One Night

The subject matter was in question. The subject matter of the play I was in. A particular conscious mother of the community familiarized herself with the play and seemed hell bent on shutting us down near opening night. My father followed pace and removed me from the play, forbidding me to take part in such sexually suggestive dialogue.

When I was growing up, my father would always be the voice of affirmation during a movie that may have been questionable at home. "Don't worry," he'd say, "it's just a movie.

They were just actors, acting, playing out a story, pretending. I wanted to be one of them, an actor.

Plaza Suite was the title of the play, written by Neil Simon. I was playing the role of a sleazy producer, trying to seduce an old girlfriend, who was now married with children.

Weeks I had worked to learn lines, emotions and blocking. All to be pulled out at the last moment. I feel now he was trying to save me from something, or he was trying to teach me a lesson. Either way, I didn't get an explanation. He wouldn't talk to me, nor I to him. I was angry, to say the least. Maybe he was doing this to me to perhaps divert my educational career path, to keep me out of the theater. 

The night before we were supposed to perform, the phone rang. I jumped up. I was standing on my pink bedroom carpet. I heard my fathers' footsteps upstairs, going for the phone. I slipped down the hallway to eavesdrop. 

"Yeah, hello...?" There was silence for the longest time, but he hadn't hung up yet, I could hear a girls voice on the other end, faintly. It was several more minutes until I heard his voice, "Ok, bye."

The phone was hung up, so I snuck back down the hallway, slid across the pink carpet, and into my bed.

I heard my fathers' voice in my doorway. "You can do it..." That was all.

Whatever, she, my young sweet costar, had said to him had convinced him to let me be in the show, after all.

So I went under the spotlight, in my first real featured role, without my father in the audience. He'd let me do it, but he wouldn't be witness to it. My father taught me to power of silence and absence. I much prefer the absence. It would be years before he attended another of my many shows.

I can totally understand that along the way he had to say no to some of my characters. I definitely did not want my father to be there to see me portray a possessive, gay antique dealer. No, for shame.

But, if he'd been there, I could've been changed for the better. If only just for one night.