Bill Dawes

Jeff Weiss, Part 2

The theatrical run of HOT KEYS, Jeff Weiss' aptly titled downtown production, was at once the strangest and most gratifying theatre experience of my life. Curtain went up at midnight and came down at 3am, I spent most of my time onstage oiled up and half naked, but it was the best acting work I'd ever done. Jeff forced me to forget many of the weird acting habits and pretensions I'd collected at NYU while studying my 'craft..' Before the first performance, he blazed up the fattest spliff I'd ever seen and nonchalantly said, 'just jump off the mountain and see what happens.' I jumped off the mountain for three months with that show.

It took me much longer than three months to appreciate how unique and bizarre this lower east side theatre world was. On one of the first weekends, as I left PS 122 in the early morning hours after a late night show, I was accosted by a short, chubby little gay dude in khakis and a blue button down.

"Hey Bill."

Great, I thought, another creepy dude with money who thinks I'm some insatiable Chelsea bottom.

'Hey, DUDE,' I responded.

I probably made the 'Dude' a little more staccato and sharp than it had to be. I had gotten in the habit of appending a 'dude' or 'man' to my same-sex Manhattan greetings as a not-so-subtle way of spiking the Village gaydar with a 'HETERO' blast. Since I looked...well...gay, it was all I had.

"Uh, listen," Gay George Costanza stammered, "I'm doing this play 'Tartuffe' in a couple of months and I think you'd be great to play the Prince."

Really? The Prince?

That's what my career needed as a jump start - the opportunity to play a piss-ant part for no money in some black box theatre on the 4th floor of a walk-up in Greenwich Village. The amount of classical off-off Broadway shows in the city was astounding. It wouldn't surprise me if this show was being put on in... shiver... Brooklyn. The only thing that makes my skin crawl more than Brooklyn is the idea of doing theatre in Brooklyn. You mean I can have all the filth and danger of a big city with all the inconvenience of a shitty suburb!? Yay!

Luckily, I had an out...

"Well, I'm still in school right now so I can't really do anything else. This show is an exception because it plays so late."

"Okay, well my name is David Saint, and I'm a fan of your work. Maybe some day in the future we can work together. Good luck."

And then he walked away.

Very polite, very professional, I thought. Hmmmm, I guess he DIDN'T want to sleep with me... am I losing my looks?

Two months later, I was walking in Times Square and saw 'Tartuffe' on the marquee of a premiere Broadway theatre. It was being directed by 'David Saint. It turns out David Saint was, and is, a huge theatre director. My douchey homophobia, or whatever it was, ruined my chances to do a quality show on the Great White Way.

Welcome to the strange, wide world of Jeff Weiss. Constantly surrounded by fireflies, vagabonds, trannys, and the HIV underworld, Jeff also garnered attention from an upscale, uptown audience that would leave its west side floor-throughs and gamely hang out in a crowded, makeshift theatre with no air conditioning to witness his newest concoction of the crazy and the carnal.

The number of actors who got their big break with Jeff and/or worked with him on his "Hot Keys" series was astounding: Kevin Kline, Frank Langella, Allison janney, Victor Garber, Kristen Johnston, Ken Leong, the list goes on and on. As a matter of fact, the first guy who ever played the Billy character was none other than the freaky and talented Willem DaFoe. Jeff's following never failed to amaze me.

Rumors persisted that Jeff was a pathological liar and, indeed, some of his stories seemed, if not implausible, constructed entirely for entertainment value. In some ways, he reminded me of the Albert Finney character in 'Big Fish.' Jeff loved a good-old fashioned yarn and maybe sometimes he took out some of his more colorful spools. A couple of New York actors were adamant about Jeff's relationship with the truth and would vehemently advocate for their positions like we were debating a matter of extreme national security. For me, the veracity of his stories got cleared up during my last week of 'Hot Keys.'

One of the more popular characters in "Hot Keys" was a Finnish gymnast named Bjorn who went around sleeping with strangers and then murdering them. Jeff told me, during one basement rehearsal, that the first half of the storyline was true: that he used to go uptown, pick up rich, married suits, pound their buttholes into jelly for a weekend and then retreat south of 14th Street without fear of detection or repercussions. "Bjorn" was his nom de guerre.

It was a perfect plan, Jeff said, and in his defense, he was a handsome guy. He looked a little like Sir Laurence Olivier with a crack problem. His double life lasted for years, he boasted, until he started getting a little more famous and doing Broadway shows. He would exit the stage door some nights and there would be some forgotten Bjorn conquest waiting for him, slack-jawed and confused. I imagined some poor guy scouring uptown gay bars, looking for 'A guy... about yay tall... named Bjorn?" only to find him after a show. Off-handedly, Jeff declared this happened on several occasions.

Yeah, right! Cute story though.

As I continued doing shows with Jeff, he continued to tell me even more outrageous stories. At one point he had a brief love affair with Richard Gere when Gere was working at the Pyramid club on Manhattan's lower east side. Then, one night during his days at the Russian-Turkish baths when they were still a veritable revolving door for gay orgies, the famous dancer Rudolph Nureyev was getting his nightly ass pounding from a group of sycophantic queens when things got a little...intense...and Nureyev had to call a halt to the activities.

With Nureyev's age, ill health, and penchant for fat cock, Jeff explained, he had become horribly incontinent. Ol' Rudy had stopped the anal action to make a dainty dash for the bathroom. Jeff meticulously described the scene: Nureyev on tiptoes, floating down a dank, sparsely lit hallway, rivulets of Rudy doodie dancing down his hammys... all in stark contrast to the pink ballet slippers cinching up his feet.

Bullshit!

Ballet slippers?! C'mon! Like he would wear his work shoes during a Turkish bath gangbang!!! Jeff was taking a little too much poetic license with that absurd detail. Nureyev did his final performances with a generous butt plug and a diaper underneath his tights, Jeff contended. This wasn't speculation...he knew. The diaper, he continued, would have to be changed throughout the night by a young Latin assistant waiting in the wings of the Met.

Jeff and his Big Fish stories. They made me laugh, but what a goofball he was with those lies! If I just accepted him as a creator of tall tales, I knew I'd be okay with all the crap he said.

On the last weekend of Hot Keys, I was heading home to my girlfriend on East 13th Street after a particularly long show that ran until almost 4am. Once again, a well-groomed gentleman was waiting for me outside the entrance on 1st Avenue. At least this gay stalker was attractive. I couldn't help but think 'I must look goooood!'

"Excuse me," he said.

"What's up, dude?" I responded. Bam. Dude was extra straight. Like an arrow.

"I have a question to ask you... but I'm a little embarrassed by it to be honest," he said.

"No, it's cool - I'm straight - but don't worry about it."

"Oh, sorry, no, it's not about you, it's about Jeff."

My curiosity was officially piqued.

"Well, he's probably still upstairs. You can go up there and ask him whatever you want," I said.

"Oh, no, I don't think I can...."

He looked down at his feet and then around in the cold night. Clearly, he was a little flummoxed. If you want someone to set you up on a date with Jeff, I thought, I'm probably not your guy. I took his silence as my cue to leave, so I hitched my backpack further up on my shoulder and said, "Well, I'll see around."

I took 3 or 4 steps until the following sentence stopped me in my tracks:

"I think I slept with him about 8 years ago, but he told me his name was Bjorn."

I froze like a deer hearing the crinkle of Autumn leaves under the boots of a hunter. What the fuck?!? Now I was the one who had no idea what to say. I stopped and gawked at him, my silent invitation to elaborate.

"I met him by my place on the upper East side and he told me his name was Bjorn and he spoke with this crazy accent."

"How did you find out he was here tonight?" I asked. "Is that why you came down, to confront him?"

Again, the man looked down, seemingly flustered.

"No, I came here with a friend. I had no idea who Jeff Weiss was. And then I saw him, and, it was so...."

The man's voice quivered a bit and then trailed off. By way of explanation, he shrugged and forced a tight smile. When he suppinated his palms during the shrug, the light from the lamp post above caught the gold in his wedding ring and it glinted against the darkness before the dawn.

I did everything in my power not to erupt in raucous laughter until we parted ways. We stood that way for a few more awkward moments, the wind from the 6 Train coming up through the street-level subway vents in alternate bursts of hot and cold. Santa Claus IS real, I thought.

I'm not sure what he wanted from me. Maybe he wanted me to say something that would let him know it was okay or maybe he knew that, in me, he found the one person on the planet to whom he could admit this clandestine Finnish affair. Then I saw the doubt in his eyes and I realized his reasons were more practical. He just wanted confirmation.

"It's him... isn't it?"

I wanted to tell this stranger not to take it personally - that Jeff had a partner who saved his life, that Jeff could never leave this man, and that his uptown vision quests were just a way to keep his penis in the game, as his head and his heart were committed to one man and one man alone. I wanted to tell him that he wasn't the first guy to wait after a show abashed and saddened, and I wanted to tell him that he had nothing to be ashamed of. But, in the end, all I could manage to say was:

"Yes, it is."

On the short walk to my girlfriend's place, I couldn't help but think:

"....I can't believe Nureyev shit on his ballet slippers like that...."

Jeff Weiss, Part 1

Any graduate acting program seems to suffer from the same set of awful ironies. First, they make admission incredibly challenging because they're separating the wheat from the chaff. Then they spend the next three years reminding you how bad you suck. Second, they stress the honor and artistic integrity of being a devout theatre actor, but the only alums they celebrate are the ones that get sitcoms. By my third year in the MFA program at NYU, I was ready to shoot the esteemed faculty right in their fucking faces. Other than my acting teacher, Ron Van Lieu, the feeling was mutual amongst the faculty.

The singing teacher hated me because I was an awful singer, which happened to coincide with HER being an awful cunt. The voice teacher hated me because, try as I might, I could not get much past the third row of a theatre. The Shakespeare diction coach hated me because... let's be honest - it's 'Shakespeare diction' - it was painfully pointless and my only joy in the class derived from my ability to mock it at every turn. I was as close as you can get to being persona non grata in the NYU MFA program. As a result, I got cast in a lot of roles with "#1" or "#2" as their suffixes. The types with lots of standing around but only one line and it was always something like, 'My liege, dost thou desire thy sword?' For most aspiring actors, this kind of experience would have destroyed their spirit, Luckily, part of me knew the whole concept of a school for acting was fucking retarded and silly, so I was able to enjoy the best part of NYU every day, and that was the NY.

Still, it was clear to at least one other classmate that I was sort of unhappy there. Or at least that I didn't fit in. So one day, this classmate, Flo, came up to me and said, "You know Bill, my boyfriend did a show with this actor in Seattle and he's got some crazy late-night serial show in the East Village. It's pretty weird shit, but this guy is supposed to be pretty interesting. He's holding auditions tomorrow if you wanna go."

Fuck it. I went. Why not?

When I arrived at PS 122 on First Avenue in the East Village, it was fairly empty. It wasn't the cattle call type of audition I'd seen in my short career as an actor. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even find the fucking room since it was Saturday and the building was essentially deserted. I went up a flight in the old public elementary school-turned-iconic East Village artist haven and found scripts for the 'serial play' being put on by this actor from Seattle. It was a cold read - I was supposed to read the scenes and audition for them within 20 minutes. Most actors hate that, but I didn't care one way or the other.

In a nice but of serendipity, the character I was auditioning for was named "Billy". I grew up as 'Billy' until I started going by 'Bill' my freshman year in college in a bid to be taken more seriously (fail). It was a lead role and all my scenes would be with this same actor/playwright dude.

I grabbed a set of scripts and sat down in one of those old formica public school desks with a big grin on my face. Lead role. Sweet.

The first scene I read involved Billy's incestuous love affair with his male wrestling coach, who also happens to be his father. Billy is complaining to his dad/coach/lover about the taste of his--Billy's--semen. He's worried it tastes sour. Dad/coach/lover informs him that he should "drink more Juice. That will sweeten your cum right up."

I visibly blanched and put the sides down.

What the fuck?

This shit was disgusting and wrong on about 7 levels in the physical plane, 4 levels on the spiritual plane, and Pi levels on the metaphysical plane. I had signed in to audition but it was time to leave. I mean, right? Even if I wasn't offended by the content, I wasn't gay and SURELY this role was intended for some 20 year old piece of fruity East Village eye candy who had no qualms with prancing around and getting revenge on his overbearing father in one fell swoop. Not for me. I was a serious actor. This was pointlessly offensive and grossly frivolous gay shit.

I heard noises and froze like a gazelle in the bush. There were voices coming from a nearby room. Hmmm, I guess I found the audition. I contemplated leaving but curiosity got the better of me and I edged towards the slightly open door. An older man in his 50's with baggy, cheap clothes and a weird knit beanie was holding pages and arranging chairs in order to sit next to a young bleach blonde kid. It seemed like the older man was giving him notes about the scene. As he positioned his chair, his head swiveled and he caught me peeking through the crack like a creep.

"Oh hey, come in. We're about to do a scene. Feel free to watch if you like." He had an almost juvenile smile with a gap between the front two teeth, which juxtaposed oddly with his sharp features and weathered skin. Stuck, I silently nestled into the nearest seat with a sigh. Well, I can watch this train wreck for a bit and pretend I'm Lars from Denmark -- just lost and passing through.

The young bleach blonde with the tank top cleared his voice and started speaking in a high-pitched gay accent. Not a Harvey Firestein 'I'm gay and I'll fuck the Steelers offensive line and then smoke a pack of Marlboros' pitch, but a freshly out of the closet lemme try acting fag-cent. He was clearly green and clearly awful. Ugh. Off-off-Broadway.

Then it was the older man's turn to talk. He turned to the hacky fag and said, 'Billy... I love you so much.'

Inexplicably, hairs rose on the back of my neck.

I had just spent three years learning the 'craft' of acting, but within 5 seconds of hearing this actor, I was convinced my teachers didn't know a fucking thing. I had never experienced anything close to this. The feeling reminded of that camera move - ubiquitous in 70's film, Jaws being a prime example -- where the camera swiftly dollies out while the lens simultaneously zooms in; the not so subtle nudge to the viewer that the subject of the zoom is having an intense revelation/out of body experience/awakening/sees a shark. This was the REAL shit. I leaned in, zeroing in on this odd man in the clownish clothes with the bizarre knit red and white bulls eye beanie on his balding head. I had an epiphany: I had just thrown away $60k in loan money.

The scene continued. The dad was in the hospital and his son/wrestling team member/lover was there to see him. Somehow in the mire of this disgusting, reprehensible, white trash Jerry Springer relationship, the older actor managed to bring incredible emotional depth and simplicity and naturalism to it. And on the 'Juice' cum line he made me laugh out loud with his buoyant and light reading of it.
When the scene was over, I knew I would do anything in order to be on stage with this man.

This man was Jeff Weiss.

When peroxide skull left and I auditioned with Jeff, I got the humbling and exhilarating feeling of knowing that I was acting with a genius. He gave so much focus and attention to me while I talked that it almost made me feel giddy.

And yes, I know that sentence is gayer than 8 guys fuckin' 9 guys, but there's really no other way to put it. I was next to some sort of savant. I was smart enough to understand it, and talented enough to know he was out of my league.

The weird part is that, when I left, I kind of knew the role was mine. Of course it was. In some preternatural way that baffled and intrigued me, I connected with this old, beanie'd east village queen. I was going to be half-naked, lightly oiled, rolling around on a gym mat with him, doing scenes at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays...in public. And somehow, that was perfectly okay with me. Beyond okay, it presented an escape from the hackneyed and fossilized teachings of acting school. Chekhov and Shakespeare plays again this semester? What a surprise!

Jeff called me the next day from a pay phone to let me know where and when the first rehearsal would be. He didn't even bother with officially offering me the role. Like I said, it was obvious. I wrote down the info and looked at it with a crooked grin, maybe a little bit concerned. It read: "Tomorrow. 120 east 10th street. 10pm. In the basement." Since this was after Pulp Fiction, one of my classmates was convinced I would never return to the NYU Tisch, forever trapped in a basement in the role of 'Gimp of the East Village.'

When I showed up to the East 10th Street address, Jeff was in the same clownish clothes and beanie scraping ice off of the steps on the stoop. It turns out Jeff was also the building's superintendent. This just gets stranger and stranger, I thought. Jeff's brown eyes beamed when he saw me and, in what I was soon to find out was his signature greeting, grinned and guffawed a 'Hi Billy!' I murmured a 'Hey Jeff,' and he presented the entrance into the dilapidated brownstone like it was the dacha of a Russian czar.

Once inside, I followed him down the mosaic tile steps into the basement. The basement was nearly black except for some indirect courtyard light from a window in the back and one small gas kerosene lamp on an old wooden desk by the window.

"Watch your step," Jeff said, lighting another kersone lamp and leading me to the desk at the back wall. The desk had an old smith-corona typewriter and two small wooden folding chairs, evidently made for midgets or 3rd graders. Jeff pulled out my rickety chair with a scrape on the cement floor, and then sat down in his with a casual grin like it was tea time in Paddington. Although everything about this dank and dark cellar suggested it would, indeed, be a perfect setup for a Gimp or, at least, the creation of a Gimp, I felt oddly at ease. Speechless, but at ease.

"Alright, let's work on this scene," Jeff said somberly as he spun the paper around on the smith-corona roller and cracked his knuckles.

"Okay," I murmured inaudibly.

We started reading through it and Jeff stopped when he got to the line about the sour-tasting splooge.

"Hmmm," he mused as he stroked his white stubble. "I think Gatorade is funnier.... So it would be 'Sour semen, huh? Drink some Gatorade... electrolytes will sweeten that jizz right up.' Whadda ya think, Billy?"

He delivered the line so sincerely and looked up at me with earnest, searching eyes. In response to his sudden query, I half-nodded, half-laughed despite my aversion to the subject matter and the very thought of man ranch being anywhere near my taste buds. It was impossible not to laugh when he delivered such bizarre shit with such utter conviction. Jeff had this uncanny ability to completely believe the truth of what he was saying, and it made YOU believe it in turn. So much so that, to this day--because I'm a nice guy--I will drink a quart of Gatorade if I know that, later on, I might make a mess in a girl's mouth. I have absolutely no idea if there is any scientific basis to the G-effect on cock snot, but the idea has stayed with me.

While I was laughing with my hand over my mouth, I realized I must have appeared like the countriest of bumpkins. This wizened East Village queen had already retired from his job as a male hustler blowing johns in Port Authority bathrooms when he was my age (true story) and I hadn't even been to a gentleman's club yet. . I felt self-conscious and naïve. But Jeff didn't judge me or make me feel inferior. He just looked at me with a tender, bemused look. He laughed and produced a tightly wound joint from the inside pocket of his ruffled clown coat. Then he said something I will never forget:
"Hey it ain't Chekhov."

It was the perfect sentence at the perfect moment in the perfect time in my life.

"Thank God," I said.

Jeff choked on his inhale and let out a staccato laugh through his gappy grin. He offered me the joint like he was handing me a pencil

"Here," said.

I had never smoked marijuana before in my life. My superego instinctively shot down my spine and clenched my sphincter into a conservative and righteous fist. I had been pressured dozens of times to smoke but had never once been tempted. I still wasn't 'tempted,' but my hand took the joint and put it in my mouth. My lips pulled at it and my lungs followed suit like it was Tuesday.

Hell, I guess it was the perfect moment to smoke weed for the first time.

The Atom Showdown - VOTE NOW

My "How to Spoon" short w/Michael C Hall is up against two other videos over on Atom.com. Voting goes until 6pm EDT and the winner gets...something, I'm not really sure.

SO VOTE FOR IT NOW over at the Atom.com Showdown! I'll be your best friend!

Bill Dawes' Thursday Callidge Nyte @ Hollywood Laugh Factory

Much like my time as host/comic-in-residence/room destroyer at the Times Square Laugh Factory in New York City, I will be doing a College Night every Thursday at 10pm here at the Hollywood Laugh Factory on Sunset Blvd.

As part of the deal, if you print out this page you and every person in your party will receive $5 off admission. Additionally, college students get in for $10 since this is...ya know...fucking College Night.

All you have to do is call the reservations number at (323) 656-1336 to get your tickets, then come armed with this page printed out and/or your student ID for the discount and/or reduced price. You don't have to call ahead to get the discount on tickets for my College Night if you don't want. You can just come to the club and wait in line, but waiting in line to buy tickets is like buying porn. No one does that anymore. So come one, come all to the Bill Dawes Thursday Callidge Nyte @ The Hollywood Laugh Factory every Thursday night at 10pm.

If you is smart like I is, you be coming there much times.

Meeting Mystery

December 20, 2008:

"It's like you--no matter how much I blow you off, you always come back."

The burst of adrenaline her comment elicited sent a concussive wave of chemicals through my brain and pasted a look on my face that, I'm sure, was hard to disguise. If I had the ability to TiVo my life, I'd probably wear out the remote in amused Golem-esque self-loathing watching the expression develop. My eyes popped, my jaw dropped, my face reddened. On stage, I shoot hecklers down with the ease of a seasoned crowd sniper, but in my real life I'm not as nearly adept. Her sentence rendered me utterly speechless.

She - let's call her G - stared me down with her entitled smile; the same stamp of smile that has challenged and weakened my spirit throughout my life. Smiling dark eyes, full lips, at least one unique quirk. With her, it was the beguiling way the tip of her tongue nestled, wet and coquettishly, between her upper and lower set of teeth; poised to say something scandalous.

I wanted to say something quick and smart like, "Pfft! Nigga please!" but this bitch had my number and she knew it. It could not have been more obvious. I couldn't have been more submissive if I had been a Korean in a leather harness licking dried dog poo off the sole of her shoe.

My brain continued to buzz from the cocktail of adrenaline and fear. I ransacked the relationship archives of my brain and mustered quite possibly the most pathetic and feeble response of my life... and that's saying something.

"You shouldn't SAY that." I spurted back.

"Oh come on, it's true, we both know it." G laughed.

"Yes, but it's not something you should say out loud." I had a yuk-yuk-isn't-the-war-of-the-sexes-funny smile on my face, but my attempt at levity was betrayed by the fact that my normally beady eyes had enlarged to the size of saucers like some Japanese anime character. "AKIRAAAAAA!"

Silence followed, mostly. It was peppered by a one-sided argument between our Pakistani cab driver and whoever was on the other side of his blue tooth. I looked at the cabbie through his rearview mirror and could have sworn I saw a smirk on his face. Busy with driving through Manhattan traffic and arguing with the leader of his sleeper cell, even Ahmed could tell I was pitiful and pussy-whipped.

This was my first date with G in a while. It wasn't unusual for a week or two to pass between our dates, as much of our relationship fits into the category of 11th Hour Cock. Luckily, I have been blessed by the fact that, at the 11th hour, I tend to have some cock on me. Most men wouldn't complain about being the erstwhile booty call of a cute, olive-skinned, 32D Manhattan professional, but I have a medical condition that makes me not like most men. That is, I am an absolute pussy.

I completely believe in true love. About a month or two before I first met G, I had fallen hopelessly in love. Her name was Brooke and for a brief time I lived inside an impenetrable bubble of joy, with visions of babies and July weddings and post-coital Honeymoon pillow talk dancing in my head. It ended with distance, mistrust, and a torturous bittersweet 'goodbye-forever-maybe' goodbye. It was the type of whirlwind romance that, if I were to look at from my couch with a bag of salted Soy crisps, I'd say, 'What a couple of deluded and fucked up losers. They thought that could have been IT?!' Inside the bubble, though, it was as if I could feel all the atoms in my body vibrate with giddy and life-affirming ferocity.

Now, I was relegated to11th hour cock again and I was starting to think I wanted more. I had made the same mistake with Melissa, about a year previously. I was her booty call /shoulder to cry on after abusive nights as a cocktail waitress at the W. A slight paradigm shift and maybe it could have been more with Melissa. Of course, for her, it wasn't, and my medical condition acted up. The result? An 11th hour relationship ended, after two years, by text. A 21st century dumping. I couldn't even watch her walk away: Going...going... gorgeous... gone.

I was taking G to a really cool Tuesday party at a place called The Box. Now, I'm no arbiter of 'cool' by even the most generous stretch of the imagination - I still rollerblade and my first car was an electric blue Miata -- so let me render my definition of a 'cool' party so we understand each other: it was weird and freaky and impossibly eclectic, with sex and drugs (allegedly) and vaudeville and burlesque and beautifully fucked-up rockers, fireflies, billionaires, millionaires, and mostly, lower east side Manhattanites too cool to venture above 14th Street. My friend Caron Bernstein throws the party and I lucked into her coterie of close friends so, if I'm in a pinch, I can come across as socially relevant and - again with the yucky word - cool.

The door at The Box is notoriously difficult but Caron is one of those women whose presence is like a magic wand. She can get anyone in anywhere. Caron whisked G and me and her two girlfriends who met us there into the club -- a cozy, old mahogany wood speakeasy. It is a club that can best be described as the set of Moulin Rouge in miniature. The second you walk in and immerse yourself in its deep amber glow, there's no reason not to expect to see a midget, the coke-tipped nostril of a near-billionaire, the hottest girl you've ever seen, and the hottest girl you've ever seen with a penis. All at the same table.

Caron knew I liked G. She knew we were on a 'date' and that I'd been miserable since my impenetrable bubble of joy with Brooke had burst. More importantly though, she knew I'd been, on balance, unhappily single for a couple of years. So, like a great friend with great tits, she parted the party waters and placed us on our own velvet couch - worn and cum-stained just enough to rock the line between downtown hip and midtown homeless shelter (ahhhhh, that elusive line). We were front and center with free bottle service and a beautiful Vargas/ Betty Paige pinup waitress with a flower in her coiffed hair to boot.

I harmlessly flirted with G's friends while I scanned the room and soaked up the ridiculous ambiance. Against a far wall, I caught the goofy grin of a tall, thin scarecrow of a man. He was pale and his body was inordinately straight up and down. He would have looked out of place if it weren't for the Cheshire grin. 'Ahh, that dude is rolling,' I thought. Welcome to The Box.

To say the Tuesday night show at The Box is just a burlesque show is like saying Bill Gates is just an IT guy. If Fellini, in his most drug-addled years, were to create a variety show with Satan and Cirque du Soleil as co-producers, he might have come up with something like this. Midget Hitlers, crucifix dildos, faux abortions, simulated anal rape, and things coming in and out of every conceivable human hole (no sacred cow or orifice was spared from, literally, getting fucked with). All of it somehow rendered safely artistic by incredible acrobatic performances, virtuoso singers, flawless naked dancers and, of course, a live band.

The bottles kept magically appearing, G and her friends got more and more drunk, and at one point, G was brought up on stage and molested by 5 hot female dancers. Our velvet couch was getting very popular. We kept meeting people and making new friends, including a chubby Mexican girl with whom G hit it off almost immediately. I had no doubt this night was going to end well.

Feeling confident, I went to speak to Caron at her table. On the way over, I passed the tall, inordinately straight scarecrow-looking fellow. He was standing in the same place with the same plastered-on grin. I took a closer look and noticed a purple faux-pony knee-length overcoat, a purple faux-pony hat - think mid-90s Jamiroquai - and couldn't shake the sense that he looked familiar. He took his hands out of his pockets as I passed and that's when I saw them.

Purple fingernails.

Oh shit, is this guy doing the whole 'Mystery' look? Is he copying the renowned PUA from VH1's 'The Pickup Artist' and Neil Strauss' 'The Game'? Why the fuck would someone copy that look? It's dorky. Unless, of course...that IS 'Mystery?'

With that possibility churning in my brain, I reached Caron's table and sat down with her, half paying attention to our conversation and half to whatever Mystery was doing. Looking around the room during lulls in our conversation, I noticed he was engaged in conversation with a girl while a gaggle of dorky, overly-styled guys observed. Wait, is he teaching a class tonight? I took a closer look and realized not only were they his students but the girl they were watching him try to pick up was G. A few vodka-infused brain cells quickly coalesced into a thought - Mystery is picking up my girl!

I continued talking to Caron but doubt began seeping into my cerebellum. He's going to leave with her. Why not? What makes YOU so fucking special, Bill? She can leave with him, blow you off, and you'll always come back...right?

My adrenaline began to race. There was no WAY this freak was going to come up and seduce this girl. Impossible! I started breathing through my mouth. Every single insecurity I'd ever fought against -- about my personality, my looks, my career, and my sexual prowess -- boiled up in my flustered Irish face.

I walked up calmly and said 'Hey' to G as casually as I could. That familiar Stuart Smalley refrain began playing on a loop in my head -- I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darnit people like me -- while I figured out what the hell to do. Why are you feeling inferior, Bill? You make fun of Mystery whenever his name comes up in conversation! It's even in your standup act! He's not THAT fucking tall! You said he only picks up vapid strippers and girls who were touched in the no-spin zone by their uncles.

The second I entered into the equation, Mystery turned his entire focus onto me; just like it's detailed in 'The Game'. He zeroed in on me like I was the most interesting person on the planet - in fact, I was the man he was trying to platonically seduce...and then get rid of. I knew what was going on. I'd read about it. I suffered through the TV show--'sarging' when another guy's there. Kill him with kindness. I knew. But he didn't know I knew. And therein laid my advantage.

When he introduced himself, I asked him to repeat his name.

'Mr. C?' I asked.

'Mystery,' he said.

'Oh, okay.'

'Can I have a cigarette?' It was G. She was watching the slippery introduction, probably a little bemused.

'Why of course.' Mystery then deftly produced a cigarette. As she reached for it, he did a sleight of hand and it disappeared. 'You like magic?' G smiled. In my drunken stupor, it took me a second to realize that Mystery was talking to me.

Are you fucking kidding me!?

He was doing PICKUP 101. He was establishing 'value' now. He had already misdirected G when she reached for the cigarette and now he had her rapt attention. She had that smile on her face, the smiling eyes, even the tip of the tongue between the teeth. He gets to see that, too?

I feigned indifference, even though I do love a good live magic show. Mystery started to do all that fancy shit with the cigarette up the sleeve: where'd it go? Oh, it's back again, in the other hand! Now look - it's behind G's ear!!! Who knew?! I was starting to get bored. Then he did another skibbiddydobap! and presto! it was lit and in G's mouth.

Motherfucker! That totally trumps the balancing fork trick I do at 24-hour diners when I'm drunk!

Mystery rarely took his eyes off me and that fucking grin never left his fucking face. G took a long drag and stared right at him. Was she impressed? Amused? Attracted? It was hard to tell because G always looked like she was on the verge of a smirk, giving her an inscrutable Mona Lisa quality. It could just be her face. Maybe she has Bell's Palsy.

Why was I freaking out? Do magicians actually hold sway over women? It's true that a goofy Jew like David Cooperfield got Claudia Schieffer and it's TRUE that David Blaine was the most notorious member of Leonardo DiCaprio's 'pussy posse' in New York during the 90's, but come on! It's gay magic!! It's stupid!!!

That's when I noticed the other guys - his students -- hovering around. One even took out a notepad. The predator was closing in. They were salivating. They were going to learn how to steal a girl. From me!

Mystery started talking a blue streak, prattling on in never-ending sentences. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a little voice said, 'Seriously Bill, who cares? Fuck this dude. You don't want to talk to him, do you? He's the annoying guy at the party who wants attention.'

"... and here we are at a really cool place sharing a unique experience in New York City - there's a community of all these incredible people and we're doing what a community should be doing: having a fun night out watching a show, sharing a good time...."

Mystery took a drag on the cigarette and turned to G: "...Sharing a cigarette..."

Without missing a beat and with the linguistic bravado of Mae West in 'I'm No Angel,' G said, 'Oh... are we? I almost forgot.' That smile again.

It was a coquettish dig at Mystery for hogging the cancer stick but in my escalatingly jealous noodle it sounded like 'My right leg is Christmas, my left leg is Easter - why don't you come and visit me between the holidays?'

Mystery, surprisingly, shut up for a second and handed the cigarette to G, who took a luxurious drag and blew it out through pursing and impossibly cherry lips. He swallowed, seemingly gathering himself, and launched back into his weird 'communitas' speech about art and humanity and shared experiences. I stared blankly. Was my boredom killing his game?

The chubby girl from Mexico City waddled up and cut through the tension with subliminal neon arrow signs pointing to her soul as she loudly proclaimed "how much fun" she was having. She even danced a little chimichanga merengue thing as she insinuated herself into the situation. She grabbed G, pulled her into her little chalupa fupa and said to Mystery, 'Oh my God, have you met G? Isn't she gorgeous?!'

Mystery instantly looked at me. He was trying to discern the nature of my relationship with G. If he knew that she had become my eternal elusive, that my throat constricted at the thought of her, that I've deleted her number from my cell phone on numerous occasions with the hope that she would cease to exist in my life, then maybe he would have relented. Or maybe he would have insisted on bedding her.

It was at that moment I realized I was not cool, not a stud, not even remotely a player in the game. I was a scared little boy who craved the affection and attention of women because of a terrible, dank well of insecurity that probably reached back to the time I reached for my mommy's breasts and got a bottle of SIMILAC instead. Maybe he saw a flash in my eyes; perhaps he saw the fear that, when mixed with alcohol, can catalyze a fireball of directionless violence. He spends his nights in bars. Of course he sees these things.

"Yes she is gorgeous. Honestly, I've been checking you out all night... but I don't want to step on any toes here." He gave me a pointed look. Was he asking for permission?

The lonely Mexican broke the looming tension around my pending response by leaning in and giving G a hug; the hug of old friends...or new friends with bottle service. Mystery saw his opening.

"Wow, look at this love! This is great. How about I get a hug, too?"

I saw it coming from a mile away: he would hug Senorita Lonely Corazon, cursorily, and then casually turn to G and give a lingering hug, with maybe a slight touch to indicate intention. Sure enough, he held out his arms wide...really wide. I was way ahead.

Mystery was going to try to pick up my eternal elusive. I kind of smiled at the serendipity: on a night where I'm feeling the most insecure about myself and my feelings for a woman, a world-renowned pickup artist decides MY woman is HIS 'target.'

I sat there watching, my mind drifting to my Brazilian jiu-jitsu training as my eyes trained in on Mystery's velvet and velour Willy Wonka overcoat. I focused on the lapels, basically forming a rope around his skinny neck. Slide the fingers towards the nape, thumb outside, lift the elbow up, and I would only have to pull down slight on the opposite lapel...

He quit hugging Tamale and, like clockwork, turned to G with his arms out.

.... If he resisted, I could just straight grip one lapel, reverse grip the other, for leverage I need to get his hips below mine, on the floor possibly..

He took the cigarette out of her mouth and went in for a hug.

... or do an arm drag and get behind him for a rear naked choke. 5 seconds til unconsciousness. He was long, it would be easy to get my hooks in...

His hands reached down slightly and the hug did, in fact, loiter...inappropriately so. He smelled her, made an invisible comment, and gave her a peck on the cheek.

By the time he pulled away, I had successfully, albeit hypothetically, choked out Mystery five or six different ways - a respectable number for a two year Brazilian jiujitsu blue belt. A small part of my brain locked onto this idea like pitbull jaws: fighting solves everything.

What's the worst that could happen? You choke the fucker out and G doesn't leave with you because she's mad? Well she's not leaving with his unconscious ass either.

Luckily, violent thoughts slowed my heart rate as I settled into my back-up plan. He was talking to G about the performers and the magic of the night or some shit, so I insinuated myself back into the conversation.

"You're a magician, right? You should get on a show like this?"

"Dude, lemme tell you, I used to do magic shows. Hundreds of them."

"What happened?" I asked immediately. I had forgotten that his failed magic career was the thing that kept him drunk and unglued during much of 'The Game.' Even I couldn't tell if I was being disingenuous with the question.

For a flicker, Mystery seemed a little flustered. He switched his attention between me a G a little too energetically.

"Well, I'm doing something else now and it's working out prrrrretty well for me."

I didn't say anything. The veneer of his super-secure, cooler-than-the-other-side-of-the-pillow aloofness was beginning to crack. I gestured to the cigarette that he had been sharing with G. I wanted it. He looked slightly confused, so I just snatched it out from his hand. I put in my mouth and inhaled my thoughts. The grin, magically, disappeared. The veneer was crumbling. I was sinking my hooks in. He was about to tap out.

"I'm doing Season 2 of the PICKUP ARTIST on VH1 right now." There it was. The clueless braggadocio that comes out when insecure douchebaggery is exposed. Tap out now, I thought.

"That a tv show?" I asked. This time I knew I was being disingenuous.

He turned and stared at G dramatically.

"Yes it is! And I am... THE PICKUP ARTIST." And, he's out.

If he had a cape, he would have swooshed it with a flourish. If he was Dracula, he would have swooshed the cape and turned into a bat. If he was a real magician, a cloud of smoke. Instead, he was just another formula-fed insecure man-boy, so he turned with a semi-triumphant semi-huff and went back to his booth.

I racked focus to see the guys observing the event suddenly turn away and pretend not to care. I saw him speak to a Latin-looking dude - who I later realized was 'Matador' or 'El Matador' - maybe explaining the reason he bailed on his sarge.

I wasn't sure either.

"Who the hell was that guy?" G smirked, as she exhaled and absently flicked the fading butt to the floor.

Several minutes later, I noticed Mystery at the booth with my friend Caron. At same point, the Mexican girl sat down next to him. And at some point they started making out. I couldn't help but think.... Hmmm, I guess like many of us, even the greatest pickup artist in the world, sometimes, has to settle for a 3am Taco Bell run.

I turned to G and put my hand on her ass.

'Let's get out of here.' Timeless. Classic.

She smiled at me with her singular smile, and I knew that, tonight at least, we would be lovers.

When we leave The Box, there is still more show left. But it's after 3am. She has work at 10am. And I, once more, have a case to make.

As the cab bounces uptown from the hurly-burly of hip south of Houston, our hands shyly find each other and interlace in silent communion.

Tomorrow, she will forget me. I know this. There will be cocktail parties and dates. There will be setups and more doctors and lawyers and other men her age entirely more suitable for her than a poor comic in his thirties.

There will be, for her, time and world enough.