I am awash

 with tears. I just finished listening to a young woman go on about her first experience of going to a play — the musical Hairspray. It’s all megamusicals now -- that’s all they know -- and certainly that’s a problem, but we won’t go there. Where we will go is to what I think is so horrible about this soul killing lockdown. I’ve noticed more commercials on CNN (my drug of choice during COVID-19) for mental health issues. Apparently even Bell has a mental health app (well that should help!). And Michael Phelps is  advertising online mental health services. Unfortunately I can’t stop looking at his humungous hands, so I am somewhat distracted. Well if you’re anything like me and an extrovert you find you dream now about parties, and that’s what theatre is, it’s a party. The defining characteristic of a party is that there will be people there you don’t like. I tried to explain this to my boyf, who has never liked parties. I remember years ago we almost had one (we hardly ever do, for this reason) and I had put a particularly awful person on the invite list — only because he was somewhat famous. My boyf burst into flame (as he is often known to do, especially during COVID-19 times — someday he will explode!) saying that this person was a disgusting piece of manflesh, a rotting corpse of incipient ineluctable indolence -- in other words -- a sycophant slut. And all this was true. I can’t deny it. This potential invitee was (and is) what we fags call a 'glory hole voyeur' (which -- for all you straights -- is something like a poll-watcher, but not exactly the same) anyway, my boyf was right that this person was barely alive — in the sense of deserving the moniker of ‘human.’ “I won’t have him in our house!” He yelled (something he has often said about various people, since).  I told him I was fully aware that this poor excuse for a breathing sentient animal was detestable. “And why would you want to have him at our party?” -- my boyfriend screeched. I wanted to turn his volume down, but my boyf is not a TV or digital device -- which is of course one of the reasons why I love him. Instead I tried to explain that parties were indeed places where you meet people that you do not like, and that is one of the reasons for parties. He didn’t understand, and I tried to explain -- as one might to a small child -- that the point of parties is that you go home afterwards and gossip about all the horrible people you have met (which he and I have actually done). But most of all, you have the opportunity of confronting ‘the other' at close quarters. In other words unlike on the internet, where you hang out only with other  'Proud Boys' or 'others who believe that those who don't use the proper pronouns should be burned at the stake,' you will meet people who think and look differently than you (hopefully). That’s life, --or that’s living breathing socialising life, which is something we have none of now. (Hence why I am dream of what was once called parties but what we now call dangerous social gatherings of more than 10 people!)  And the theatre is like a party. I always like to tell the story of Susan Cole, prominent NOW columnist (if NOW still exists, does it?) and lesbian playwright, who was sitting in my seat when Elaine Stritch came to Toronto (was she at The Wintergarden?). Anyway there was Susan -- and she hates me and I hate her -- we’ve both gone on about it quite publicly for years (just to be perfectly clear, I'm Bette Davis and she is Joan Crawford!) and she smiled in that way she has and said with just the right dose of charitable condescension: “I’ve always wanted to ask — what is it that gay men find so fascinating about Elaine Stritch?” This reaked of the essentialism that so characterized her column and her aesthetic. I just said “Because she’s f-ing talented!” (I will not bother to fill in the blanks.) But I’ll always remember that encounter (and it was my seat by the way, and she did vacate it at my polite request)-- because I cherish it -- just as I cherish our mutual acrimony. I’m sure Susan Cole is a nice person, or I hope she is (I used to know her sister too, who was the salt of the earth, so maybe you know the acorn doesn’t far fall from the tree -- or whatever the saying is -- though I think it only applies to parents and children). Because Susan Cole and I would never voluntarily share the same air, but here we were forced to. And being forced to share the same air is de rigeur nowadays (in Quebec I think you can go to jail for it). But probably the most eloquent (I hope) symbol of my love of theatre is embodied by that faggot I always used to see at the opera. He used to get all dolled up -- spangles and tight gold pants -- and he must have been ninety years old (well these days, because of Grindr, 50 is the new 80). Here was a man who I would be frightened to meet in person (only because it would be far too much like looking in a mirror) as I am a sad old faggot who would in his heart wear sequinned pants if he could. (I wore a sequinned mask and beautiful red dress when I went in drag to RM Vaughan’s funeral, and people treated me like I had leprosy. But I have had so much sex in my lifetime that I probably do. And I mustn’t hold it against them -- they were COVID CRAZY ARTISTS and scared, many of them, of being caught loitering in a park  -- in daylight -- as the actress said to the bishop! -- and afraid to admit they were even there…). But I am, like everyone, of course, afraid to confront my own self when I meet myself in person. So I would never want to actually wish to meet this sad old faggot I always see at the opera -- but to be able to have a glimpse of him before settling into my seat was routinely transcendental. You will notice when I talk about theatre I only talk about the audience, never the play; well that’s what it’s been about, since Shakespeare’s time, when the theatres were right next to the whorehouses, and people were screwing in the wings -- and the balcony -- never mind the floor. Yes I cried when this young woman talked about the plush seats and bright lights of her very first Hairspray experience. I miss it all so dreadfully, and it’s all coming back to me now, and I am prostrate with grief. Really. Who cares? No one… Shakespeare, somewhere, is wiping away a tear, and perhaps Joe Orton, who probably also got blown in a men’s washroom at one of his openings (and yes, in case you were wondering. that is a double entendre --which is something you are liable to find in the theatre, and in the audience, too….)