AKA William

Because the old school gay is fast becoming the new modern man, AKA William theater contributor Ben Rimalower will, every Thursday, document exactly how, when, and where everything old becomes new again.

Straddling the line between old school showbiz cheesiness and contemporary short attention span whateverness, Ben is the New Old Gay. He loves Patti LuPone.

New York is a dirty, polluted city full of dirty, polluted people and I love it. I don’t want to be anywhere else, it’s the center of the Universe. But it is gross and there’s no getting around it. The garbage rotting under the summer sun, the slime of the straphangers, the grime under the bum’s fingernails as he cups your hand while you light the cigarette you just gave him.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opa6zXlbtoI 225 200]Brooklyn, where I live, is the butthole of New York. Our garbage gets left out longer, our subways are more poorly maintained and our bums don’t need an excuse to touch you. For a nice Jewish boy like me, it can all be a lot to take.

I think the biggest hurdle is the mice – mice on the train, mice on the street, and ultimately, Mickey and Minnie dashing around in my apartment. For years, I was constantly in a state of being freaked out and lived in constant fear of touching anything the mice had touched. I would wear shoes at all times, even in the shower, and use paper towels and rubber gloves to avoid contact with potentially mouse-tainted surfaces. I wouldn’t eat from any restaurant in Brooklyn and even gave up Entenmann’s when I saw on the box that their factory was there.

I used to sit at my window, watching in terror as mice ran in and out of the Tribeca Oven, a commercial bakery across the street from my house. I held my breath in my neighborhood, so nauseated by the smell, I was convinced, of roasting rodents, only breathing easy when I’d come up out of the subway in Midtown. To me, Manhattan with all its modern convenience, offered at least the chance of cleanliness. I’d see a middle-aged lady get out of a cab in a mink coat and think I might make it after all.

I clung to the fantasy of a sterile, sanitary shield around my existence. Growing up in manicured Southern California, I hardly ever saw a bug – or encountered an animal that hadn’t been fixed. As a child, I had feared not necessarily germs, but cooties. I wouldn’t share a drink or a bite with anyone, not even my family. I would develop illogical repulsions to certain restaurants based on urban legend or gossip, and go to great lengths to avoid places where everybody else ate.

My first week in college at Berkeley, everybody was eating the delicious, healthy, inexpensive sandwiches and salads at Intermezzo Café. I once tried to take advantage of that convenient little place, although it offended my delicate sensibility. It was teeming with smelly homeless people and even smellier spare-changing punks – and that was just the employees. On my first visit, I saw a large cockroach crawl across the menu on the wall and that was it. In four years at Berkeley with Intermezzo a staple in everyone else’s life, I never went back.

When I became sexually active, safe sex felt like protection from my fear of other people’s biology. Maybe my sex drive was just stronger than my neurosis…