Tag Archives: friendship

03.01.26
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Time Step

A dear friend of mine died suddenly this week and suddenly nothing else mattered. 

David Arthur was so many things.  An actor, a dancer, a singer, a songwriter, a novelist and the single person in my life who knew the most about Broadway and the American musical theatre.

Our Dear David

Now, being a gay man of a certain age, I do not say the latter lightly.  Of course, I have MANY friends who excel in this area, many of whom read this blog and will be quite upset at this statement. 

However, none had the breadth of knowledge over so many shows over so many decades.  Or still hung on to rare recordings of Bea Lillie, Tallulah Bankhead, Mary Martin, Julie Andrews, et al in _________ or performing __________ on the radio, or performing their nightclub act where they did patter and a song that was cut from ________, or… well, you get the picture.

I met David in the late 1970s through one of the most caring, memorable and certainly most talented people I knew at the time, or ever, the late Brian Lasser. We were walking on the west side of Manhattan to meet this guy who he claimed “is the funniest person I know.”

reaction, sassy, really, hmm, see, i see you, oh really, yeah right, sus, i see, told you so, i dont think so, o rly, you already know, you sure, dubious, i doubt
Funniest?! I’ll be the judge

Now, being a gay man of the certain age, in the 1970s, I can tell you there were A LOT of funny people.  But Brian, as usual, was correct.

Can I remember a single thing David said at that first meeting?  Certainly not!  Only that somewhere there was a story about either Noel Coward or Elaine Stritch (Note: Probably both) mixed with a diatribe of backstage gossip about pretty much every show that was playing at the time on Broadway.

Man, we had so much fun. And neither one of them are around anymore to remind me of exactly what we talked about.

Of course, they are still here…somewhere. 

But it’s not quite the same. 

Miss you both

Though I do remember Brian telling me about the time he went to see David play Captain Hook in a summer stock production of Peter Pan somewhere in the Midwest and regaling about how hilarious he was. 

And how many liberties he took with the “character.” 

At one point he had Hook dancing the Charleston back and forth across the stage doing jazz hands.

This reminds me of the time some years later David took pity on me – soooo not a professional dancer – and granted my request for him to teach me how to tap dance. 

All my life I wanted to tap dance and was too embarrassed to try it.

I even invented a character for it – the gangster Jimmy DeMarco.

No Comment At All GIFs - Find & Share on GIPHY
Go ahead with it Chairy!

Jimmy was not tall but somewhat more, well, diminutive, like me – think George M. Cohan adjacent with a tommy gun and a black and white suit.  But he had a heart of gold underneath.  And he could really, REALLY dance.

It is not a lie to say that for two f’n hours David stood on the linoleum floor in my kitchen and tried, tried and TRIED to teach me to tap.

I was absolutely AWFUL!   I mean, like appallingly bad.  I could hear what he was telling me to do but my feet just wouldn’t friggin’ do it.  He told me eventually they would.  And that suddenly I’d “get it.”

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills': Hallowmean – foolish watcher
I did not have faith

So he stayed with me, kept at it and eventually, EVENTUALLY I managed to do something that approached… not even a time step.

Though he was kind enough to tell me I was….getting it.  And would’ve kept going long past those two hours.  But now I decided to take pity on him and say we should stop before Jimmy had a heart attack.

This brilliantly funny man, who was flown in to teach honors high school students with three left feet at New Trier High School in Chicago year after year for their big musical, and toured all over the world in Bubbling Brown Sugar, would have stayed in in that hot apartment in West Hollywood coaching a fictional character to dance for as many hours as it took just because I wanted to.

Gosh, it was so……psychotic!

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Not at all how I looked, but how David made me feel!

And yeah, I was really, really, REALLY Baaaaaad.

Here’s one of David’s favorite Broadway performers – the great Gwen Verdon – who, of course, he met a bunch of times and also had funny stories about I will tell to one of two of you privately – in a clip from The Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s.

Such joyous talent.  As he was.

“If They Could See Me Now” – Gwen Verdon on The Ed Sullivan Show

08.21.23
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Patty

A close colleague and dear friend passed away very suddenly the other day after a very short illness.   Her name was Patty Zimmermann and she was a real presence and a force of nature.

She was a combination and contradiction of so many things. 

Film scholar, intellectual, brilliant, challenging, hard working, determined and indefatigable.

A tough cookie yet a sensitive soul who could break out into tears if she trusted you.  A pusher who never stopped pushing but, more importantly, never stopped pushing you or encouraging you with some project or notion or thought you might not have thought much of.

Oh, and a loving mom and wife and friend. 

Very much so.

And no, of course, she wasn’t perfect. 

At all.

But which of us are?

If you can think of anyone to put on that list, you’re lying.

Patty and I were about the same age and I’ve lived long enough to experience enough loss to know the drill. 

In roughly this order there is shock, devastation, sadness, loneliness, love, healing, recovery and, finally, renewal. 

But, well, you are never the same after you lose someone.

A piece of them is imprinted on you that shapes who you are and how you proceed with your life.

Maybe this sounds insightful but, truly, it doesn’t really scratch the surface of much of anything. 

Especially since I keep coming back to one basic thought –

How can someone be told they’re sick one day and then, less than three weeks later, be dead?

How could I be talking or texting with them one day and then the next day, or a few days later, they’re gone?

Well, because they can – in three years, three weeks, three days or three seconds.

And none of us wants to think too much about that because, if we did, well, not much of anything would get accomplished.

So since Patty would have none of that, here’s what I want to share:

It’s not about her many essays, books, accolades, challenges, friends, families, anecdotes and philosophies.

I’ve been reading about them all over social media and if you google her name you can find out about them too.

It’s about her and me and human connection.

About seven years ago I was facing a very serious medical challenge that I don’t talk much about.  I’m okay now, as far as we know.  But it was difficult and tricky for me for a lot of reasons.  And even though I never stated them, somehow she knew.

When you’re facing something big, if you’re lucky, you get a lot of support.  But what you also get are a lot of surprises.  People run away because they can’t deal with mess. 

Actually, what they can’t deal with is their own mortality, but that’s another subject. 

Just know, for all the people who are there, expectedly or unexpectedly, there are a whole lot of others who keep their distance because they can’t deal with being close.

This was not Patty.

We lived on different coasts and didn’t see each other all that often.  We were in touch, but not constantly.  She and my husband were closer friends and colleagues but he didn’t tell her everything.

And yet, she knew what I needed that I didn’t have.

Those handwritten notes on durable cream-colored note cards. 

Words of encouragement and cheerleading and support and compliments and strength from an across-the-country one person cheering squad.

Not constantly but consistently.  For years.  Often turning up out of the blue just when I needed them.

This is not to say that I didn’t have incredible love and devotion from people right here in my daily life.  And in other places.

But what writer doesn’t like to get handwritten missives, written with a good pen, in thoughtful, pithy, positive, passionate phrasing?  Who doesn’t want that validation?  Who doesn’t want to steal some strength?

I still have them.  And there were many. 

I once told her how much I appreciated them but I’m not sure how much she understood.  I’d read them over if I suddenly got down.  I’d keep them in my top drawer by my bed, alongside bills that had to be paid or lists of stuff I had to accomplish. 

Just in case I needed a lift.

I didn’t even have to read them.  In fact, I didn’t re-read them all that much.

It was more the feeling and the sight of them.  The fact that they were there and that I could look at them or not look at them anytime I wanted to.  I could use them to remember or to steady myself.  Or ignore them and bury them under a mountain of paper I didn’t want to have to deal with if I was choosing to forget.

What I never did was file them away.

This might not seem like a lot but it meant a lot for reasons I can only now begin to understand. 

Patty was a big supporter of this blog, reposting it frequently and talking it up to a voluminous list of her colleagues and friends. 

She recommended me for writing assignments, helped me navigate the waters of academia when I segued into a new career and accepted me into her extended family soon after my husband and I met.

I have a lot to be appreciative for but it’s the notes that mean the most and taught me the most. 

As I’ve told my students for years, you never know what effect your writing will have on someone else. 

And yet somehow, the power of the notes, her notes, continue to endure and surprise me.

Rest in Power, dear comrade.  I miss you already.  So much.

John Lennon – “Power to the People”