All My Friends Are Gonna Be Strangers

It's Southern Decadence week in New Orleans and I'm standing on the wrong end of Bourbon Street surrounded by literally hundreds of sweaty, horny, and very drunk gay men. Here, there’s a six foot six cowboy who’s built like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime and wearing only a straw cowboy hat, pointy toed cowboy boots and a black leather jockstrap. There, a matched brace of youths that might weigh in at buck thirty five a piece in matching sailor hats and white briefs. They’re singing "Anchors Aweigh" and seem very patriotic, albeit in a rather unconventional way.


It’s swelteringly, tropically hot and love is in the air, in the street, in the bars, the alleys. Am I uneasy? No. Am I straight? Yes. Am I offended when some men hit on me and some don't? Not exactly, though I do wonder why. Primarily I’m impressed with the sheer force of abandon with which these boys are partying and at the same time amazed at how well groomed the majority of them are. During beach season one year I tried to thin the hair on my chest with an electric beard trimmer, but the results were not as I see before me tonight. When I finished I didn’t look any the better, in fact I looked as if I had mange.

In any case, though dwelling on the past is as inevitable as it is futile, one needn’t dwell on the worst of it. I turn to why I even have the capacity to stand here and take all this in and it’s this: Georges Bizet and The Dallas Opera.

A lifetime ago, after college but before grad school, with no idea of what to do or who to be, I impulsively auditioned to be a supernumerary, a non-singing extra in the Dallas Opera's production of Carmen. The interview consisted of sitting down with the diminutive stage director who expressed relief when—after inquiring if I had any acting experience—I answered “No.” I told him I considered myself completely free of any opinions on acting, productions, plays, and anything else theater related.

“I couldn’t stage a coup in South America,” I quipped.

As he looked me over for a long moment I expected to be shown the door. The he broke the silence. "That's good," he said. "You have no idea how trying these bitches with a little experience can be."

It seemed sensible to agree, so I did and that sealed it. In short order he gave me the run down: rehearsals were every night for two weeks, afterwards there would be four performances: Friday night, Sunday matinee, Wednesday night and Saturday night. He paused before delivering what many in my position must have received as highly offensive information.

“The pay is five dollars per night.”

He may have taken my silence as the preliminary stages of shock. “Per night,” he reiterated. “Not per hour.”

I shrugged my shoulders and said “Sounds great.”

He pursed his lips and continued. Though vital to large productions, supernumeraries play only a small part and are always expected to do exactly what is asked, nothing extemporaneous, nothing additional and “No acting!” We were scenery. Even so, we were expected to be polite scenery and call ourselves and each other "supernumeraries"—or “supers”—as opposed to the trade slang “spear carriers” as that was considered a derogatory term. Upon entering the room I had noticed

Al Dente

Al Dente


Each summer here in Texas that as the heat climbs, the rains stop and the temperature builds at a truly ferocious pace, I increasingly find myself standing trancelike on my front porch. My mind travels northwestward, through the pecan groves and the oak stands, the mesquite thickets, skimming over the Brazos, Pease, and Red rivers, further and further, leaving the cotton fields of the panhandle behind and finally soaring over the wild, high Texas plains and the deserts of New Mexico. This goes on for days, and for days I shake that vision off and I shake it off until something clicks—or snaps—and I recognize what I knew all along; there’s a long drive in front of me.

As with many of my lifelong habits, this started innocently enough. One August day a few years ago I got a phone call from my friend Evan Voyles, who is one of the strangest and most wonderfully interesting people I have ever met. We first met in Abilene, TX. I lived alone in a small stone house on College Street; Evan had a small house too, but shared his with four hundred pairs of custom made cowboy boots he'd collected from all over the Southwest. In addition to his boot collection, Evan also trade in Navajo blankets, antique firearms, knick-knacks and old neon signs, the kind you see advertising hotels, department stores, long defunct products such as Bull Durham Tobacco, Four Roses Whisky, AM radio stations, greasy spoon diners, in short any of the old, quirky stuff that that was