Stuart Kaminsky: Show Business is Murder

Who cares? was what Birch thought, and wondered how long she could stay with Scotty if all they were going to do was spend blue-sky Sunday afternoons watching old movies with a couple of-

Queers.

The word popped into her mind before she could stop herself. It wasn’t a nice word, and it was especially not nice because what were she and Scotty? But somehow it was different when it was boys.

The trouble was, she was new at this. She’d “come out”-and in her mind the words were always in quotes-only a few months earlier, and not by choice. She wasn’t even sure she really was one, except for one thing: there had never been a boy or a man, in the movies or in real life, who made her feel the way certain girls did. First Enid and now Scotty. She felt a stirring in her jeans just looking at Scotty-her elegant short hair with its slight curl, her long legs in those tight jeans, the silk shirt, the studded belt, the Frye boots-Birch looked down at her own feet, clad in moccasins, peeking out from under frayed bell-bottoms and wondered for the fiftieth time what a really cool chick like Scotty saw in her.

“My baby dyke,” Scotty called her. “My little tomboy from the Catskills.”

Birch didn’t mind being called a tomboy; she’d spent her entire seventeen years of life answering to that description. But “dyke” sounded so ugly. It had sounded especially ugly in the mouths of kids she’d known since kindergarten. When some of her former friends caught her holding hands with Enid at the Tinker Street Cinema last summer, they’d thrown stones at her, called her dyke. Now Scotty used the word with amused affection, as if it could never hurt.

Scotty, present

“ ALL SINGING, ALLdancing” it said on the long red awning that stretched from Theatre 80’s double doors to the curb. You could see that awning from as far away as the Bowery, and you walked toward it with heart high, knowing that no matter how dreary the day or how low your spirits, the double feature at the end of your trek would change your mood more rapidly and surely than any of the illegal substances being thrust at you along the way. Who needed grass when you had Busby Berkeley? Who needed uppers when Fred and Ginger were dancing cheek to cheek?

Patrick I still miss every day. He was the brother I never had, and yes, I’m well aware that I have three brothers, thank you very much. Three brothers who hate me for three different reasons: Brian because he’s a Christian now and I’m going to hell, Ian because he’s a stuffy old fart and I embarrass him, and Colin because I had the nerve to be born at all. The only saving grace to Colin is that he’d feel that way even if I liked men.

So Patrick was my soul-friend, the girl I should have been.

Birch, 1972

“ LIKE THAT PLACEin Hollywood,” Birch said, and Patrick rolled his eyes. Usually she liked Patrick, but she could tell she was about to get another lesson in how little she knew.

“That one’s Joan Blondell.” He pointed to the square of sidewalk with handprints and a scrawled signature. As if she couldn’t read. Of course, who Joan Blondell was and why her handprints belonged in cement outside the theater was unclear; still, she thought she recognized the name Ruby Keeler.

“I was here when she came,” Patrick said with a rapturous sigh. “Oh, she’s put on weight and her hair can’t possibly be that color in real life, but just to see her, to stand next to her-it was a dream come true.”

Scotty came back with the tickets and they walked through the double doors into the narrow hallway that led to the seats. The white walls were covered with posters and black-and-white glossies signed by the stars personally to the theater’s owner, Howard Otway. Patrick always made a point of blowing kisses at his favorites as they made their way to the coffee bar, a little black-painted cubbyhole just off the screening room.

No popcorn, just movie candy and tiny little cups of very black, very strong coffee. Everyone but Birch bought a cup; she decided on Milk Duds because they lasted nice and long. She suppressed a sigh. The little theatre reminded her of the Tinker Street Cinema back home, where she’d spent so many happy hours-until last summer.

Scotty, present

WHAT WE DIDat Theatre 80 was buy our coffee in the anteroom, push aside the heavy red velvet curtain, and walk across the stage to our seats. Theatre 80 hadn’t started life as a movie theater. It was a legitimate stage once home to You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

This meant that not only did the theater have a little foot-high stage, but the seats were nice and plushy, set wider apart than usual. There was also a real curtain that opened and closed, giving the showings a special touch you just couldn’t get at the Quad or even the Regency uptown.

The regulars were there: three old ladies I privately thought of as the weird sisters, a little matched set that reminded me of salt shakers. The old man with the liver spots and the burgundy-colored beret who sat by himself in the fourth row. Groups of gay men wearing sheepskin coats and laughing loudly. Black-clad film students from NYU, who discussed the social implications of the musical in not-hushed-enough voices. Patrick made it a point to steer us to seats as far away from them as possible.

We loved each other very much, Patrick and I, but we never actually sat together during a movie. He favored the center seats, and I had to have an aisle. No idea why, just an overwhelming need to know I could get up and run out if I had to-not that I ever did. It was just that the thought of being trapped in the center brought on a panic I couldn’t control. So I led Birch toward the extreme right side of the theater and found us two seats in the seventh row while the boys edged past a plus-sized couple who glared at them.

The lights dimmed and then darkened, the red curtain was pulled back, the projector began to whir, and a thin blue vapor emanated from a tiny window in the back, projecting an image onto the screen.

And not just any image: The MGM lion roared, and the audience clapped. We were notorious for applause. First the stars received their due (Judy most of all), and then the director got a hand, and the choreographer, and, from the gay men especially, the costume designer.

For Me and My Gal contains one of the great movie lines of all time. Judy and Gene play vaudevillians in 1917 or so. Just as they get the booking to play the Palace-that ultimate cliché of vaudeville musicals-Gene gets his draft notice to fight in World War One. He injures himself to beat the draft, and Judy, whose brother has just died in battle, catches him at it. She turns to him and in a voice dripping with contempt, says: “You’ll never be big time because you’re small time in your heart.”

Patrick and I loved this line. We repeated it often, cracking each other up every time. Of Richard Nixon the unspeakable, we said only, “He’s small time in his heart.”

So of course at intermission, when we met for a shot-glass-size cardboard espresso, we said the line in unison and laughed. Next to us, the weird sister with the whitest hair turned to her companion and said, “I remember the war. I was in high school. We were supposed to knit socks for the soldiers.”

“I knitted three pair,” the other said with pride. “My brother was a doughboy.”

“I only finished one sock,” white hair admitted. “And then the war was over.”

The little old man with the burgundy beret stepped into the room on light, dancer’s feet. When he saw me looking at him, he winked and did a little dance, humming “For Me and My Gal” under his breath.