Yes, I know. It's been a while, but I've been busy. Very busy. The new season has begun and the 12 hour days have become 16 hour days. The heat is on, but I'm trying to stay cool. Today was the last day of my "probation." I'm now official in this position. My boss told me this evening that I'll be getting a raise. This is a good thing. Tomorrow night, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Namoli Brennet, will be taking my stage for the first time ever. I'm exhausted, but feeling pretty zen right about now. So, with wine glass in hand, I sat my naked ass down and pondered the next word on my list. "Theatre." Heh. Perfect.

This word is loaded, and I wonder if Melissa has any idea… It means so many things to me. Not surprising, considering where I find myself, these days. I never really imagined myself managing an historic landmark like the Rio Grande Theatre, but here I am. It consumes my life, but I have no real complaints. The challenges are immense, but I don’t really feel daunted. I can honestly say that I have never felt so appreciated by the people I work for. It’s both a pleasure and an honor to have been so charged. In terms of the “word,” however, it barely scratches the surface.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been referred to as “theatrical.” Not in the melodramatic sort of way some people are theatrical. I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a limelight personality. Though I find myself comfortable on a stage, I’d rather be behind the scenes, pulling the strings, if you will, in a very Machiavellian way. I just happen to be very fond of stagecraft. Performance, whether it be acting, singing, lecturing or any other form of storytelling, from a stage area, fascinates me. It’s like magic.

I attribute this fascination to the fact that, as a child, I had a terrible stutter. The stutter seemed to vanish, however, when I read aloud from other sources. My mother, being a reading teacher, discovered this fact early on and made me read aloud at every opportunity. This led to my composing and memorizing my words in advance and speaking them back before whatever audience I found myself. Memorization took the pressure off my poor brain and taught me how to slow down, compose my thoughts and speak them clearly, rather than in a rush and tumble of painfully stillborn sentences. It was only natural that I would join the drama club in high school. Everything changed dramatically, if you’ll forgive the pun, after that.

As already mentioned, I wrote a play while in high school and had it drag me all the way to national championships in New York City. I was a junior in high school at the time. I still don’t think the play was very good, but others seemed to like it. As a result, I was offered a drama scholarship to New Mexico State University. College was a notion I’d never even entertained, up until that point. It got me out of Tularosa and completely changed my life. The “career” didn’t last long, as I was ejected from the drama program by the dean, when he found out that I was tricking with one of his married professors. Shit happens. I moved into the writing program.

Over the years that passed, I kept finding myself dragged back into theatre. I did summer stock in Silver City, New Mexico, way back in 1982 and it was there that I met the first real love of my life. Years later, I wrote a play about the ghosts haunting me after that first love’s suicide. Before it was ever produced, I wrote and saw staged a handful of short, one acts. I continued acting, here and there, in a variety of productions, mostly alternative, some requiring nudity. I founded a theatre troupe in Phoenix and, eventually, had my ghost play produced in 2007. It was on stage, a year later in a production of Psycho Beach Party, that I met Donny, the man who taught me what true love is all about.

And here I find myself coming full circle. I’m back where I started on this little journey. Difference is, I’m not a theatre student this time around. Now I’m the guy in charge. I’m master of my own destiny. I’m managing the hottest entertainment venue in town and I have the hottest partner, another one of those “theatrical” types. Still, the word “theatre” fits. Without my ever really realizing it, that word has helped shape me. It continues to direct me. It’s a part of my destiny, it seems. And really, who am I to complain? If all the world is a stage, I've got pretty choice billing.

There's this meme going around, in which somebody gives you five "relevant" words and, in response, you have to write something about each one. Normally I don't go for "getting to know me" memes. Waste of time, mostly, but also, they tend to be dumb. This one is a little different. For one thing, Melissa Maples challenged me and she is anything but dumb. For another, it gives me something to write about and I work best with assignments. Of course, I'm not about to do it the way everybody else does. Rather than jot down a few words on each topic, one after the other, I think I'll weigh each one carefully, then write about it at length. One word at a time. One journal entry, as I find the time. That said, the first word is "writing." Here goes...

Asking me to write about writing is a bit like asking a hemophiliac to describe bleeding. Scratch me and it’s an almost certain fact that ink will flow from my veins. It’s both a blessing and a curse; a joyous compulsion and a cruel obsession. It is, in a word: life. Which makes it all the stranger that I find myself at a point in my life wherein writing plays such a small role. For over 25 years I’ve not gone a single month without having at least one article, essay, review, interview, poem or short story published in some publication, somewhere. All that ended three months ago when I took on the very taxing job of running the Rio Grande Theatre.

Why? Because there just hasn’t been any time. I know, that sounds like a lame excuse for a self-proclaimed write-a-holic. If there’s time to eat, to sleep, to shit, there’s always time to write. Therein lies the problem. I rarely find the time for any of those things, anymore. I eat on the run, I sleep sporadically and my digestive tract may never forgive me for the neglect and misuse. It just happens to be the way it is, these days. I still work ten to 12 hour days, six days a week. Ah, but it isn’t so dire as it sounds. I do write. I’m writing now. I’ve got folders filled with notes, reflections, private journal entries and lists. I’m big on lists. It’s the publishing part that’s fallen by the wayside. No big loss, really. The challenge of this new job far outweighs the need for validation as a writer. Maybe I’ve finally outgrown that selfish desire. Maybe…

So, yes, writing is a necessary part of my life. Like oxygen. Even when I was a young turk rebelling against the strict protocols of the Catholic Church and the evil nuns who kept us in lockdown at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School, I wrote. Short stories, mainly, about the ungodly and often grisly demise of Sister Alphonsine, my chief nemisis; she of the immobilizing halitosis and arthritic death pinch. I was seven or eight at the time. Later, in high school, I wrote my first play and took it to national playwriting competitions, despite vociferous condemnation from my stepfather, who believed all that "creative crap" I was doing was, not only a waste of time, but a sure sign that I was a sissy boy, unworthy of his hometown letterman reputation. Hell, even his despicable act of burning my journals and sketch pads, in the front yard when I was 16, didn’t deter me. I learned then that it wasn’t what had been written, but what was left still to write that mattered.

I wound up in college, just so I could escape the man, the church and the repression. Had to turn a lot of tricks to make it happen, but I’m not complaining. Coming from a small town, with no real prospects and a depressing lack of monetary worth, I happily sold my ass for the privilege of attending the University. And, lo, while there, I discovered a whole new world of possibility. There were people attending and teaching at the University who proudly proclaimed themselves writers and pursued careers in the field! I was smitten and I never looked back. Had my first short stories published in the local student lit journal. Joined the college newspaper and got my first taste of a byline. I guess I just never stopped after that.

Over the next 30 or so years, I wrote constantly. It became a driving force, no matter what job I held. Over the years, I wrote for, edited, managed and published a series of entertainment magazines. I had my own ridiculously successful literary website for a few years. I worked for Paramount Studios, which then parlayed into freelance work with every major Hollywood studio and a clutch of smaller, independent production and distribution houses. I was a columnist, staff writer, freelance publicist and writing consultant for whomever would have me. I wrote and had three plays produced. And I had enough short stories published to fill three anthologies. Not a bad run, when you think about it. In fact, I’m probably the most prolific writer nobody has ever heard of. I’m okay with that.

It’s odd to sum my career up like that, in such a short paragraph. There was so much more to it, obviously, but in the end, everything in this line of work can be summed up in a paragraph. I’ve done more than my fair share of reducing others to a synopsis of concise syllables. All’s fair in love and words. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. It wasn’t the details of the experiences that counted, it was the overall experience itself. I was, by gods, and still am, a writer. I always will be, until the day I die, crippling arthritis or dementia not-withstanding. I guess if I had to come up with an epitaph for myself, something to carve into the granite that will someday be my footnote, it would be, “I came, I wrote, I lived the impossible dream.”

‘Nuff said.