RENT!

I know I still need to crank out the third part of my Narc-post, but I don't have it in me right now to reconstruct the details of Sunday and Monday. Instead, I'd rather post about Rent, which opens today in wide release. I arranged a little "movie-party" for my nearest and dearest, and we're all going to see the 7:00 show at the Ziegfeld Theater. (That includes me, BigSis, Bro-in-Law, Hammer, NDN, B and get this-- B's girlfriend!)

I'm really excited about the movie, but I also have strangely mixed feelings about all of this. For me, Rent is not just a show, but a concept, a marker, that resurfaces in my life every few years, marking progress (or more accurately, the stages) of my "growing up."

I first saw the musical on Broadway with the original cast when it premiered in 1996. I was 17 years old--a senior in high school at the time. While I considered myself to be "wiser" than my infantile, shallow and rebellious peers, I didn't take much to this show about a bunch of wannabe artists fucking up their lives on drugs, living in the East Village. I was a hard worker and respected authority. At that point in my life, I had never taken a drink, never done a drug, and was a perfect (perhaps too perfect) student. I was busy indulging my budding interest in opera, trying to compose my own historical opera about the Russian Revolution, writing poetry, and often dressing in romantic flowing skirts (In my mind, they were perfectly suited to being swept up by the wind on a rugged ocean cliff). In other words, I was the same sort of hyper-emotional Romantic girl that I am today, but I was an incredible introvert. I repressed everything-- the keeper of all of my own emotional secrets, and not yet an enthusiast of urban grit, night-life and danger. I was most interested in Rent as a modern expression of La Boheme. So I went to see the play with my sisters and parents. At the intermission, my stepfather expressed his frustration with the show.

"What is this shit?" he demanded.

(Keep in mind, the lyrics were kind of hard to understand and he is a very traditional man who grew up on a farm in Italy. He hates coming into the city, and I don't think he expected to see homosexuals and drug addicts dying from AIDS and singing rock music when my mom invited him to join us for Broadway play. He was probably expecting something more along the lines of "Oklahoma" or "The Sound of Music.")

As for me, while I found the music appealing, I didn't quite "get it."

The next time I grew interested in Rent was during my junior year of college. I guess you can say I transformed myself quite a bit between the ages of 17 and 19. To give you an idea-- in February, 1998 I had my first drink. By December of that same year-- two days before my 20th birthday, I was picked up by an undercover cop for buying cocaine on the street. Of course, my family still didn't know anything about my wayward life, as I preserved a perfect facade. They believed me to be the socially responsible, brilliant young woman who overloaded herself with coursework and extracurriculars at an Ivy League school, a natural progression from the girl who never did so much as skip a single class in high school. You can imagine my mom's surprise when she got that phone call at 4:00 am from a NY City cop!

I don't want to go into all of that here, because it's besides the point. I'll save that story and its fall-out for another day. The point is, I was different. As a result of the arrest (which was dismissed-- I have no record). I had to do several days of community service picking up trash in Tompkins Square Park, smack in the center of Alphabet City, the neighborhood where the characters in Rent live. (Yes, it was pretty awful-- you'd be amazed at how many condoms and needles people leave laying around in plain sight in city parks!)

I started to listen to Rent differently, popping it into the CD player frequently. (Incidentally, I got my copy of the Rent CD by trading with B for my Rachmaninoff Choral Vespers. I think I got a good deal. I love the Rachmaninoff, but Rent is a double CD!) I was pretty depressed in those days for a variety of reasons--among them, that I was sick and tired of being "perfect." I wanted to live dangerously. I had urges all the time to do something drastic-- to do something dramatic. Of course, I thought of my 19-20 year old self as infinitely more worldly than I had been at 17. And the musical's characters resonated with me entirely more so. More and more I was getting a sort of "night-life itch." I guess you could say "Hyde" was being born, growing stronger and stronger by the minute.

(Mimi sings: Whats the time?/ Well it's gotta be close to midnight/ My body's talking to me/ It say,'Time for danger.'/ It says 'I wanna commit a crime./ Wanna be the cause of a fight/ Wanna put on a tight skirt and flirt/ With a stranger/..... In the evening I must roam/ Can't sleep in the city of neon and chrome/ So let's find a bar/ So dark we forget who we are/ And all the scares from the Nevers and maybes die...)

You get the point-- it was self-indulgent adolescent soul searching fueled by easy access to drugs, alcohol and potentially dangerous men, as New York City was "my oyster."

I next saw Rent the summer that B and I got together-- the summer of 1999. We took a trip to Atlantic City and it was an amazing trip for me. Although we had been best friends for three years before ever having sex, we bonded on that trip in a way that cemented something for me-- something that can never be undone. The show was doing a 1-month Atlantic City run that August, and B and I went to see it. I saw it all with new eyes. This time around, it was not about rebellion for me, but about hope, love and loss-- about the frustrations of trying to carve out one's own identity, of trying to figure out what to do with life.

B and I had some strange undertones to our relationship, especially in the beginning. I was slowly emerging from a very rough patch characterized by depression and every self-destructive behavior imaginable. B, on the other hand, was completely "square," and hid his own emotions quite well. I think we started off with a sort of a mutual "savior-victim/victim-savior" dynamic. He wanted to save me from my self-destructive ways, and I wanted to save him from the lack of love and feeling in his life. (Hmm... think I picked a similar project with Narc? Seems to be my modus operandi). But, if you look at the relationship between Mimi and Roger, it's kind of similar-- Mimi is physically destroying herself, and Roger has emotionally shut himself out from the world. But they find each other. Both of us felt ourselves mirrored in that pair and in the themes arising from that relationship.

The night after we saw the show, we sat on the beach for hours, just talking.

I saw Rent on Broadway for a second time in 1999-- this time it was December. Liu's brother and his friend were in from out of town for the big New Year's celebration (one of the wildest nights EVER-- again, a story for another time), and she lined up all sorts of cultural events for us. (We also went to see Tosca, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch that same week). This time, I was seeing the show just after my 21st birthday, several months into my relationship with B. The show was transformed. It was now entirely about love, friendship, self-construction, and the passage of time, as I prepared to graduate from college. Its many meanings rang true and I identified deeply with it.

Since then, Rent has been brought off and put back on my CD shelf a number of times, but my love for it has grown nostalgic. I've never embraced it with quite the same intensity after graduating.

While I was two years younger than "Mimi" the first time I saw the musical, I am now nearly seven years older than she. And for some reason, that makes me uncomfortable. I wonder who it is that I have become. If we could peer seven years into Mimi's future, what would she have become? But we can't. She is frozen at 19. I age. And for some reason, that makes me feel anxious.

Rent also has meaning to me as a lifetime New Yorker. It captures a particular NY moment--the New York City of the 1990's. That's my New York-- the NY I fell in love with when I first moved into the city from the suburbs. (In the same way that the 1970s NY will always be my mother's NY). While it's difficult to notice the city changing, day to day, it most certainly has changed. The "moment" lived by those characters has passed. (Especially post 9/11. Nothing has felt the same since). I'm nostalgic for the New York City of my college years--the Giuliani years... the Clinton years. Why should the passage of time raise such existential angst in me? Then again, I suppose it's normal...

So I find myself returning to Rent once again. It is yet, another year--this time, just two and a half weeks before my 27th birthday. This time I return as an adult; I return with friends and family, but with nervous anticipation. (Why don't I feel like I've worked it all out? When will I have earned my stability?)

Yes, it bothers me that B's girlfriend is going to be there, but I invited her. If it means I have to deal with her existence in order to be with B tonight, I'll take it.

So those are my thoughts this afternoon. I'm looking forward to the movie and will let you know how it goes. And then, maybe I'll finish my Narc-post.

:)

h