Sunday, February 12, 2006
It's noon, the wind is howling, snow is coming in almost horizontally, and there is both thunder and lightening. Here in the neighborhood streets we haven't seen a plow yet. In a couple of hours I have to take the Jeep and head into Boston's South End, where a declared snow emergency will have eliminated hundreds--thousands--of legal parking spaces, to assist at the final performance and strike of the opera. Can you guess how much I am NOT looking forward to this?
But how amazing is THIS? You remember my hate/hate relationship with my old Catholic high school back in Kew Gardens, Queens, NYC? How they sought me out for a page on the new alumni site, accepted it even though I declared myself openly to be a gay man, then had me down to speak to the students at a Career Day last October that turned into a healing experience? Ok, good, we've caught up.
So, I'm at the final dress/technical rehearsal for the opera on Thursday, having gotten some lighting glitches fixed, sitting quietly in an audience seat listening to the conductor iron out a few details with the chamber orchestra. S, the stage manager, a very nice guy I'd met just two days before at the first tech, sat down next to me and we began to talk. He said he was a New Yorker who had come to Boston, and was having a hard time meeting guys he'd consider for a long term relationship:
Will: I'm from New York, too, originally.
S: What part?
Will: 72nd Street and Broadway for the first five years, then Rego Park in Queens. What about you?
S: Middle Village
.
Will: Ha!--we were practically neighbors.
S: Did you go to high school in Queens?
Will: Yes.
S: I thought it was you. I recognized you from my high school's alumni site.
Will [stunned]: You CAN'T mean Archbishop Molloy?
S: Yes!
Will: Oh. My. God!
So, really, what are the odds? Two men, of different ages who had real problems fitting in at a New York City Catholic high school that had no use for the arts or for gays, meet in the middle of an opera production in Boston. S had also put a page on the site (a nice one that I've checked out) although he didn't mention being gay on it as he feels it's part of him but doesn't define him. He seemed very interested in my being so out to the school and agreed they needed to know they had gay alumni. I told him of the huge changes that have taken place there since we left at our various times. I began to mention names of "problematic" teachers, some of whom were still there during his years and he updated me: "heard he was that way but must have mellowed with age," "still an unbearable asshole," etc.
S works at Harvard, just two train stops away from me at MIT. We'll be getting together for dinner in a week or so near where I work so I can show him our design/production center and we can talk a bit. Perhaps I can even give him some pointers on ways to meet men who might be husband material here in Boston.
OK, another meme. This one's via Karl at Adventures in Gastronomy:
Name 4 movies you own that you think none of your friends own:
1. "Fire Over England" with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh--the film that led to her being cast in "Gone With The Wind"
2. "Morgan" a wonderfully subversive English film from the 60s with David Warner, Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Stevens
3. "The Hidden Fortress" by Akira Kurasawa which George Lucas credited with being a major influence on "Star Wars"
4. "Männer" (Men), a gay German film directed by Doris Dorrie
Name 4 books you own that you think none of your friends own:
1. "J.C. Leyendecker" by Michael Schau, advertising art of the 1930s by the man who created the "Arrow shirt collar man" image. It's filled with art of stunningly handsome male models, most of whom Leyendecker had sex with after they posed. Leyendecker's valet had the job of recruiting beautiful young men who would be cooperative.
2. "Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain," A Metropolitan Museum of Art book
3. "Sultan Ibrahim Mirza's Haft Awrang: A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth Century Iran" by Marianna Shreve Simpson. One of the most magnificent illuminated books ever written and illustrated.
4. "Bath and Bathing in Classical Antiquity" by Fikret Yegül. Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic bathing traditions and bath houses. Dean from aman yala just might have this one, actually.
Name 4 cds you own that you think none of your friends own:
1. "Andalusian Music from Morocco" by the Moroccan Ensemble Fez (well, maybe Dean has this one also)
2. "La Purpura de la Rosa" by Tomas de Torrejon y Velasco, the first opera written in The New World--a lively and
incredible mix of Spanish flamenco, Inca and Baroque styles, written in early colonial Peru
3. "Ludis Danielis," the 12th Century Play of Daniel from Beauvais, France, heavily and exotically influenced by music of the Turkish near east brought home by the Crusaders. Performed by the Rene Clemencic Consort.
4. "London Pride: Songs from the London Stage" sung by Twiggy, and sung very nicely indeed.
Name 4 places you've been where you think none of your friends have been:
1. The Kremlin of the Belorussian city of Pskov
2. Marimbula on the eastern coast of New South Wales, Australia,
where the bell birds sing and a restaurant overlooking the little harbor unexpectedly had a mirror portrait of Fritz's great aunt, the American soprano Lillian Nordica
3. The Hammam (Arabic Bath) in Granada, Spain
4. Inside the base of the gigantic statue of "Mother Russia" that looms over Kiev, Ukraine
But how amazing is THIS? You remember my hate/hate relationship with my old Catholic high school back in Kew Gardens, Queens, NYC? How they sought me out for a page on the new alumni site, accepted it even though I declared myself openly to be a gay man, then had me down to speak to the students at a Career Day last October that turned into a healing experience? Ok, good, we've caught up.
So, I'm at the final dress/technical rehearsal for the opera on Thursday, having gotten some lighting glitches fixed, sitting quietly in an audience seat listening to the conductor iron out a few details with the chamber orchestra. S, the stage manager, a very nice guy I'd met just two days before at the first tech, sat down next to me and we began to talk. He said he was a New Yorker who had come to Boston, and was having a hard time meeting guys he'd consider for a long term relationship:
Will: I'm from New York, too, originally.
S: What part?
Will: 72nd Street and Broadway for the first five years, then Rego Park in Queens. What about you?
S: Middle Village
.
Will: Ha!--we were practically neighbors.
S: Did you go to high school in Queens?
Will: Yes.
S: I thought it was you. I recognized you from my high school's alumni site.
Will [stunned]: You CAN'T mean Archbishop Molloy?
S: Yes!
Will: Oh. My. God!
So, really, what are the odds? Two men, of different ages who had real problems fitting in at a New York City Catholic high school that had no use for the arts or for gays, meet in the middle of an opera production in Boston. S had also put a page on the site (a nice one that I've checked out) although he didn't mention being gay on it as he feels it's part of him but doesn't define him. He seemed very interested in my being so out to the school and agreed they needed to know they had gay alumni. I told him of the huge changes that have taken place there since we left at our various times. I began to mention names of "problematic" teachers, some of whom were still there during his years and he updated me: "heard he was that way but must have mellowed with age," "still an unbearable asshole," etc.
S works at Harvard, just two train stops away from me at MIT. We'll be getting together for dinner in a week or so near where I work so I can show him our design/production center and we can talk a bit. Perhaps I can even give him some pointers on ways to meet men who might be husband material here in Boston.
OK, another meme. This one's via Karl at Adventures in Gastronomy:
Name 4 movies you own that you think none of your friends own:
1. "Fire Over England" with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh--the film that led to her being cast in "Gone With The Wind"
2. "Morgan" a wonderfully subversive English film from the 60s with David Warner, Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Stevens
3. "The Hidden Fortress" by Akira Kurasawa which George Lucas credited with being a major influence on "Star Wars"
4. "Männer" (Men), a gay German film directed by Doris Dorrie
Name 4 books you own that you think none of your friends own:
1. "J.C. Leyendecker" by Michael Schau, advertising art of the 1930s by the man who created the "Arrow shirt collar man" image. It's filled with art of stunningly handsome male models, most of whom Leyendecker had sex with after they posed. Leyendecker's valet had the job of recruiting beautiful young men who would be cooperative.2. "Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain," A Metropolitan Museum of Art book
3. "Sultan Ibrahim Mirza's Haft Awrang: A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth Century Iran" by Marianna Shreve Simpson. One of the most magnificent illuminated books ever written and illustrated.
4. "Bath and Bathing in Classical Antiquity" by Fikret Yegül. Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic bathing traditions and bath houses. Dean from aman yala just might have this one, actually.
Name 4 cds you own that you think none of your friends own:
1. "Andalusian Music from Morocco" by the Moroccan Ensemble Fez (well, maybe Dean has this one also)
2. "La Purpura de la Rosa" by Tomas de Torrejon y Velasco, the first opera written in The New World--a lively and
incredible mix of Spanish flamenco, Inca and Baroque styles, written in early colonial Peru3. "Ludis Danielis," the 12th Century Play of Daniel from Beauvais, France, heavily and exotically influenced by music of the Turkish near east brought home by the Crusaders. Performed by the Rene Clemencic Consort.
4. "London Pride: Songs from the London Stage" sung by Twiggy, and sung very nicely indeed.
Name 4 places you've been where you think none of your friends have been:
1. The Kremlin of the Belorussian city of Pskov
2. Marimbula on the eastern coast of New South Wales, Australia,
where the bell birds sing and a restaurant overlooking the little harbor unexpectedly had a mirror portrait of Fritz's great aunt, the American soprano Lillian Nordica
3. The Hammam (Arabic Bath) in Granada, Spain
4. Inside the base of the gigantic statue of "Mother Russia" that looms over Kiev, Ukraine
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HMMM - a single man, working at Harvard, interested in a LTR? Seems like he and I have a lot in common! LOL
You have my contact information, Will! LOL
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You have my contact information, Will! LOL
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