Seasons of Love

Hey Strangers, 

It’s been a while… 

Let me start by wishing all the mothers out there a Happy belated Mother’s Day. I may not have a relationship with my own mother, but that will never stop me from saying that there is no greater role than that of being a mom. So, to all the moms out there, I hope you had the most wonderful day. 

You know, today is a very special day. Back on May 10, 2015 (which happened to have been Mother’s Day that year), I launched Baztards®. I have always loved to write, and creating this website allowed me the opportunity to let the world in on who I really was. You see, back in 2015, there were a lot of false perceptions about me due to a bad break-up, and I wanted to take control of the narrative. I cannot stress enough how thankful I am for all the love I have received over the years and for all the opportunities this website has brought into my life.  

Although I don’t write as much as I used to, I will always remain appreciative to all of you for welcoming me into your homes for the last six years. I know it’s difficult to believe due to the lack of content over the last 2-3 years, but I still have plenty of ideas and so much to still say. I mean life continues to go on and on, and my hope is to be able to more frequently express myself here. 

As I sit here on the anniversary of my website, it’s interesting because I am thinking about a question I asked myself six years ago, and that has always been a driving force behind most of my writings: How do you document real life, when real life is getting more like fiction each day?  

Back then, it had more to do with damage control than anything else. But today, I’m actually thinking about another big anniversary being celebrated this year. Of course, I’m talking about the show RENT, which debuted on Broadway 25 years ago. That question is the opening line to the first song in the production. 

I’m sure all of you have heard of RENT before today, but for that one person out there who hasn’t, RENT is about a year (or 525,600 minutes) in the life of a group of friends living in Manhattan’s Alphabet City either in the late 80’s or early 90’s. The show, based on Puccini’s La Bohéme, was written by the late Jonathan Larson, who died the night before RENT was to premiere, and over the last 25 years, it has become a cultural phenomenon that forever changed the face of theater. It has won numerous awards, including a Tony or two and the Pulitzer Prize.

I should probably confess that the first time I saw RENT, I HATED it. But in my defense, my introduction to it was actually as a workshop presentation in the East Village, and not what the world would come to know and love. It’s actually a very funny story. 

I was in my second year of college, studying pharmacy and living on the Lower East Side with my Grandfather. One day, I got a call from a then friend who told me that she had passes to this workshop presentation featuring this singer named Daphne Ruben-Vega, who I knew from a girl group called Pajama Party. For those who don’t know, Pajama Party had a few club hits (Over & Over, Yo No Sé and Got My Eye on You) in the late 80’s/early 90’s and they were EVERYTHING back in the day. Being the fan that I was, and after being told that the theater wasn’t that far from my apartment, I agreed to go. 

I honestly cannot remember many details about that original presentation, but I can tell you that the workshop I saw was VERY long and had a VERY dark undertone to it. The first song, as I recall, started with something about jumping out of windows and slashing wrists, and I was immediately put off by what I was watching. Most of the characters had AIDS and the workshop itself went on so long, I was praying for the characters to die. I remember walking out of that theater space and asking my friend “what the hell was that?,” and saying that if I had to hear them say “would you light my candle” one more time, I would have jumped out a window myself and slit my own wrists. The only saving grace was, of course, Daphne, who we ended up meeting that night. 

Fast forward a couple of years. After taking a year off to deal with some family issues, I returned to college to study psychology and art. Around my birthday, this same friend and another person decided to take me out to lunch at The View in the Marriott Marquis. While we were there, I was told that they had another surprise for me, and after we ate, we walked over to the Nederlander Theater. Lo and behold, there on the marquis was the word RENT. 

I remember, clear as day, saying out loud “Please tell me this is not that light my candle shit we saw that time,” and my friends laughing. I was told to trust them and give the show a chance because they had gotten great seats. They said if I really hated it, we could leave during intermission, so I agreed, and we went into the theater. To this day, I am glad that they convinced me to go in and watch it, because the show was VERY different than that “light my candle shit” we saw a couple of years earlier.

For one thing, the cast was 90% different from the workshop, with the exceptions being Daphne and someone named Anthony Rapp. The character of Collins was now Black (he was Caucasian in the workshop), and the character of Maureen no longer had AIDS. There were less songs, and whatever songs they did keep from the workshop were reworked and less morbid. And although the overall story remained the same, the show had a much quicker pace and a lighter tone to it.

Surprisingly, this time around, I remained extremely interested in what I was watching the entire time. There was something about this cast with these songs and this story that seemed fresh and exciting to me. It truly was one of those “lightening in a bottle” moments to watch these people on stage pour their all into this production. I remember telling my friends that the cast looked like they actually wanted to be there, and it looked effortless.

Over the years, I went on to see RENT more times than I can count, with various versions of the cast. I have sat on the floor level and in the balcony, stood in line for the $20 lottery tickets and even was lucky enough to be in attendance for the final audience show (I believe the final show, which was taped, was by invitation only). I saw the show when it went off-Broadway (with a then unknown MJ Rodriguez, who is well known now for playing Blanca on Pose, as Angel), was there opening night for both the movie adaptation and the big screen version of the final performance (which I both have on DVD), and even sat through that G-d awful “anything but live” version played on Fox a few years back.

After all these years, I find it funny to say that I proudly consider myself a “RENThead,” mostly because I CANNOT STAND Broadway musicals for the most part. But something about this show in particular has always resonated with me.

For starters, the show takes place in a period of time that I actually lived through. As a kid of the 80’s and 90’s growing up in the New York area, I grew up in the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. Similar to the cast of RENT, I have had friends of all different backgrounds, and knew people who both lived with and have died due to complications from HIV/AIDS. It’s very hard to live in a place like New York City and not be touched in some capacity by the AIDS epidemic. So, the overall subject matter has always hit home for me.

I also spent a lot of my childhood in the area to which the story is set. I have vivid memories of visiting my Grandfather the summer the police raided Tompkins Square Park to remove the homeless. Back then, the park was considered extremely dangerous because of the large homeless population, as well as all the drug dealings happening there. In fact, I remember on Friday nights going with my Grandfather to this little eatery on 1st Ave called Teresa’s, and whenever we took the bus, our stop was right in front of Tompkins Square Park, which was eventually boarded up for safety reasons. But I digress. In case you didn’t know, those riots were the inspiration for the backdrop of RENT.

Watching the show always brings me back to living with my Grandfather on the Lower East Side in the early 90’s. My Grandfather and I were walkers, and there wasn’t a single weekend that we didn’t travel through Alphabet City to go to the Village. One place that we went to on numerous occasions was Life Cafe on Avenue B. For those who have seen RENT, Life Cafe is where the cast sings La Vie Bohème. It’s been years since I have been in Alphabet City, and most of the places we frequented no longer exist. But every time I watch a clip or hear a song from the show, memories of a time gone by and of people I have loved and lost fill my head, and I can’t help but reminisce and smile.

My Grandfather was a big advocate for living one’s best life. Granted, he had plenty of rules while I lived with him, but he was also that person who bought me the Madonna Playboy when I was in 5th grade and told me what a hooker was when we walked through Times Square. And although he never lived to see me ever date a guy, after he passed, my Grandmother told me that he knew I was Gay and all he wanted was for me to be happy. She told me that he didn’t want me to ever regret anything and that I should live my life to the fullest. So, every time I hear Mimi sing the line forget regret or life is yours to miss, it always brings me back to my Grandfather.

After my Grandfather passed away, it dawned on me that I was living my life the way others wanted me to. I was almost 30, and although I had a circle of great friends, I had never been in a relationship with a man or even lived on my own. I was in a position where I needed to find my place in this world and live my life for myself. There were definite high and low points over the years following my Grandfather’s death, but it wasn’t until I got diagnosed with Hashimotos/Hypothyroidism that I really began to fully understand the underlying themes of RENT.

When I was initially diagnosed, I was told that lumps were found on my Thyroid, in my chest/lungs and some other places. For one full week, I was sent for all these different tests, sometimes two or three in a day. We’re talking biopsies and all kinds of ultrasounds and sonagrams. Let me tell you that there is nothing scarier than thinking that there’s a possibility of having Cancer and wondering who, if anyone, would be there if you were sick and dying. Bringing it back to RENT, I took to listening to the song Will I on loop during that time. Needless to say, it was a rough period for me, and I spent the majority of it feeling sorry for myself.

Fortunately, all the lumps turned out to be benign, but that week definitely triggered something in me. Sure, I was fine, but the idea that I could one day be told that I had some form of Cancer made me begin to question my mortality. I began to think about who was in my life and decided to remove those who just didn’t bring anything positive my way. I also came to the realization that living with regret was kind of stupid and to live in the present. Life was a precious gift that wasn’t guaranteed, and if something were to happen to me, I wanted to be able to say that I lived it to the best of my ability.

No matter if you’ve seen RENT once, twice or even a hundred times, you quickly learn that the central messages throughout the show are to measure your life in love and that there is no day but today. For most people, these things would be easier said than done, but when you take into account that a number of the central characters were living with or had a close connection to someone living with HIV/AIDS at a time when the epidemic and death rate were at an all-time high, these themes begin to make sense. At least, they do for me.

The truth of the matter is I can go on and on. RENT to me represents a way of being. It’s about finding the happy even when things are crap. It’s about surrounding yourself with a core group of people who value your most authentic self and not an idea of who they want you to be. It’s about pursuing your art. It’s the idea that your accomplishments in life and your legacy come from the love you emote and receive. It’s about living for the day. In a single word, it’s about life.

A few weeks ago, I was watching this anniversary special put on by that place in the East Village that originally workshopped RENT, and it made me wonder if the show would have become the phenomenon it did had Jonathan Larson not died. Unfortunately, we will never know. But what I can tell you is that his death helps to drive home the message that there is no day but today.

Thank you Jonathan Larson for your beautiful message and Happy Anniversary.