Oh, Penny: Part II

Penny Arcade is a petite lady, of voluptuous shape. When I meet up with her, I notice she is much shorter than my own 5’1 ¼” inches, that she must have been wearing heels when I first met her. Her face is wiped clean of makeup, so her eyes are much brighter and friendlier, with the hint of the finest lines at the corners. I notice now she has small dimples on the tops of her cheeks, so whenever she swears it’s like listening to a delightfully foul-mouthed doll. She is wearing a black lace and sequin dress, having just come from a funeral, with royal blue ballet flats covering her tiny feet (her light pink high heels are wrapped in newspaper in her silver snakeskin bag, since she stepped in gum while wearing them earlier).

She called me this morning to tell me our itinerary for the day. I was to meet her at 2pm in the lobby of a building near Madison Square Park. We would then talk for a bit, get on the train, and I would then accompany her to her physical therapy session and wait for her in the lobby, and we would talk some more. I was happy to go wherever I was led.

As we leave the lobby, she notices her bag keeps messing up the sequins on her dress and asks me to carry it. On the way to Madison Square Park, she begins talking about exactly what I asked to hear—her life. Even before we sit down on a bench, I am enthralled. She reaches into her snakeskin tote and finds a yellow pack of Natural American Spirits, striking a flame from a Duane Reade matchbook with eventual success.

As the cigarette burns, I listen again with rapt attention as she talks about what it means to be an East Village artist, that close-knit community of out-of-the-box thinkers and doers of performance art, sculpture, music, you name it based solely in the East Village. It means to be a part of a kind of community that doesn’t exist like it used to, she says. People get further and further away from each other with technology, even though technically it brings them ‘closer together.’ I smile. I’ve believed for a while that no amount of text messaging replaces the warmth of someone’s voice, though I have been known to bend toward technology on occasion, much to the disdain of my mother.

She talks about art not being equal to poverty, that who the hell are these kids who live off their parents and do nothing and move to Williamsburg because ‘that’s where the artists are?’ She is incensed. No! The artists are here! Doing their art! Living amongst artists does not make you an artist.

She talks about the exclusionary nature of modern homosexuality (Arcade describes herself as a bisexual faghag), about the Howl! Festival and Debbie Harry and Patti Smith and performance artists like Ethel Eichelberger and Karen Finley and how 22-year-old women do not want to sleep with the 60-year-old men who hit on them at art galleries. She says nobody is enthusiastic anymore, that everyone thinks they’re an expert and they don’t value the people who came before them. It’s a youth culture, she says, which is good for entrepreneurship but bad for knowing where you came from.

As we walk to the subway, she tells me how she liked John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous Theatre better than Andy Warhol’s factory crowd because the factory was too disorganized. On the train, she tells me how she went to Spain and performed with a communist puppet theatre. One night she brought home an American sailor and the leader of the group yelled at her the next morning, telling her she was a whore, that she smelled like a whore. “I don’t smell like a whore!” she said. “This is Kiehl’s! I’m wearing Kiehl’s! It smells like rain.”

Her eyes sparkle as she imparts story after story, idea after idea. Soon, she asks me about myself. I tell her freelance work is nice for me right now because I never really liked taking orders from anyone. I think this resonates with her and she squints with happiness. “I like you,” she says. “You’ve got guts.” I am floating. Penny Arcade thinks I have guts. There was never so fantastic a moment on the N train.

We walk toward Columbus Circle and into her physical therapist’s office. ‘I’ll be 30 minutes,’ she says with a smile. She leaves and I try to process everything. I want to remember all of the details, all of the stories she tells, all of the names she mentions. Quentin Crisp, a writer and dear friend who called her “Miss Arcade” and with whom she once went to a leather bar, among other things; Taylor Mead, a performer who, at 86 years old, still performs once a week at the Bowery Poetry Club; about being the ‘little sister of the avant-garde,’ because avant-garde is not a style, she tells me, her mouth moving around the word ‘style’ with disdain, it is an artistic movement.

While I am still processing, Penny comes back out, and we sit and chat some more but eventually our time comes to an end. “Do you have any more questions for now?” she asks, genuinely curious. No, I say, but I could listen to you talk all day. It’s the truth.

We walk outside and while Penny has another cigarette, I am happy that she wants to talk to me some more. She leans against the window of a Pax restaurant, her elbow in the photo of a giant wheat flatbread sandwich. She tells me about her book, ‘Bad Reputation,’ a collection of performances, essays, and interviews and its (non)review in The New Yorker. She tells me about the success of Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, her long-running performance in the 1990s (her name still stands on the cornerstone of Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street. The venue used to be the famed Village Gate nightclub, and Arcade's show was the last to be performed there, along with Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris). She tells me how people used to tell her she looked like famed Italian actress Giulietta Masina and wanted her to run off to Hollywood and join the circus (read: the industry), but she chose to stay here in New York and is always glad she did so.

I am too. I think the world needs people like Penny, who do whatever feels right for them despite what other people tell them is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. There’s grand happiness to be found following your bliss, not someone else’s. She wants to pass on what she knows to people like me, she says, because people did it for her, too. How else are you going to learn?, she says. I am honored that she has chosen me as a worthy vessel for her wisdom.

Penny’s cigarette burns out and I walk with her to her last destination for the day. We part ways with big smiles ‘I like our little relationship,’ she says. We give each other a great big hug and promise to get together upon her return. I wave and walk away, smiling. What is this life? Is it even real? I shake my head in disbelief. I still wonder if it really happened.

Oh, Penny: Part I

This story starts with a book. It is torn, weatherbeaten, highlighted and tabbed into oblivion, and it is the closest thing I have ever had to a Bible. The book is ‘Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk’, a book I have read and reread so many times that I see the story of punk unfolding in front of me every time; I know its plot twists and turns, and I know all of the characters by name.

I elevate this book to mythical proportions because during a time in my life when I understood nothing, when I felt like a joke missing a punchline, I still understood this book. It starts in New York, the home of punk, tracing the development of the genre along with its side-genres and subcultures. More than the history of punk, though, Please Kill Me reaffirmed my love for New York, for all of its acceptance of wild, abstract thought and not-so-misspent youth. It made me understand the beautiful messiness of creativity, how the muse worked, what a community meant, how people learned about themselves. This book gave me hope that one day I would never have to see another minivan, that I could meet insightful, intellectual, artistic people who would become my friends, that the life of creativity I wanted for myself was real.

As much as I relished every part of ‘Please Kill Me’, as far as I knew I would never come in contact with any of its colorful cast of characters—most were either far too famous (although I did meet David Johansen once), far too on the fringe or far too dead for me to ever really meet them. But New York is funny that way—it’s so big, but it’s still so, so small because so many of its communities overlap, especially in the arts—and you never really know who you’re going to meet or see where.

**

This story continues last Tuesday, when I had the distinct pleasure of attending Book Club Burlesque, a raunchy, bawdy, and so, so smart burlesque variety show at the Parkside Lounge on the Lower East Side. Each monthly Book Club Burlesque is inspired by a particular work of literature (past shows have been themed Lolita, Mutiny on the Bounty, A Handmaid’s Tale, etc.), and the show I attended was themed after Louis L’amour, the prolific Western writer. A slew of performers in and out of drag and back in again performed Western-inspired acts, like a naughty Native American trading her clothes for whisky, or a drag Dolly Parton (portrayed by the incredible, chiseled and glittery artiste Faux Pas) disrobing to forget her sad, country heart. There were also musicians and comedians on the bill. None, however, was as unreal a surprise as the last guest performer on the bill, one Miss Penny Arcade.

At the announcement of her name, I gripped the leg of CH, my guest that evening, in pure disbelief.  A shriek-whisper shot from my mouth. “HOLY SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! PENNY ARCADE! THIS IS NOT REAL THIS IS NOT REAL.” I covered my eyes with my hands and slid them down my face. If I were standing I would have fallen over. I was sitting and I still almost fell over. The entire synopsis of Please Kill Me ran through my brain again. One of its memorable characters sat before me. My jaw dropped, and my mouth stayed open for probably the next ten minutes, my eyes sparkling in the room’s darkness. What the fuck is my life right now?

“Who is she?” CH whispered to me. I didn’t mind that he didn’t know because many don’t. To merely list the facts, Penny Arcade is an internationally renowned performance artist, famous for critiquing culture in a loud, opinionated and generally challenging way. She speaks openly about sexuality, art, cultural values, and what we need to do to fix each of them. She appeared in a film by Andy Warhol entitled Women in Revolt, is the author of her own one-woman plays, and has been a staple to New York’s downtown performance art scene (and the international performance art scene) for myriad years. One of the places she began her career with theatre director and playwright John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous Theatre, a gay-friendly experimental theatre group in 1970s New York. It is here that she becomes part of Please Kill Me, narrating her experiences in the growing art movement downtown and coming into contact with people like Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.

You don’t forget a lady like Penny Arcade. You don’t forget a name like Penny Arcade.

She has bleach blonde hair with dark black layers underneath, thick black liner on her eyelids, darkened brows and pink lips. She is wearing a white dress and speaks in a throaty voice caressed by years of cigarettes. She reads a piece called Cowboy Mouth (not named for the Sam Shepard play, but rather for the Bob Dylan song “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”), about being post-menopausal and feeling aroused for the first time in a while. In it, she says, “If The Vagina Monologues were really feminist, they’d be called The Clitoris Monologues.” I am sold. As I sit, rapt with attention and my mouth still hanging open, I know I must go talk to her after the show. I must say thank you, it was such a pleasure to hear you read. I must say I never thought in my wildest dreams I would get to see you in person, much less see you perform.

Thankfully, though, I introduce myself and only say the first part. Penny is kind and says thank you and CH takes a picture of us. She asks about what I do, who I am. I answer coherently and we chat for a bit, but the only thing running through my mind is “PENNYARCADECARESABOUTSOMETHINGIHAVETOSAYOHMYGODOHMYGOD” I must sound flustered because she says with a smile, “You know, I’m just a person,” her big green eyes searching for recognition on my face. I smile, and my brain calms down a bit. But then she says, “Are you on Facebook? Do you have an email address?” and my brain talks in all caps again. “PENNYARCADEWANTSTOKEEPINTOUCHWITHME?????” I have more difficulty with the words this time, but I write down my info on the back of her piece like she asks. CH and I leave, and I bury my face in his shoulder, squealing with delight. “It’s like you’re starstruck,” he says. It’s true, I am. But at the same time, I don’t expect to hear from her ever again. I mean, I’m just some flustered person who talked to her after a show. What could possibly happen?

Well, she could friend me on Facebook and email me some articles she was featured in. I could nearly fall off my couch in excitement and then have the guts to ask if she would meet with me and tell me about her experiences and she would say yes of course and then I would cry tears of joy in my apartment.

Penny is incredibly welcoming, and willing to make space in her very busy schedule for me before she leaves to Europe for a month and change. It is now a week later and my brain is still tripping over itself as I get dressed to go meet her. What does one wear to hang out with a legend, anyway?

**

DIVA

There’s a certain feeling you get when you hear a completely perfect sound. It starts at the tops of your shoulders, then runs up and down your arms, prickling your flesh and making  the hair on the tops of your arms stand up. There are tons of places one might expect to hear such sounds—on Broadway, at the Opera, in a recording. And in a gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen on a Monday night.

On a busier night, like a Friday or Saturday, there’s a line of people, mostly men with the occasional woman, waiting to offer up their IDs to the bouncers in front of the black, unmarked façade of Industry, on 52nd Street between 8th and 9th Avenue. Tonight there’s none, save for a few men smoking behind velvet ropes. Two them are young men in short shorts and canvas loafers, hair messed boyishly with just the right amount of product, cigarettes dangling from their lithe, manicured fingers. They speak with the lilt of high school valley girls about who’s on the bill tonight, taking drags of gossip between inhalations.

At Marty Thomas’s DIVA show, the ladies always on the bill are the accomplished and talented Kelly King, Kat Hennessey, Anne Fraser Thomas, and of course Marty Thomas himself. Each has performed around the globe in shows like Wicked, Xanadu, and Cirque du Soleil; they’ve won Grammys and topped the Billboard charts. And on Monday nights at Industry, they don only their most sparkly attire and present their voices to you for absolutely no cover.

Kelly King

TL originally took me to Industry to see DIVA, and I could not believe my ears. It was only in the theatre that I had previously heard such voices, belting powerful notes high and mighty. But on a tiny little stage in the back of a gay bar, I was treated to a sassy, silly, perfect little show where all four divas sang the greats—Whitney, Cyndi, “And I Am Telling You” from Dreamgirls, “Defying Gravity” from Wicked; you know, the things divas sing. Because you might be able to hit some notes honey, but if you can’t bring it home then get off the stage.

Kat Hennessey

Luckily, all of the divas bring it, free performance or not. Marty, the charismatic producer and emcee who Time Out New York once called ‘a human spangle’, hits notes I thought impossible for a man but still manages to make them sound impeccable; Kelly is a teeny woman in big ol’ stilettos whose voice is the flawless stuff of dreams; Kat is a redhead with a sweet, friendly belt; and Anne is another sassy belter who loves the crowd.  

Anne Fraser Thomas

There is big, glamorous hair, shimmering stage makeup, shiny costumes, choreography, lights, a disco ball, the works—it’s nice to know that even though this is a smaller show in a gay bar, the performers take it seriously enough to put on a good, practiced show, but still have enough fun with it so the audience doesn’t feel ashamed to hoot, holler, snap multiple times in a row, and say “YES, BITCH!” and “WORKKK!” when they’re blown away by the performers’ sparkling high notes.

It’s the kinds of shows like this that are possible in places like New York, where people just love what they do and want to share it with others. The singers are a part of a tight-knit community of performers that support each other and come out to see each other no matter where they are (I was pleasantly surprised to find that several Broadway actors were in the DIVA audience along with your humble Miss Manhattan, snapping and shouting away with love at their favorite diva).

Thomas started the show to bring together fantastic entertainers from all across the New York performance scene, be they from cabarets or the Broadway stage. As he says in the DIVA promo, “I thought I’d bring my closest friends, who sing higher than anyone I know…” The rest falls together wonderfully, with Marty, the talented ladies and a weekly guest diva putting on a fun show that’s worth far more than you’ll pay for it. It’s delightful, it’s sparkly, it’s fierce. It’s DIVA.

Sleeps Well With Others

The one thing you will love--or hate, depending on who you are—about your apartment in New York is the amount of people who will be staying with you for innumerable weekends of the year. I am one of those people who absolutely loves this—I love sharing my take on the city with others, painting the town red, finding new and crazy things to do, and experiencing the city through new eyes each time someone visits.

When I was in high school, my house was never the house where everyone came to hang out because everyone I knew lived 30 minutes away from me. But because so few people have room for extra people in their apartment, mine is happily the one they choose for their weekend getaways. I enjoy hostessing an impossible amount: can I get you some water? There are towels in the linen closet. Something to eat? Because if your guests are visiting from out of town, why should they not feel like royalty?

Every time people visit and ask me to take them out, my soul feels all warm and fuzzy. It means I get to share my part of the city, part of myself, with people I love. I’m sure every New Yorker feels this way. There are places that are your standbys, that even your visitors come to love and request specifically to visit when they’re in town. So far, for me, this includes: MacBar, Beauty Bar, The Sunburnt Calf, The Meatball Shop, and The Strand Bookstore, among others.

Yes, there do get to be points where it feels like I’m running a Bed and Breakfast—so and so is in this weekend, what’s-his-face is in the week after that. It can get exhausting, and sometimes I just want a weekend to myself. Everyone comes to New York because, well, it’s New York. On the whole, though, I love the company and I love that with each different set of visitors your itinerary will vary. At least I’m not doing the same thing every weekend. For example, SD will come in and she'll want to go to the theatre and find some cool coffee shops. KriTo and TDS will want to shopppppping and danciiiiiiing and maybe to a museum. It tests and develops my New York know-how: how do I show these people a good time when they've already been to visit many times? But somehow I make it work and we all end up coffee-ing or dancing the night away.

I wonder if it’s a cyclical phenomenon, this people-coming-to-visit thing. Of course, who doesn’t want to go to New York, but maybe sometimes New York is just a happy side effect of seeing a friend?

…maybe not. I mean, it is ‘The Greatest City in the World’ we’re talking about here.

Even so, I’m happy to have people, no matter their reasons for showing up at my door. It’s been everything from auditions to interviews to school trips to vacations. And yes, maybe they wouldn’t be coming way down to South Florida to visit, but that’s a proximity thing. It’s one of the reasons I’m glad I live in New York, actually—it’s the Greatest City in the World, so it draws the Greatest People in the World. It made the college/real-life transition so much easier, knowing I’d see the shining faces of my college friends multiple times per year.

So despite all the schlepping around Manhattan and occasionally Brooklyn, I adore my visitors. Especially at 4:30am when we all sit in my living room, partially hammered from a night out dancing our asses off at Fat Baby and Pianos on the Lower East Side, eating plantain chips with hummus and bullshitting about life, there is really no place else I’d rather be.

Long and Hot

…the summer, I mean.

 I know what summer means, typically. It means barbeques, suntan lotion, saltwater, chlorine, tan lines, not feeling bad about having ice cream in the middle of the afternoon, and candy-colored drinks with little umbrellas in them. Some of these things you get in New York, others not so much; and some things are an entirely different animal.

Coming from South Florida, I know heat—sweating after being outside for a full minute in places you forgot you had glands. But New York is different. At least in South Florida, you have to drive everywhere, and if you’re lucky your car has air conditioning. Not so in New York, where walking and public transit are the norms. Walking to the subway, there’s a soft but intense heat that swaths itself around you as if it was an overcautious school nurse wrapping a bandage around your leg just a little too tight—it’s not uncomfortable, per se, but  makes your limbs throb and it’s almost a challenge to feel your toes. As you descend the stairs underground, however, the bandage gets tighter and tighter and tighter…

Going underground is a little like being in a sauna against your will. Sweat begins to glisten on your face more and more with each minute you wait for the train. By minute five, sweat begins to form droplets on the upper lip and we all pray we are never the unlucky soul who waits more than 10 minutes for we will surely melt. It is, as KriTo would say, “some Wizard of Oz shit.” But when that train comes whizzing past, it brings a glorious rush of cool air that sweeps your hair up and the droplets away, saving the day each time. Inside the train, we lean voluntarily against cool metal poles that we would normally avoid like the plague for fear of actually catching plague. Summer means abandoning fear in pursuit of anything cold. The once calorie-conscious nursing student eats her frozen yogurt on the train with gusto. Teenagers recklessly sip Slurpee Big Gulps, for once not worried about looking cool. Even the financier on his way down to Wall Street chooses a pretty pink frappuccino to fight the heat.

Despite previous commentary, though, I don’t hate the heat. If anything, I find it a worthy adversary. I admire its wit and cunning. For example, when all year fashionistas pursue dewy, glowing skin with this potion and that cream, summer bestows it upon all of us for no charge and suddenly they prefer the matte look. I enjoy finding new ways to beat the heat, be it via my own frozen yogurt or eating a salad or even just letting it warm me up because, well, if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. I like the way summer shines itself onto my nose and cheekbones because it makes me look alive, living in the moment. And summer makes walking in the rain almost enjoyable—it’s like the weather’s way of saying, ‘Oh, sorry for all that heat, bro. Let’s cool it off a little. My bad!’

Summer in New York is like a three month-long celebration. Everyone is outside all the time, playing on roofs and in parks. Some of this playtime includes rooftop and park movies. I had the pleasure of attending HBO’s Bryant Park Film Festival this past Monday. The festival shows classic films every Monday night all summer. I chose this night to attend the Bryant Park Film Festival for the first time because of Marilyn. Miss Monroe and I have always had a very important connection, though I cannot explain to you how it works or why it exists. When I saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was on the upcoming bill, I wrote it in my agenda weeks in advance and urged HL to come with me. Who wouldn’t love to sit in a park and watch a movie? I’m pretty sure this is one of the things that makes summer in New York.

There’s a big, flat lawn in the middle of Bryant Park, surrounded by tables, chairs, and a walk-up café or three. They roll out the lawn in the spring because in the winter it’s an ice-skating rink. And when it’s a Monday night in summer, it’s absolutely packed to the gills with people, all facing a tall movie screen at the front of the park, on 6th Avenue. Since the movie started around 9, I thought if I arrived around 8 there would certainly be a patch of grass for me somewhere.

Barely true. I wedged myself between a series of lady groups who had spread their picnic blankets over larger areas, leaving just enough room for a small lady like I to heave my giant bag next to me and save room for HL, who was coming later. I unwrapped my salad and read my GQ, waiting for the movie to start. Next to me, girls chattered drunken mistakes, couples laughed, and every so often someone would stand up and wave at a friend just entering the park, guiding them towards their sitting place. Said friend would then gingerly make their way on tiptoe through the spaces on the lawn not covered up by someone else’s blankets or towels. It takes more skill, balance, and precision than one might think.

Eventually, though, you sit, and the movie begins. There are a couple of previews and a Bank of America commercial (they sponsor the festival), and then the HBO intro. It’s an old one, from the early ‘80s probably, and everyone gets up to dance and clap their way through it. Then the movie begins with a giant roar of applause from the audience. Then, in a flash, there are Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell up on the screen in shimmering red sequin gowns and feather headdresses singing “We’re just two little girls from Little Rock…” The audience applauds at the end of each musical number, laughs in the proper places, oohs, aaahs, smiles and then the movie ends.

People filter out of the park in droves, down into the subway for more heat or walking for a bit to take in the refreshing night air they’ve been blessed with. That same summer dew nestles onto their faces as they enter their homes, opening the windows and letting the night air whisk in a breeze along with the sounds of dogs barking, taxis honking, and traffic rushing in the distance.