuff you love to do just vaporizes, and you can’t get it back. But Rocky Horror had come back. And now, tentatively, karaoke was doing the same. Suddenly, I was seeing Rachel and Vickie again every week, and eventually I would count Todd and Eric and the growing assembled as people I could count on to be there and to sing their hearts out with me.

You think when you’re younger that the stuff you do is stuff you’ll do forever. And when it stops, well, that’s one of the hardest lessons. One of the best things I learned this year is that life might be a little more cyclical than that. You can go back, even as you’re moving forward.

Near the end of the month, our former roommates, Jay and Scott, asked Shawn and I to accompany them to Canobie Lake Park. We agreed immediately. Things had been ramping up for me so much, so quickly, that I hadn’t really had a break since the start of the year, and while Disney is my favorite place in the world, I don’t generally rest there (see above re: 24 Hour Day). We went on roller coasters, had popcorn, and just palled around. May is the quietest, most understated month.

On the last Sketchhaus night of the month, my troupe, the Sketch Avengers, did a short 25-minute opening set. I got on stage and, as the groom of a wedding where the best man was making it all about him, got to scream at people. In 25 minutes, I became a producer, director, and actor. On my way.

Books Read: Hide & Seek, by Jack Ketchum; Too Hard to Handle, by John Perich; and The World According to Garp, by John Irving

The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: April

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

April

And suddenly I’m in Asbury Park, New Jersey, with one of my best buddies, Marty. It’s a bit of a mish-mash, musically. Asbury Park is the Bruce Springsteen hub of the universe. It’s where he got his start. It’s where most of his first three albums take place. Places like The Stone Pony and the boardwalk are legendary. But we’re not there to see Bruce Springsteen. I played Marty non-stop Drive-By Truckers on the way down to the shore, but we’re not there to see Drive-By Truckers, either. We’re there to see “our” band, Blue October, in the midst of their Any Man In America tour. We finagled our way to the front, and the band is on, and we have a lot of fun by the sea.

The next day, we headed into New York City and ate brunch with my friends Kristen and Mark and Duncan. On the eve of Easter, Marty and Duncan and I decided to check out Rocky Horror in Chelsea. Even though I’d known Duncan for years and we’ve been friends, we’ve never really hung out for an extended period of time. This was a chance to change that. He’s an old-school Rocky fan, I’m newish school, and Marty was just happy to giggle along. Plus, the emcee is a chubby goth in bunny ears, so it’s pretty much awesome.

The first meetings of Sketch Avengers began. We ran through scripts. We brought in more actors. I gave some suggestions and everyone seemed interested in listening to me. By the third rehearsal, one of the actors got there late, and said she’d been pulled over for driving too fast. “I blamed it on my director,” she laughed. I asked, “Who’s your director?” She looked at me blankly and said, “You are.” That’s when I realized that I’ve been the Sketch Avengers director for weeks and didn’t know it. On my way.

Drive-By Truckers had become so big to me in such a short amount of time that it was almost overwhelming. I tried to get my friends into the band, to little avail (though my friend Jeff, who lived in New York City and who I’d met at Disney the year before, confirmed that he liked them). I kept returning to the song “World of Hurt,” and that line, “It’s great to be alive.” Already 2012 was shaping up to be leagues better than 2011, and I thought it was important to reflect that, permanently. On

April 14th, I met up with my first tattooer post-Kelly. His name was John and he was talented as hell. Within two hours, he got the band’s symbol (the Cooley bird) and that legend, It’s Great To Be Alive, tattooed on my arm.

My boss at my temp job officially extended my position to August, meaning I didn’t have to worry about finding a new job till then. Hooray!

I pitched an idea to my editor at Cemetery Dance: Stephen King Limited, a chapterbook that would take a narrative look at the world of Stephen King limited editions. He immediately approved the idea and I got to work, dividing my day between writing and researching that and working on I’m On Fire.

Mid-month, my Kickstarter money came in. I immediately marched to the Apple store and got myself an iPad, which I named Tug. That day, I transferred the I’m On Fire file to it and began editing and re-writing work there.

I also started listening to my friend Marty and began doing cardio in the morning, before work. Just 15 minutes on the elliptical to complement my muscle workouts in the afternoon. It was cool – I had audiobooks.

On April 21, I flew down to Atlanta, Georgia to see the Drive-By Truckers in concert for the first time. It was also Record Store Day, and my buddy Joe accompanied me to Criminal Records to see lead singer Patterson Hood play a solo acoustic set. It was the closest I’d ever come to this new icon in my life. That night, we headed to the Tabernacle in Downtown Atlanta; I got right up front, and the music blasted me so hard and so thoroughly it felt like I was being reborn. It was one of the best nights of my entire life.

I wrote one column on FEARnet, the first on my iPad, and I wrote three poems: “Nosebleed,” “Blood Orange,” and “Tinnitus.” That last one was about the rock show.

Books read: Juliet, Naked, by Nick Hornby; The Fourth Hand, by John Irving; The Professional, by Robert Parker; and The Wind Through the Keyhole (again), on audiobook, read by Stephen King.

The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: March

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

March

Starting the month off in Disney World is never a bad portent. Joe and I eat lunch at Mama Melrose in Hollywood Studios. I fly home on the second, and three days later, Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball comes out. It’s fantastic and I’m so happy. At the end of the month, my friend Neil and I took in one of the first 10 shows of Springsteen’s tour; unlike with the Working on a Dream tour, a lot of the new material made up the core of the setlist. I blissed out and Neil bought me an awesome red tour shirt. This would mark the first of several times I would go see my favorite bands with my favorite people.

Upon my return home, I began to build programming for Sketchhaus. I started writing my favorite performers and seeing if they want to do stuff. A lot of people did, which I didn’t anticipate. I discovered almost immediately that my physical proximity to the theater was a huge boon for me. I’m forever writing stuff at the Starbucks near the theater, and performers are always coming in. I’d get them to pitch me some ideas, and they would, and I’d give them stage time. Could it really be that easy? As it turned out, it could. Pretty soon, the schedule for May began to form, and I was looking forward to building June.

Around this time, one of the theater people, Sam Ike, wrote to me about maybe putting on a show featuring people from all the existing sketch troupes – like a supergroup of sketch. I thought it sounded like a fine idea, so I started contacting people and they responded. People sent me scripts. I started casting. Sketch Avengers was coming to Sketchhaus in June.

I turned in my manuscripts for This Terrestrial Hell and Surf’s Up, nervous but thrilled. These weren’t maybes. My editor had read and liked my work, and was going to publish my books. On my way.

I wrote two reviews for FEARnet.com, and wrote six poems: “Fourth on Green,” “Shackles,” “8:55,” “Passenger Seat,” “Roscoe,” and “Delta County.”

At the same time, I started working on the edits to I’m On Fire … and realized, somewhat happily, that I’m a better writer than I was when the book was first written in 1999. It didn’t need some light work; it needed an overhaul. I also needed new hardware and software to really dig into the editing – my laptop was getting a little too heavy to lug around everywhere, and I thought an iPad would be the answer – and in order to do that, I needed to take as many extra bar shifts as I could. Which then cut into my writing time. It was like a poisoned gift of the Magi situation. On top of that, while my publisher gave me advances for my nonfiction, I would only get residuals for my fiction; nothing up front.

My friends suggested I start a Kickstarter campaign, which I reluctantly did. I wrote a blog entry called “Kickstart My Art” and posted it on March 20th. I did a lot of things wrong. I only let the thing happen for 2 weeks, which is a huge no-no. I offered only digital work for incentives. And I may have asked for too much - $950.

To my absolute astonishment, I got more than what I asked for in a single day. In. A. Single. Day. How humbled, and awed, and stunned I was by everyone’s belief in my writing. The entire thrust of my friends' confidence in me, I vowed to make I’m On Fire the best damn book it could be.

And my arms were noticeably bigger.

Books read: Sixkill, by Robert Parker; Devil In the White City, by Erik Larson; I, Fatty, by Jerry Stahl; Just A Geek, by Wil Wheaton; Archie: A Celebration of America’s Favorite Teenager, by Craig Yoe; and Stay Close, by Harlan Coben

The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: February

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

February

Let’s not diminish things here: February was huge.

Like, massive. The Winter of Kev Discontent was kicking the snow off its boots and transforming into the, uh, early Spring of New Stuff. Sure, why not?

Early in the month, I had my first meeting with the Sketchhaus folks. I … may have typed up a detailed four-page “Sketch Manifesto,” that I got ratified by the existing producers and sent to my bosses at ImprovBoston. Still trying to get the gold star.

This time it worked. Before I knew it, my bosses at the theater were talking about My Vision for Sketchhaus, like it was a real, viable thing that could be put into action. Would be put into action. Suddenly, this guy who had no real experience doing anything theater-related except slinging beers, selling tickets, and laughing was running a whole night of comedy. Well, would be. In May. I could barely believe it.

I did my due diligence when it came to comedy. I went and saw a night of improv at ImprovAsylum, and a whole standup showcase at The Comedy Studio in Harvard Square. I returned to the Comedy Studio a few times, when some of my favorite acts were performing. I did not return to IA. I also appeared naked in the Boston Globe, due to my hosting the Naked Comedy showcase once a month at ImprovBoston. Naked. In the local newspaper. My Dad saw that with no warning late in the month, and gave me a very concerned phone call.

Shawn and I get Details magazine at home. He likes looking at the pretty guys on the covers. I was idly flipping through the new Channing Tatum issue and saw they had a 6-week arm workout that looked like something I could do. I’d been spinning my wheels at the gym for years, having gotten on a plateau and stayed there. It finally occurred to me that my gym was in the basement of the building I was now temping at. Maybe I could give another go at building my muscle. I wrote my buddy Mark in New York and asked him to build me a comprehensive chest workout. Then I found a good shoulder one, and decided to rotate days. Soon enough, I was going to the gym every afternoon, not just three days a week. And the results were almost immediate.

Shawn and I celebrated our thirteenth anniversary on February 14th, Valentine’s Day. He got me the Drive-By Truckers album A Blessing and a Curse, completing my collection of DBT records. My interest in the band had sparked the year before and it was just growing, so this was a big deal to me. I got Shawn an iTunes gift card. We’re minimal on our anniversary.

My editor at Cemetery Dance, Brian, wrote to me and asked me if I would be interested in publishing my own books as ebooks though the publisher. My own stuff: novels, collections, you name it. I was immediately thrilled, and began compiling my short story collection, This Terrestrial Hell and readying my poetry collection, Surf’s Up. This time, I got beta readers. And I wondered how ready my early novel, I’m On Fire, would be for publication.

I wrote five poems: “One-Night Stands With Writers,” “Open the Door, Longhair,” “The Perils of Umbrella Repair,” “Early and Close,” and “Sacrament.”

My review of Stephen King’s new Dark Tower book, The Wind Through the Keyhole, appeared on FEARnet. Later, Wikipedia would single me out as having the first review of the book anywhere, and treated me like a real reviewer (which I suppose I am now), quoting me with lines like, “Quigley elaborates on the book's thematic 'bridge' status…” My senior year English teacher, Mrs. Kreinsen, would be proud.

Early in the year, Disney announced a new promotion: One More Disney Day, which would be a 24-hour event at the Magic Kingdom in Florida and at Disneyland in California on Leap Day: 6 AM to 6AM. After briefly considering starting the day off at Disney World and ending it at Disneyland, my buddy Joe and I decided to do the overnight entirely at the Magic Kingdom. We woke up at 4:30 and got to the Magic Kingdom at 5:30. We got glowy hats and bought T-shirts. 6:00 AM at the Magic Kingdom was foggy, ethereal. As bizarre as it was to be here this early in the morning, that was nothing compared to being there late at night. I guzzled a five-hour energy shot at 1:00 AM and couldn’t calm down. I vowed to ride Space Mountain once an hour; there’s literally nothing like riding through the dark at 3:30 in the morning, when you’re so tired you might die, and your buddy is by your side and nothing is stopping you from having the time of your life. We emerged into March at 6:00 AM, the sun just coming up over the Seven Seas Lagoon.

Books Read: The whole Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, as well as one of the best books I read all year, Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline.

The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: January

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

January

The previous year had been a rough one, no way around it. I left my long-term temp job in the hopes of something more lucrative, a move that did not pay off. I spent much of the early winter unemployed from a full-time job, but not able to collect unemployment. I was working box office and being a bartender at the theater, and they gave me some odds and ends to do, but otherwise, I was hurting. I eventually took a temp job at a publishing company in one of the less glamorous sections. I did not expect it to go that far.

On New Year’s Eve, I volunteered as a greeter for ImprovBoston’s New Year’s party. It would turn out to be a good omen. Despite the crappiness of the previous few months, I was optimistic. I made a list of eight New Year’s resolutions:

1. GO TO DISNEYLAND
2. GET LUCKY JEANS
3. OWN BOWLING SHIRTS
4. GET A SHAVING KIT
5. NANO EVERY DAY
6. SEE COMEDY ELSEWHERE
7. TRAVEL SOMEPLACE THAT ISN'T DISNEY
8. PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARD

Some of those would come true. Some wouldn’t. It mattered but it didn’t, because in almost all ways I managed to surpass this list in completely unexpected ways. You’ll see.

Shawn showed up just before midnight and we kissed. Sometimes we’re not together on New Year’s Eve, which isn’t necessarily the tragedy I could make of it (I adore tradition, and also emotional moments that movie and books tell me are important), but I was glad for it this night. Surrounded by friends, inside the theater I loved, kissing my sweetie: it was a great way to start the year.

My buddy Marty came down from New Jersey and, on a whim, decided to go to Rocky Horror in Harvard Square. I hadn’t been in a while and I was a little rusty, but the old love of it washed over me again. I’m at the age, I think, where I know that chasing the dragons of your youth can sometimes result in getting burned, but this was different. Familiar. Comfortable. As erotically thrilling as ever. Sometimes, you can go home … even if it’s to a transvestite in fishnets.

Midway through the month, I ran across one of my “Here’s how I met Stephen King” stories, with all the requisite embarrassment and shame and fanboy drooling. And I thought, I could tell this to people and they’d find it funny. Wait, don’t I work at a comedy theater? As it turns out, I did. As it further turns out, Christine Cuddy, one of my acquaintances at the theater, ran a storytelling show on Wednesdays called A Night of Oral Tradition. I asked her if I could get up and tell my tale and she readily agreed. On January 19th, she announced me as “the best friend a theater could have,” and I told my Stephen King story to the gathered assemblage. And my theater boss.

Springsteen announced a new album. John Irving announced a new book. I wrote a column for FEARnet.com about Stephen King and his unpublished recent stories. My poem, “DMM,” completed my poetry collection, Surf’s Up, which I thought I might self-publish, like Foggy at Night in the City had been the year before.

Late in the month, the producers at Sketchhaus – the premiere sketch comedy night at ImprovBoston – asked me if I would be interested in co-producing the night. I was honored to even be asked. I’ve had no formal comedy training, I’d never written a script, and except for my hosting Naked Comedy Night and doing my one storytelling thingy, I’d never been on stage. But it seemed interesting and fun, so I said okay. Simple as that.

Things were looking up.

Books Read: Watership Down, by Richard Adams; Cujo, by Stephen King; The Shining, by Stephen King

The Ink Journals

The why, where, and how of my body art.

1. Bear With Me (May 10, 1999) - Bear Claw

2. Stand In the Place Where You Live (November 13, 1999) - Stephen King's The Stand

3. Man Without Fear (October 4, 2004) - Daredevil

4. We Can Make It If We Run (September 24, 2005) - Bruce Springsteen Sneakers

5. Boldly Going (February 18, 2006) - Star Trek

6. My Flirtation With Obscure Punctuation (April 8, 2006) - Interobang

7. Howl (November 8, 2006) - Cycle of the Werewolf

8. Red and Blue (January 29, 2007) - Blue October

9. Pinch Me (February 18, 2007) - Barenaked Ladies

10. Thou Mayest (July 19, 2007) - Timshel

11. Sorry, But Our Princess Is In Another Castle (January 28, 2008) - Super Mario

12. Like a Grand and Miraculous Spaceship (August 19, 2008) - Spaceship Earth

13. Lucky Thirteen (June 9, 2009) - Anchor 13

14. If We Can Dream It... (July 22, 2009) - Horizons

15. A Bear Can Rest at Ease (April 2, 2010) - Baloo

16. The Pepper Engine (July 20, 2010) - Steampunk Dr Pepper

17. The Eagle Has Landed (August 2, 2011) - Bob Seger Eagle

18. It's Great to Be Alive (April 14, 2012) - Drive-By Truckers

19. I'm the Wind, Baby (July 31, 2012) - Tom Servo

20. Hardy & Arbuckle (March 29, 2013) - Comedy & Tragedy

21. Don't Panic! (July 5, 2013) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I'm the Wind, Baby

When I was but a lad of 18, I worked at a mall bookstore and lived in a rooming house with old men winding down their clocks and junkies trying to get clean (sometimes they did; sometimes other stuff happened). I ate a lot of Ramen and drank a lot of generic Stop & Shop soda. There was a pay phone in the hallway I had to use to call my boyfriend, who was thirty years older than me and worked nights. This was before I discovered Bruce Springsteen and my landscape of entertainment was almost entirely re-reading Stephen King novels and finding Real Truth in Counting Crows’ August & Everything After.

I’d get home from the bookstore late, late, late. The buses from the mall to my house were on a schedule staggered just so that I would usually get out of work forty-five minutes before the next bus was due. We had to wear dress shoes and ties at the bookstore, which I’d always found absurd, so when I shut the door to my little room (checking to make sure that the cardboard around the door jamb were still taped in place, so that the old men’s and junkies’ cigarette smoke didn’t seep in and play hell with my asthma while I slept), my feet hurt and my neck ached and I was exhausted. Too exhausted to sleep, usually, so I’d flip on the little 12” TV set up on the dresser that came with the room … and I’d laugh my goddamned ass off. My salvation in those early days of living on my own was Mystery Science Theater 3000, the show about the guy on the spaceship with his little robot buddies – Crow and Tom Servo and Gypsy and Cambot, for whom I would eventually be nicknamed – who are forced to watch bad movies and survive only my making fun of them. I watched Attack of the Eye Creatures. I watched Crash of the Moons. I watched, dear God, Manos: The Hands of Fate. And I fell in love.

Sometimes Tracey would come over to my rooming house with her then-boyfriend Pete to watch with me. My friend Jim would sometimes come by and fall asleep watching it, because he was a chauffeur and started work at 3:00 in the morning. Eventually, Tracey moved out of Quincy and I moved out of the rooming house, and I’d go to Brookline to watch it with her and her boyfriend Jerry. Yep. It stinks!

Things mutated. I lived in a studio apartment now, at least three times the size of my room at the rooming house. I had a kitchen. In which to put my generic Stop & Shop sodapop. Dave (also from the bookstore, and who introduced me to not only Bruce Springsteen but also Daredevil, making him one of the most important touchstones in my cultural development) and Tracey would come over and watch with me. Eventually, we invented the Geek Sleepover. Dave would pick us up at the train station in Quincy (Town of Presidents, don’t you know) and drive us back to his place in Fall River (conveniently located to New York City, only three hours away!) We’d load up on KFC and Utz and soda and get in our jammies and put puddles of water outside the bathroom every time Tracey went in so she’d step in the puddle and get her feet wet, because we’re grownups. And we’d watch MST3K together. Rowsdower!

We’d listen to the songs. We’d make in-jokes about the show. We’d circulate the tapes. I bought the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide and read it to literal tatters. When I met Shawn, I discovered that he and his former roommate Kenna used to watch the show (Shawn disconcertingly called it Mystie), and it was True Love Always. Soon, Shawn was joining us for Geek Sleepover, and you ever get those moments where your life actually seems like a narrative rather than a series of random stuff that happens? Yeah. That. Eventually, I met my buddy Kenny in Texas, and he was a die-hard MST3K fan. Whenever I would visit Texas, we’d watch the show. When he moved to Boston, I’d go over and we’d watch reruns. For a brief, burning time, Kenny was one of the best friends I’d ever had, and we’d nerd out completely to old episodes. I’ll blame Rocky and get away scot free!

Geek Sleepover ended, because everything ends. But, I’m discovering, things rarely end forever. Much like I’m rediscovering Rocky Horror now with Vickie and Duncan and Marty, MST3K as a thing rose up again in my life. Dennis, the funniest man I’ve ever known, decided to start organizing MST3K afternoons. Now, I’ve never really been a gamer, but I did Dungeons & Dragons in high school and I know how the experience is. This was like that, only in my specific area of nerddom. We’d head over our friend Emmy’s house or Dennis’s house and we’d order pizza and drink soda and eat chips, and lose our minds watching MST3K. Lose. Our. Minds.

When I found out my tattoo guy, Kelly, was coming back into town for a few weeks, I booked an appointment with him immediately. I contacted him on Facebook.

“What are you thinking of getting?” he asked.

“I was thinking Tom Servo,” I wrote.

“Are you fucking serious?” Kelly’s a badass who rides motorcycles and listens to psychobilly and tattoos people for a living … and is also a giant goddamn nerd. His huge chest tattoo in progress is the cover of an X-Men comic. He was ecstatic with the idea of doing a Tom Servo on me, and came back with a drawing almost immediately. I loved it, and though I had a brief lapse where I thought I might want a Hitchhiker’s Guide tattoo more, I stuck with Servo. It was the right choice.

Kelly placed the drawing on my bicep and I approved it. I said, “This is going to hurt a lot, isn’t it?”

“Well, only near the elbow and on the side of your arm. Not the guns themselves.”

“Oh. Well that sounds just swell, then!” It wasn’t.

Shawn arrived at Chameleon just as Kelly was setting up his table. His official job was to take pictures of the process. His real job was to let me crush his fingers later, when the needles jabbed into the tender flesh near my inner elbow and I was willing to punch kittens to make it stop.

I got my most recent tattoo done by John, also at Chameleon. His technique is light and long. Kelly goes at it had, but he gets the job done a lot faster. Both valid, both great artists, but you learn how to fool yourself about the pain. My Drive-By Truckers tattoo was (1) in an easier spot on my outer arm and (2) done light and long. So I’m thinking, “Oh, Kelly said it won’t really hurt, and though I know it will hurt some, this will probably be the same deal as before.” Nope.

It’s worth it, though, and here’s why: Kelly’s a goddamn genius at this stuff. Once the outline was in, Shawn – who had been skeptical of me getting Servo – was fully on board. While Kelly has a lot of selling points, dear God is he good at shading. You almost can’t believe a piece of 2-D art on a person’s skin can have depth, but Kelly crosshatched and shadowed until it did. Even before the color went in, Servo’s head looked like a sphere, not a circle. In between bouts of ow, I raised my head to look at the work in progress and said aloud, “Whoa.” At one point, Kelly even impressed himself. “Yeah, whoa.”

Then there’s the collateral awesome. Kelly said, “Since the last time I’ve seen you, you’ve really bulked up.” That was kind of the best compliment ever. (BUCK PLANKCHEST! FLINT IRONSTAG!) Then there were the moments of tattoo euphoria, where there’s pain, sure, but somehow it feels awesome, and you ride that until that more jagged, red, blinding pain rises up again. And the not-inconsiderable fact that Kelly? Is crazy hot.

You know how in the 80s, a stand-up coming knew he or she had done well when Johnny Carson called them over to talk after their set? Well, I know when a tattoo has exceeded Kelly’s expectations when he takes a picture of it when it’s done. He’s only done it three times now: Baloo, Steampunk Dr Pepper, and now Tom Servo. And it deserved it.

I'm the wind, baby.

Finish Line

Finish Line

I’m On Fire: 134, 443 words. DONE.

Here we come to the end.

A couple of times, I thought I wouldn’t be able to push through. I think it happens to every writer, every once in a little while, those dark nights of the soul where you know with certainty that you’re simply not good enough to live up to your ambitions. Those moments pass … but when you’re inside them, man are they debilitating.

I read somewhere recently that the mark of a good writer is someone who sits down and gets words out without being inspired. Inspiration is grand, but it’s rare. If you’re lucky, it hits about a dozen times over the course of a book. It’s those moments you live for, where the course of your novel lays itself out as if from somewhere divine. But the other days, when you’re faced with a bunch of story behind you and a bunch of white space ahead, where you have to sketch out some necessary backstory that you don’t want to do, and you have to make it interesting – those days count, too. They might count more.

Writing is work. It’s good work. It’s rewarding work. But it is work. I find it hilarious whenever anyone says to me, “I have a great idea for a book. All you have to do is write it!” That type of thing assumes (1) I don’t have great ideas, and (2) writing is just some frivolous mischief I’ll busy myself with for a couple of lazy afternoons and then boom, novel. That’s just not how it works.

Confession time: I have never liked rewrites. Ever. I’ve always been, “I just finished a novel? Time to jump right into another one!” And that’s fun. That’s how you get to say, “Oh, yeah, I wrote 17 novels in 12 years!” But you hamstring yourself. Going through a novel once and then leaving it behind does a disservice to both you and it. I wrote I’m On Fire in 1999. It was my second novel and I was still learning. Jumping back in thirteen years later opened my eyes. Words choices I made seemed juvenile. Big twists that seemed so shocking then seemed less effective now. Most characters seemed flat and my main character grew from a cipher to unlikable. Stuff needed to change. So I changed it.

The book has a new ending. It has a new character. The villains have new shades to them, and I added some new, diabolical toys for them to play with. I pulled fewer punches: bad things happen to nice people, and they happen brutally. That was sometimes hard, and I had to be sure I was on the right side of the line between valid storytelling and gratuitous violence. I think I’m okay. I hope I am.

It’s a better book. A stronger book. And doing the rewrite has made me believe I can take on some of my other efforts and make them stronger, too … and also move on and create new things. I have a novella I’ll be working on throughout the summer, as well as a new nonfiction book for my publisher. I’ve got a lot coming up, and I can’t wait to jump right in.

To everyone who helped make this happen: thank you. Art makes us forever. Here’s to eternity.

Kev

Thirty-Seven and Halfway Through

Hey guys. You might not have known (despite my MANY social media reminders) that I turn 37 today. I went to Disney World last year, during the muggiest, hottest Epcot day ever. And then I ate steak. So much steak. Oh my God, I want steak. Kobe beef. Can someone bring me some kobe beef? I...

Wait. Tangent. Anyhoodle.

Last night, I took the stage at Rosebud Karaoke. I got in even though I was there late because I know the guy. I grabbed the mic, smiled at the audience, and said, "I'm thirty-seven. Let's party." Cheers! Revelry! "THUNDER ROAD!"

I can even make the ladies swoon. It's the power of Springsteen.

SO! On New Year's Eve this year, I made a total list of things I wanted to accomplish this year. I'm ... very intrigued to see where I am with all those resolutions halfway through my year. Let's take a look, shall we?

1. GO TO DISNEYLAND - Guys, I'll be there in THREE WEEKS. Actually, the resolution was to do it FIRST (before Disney World), but One More Disney Day happened and it all went downhill. So it's modified, but I am STILL GOING. Oh my God, Disney California Adventure is calling me home.

2. GET LUCKY JEANS - Okay, not quite. See, here's the thing. Lucky jeans are expensive. They look great and are awesome, but man do they cost. However, I actually DID try a pair on this year while I was in Atlanta visiting Joe, so that HALFWAY counts.

3. OWN BOWLING SHIRTS - It's a little weird that two of my resolutions are sartorial. Also, do I want to look like Smash Mouth and Guy Fieri? Apparently. This hasn't happened yet, either, but it so will. I will be the heppest cat this side of the Mississip.

4. GET A SHAVING KIT - I became enamored with the art of shaving last year. Like the old school, brush and lather and all that jazz. I think part of me thinks this is the 1920s. A few weeks ago, Shawn got me some aftershave, so that's ... LIKE a kit, right?

5. NANO EVERY DAY - Basically an invective to write every single day. While I haven't STRICTLY adhered, I have written two chapbooks, a score of articles, a bunch of blogs, and I'm nearly finished with the editing of I'm On Fire (which was actually a full-on rewrite). So yes, I've been accomplishing this quite well, thank you.

6. SEE COMEDY ELSEWHERE - I've been to the Comedy Studio twice to support my standup friends, and went to ImprovAsylum once because my favorite all-lady comedy troupe Bearcats were playing there. DONE!

7. TRAVEL SOMEPLACE THAT ISN'T DISNEY - I've been to New York and New Jersey a few times (for concerts, and Coney Island, and Rocky Horror in Chelsea, and buddies galore), but the real coup this year was flying to Atlanta to hang with Joe, get a 2 hour massage, and see Drive-By Truckers in concert. (And I'm doing it again next month, WAHOO!)

8. PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARD - Anyone have $2,000 I can just have?

9. WRITE FOR ARCHIE COMICS - The only amendment to my list, and something I really want to try to do. Still working to make it happen!

Stuff I didn't resolve to do but did: became a producer, director, and sometimes actor of comedy at ImprovBoston: roles I sort of stumbled upon and found out I LOVED. Conceived of a terrifying novella I will be writing this year. Published two collections - a short story one and a poetry one - through a real publisher (Cemetery Dance). Got an iPad. Placed a short story in a MAJOR fiction anthology. Became part of the Rosebud Karaoke movement. Got ... kinda huge, arm and chest-wise. And stayed overnight at the Magic Kingdom.

It's been a great year so far. Let's make the back half of this piece sing!

The Movie Never Ends

I was fifteen years old when I first saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I watched it with my uncle and his then-girlfriend on my old floor-model TV that took up an unknowable amount of space in my teen-age bedroom. Freddy had seen the film dozens of times, but me and Harriet were noobs … or, in Rocky parlance, virgins.

The film bothered me in a lot of ways I didn’t sort out until much later. This was 1991, remember, and I was struggling with my identity as a wee gay. The cross-dressing and bodybuilders and all that did nothing to convince me that gay was the way to go for me, because I knew in my heart that I wasn’t interested in those things. But midway through the film, Meat Loaf shows up on a motorcycle and a leather jacket and boy howdy did things light up there. Seeing him, and subconsciously understanding the implication that he and Dr. Frank N. Furter had had some sort of affair, fired something in my belly. Wait. Fat guys can be gay? This changes everything.

I probably can’t give Rocky sole credit for me having the courage to come out, but it deserves at least some of it. Still, the movie itself – beyond Meat Loaf’s all-to-brief appearance – rankled me. Then this kid, a friend of my downstairs neighbor, had it on video and insisted I see it again. I did … and something changed.

I’ve never been quite able to figure out what that change was. Maybe it wasn’t the particulars of the gayness, but the fact that it existed at all, in your face and loud as life. I came out at sixteen and while I was never an activist, I went to marches and was a peer leader and one time showed Rocky in my Gay Youth afterschool program. This kid Justin dressed up in fishnets, something I’d never had the balls to do.

Speaking of fishnets: my high school crush was into that part of it. His name was Mike and let me paint you a picture. He was seventeen, a year older than me, and could grow a beard. He was hairy and tall and a bit chubby and I was in love with him. I don’t mean like I admired him or I looked up to him – I mean those things, sure, but I was head over heels in love with him. He was the first man I ever loved, even though we were both boys at the time, and 1992 seems so antique now. He was into Rocky big time, and even after he found out I was in love with him, we talked about going into the Big City and seeing the show in the theater. I was wild to throw rice and toast and see Meat Loaf on the big screen. He was wild to put on fishnets and a bustier and girl it up a little bit. I encouraged this behavior, because I thought cross-dressing was akin to bisexuality, and that if he indulged his predilection for lady clothes, he might actually fall back in love with me. Of course that never happened, because first crushes never work out. We had sex, though, and even though it was a tiny bit disastrous, it’s still one of those memories I’ll always carry with me. I had the soundtrack to Rocky by that point, and during the floor show, Frank sings about, “erotic nightmares beyond any measure / and sensual daydreams to treasure forever.” Those lines helped me so much then and they still do: it’s a sex-healthy and a kink-healthy message; you let yourself be yourself and the rest just falls into place.

I never saw the show in the theater until I started seeing Shawn, now my de facto husband. I can’t actually quite remember my first time, but I know it was with my friend Tracey, who was just as scared as I was. Everyone was dressed up as the characters. I was not. I was scrawny and nervous and wearing used clothes I got from Savers, the Thrift Department Store. I knew to call out stuff, but all my information came from a series of comics that came out when I was still in high school; the callback lines were printed in the back. Bad: they had been sanitized for comic-reading kids during the last days of the Comics Code. Worse: there were three issues, and I’d somehow missed the last one. So while I was fairly confident in knowing the lines for the first two-thirds of the film, the end of it remained a mystery to me. But I’d get it eventually. That stuff comes in time. (In this movie, even time comes!)

I started going regularly in 2000, when Shawn still lived in Davis Square and I lived in Quincy and Tracey lived in Brookline. Shawn came once or twice, but it was a real Tracey and me thing. We’d meet up at Shawn’s and put our gear on (our gear at that point consisted of Tracey wearing angel wings and fishnets and right shirts, and me wearing devil horns and my Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts shirt, and putting my hair up like Xander from Buffy; I never said I was cool or subversive), then head out to the show in Harvard Square. After the show, we’d come back to Shawn’s – I’d get in his bed, Tracey would get the guest room – and in the morning, I’d walk Tracey to the train so she could get to work at 10. (One night, she’d forgotten her normal clothes, so when I walked her to the train, it looked like the tattered remnants of a particularly slutty one-night-stand. As she got in the train, I smiled and said, “Well it’s not mine, but I’ll pay for the scrape.” Her mouth dropped open. The doors slid shut. It was a good morning.)

We kept telling ourselves we’d do it every other week, to save money. Eventually, we realized we were going every weekend. So we just embraced it. The people there got to know us. Other regulars started to hang in our section. Because I’m a nerd, I spent way too much of my free time coming up with callback lines. The greatest thing that could happen to a Rocky regular is when one of the callback lines you make up continues when you’re gone. I brought in this silly “Skeletor! Skeletor!” line when Rocky’s in the tank; after being gone for a while, I came back and found out they were still doing it. It’s maybe dumb, but it made me so giddy. I contributed to this. It’s not high art, probably, but it’s art, and when I add to something like this, something big and traditional with a history as old as me, I can’t help but take a little pride in it.

The cast knew us by name. All the straight guys played it up for me because they knew I was into them. All the ladies and the gay guys did it for Tracey, because she was into them. It was a nice little give and take. Tracey and I became so well known that one Halloween, we went as each other, and everyone got it. Not to get too grandiose about going to see a movie over and over, but at one point I was struck by an epiphany: I was living my 20s in exactly the right way. I was writing novels, Buffy was on TV, I was in love with a man who loved me back and I had plans with my best friend every Saturday night. Those feelings come rarely in a life. I think I’ve had them four of five times over the course of my existence. I’m doing just what I’m supposed to, and I’m having a blast doing it.

I saw Rocky in Texas with a group of bear friends. My buddy Joe introduced me to an outtake song I’d never heard of. And when it came out on DVD, I bought it and watched all the special features. Rocky wasn’t the whole of my life, but it was major.

Things, of course, fall apart. Tracey drifted away from the movie before I did. I liked going alone, but I didn’t like it enough to keep going alone. So I drifted away, too. Wrote books. Found theater. You find ways to keep yourself afloat in the wake of good stuff ending. Some people accuse me of chasing the dragon, of trying to continually replicate the original best experiences by doing the same thing over and over. But that’s not true. There is no try. I revel in repeat experiences because there’s safety in recurrent joy, yeah, but because there’s also nuance and change and history and tradition and friends. It’s that way with improv and karaoke and Disney and Springsteen concerts and King novels and everything I do, every thing I love. You form a structure for your life and you live inside it, because it’s comforting and warm, but it’s never exactly the same. It’s always just different enough to keep me coming back.

I was heartbroken when I found out the Harvard Square theater was closing. It's moving to Boston Common in August (yay!), but Rocky had been In Harvard for twenty-eight years – most of my existence. I’d come back recently with my buddy Marty, which reignited my love of the show (since, I’d been to the show in Chelsea in NYC twice with Marty and/or my buddy Duncan, who has a poster of the show up in his house). Last week, the penultimate week, I came back with my friend Vickie and everyone knew my name. Vickie had only been to the show once and she had a great time; she indulged me in my callbacks and did the Time Warp and threw rice with the rest of us. I had a legitimate panic that she wouldn’t want to come this week for the final Harvard Square show, but she showed up in her fetching black dress with her hair pulled back. I came in my I HEART CHUBBY BEARDED DUDES T-shirt and my yellow bunny ears and my pink Chucks, for that is apparently how I roll.

At the start of the night, they usually do a Virgin Ceremony, where they find a bunch of folks in the audience who have never been to the show and have them do something degrading, and then pop their cherry onstage (it’s a red balloon, like in Lucky Charms). Last night, they changed things up and asked people who had been over 350 times to come up onstage. Folks, I have wanted to be on that stage for years, and now there I was, up in those lights looking back at that giant, rowdy audience of hundreds. I used to have this insane fantasy that the guy playing Brad got sick and his understudy wasn’t available, and they had to scour the audience for someone who knew the role well enough. I did.

Only then did they ask for actual virgins, and then we, as lifers, got to pick our own. I of course went for a chubby, bearded guy in the front. Because hot damn was he foxy. Our mission, we learned, was to switch clothes on stage. Now, I’d seen this guy in line and thought idly about getting into his pants, but this was a dream come true. His shirt was huge on me, and he managed somehow to squeeze into my I HEART CHUBBY BEARDED DUDES shirt. Erotic nightmares. Sensual daydreams. Night. MADE. We lost … but did we? Did we indeed?

The whole show was a little bittersweet, but I wasn’t at all rusty this week (even though I forgot some stuff). I got the bun dance line down. A guy near me and I were trading lines off. A lesbian couple in front of me found most of my lines hilarious. After the show, they turned the house lights on, and all 300 of us freaks and weirdos and outcasts in the theater stood up. And they blasted “Don’t Stop Believin’” over the loudspeakers. All 300 of us sang along and cheered in unison. If I ever needed another moment for an epiphany, there it is.

Things change. The center doesn’t hold. Friends drift away and people are never the same way that they were when you knew them best. But it’s like Bob Seger says: rock and roll never forgets. Rocky changed me, saved me, made me feel like being myself was okay. Whenever I want it again, it’ll be right there, waiting for me. The movie never ends. It goes on and on and on.