Monthly Archives: September 2003

Oh my GOD! How do I do this. This is so stressful. I don’t know what to say….. arggghh I’m hyperventilating. gulp gulp gulp gulp. Has there ever been anyone so worthless as I? Maybe it’s not too late to back out. Where is Faustus’ number? Arggghh! I can’t find it. How do I get into these things? If only all my earlier choices were different. Shit Shit Shit Shit Shit Shit. Now I can’t find my meds. MOMMY!

Well, “next week” of yesterday’s post is now “this week.” We start rehearsals on Wednesday, and our chances of having the five songs I mentioned finished by then are looking good.

However, so as not to be led astray by o’erweening ambition, I have arranged for the Search for Love in Manhattan to be hosted, starting tomorrow and running through next Tuesday, by a very special guest blogger. He’s witty, he’s wise.

He’s my therapist.

So if you’re lucky, you’ll all end up as emotionally healthy as I am.

Oh, wait.

Next week I start rehearsals for another reading of my musical about the concentration camp Terezin. Since the last reading we’ve done significant rewrites, including writing five new songs. Or at least by the time we start rehearsals on Wednesday we will have written five new songs. I hope.

But the thing is, spending all this time with the Holocaust is starting to get to me. When I have to write music for hymns to despair with names like “Hell Is Another Name For Man,” it’s difficult not to go out and buy a gun and shoot myself.

However, the knowledge that I have to have written five new songs before Wednesday is keeping me alive.

At least for the moment.

From the conversation I had with the man behind the counter at Subway when I went there to get lunch today:

MAN (wrapping the sandwich he’d just made): Will that be all?
FAUSTUS: No, I’d also like a bag of baked chips and a soda.
MAN: Would you like some chips and a drink?
FAUSTUS: Um . . . yes.
MAN: What kind of chips?
FAUSTUS: The baked ones.

I want to comment on this, but words fail me.

One of the greatest mysteries in the world to me is why this product didn’t become the thing every gay man in the world had to have. In fact, it seems never actually to have been made available at all.

And yet we have Freedom Rings.

There is no justice in the world.

I’m going to London.

I’m going to London to see the London production of a musical I wrote.

Actually, since this musical has actually been produced in London before

Ordinarily I am the pettiest and most jealous of men, and seeing other people write better than I do turns me so green I’m practically a Muppet.

But then every so often I read something like this and realize that I don’t mind that the author is a better writer than I am, because it’s just so beautiful and funny and good and vitally important.

So thanks, Choire.

Unlike the rest of the known world, I use neither a Microsoft-based e-mail program nor a web-based e-mail program. I use Eudora, for which I have a fondness because it’s the first e-mail program I ever used.

The great thing about Eudora is that it talks to you

Yesterday the cheerleaders cheered for the end of the Boston-New York AIDS Ride at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center.

We started our routine and it was going spectacularly. The hitch mount went up, the vault-over went up. We were preparing to do the split mount, in which I and another girl stand in four burly guys’ hands while a very small girl does a split on our shoulders before flipping over into more burly guys’ hands.

So I and the other girl jumped up into the guys’ hands, the very small girl jumped onto our shoulders . . .

. . . and then I looked into the crowd and saw somebody wearing a white suit.

After Labor Day.

I was so shocked and appalled that I almost dropped the very small girl. Luckily, I was able to master my dismay quickly enough to prevent her death.

But if I ever see him again, I may not be able to master my dismay quickly enough to prevent his.

Please forgive me for not posting Friday or yesterday. I’ve spent the weekend celebrating the news I got on Friday. The letter began:

“Dear Participant: FAUSTUS, M.D.

“We are pleased to inform you that you successfully completed both the written and practical portions of the AFAA Primary Group Exercise Certification Program.”

I’m one step closer to being an aerobics instructor! (I still have to get CPR certified. And then there’s the small matter of actually auditioning at gyms and, you know, getting a job.)

But I’m one step closer to being an aerobics instructor!