Harvey, Jerry, and Me
“It kills me to know that they look at me and all they think is. ‘Where did we go wrong?”
Me, the boy who was teased for playing the violin
When the topic turns to Pride, my emotions span the spectrum of my life experience as a gay man. Born in the mid-fifties, raised in a family of Jewish physicians with a generational bent toward homophobia, I experienced childhood and adolescence as an irreconcilable choice between what would make me feel happy and what would make me feel acceptable – to my parents, my classmates, myself. Could I continue spending after-school afternoons with my friend Carl, dancing cheek-to-cheek in his living room to the Broadway cast albums playing on his cherished record player? Or would I have to succumb to the teasing and bullying of those who would call me a sissy when they saw me walking to school holding my violin case? Would I ever be able to accept myself as the likeness of my father’s cousins, who he referred to as “fairies” who were “light in their loafers?”
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
The choice was not a choice at all, or so I concluded. I separated myself from my dear friend Carl, found myself a high school girlfriend, and stayed by her side for the next twenty-five years, as my girlfriend, fiancée, wife, and the mother of my three children. The irony, of course, is that the only thing that was not a choice was my sexual orientation. It was what it will always be. I am gay.
By 1981 I was a dad, and I was working at Newsweek Magazine when the first cover story had been published about “GRID” (Gay Related Immune Deficiency), as it was called, before anyone heard of HIV or AIDS. I had a burning desire to learn more about the feelings I could no longer deny, and I bought two tickets the following year to take my wife to see Harvey Fierstein’s play Torch Song Trilogy, on Broadway. I was mesmerized and devastated, and I had no way to explain to my wife why I could not stop crying at the final curtain, and so I said nothing. A year later I once again sat with my wife in a Broadway theater, screaming with enjoyment (me, not she) at Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s masterpiece, La Cage. Although when George Hearn belted out, “Your life is a sham 'til you can shout out loud I am what I am!” I could barely breathe.
Me, as a young father
Young and married, before I came out
It would be another thirteen years before the evening came when I was having dinner with a new friend, complaining about the stress in my life and my marriage, and he looked me straight in my eyes and asked, “Are you sure you wouldn’t be happier in a relationship with another man?” I hadn’t known he was the son of a gay man who’d come out to his wife and family – and he had a strong sense of what was causing my stress. I knew in that moment I’d waited my entire life for someone to give me permission to answer that question. To feel pride in who I was and what I am. Two weeks later I’d come out to my wife, my children, and my brothers. Six months later I told my parents I was gay, and I moved out of my family’s home. I moved into Greenwich Village and found a room to live in, through the Rainbow Roommate Service. None of that was easy. All of it was painful. And it was liberating. And it was joyful, in a way I’d never-before experienced. I began to live an authentic life, at age 41, for the very first time.
Me, current with partner Arlex Dalmacio and Henry
I joined the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, and the very first concert I participated in was a salute to Jerry Herman at Carnegie Hall. Jerry was there. Lee Roy Reams performed “I Am What I Am.” My father had passed away a few months earlier; my mom flew up from Florida to hear the gay son, who she swore she never knew was gay, sing at Carnegie Hall. She met my new boyfriend, a younger law student from Kentucky I’d met in an AOL chatroom. I felt, even for a moment, pride in who I was and what I am. At the after-party, we sat next to Carol Channing and her gay husband. There are moments you don’t forget. The Pride concert that year was the New York premier of “Naked Man,” which had been commissioned by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. It was hard to get through rehearsals, crying as I sang. How does one sing the lyric, “There is no loneliness like this,” without falling apart?
Two seasons later, Harvey Fierstein and Kristin Chenoweth were the guest artists at our NYCGMC concert. They each had private dressing rooms at Carnegie, but Harvey chose to dress with the rest of us. I stopped to say hi to him. “Hi Cookie,” he responded, in that oh-so-gravelly voice. I was in heaven. Harvey and Jerry helped me learn what it meant to have pride in who I was and what I am. The concert was a joy. I’ve had other opportunities to perform with Harvey and see him perform, and I’m about to begin reading his new memoir, I Was Better Last Night. Jerry Herman’s songs, which I adore, have been a part of many of my concerts. I was honored to attend his memorial service in 2020.
I’ve had the privilege to sing with six GALA choruses around the country since coming out. My oldest child, my daughter Amy, sang with me in a few of those concerts. She was a founding member of the Youth Pride Chorus in New York City, and she, too, sang with the NYCGMC. How’s that for pride? I’m pretty sure she knows every word of Naked Man by heart, and I was thrilled when she came to San Francisco to see our performance of Andrew Lippa’s Unbreakable.
Me at Davies with SFGMC
I’ve recently completed the manuscript of my own memoir, Cellophane (as in “Mr. Cellophane,” from Chicago). Showtunes provide the artifice as I tell my story. A story of struggle, of pain, of courage, and, in the end, of pride. I learned a lot from Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman along the way. I learned how to stand on a stage and be proud of who I am. Singing with the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus has lifted me to new heights in that regard. I sing, with my chorus siblings, about Pride.
Happy Pride!
Written By:
JOSEPH A. SHAPIRO
Upper Tenor 2
Joseph Shapiro is a 2010 Lambda Literary Fellow and has presented his work at the Tin House Workshop and the Kenyon Writers Workshop. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, where he taught Expository Writing and introduced the first college-level course at any NYC university, focused on Transgender Literature. He resides in San Francisco, with his dog Henry. He is the Director of Administration for a large international law firm. A tenor, he has performed as a member of the New York City Gay Men's Chorus at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus at Davies Symphony Hall, where he will once again be performing in July.
