bill russell

(the saint known as paul)

seeing as how the culture wars are fulminating, i figure i might as well jump into the fray (not that i haven’t been there all along) … this particular period of battles seems defined on one side by the passion of the christ and on the other by the explosion of gay marriages … so for some reason i thought of this poem … one source of inspiration was a trip to greece, but the other is lost in the increasingly shady areas of my memory: a well-argued theory that st. paul was gay … wish i could recall the actual source, but, at any rate, this is what it inspired …

the events described herein happened a year ago … vinnie did die but not quite as quickly as the doctors predicted … his life partner, ken, and his business partner, jeffrey, arranged a beautiful memorial service at the majestic, where vinnie had cast many actors in phantom

in 1994, b.d. wong, who had appeared in a benefit production of elegies for angels, punks and raging queens in los angeles, called to ask if janet hood and i would like to write a christmas song for him to record for a c.d. to benefit broadway cares/equity fights aids … b.d. had appeared in the original production of la cage aux folles with my friend bob brubach, who died in 1987 on christmas day … though bob was not a drag queen, he had a great appreciation for their talents and so this was written for him … happy holidays!

i’ll be spending the month in los angeles directing pageant … because it’s a low-budget production, i’ll be staying with different friends, something i did a lot of in my very itinerant life in the 70’s … then at the end of that decade i met and moved in with bruce and have been shockingly “settled” since … this was written in the early 80’s