He Who Laughs, Or The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Intimacy

THE AIR: I am crisp!

THE SKY: I am clear!

THE STREETS: We are quiet!

THE PEOPLE ON THE SIDEWALK: We’re bringing coffee cups to our smiling lips!

NEW YORK: It just feels like one of those great Me Days, you know?

MEL TORMÉ ON MY IPOD: I hear the breezes playing in the trees above, while all the world is saying you were meant for love, isn’t it romantic?

ME: I am meant for love, Mel Tormé, and yes, this is all very roman —

CHRISTOPHER STREET: Fancy a big black dildo?

ME: Er, no thank you.

CHRISTOPHER STREET: New year, new harness?

THE LUCILLE LORTEL THEATER: (sighing) Neighbors.  Keep it down!

CHRISTOPHER STREET: Um, you keep it down.  You’re the one with the gay play on.

VOLUNTEER USHER WEARING A BACKPACK: You’re in Row H, right here.

ME: I think this is Row J.

VOLUNTEER USHER WEARING A BACKPACK: You’re right, it is.

EVERYONE IN ROW J: What?  This isn’t Row H?  Goddammit.

THE GIRL BEHIND ME: (to her friend) Did you know that, like, Ethan Hawke is the reason that, like, Lisa Loeb is famous? (flipping through her Playbill) Oh, I don’t think this is a musical.

“THE PRIDE”: I’m starting — and, no, I am definitely not a musical.

THE GIRL NEXT TO ME: Well, the first scene seems as good a time as any to finally take off my scarf, coat, and wool cardigan!

BEN WHISHAW: I am a fantastic, sexy, rail-thin British actor.  You shall know my name henceforth.

NAZI FETISHISM SCENE: Charmed, I’m sure!

ANAL RAPE SCENE: Room for one more?

BEN WHISHAW’S BULGE: Stop looking at me!  Just because I’m massive doesn’t mean I’m not shy.

GAYS WITH DISCOUNT CODES: We can’t help it!

ELDERLY MCC SUBSCRIBERS: Is that the young gentleman’s crotch or is it a new set piece?  We can’t tell; our eyes are raisins!

ME: Boy, am I glad I’m not one of those desperate gays with a discount code.  I am a serious theatergo — holy hell, half of him must be dick weight.  I am leaning forward because I am … so engrossed.  In the themes of the.  Playbulge.

GAYS WITH DISCOUNT CODES: Mmhmm.  How much did you pay for your ticket?

ME: Full-price?

GAYS WITH DISCOUNT CODES: Let us see your ticket stub.

ME: All right, fine!  I had a discount code, too!

Yesterday morning on the subway I was thinking about Garrison Keillor, and I happened to glance at the newspaper being read by the man diagonally across from me and it had an article about Garrison Keillor in it.  What is it called when that happens — synchronicity?  Something like that.  I took it as the universe saying, Go on with your bad self.

Holy hell.  Good movie.

Stop checking out that
girl. I’ve got quinoa in my
Whole Foods bag; love me.

You know what sucks?  Spending an entire party flirting with someone who’s smart, funny and cute, only to be told immediately by several people after his departure that he has a “serious boyfriend.”

They should be tagged, branded, forced to wear a distinctive earring or something.

Sam Worthington has agreed to empty this bottle of water on his head while wearing a white shirt if you book tickets to He Who Laughs Live in advance.  Seating is tight, and so is his shirt once doused.

 Okay, I couldn’t leave him standing there holding a bottle raised above his head, so you’re on the honor system.

I saw “Avatar” on Monday, the day it surpassed the box office record of “Titanic,” so with my IMAX 3-D matinee stub in hand I say to James Cameron: “You’re welcome.”

I liked it, even though it was long enough for me to have to leave to pee during it, and I liked Sam Worthington even more.  I’ve devoted the last two days to watching clips of him on YouTube, and I found this lengthy but totally fun clip of him and Zoe Saldana interviewing each other:

I’m convinced they’re hot for each other.  Like, out of control hot for each other, right? 

Ian J. rolled his eyes and suggested that they could just be “good friends,” but I think they’re on the verge of crazy fun sex, maybe after the photocall on the Tokyo promotional tour and they’ve had a few beers in the hotel bar.  Fast-forward to 8:40 and tell me I’m wrong.  If they are just “good friends,” then fine – that makes it a “When Harry Met Sally” situation, and I can work with that narrative, I thrive in that narrative.

From the Hope for Haiti telethon:

PAPARAZZI OUTSIDE: Are you Ryan Reynolds?  Are you Naomi Watts?

ME: No.

PAPARAZZI OUTSIDE: Fuck you then.

ME: All right then, I’ll just, uh, take my ticket and proceed to the …

THE BALCONY: That’s right, bitch.  Get up here.

THE STAIRS: You’re poor, you’re poor, you’re poor.

ME: (gasping for breath) More?

THE BALCONY: Ascend, peasant!

THE USHER: (to a woman) Ma’am!  Ma’am!  I said the second row down.  You’re going too far.

THE WOMAN: (to anyone who will listen) Boy, they see a senior and think we can’t follow directions!

THE FACT OF THE MATTER: You can’t, ma’am.

EVERYONE IN THE BALCONY: (leaning forward) Are Ryan Reynolds and Naomi Watts down there?

EVERYONE IN THE ORCHESTRA: Not yet.

EVERYONE IN THE BALCONY: Fuck you then.

THE WOMAN AT THE END OF MY ROW: (to each and every person who climbed over her to get to their seats) I can’t believe an opening night performance was on TDF!  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  Could you?  Did you get your ticket on TDF, too?  You didn’t?  How much did you pay?  Oh my god, that much?  I only paid $34, and here we are sitting right next to each other.  $34, that’s all.  And that’s with the service fee!  It’s not worth it to pay more.

EVERYONE IN MY ROW: It might be worth it to kill you.

THE PLAY: Shut up, all of you.  I’m starting.

THE MAN NEXT TO ME: Mmm, yummy yummy, I love biting and chewing on my nails with my mouth open.  What a treat!

LIEV SCHREIBER’S VOICE: I am gorgeous and sonorous and a theatrical treasure.  I am the  butter that melts, golden, on the waffle brought to you in bed by a bearded Jon Hamm on a wintry morning.  I can even leap to the balcony without aid.

EVERYONE IN THE BALCONY: Thank you!

THE WOMAN AT THE END OF MY ROW: I paid less for you!

LIEV SCHREIBER’S VOICE: Someone give her a little push.  No?  I gotta do everything around here?

THE ENTIRE AUDIENCE: (trembling with ecstasy) Don’t.  Stop.  Making words and sounds.  With your mouth.

THE MAN NEXT TO ME: You all can keep your popcorn and pretzels and Sour Patch Kids.  Give me fingernails!  Ten fingers, ten nails, ten fantastic snacks.  Chew, chew, chew.  And I haven’t even gotten to the cuticles yet — that’s dessert.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Isaac, I know you haven’t always been the biggest fan of mine, but you have to admit: I’m holding my own up here.

ME: OK, fine.

THE WOMAN BEHIND ME: (an hour into the show, to her mate) Is that Scarlett Johansson?

ME: (slaps his hand on his forehead)

Together at last.  I want them to make a buddy picture!  Please?

I should not be allowed in kitchens, unless it’s to prepare a wee small hours cheese plate.

Last night I burned two pork chops in the oven so badly that they literally made a gasping sound when I peeled them out of the baking dish.  With two hot pads I carried the blackened dish to the sink, and after three seconds under cold running water the dish shattered in my hands.

I stood over the sink shrieking, my mind blown.  How could something as sturdy as a Pyrex baking dish disappear like a handful of sand through my fingers?  I suppose that’s just the furious destructive power of my culinary ineptitude.

What will I do if when I have a husband and children?  They’ll have to wear helmets when I cook, and we’ll need one of those showers in our kitchen, you know, the kind they had in your high school science classroom in case someone burst into flames.

Seeing as how I don’t currently have a husband and/or children, I went ahead as planned and ate one of the charred chops for dinner and the second today for lunch.  It was a bit like eating a belt.

I just decimated an entire bag.  They’re better than a boyfriend.

Tonight on the subway home a woman pushed me out of the way so she could get the seat I was headed for.  Whatever works.

I did get a seat next to a girl who was huddled in a puffy jacket — only her eyes were visible — and I couldn’t tell if she knew the man on the other side of her, but he talked to her nonstop nonetheless.  He was bragging about how he smoked a joint right in front of a cop and the cop didn’t say anything.  That was a triumphant moment for him; he was on a high; he was high.  Oh, and his breath was revolting.  Maybe that’s why she was so zipped up.

Behind me a straight couple was arguing about who had more bags to carry.  Even though she refused to accept defeat, the woman kept putting her arm around the man and stroking his neck, and each time she did this she’d elbow me in the head.

Seated across from me was a woman with a suitcase who was crying.  She had a finger in the new Barbara Kingsolver book, holding her place.  I couldn’t help but watch her, imagine what was making her cry.  Maybe she was coming back into town after a funeral, or maybe someone was rude to her on the Amtrak, or maybe she was slowly moving out of a lover’s apartment.  Or maybe the middle section of Barbara Kingsolver’s new book is just that good.

There is a techie on his cell phone in front of my box office window right now who keeps calling the person on the other end of the conversation “baby.”

“Hey, baby, I’m on a break now” – ”I don’t know, baby, I’m just fried and don’t know about tonight” — “Baby, baby, calm down” – I’m gonna hurl.  Women: do you like being called baby?  At the Golden Globes, the men in their speeches: “You’ve stuck by me all these years, baby, and I wouldn’t be up here without you.” 

What a nice sentiment from a husband to his wife, but then he has to call her baby and suddenly it’s not nice, it’s not loving, suddenly she’s his secretary and his hand is caressing her upper thigh and he’s saying, “Baby, the girls in this picture, they got nothin’ on you, I swear I’m gonna put you in my next one,” and as she lets him touch her she’s trying not to think about the girl she once was, practicing her own acceptance speech in the mirror of her bedroom with a hairbru – stop it Trisha, she thinks, snap out of it, what other choice do you have, go crawling back to Mom and Dad, they said you’d never be a star, do you want to prove them right, no, never, he can touch me wherever he wants, I’ll never go back to Topeka, those people and their smug faces, I’ll show them, I’ll show the whole world that Trisha McAllister can light up a night sky, that’s how big of a star she is, as her bra straps fall.

Eek.  That got a little out of hand.  Now I’m sad.