This is a story about a continuing relationship between two men in New York City. It includes explicit homosexual acts. If you are underage or find such material distasteful, please read no further.
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The people and events in the story are totally fictitious, but actual locales are used to add realism.
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Copyright 2015 by Macout Mann. All rights reserved.
AT FIRST SIGHT
by Macout Mann
VI
Both mine and Wilbur's families arrive on Monday, June 9. The last preview was Saturday. We have a cast meeting at the theatre to work out final details this morning. Arnold Cousins has a thing about opening on a Tuesday, so the delay works out well for Wilbur and me. We can have our party for the folks tonight.
Wilbur has engaged a not-too-fashionable caterer to do drinks and heavy hors d'oeuvres. My brother, Steve, has opted to stay at the Waldorf. Our families share a cab to St. Mark's Place. They are suitably impressed with our digs, and my folks easily accept that our living arrangements are totally platonic.
Wilbur goes down to help hail a cab for the return trip to Fifty Second and Park. The caterer packs up and leaves. "Alone at last," Wilbur says.
"About time," I respond. I reach for my favorite part of his body.
"I've got some news to tell you," he says. "I've been offered an assistant professorship at Columbia. Should I accept?"
"By all means...if you want to," I answer. "You know I'll go with you wherever you want to go, if you'll still have me."
"Well, it looks like you may have a promising career in the `the-ah-ter,'" he says, "so staying in New York might be best for both of us."
"Well, let's see what tomorrow night brings," I say. "In the meantime..." I gently pull him into the bed.
I salve my prong with KY as I nibble his nips, tongue his navel, and clamp my chops over his leaky tube.
"Take me, love," he whispers.
I take him. I feed his ass with my manhood, ensuring that on each thrust I make maximum contact with his prostate. I want us both to be equally thrilled as I demonstrate my adulation for him. At the same moment that I fill him with my cream, he releases his load onto my gut and his own chest. Our union is perfect.
Arnold has another obsession. It all has to do with "breaking a leg." Not until exactly seven minutes after the appointed hour for the show to begin does he enter the orchestra pit to polite applause as the house lights go down. The overture begins.
Not quite two and a half hours later, the final curtain falls. There is thunderous applause. The less than nine hundred patrons make a sound like might be heard at the the Met. And it's not just old folks nostalgic for the light opera of yesteryear. At least a third of the audience are young types, many from Juliard. After all, our Mabel, a Metropolitan Opera Auditions runner-up is a Julliard graduate.
Our angel has arranged an after-the-opening-party. The stage of the Harvey Theatre is converted to a party room. I meet Jason Meriwether, one of the country's richest venture capitalists, who's paid for everything thusfar. I introduce Wilbur to Ronald, saying to him that this is the good friend I was telling him about.
"I envy you," Ronald tells Wilbur.
My parents are terribly impressed. Steve wonders if he can get into any of the girls in the chorus. Even my dad enjoys the show.
It's not like it used to be. Folks waiting up for the first edition of the papers to find out what the critics wrote. Nowadays, people are more likely to hear first from the television reviewers or see critics' blogs. After the party, Wilbur and I go back to St. Mark's Place. The folks go back to the Waldorf. God knows where everyone else went.
The most influential review probably still appears in the New York Times. It reads in part:
Last night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre a
remarkable event occurred. The audience was transported back
to 1880, when the only Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to be
premiered in the United States, opened.
It was a remarkable evening. "The Pirates of Penzance"
came alive in its original staging. The audience was enthralled,
this critic among them.
The performers were all first rate. Antoinette Lacy as Mabel and
Brandon Smith as Frederic, both young and accomplished as actors
and singers, were perfect. Jack Crawford, as the Major-General,
was unbelievably "modern major-generalish."
Arnold Cousins, the musical director, had a perfect grasp of
Gilbert and Sullivan's style.
The producers call themselves "The American D'Oyly Carte Opera
Company." One hopes they succeed in becoming such.
Hallelujah!
The six-week run at the Harvey Theatre is a guaranteed sellout. Jason Meriwether's investment is more than repaid, but he refuses to be reimbursed. "I want D'Oyly Carte in America to be a real success," he says.
So a tour is arranged. The Bank of America Theatre in Chicago is dark in advance of the opening of "Rain." Similar availabilities are found in Minneapolis, Denver, Dallas, New Orleans, Birmingham, and at the amazing Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Wherever we go we are hailed. I think the major reason is that the production is mounted in the old style. Grand, it is.
We return to Manhattan to learn that we are booked into the Koch Theatre at Lincoln Center for an additional six weeks. The former home of the New York City Opera, the Koch is four times the size of the Harvey, where we began. Now we also are to rehearse "Pinafore," which will open once "Pirates" closes.
Meanwhile, Wilbur has found us an apartment uptown on Riverside Drive opposite the Palisades. It is in an older building, very comfortable with a nice view of the Hudson. We celebrate my return in the expected way, while vowing to each other that we have both been faithful in my absence.
Come the weekend we go once again to Central Park.