jonathan larson would be disappointed in me
the ship is sort of sinking, so let’s start drinking
One of my jobs involves hosting high energy bus tours, that lead audience members through 75 minutes of “flash mob mischief” through midtown Manhattan. Performers on the street include, but are not limited to, a rapper, singer/saxophone duo, and a lost Broadway wannabe. In the show, the character I play, “Jackie”, has seen Rent 32 times. When we hit that beat, we as hosts make a joke where I’ll say, “You’ll never guess how much that cost me either?” “How much?!” my other host asks, which is my cue to start singing, Five hundred twenty six thousand six hundred dollars. After holding for applause, I typically riff on how much of a Jonathan Larson stan I am, and then we move on to introducing something called “The Ride Quiz”. Curious for more? Check out our schedule at experiencetheride.com.
In reality though, I would be the type of human who would see Rent more than 32 times. This past holiday season, you could find me cat-sitting in Brooklyn googling, “how to stream Rent the movie musical version”. Much to my dismay, I learned that Rent is only available to view by renting for $4.99 on Amazon. Jonathan is probably rolling in his grave over that sick joke. Alas, refusing to be denied this one simple pleasure, you better believe that I venmo’d my friend the subject “YES IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE AND I’M WATCHING RENT”. I sat back on the leather couch in my comfies, cracked open a grape Olipop, and clicked play.
I think about Rent the musical often.
How can you connect in an age//Where strangers, landlords, lovers,//Your own blood cells betray//What binds the fabric together//When the raging, shifting winds of change//Keep ripping away
The first time I saw Rent the movie I was dating Kastel (pronounced Castille), my first love. Kastel was half Columbian, had big brown puppy dog eyes like Pedro Pascal, and a penchant for being mediocre at best to everything from the swim team to the saxophone to showchoir. We met through my friend Eric, who hosted movie nights — sorry, makeout orgy parties in his basement. Dating Kastel involved a lot of dry humping and heavy petting. I’d straddle him in my dark True Religion jeans and cropped green Hollister hooded cardigan, overtop a tight white camisole that pushed my Victoria Secret padded bra up enough to give the illusion I actually had tits. During high school football games, he’d stand behind me with his hands in the front of my hoodie. We would passionately makeout in front of the dumpsters after the school play. He was my freshman year homecoming date and the first guy to finger me. It happened in the Florida Room of my house, a room completely made of glass windows. He laid on top of me on the white wicker couch with floral red printed cushions, and Remember the Titans played on the tv while we waited for Papa Johns to arrive. My younger sibling I think witnessed the whole event when they were coming in from the backyard. Oops!
Kastel would be my on-again and off-again high school relationship. We became official right after Homecoming my freshman year. My main memories of that time were late night AIM (aol instant messenger for my Gen Z readers) chats that I would print out because it felt like love letters, and my parents opening the garage door on us as we kissed goodbye in the snow after the winter formal. I wore a tiny red dress with multiple sequin bands, and I remember feeling so cool when earlier that night, my carpool buddy’s older sister squealed with excitement when she saw me on the dance floor. I felt untouchable when she pulled me into her dance circle, and I got to grind against my boyfriend next to her and the cool Senior girls.
A few months later, we broke up. It happened over AIM. Obviously. I mourned by listening to Since You Been Gone approximately 6,000 times. Another few months went by, and one day he rode his bike to my house and we dry humped for an hour on my couch while my parents were still at work. This trend continued on and off all of high school. We’d hook up whenever he’d text me that he was going to bike over, not speak for weeks, and then randomly he’d send me an IM after *bringing flowers to my dance recital that my grandparents were also attending* that he “really missed me” and “was so glad he got to see me tonight”. It was a love story for the ages!
One of my favorite memories of Kastel was my sophomore year. We were at an all night dance-a-thon at my high school, and we fell asleep in the hallway next to the vending machines entangled for a few hours. It was probably one of the strongest feelings of safety I’ve ever experienced. Full oxytocin overload.
One of the worst memories I have of Kastel was my senior year of high school. He showed up at my front door in a snowstorm at 9pm. I had just convinced my parents to put on Mamma Mia on Netflix, and instead of sneaking out to meet Kastel on the road like a smart person, I thought it’d be better to have him ring the doorbell and I’d just play dumb that he “just so happened to be in the neighborhood on his bike in a snowstorm”. All I wanted was to feel like I was on an episode of The O.C. and makeout with my boyfriend in freshly fallen snow. Instead, my dad chased him out of the house and proceeded to have a horrible episode where my mom defended me claiming, “There’s no way she could have known!” I sobbed in my room, curled up in a ball of shame and guilt.
But back to Rent! The musical turned into a movie! Like any true musical theatre girlie, Rent sparked something in me. The second the piano plunked those pivotal opening chords for “Seasons of Love”, and the spotlights illuminated the entire cast on a bare stage, I had full body chills. I wanted to be Mimi dancing at the Cat Scratch Club! I wanted to feel the confidence of Maureen performing Over the Moon! I wanted to sing on top of the tables at an East Village cafe with my bohemian friends and have the audacity to scream “wine and beer!” even though we have no money to pay the bill! I wanted the type of love Angel and Rogers had! I wanted someone to rescue me while discovered in an alleyway dangerously high from an overdose, and sing me back to health with a special ballad about my eyes that took all year to write!!! Is that too much to ask!?
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For some reason, I always thought Jonathan Larson died of AIDS. Then again, I also thought that buffalo wings were from buffaloes, and that if you got pregnant as a teenager it was because God was punishing you for getting a bad grade on a test. Not a joke, just the result of my strict upbringing.
It didn’t really hit me until I saw Tick, Tick…Boom! (the Netflix film starring Andrew Garfield), that I learned Jonathan Larson actually died from a sudden aortic aneurysm the night of the show’s final dress rehearsal. He never got to see it. Can you imagine?
I can’t help but wonder what Jonathan Larson would think about my life today. I work at a hedge fund for a day job, but I am also writing my first novel. I retired from regional acting, but I still perform every weekend (technically on and off-Broadway) on a bus. I’ve waited tables, walked dogs, nannied British queens, worked front desk for a Miami inspired dance cardio brand and the indoor bowling alley best known as SoulCycle. I’ve even gotten paid $25/hour to flirt with corporate types, and ask if they would like to get a massage in exchange for having a consultation with a chiropractor. I’ve drank beer I can’t afford on the rooftops of the lower east side. I’ve performed in shitty basements in the East Village and underground cabarets on the west side. I’ve braved New York at 5am in the freezing dead of February to get on the unofficial list for an audition at Ripley Grier. I’ve belted 16 bars and performed a contrasting monologue hundreds of times, all in the hopes of finally getting my golden ticket out of waiting tables and subletting in Washington Heights to book a season at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park just to be a dresser waiting in the wings to assist the Equity actors with their quick changes during an extended run production of Shakespeare in Love. I’ve openly wept on the subway heartbroken and defeated at 2am on a Sunday, and I’ve also squealed with unbridled joy when I’ve gotten the call that I booked the job. I’ve screamed both “anarchy” and “death to capitalism!” at work. I’ve made out with girls. I’ve flown to Paris to workshop my essays with my favorite author. I’ve confessed my love to someone who didn’t deserve it on the streets of Bushwick at 3am in a sequin dress in the snow.
But still, I can’t help but wonder if Jonathan Larson would be disappointed in me. Disappointed in my life. If he’d be upset that I am helping the patriarchy and capitalism thrive by working at a hedge fund in order to pay my insanely high rent. The fact I no longer really audition. The fact that time is flying, and I have days where I can’t leave my couch, trapped by my sometimes debilitating depression. I wonder if he would want me to quit my job. If he’d want me to protest louder and more often. If he’d slap me on the wrist for paying so much money on athleisure and iced coffee. That I’m not performing my one woman show. That I’m putting off writing my book. That I rely so heavily on capitalistic structures and parameters to get my ass in motion.
The man wasn’t perfect. Tbh Tick, Tick…Boom! the movie makes it seem like he was a pretty shitty boyfriend. I mean, he fully ghosts Susan, his super hot dancer girlfriend. All she wants is to relocate with him to Jacob’s Pillow so she can dance again, and he has the audacity to ignore her phone calls, even when she calls him from the payphone outside of his apartment where she can see that his light is on. Comforting to know the men have never been well! But to be fair, he was working tirelessly on a musical that changed the course of musical theatre. That changed what musical theatre could look like and sound like and feel like. The kind of stories it could tell. And it’s heartbreaking and devastating that he never even got to see the end result of his labor of love.
Not many people know this, but my uncle actually died of AIDS. Growing up, my mom always said it was because of a brain tumor. Still not sure why she lied about it for the first 18 years of my life, but I guess on brand for the homophobia and shame that was even more rampant back then, and also my grandparents were devoted Republicans. One day in the Target parking lot, my dad actually told my siblings and I the truth. I found it fascinating to learn my mom was actually the one who encouraged him to come out to my grandparents on his death bed. That she was the one who told him he should tell the truth that he was gay.
I was two when my uncle passed. I don’t remember him, I only have old photos to go off of. It wasn’t until my mom picked me up from the airport for my grandfather’s funeral, that we finally had a more open and honest discussion about my uncle’s life. As we drove on the highway, trees passing us on either side, I learned he had a partner and a dog and that he lived in Baltimore. I wish I could’ve known him. I bet he was a really incredible human. I can’t help but feel sad I’ll never get to know my gay uncle. He was 45 when he died.
At the conclusion of the film adaptation of Tick, Tick…Boom!, Susan gifts Jonathan a gorgeous book of manuscript paper he can’t afford from The Strand.
“For the next one”, she says. “Do you have any ideas?”
He nods his head. “Just questions.”
“That seems like a really good place to start.”
Jonathan’s work continues to strike me with each season of love. I recently went through a breakup where I finally understood the lyric, why do we stay with lovers who we know down deep just aren’t right for us? Pure poetic genius. He asks the questions we’re too scared to. He finds the language for feelings that flourish.
After days of downpours, the sun is finally out again. Ariana Grande just released a new album called eternal sunshine. Today is also the 30th anniversary of my uncle’s death. In writing this, and in finding new ways to make sure I am writing more and more, I am ready to devote this next season of love to making more of an effort to fearlessly transform my life into one Jonathan Larson would be proud of.
Fear or love baby, don’t say the answer, actions speak louder than words.
