The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

On Wednesday, I lost my cellphone.

By all accounts, it should've been a tragedy.  I was in the middle of an incredibly busy week, on the way to meet a producer, a few hours before four people were showing up to my apartment to be fed.  This also happened two days before I was going to bid adieu to New York.  I decided that the only way for me to finish the final revision on my novel was to leave Manhattan and get the kind of calm and focus that is so elusive for me on the island.  I had arranged a week-long residency for myself at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, where I'm getting married in two months, where I'm teaching an Advanced Directing Class.  And because I was leaving New York, I decided that I needed to get everything done that I'd been putting off for weeks.

I splurged on a cab to the producer's meeting, since it was that annoying kind of meeting in the middle of the day, in a neighborhood I'd already been to a few hours earlier.  Ordinarily, I would've squatted in a cafe and earned the proprietor's ire by reading for hours and only ordering tea, but I had to get home, remove the chicken from the buttermilk brine I'd soaked it in in preparation for frying, grate the lime and lemon zest for my chilled cherry soup, and oven fry the bacon so that the salad I was planning to serve after the entree had a little kick.  I didn't have time to idle in cafes.

I stepped out of the cab, greeted the wonderful writer with whom I was about to step into the meeting, patted myself down, and said half to myself and half to her, "My phone is in that cab."

I had kept the receipt.  I called 3-1-1-.  I gave the medallion number.  They gave me the garage number.  My ringer was off, of course, so the driver wasn't picking up when I called.  I suffered through the meeting, came home, and somehow, had lost the cab receipt that had been in my possession just a few hours earlier.  I remembered the garage number, however, and used the magic of the internet to discover that the garage was just around the corner from my house.  I found it, and across the locked gate, saw the cab (Medallion Number 4P19) where I suspected my phone was hanging out, free for once from incessant usage and checking.  But I couldn't get to it.  And I had dinner guests arriving.  And the deep fry thermometer I had ordered from Amazon to get my coconut oil to the perfect 325 degrees of heat for frying chicken still hadn't arrived.

The dinner party, I'm proud to say, was a glorious success (I didn't photograph any of the food, and even if I did, I'm currently at the O'Neill, where the wireless connection feels more dial-up than broadband).  I started with the aforementioned chilled cherry citrus soup, followed by savory sweet mashed potatoes (I used bacon grease instead of butter), blanched broccoli rabe, Rafael's irresistible smoked salsa, and coconut friend chicken, followed by a salad with arugula, romaine, walnuts, cranberries and chopped bacon.  Then my guests (one of my fav guys from my soccer team, his bf, and a straight couple) humored me by playing Citadels, one of my favorite uber-nerdy board games, which was won by the only woman present (I came in second place by one point).

And through all of this, I didn't have my phone.  I've turned on the iCloud track option, and apparently, my phone gets turned on every few seconds every few hours, then turned back off.  I chart its progress from my computer, amazed at the technology that allows me to do this and befuddled by how it's supposed to help me get my phone back.

The last few weeks had been hard on me - every project I'm working on thrills and delights me, but somehow, with the wedding planning, I'd been feeling manic and stressed, not the creature of joy I'd like to be.  I felt it affecting my behavior, and for the first day or two without my phone, I felt its absence, the way you'd miss a cybernetic limb that had been hacked off.

What time was it?  Had someone emailed me in the last six minutes?  What was the weather in New London going to be like?  Was that a text or just my leg muscle twitching?  How many people have responded to my last Facebook post?

This and many other questions went unanswered without my pocket-sized portal to other worlds.  And although I was going through withdrawal, I also felt liberated.  I told myself that if I hadn't found my phone by the time I went to New London, I would spend the week without it.

So far, it's been great.  I do get scared, thinking about all the people who might be texting me, ignorant of my predicament, assuming that I'm unbearably rude in not responding.  But the impulses to check the time or my email every few minutes are already diminishing.  My dear friend (O'Neill Artistic Director and officiator of my wedding) Wendy Goldberg and I took the train up together, and had a two-and-a-half-hour conversation that wasn't interrupted by beeping or pinging or chirping electronics.  And when we got off the train, she was so inspired that she told me to take her phone and keep it so that she, too, would be phone-free for her week up here (seven minutes later, she insisted I return it so that she could check her email).

I love being phone-free, and feel positive that this week will be more productive without it.  And if I need to check my email, I can just use my computer, the way we used to in the olden days.  Or, I can use the iTouch that my family gave to Rafael for his birthday two years ago, that I brought up so that I could have an alarm clock. 

Why Planning A Wedding Is A Cruel Fate That Should Only Be Reserved As Torture In The Ninth Circle of Hell

I Want To Get Married

I want to get married.  I do.  To Rafael Ascencio.

The idea that I found anyone who wants to spend the rest of his life with me, and that that person happens to be someone with whom I want to spend the rest of my life, and that the state in which we live made gay marriage legal are three deeply unlikely events that have colluded to make me want to get married.  I never thought I'd want to get married.  But now I do.  And when you want to get married, you have to plan a wedding.

Planning The Wedding

My sister looked at me in undisguised horror when I told her I was going to have a wedding party (she had her best friend standing up at the ceremony with her, and that was it).  In fact, when she and her now-husband were getting serious, she informed him in no uncertain terms that she did not want to be proposed to.  She thought it was demeaning.  If/when they wanted to talk about marriage, they would do it in a civilized, equitable way.  The incredibly talented Leslie Kritzer and Vadim Feichtner had a small ceremony a few weeks ago and invited everyone to meet them at a bar in midtown after, where there were toasts and libations and some of the most delicious cake I've ever eaten in my life.  The event was beautiful and it captured them in all of their glory.

I proposed to Rafael on May 24, 2012, on one knee, with a ring.  We're having a wedding party of our nearest and dearest, that includes my brother (who also didn't have a wedding party) and my sister (who seemed flattered, confused and disturbed when I asked her to be in mine).  There are many conventions of a traditional wedding we're not following, but basically, we've signed up for the kit and caboodle.  The irony is not lost on me: gays rush to the conventions of wedding and institution of marriage that our straight brothers and sisters eschew as old-fashioned and antiquated.  When you've had to fight for something, you appreciate it differently.

I can't wait for my wedding.  But planning it has been unadulterated hell.

Why Planning A Wedding Is A Cruel Fate That Should Only Be Reserved As Torture In The Ninth Circle of Hell

To be fair, I don't think Rafael would describe the experience of planning a wedding in any way equivalent to getting your wisdom teeth pulled out.  But in the same way that my dentist didn't really explain to me that getting my wisdom teeth pulled would involve a big, sweaty Iranian dentist yanking on them with a wrench, no one really told me what the experience of wedding-planning would be like.  Or maybe they did, and I just didn't believe them.  I'm a theater director, after all.  I'm used to putting on shows.  How could this be so different?

Most Wedding Vendors Are Hateful People Who Try To Rob You

If a vendor is primarily in the wedding industry (a wedding photographer, for example, as opposed to just a photographer, or a wedding planner as opposed to say, an events planner), chances are they want to rob you.  They want to use your insecurities, fragility and vulnerability to charge you at least twice as what their service would go for in any other context. 

 Delphi Harrinton, the gorgeous actress whose equally beautiful husband Norm just passed away last week, described to me how people in the death industry tried to take advantage of her, and I couldn't help but think of the local Connecticut photographer whose starting price to shoot my wedding was more than I had been paid for my last directing job.  Now, I know it's a lot of work, and there's overhead, and lots of other expenses.  But still.  It takes me a month to a direct a play.  It would take this photographer one day to shoot my wedding.  And not one full day, either, because her starting package was only an eight-hour period.

One of the best pieces of advices that I got about wedding planning that, whenever possible, don't tell the vendor that you're contracting their service for a wedding.  The guy who runs the BBQ joint down the street in Waterford has no idea that the two lambs I want smoked on May 26th are for a wedding.  As far as he's concerned, they're just for an event at the O'Neill.  Female friends have performed similar experiments - hairdressers and florists are notorious for the "bridal special," which as far as I can tell, just means +50% cost.

Part of why robbing brides and grooms is so easy is because most of us have never been married before.  Think about how much more you knew about buying a car or apartment the second time you did it (I, of course, live in Manhattan so I don't know anything about either of those things).  Because most people only have one huge wedding in their life, our newbie status makes us vulnerable.

Money Money Money

Rafael told me it would be tacky for me to discuss how much we're spending on our wedding.  I told him that I'm tacky all the time.  He looked at me with a mixture of pity and sadness in his eyes, so I've decided not to reveal how much money our parents are spending on our wedding (and yes, our parents are paying for it because there's no way we'd be able to).  Let me put it like this - it's half of what some non-rich friends of mine spent on their wedding.  It's more than the budget of some off-off Broadway shows I've directed.  And it's certainly more money than I will ever spend in a single day.  The idea that I'm spending this much money on my wedding makes me re-examine my priorities in a fundamental way

Last month, I bought a Calvin Klein jacket for $100.  It was at an outlet store, and had been marked down from $350.  It's actually, three jackets in one - a warm, puffy snug thing that can be worn on its own, a water-proof shell that can also be worn on its own, and finally it serves as a heavy winter-jacket when the two pieces fit into each other.  My only rain jacket was a trench coat (Burberry, natch) that my uncle had given me a decade ago, which is still awesome, but can't be worn in any casual setting unless I want to look like a flasher.  My old winter jacket was easily twenty years old.  I really needed a new jacket, and this one was a steal.  And yet, my hand still trembled as I presented the credit card to the cashier.

I hate spending money.  And the idea that I'm spending this much on my wedding sickens me .  And the fact that it's still not even nearly enough for me to to throw the kind of bash that I want sickens me even more.

The Crux Of It

And this is really the crux of it - the reason that planning weddings are such hell.  We are forced to compromise every day of our life.  If you're a theater director, as I am, you're sometimes even forced to compromise two or three times a day, which is much more than I think can reasonably be expected of anyone.  And there's this myth that on our Special Day (it will be Special regardless of how much mula you fork out), the most Important Day Of Your Life (I find the idea that there is a "most important day of anyone's life" totally ridiculous, and even more so if that day is your wedding) you should have everything exactly the way you want it.    

But as anyone who has gotten married can tell you, it's not going to be like that.  Wedding vendors want you to believe this lie, so they can highway rob you sans the highway.  And if you buy into it, all you're doing is playing into their nefarious, exploitative, evil hands.

Don't do it.  Pretend you're a theater director.  Compromise in the good way.  And like in great theater, the limitations will free you, leading you to imaginative and beautiful and unique solutions that a bottomless well of money could never offer.

Who To Invite To Your Wedding

The Guest List

As someone who thrives in situations of great discomfort, I thought I'd tackle the often-thorny issue of who to invite to your wedding.  I imagine this is difficult for every would-be groom and groom (or bride and bride, or groom and bride, as the case may be) but I think this is especially tricky for us theater people, who have so many more friends, colleagues, peers and associates than normal people with normal jobs.  The following is the criteria of guidelines that Rafael and I created when figuring all this out.

The Magic Number

The first thing you need to figure out is how many people you want at your wedding.  If I were writing a wedding-advice book, I'd write something diplomatic here, like "there are different size weddings for different people and you and your sig other should figure out what kind of wedding you want." But I think that's ridiculous. This is what my research revealed: most people with weddings of more than 150 were unhappy.  That's the truth of it.  Everyone I asked, and I asked many people, told me that 125 is the number to shoot for.  Let me also point out that if you're planning on serving a meal at your wedding, which has become the norm, it's basically impossible to do that for less than 200/head unless you're doing the reception at a restaurant, so you do the math: that's already 25K right there.  The 125 number also makes sense to me because, like the host of any good party, you're going to want to spend a few minutes with each guest and at a certain point, that becomes impossible.

The Must-Haves

Certain people are must-haves, and I suggest you start there: family members, friends you've known forever without whom you couldn't imagine the thing.  Close your eyes and think about whose absence would cause you actual pain.  Start by making a list of those people.  (Also, close your eyes and imagine whose presence would cause you actual pain.  Make a list and make sure none of those people are invited). 

Pay To Play

Next, if your parents are paying for the event, ask them if there's anyone they'd like to invite.  It's the decent thing to do.   And you might even be pleasantly surprised - our next door neighbors growing up and the parents of a dear childhood friend of mine were on my parents' list, and they're both couples that I'd be delighted to have in attendance.

Now, you've got a list of everybody who has to be invited.  This is where it gets tricky.

The Hard Part

Now, you and your fiance should make a list of everyone they'd like to have there.  Anyone at all.  This could be a long list, much longer than the number of people that can actually be accommodated by the wedding.  Put anybody you'd like on that list - let it be whimsical. Then the two of you should work your way through the two lists.  It's important to do this together, because some of the questions are not about the relationship you (singular) have with an individual, but rather about the relationship that you (plural) have - after all, this is about you (plural), not you (singular).  (If English had a second person plural, like every other language, we'd all be saved many parenthesis).

Here are the questions Rafael and I asked ourselves:

Do we both have a relationship to the individual?

Obviously, it helps if the someone is someone to whom we're both connected.  

Another question, which sounds stupid in its simplicity, is: have you met the person?  A childhood friend of Rafael's was passing through New York yesterday, and we all made a point of re-arranging our schedules so that we could have lunch because I wanted to spend time with someone who was going to be at my wedding.  In my ideal world, I wouldn't meet anyone new at my wedding, but knowing that's somewhat inevitable, Rafa and I are doing the best we can to meet all the people who've slipped through the cracks. 

Have we spent one-on-one time with the individual?

As someone for whom one-on-one interactions are the source of major anxiety, this point helps me incredibly.  

Have we been to their home?/Have we had them over to our home?

A picture of our living room.  Doesn't it look cozy?

Someone mentioned this criterion to me in passing, and I've found it to be incredibly helpful in the murky waters of theater friend/colleague/associate.  Hosting someone, or being hosted by them, is an incredibly intimate act, especially in NYC where we go out all the time but rarely stay in.


What are your actual feelings about the person?

It was helpful for me to hear, from Rafael, about which of my friends he felt made him feel most welcomed into their lives, and around whom he felt most comfortable.  I appreciated being able to share with him the same. 

Also - do you like the person?  Again, I know this sounds stupid, but you shouldn't invite someone you don't like to your wedding.  That would be weird.  

How long have you known the person/how long are you planning on knowing the person?

This is a key one to me, and oddly revealing: I'm inviting more people from high school than I am from college, something I would've never predicted at any point in my life.  Inviting someone just because you've known them a long time or you went to their wedding ten years ago is a terrible idea.  But inviting someone who has always been in your life and suspect will always be in your life is a great idea.  Do that.

Notable Sub-Categories:

1)  Children

Rafael and I decided against inviting children.  I tell people "We wish we could, but we just can't afford the extra head count," and there is truth in that, but also, I don't want kids there.  When you're getting married at our age, everybody's got kids, and I don't want a crying baby ruining my ceremony or my reception becoming all about little Bobby's finicky eating ways and would the caterer mind preparing a portion of the salad that doesn't have nuts or cheese but does have extra dressing on the side?  Screw you, little Bobby.  This is my day, not yours.

Rafael and his cousin Adrianna's daughter, whom we plan on exploiting for her adorability as a flower girl. 

Exception: Rafael and I are allowing the nephews, god-children (we each have one) and another kid or two whose cuteness we're planning on exploiting in the ceremony as flower-girls or ring-bearers.  Those kids are working for their place and I feel fine about that.

2)  The Exes

Don't go there.  I just can't imagine it's worth it.

Exception: Linsay Firman, my last ex-girlfriend, the mother of my god-daughter, is someone who made my must-have list.  Being on the must-have list trumps the ex- thing.

3)  People Getting Married Around The Same Time You Are

Vadim and Leslie!

I've noticed this wonderful thing - I've gotten closer to friends getting married within a year of me and Rafael (speaking of which - major shout-out to Vadim Feichtner and Leslie Kritzer who tie the knot tonight - Vadim and Leslie arranged one of mine and Rafael's most beautiful nights, and I'm so happy that two such beautiful and talented people found each other).

It's like being on the same hall freshman year.  Invite those people.  It's fun.

4)  +1

If a guest is dating someone when we came up with our invite list, Rafael and I decided that they should be allowed to bring that someone, even if we hadn't even met them (I think there's only one of those, and we're planning on remedying that before the big day).

If, however, you've just started dating someone, especially someone we haven't met, or you just want to bring a +1 for the hell of it, no can do.  Each person costs hundreds of dollars, and more importantly, the idea that your +1 is taking the place of a friend or colleague that I'd like to invite but can't because we're short on spaces is just crazy to me.  I've gone to many weddings by myself in my single years.  It's fine.  Make friends.  My friends are, after all, the coolest people in the world.  Or get drunk and threaten someone.  That's fun, too. 

5)  Those Special Someones  

For all the blogspace I've dedicated to writing about the logical criteria of whom you should invite to your wedding, here's the truth of it, or at least, the truth of it for me (which is the same thing in this blog).  A handful of people whom do not fit into any of the criteria were invited anyway.

As I try to articulate why these people are important to me, I can't quite, except to say that at different times in my life, they have been there for me in unexpected ways, above and beyond, saved from something or myself, given me an extraordinary opportunity, or restored my faith when it was gone.  Those people go on the list. 

Now What?

Now look at the amount of people you want to invite, and compare that with the amount of people you can invite.  Each wedding book has a different equation about how to deal with this, but the basic wisdom is to invite 10 percent more than you actually accommodate, planning that some people will have closing nights or puking children or other obstacles that will prevent them from attending.

Distribution is also important, here.  Because I'm in a deeply social industry and desperate for approval in a way that Rafael is not, he has agreed to let the amount of "my" people outnumber "his" people.  This also means, however, that if we get to invite more people to our wedding, I'm going to insist that those slots go to Rafael, because I don't want the proportion to get ludicrous.  I'm not marrying myself, after all (that's illegal in most states).  I'm marrying Rafael, and I'd like the parties present to be as equal as possible.  

But There Are People I Want To Invite But Can't!

Tell me about it, kid.  If it's any consolation, that's exactly what casting a play is like.  Especially when you live in a city whose unsung resource is its rich casting pool.   

This, like trying to figure out the "right" number of people to invite to your wedding, is impossible.

Life is hard.  In my ideal world, everybody I'd want to have at my wedding would be at my wedding.  That means, however, that we'd have over 300 people at our wedding.  That means our wedding would have too many people.  That means I wouldn't be in my ideal world any more.   You see the problem?

You see the problem?  

I think one of the impetuses for this post was a desire to exorcise my feelings of guilt and anxiety about having so many people whom I want at my wedding and not being able to invite them.  And I remember what it's like to not be invited to a wedding for which I was expecting an invitation, and the hurt that causes (the party in question in that incident was someone I'd help move apartments three times, back in our early 20s, when you were allowed to ask your friends to help you move.  When I wasn't invited to that wedding, I remember thinking that my lower back had really been taken advantage of).

Dear Joss Whedon: I love you.

You have to trust that the people who love you understand that loving you and being loved by you is different than being invited to the wedding, and not mutually exclusive.  Some of them might even reach out to you, as some have to me, which I think is okay as long as it's done in a non-confrontational, calm manner.  For example, I have some cousins in Oregon whose son is graduating from Wesleyan the day we're getting married - they asked in a very kind email if he and their other children who'll be out here can attend, and we agreed to check in closer to the dates and see how the RSVPs go.  Of course, Joss Whedon is the speaker at Wesleyan's graduation this year (he's an alum), so should I be absent from my own wedding, you'll know where I am.

The Take-Away

Anyone's who's put on a play knows that making a choice means eliminating hundreds of others, and planning a wedding is no different.  If you have a swing band that means you can't also have a Lady Gaga impersonator and a sixteen-piece band flown in from LA, as the older couple from the midwest sitting next to me and Rafael at dinner a few weeks ago did when their daughter got married (I can't make this stuff up).

The guest list is the same way - you're simply not going to be able to have everyone there whom you'd like, nor everyone who'd like to be there.  The important thing, in some way, is that it doesn't really matter.  Your wedding might be the last time, or the first time, or the only you ever see some of your guests.  In a few years, Rafael and I might wish we had invited more people from my gay soccer team, or one of the plays I've been developing with one of the many playwrights whom I love could get picked up and after the trenches of rehearsal we'll become bffs and I'll regret not having invited him/her to my wedding.  And who cares?  Life goes on.  It might be the most important day of your life, but it's just one day. 

Reasons To Change Your Wedding Date

Save The Date

"I have my Save The Date for you!" I told Kelly Hutchinson excitedly during a break at our Paradise Lost rehearsal two weeks ago.

"I need to talk to you about that," she responded.

These were not welcomed words.

The long-of-the-short of it:  Kelly had been cast in The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen at BAM starring John Turturro.  It's the kind of job I might've missed my wedding for.

BAM, best friend stealer.

On Saturday, May 25th, the day I was supposed to get married, she had a matinee and evening show.  The next day, May 26th, she had a matinee show.  So even if I moved the wedding one day, the most of Kelly I'd have is showing up at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, in Waterford, CT, our venue, at 8PM.

I can't change my wedding so that one person could make it for the last few drunken hours.  That's crazy.  I didn't even know if the venue was available, let alone The Old Lyme Inn, that cute WASPy establishment we had booked for two nights for the families to stay in.  And what about the caterer, Scoozi Events?  They were putting together this ridiculous seven-course meal that my heart was set on as a favor for Rafael, who'd used them for some of his big fancy functions in the past.  

So, Kelly wouldn't be able to make it to my wedding.  With sadness in my heart, I mailed out the beautiful Save The Dates that +Eric Sutton had designed.

Emotional S&M

Kelly as Olga, the eldest Romanov Duchess in OTMA, by Kate Moira Ryan.

A little cloud hung over me as I deliberated what to do.  Decisions are usually easy for me to make, so the emotionally S&M part of my personality relishes a conundrum, and this was certainly that.  I figured at some point I would get used to the idea that Kelly, to whom I introduced myself during the intermission of her middle school performance of ANNIE (she was in 8th grade, playing Mrs. Hannigan; I was a freshman in high school, scouting the talent at the other middle school in town, the one I hadn't attended) wouldn't be there when I tied the knot.

There are certainly greater tragedies in the world, like having your brand new bicycle stolen ten days after  your fiance gave it to you even though you locked it up nice and tight with the allegedly unbreakable, unpickable lock you spent a fortune on. (I try to find generosity in my heart for the bicycle thief.  I do.  I imagine some poor, destitute, brilliant young person who stole to pay for their education or food.  But it doesn't work.   I hope something terrible happens to that person, like having to live in an alternate universe where Romney won).

A few days went by, and I talked myself into believe that even to have contemplated moving the wedding date was crazy.  I was explaining this to a friend (okay - it was in therapy, but I've learned it's better to say "to a friend" because it makes people less uncomfortable), when I realized it wouldn't be so hard at all.

Kelly as Masha in my production of THE SEAGULL

I Am A Theater Person

I am a theater person, after all.  I'm adapting Paradise Lost for the stage with twenty actors.  I've cooked dinner every night for a week for a colony of seventy-five people at glorious Lake Lucille while they were rehearsing a mult-media, site-specific, deconstructed version of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.  I have supported myself in New York City for 15 years.  How hard could moving a wedding be? 

I called the O'Neill.  They could do the new date.
I called the Inn.  They could do the new date.
I called the caterer.  They could do the new date.

I called my mom.  She told me that I shouldn't do it, because "something told her" I shouldn't.  And to cite evidence of the truth of her feelings, she offered the example of my sister's wedding.  My sister decided to get married on a Saturday, and my mother intuited that Sunday would've been better for her.  My sister did not change her wedding day based on my mother's hunch.  That Saturday when my sister got married was overcast.  The Sunday was beautiful.  Did I need more proof?

I wrote the email.  I compiled my guests' email addresses.  I remembered to ask Rafael what he thought.  He gave me permission, in the even and calm way he does most things, bless his beautiful heart.  Then I called Kelly to make sure she was free the evening of Sunday, May 26th.  And then I sent out the email.

It Takes 45 Minutes To Change Your Wedding Day.

Of course, the venue of the inn or the caterer might not have been available on the new day, and then, honestly, I don't know what I would've done.  But as much as the wedding machine wants to make you feel like the only way to have a good wedding is to spend more money than you have, or that you need to book everything at least in a year in advance, all of that is poppycock.  Poppycock, I say!  You get to make the wedding you want for yourself.  Rafael and I decided to have the dancing between the ceremony and the reception because the O'Neill has a little pub with a piano where we wanted to go after the reception and sing show tunes.

Some vendors have visibly blanched, like almonds, when I tell them the dancing is going to happen before the reception.  Gays getting married is fine, apparently, but violating the sequence of events is heresy.

Kelly as Prodigy in SAVE THE WORLD, a superhero adventure play I directed, by Chris Kipiniak.

The only wedding book I purchased, A Practical Wedding by Meg Keene (check out her great wedding blog here), is wonderful at debunking all of these myths.  In many intelligent, researched, wonderful ways, each section has the same message: just because something is often done doesn't mean you have to do it. 

Kelly Hutchinson was the first person I came out to.  I was the best person at her wedding.  I think the longest we have gone without speaking is a few weeks when she was studying at BADA in the summer of 1997.  When she was just an actress and I was just a director we worked together all the time.  Now that we're both writers, we read, critique and re-read each other's stuff.  She knew me when I was in high school, and I have never regretted following her advice.

 Moving my wedding so that Kelly Hutchinson could make it by the fifth course, then join us for show tunes at Blue Gene's pub and brunch the next morning was worth it to me.  And if the weather's terrible, my mother will get to say, "I told you so."

Eric Sutton was kind enough to whip 2.0 version up, so that I could attach it to the CHANGE THE DATE email I sent out.

7 Years of Missing Wendy

"I like him.  He knows when to laugh."

These were the first words Wendy Wasserstein ever spoke to me.  Or rather, about me, I should say.  We had just finished the first day of a week-long workshop of her play Old Money at Lincoln Center in May of 2000, in preparation for the upcoming production that would go into rehearsals in October of the same year.  The ever-kind Mark Brokaw had asked me to assist him on the production, and invited me to sit in on the workshop, and at the end of the first day, after the actors left and I lingered, hoping I'd be allowed to stay and hear how Wendy and Mark talked about what they'd learn from having heard the play, Wendy gestured to me and said those words.  "I like him," she giggled, in that endearing way that made you feel included.  "He knows when to laugh."

The First Laugh

Knowing when to laugh was a matter of great import to Wendy.  When I worked for her over the course of the next few years, the first first laugh was something she'd talk about.  For her, the first laugh was to a comedy what the first song was to a musical - if it didn't come early enough and wasn't pitch-perfect, you'd lose the chance to introduce your audience to the piece.

After Old Money opened, Wendy asked me to type for her.  I was her amanuensis, I guess, although I only learned that word recently, in the context of Milton, who was blind when he "wrote" Paradise Lost.  The poem was transcribed by his daughters, to whom he recited it in its entirety.  I imagine them furiously scribbling down his lines of perfect iambic pentameter, secretly bemoaning their cruel lot in life to each other later.  "If only we weren't the daughters of a brilliant blind poet," Anne Milton, the elder, would complain to Mary, the younger.  "We could go out on Saturday nights like the rest of the Puritan girls.  But instead we're stuck home scribbling away.  And don't even get me started on my ink-stained fingers.  Who's ever going to want to slip a ring on one of these?"

The one on the left looks especially bored to me - she's totally thinking "Dad's blind, so he can't see me rolling my eyes at him." Milton also had a third daughter, standing in the back, but she's rarely mentioned so she must've been boring.

A Life In The Theater

I'm not sure exactly what I'd be doing today if I hadn't met Wendy.  Unlike many of my peers, I live on the money I make directing and writing.  In my twenties, when the income I made from directing was the meagerest of trickles, working for Wendy was the only way I could afford to pay my rent and buy my groceries and go out dancing.  In addition, my first professional directing job was at Theater J in Washington, D.C. - two one-acts Wendy had written and given to the little theater to produce if and only if I got to direct them.  The first was called Welcome To My Rash, a piece that's almost unbearably painful for me to look at now, about a sick, middle-aged writer struggling with her illness and loneliness.  The second was a one-act version of Third, which would grow up and become Wendy's last full-length play.

I am not resilient the way many of my friends are, and I think working a day-job would've broken me.  But I didn't need a day-job, because I had Wendy.  When I would kvetch to her about how unfair it was that young directors with trust funds could stay in New York and assist for free while I had to go gallivanting around the country directing at colleges, she would tell me that she was my trust fund, and I would remember how lucky I was to be able to support myself in a job that paid well, didn't require early mornings, and allowed me to learn about my field.

Writing

Up until and including the time that I worked for Wendy, I never wanted to write.  I know this, because I didn't write anything, and I'm someone who believes that people do what they want to do.  I haven't actually parsed through the cause-and-effect of losing Wendy and starting to write.  Was it something that would've happened if she hadn't passed away, because my proximity to her inspired it, like the Fantastic Four, who developed their superpowers after being exposed to cosmic rays (not to be confused, of course, with the gamma rays that turned Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk)?

One of the first things I ever wrote was a play about a young director and the established writer he works for, titled WORK.  I've been hacking away at it for years (click here to go to my website and download the sample).  I have no idea if the play will ever have any life, but I know that writing it helped me tremendously as I struggled with Wendy's loss the ache of missing her.  So maybe losing Wendy was the cause, and writing the effect.  I am positive that I'd never have had the fortitude to write my young adult novel, ONE MAN GUY, if it hadn't been for the years I spent at Wendy's side.

Or sometimes I think, Wendy died so young, and with so many things she still wanted to write, that I started writing to try to fill the void her absence created.  Chekhov, after all, wrote hundreds of short stories and 5 brilliant plays before he died at the age of 44.  Sometimes, when I want to depress myself, I think about all the work he would've made if he had lived to be 50, or 60 or 70.  It's enough reason for everyone to pick up a pen and start writing their version of funny, sad, heart-breaking characters on a Russian estate.

Closer Than Ever

Writing makes me feel close to Wendy.  Unlike directing, with which I've had mentors galore, Wendy is the only one of two writers I've ever really been close to in that way, and so the act of it reminds me of her.  Writing my play about her, this blog, my young adult novel - every time I sit down at the keyboard, I hear her voice, and most of the time, it's making me laugh.  The rest of the time, it's giving me advice, which is inevitably practical.  When she came to see my production of The Seagull, she told me how much the character of Trigorin spoke to her, in his obsession with his writing, and how he (and Chekhov) were clearly so interested in the craft of the art.  Wendy took great pride in that, in her own work.  And I know that some people feel her plays are a little old-fashioned, and not edgy enough, or too nice, and until I get to direct one again and prove those people wrong, I hope we can all agree that they are, at least, written by someone who brings great craft to her field.



Pastrami and Cheesecake








October 18th was Wendy's birthday.  We had plans to lunch together on the day that neither one of us knew would be her last birthday, in 2005.  We were supposed to meet at the little writing studio she kept on 60th St (in the same building where Rafael was living when I met him, and if you think that wasn't Wendy nudging me along from beyond, you gravely underestimate her).  Wendy wasn't feeling well enough, however, to leave her apartment, so I went to the Carnegie Deli and picked up pastrami sandwiches and cheesecake, one of our perennial favorites.

She was in bed, where I served her the delicious fare.  She picked at her sandwich and didn't even touch the cheesecake.  If I weren't in such deep denial about her medical state, this would've been a clear sign that something was wrong.  I ate my portion with gusto, blabbering on about boys and work.

I try to do something that would honor Wendy ever January 30th.  Before her niece Samantha moved out West, we'd sometimes meet for a cocktail at Cafe des Artistes, which like Wendy, is no longer with us.  The first anniversary of Wendy's death, I went to see Sarah Ruhl's stunningly beautiful play The Clean House at Lincoln Center, in the same theater where Old Money had happened years before.  I wept through most of The Clean House and left the theater knowing that I would direct the play one day (which I got to do at Syracuse Stage two years ago, one of my finest productions).

But the one thing I always do January 30th is go to the Carnegie and order a pastrami sandwich and a slice of cheesecake.  I am passed the age where I can finish both those magnificent servings by myself, but I still do it, knowing I'll have leftovers for another meal.  And so I invite you to partake of this tradition, wherever you are today.  Order some pastrami or a slice of cheesecake, and spend a moment thinking about Wendy, and how lucky those of us who knew her were to have known her, and how lucky all of us are to have her work.  





 

Dinner For Two

"You don't know how to cook a chicken?" 
Marty to Janie, Isn't It Romantic, by Wendy Wasserstein
-->

The Best Chicken You’ll Ever Have Ever.  Ever 

This is the actual picture of the actual meal that I made in this post.  I'm getting better about photographing food.  Like with most things, it's all about the light. 

 

I know I’ve been posting about food lately.  I think it’s easier because every day I basically make something that I want to share with the world.  It’s also easier writing because it doesn’t require me to reveal myself.  Do with that what you will.  Or Twelfth Night.   Which is the day I’ve starting writing this post, coincidentally, although who knows when it’ll actually go up. 

All of this is my way of saying – rest assured, I’ll write about personal gay marriage stuff soon.  But now I’m writing about fowl.  

I had this meal for Rafael the day after he returned from his holiday trip to Mexico.  I didn’t go with him because the ticket was over a grand and also because I think gay couples split for the holidays more than straight couples do.  He got back on the 3^rd, and then on the 4^th had to head out to Passaic so that he could wake up early and check a shipment coming in.  If it sounds like I don’t really know what I’m writing about, it’s because I don’t.

Exemplary Fiancé

When he came back, I thought it would be nice to greet him some food because when I’ve been out all day, I cherish the idea of staying in for dinner.  I know I’m making myself sound like a simply exemplary fiancé.  As I’m sure none of you need persuading, being my other is in many ways not easy, but the point of this blog isn’t to reveal my various short-comings to you: it’s to make my life sound fabulous so that you envy it.  In the food department, I imagine I’m a joy to be with.

Here’s the simple dinner for two I whipped up tonight:

Roasted Salt Chicken

Blanched Apple Cider Kale (2 bunches)

Savory Sweet Potatoes (4)

Rather than give each individual recipe, I’m trying a new approach where I talk you through the process of doing it all together.  Tell me if you like it or if it’s annoying.

I started three days ago, when I went to my butcher and bought the fowl.  I go to a great, old-school butcher right behind Port Authority – Esposito’s And Sons.  I’ve been going there for over ten years, and I have never purchased a bad piece of meat there.  They only had chickens on the larger side (4.5 lbs or so).  I hadn’t made this recipe with a chicken that large before – usually I like them in the 3.5 or 4lb range, but it turned out great.

Take the chicken, then pour salt all over it.  I use kosher salt, but you can use that fine table salt, too.  Rotate the chicken to make sure you get every possible inch of surface area.  After you’ve put on more salt than you think you should, put on a little more.  Then you’re done (if you want to get technical, I think it requires around .5 lb).  Then wrap the container holding the chicken in plastic wrap, and let it sit in the fridge for 2 or 3 days.  4 days is okay too, but five days is getting dicey. 

Now we jump to today:

Turn the oven to 450 degrees, and put a roasting pan in the oven as it heats up.  Then put a pot of water to boil (remember how I hate it when people don’t tell you to do this early on?).

Peel the potatoes down and wrap them in tin foil.

Then take the chicken out of the fridge, and put either half an onion (if you want to make gravy) or half a lemon (if you’re a citrus junky) in the cavity.

When the oven reaches 450, take the roasting dish out, and put the chicken in the dish, breast side up.  The chicken should sizzle when it makes contact with the very hot roasting pan.  Put the pan back in the oven.

On a higher rack, on the sides, put the sweet potatoes.  Then close the oven and set the timer to 55 minutes for a chicken 4.5lbs (50 minutes for 4lb, 45 for 3.5lb).

As the chicken is cooking, remove the kale from its stalks.  Greens come in two varieties – non-assertive greens, such as spinach (which can be eaten raw and don’t need to be de-stalked) and assertive greens, such as kale or collard greens, which need to be de-stalked and cooked before eaten (yes, I know some of you eat kale raw, but that’s gross).  


 I've prepared a video to show you how to do this, but blogger keeps on giving me an error when I try to upload it, so I put it on youtube instead.  It's 28 seconds long.

http://youtu.be/Jb7Wn1SjTso

a video of me de-stemming kale

Once your kale is de-stalked, chop it up roughly. 

When the water comes to a boil, throw in the kale.  It should get nice and vivid green.  After around three minutes, use a colander to drain the kale in your sink.  The kale will keep cooking, so if it’s a little rawer than you usually take it, don’t worry.  Lots of recipes have you cook the kale longer, usually 8-10 minutes, but I think this is crazy.

After 55 minutes of roasting (or 50, or 45, depending on the size of your bird), take it out and flip it over, then put it in the oven for another ten.

You can also take the sweet potatoes out – try one.  If it’s cooked-through, then you’re all good.  If it's still hard in the middle, toss them back in the oven for another ten minutes.  Once they’re done, open them up (carefully – they’ll be steaming) and cut them into six or eight pieces and put them in a large bowl.

After you’ve flipped the bird, take it back out of the oven and flip it back so it's to breast-side up, and let it cook for another few minutes.

A Wonderful Dilemma

Once the bird is done – you’re faced with a wonderful dilemma – what to do with all of that beautiful fat you’ve rendered?  If you stuffed an onion into the cavity, toss that onion into a blender along with the rendered fat, and blend it up into the most delicious chicken gravy you’ll ever try.

If you went the lemon route, don’t worry – there’s still hope for you.  Pour half of the rendered fat into the bowl with the potatoes, and toss the kale in the remaining half.  If you used the fat to make the gravy, you can use some butter with the potatoes and some olive oil for the kale.  You can also throw whatever else you like in with the potatoes – Rafa and I used some chili powder tonight and a wee bit o' pepper.  Some people like brown sugar or some other sweetener, but I think the sweet potatoes are so delish they don’t really need it.  Then finish up the kale with a sprinkle of apple cider vinegar.

The chicken has rested sufficiently, and you can serve all of them together.  I’m going to include the same picture from the beginning of the post because I think the food looks so luscious.  Serve with a strong white, a dry rose, or a light red.  

The other things that’s nice about this recipe is that you’re pretty much guaranteed to have leftovers (unless you and dining companion are real pigs[MB1] ).  I always think that’s nice because it’s not like we can cook like this every night, so if you’re going through the effort, make it worth your while.

---

 [MB1]I usually don’t have left overs.  But tonight, with that big bird, I did.

Better Than Chocolate

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, with snow

I'm not exactly sure how to write about the retreat that my PARADISE LOST company took up to the O'Neill Theater Center - it exceeded even my wildest expectations, both in terms of productivity and fun.  When we met today in New York to work on Book V, the members of the company who were unable to join us on the retreat asked me to talk about how it went, and the first thing I did was realte the menu.  This was it:

PARADISE LOST

O’Neill Retreat

MENU

Thursday, January 17

Lunch

Cumin lentils w/roasted vegetables served

over citrus brown rice

with slab bacon onthe side

Dinner

Appetizer: Guacamole & Corn Chips

Entrée: Tacos  (choice of Pork or Beans, with accoutrements)

Dessert: Dark chocolate shredded over blueberries on a bed of Greek yogurt

Friday, January 18

Breakfast

Strata with Spinach, Gruyère and spicy sausage (vegetarian available)

Coffee or Tea

Lunch

Sandwich spread

(cold cuts, cheese, & condiments on whole wheat bread w/pickles)

Dinner

Appetizer: Arugula & Romaine salad with apples, goat cheese, & toasted walnuts

Entrée: Roast chicken breast, broccoli rabe, & wheat berries

Dessert: Strawberries drizzled with a balsamic reduction over vanilla ice cream

Saturday, January 19

Breakfast

Tofu scramble with Swiss chard served on a bed of quinoa

Coffee or Tea

Lunch

Sandwich spread

(cold cuts, cheese, & condiments on whole wheat bread)

I have to give props here to Chris Grabowski, director and cook extraordinaire, who accepted my invitation to join us a week before we left, and who prepared both dinners (with help from company members).  

Those of you who have been following my blog might recognize some of the recipes - especially the tofu scramble and the lentils.  When cooking for large groups, it's good to throw a few things in that you're uber-familiar with.  I'm all for leaving the comfort zone, but in that kind of situation, one recipe goes astray and there you are with a company of hungry actors and that's not a pretty thing.

A Group Dessert That'll Wow 'em

The biggest surprise for me, recipe-wise, was how big of a hit the second dessert was, which I'm titling BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE because that's what the company kept insisting.  It's easy to make, but I'm going to share with you a few tips to take this simple, delicious dessert and catapult it into extraordinary.

BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE: 
Vanilla Ice Cream with Strawberries, Swimming in Balsamic Reduction 

(These portions served 14 actors just right.  It can obviously be made on a much smaller scale).

3 gallons really high quality Vanilla Ice Cream
1 quart strawberries
1 bottle good balsamic vinegar

Notes on Ingredients:

Let's start with the ice cream.  When a recipe is this simple, you have to splurge for the good stuff.  It doesn't have to be fancy (I used Breyers).  The ingredients should basically read cream, sugar and vanilla.  Breyers also has milk and tara gum, a thickening agent that probably isn't going to kill you.  If the ice cream has any ingredients you can't pronounce, don't get it.

Strawberries are only in season in the northeast in the summer, but the store had some delicious ones from California, and I swallowed my green-guilt and bought them.  Berries are usually interchangeable in simple desserts, but with the balsamic vinegar, strawberries' sweetness is key.

First, pluck the heads off the strawberries.  Some people cut them off, but I think you lose some good strawberry that way.  Next, and this is very important, soak the strawberries in cold water.  If you really want to gross yourself out, do this in a transparent glass bowl, and you'll see all the seeds and dirt they release.  After fifteen minutes (or ten, or twenty - who really cares), rinse them out and soak them again.  I got this tricky from Mother Barakiva, and it does wonder for their taste.  After they're soaked, cut them in half.

Finally, buy yourself a good bottle of balsamic vinegar.  You're going to be boiling it down, so don't go crazy, but again, don't buy bottom shelf or you'll regret it.  Look for a seal from the Consortium for the Protection of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena (CABM). A burgundy-colored seal (you'll find it on the neck band of the bottle) means your product is authentic.

If you've got a dish large enough to hold all the ice cream, or if you're using a few dishes, put them all in the freezer - that'll keep the ice cream colder longer.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1)  Pour the bottle into a sauce pan bring to a boil, drop down to a simmer, and reduce by 50%.  That's all a balsamic reduction is - vinegar that has been boiled down.   How do I know when it's reduced by 50%, Michael?  Well, this is a very good question, reader.  Until the people at Calphalon figure out how to include measurement notches inside of their pots (this doesn't seem like it would be so difficult to me, but I've never seen it, so what do I know?), this is what you do: get a large Pyrex measuring cup, and after it's been boiling for around 10 minutes, pour the liquid in the cup and compare it to the bottle's capacity.  Warning: at a certain point, the reducing vinegar will give off noxious fumes and you'll feel like you're the victim of chemical warfare.  That means you're doing it right.  A few minutes of those and you'll have your reward.

2)  Put the ice cream into the serving dish(es).

3)  Put the halved strawberries on top of the ice cream.

4)  Pour the reduced balsamic vinegar (still hot) on all of it.

5)  Serve immediately.

My company went crazy for this.  Most of them couldn't believe that the dessert didn't have any chocolate.  I'd never thought about it, but the richness and tartness of the reduced vinegar in that quantity did imitate dark chocolate's punch.  The product is exquisite - the richness of the ice cream creating a base of which the sweet strawberries and sweet/tart vinegar can dance.

We also got a lot of work done on the retreat, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that.  But honestly, writing about how Lucifer impregnated Sin after she sprung out of his head, during a counsel he organized to try to overthrow God, and how she gave birth to Death, and the amazing metaphorical significance of all of that, just doesn't seem as interesting to me as delicious and simple-to-make desserts for groups.