Met Gala

I love a good surprise.   

I’m usually on the giving versus receiving end, so helping surprise a room full of celebrities by showing up on stage with Cher was a delight.

But this time, I got got.

First of all, being in New York on tour in rehearsals for the Met Gala and keeping it a secret from everyone in my world was challenging, especially since the majority of my NY family are in the business. The NDA we signed just to rehearse in the museum was three pages.  We were asked to remove any swag with Cher’s name on it just so that set-up staff working the event could infer nothing.  I’m still not sure from my conversation with Harry Styles backstage before the event if he even knew whom he was introducing. And staying mum was not just a matter of NDA job requirement, it was also about protecting myself.

The thing is, I am a hopeless fashion tragedy, a disgrace to prided homosexual values (however stereotypic), a parade of rebellion against efforts to look fabulous all the time. My gay card was temporarily revoked regularly by colleagues and friends – especially when I was on Broadway.  Compounding the abomination was my tendency to drape large flowy clothes all over what they consider a brilliant frame; this was wasteful.   I reminded them that as a dance captain on Broadway maintaining the show and putting people in it, I was basically always in rehearsal or performing, so why add costume changes?  And I loved winter because layering was essential (and slightly forgiven).   Still, out of love, Motown the Musical friends were the worst:

“No, Jamal, that’s not tight! Those pants don’t even fit!”

“The boot cut is done. Throw those away.”

“You look homeless. Really, you do. It’s not okay.”

“Just don’t wear anything. It would be such an improvement.”

I made efforts to defend myself to approximate the sense that I was wounded by these attacks.  But my lack of shame angered friends even more.

Eric LaJuan, who slayed his Jackie Wilson, Rick James and Billy Gordon roles nightly and would just shake his head in dismay every time I walked into our double dressing room, is in some corner of heaven—designer pants sewn onto his thighs—sipping a drink in disbelief.

Because the fact that I would now be at probably the most highly anticipated fashion event of the year is, well ironic—especially since I scarcely understood its industry importance.

Zara / Top shop options.

Here is how it went down:

In rehearsal for the Gala, Diana Craig Patch, curator for the Egyptian collection at the Met, gives us a crash course in the fragile 1st Century BC sandstone Temple of Dendur, in front of which we would dance but not face squarely while exhaling.  I hug Bob Mackie. I joke with Baz Luhrmann as he stands in for Serena on stage left so that Melanie can incorporate into the rehearsal escorting her to her mark. We space the numbers and then started running things. When I am standing on the platform far out into the house, I spot an impossibly statuesque and short woman below me whose hair brings to mind Anna Wintour. I smile at her mid-step, connecting no dots.

Later, she comes over and thanks us all for being there, honored that we are performing.  She says other things as well, but I am busy berating myself for not processing sooner who she is, for not remembering that she annually coordinates the hell out of this event. I am cutting my eyes up at Eric whose I-told-you-so’s drop down and side-saddle every word Anna Wintour speaks.  

“I just want to know,” Ms. Wintour asks, “what will you all be wearing?”

Now, understand that I am on my knees talking to Cher when she arrives, and although the entire creative team are there, I am closest in proximity. Yet for an answer, she looks dead at me.  Not Melanie, who had the microphone for most of the rehearsal, not Cher or her famous manager who are sweating distance from me. 

And this is the real one, so yes, yes, that was a question, directed to the one person who could scarcely remember the colors of the costumes, let alone reference anything in the lexicon of fashion that would quickly get the paragon editor of Vogue the gist.

“As little as possible, of course,” I say.

Laughter.

Relief.

“That sounds great,” she says.

But I was not out of the woods.  A last-minute change required that I go buy a pair of stylish pants with holes in them, pants that fit. My large open sweater with the hood worked great provided I wore it with no shirt. But now I had the painstaking task of trying to dress this body.

For a number with Cher.

At the Met Gala.

Eric Lajuan is now surely in a full kiki, as I tromp from store to store trying on pants, irritated at how invasive they are, taking pictures to send to Baz Halpin (yes there were two), determined to find more boot options so as not to deal with exposing my Achilles—which is the new style.  I long for the bell bottom to come back.  Has nobody read about Achilles and how Paris of Troy slew him?

I consider this, as well as my healthy level of respect for Anna Wintour, who has taught naysayers the ways in which fashion affects all the business sector industries that consider themselves more important.  This is reason enough to surrender to the task at hand.

Of course, my private fashion odyssey proves worth it – the surprise Cher unleashes on that camp-clad room of celebrities is epic. While we wait, I teach Harry Styles how to pony  backstage right side where we warm up - he learns quickly! Soon after, Lady Gaga and dancers from the hit show Pose stand by so that she can introduce them.  In their blue and green catsuits festooned with keychains, key rings and keys, they turn it. I understand a few of the keys may have sailed into some of the camp drag in the audience, but it seems entirely appropriate for gay house culture to smack our consciousness any time it can.

Then, as is the case with “special appearance” gigs, the variable come fast:

Serena is stunning.

The stage is slick as hell.

Tracee Ellis Ross looks amazing. Flirt with her.

Watch your boss because stage left is slickest.

What did we decide for this non-shield alternative here?

EPHRAIM SYKES???

JAWAN JACKSON??

This is the moment I get got. Surprise!  Two family members from Motown the Musical along with others I love from the close knit black Broadway tribe, make themselves known to me.  They are here no doubt because of they are amazing as The Temptations in Ain’t Too Proud. So no it is not handsome RuPaul or ecstatic Sarah Paulson or real marvel(ous) avenger Naomi Campbell who surprise me.  It is my talented friends who are there to witness me at this fashion event.

I gag in high definition.

When it is time for me to leave the stage and trek to the platform at the edge of the audience my friends accost me.  We have a quick, hug festival reunion, temporarily leaving the Met Gala and entering the bliss of comfort that only comes with this kind of familiarity.  

Word to the wise: when an icon is on stage, everyone does everything they can to get close.  We are as far away from it as possible at the platform, so the bulk of my audience are the dancers from Pose. I could not have asked for better.  Never in my career was a developpe a la seconde into a back fall more necessary.

I finish the number, exit, make the costume change into our black for If I Could Turn Back Time and come back to stage.  Because we were added at the last minute, the dancers are thinking about blocking. I am no exception. Even with 17 years of hearing the song in shows, I work to bring it to my consciousness.  Punch on turn, back and time. Peace out on reach, the and stars. Switch positions on key cues…

I dash past the many celebrities at the King Arthur-style table on house right to make it to the platform for the end of the number when I realize that Serena is not on the corresponding side of the party; she is where I first saw her stage right.  This means Melanie cannot escort her on to the stage.

After Cher leaves, I fly past the King Arthur table, run up the stairs, sprint across the stage to the other side and jump off of it to land in front of Serena. 

I extend my hand.

“I got you.”

She comes with me up the stairs.  Crisis averted.

There is a misconception that because you perform at the Met Gala you are attending the Met Gala.  It’s hogwash.  The minute we are done, we are whisked to the green room to get out of costume and beat the parade of Escalades and Cadillacs getting stars out of the building.

I peel off the Top Shop pants, cursing (and missing) my Broadway family and friends.  

Then over a very strong margarita, I work out how to tell this story.  I am wearing a large, blissfully comfy pair of black sweat pants…

Familiarity

Dennis and Sumayah were on a mission, in fact.  But the shuttle for the Convention Center Marriott was busy with less important things, like getting guests to and from the airport, damn them. Didn't they understand the urgency of our dining needs?

We tried Uber.  We were clever. We had figured out that unlike on previous tours, the Uber app offered us a quick, affordable alternative to cabbing around. But this was Little Rock, Arkansas, where clicking on the FIND ME A CAR button crashed our phones.

We settled for a cab and, $25 later, made it to the Waffle House.  The world has never seen three people so happy for breakfast at 1 p.m.. Then it poured relentlessly, right about the time that we had cleared the plates.

Our waitress, Jusmary, who might have still been irate behind Dennis’ question early on about whether there was a “t” sound in there (even though there was clearly no “t” on the nametag), agreed to help us with  cab.  Thirty minutes later a cab showed up.

Since Dennis suffered the superfluous conversation during the first ride, he ushered me to Shotgun for this one. Wouldn’t you know that this yellow cab, whose backseat was clean simple leather, had shoddy upholstering in its front seat, which the driver had to clear of his personal items?

“Get comfortable,” he said, as if he could see that my collecting the collar of my Zara coat was a form of pearl clutching about gnawed seats, a junk food littered floor and an abused dashboard. "Where y'all going?"

“They’re sending us to Park Plaza Mall. Is it a good one?” Dennis asked.

“Yeah, I’ll get you there, it’s not that far.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Tim,” the driver said.  “But people call me Pac-Man.”

I was so afraid to ask why. And it didn’t matter. We were off to more familiarity.

Until, after a long country drive, we got to the OUTDOOR mall.

“Why would they send us to an outdoor mall on a day of torrential rain?”

“I don’t know,” Pac-Man said. “There’s another mall the other way, between the Waffle House and the hotel. Y’all say you staying downtown, right?”

We were crestfallen, our trust of concierges instantly gone.

Then the conversation began, the one Dennis wanted to avoid.

“So are y’all choreographers?” the Pac-Man asked, as I de-tangled my backpack from the exposed wires under the glove compartment.

“Something like that.”

“You definitely not from around here.”

“What makes you say that?”

“White folks buy up shit, own shit all over the world then come stay here.  Black folks come to Little Rock have to have a reason.”

“Um, sure.”

I could swear I heard snickering in the back of the cab from one of the other two, probably Dennis.

After a minute of silence, Pac-Man said, “I hear Cher is in town. Playing at the arena.”

When I relented, telling him we were with her, he nodded that knowing nod of the quiet, observant neighborhood mechanic who misses nothing.  His cell rang.

“Hello…I’m driving right now…no I’m glad you called me back, it’s okay…I lost your number, dropped it down the commole…hello…hello??”

I dropped my head.

“She’ll call back, whatever,” he said.

By the time we made it to the Dillard’s Mall, so called because Mr. Dillard of Little Rock had his store split on either side of the three-floor shopping rectangle, we had ratcheted up about $70 in cab fare.  The driver was kind enough to circle the parking lot so that he could deliver us curbside to the destination. 

Dennis felt better immediately; there was a Target down the street.

“You paying with a credit card?” the driver said.  “I hate credit cards.”

The statement vied with the tip top customer service a minute before. But I figured all would be revealed soon.  I passed the credit card to Sumayah to deal with it in the machine in the back.  Pac-Man then grabbed the receipt-maker by its back, as it would not function without his squeezing its parts together.

“Piece of shit,” he muttered, waiting for it to print.

"It's fine," I said. "We will be fine."

“Y’all have a nice day.”

There was a lesson somewhere in all of this. But unfortunately, nobody had the resolve to learn it without a cup of coffee, which could not be purchased in the food court or at Dunkin’ Donuts (there wasn’t one) or a Starbucks (also missing).  

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We found out on the way out that in the bike shop upstairs, there’s a barista sometimes working in the back….

Umbrella

 We train our bodies for years and years to obey whatever challenging, sometimes dangerous instructions we give them. We fight to make things happen that should be reserved for other bodies, like those of cheetah or gazelles for example, or perhaps a snake/elephant hybrid, all so that we can manage simple and impossible things on stage for the delight and transformation of a person’s life/soul/spirit. 

            Unfortunately, props don’t invest in the same training. They do what they want, behave as they feel, mis-listen to our needs, fold their arms in defiance.   Investigations of how they work do not prove lucrative—for those of us not blessed with the good karma of prop handling magic, things go wrong.

            I am one of those people.

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Photo Courtesy of  John Wren

            I’m not sure if Sumayah is hostage to my bad prop karma or sabotaged by her own, but what’s clear is that umbrellas are not her friend.

            The first time it went wrong in “Burlesque” during tech rehearsal, her prop umbrella, which is rigged to not close shut all the way (since there is no time in the choreography to fiddle with the sharp button on its stem), wouldn’t open either.   We both rendezvous off-stage right near the stairs, me to make an entrance, her to grab her umbrella and re-enter. During the tech, she couldn’t find her umbrella because someone we have yet to identify moved it to a position on the stairs.

            As planned, I had grabbed the other umbrella to give to Ryan as I enter, since she has less time, and I watched Sumayah in horror search for her prop.

            “Where is my—I set it right here before this run!”

            “It’s right there,” I said, mid Fosse step fluttering my hand toward the stairs.

            This helped her none, of course.

            Determined to be a better friend during the actual show in front of people (18,000 of them in Phoenix, to be specific), I grabbed both umbrellas out of the holster and handed one to her when she ran to get it. 

            In the hasty world of quick entrances and exits and props, there is little time for "Thank you."  So I accepted the general smile of her aura about this consideration.

            The split second was decimated by the revelation that her umbrella stem was broken. When it got broken, how it broke, whether it tried hara kiri because it was done with us, we don’t know.  Just that it was broken.  And that when she pulled the handle, it detached from the rest of the stem.

            Sumayah then proceeded to go out with her very abbreviated prop and work the short stem like a pro.  She kicked her legs over it, pretended it could actually provide the kind of shade it was really meant for vs. the kind it was giving.  She pushed it over her head as if it were “Wade in the Water” high vs. just off her ear...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7huPVXNwOEM

     
       I had to stop looking. Because you see this is when the demon of laughter commences to take you out of your show.  All I could think of is how she had a shady umbrella. Ella. Ella. Eh, eh, eh.

        But then, the next night, I picked her up and swung her down around my waist, and my hat fell off, and I thought she maybe caught it in her other hand perhaps (desperation)...
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgtNhrVtDkw

            Karma. Prop Karma. 
            And an oversized hat with an attitude...

Popcorn

At the time, I could come up with no good reason to order a large popcorn instead of the medium or the small, especially since I had whisked myself solo to watch Roman reputation be torn asunder cinematically for the second time this weekend.  Who was I fooling? I had even less business seeing “Pompeii” than I did ordering popcorn to satisfy my inner FB - if you don’t know what that stands for in this case, it’s safer you not know it applies to me.

           The woman behind the counter must have known. Maybe she saw my desire, my instant recollection of the downtown Phoenix AMC’s version of butter from my gluttony with it during “300: Rise of the Empire” a few days back. Now, I asking if the butter was self-serve, as if I didn't know.  She said yes.

            A beat.

            “Would you like me to dump half of it out so that you can butter it through?” she added.

            I nodded, embarrassed about my transparency, and then had the nerve to be sparing in my application—twice.

            By the end of the 98-minute festive disaster flick, I took the half of the bag of popcorn that I did not (and knew I wouldn't) eat, gathered it by its neck and sauntered the five blocks back to the hotel.

            Downtown Phoenix is quiet at night.  It's lonely, save a light wind with no particular destination, nor hurry to get there.  Lovely buildings, unblemished pavement.  And absolutely nobody on the streets. This night, I saw not even a random homeless person, odd since there was no abusive weather to hide from.

             Then one particular homeless man in a wheelchair made me understand the rulings of my gut.

            He had a long, clear face framed by gray hair that looked less matted than simply age appropriate.

            “Do you happen to have any change?” he asked.

            There was a casual tone, nothing ominous, desperate, or duplicitous in it. He did not appear high, drunk or mad at the world for his circumstances. The whites of his eyes showed none of the dramatic hope I had just witnessed in “Pompeii,” but they lacked expectation.

            “I don’t,” I said. “But I do have half a bag of popcorn.” I grabbed one last handful of popcorn and then extended the bag to him, knowing absolutely he would take it. “It’s good.”

            “Thank you sir.”

            I understood in that moment why I ordered the large popcorn, and it relieved me to have listened to the divine instruction instead of shooing it as bad judgment. Turns out, it was not mine to make.  God had plans, and I was the executive vessel.

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             I know, it's crazy, but go with me on this one for a minute. The payoff is often invisible: the times that the car doesn’t hit you when it could have, or when the brown recluse is diverted elsewhere, or when the cancer you never had the displeasure of knowing about dies first. Surely, these are balances for our right-doings. I am thankful every day for the thousands of times my life, my career, my loved ones are spared.  

           But rarer is the instant gratification in understanding my compliance with God’s good will had tangible, visible effect: this time a homeless man in a vacant downtown connected with the one passer-by who had food. Yes, he asked for money, but I'm sure it's because he didn't know I had food; Lord knows there is almost nothing open in downtown Phoenix after ten that he could have used the change for. 

           Other than perhaps popcorn at the movie theater. 

           The rest of my walk was slower, more relaxed even. And now it was okay for me to admit my appetite for disaster[ous] flicks. 

            And [fake]buttered popcorn.