On Writing, Not Singing

Over the weekend, I went to an LGBT themed brunch, where I must admit, I felt like a bit of a hypocrite; on the other hand, I still certainly count as solidly B.

In any event, I met someone there who is a high-level Broadway producer, and when another one of the guests mentioned that he had written something and the producer politely agreed to look at it, I just bit the bullet and told him about my play Duet. (If anyone is interested in reading it, you can post a comment with your real email address - which I will delete later if you ask me to). I don't actually know how this play got written. My mother always wanted me to "be" a writer (I - to my disappointment - got the English medal not the music medal when I graduated from High School) so I probably do write a lot better than I sing, but I had never written fiction before.

But when all the brouhaha was going on with The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed, and there was really no one I could talk to because everyone I knew was either a friend of my partner's or of his, this play just sort of wrote itself. I mean he was very funny and a bit pretentious. An excellent voice teacher, yes, but besides his not knowing the difference between being seductive and being supportive, or being seductive and being appreciative, or what you will, he also did spout a lot of new-agey claptrap that was quite funny when I put it all down on paper.

The line of the decade (after hearing me sing "Mon Coeur)":

TMWSNBD: What are you singing about there. Translate it for me.

ME: My heart opens at your voice like a flower at the kiss of dawn.

TMWSNBD: Sooooooo. What kind of flower do you think she's talking about?

This play did have its world premier at a small community theater in Texas and sitting in the audience hearing people laugh at the lines I had written, which came from the torment I had suffered, just put me over the moon. I think the play is really good. It's funny and well-written. If it were a movie it would be called a "chick flick". The off-Broadway theaters I had sent it to weren't interested....not edgy enough, but even people from there seemed to be impressed with it.

So who knows? Maybe that tortured and transformative phase of my life will live on forever?