What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Au Lit, by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892

My crash was inevitable.

After a year of sex work, lots of drugs to cope with my revulsion, and a near-death encounter with a raging pimp, I hit bottom. Hard. Then fell into a deep depression. Not the ordinary kind. I’m talking depressed like you can’t get out of bed, no less leave your apartment.

It was so bad I had to quit acting school. This pretty much killed me. My dream of being in theater had been the whole point of coming to New York City. The only reason I’d taken up sex work in the first place was to pay for acting school. Now everything had gone smash, and I’d wrecked my life.

But I’ve already written about all that here and here.

What I want to tell you about now is not the misery—but a sliver of joy I found in the winter of 1968, just after I turned twenty. A brief but life-changing moment of truth.

A month after my crash, I did manage to get out of bed and walk out of my apartment to a park nearby. As I sat on a bench, watching children on the swings, I knew I had to pull myself together.

I did what I knew how to do: I auditioned for a touring theater company. Even in my fragile emotional state, I landed the part of Pearl in the 1930s drama Tobacco Road.

I packed my suitcase and hit the road. It felt so wonderful to be back onstage, working with a committed ensemble. I began to heal.

Most of my male castmates were gay, and after our shows, I usually tagged along with them to gay bars. Why not? This going to gay bars wasn’t about me. I was still trying to prove to myself I was straight, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Then, one night everything changed. At a bar in Tampa, a woman leaned in toward me.

“See that blonde over there?” She pointed across the room. “That’s Terri. She’s my best friend. She wants to dance with you, but she’s too shy to ask. Would you like to dance with her?”

My stomach did a flip. No way would I admit how excited I was. I decided to agree, you know, so as not to be rude.

“Yes!” I said, nearly jumping from my chair.

When I got close enough to get a better look, I saw that Terri had alabaster-white skin, a few freckles, and gray-green eyes. Pretty enough to be a model, but her straight, blonde hair was cropped short, and she wore male attire.

“Would you like to dance?” My insides quivered.

Terri stood, took my hand, and led me to the dance floor. She carried herself in a distinctly male manner. Strong, confident, beautiful. Her combination of masculine and feminine enthralled me.

We danced and chatted until the bar closed. Afterwards, we went to her place and lay in one another’s arms, talking until sunrise. I felt a deep and instantaneous connection with this woman. And for once, no pressure to have sex.

A few evenings later, Terri and I were indeed intimate. It was like being struck by lightning. I’d never come even remotely close to feeling this way with a man.

That month, we spent every possible moment together, visiting her favorite haunts, seeing her family and friends. Sometimes—I know it sounds corny—we just curled up together, faces almost touching, lost in each other’s eyes. Words felt unnecessary.

For the first time in my life, I was deeply in love.

What a relief! For so long, I’d feared I was incapable of love because I felt nothing for men. Now, I’d finally come home to who I’d been all along. I cursed my conventional Midwestern upbringing and pledged to live the rest of my life out and proud.

After the tour ended, I returned to New York City. Terri and I talked on the phone almost every night and planned visits. But the impossibility of our relationship became clear. We reached an impasse. She loved Tampa and wasn’t a big-city girl. I couldn’t leave the Big Apple if I were serious about theater.

It was one of God’s cruel jokes: He’d finally sent me my person but kept us over a thousand miles apart. I missed Terri horribly. Again, I turned to drugs to dull the pain. Not just pot and LSD. I began snorting methamphetamine in binge-and-crash cycles.

Meth did terrible things to my mind and body. I worried intensely about the damage but couldn’t seem to stop. I needed help. Plus, I wanted to be a better person, worthy of Terri’s love. I decided to return to acting school. Maybe if I reconnected with the best and truest thing in me, my love of theater, I could quit the drugs and be okay.

I enrolled in a musical comedy class. On the first day, the teacher described Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by Eli Siegel, saying it would make me a better actor and person. I was a sitting duck. When she invited me to Aesthetic Realism lectures in the West Village, I said yes.

After each presentation, the members embraced me with intense friendliness—typical cult recruitment tactics. I accepted their invitations to socialize and returned weekly. I had no idea yet that Aesthetic Realism was profoundly anti-gay—and certainly not that it was a cult.

The dreaded phone call from Terri finally came. She broke up with me.

“I need to be with someone I can share my day-to-day life with. Neither of us can relocate. Better to end it now.”

Nothing would change Terri’s mind. I was devastated. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I cried for days. A few weeks later, I wrote her a goodbye letter, thanking her for letting me love her.

Then I made a major decision—the kind you’re never supposed to make while grieving: Now that Terri was lost to me forever, I would throw myself into the arms of Aesthetic Realism. Unconditionally.

I filled out the formal application, requesting acceptance into Eli Siegel’s inner circle. As required, I wrote that Siegel was the greatest person who ever lived, and Aesthetic Realism was the knowledge all humanity had been waiting for.

I also wrote these words:

“I fully and intentionally pledge the rest of my life to Aesthetic Realism.”

It would take me thirty-two years to escape.