Against My Better Judgment by Brown Roger;Brown Roger;

Author:Brown, Roger;Brown, Roger; [Brown, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

In response Skip wrote: “Thanks for the card and $—I must admit I'm about as much in touch with Shakespeare as I am with my scrotum.”

The cryptic reference to being in touch with his scrotum is a reference to the first New York trip, the trip of late October, and that event must now be related and, in chronological order, five others which led to the final crisis.

* * *

The idea for a sumptuous weekend à deux in New York began with my interest in seeing Puccini's Girl of the Golden West, an opera I had never seen and which was being given by the Met in the fall of 1991. In mid-October I asked Skip whether he would be interested. Would he! Skip's eyes shone. He had loved the bits of La Bohème played in the movie Moonstruck, and an older gentleman of earlier acquaintance had promised Skip some day to take him to see La Bohème but had defaulted on this promise. Months later I heard more about the older gentleman—a smarmy, defrocked priest—stuck on La Bohème.

“Well, Girl of the Golden West is by the same composer as Bohème: Puccini. It's much less melodious and less popular than Bohème, but you might like it.”

“I want to go! I want to go! It would be a dream come true. I lived in New York for a few months and I loved it. Please, Roger, can we go?”

“I think it would be fun to stay at the Pierre, which I liked a lot last spring. We could take a suite with two bedrooms and baths and so each have our privacy. You can wear your dark suit, Skip, and you'll be the best-looking man in that glamorous audience.”

Tickets for the opera, the premiere of a new production, were sold out but Barry and Anthony, who live in New York, told me that there was a way to get tickets to anything: an illegal scalping agency. I called and found I could get two good seats for $500 each. They could also get tickets to Les Miserables.

“Would you want to stay an extra day and see Les Miserables?”

“I would give my left nut to see Les Miserables! Roger, you are amazing! And a prince!”

At the opera Skip sat next to a great Opera Dragon, eighty years old, hair piled a foot high, hands encrusted with jewels.

“Are those real?” Skip asked. The Dragon took a good long look at the boy and his escort and hit on the correct answer instantly. I made upper-class opera discourse with her and Skip whispered to me: “The old broad is playing footsie with me.”

My hopes for the opera had been that Skip and I would experience synchronous musical thrills, breathing sighs with tear-filled eyes, and be drawn together in a new way. The first opportunity Girl of the Golden West provides for a big thrill is the Wild West motif that booms from the orchestra with Minnie's entrance into the Polka Dot Saloon. I sought to cue Skip by taking a breath so deep that the boy should feel the chest expansion.

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