Wonderland Burlesque's Re-Do Quiz, Part II

Wonderland Burlesque's

Re-Do Quiz, Part II

I recently read that regret is a waste of time since: whatever it is that happened which one might regret - it brought you to the place where you are now. And even if the place you are now is not all roses and accolades, it is temporary and yet another step towards a place where you will be happy.

It got me thinking... and I realize I am not the first person to think of this, but...

Wouldn't it be wonderful if life came with a 're-do' button, lending us all the ability to take a second shot at a given moment in our life? 

That's the thrust of today's quiz. So, get your hand over your buzzer and get ready to hit that re-do button. 

If you could, what would you do differently? 

Or... is it a regret you're happy to live with?

(Please note: The photos featured simply fit something mentioned in the post.  I do not endorse smoking in any way. Smoking is not sexy. It is nasty, unhealthy and dangerous. It's also unpleasant to be around, so, if you do smoke? Consider stopping. Your dick will get harder, your breath will smell better, you will feel better, and you'll get laid more often!)

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1/ That time you told someone the honest truth.

Ugh.

Never, ever tell someone you love 'the truth.' 

Or, in the words of our blessed gay saint, Jerry Hermann: 

"Will sit down and level
And give you the devil,
Will sit down and tell you the truth!"

Trust me on this...

It never ends well.

You won't do a great job of communicating what's at the heart of the issue and they will not receive the information as anything but an attack 

I speak from experience. I lost a best friend I treasured for 20 years. Thought the world of him. 

But, when his father left him a sizable inheritance, he quickly morphed into someone I didn't know. And when he found the love of his life in Miami - and they started doing Crystal non-stop? Well, I almost got off the bus... but I couldn't leave him behind. 

After a few years of that lifestyle and lots of stories - the kind that raise hair on the back of one's neck - he relocated to St. Louis, enrolled in a 12 step program and seemed to be his old self. I went to visit him and we fell into old patterns of patter; we both thought the world of Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and would riff on it's toxic flavors for fun and games. 

But then, it got very real. And I let him have it. I congratulated him on his sobriety, but felt certain he still hadn't developed an ounce of humility; he was play-acting. I told him that he was delusional about his Crystal-Meth boyfriend, because you can't 'love' someone when you spend most of your time together doing crack.

He disagreed. 

Then I told him that he needed to make amends - not just to me, but to all his friends who stood by him and put up with the horror show that his life had become during his time in Miami. 

He didn't see it that way.

I concluded by telling him he was selfish, myopic, self-centered, and the least generous person I'd ever met. 

Well... you can imagine how that went over.

In the end, I told him I loved him and cared deeply for him, but.. he had some serious work to do. 

That was day two of a four-day stay. We made our peace, or so I thought, and had a nice time the rest of the time. 

I went to dinner with his 12 step group. They hated me. Well... I was an outsider. And not only were they AA gays, they were also all A-gays. And that crowd? They either find me refreshingly candid or... they loath me. This group? They went with the latter. 

The silence was deafening. 

No. They did not approve.

So... I should have seen the writing on the wall. But I was floored when two months later all communication on his part ceased.

And I have come to accept that we will be forever estranged. 

If I could? I'd go back and keep my mouth shut. I went into what was a new situation for both of us and launched into the same script we'd been rehearsing for years and years. 

I should have entered quietly and listened. There may have been a time and place and a means for sharing my truth.. but that? 

That wasn't it.

Read the room, Mildred.

2/ That time you made an impulse purchase.

We were on a bender. Buying up houses. For our newly formed LLC. 

We had a dream of offering homes with fenced in yards so that elderly people could live independently and have a dog. 

The housing market had hit rock bottom. You couldn't look right or left without spying a foreclosed home and some of them had been on the market for years.

In we came, with a low-ball cash offer and the banks, who were only too happy to unload these dumps, played ball.

Most of the houses turned out great. We were a definite improvement over what was and we gave these old homes a new lease on life. 

However... there was one house that I really should have walked away from completely.

I call it 'the murder house,' for there was a huge bloodstain on the carpet in the bedroom. Whoever it was? From what I could imagine, they bled out on the left side of the bed. 

But that was not the only issue. The house had been recently renovated, which was going to save us a ton of time and money... however, it was the equivalent of putting lip gloss on a herpes sore. The house had major issues. It had settled oddly. It was subtle, but I came to see every room as slanting in a different direction, like walking through a midway fun house. The kitchen, nicely appointed, had a depressing air about it, as if nothing fresh could ever come of it. I adored the vintage woodwork, the Queen Anne windows, and the built-ins. It was lovely. In a way.

But the energy in the home bothered me the moment I stepped into it. And the discovery of the bloodstain in the master bedroom only confirmed it; there was something wrong with the house. 

However, we were flush with cash and eager to add another property to our portfolio, so... we snatched it up. The other three partners saw nothing wrong with the place and I demurred. 

Well... 

During the dozen or so years we owned it, the neighborhood went to hell. And, despite most of them being recommended by friends, other tenants, tradesmen we worked with, and, in one case, the church a block down... every tenant we placed in that home proved to be an absolute nightmare.

We rehabbed that home four times. We had one tenant who, before he vacated, removed both the front and back doors before taking a sledge hammer to the back of the refrigerator, the stove and the furnace.

I was never so happy as the day we found a buyer for that property. 

I wanted out. I wanted that creepy energy out of my life. So, someone met our asking price - we made a handsome profit - and we were only too happy to say goodbye.

Turns out thing didn't go as planned for the new buyer, either. 

Sadly, the home currently looks abandoned and in disrepair.

Pity the next fool... 

3/ That time you bowed to peer pressure.

I was fresh out of high school and a total teetotaler and squeaky clean. 

Fell in with the theatre crowd during that summer, as I got hired to do a series of five shows. It was a heady time, and I was so clueless. 

That fall, I was doing the lead at the local college - a bit out of my element, playing Petruchio in Taming Of The Shrew. The woman who played Kate was a few years older than I was. She had a habit of having an open Tab soda and a cigarette waiting for her backstage after she finished her final monologue. As we waited for our curtain call, she would sip the soda and puff away on the cigarette. 

I'd always liked the way cigarette smoke photographed. It looked so glamorous. 

And everybody who was serious about theatre smoked... like fiends. So? One night, I took the plunge. 

And ten years later, I finally kicked the habit that I had been trying to kick since the day I started. 

Oh, I romanticized it... but hated it, too. It took a toll on everything; my finances, my dancing, my singing, and my health. But when you're in the thick of it, you defend it, you protect your addiction. 

I was never so happy as the day I finally knew I was on the other side of it. 

So, when all those gay designer drugs became popular? While I dipped my toe, acquiescing to the influence of my best friend, I never did any of it more than once. I knew better. 

You get a monkey off your back? 

You know enough not to buy another ticket to the circus. 

4/ That time you stayed home.

I certainly know how to burn bridges. Throughout my twenties and into my mid-thirties? Nothing but scorched earth. 

Yes, it would seem I was one to never learn... until I did.

Someday I will identify the turning point, but for now... let's look at one of my most destructive torchings. 

I was just coming off of having directed a lovely (if troubled) production of Ladies Of The Alamo, and had a break before beginning work on a production of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. So, to fill the month, I took on two tech jobs. The one was a favor for a women who would become one of my favorite actors to work with; to design and construct the set for a production of Neil Simon's I Ought To Be In Pictures. The other was a bit more prestigious. One of our rank had snagged a job directing The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie at one of the larger theatres in the city and everyone wanted to help out. I agreed to design the lights. I'd worked at that theatre several times and had designed another there, so I thought it would be no great ordeal. 

Well, because our team was concentrating on Brodie, Pictures got the short straw. I had to build the whole set by myself. So, I spent days working on that set and my late nights designing lights. Thing is, the theatres were on opposite sides of the city and I had no car. I bussed it. And, it was cold. 

Everything was on schedule. The set was complete, or so I thought. 

The director hated the color of the walls. She came to me in tears, demanding it be changed. I had no time, but stayed overnight to do the whole thing myself, in a lighter shade. 

Did I mention the shows both opened the same night? 

Well, this happened the night before final dress. 

I was debuting my lighting design the next night for Brodie. 

It was a complicated design and, while I had worked with the lightboard operator a few times, we'd never gone through the whole show, start to finish. I didn't know what it looked like with actors on the stage. And the poor director had no clue what I had in mind.

You see, I was heavily-influenced by MTV at the time. So, this rather traditional little drama was getting quite the light show. Along the way, I decided that Brodie was, in fact, Adolph Hitler. She has two monologues and I built my whole design around those two moments. To say that my design was flawed and inadequate? A bit of an understatement.

I got home after having stayed up all night painting the Pictures set. In addition, I got to stand for two hours in sub-zero weather waiting for a bus. I couldn't sleep. I just kept chain-smoking cigarettes. As evening approached, I was in a weird, angry state of despair. I think I must have known that my design for Brodie was a mess and I didn't have the energy or drive to do anything to advert total disaster. 

As we approached curtain time, the phone began to ring. I refused to pick it up. It rang and rang. And I smoked and smoked. It was maddening. 

Well. I was fired. None of those people spoke to me for quite some time... that is until I was up for a job directing a one-act for a competition - something I dearly wanted to do - and they all showed up and torpedoed me in front of the entire theater board. 

I deserved it. 

I did try to make amends, offering excuses. But, it was too late. 

All those bridges burned. 

After all these years I realize it was all my own fault. 

I never asked for help. I seemed incapable.

All I had to do was pick up that phone and tell them what I'd just been through and that I couldn't get my ass on a bus - that someone would have to come and pick me up and get me to the theatre. And I could have demanded help painting that set, as well. 

Instead, I created a no-win situation while sucking on cigarettes, delirious, detonating bombs. 

Well... I sure knew how to win friends and influence people, huh? 

5/ That time you wore your heart on your sleeve.

I was gaga for a girl once. 

Her name was Lucinda. She looked like the Swiss Miss on the cocoa box. 

I had in mind, at the time, that she would rescue me from my confused sexuality, that we would marry, that my mother would begrudgingly approve and that the two of us would proceed to make a couple of babies. 

Oh - my- word. Talk about your delusional homo.

I had no idea what it meant to be in a relationship. I thought it was all romantic gestures and whispered endearments - and sex, sex, sex. 

Well, while I may have had my secrets... Lucinda had a few of her own. 

She left me for a mutual female friend - a rather predatory lesbian with undealt with anger issues. I think Lucinda was attracted to such a complicated puzzle of a person, and it made for a nice change of pace from the repressed gay dude with undealt with anger issues which she'd been momentarily attracted to. 

To this day... whenever I hear Foreigner's Waiting For A Girl Like You, I think of Lucinda. The bullet  we both dodged and the unborn babies whose lives we never got a chance to totally fuck up.

Sigh. 

Good times.

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And that's enough of me.

Your turn. Leave your answers in the comments section, or post on your blog and leave a link.

That's all for now.

Until next time...

Thanks for reading... and participating!