The truth is, maybe coming from way deep in his centuries-old Native American Navajo spiritual view of the world, there’s simply nothing false or even remotely dishonest about my Ganymede. This occasionally makes me pull back from him and put my acquired world-weary guard back up—and in doing so, expose how unworthy I sometimes feel to be loved as totally and fiercely as he loves me.

Our love just plain scares the heck outta me sometimes. There are a heap of scars and bruises I don’t always do a great job camouflaging when I try to trust what people say. It was difficult enough eleven-and-a-half years ago to have a brilliant, incredibly talented, dropdead gorgeous 23-year-old confess his love for a rather diminished 65-year-old, especially because, as any teacher knows, there's always run the risk of having a student become youthfully enamored of their Prof.

Today, at ages 35 and 77, I sometimes find it hard to consider myself worthy of this great gift from the universe—and sometimes I wonder, more and more actually as I continue to diminish, if I’m being unfair to him when he will one day not so far away have a life to live without me.

So, once in awhile when I feel my idyllic bubble pop and those familiar yammy-yammies start to descend on me, my Gany just laughs at me, kisses me sweetly on the lips, and asks what we're gonna have for dinner, going about his day trusting in what a magical world we’ve made for one another. 

Seventeen years ago, I resigned from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle due to controversy centering around whether I should be a member since I’m also an actor and a two-time LADCC Award winner myself, once from before I was originally a member for Leading Performance as Kenneth Halliwell in the west coast debut of Lanie Robertson’s Nasty Little Secrets and the other during my “hiatus” as part of the ensemble cast of Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird at the Boston Court Performing Arts Center.

Last month, I was contacted by the Circle and asked back into the fold for 2024 by a unanimous vote from its current membership, something I found quite gratifying ‘cuzz I haven’t always been given that much support for what I do. 

Since I’ve aged out of my much-missed acting career as the only 928-year-old juvenile actor around with an ass the size of Texas, I guess I’m no longer as much of a threat to the integrity of the organization and frankly, from what I can glean, thanks to online transmission now utilized as the major source of communication, member involvement has been streamlined considerably since I left the group in 2007. And so, I am quite honored to say I am now a proud returning member of the LADCC. Huzzah!

16 OCT 22:  Age is irrelevant. Ask me how many sunsets I’ve enjoyed, characters I've birthed, art I’ve created, wizards I’ve befriended, laughs I’ve shared, crises I’ve averted, crises I’ve survived, lovelies I've fucked, animals (and others) I've saved, cancers I’ve beaten, cities I’ve conquered, trips I’ve taken, opening nights I’ve attended, careers I’ve launched, students I’ve inspired, stories I’ve read, stories I’ve written, and especially: how I've loved the people I’ve loved. That’s how old I am. 

I read a fond remembrance about Herb Caen, the legendary, incredibly powerful and influential San Francisco newspaper columnist, which brought this experience back to me for the first time in years.

In the early 1970s I was in the midst of my long tenure as Talent Coordinator for the Troubadour in Los Angeles, living a tale of two cities as I doubled also booking our brief and struggling Troubadour North in San Francisco.

When the SF club finally sputtered out, it became The Boarding House and I stayed on there so Victor and I could keep living in our beloved City by the Bay—and take a well-needed break from dealing with the notorious Doug Weston.

Bette Midler was still a total unknown then but I had been comped to come east to see her manic club debut among the towel-clad fans at New York’s Continental Baths. 

I soon after spent over a year pushing hard to get Doug to let me book her and also to help arrange for her to make her very first appearance on the west coast. When her first album was released in 1972 and with my help contacting other clubs across the country to make touring viable for her, it finally happened.

Bette immediately made a huge splash at the Troub in LA (as did the album), so by the time she was about to play the Boarding House the following week, we sold out even before she opened.

A few days into the SF run, I was working inside the club near the box office and could see from there a car pull up in front and, while her driver kept the motor running, a stern-faced brunhilda in a huge mink coat ran out of it and barreled to the window to loudly demand of the cashier there, “Quick! I need six tickets to the first show tonight and tell David Allen we need front row center!”

Our box office manager Nina Corea politely said, “Oh, I’m sorry, but I hate to tell you that our entire week is sold out. Maybe if you know him, you could call Mr Allen (the owner) and see if he can set something up for your party.”

The woman went totally ballistic. She screamed and yelled and finally said, “Do you know who I am, my girl? I’m Mrs Herb Caen!”

Nina politely said, “Oh, I wish I could help but you’ll still have to check with Mr Allen, I’m afraid.”

Mrs Caen exploded. “I’ll call him, all right! And I’ll have your job for this! What is your name, my girl?”

Nina quietly, voice shaking and tears beginning to flow, told her her name. “What?"  the battle-ax screamed back through the window. Taking out a little pad and pen, she demanded, "How do you spell that, my girl?”

As Nina started to spell “N-I-N-A” through her tears, I slipped out of the office, walked out to the front of the club, and sidled up right next to the screaming woman.

I said with great concern, “Mrs Caen, I have heard this whole exchange and I think when you talk to David you should also tell him I spoke to you. I am Travis Holder, the Talent Coordinator of the club, and I...”

I stopped to gesture to her pad where she’d written NINA and was still holding the pen poised to continue. “That’s Travis,” I said. “Please write that down too. That’s T-R-A-V-I-S.”

I waited until she got it and wrote my name down, letter by letter. “So when you call David about this, I would like you to also tell him Travis talked to you—and wanted him to know I thought you acted like a real cunt.”

As her mouth dropped open, I got right up extra-close to her horrified face and added, “That’s C-U-N-T.”

*  *  *

EPILOGUE: The next day I was asked to come in to my boss’ office and I fully expected to get fired. David Allen looked at me sternly and asked me if I knew who I’d dissed so harshly the day before.

I told him I did and said, “You want me to clear out my desk and disappear, right?” but instead he laughed his heartiest laugh. “No, Travis, I want to take you to lunch. I’ve been wanting to call her that for years.”

30 MAR 22:  News Flash! After 600-plus  years, William Shakespeare has started work on a new play!

In what feels like the fourth or fifth act of the lengthy epic, The Fool lifts the sagging spirits of the bored members of the royal court with the adjuration, “If self-congratulation be the food of love, play on!”

He proceeds to deliver a prophetic comedic monologue to the audience in which with reckless abandon he shockingly evokes the name “Macbeth” in the theatre. (Google it)

Suddenly, some consequence yet hanging in the stars bitterly began its fearful date. A mere 53 seconds after the woefully unwise proclamation (true this), like a fountain with a hundred spouts did run pure blood, a contentious and oddly influential man with the same initials and first name as the Bard—who has recently though not with the remotest sincerity assumed the persona of King Richard—dramatically storms the stage and slaps The Fool.

“Keep my Queen’s name out of thy fukken mouth!” he roars—twice.

“Wow!” the shocked Fool cries out into the silent darkness. “O, wretched state! O, bosom black as death!”

In the final act, the perpetrator, who is surprisingly still heralded by the inexplicably cheering crowds gathered after the offense (surely because they feared his great entitlement in the kingdom) is comforted at a grand royal banquet by a colleague actually known for playing Macbeth and who should have been the one honored for his transformation, not the far less noble King Richard imitator. “Are thou not, fatal vision,” he asks the false monarch, “sensible to feeling as to sight?”

In vain, the Richard pretender tries to explain his bizarre fury: “To slay beasts most foul! ‘Twas this I was made [and] is my calling, not just to get paid!”

Yet take ye heed, poor Fool! Beware the dreaded dagger! Me fears ‘tis evil shiny-domed Queen (or is it Lady Macbeth in disguise?) who is the powerful schemer flashing her evil eye at the laughing King Richard to persuade him to do her dastardly bidding!

O, dainty duck! O, dear!

Beware the wrath of the self-proclaimed mighty! 

21 JAN 2021:  Hugh sorta outed us in an essay he wrote last September (2020) for his Facebook page, mentioning we were an “item” before the summer of 2013—meaning, of course, a few months before he got his degree from New York Film Academy where we met in my class. I have always publicly maintained our student-professor romance didn’t start to develop until the following summer after he had graduated since I obviously didn’t want to herald its existence while I was still teaching there. So now that the proverbial cat is out of the proverbial bag, I felt maybe an explanation—or is it a confession?—was in order.

Hugh came into my class in September of 2012, the fall semester immediately after he transferred west to LaLaLand from our New York City campus to complete his final year. He was 23, certainly handsome, and obviously a gifted student, but romance was hardly on my mind. See, I grew up the son of a cowboy and that image, something Hugh carried like a badge of honor, was about the last thing to which I gravitated. Anything that reminded me of my father I basically avoided like the plague.

Besides, although my then-43 year relationship with Victor hadn’t been lived as lovers in over 30 years at that time, a new love interest, even a fleeting one, was something I was totally sure and content that at age 65 was no longer in my future. Even the idea of physical intimacy was something that for me had morphed over the years of regret and disappointment into something I found kinda creepy, not to mention that the last thing I wanted at that point to share with anybody was a vision of me in my rather corpulent all together.

I connected immediately with Hugh and admired his talent as an actor and as a critical thinker, but it wasn’t until, at about the halfway point of our semester together, that something happened which turned my thoughts around. I had assigned his class to write and perform their own monologue, which we would then film on location on the Wisteria Lane set at Universal Studios.

Hugh’s creation knocked my socks off, not only because it was brilliantly written and performed by him but because it was a tearful, heartfelt monologue spoken by a young professional in the 1950s or 60s telling his male lover he had to break it off with him because of what he saw as an obligation to appease his narrow-minded religious family.

I was gobsmacked but still, my thoughts did not in any way drift to the romantic. After all, not only was I his mentor, he was 23 and gorgeous and I was at 42 years his senior and hardly a young sprout ready to be picked off the vine. What I did realize, however, knowing a bit by then about Hugh’s upbringing and family situation raised on horseback on a farm on a Navajo reservation in rural New Mexico, that his subject matter for the monologue was not an easy one for him to attempt.

It was a fluke Hugh ended up studying for a degree in Acting for Film after achieving his first degree in Outdoor Education, which was paid for totally on his own despite his father’s disdain and refusal to pay for his kids’ higher education. While he was going to college and working 60 hours a week on his dad’s oil rigs to pay for it, he was discovered by an Albuquerque modeling agent and launched into a career that lead him to an audition and then a scholarship to study at NYFA in Manhattan.

I could see he was in pain and, on a break later that day from filming of his class’ midterms, we talked a bit about his choice of subject. He assured me he was not gay, something that for me was not as successfully executed as his other performances. Although I never made a point of declaring my lifestyle to my students, I also never hid it if the subject came up in class, so Hugh was already aware of who I was and what I believed.

So when he admitted some confusion about the brave new world unfolding around him, I respectfully told him I had a good ear and, sensing his aloneness, I would be happy to be there to discuss anything he needed to talk about along his journey discovering his place in the world. Again, a “quickie”—or even a “longie”—was not on my mind; I genuinely wanted to be there to help filter the confusion and potential pain he would be experiencing as he opened up to this new world so foreign from Farmington, New Mexico.

As a theatre reviewer, I am always given a pair of tickets to shows and events and always made a habit to invite my students to go with me if my usual group of like-minded friends could not attend. This was frowned upon at NYFA, so I was careful to choose my “plus ones” to avoid trouble with the administration, only including students who loved and had a passion for live theatre (sometimes rare at a film school, sadly) and that distinction surely included Hugh. I would meet students I invited at the theatre to not further fuel any suspicions about my intentions and usually invited males to join me so no Harvey Weinsteining would be suspected knowing the climate in which we all live these days—ironic though that surely was.

Hugh was an exception since, although he had a car, he was a little overwhelmed by LA and would come to my place first and we’d drive together to whatever theatre was hosting me. One of the first of several nights enjoying a play and amazed at the insight and intelligence and passion with which he dissected a performance, on the way home with him driving both of us this time, he again cavalierly blurted out he was not gay but this time added, “But I admit I am a little curious.”

Again, I did not see this as an opening for a session of forbidden lovemaking between a hot young cowpoke and a proverbial dirty old man, but began instead to warn him about not rushing into something like that with just anyone but to wait until he could relieve his curiosity with someone he loved or at least respected or admired. I had a mental picture of him walking into a gay bar (a place, I admit, I myself had not entered over 30 years and still to this day) and getting swallowed up by some slick shark who would disillusion all the genuine feelings and tender simplicity Hugh deserved to find.

On that night or maybe the next time we went to the theatre, his loneliness and confusion broke my heart and just before I got out of the car, I told him not to rush into anything and to know I would always be there to help him understand himself and see the world a bit more clearly if he needed me to be. He threw his arms around me in the front seat, a sweet, simple gesture, but the bolt of pure electricity that suddenly ran through my body scared the hell out of me. I instinctively kissed him lightly and affectionately on the side of his neck and said goodbye.

When I got into my house, I was truly almost dizzy, sitting staring forward wondering what I was feeling and telling myself what an old fool I was. Within 15 minutes of so, Hugh had gotten back to his place and texted me, saying that hug and my chaste peck on the neck marked the first time anyone had touched him or shown him affection like that for over two years.

I sorta avoided him for awhile, beginning to feel I was starting to overstep the traditional student-teacher relationship in the worst kind of way. I made sure he had some fellow students with whom to spend Thanksgiving and was planning a trip home for the holidays, but during our semester break, I did something I’d never before done with a one of my students: I emailed him a link to my unpublished novel Waiting for Walk,  a thinly-veiled personal memoir about growing up as a kid actor and discovering my own sexuality.

He soon after sent me this email, something to which I did not feel comfortable responding to right away for fear of how happy his reaction made me:

Hey Travis,

I finished reading your book... It was one of the most heart-rending pieces of work I have ever read. It was smart, funny, and captured an essence that was relevant to myself on an incredibly personal level. I was dumbfounded at the development between Morgan and Chris; my god. I fell in love with (but also grew so exasperated with) the evolution of Morgan and Sean's relationship, the invisible barriers that presented themselves through Morgan were so heartbreaking.

Your honesty was so impressive. I would be proud of myself if I were brave enough to be as open with my life as you have. This book surfaced many issues in my own life, and I want to thank you for sharing it (your life) with me. I would really like to read your book about your years in the music industry.

After reading your book I really would like you to look at a screenplay that I have been kicking around for some time. I wrote it before I read your book, but... The subtext/story that I am trying to capture in this project is precious to me, I want to do it justice, and I know your feedback would help me a bunch. It is nowhere near the quality of your work, but I humbly ask that you skim through it. I’ve attached it to this email if you get the chance. Please note that it is not complete yet, but I would like your opinion before I finish it.

I would very much like to get together sometime soon and discuss your book. It really had an impression on me. I honestly mean that. Maybe you could let me buy you a cup of coffee at Aroma or someplace you'd prefer.

His screenplay was about a young rural Native American boy trying to come to grips with his sexuality. I gave him some sketchy thoughts but told him we’d talk more after our last class, pushing him away a tad when school resumed after our holiday break, knowing Hugh would no longer be my student during his final semester before picking up his degree late that May. Then against my better judgment, I invited him to go with me another play and he eagerly accepted.

As we sat out on the patio in front of the Odyssey Theatre in West LA on January 21, 2013, I was mesmerized by Hugh's beautiful, deep, amazingly wise eyes as he went on and on about how brilliant my book was and how he wished he could be brave enough to write such a thing. Then, I guess because I was ignoring his innuendos, he told me he had fallen in love with me.

I almost fell off my chair, but kept my composure and started talking a mile-a-minute about how it was just an infatuation because I was not only his teacher but the first person who reached out to him, and that one day soon he would meet someone his own age, etc., etc. I could see his very expressive young face drop, especially after, I’m sure, it had taken him a lot to say what he did.

The rest, I guess, is history. After many jokes about myself and quite feeble protestations, our epic romance was suddenly on and it was truly a whirlwind. After two months of things happening I thought I would never experience again in my lifetime—and rethinking my ideas about intimacy being creepy after remembering what it felt like to be intimate with someone you love—my constant comments to Hugh about what would happen when he really found someone his own age to love prompted him to blurt out to me after one glorious night, “I don't think you really believe how much I love you.” I twirled my jokeshop Groucho Marx moustache and immediately quipped, “No, I do, I do... I just think you have lousy taste.”

That was it. He said he had to get out of this, that I was making him feel his feelings for me were somehow wrong. As my heart sank, we bravely vowed to stay friends but to move on from being lovers. That lasted about two weeks, culminating with his flow of tears over a California omelette late one night after a play. We gave up trying to stay apart—and I did my best to bite my tongue whenever a bout of self-deprecating humor overtook me, a defense mechanism I’d developed to perfection over my long lifetime.

Funny. I thought I was being so cool when I attended Hugh’s graduation ceremony that May, shaking hands with the grad, meeting his entire family, and even being photographed next to him with his mortarboard perched on top of his cowboy hat. So cool, so professional I thought I was. Last year when his mother was staying with us in New Orleans during my gallery opening, Becky admitted to me she knew right away that day I was not just Hugh’s favorite teacher. She knew. Mothers know, they say, or maybe Hugh and I are not as good actors as I thought we were.

Hugh and I have been together now for nine years as of January 21, 2022 and, although I haven’t been terribly successful at abandoning my cruel self-inflicted humor, he has become a master at merely shaking his head, rolling his eyes, and cuddling himself into my arms. Together, we care for Victor as he descends into Alzheimer’s and we’ve spent our quarantine time realizing our love is stronger and stronger and more amazing every day.

My only regret, of course, are those 42 years between us, always knowing the time we have together to experience this special love is limited for us. After 51 years of living with Victor, he’s been more family to me than my own family has ever been and I’d be willing to give up my life for him in a heartbeat but still, I would never have known a real true romantic love in my lifetime if had it had not been for Hugh and these magical eight years we’ve shared. Oddly, that somehow seems like enough.

Then again, he does still owe me that damn cup of coffee at Aroma so I ain’t’a gonna croak just yet.

 MY TEXT: 3 FEB 2013:

“Geebus, I don't know what's happening—but I sure am enjoying myself, even if I have no idea how I'm letting my addled brain get me into this.”

Victor, 1972,  Buena Vista Park, San Francisco; photo by Travis Michael Holder 

1 NOV 22:  Geebus. It was 53 years ago today when Victor arrived at my house on Graciosa Drive with two tabs of Purple Haze and “Eli and the Thirteen Confession” under his arm.

He never left.

We had been introduced several months before by Liza Minnelli at an after-party in Vegas after one of their shows at the Riviera. She and I were sitting in a corner catching up and Victor walked by through the crowd. I’d seen him earlier onstage and thought he was very exotically handsome, but not a thought of romance went through my head. As he passed, Liza yelled for him to come over. As he stood directly in front of us, she said, “Travis, this is my dancer Victor. He’s been dying to meet you! He has a huuuuge crush on you!”

I thought Victor was going to crawl into the floor he was so embarrassed. Still, I had recently separated from my ex-wife Debbie and I remember thinking, after the end of my mess of a marriage only a few months earlier, getting involved with a guy would mean I could have a free and fun whirlwind love affair without having to make a lifelong commitment. Again, that was 1969. Au contraire, eh?

Victor and I made plans that night to go out dancing when we both got back to LA. I was quite excited—and he stood me up. I thought: “Never mind… maybe this is for the best. Being single again (I was all of 22) and free of commitment isn’t that bad.” I didn’t respond to his calls for weeks and completely wrote him off.

A couple of months later, we ran into each other and he invited me to a big overnight Halloween party on a yacht sailing out from San Pedro. I was kinda still intrigued and agreed to meet him there but the people I was going with, my neighbor Kathy and her on-again-off-again boyfriend Sly Stone (!), had a big stoner fight as I was waiting for them to get into costume. We missed the party, so this time I stood him up, albeit accidentally.

The next day he called to tell me how disappointed he was, especially since he’d dressed as Valentino as the Sheik just to dazzle me. I invited him over to my new Beachwood Canyon house that night, November 1, 1969. He arrived with those two tabs of acid, introduced me to the music of our soon-to-be bestie Laura Nyro, and our first psychedelic kiss was like the entire universe popping like bubbles inside my head. He literally never left. We’ve lived together ever since that night.

Although our crazy Gatsby-like romance was totally hot and amazing and groundbreaking during our first decade-plus careening through four cities (LA, NYC, San Francisco, and then hiding out in Lake Arrowhead) and saw us world traveling (him dancing, me acting and then babysitting legendary rockers), the romantic element burned out about 12 years into our relationship, mainly due to his former problems with those two “ols”: Seconol and alcohol.

Still, our family status remained, especially when later raising a then-difficult teenager together, and today we have been legally married for the last six years—although that legal status was not entered into as a solidification of our once-heady romance but mainly so I can be there to make decisions as he descends into Alzheimers at a slow and painful pace and/or so he is covered if the Big C finally succeeds in taking me away.

It hasn’t always been easy by any stretch of the imagination and I can’t thank the fates enough for cushioning my long and bumpy ride by bringing me Hugh, whose true and unbridled love has made the tough times many times more tolerable and has shown me over the past 10 years that a true and perfect love can overshadow any trial and tribulation.

So oddly, today is kinda a happy though bittersweet 53rd anniversary as I have Victor, someone I still love and would protect with my life, here at home to care for rather than him being locked away in some “facility” and I have Hugh, the love of my life, beside me to help me care for Victor as he so flawlessly cares for me. As Victor slowly continues to disappear before our eyes (several doctors reluctantly admitting our massive and continuous use of the Demon Weed is probably why he’s still with us here at home), caring for someone for me has taken on a whole new—and occasionally nightmarish— meaning.

Although the patient and understanding Hugh is my love and my heart, Victor is still my responsibility and always will be. Why, many people ask? Well, simply because, although he’s often a frustrating and heartbreaking person to deal with these days, I don’t easily give up on people I love—no, make that not at all. So today I’ll say, “Happy Anniversary, Victor,” but the likelihood of him remembering exactly what that means is anybody’s guess.

Still, could be worse, my life. Lots worse. And I couldn’t be more grateful.

SEPTEMBER, 2020:  After avoiding watching much network television my entire life, during my time stuck here in captivity for six months my entertainment options have devolved a tad. Vegging out in front of the tube far too much these days, I keep seeing endless TV commercials—not to mention print ads and mailings from AARP—promoting senior care facilities, retirement communities, and insurance opportunities targeting old duffers like me.

These shockingly transparent ploys aimed at more ways to keep us all marching in place always feature some generic ancient-yet-hip grandma with Barbara Bush hair and a colorful flowing scarf whiling away her golden years with a paintbrush in hand contentedly capturing sailboats and sunsets. Although their equally generic though less energetic male counterparts, who always wear those overwashed canvas hats with fishing lures stuck in them, are gluing together model trains or reading shit to their adorable grandchildren, I have to admit I identify more with the old ladies—and after all, I do have my share of flowing scarves.

So here’s the thing: although I’ve been painting all my life, it’s now been three-and-a-half years since I finally listened to those far wiser around me and started to take the idea of marketing my artwork seriously. It’s been a remarkable journey and exciting throughout but especially in the last six months in isolation, as my relatively newfound obsession has proven to be a great way to get me through my quarantravis—not only as a necessary lifesaving outlet considering I can’t act, teach, coach, or write about theatre, but also because ever since this whole crazy pandemic stopped the world I’m selling a lot of stuff.

I guess being stuck at home has made people say, “Geebus, I can’t stare at that fucking blank wall anymore that I never had time to think about before.”  I am suitably gobsmacked and amazingly grateful, not only for a way to channel my creative energy (whenever I’m a little down, Hugh says, “Why don’t you go paint for awhile” and soon the clouds begin to clear) or  for the generous boost to my meager retirement fund.

See, taking into account I am about to turn 74-friggin-years-old, I confessed to my friend Penny that I wondered sometimes if I was the living embodiment of that old lady with the scarves dabbing away at her sailboats and sunsets, but she just laughed. “First of all, I’ll bet she doesn’t have a hot boyfriend young enough to be her grandson mooning over her 24/7... and then, I’ve never seen you paint a sailboat or sunset in your life. All you paint are penises, dilapidated buildings in the French Quarter, and portraits of Tennessee Williams.”

Well, that does make me feel a bit better, although I actually did paint a sunset once from a photo I took from my classroom window at New York Film Academy featuring traffic lights on Barham and Hogworts being built on the Universal Studios backlot.

Sailboats, I guess, are still to come.

Stay tuned. I’ll get there before you know it, I’ll bet, unless all those good ol' patriotic A'murkin asswipes who refuse to wear a mask don't kill me first.

I can’t tell you I grew up in a musical family but music was always there, way back then when the dinosaurs roamed. Let’s just say my family had mighty eclectic… and diverse… musical tastes.

My grandfather had been a classical violinist from his early days in Denmark but spent most of his life in America working at Lyon & Healy in Chicago, where many of his friends were or became famous classical musicians and music creators.

My father’s taste never went beyond music that made him go “Yee-Haw” or Patti Page singing about doggies in her window, but my mother was all about jazz and blues and funny cigarettes—and since my career was primarily in musical theatre as a kid, where I thought all I needed to do to get hired was be cute and loud, she and I often sang along to original Broadway showtunes and Judy Garland albums when we were together. I guess that was a bit of a prophetic clue to the future.

Still, I never really got into classical music in my formative years, mainly because my life was constantly being hurled in that other direction. But when I was 11, a young concert pianist named Van Cliburn skyrocketed to fame after he traveled to Moscow at the height of the Cold War and won the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition. He even made the cover of TIME.

Now, Cliburn didn’t look anything like Copeland or Heifetz or even Oscar Levant or Victor Borge. He was 23, had a cool rebellious shock of blond curly hair, and I guess I developed a bit of a crush on him before I had a clue what that even meant. Suddenly I had a whole new appreciation for... classical music.

I wore out Cliburn’s debut LP playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #1, with that striking cover featuring him hovering over his keyboard like a classical music comic book hero (another of my youthful passions) and so, when my grandfather mentioned one night at dinner my new hero was coming to town to make his first stateside appearance since his triumph in Moscow performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, I almost choked on my frikadeller.

One of my grandfather’s best friends was a dour old guy named Fritz I must admit I usually avoided since he would run his palm over his Brylcreem-ed hair before insisting on shaking hands. But still I knew from many past ignored invitations that through Fritz I could get tickets for just about anything. Fritz, you see, was Fritz Reiner, the Symphony’s music director and the world-renowned conductor who would be leading the orchestra for Mr. Cliburn’s appearance. Asking a favor this one time would be worth greasy hands.

He was quite shocked I actually wanted to go to the Symphony but did indeed get me tickets. I was mesmerized by Mr. Cliburn the instant he walked onstage and even more lost in space when Rachmaninoff‘s Piano Concerto #2 began to saturate the massive and austere Symphony Hall—but when that was followed by Beethoven’s glorious Piano Concerto #5, his “Emperor” Concerto, my head exploded.

Of course, since I was 11, instantaneously my obsession with Cliburn transferred to an all-new hero: that ultimate droogie  Ludwig Van—a reference you’d probably have to be my age to get. I began catching up, playing Beethoven’s music nonstop, then one day my grandfather offhandedly mentioned, “And you know, don’t you, Beethoven was deaf?”

My heart about stopped.

Here’s the thing: I was not a skinny little kid, although my self-image in retrospect was quite grotesquely magnified, judging from old photos taken back then. Still, I did have a stage career early on that was, like my backside, fairly substantial. Yet ironically I could stand in front of 2,800 people staring at me from the darkness and I knew I had a certain inexplicable power over them, though I had no idea how it worked. I only knew that they were laughing with me, not at me.

After a show, however, I needed to again walk out onto the street and within seconds I would disappear into the pavement. I was painfully shy and felt totally incapable of exerting the same influence I had on others back in my preferred version of “Real Life.” The only place I ever felt totally comfortable in my skin was on a stage, which is why the concept of stagefright was an enigma to me. I couldn’t wait to get back under the lights.

But as I struggled to grasp how Beethoven could possibly create such magic without hearing the sounds around him that naturally inspire most composers, things started to make sense to me. I began to realize something urgent in my young life about the unearthly gift each of us is given as artists: the ability to make magic happen despite our personal limitations—or what we might perceive to be our own limitations. Suddenly being stuck with my substantial adolescent ass paled in comparison.

What I learned from Beethoven at age 11 brought about an amazing revelation in my life and in my art. I began to understand how art can heal and that what I “did” could be so much more than being cute and loud. I knew if this man could so brilliantly comment on the human condition—and if that commentary could survive the whiplash of time—I too could do just about anything if it came from that special place just right of the heart, that place so wildly unique to each and every one of us.

I did actually get to meet Van Cliburn a few years later while touring in Bye Bye Birdie. One night it spread through the cast that he was in the audience and, in the green room after the show, there he was. He was surrounded by a sea of people but I realized his gaze was continuously landing right… on… me. It was like that scene when Tony and Maria first see each other across the room at “The Dance at the Gym.”

I was thrilled… and apprehensive… especially when the eager cluster of greedy well-wishers left his side to crowd around another visiting celebrity entering the room and Van Cliburn motioned me to come to him. As I floated across the room, in my mind bathed in colored lights and accompanied by Bernstein’s tango, the closer I got, the more I could smell his English Leather—it was the early ‘60s, remember.

I expected he was about to ask me if I would consider touring the world as his constant companion or at least tell me how fantastic I was in the show. Instead, he leaned forward, extremely close to my surprised face, and whispered, “Where do I pee?”

From Ludwig van Beethoven I learned how a humble man can be a great man—and from Van Cliburn I learned how a great man still occasionally needs to take a leak.

Here are a trio of true Hollywood stories I've always loved:

Late in her life, Shelley Winters was asked to audition for a project... and as if that wasn't disrespectful enough, she was told to be sure to bring along her headshot and resume.

Winters arrived toting a huge carpetbag and when asked if she'd brought her photo and resume for them, she opened her bag, took out her first Academy Award and, placing it in the table before them, said, "Here's my photo"... and doing the same with her second Oscar, said, "And here's my fucking resume." 

Asked to come in to meet with a young Jeffrey Katzenberg, four-time Academy Award-winning director Fred Zinnemann was asked by the fledgling exec, "So... can you tell me what you've done?"

Zinnemann leaned back and replied, "You first."

The lategreat actor David Dukes had bought the rights to the then-controversial novel Native Son and tried desperately to find someone in Hollywood with balls enough to make it into a movie. Finally, Paramount showed an interest and David was asked to come in to meet Paramount's colorful studio head Robert Evans to discuss the project.

As he sat silently listening, Evans started going through his volumes of notes on the story, saying he wanted to eliminate a major character, consolidate two others into one, and completely change the ending. Frustrated but trying to stay polite, David had finally had enough and interrupted the infamous egotist. "Mr. Evans," he asked with hesitation, "I don't mean to be disrespectful, but have you even read Native Son?" 

Without missing a beat, Evan replied, "Well, of course, not personally."  

Harvey Weinstein was hardly the first. My memories of inappropriate behavior and eventually even worse go back more than a half-century.

At the ripe old age of 12, a famous and vaguely-closeted coworker (more a comedian and then only on the verge of fame) came to me backstage, tore a hundred dollar bill down the middle, and gave me one of the halves. He told me if I wore the same underpants for two weeks and gave them to him, he would give me the other half. I had no idea what was going on but I did know it was wrong.

I took the half he gave me, ripped it into tiny little pieces, and threw them in his face--and a hundred buckaroos was worth a lot more than today, you know. He started yelling at me, calling me an "ungrateful little shit," etc., until the stage manager came into the dressing room to see what was going on and I told him, loudly and publicly, about this future Hollywood square's puzzling offer.

It was a big deal but... was he fired? Naw, he was a big draw for the show, after all. Instead the producers warned him to stay away from me and all the other many kids in the cast. He never spoke to me again and years later when he was a bigassed tv star, seeing me walk into a restaurant in Hollywood and later again running into me at one of the many all-boy parties at Raymond Burr's house, both times his early exit was faster than his little feeties could carry him. It made me feel very adult--and very powerful. I think that's where I developed the now-patented Travis Smirk.

The worst thing that has ever happened to me in my life happened the following year, however. At age 13, I was raped by a very charismatic, very famous man who kept telling me to relax because he knew what I wanted. He was showing me what I wanted, he whispered hoarsely to me over and over between thrusts. Right.

I have to admit I did have an idea what was happening when he started paying attention to me backstage and it was pretty dang thrilling--a handsome internationally renowned film star whose work I admired immensely was going to show me what everyone was always talking about. It quite honestly started out to be great fun, but I was 13 and a lot more naive than I let on, swimming around with the sharks in this adult fishtank at such an early age. I actually had no idea where the initial "fun" was going to lead. I mean, a very flamboyant chorusboy once teased me THAT was what THEY do but frankly, I didn't believe him.

So my teacher's mantra was for me to relax but I didn't--and I hid the continuous bleeding from my mother for several days until she found my discarded underwear I was hiding every morning at the bottom of the trash. I fell apart when it all unraveled and soon after I ended up facing a little stay in a hospital--and not a medical facility. I just couldn't go back into the show or, for that matter, even walk down the street and be able to look anyone in the eye. I was sure they could all see it: that thing he told me he could see that I wanted. I had in NO WAY wanted--or expected--such a thing but I couldn't get it out of my head that they all thought I did, they all thought they saw something in me I couldn't see myself. I was horrified. And ashamed. And humiliated. And terribly, terribly confused about the world I had thought I'd known.

The result? Yeah, I survived, mostly, except, as anyone who has ever been "with" me knows, nobody touches me THERE. Ever again. My old friend Barbara Bain told me once she believes that's why I have such a massive ass, something willed by me so no one will ever again find it attractive.

At age 14, I had the incredible honor of working with the greatest playwright of the 20th century, someone I looked up to maybe more than anyone else on the planet. Meeting him for the first time as part of a line of actors in the green room, I was bursting with excitement. As he came to me, his eyes lit up with that telltale look and, as he shook my hand (limply and a little too long), he crooned, "Weeeell, hellooooo, young man." My heart sank. Sadly at that young age, I immediately knew what was up.

During the run, he haunted me relentlessly--especially when I was putting on my makeup since I wore only a speedo thing at one point (if you can believe that, knowing today they wouldn't fit over one thigh) and he loved to show up when I was opening my jar of Texas Dirt.

Then one day, he came into the dressing room and said, "My beauty, you have inspired me." Uh-oh, I thought, but reluctantly asked what he meant. "I have gone to the drugstore of my hotel," he told me. "I have bought a child's set of watercolors and have painted a portrait of you... from my imagination." I was knocked out and said I was honored, but also remained suitably wary. Sure enough, he asked me to come to his hotel to see it. I suggested bringing it to the theatre but he said it was too big--and he really didn't want anyone else to see it.

Almost every day he mentioned the painting and how he wanted me to visit his hotel--I was 14, remember. Then one day, talking again about the painting, he said what was unique about it was he spilled coffee on it while he was working on it and then used it as a wash and it was the "perfect brown" to recreate our set behind me. I excitedly told him my mom was a watercolorist and often used coffee as a wash and I would love to have her see it. He laughed. "Honey," he said, "this isn't the kind of picture one would show your mother."

A few years ago, speaking about the incident at an annual literary festival honoring him in New Orleans, I told this story in a talkback. My future friend Erma Duricko came to me after and told me she thought she owned the painting of me. She took a photo of it and sent it to me and it was unmistakably me. It also proved his claim he had done the painting, as he told me proudly, from his imagination.

Boy, did that guy ever have a BIG imagination.

And the hits just kept comin'. I came to El Lay under contract to a major film studio in 1966 and the legendary head of casting who brought me here immediately turned me over to an infamous topdrawer agent and tucked me under the wing of a hugeassed casting director (with an award now named for him by the CSA), both of whom made plays for me that almost sent me running back to Chicago to become a plumber or something.

The casting director one day said a producer was interested in me for the lead in a little potentially important indie movie and suggested I come to his home to work on the script with him. It involved one Mrs. Robinson, it seemed--and I am purdy sure in retrospect the die (and the iconic role) had already been cast. I did go, however, not knowing that, but still fearing the worst.

After a short while and his third declined offer of wine, he told me I was too tense and wondered if I ever had a really good relaxing massage. He led me into an adjoining windowless room that smelled like a locker room. In it was a professional-looking massage table all set up with sheets all in place and a nearby stack of white towels. I declined to go in. After much attempted cajoling, he said, "You do know, don't you, your career is in my hands?" I told him to go fuck himself and WALKED back to where I was staying.

Six months later, my studio dropped me. They said it was because I was growing my hair for a stage role they didn't want me to do, something I told them was not an option they had mentioned in my contract--I had been SURE of that before I signed it. So, whichever the reason, thus ended my career as someone the trades once referred to as a "poor man's Troy Donahue"--and proved the dawning of my own personal Age of Aquarius.

Oh, and the guy who raped me at age 13? My mother did not stay quiet, but the powers-that-be did. Although he did keep working in European b-movies and later developed a career in daytime television, the word was out and he never EVER was hired to star in another Hollywood film. He died a few years ago at age 85.

Always wondered how often he thought of me. I hope often.

These are from an era before the English language was boiled down to four-letter words. Insults had class then!

1. "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play. Bring a friend… if you have one."
- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night. I will attend the second...if there is one."
- Winston Churchill, in response

2. A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows, or of some unspeakable disease."

“That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

3. "He had delusions of adequacy."
- Walter Kerr

4. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
- Clarence Darrow

5. On Ernest Hemmingway:
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
- William Faulkner

6. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it."
- Moses Hadas

7. "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
- Mark Twain

8. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
- Oscar Wilde

9. "I feel so miserable without you. It’s almost like having you here."
- Stephen Bishop

10. “He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
- John Bright

11. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
- Irvin S. Cobb

12. "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others."
- Samuel Johnson

13. "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
- Paul Keating

14. "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
- Charles, Count Talleyrand

15. "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."
- Forrest Tucker

16. "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
- Mark Twain

17. "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
- Mae West

18. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
- Oscar Wilde

19. "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination."
- Andrew Lang

20. "He has Van Gogh's ear for music."
- Billy Wilder

21. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx

22. “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Winston Churchill

23. On Katharine Hepburn:
“She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
- Dorothy Parker

24. On being reminded by a fan to “never forget the rainbow” while holding her stall door open as she was sitting on a toilet in a public restroom:
“Never fear, dear… I’ve got rainbows coming out my ass.”
- Judy Garland

25. “I saw it under bad conditions. The curtain was up.”                                                                                             - George S. Kaufman

26. As an actor, XXXXXXX XXXXX is a wonderful singer.”
- Travis Michael Holder, TicketHoldersLA.com

Hooray for Hollywood.

While helping to build a set for an upcoming presentation at a local El Lay theatre company, my boyfriend Hugh talked to a fellow volunteer who told him her day job was as a telemarketer for a theatrical ticketing service, a job she loved because she could "spend all day talking to people who love theatre."

My guess? She'd been working there less than two weeks. But, she told him, she also teaches acting, so if he "really wanted to become an actor," he should take classes from her.

Aside from the fact that Hugh is a brilliant actor, he's also a published author, poet, and playwright, and has a boyfriend who earns much of his living teaching acting and coaching spoiled superstars. And, oh yeah: Hugh also has two college degrees--the second in Acting for Film from the New York Film Academy.

Still, humble kid raised on the Rez that he is, he kept his resume to himself but asked his proposed professora politely what technique she taught.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean, do you teach Stanislavsky or Meisner or Strasberg or Uta Hagen or Stella Adler or what?"

"No, I don't teach any of THAT," she answered. "I just teach people how to act." 

 OVERHEARD AT ASTRO:

"Let's face it. That guy isn't the sharpest tack in the deck."  

A 2020 Holiday Reworking of Good Cheer

by Travis Michael Ho-Ho-Holder

Rudolph, the Red-Faced Yes-Man
Had a very lyin’ nose...
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it grows!

Even the other Repulsivecants
Used to laugh and call him names
Only Dumb Dotard Donnie
Let him join in silly recount games!

Then one foggy Inaugural Eve
Ol’ Joe Biden came to say:
“Rudy with your mouth so big
Won’t you join our Fake Prez in the brig?”

Then how the country loved it
As Trumptypuss shouted out with glee:
“Rudolph, the Dye-Dripping Yes-Man
You’ll go down in Leavenworth... on me!”

               Photo by Peter Konerko  /  Fantasy by T.M. Holder

For BETTER LEMONS, 24 APR 17:

by Travis Michael Holder

As I contemplate my current Actors Equity Association dues statement, I have decided, after sixty-something years of acting and diligently paying my toll come hell or highwater over the years both lean and abundant, tomorrow I will be requesting a leave from the once-respected union, one of which I used to declare in program bios I was proud to be a member. Today, I’m about as proud of being a member of AEA as Rihanna is to say she used to be Chris Brown’s girlfriend.

Of course, part of the reason for this is that I’m teaching acting and directing for lotsa hours at New York Film Academy, as well as privately coaching prominent actors on two different TV series on different networks this season. Above anything else, however, caring for Victor, my partner for 48 years, desperately trying with everything in me to keep him comfortable and living at home as long as possible as he descends into the fog of Alzheimer’s, has kept me from traveling to work in theatre and eventually led to giving up my beloved apartment in New York last year. Staying in my fifth-floor walk-up with a view of a brick wall or traveling in shows has always done my nomadic Kerouac-inspired soul unimaginable good, as exploring new cities and enjoying the freedom of hotel living are things I have called home since my glory days as a working kiddie. Still, all that would not be good enough reason to stop handing AEA my meager little dues were it not for what the union has done to my world.

If you live in El Lay and have any interest in the performing arts, you would have to have been in a coma the last two years not to know how Equity has royally fucked the amazingly prolific and courageously innovative intimate theatre community in our city. By demanding small struggling theatres pay any union member who agrees to hone his art for free or with infinitesimal remuneration to have a creative outlet to offset the lack of caring from the mostly artless but omnipresent Hollywood film industry, AEA has decimated the ranks outrageously—but not without a fight. Still, when over two-thirds of LA members voted in a referendum demanding the union not put their new soul-sucking rules into effect, they ignored us all and implemented the ridiculously unworkable plan anyway.

It was difficult enough last year to send off my hard-earned cash to a union that's done nothing for me in years but give me grief—and has totally disregarded the wishes of two-thirds of its LA membership. This time out, I just plain can't seem to do it. As I said, I have been a loyal dues-paying member of AEA since sometime before Johnny B shot Honest Abe, but I can’t in all good faith support their unconscionable cause any longer.

In all honesty, there’s not much to lose for me. There aren’t many roles for geriatric juveniles with an ass the size of Texas around these days unless it’s a priest or a mentally-deficient adult—and playing stereotypical fading old duffers who invariably croak at the end isn’t much of a challenge either. Granted, this is also true in the film and television industry, but it’s especially prevalent onstage, where the only real challenges as an artist for a guy at my stage of life come from bravely off-centered 99-seat theatre companies working to create astounding new art and make a real difference. I have no interest playing Doc in West Side Story  or some other role I could call in from home for some dastardly LORT-Z pay rate at a civic light opera in Duarte or somewhere in San Bernardino County. As a 70-yr-old actor living in LA these days, teaching and private coaching are a far better way to pay the bills and pass on what one has learned from the masters before passing on—unless you’re an established name actor and even then, I suspect most of them are sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.

So, after 63 years fiercely believing in AEA and everything for which the original concept unionizing stood in the first place, sadly, I’m outta here. I may not be able to control where my tax dollars go as handled—mishandled—by our insane and dangerous fully made-up manchild President Dummald J. Troutmouth and his equally character-challenged minions, but I can stop paying Equity as it screws me personally and systematically destroys the community I love so dearly. It’s a sad state of affairs but, truly, it’s also oddly freeing.

For BITTER LEMONS; Spring, 2015:

by Travis Michael Holder

A candidate in New York for Actors Equity’s national council once asked on the 7,000-member strong Pro-99 Facebook page if anyone could explain, “for those members working exclusively in 99-seat theater,” what we see as the benefit of our Equity membership. “In other words,” he asks, “what’s the most important thing the union provides to you while working in 99-seat houses?"

First of all, I don’t think I know any AEA members whose goal is to work exclusively in 99-seat shows. To the contrary, nothing would be finer than to be paid full Equity wages for a project. But simply, there is very little AEA contract work in LA. Of the handful of union houses here, most are far enough out of "town" where some of us can’t or don’t want to travel for limited wage compensation--and the bigger houses mostly cast out of Los Angeles with actors not only hired in New York but rehearsed there.

Aside from all that well-worn yet sincere stuff about keeping our instruments in tune while waiting for film and TV auditions, and of having the honor of doing work that could make a difference in our screwed-up society despite the lack of financial reward, there’s always something else looming around the stage doors of 99-seat theatre productions in LA:  the wee-tiny chance that a successful 99-seat show will make the jump to an Equity contract. If it transfers to an Equity house, that alone would be worth the dues I’ve paid over the years to keep myself currently available for potential though rare union work. And of course, most of us deluded artists are also dreamers. Who knows? I’ve only been acting for 63 years or so—maybe one day I could still be the oldest new discovery since Fayvesh Finkel.

Personally, there are a lot of factors that keep me away from more union contracts, including taking care of my partner of 46 years, whom I’m desperately trying to keep living at home for as long as he can while the degenerative ravages of Alzheimer’s make him disappear ever-so slowly before my eyes. Then there is the fact that I have found great pleasure in teaching acting the last five years at New York Film Academy's LA campus, coming to realize it’s a fine way I can pass on (before I pass on) the knowledge I have gained over the past six decades to a “new stand of cotton,” as Tennessee would say. Then selfishly and with decidedly more mercenary thinking on my part, I have also discovered, working quite regularly these days as a personal coach for the film and television community, that one gig holding the hand of a spoiled, neurotic superstar pays more in an hour than I could make in a week on a Lort B contract in some suburban enclave with a wealth of fast food eateries and a Super 8 Motel along the main highway.

Keeping this in mind, I have turned down my share of AEA contract offers and auditions since Victor’s illness reared its unfortunate head and since the beginning of my latter-day teaching career. This has honestly left me very sad I am unable to spend my usual springs in New Orleans during the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and am currently in the process of letting go of my own fiercely-held longtime apartment on 76th Street used while working in New York—a city where, by the way, I have seen nowhere near the cutting-edge and courageously bold work on small stages over the years than I see regularly in the poor, maligned reclaimed-desert wasteland known as Los Angeles. And over the past decade I have done 16 plays on the west coast, 14 as 99-seat productions and two on Equity contracts. Of the 14 intimate theatre experiences, 13 were incredible rich and rewarding and I wouldn’t have traded my time in them for anything—and the 14^th was, shall we at least say, great fun, even if I did warn friends not to come. The two AEA contract jobs were a misery to live through and honestly, both were at least partially made miserable because of the rigidity, nastiness, and dysfunctional “assistance” and decision-making of the west coast office of my own fucking union.

A few years ago, I was offered a fairly nicely-sized role in a film shooting 10 to 12 weeks in Alaska at a very impressive rate, even if the role could have been played by any similarly odd-looking automaton. At the same time, I was offered a chance to play the dying Brian in The Shadow Box in a Culver City 33-seat space for $9 a show. I turned down the film and took the play, losing a longtime agent over the decision. You see, I was then a four-time survivor of cancer (and currently at this point in time, a five-timer) and I knew what I wanted more than anything was to say the words Michael Cristofer won a Pulitzer Prize for creating. I had previously played Mark at age 28 and Joe in my mid-30s, the latter which became another controversial decision for me, as during the final gasps of rehearsals, I received my third cancer diagnosis and was told I had about a 40% chance of survival, but only if I went immediately into surgery.

Again, I chose the play. We were scheduled to run four or five weeks, so I knew, although I was taking a chance with my life, I would get more personal healing and comfort from saying Joe’s words and submerging myself in Joe’s situation rather than focusing on my own crap. Instead of a few weeks, however, we played several months. We closed on a Sunday and I went into surgery at 6:30 the following morning. The tumor was still there to be excised but, despite my doctors’ dire warnings of gloom and destruction, had not grown or spread in any way.

Art heals. I believe with all my heart art healed me then and continues to do so today. For AEA to try to destroy that outlet for me is unacceptable. I am still unwilling to give up my passion to somehow change the world, drip by torturous drip, through whatever talent I have been given. That should be my decision, not some little miserable worm sitting in a little cubicle at the Equity office. Several theatres that gave me that unique chance to heal and grow and communicate the human condition to others have been or are in grave danger of being totally wiped out as Equity barrels through with its dastardly proposal implemented despite our loud and public protests, simply because it cannot control the unstoppably passionate intimate theatre scene in Los Angeles. If I need to one day soon chose to take on a life-altering theatrical experience in LA intimate theatre over what should be the sheltering wings of the union I have held dear for most of my life, there would be no contest whatsoever. Fi-Core R Us.

An addendum: By the way, I currently have two pair of students in two separate Scene Study classes at NYFA working on scenes from The Shadow Box. The beat goes on.

A 77-year-old man is sitting alone on a park bench sobbing when a passerby walks by and asks him what's wrong. Through his tears the man answers, "I've been in an amazing relationship with a dropdead gorgeous 35-year-old cowboy poet for the last 11 years."

"What's wrong with that?" asks the curious stranger.

Between his sobs and sniffles, the man answers, "You don't understand. Every morning, we make love. At lunchtime we make love again and in the afternoon, we have sex again, the best anyone could want. And then all night long, we do nothing but make sweet love until we see the morning light."

He breaks down, no longer able to speak. The passerby puts his arm around him. "I don't understand. It sounds like you have the perfect relationship. Why are you crying?"

The old man answers through his tears, "I forgot where I live."  

R.I.P. KURT (2014 - 2017)