me and alex

I dreamed I was on Jeopardy! last night. It was a dream about being unprepared. Throughout the entire dream I was asking people for things, for paper, for pens, I was wearing shorts, I forgot about my retainer, I didn't have a mask (neither did anyone else, and I realized it was a television set so people didn't wear masks). The other contestant was a young woman who looked quite a bit like the main character in The Queen's Gambit and similarly had her shit together. At one point, as I was looking for something, she looked up from her phone and said "The Falconworks website is confusing" and I realized she had been googling me. I hadn't thought to google her. It was that kind of dream.

Alex Trebek was there. I talked to him twice. He had a man-bun in one of our conversations, which seems pretty unlikely; it was that sort of dream, too. 

I suppose I might have had this dream because Alex's last appearance as the host of Jeopardy!, taped before his recent death, airs this week. I hadn't been consciously aware of that, though. I woke up and wrote my dream down. As I was writing I thought, again as I have recently, about the ways Alex Trebek and I crossed paths throughout my life. Not quite crossed; I never actually met the man. But he would enter my consciousness in some salient way every so often. It might be a little strange. But, you know, I can be a little strange. My mom once said I was the only kid she ever met who didn't like ice cream. (I did, in fact, like ice cream, especially French vanilla, but I didn't like the way it made me thirsty, and there was never an option to get a drink afterward. I am making up for it at probably the worst time.)

What I also liked as a kid was game shows. They fascinated me. They still do, I suppose, although I don't watch them the way I did as a kid, which is to say at every opportunity. The Joker's Wild, The Price is Right, Press Your Luck (man, do I love the Press Your Luck story from This American Life). Password. Concentration was pretty boring. Wheel of Fortune was also pretty boring; Merv Griffin supposedly once said that the secret to Wheel of Fortune was that 90 percent of the audience could guess the puzzle before the contestants do, and I think I saw through that at the age of nine. Jeopardy! was the best of them. Art Fleming, the original host, had an incredible panache as he would run the game through its paces: "The answer is...!" he would declare after a contestant chose a clue. It disappeared after a while; not enough glitz for the seventies, or maybe too brainy for the midday crowd. Ninety percent of the audience couldn't guess the clues. 

Then they announced they were bringing it back, with Alex Trebek as the host. I was excited and disappointed. Alex had been the host of a couple other shows on the "meh" list. He was a retread, generic game show host #4. And he was easily mocked in the early going. My sophomore year at Kenyon we would gather in the dorm lounge after dinner each evening for half an hour of Jeopardy! and between shouting out answers - or technically questions - we would ridicule his French accent, his occasional supercilious tone when a contestant guessed wildly wrong, his general air of being the smartest guy in the room when we all knew he was a second-rate talent getting his last chance. He was an easy target for college students. We in the lounge among us actually knew French and African geography and had read the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets. We were twenty and we knew everything. We used to speculate on his conversations with contestants after the show, as the credits were rolling. "And then I was on High Rollers," we imagined he would remark, the three poor souls trapped behind their  podiums nodding and smiling lest they not receive a lifetime supply of Creamettes. 

I left college; Alex left my life for a while. Then he came back to me. Against my instructions, my parents bought me a television, and living alone in Southern California, I almost certainly would turn to "Jeopardy!" to fill half an hour of my evenings. I don't really remember any details of that. What I do remember was an instance of the Los Angeles Times' "Hot Properties" column, which profiled the houses being purchased by celebrities. Alex and his wife had bought a house in the Hollywood Hills, as one does if one is a prominent game show star (or "host," as he used to insist). He talked about how appealing the house was for "young couples" like them. He would have been about 50 at that point. I was 25 and applying the word "young" to himself seemed ridiculous to me. Then again, I'm 55 now and it still does.

More significantly, my friend and former high-school English teacher Lance qualified as a contestant, and came over to Los Angeles for a taping. We met outside the Sunset Las Palmas Studios; Lance disappeared backstage and his wife Judy and I went to the back row where friends and family were placed, so that we couldn't relay answers with winks or flashcards or semaphore flags or whatever they imagined we might use. I think Alex came out to warm up the audience, maybe take a few questions. I could still see through the veneer, even as the rest of the audience were totally charmed by his combination of elegance - he really did know how to wear a suit - and approachability. He had sincere charm, and he had charming sincerity. Then he went backstage to do his job.

They taped the shows "as if live"; that is, if the show lasted 28 minutes beginning to end, they took 28 minutes to tape it, pausing the action for the exact length of the commercial breaks and striking up the theme music as the breaks ended. Or nearly. They could pause and re-tape a moment if needed; not contestants answering questions of course, but an intro that got bungled or a clue that Alex had mispronounced. They did that once or twice. More memorably, there was a moment when there was a doubt as to whether a contestant had actually given an acceptable response to a clue, but not the answer the hosts were looking for. After the round, they paused to reconsider it. The judges deliberated a while. "The judges" - such a grandiose term. They were probably two producers and a lawyer, the producers trying to keep the audience happy and the lawyer making sure they wouldn't get sued. They deliberated more. Finally Alex expressed exasperation. "The audience expects us to get this right!" Applause. He might have been exasperated; it might have been schtick. The audience wasn't fussed about which.

Lance racked up a pile of virtual money but took second, which meant, as far as I know, it didn't become real money, just the home version of the game and possibly some Rice-a-Roni. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that. 

We had lunch, parted, I watched the episode when it aired. I got older, I got busier, I got married. I would still watch Jeopardy! when I thought of it, when I was home from work in time. 

Then I read about upcoming online tests to be a contestant. I had actually tried this once before, in person, back at the Sunset Las Palmas studios, when I was still in Southern California. "If Lance can do it, I can," I thought, not realizing - setting aside the probability of Lance's greater intellect - that there's a significant advantage to age in Jeopardy! You live through things other people learned in history class, if their American history class even managed to get past WW2. You pick up stuff. You see a lot more movies and hear a lot more songs. And the audience probably skews older, so the pop culture references do, too. We had taken a written test and were waiting outside, comparing experiences. I mentioned a question where I'd drawn a blank and guessed wildly. My counterpart was almost angry at my youthful ignorance. "Valentino was an actor!" he shouted at me. I took some pleasure in seeing him dispatched from further consideration the same as I was.

The online test was if anything more nerve wracking. Filling out 50 or 100 answers on paper, you at least had the chance to skip and maybe come back to one that was just escaping your grasp. Online, the time counted down, the question vanished, and along with it the chance to answer. I finished demoralized. It turned out I shouldn't have been. Some weeks later I got an email inviting me to the Waldorf-Astoria for an in-person tryout.

I won't describe that experience blow-by-blow. We were sworn to secrecy about the whole process. I actually don't care about that, at this point, but in fact I wrote a whole piece about it at the time and I'll try to dig that up if anyone is interested. Suffice it to say it was one of the most fun afternoons I can remember. And of course it gave me another chance to cross paths with Alex. Not in person; he was by that point a legitimately big enough star that he didn't have to cross the country doing contestant searches. But they had a big screen at the front of the room, and as we prepared to take our second exams, to confirm the results of the online one, Alex's face appeared, welcoming us in his friendly but serious manner, like that teacher who was both your favorite and your most demanding, Mr. Chips or something. And then he read the questions (answers) to us and we madly scribbled down answers (questions, although I don't think we had to phrase our responses in question form). 

The age advantage proved true; I nailed the test. At least I felt that way, they never told us the results. Then we had to play a simulated game in front of everyone, including a mock interview. No Alex for this part of the audition, just a producer and a casting person, peppering us with questions. Somewhere along the way, I didn't nail that bit. They sent us on our way, telling us we might hear from them, we might not. They wouldn't tell us if we'd made the cut or were on the waitlist, how many of us would be called or how long we might wait. I waited. The call never came. I was disappointed, but honestly spending three hours seeing how the sausage was made was a pretty good consolation prize.

Not because of this, or at least not that I can remember, I watched Jeopardy! a bit less over time. Netflix came along and we dropped cable, and only deployed the rabbit ears for special occasions like the World Series. I went back to regular work that kept me from getting home 'til late in the evening. I kinda forgot about Alex for the most part. Once I was at my folks' house back in Ohio and after the evening news the familar refrain, "This. Is. Jeopardy!" rang out. I felt a momentary delight. 

"Ugh!" said my dad. My mom grabbed the remote. "You don't want to watch Jeopardy!?" I said, incredulous. 

(Pause for a moment here to observe the reverse-interrobang in the previous sentence.)

"No!" was the response. That was that. I went into a brief Alex withdrawal.

And then, again, I kinda forgot about him, until the news came of his cancer, then remission, then a relapse. It was, it is, pretty heartbreaking. Not for myself, for the most part. I did - I do - feel a little pang of loss. After a distant miss and then a nearer miss, I still imagined I would be standing at the podium some day, chatting with him about coaching little league baseball and his days on The Wizard of Odds. 

More, perhaps, it's the feeling of getting older. Life goes on and we discover we can't plop on the lounge sofa and watch Jeopardy! four or five nights a week. Sic transit, too, those glorious Monday evenings, when time was endless. 

And still more, the end of, in its minor way, an era. The tributes written before and after Alex Trebek's death have been lovely and heartfelt and spoke of the connection he forged, over the airwaves, with the audience, and audience who would carve out a part of their California vacation to see him in person, applaud in the way they couldn't from home. The connection was bogus, show biz, of course. Or maybe it wasn't, who am I to say?

I read some of those tributes and they all referred to the way he would practice French words, the way he would handle the contestants, especially when they would blow an easy clue, his insistence on being the "host," not the "star," because a star is distant whereas your host is your friend. They talked about his charming sincerity. 

I hope that's all true. I honestly think it is, or at least I choose to. And yet, in reading the descriptions of how Alex went about his work and his career, I saw a different quality. 

Alex Trebek was a professional. He thought seriously about his role, about how to do it well, and he worked at it. It's not easy to convey a sense that you're the most knowledgeable man in the room when everyone knows you've got both the answers and the questions. It's not easy to be Mr. Chips. Hell, it's not easy to look that good in a suit (although having a wardrobe department and Armani as a sponsor probably helps.)

It wasn't about art, and I don't think he had any delusions about that. You can find interviews where he talks about wanting the show to do well, "because if we do well, then I do well." 

I don't know what he was like to work with. He might have been a diva, although that's certainly not what you read. I would believe he didn't suffer fools. He almost certainly didn't suffer amateurs. Well: I've spent enough time in a little corner of show business to know what a gift it is to be around a stage with someone who walks in the door ready to work, capable and prepared and expecting you to be the same. 

I don't have a finishing note here. I won't be watching Alex's final show tonight: no cable or rabbit ears here. I might be a little disappointed by that, but in truth making a special point of seeing it, when I haven't been watching in recent years, seems like it would be a little silly. It was my good fortune that my path neared his a few times. 

marathon day 2018

Cowbell: check. Bright clothes: check. Sign: check. Marathon prep for Sean M Enright complete.



Sorry you didn't see the sign, Sean, but some other guy named Sean stopped and took a picture of it!

jfrej

A week from now I will be a year older. It doesn't seem like it should work that way but I am assured it does. In any case, facebook which knows everything about me thinks I should set up a fundraiser and at first I was like "eh" but they say they'll do it free (in exchange for, you know, your info and your eyeballs but that's on you I guess). So:

I had the very good fortune recently to meet a poet and teacher named Simon Lichman. We were trapped in tiny plane seats next to each other and over the course of two hours talked about pretty much everything you can imagine, most of it about art and justice and religion; whether it's possible to be a secular Christian; his work with Palestinian and Israeli youth; his trip to Lithuania and Poland. More than anything else, what stuck with me was the idea of the "stranger in our midst," an idea that occurs again and again throughout the Old and New Testaments. In Exodus, for example: "There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you."

So with that in mind I am asking you to pledge a few bucks to Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. They are on the front lines of the social justice movement, fighting for the rights of people of color and immigrants and other oppressed peoples, fighting racism and anti-Semitism and transphobia and other injustices. They are led by my brilliant and fearless friend Audrey, and they're doing the work, and they deserve your support.

So jump in with me. I'll get us started with a hundred bucks; together I'm pretty sure we can grow that to a thousand. What do you say?

Update: Oct 28

I posted this yesterday, and about an hour later I heard the terrible news. Please give if you can and share if you will.

Update: Oct 31

Last night I attended a vigil organized by JFREJ and other groups in Union Square. It was an immensely strong community - Jews, Muslims, Christians, nonbelievers and more - who came together to share their commitment to creating a just world. I feel privileged to be among them.
In my original post for this fundraiser I described my friend Audrey Sasson as "fearless." I don't know, that's the word that came to me; that's the way I think of her. But as it happens, at the vigil on Saturday she talked about feeling the fear rising and even, if I remember correctly, the fear of the fear, the fear that it will keep us from doing what we need to do.

So maybe a better word would have been "brave": not free from fear, but acting in spite of it. From the outside, though, it looks like fearlessness to me.

Anyway, here is part of what Audrey wrote the day after the vigil:

"...this is our country too. We do have a place here. We will advocate for others to be here too, and to welcome them in. Our movement is a movement for multiracial, inclusive democracy. We are building a future for each other, and a future where the promise of this country can be realized. And we know democracy will win."

in & of itself

There is much I want to say about In & Of Itself, a performance by the magician Derek DelGaudio, that I can't. Partly it's that anything I might say about the show, even really minor details, seem like they would be spoilers, and that feels wrong - it feels wrong even though very few people ever read these words, which are after all not for anybody but myself, and even though even fewer of you might go see this show before it closes in a month or so. I am not alone in that regard; Joe Posnanski, whose blog post here inspired me to go see it, says really nothing about what takes place inside the theater, and the Steven Colbert interview with DelGaudio is equally unwilling to part with any details. (This American Life spilled some of the beans, and I will not link to that.)

But I also simply can't tell you anything meaningful about the show, because - you had to be there. I mean, I could tell you this trick or that, whatever, the color of his suit or the set or the cards on the wall (there's a detail, but that's well disclosed various places, and it's pretty much the first thing that happens in the show; happens before the show starts, actually). You might react, "huh, that sounds cool" but I don't think I would be able to get you to understand: No, it was beautiful.

And I can't tell you about the show because I am still not sure what I saw.

I guess it was magic. I guess, because thinking about every "trick" that occurred - there wasn't any mystery to it, in a sense. There's an extended bit with cards, and the wonder of it is that DelGaudio was doing everything in plain sight, in front of your eyes, people six feet away from him and a camera zoomed in, you can see his hands moving in close up and he does things that simply seem impossible. And that is a lot of the show, indeed: there are things in front of your eyes that you are not seeing. There is a light offstage right illuminating him - here is something else I will tell you about the show - and he talks about that light, and the person causing it to turn on, and why she does that when she does that; he calls attention to the fact that we are in a theater and this is artifice; there is no illusion about the artifice, except he also says "I can only say these things because you won't believe me," like no matter how hard we try to pierce the artifice we insist on believing that it is artifice.  Not all these thoughts are my own, really.  But most of what he does, even - especially - the big number at the end, is not so much about what he did or how he did it as how is it possible that he could do that.

I guess that is magic. At some level though, it is craft, not art, although maybe craft taken to that level becomes art. It is an unbelievable level of craft which is indistinguishable from magic.

But this performance, as a whole, is unquestionably art, by any definition but particularly by Hammett's definition which is: work or performance wherein the audience participates in the construction of meaning.

But I cannot tell you what the meaning of In & Of Itself is because I do not know what it meant. I am still working that out; writing this is part of working that out. People will tell you it is an exploration into identity, and it is partly that. The show itself seems happy enough to promote itself as that, but then again in the business you sell what you can sell, and that's probably something the artier folks who wouldn't be caught dead at a Magic Show - me for example - can hang onto. Maybe that's what DelGaudio thinks it's about. But then again, "wherein the audience participates in the construction of meaning," so he doesn't totally get to say.

I think - this is a postulate; I may reject it later - In & Of Itself is about seeing. That's obvious, you know, like when my professor Terry Hummer described writing in his notes about a novel, "Names matter." Of course a show that uses sleight of hand is about seeing, and more importantly what you don't see. So I should fix that: In & Of Itself is about not seeing. It's about the elephant in the room.  Literally, there is an elephant in the room. Not literally, of course, it's metaphorical, but there is literally a metaphorical elephant in the room (there is something else I have told you about the show), although even for that someone on Twitter described his son saying "I see the elephant, Dad," and then seeing it himself, so I think it is possible that there was a literal elephant in the room that I missed, like that video where you are watching people passing a ball and miss the man in a gorilla suit strolling through.

I have no idea what I may not have seen that was right in front of my eyes. And maybe that's why I find the show so powerful, now.  (I am not sure I found it exactly powerful yesterday.  I found it wonderful, delightful, you know, those sorts of things - but today I am finding it powerful.)  I go through life wondering, often, How do they see that?  How do I not see that?  And I feel alone in that; I feel like everybody else has the secret power, except it's not secret, everybody has it, that tells them how to react, that enables them to see other people clearly in ways that are a complete mystery to me.  It is right in front of my face, six feet away, and everything is moving a little too quickly, with a little too much distraction, for me to notice it.  It is possible however that nobody has this power, that not seeing is just the human condition, and we are all trying to go through life looking like we see everything.  Like we have figured out the tricks when we are just guessing, and probably guessing wrong.  We cannot even see ourselves.

I'm going to leave it there.  Here is a picture of a brick.  It is just a brick, painted gold, sitting at the corner of Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) and Houston Street.

derek

I wrote a while back that nearly everything I've ever written is a kind of obituary. This is a real one. Our friend Derek died yesterday. You can read Reg's remembrance here or here.

Derek was both one of the least sentimental people I have ever known, and one of the greatest lovers of the arts I have ever known. This seems an unlikely combination. He was an economist and brought an economist's skepticism and rationality to almost any subject. You would suggest something he thought fanciful (a word of his) or dubious and he'd look over his glasses and respond, "Weeeeeellllll ..." and leave you to defend yourself, or withdraw it.

He was a senior economist at JP Morgan, then JP Morgan Chase & Co, and bought his clothes at the Salvation Army and was fond of getting breakfast at what he would call "supercheap" diners, because why would you spend more? And he gave enough money to the Metropolitan Opera every year that they would give him tickets to dress rehearsals and working rehearsals and list his name in the program, which they don't do for any old donor. For a wonderful time there, when I wasn't working regular hours, I could meet him on a Monday or Tuesday afternoon - he was working regular hours but the cadence of his job meant that he could skip out for the afternoon early in the week on a pretty regular basis. We'd get to sit in the fancy boxes, and maybe we'd end up seeing the first act twice, or skip the second act, or whatever. But we'd be there in that nearly empty, silent hall - the contrast would make you realize how noisy people are even when they're being silent - and see some of the most transcendent moments you'll ever encounter in a performance.

I had thought I hated opera until Derek started us on it, first Reg and then when Reg started working regular hours, me as a poor substitute. He delighted in having converted us both.

And he was, this unsentimental person, full of delight. He was so fond of Reg, who brought out a side of him he rarely wanted to admit existed. There he was, this major donor to the Metropolitan Opera, coming to Off the Hook performances, and I'd be vaguely embarrassed at the relative quality of our work, but every now and then he'd comment afterward about how good a particular show was, and we'd know we'd nailed it.

There wouldn't be any Falconworks without him. Not much of one, anyway. He bankrolled our first real production, "Out of the Bag," during which we all learned what a money pit theater can be. But he didn't bat an eye - well, maybe he did, but he kept funding that and other shows, especially "Fixing the Album" and the big production of "Salome" that we did at the Brooklyn Lyceum that kickstarted us into being a real company. Apart from being fond of Reg, Derek saw his talent, and kept supporting it, through lean years when we were suddenly grappling with the relentless reality of payroll, and through - well, there haven't been any fat years, but if that ever deterred Derek he never let it show. The cliche that comes to mind is that he never asked questions, but that's not true at all; he always asked questions, always looked at our financials and budgets and said, "really?" But he never wavered in his support.

Apart from Falconworks - much more than Falconworks - he kept Freedom Theater afloat through an even larger number of  lean years. And in that respect it might seem wrong to call Derek unsentimental, because any sensible person would have abandoned ship years ago, and an economist knows well the notion of sunk costs. But I think his determination to make Freedom succeed wasn't some form of nostalgia about the past or his personal connections; he was determined because he thought the work was valuable and worth doing.

(The Freedom experience did, however, give him a strong antipathy toward mixing art and real estate; whenever anyone suggested that Falconworks might acquire a space of its own he would tilt his head back suddenly, roll his eyes, and say "No, no, no ....")

He liked basketball, which always seemed unlikely. He would take New Jersey Transit and then Septa all the way to Philly, a habit that used to drive me nuts but which I've since learned (in fairness, he was going to Philly a lot more than I did). He would invariably arrive at the train station or the opera with thirty seconds to spare; how he managed to do so on public transit I never understood. He had more real estate entanglements than I could keep track of, or he, nearly. He remained friends with his exes, which led to some of the real estate entanglements. He wore bowties, which he enjoyed as a kind of trademark. I'm not sure he owned an overcoat.  He took me to see Eugene Onegin, which remains one of the most moving arts experiences of my life. He used to wrap up his toast after breakfast at a supercheap diner and bring it home with him, which I've also since learned. He used to joke about how the little technology project I'd signed onto at Citibank seemed to be a guarantee of permanent employment, about which he has not yet been proven wrong.

Once, maybe a couple weeks after September 11, he said, "If you're a gay man who has lived in New York City for the past 20 years, you've seen so much death that this doesn't seem exceptional" - words to that effect, I don't remember the exact quote. That may seem cold, I suppose, but it wasn't; it was as somber and as honestly heartbroken as anything else anyone said in those sad days.

He was embarrassed by anybody making a fuss about him. When Falconworks gave him an award at our benefit a few years ago, he sort of said, "Yes, well, all right." When he accepted it he climbed to the stage and gave, ex tempore, a lovely explanation of why it was worth supporting an organization like Falconworks, and heartfelt.

He is the maybe most loyal friend I have ever had. I am far more broken up about this than I had expected to be. How I will miss him.

happy happy

Number 4(?) in an occasional series of reviews of snacks semi-randomly selected from the kiosk downstairs:

These were pretty bad. Opening the package I was overcome by a smell that was difficult to place, but that I finally identified as the exact aroma of Frankenberry cereal. Whatever the white side is supposed to taste like is no match for fake strawberry. In combination with a plausibly chocalate cookie, they reminded me of chocolate fondue, in the way that Pierce Brosnan was a reminder of Sean Connery. 2/10.

my old school

I was sitting on the southern side of the plane as it descended toward the airport in Columbus. The view that way is as uninteresting as you can imagine.  I wished I had been sitting on the other side of the plane, where I might have looked for the green, faux-copper roofs of Columbus Academy.

With that thought in mind, and wanting stretch the in-between of travel a little longer before arriving at home, I pointed the car through Gahanna toward Cherry Bottom Road. (Yes, yes, it's a ridiculous name; it was even more ridiculous in the context of what was then the Boys' Academy with its insistence on antique and homoerotically tinged terms like Master and Head Boy.) Gahanna was what I remembered and then nothing like what I remembered; shabby strip malls where the McDonald's and Burger King were in the same places they were thirty-five years ago, and suddenly, on Mill Street, one of those pseudo-urban "neighborhoods" that are the current fashion. Cherry Bottom itself  was more crowded with subdivisions than it used to be, but the turns were familiar, leading up to a broad right-hand curve and the low, decorative gate of my old school.

The drive up the hill was the same, minus the anxiety that accompanied me every morning for eight years. The scene at the top was not: a brand new building, carefully recreating the old Academy building when the school was on Nelson Road.  It was handsome enough and the phoniness was reasonably well disguised.

Behind the new old building were the authentically dated architecture I remembered. It's hard to believe anyone ever thought that cupola was a good idea. The upper school building had been carved open, revealing the spot where a mural Matt and I painted had once been. The quad in front of what had been the library was much smaller than it used to be, of course. Walking across that quad was extremely forbidden.

We broke nearly every rule they had, including the time Bobby mooned our French teacher when he was arriving late to work - although, actually, I'm not sure there was a rule specifically prohibiting that. But almost nobody ever crossed the quad. It reminded me of when I was visiting my Exeter classmate Michael Lindsay - the real Exeter, not the New Hampshire one - and he took me to tour his old school. There was a similar patch of grass, and even as a graduate, on a summer evening with the place deserted, he couldn't bring himself to cross it. 

(I remember on that visit I mentioned that my school had just celebrated its 75th year. He laughed. The Merchant Taylors' School was founded in 1561.)

Behind the old administration building and its cupola was another lawn. This one really was smaller than I remembered. They'd closed in the far side with a dining hall a while ago, and extended the backs of the original campus buildings ten feet or so. I looked across to where the art department used to be, above our old dining hall, and the gym. There was a new sculpture. I was walking near the spot of that sculpture when I was told I was gay for the first time. I was not yet eleven and had been at the place for maybe a month, and I had earned the description by putting my arm around the shoulder of a classmate.

I couldn't get in to see the auditorium where I'd played Claggart and Algernon and Petruchio. Near its doors, outside the lower school building that went up when I was a student, I looked to see if the

mushroom was still there. It was a piece of playground equipment that we had designed as an art project. It was made out of reinforced concrete, and had a stem you could climb up and a lobe you could hide under and another lobe you could slide down. The slide didn't work very well, because, well, concrete isn't all that slippery, but you could scale up it anyway. The real thing didn't live up to my imagination when it was finished. Some time later I saw the remarks of a graduating senior, and she referred to it as a touchstone of her early years at the school. It was nice to have that connection. In any case, it's not there anymore; in its place is an ordinary bit of playground equipment.

I hadn't known what to expect. What I found was, mostly - nothing. Memories, obviously, but not much in the way of feelings. There were people I'd like to see again. Teachers, mostly;

not many classmates. It was a place I spent a lot of time, once. It's hard to remember how much it was my entire life.  I took away a good education, in its way, Latin and Greek and Calculus and that. I took away the belief that everybody ought to have the opportunity for that kind of an education, not that I've contributed to any progress on that front. On the other hand, they let me leave without knowing who James Baldwin was, so I didn't go to hear him speak my freshman year at Kenyon. They sent me off, maybe contrary to plan or maybe not, with a strong distaste for phoniness.