Author: raybarnhart1968

Guest Blogger, Michael Patrick Gaffney: Old Wallpaper

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wallpaper 2My good friend Michael has written another guest blog, the first guest blog of 2014!  Partly because my parents have lived in the same, relatively unchanged, ranch style house since 1980, I can relate to this story.  And yet, since this is a story about constants and changes and our relationship to those things, I am sure everyone can relate.  

Old Wallpaper

In 1973 my dad moved us from Queens, New York to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  Needless to say it was a bit of a culture shock for the whole family.  No one could understand what we were saying with our thick, New York accents and every time the lady at the Piggly Wiggly store said, “Ya’ll come back now, ya hear”, we would literally come back to the counter wondering what we had done wrong.  It was like living on the planet, Mars.  But one of the great things about our move was that we got to watch our house being built.   The first time my dad took us to our lot, all that was there was the cement foundation.  Once a week the whole family would pile into the new Ford, Galaxy station wagon and check out the progress of our house.  Soon there were studs up, then walls, then brinks and stone, and then the roof.

When it was finally finished it was the quintessential 1970’s ranch house, with avocado green, shag carpeting, burnt orange appliances in the kitchen, a wagon wheel light figure in the living room and lots and lots of loud wallpaper throughout. 

Flash forward 40 years!  My mother and father still live in that same house, minus the green, shag carpet, etc.  When I was visiting last summer they mentioned that they might finally take down the old, original wallpaper in the half bathroom off the garage.  “Oh, no don’t!  That’s all that’s left of the original design and it’s so cute”, I pleaded.   I made sure to take a picture of the bathroom before I left in case they followed through with their foolish plan.

This morning on the phone, my mother casually mentioned that they finally remodeled the half bath off the garage.  She also mentioned that they were thinking of finally selling the house and moving to a smaller place.  A four bedroom house was just too much trouble for a couple in their late seventies.  It was time.

 It was just old and worn wallpaper, hanging in the half bath off the garage. It was dated and silly and dingy so it was time for it to be torn down and replaced with a fresh coat of beige paint.  Preparing the house for the next family to take over perhaps.  What’s the big deal?

But that wallpaper was my youth, my memories and a link to the past.  When I would visit my childhood home, little by little things would change but I could always go into that half bath off the garage and I was immediately  pulled back into the 1970’s and my childhood.  

As a kid I probably spent too much time in that bathroom, sitting there trying to figure out the story of those characters on that red and white, kitschy wallpaper. There was the woman sitting at her vanity painting her fingernails.  The bald man drying himself off with the checkered towel.   The woman with the night cap on, checking her wrinkles in the mirror.  The man in his bathrobe combing his hair.  The mom brushing her little girl’s hair while she plays with her toy, with the cat watching closely.  The naughty poodle pulling the towel off the rack.  What did it all mean?  Pondering it now I guess it was just a simple story about a family living together and sharing a space on a daily basis.  It could have been any family I suppose, but I guess to me it was my family that I imagined on that wall.   I think that is why I find it so hard to let go of it completely.   So this afternoon I blew up the picture I had taken last summer, put it in a frame and mailed it off to my folks.  I want it to be a reminder I guess…or a monument really, to that young family from Queens, New York starting off their new life and adventure together on the planet, Mars.

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I Was a Diver

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I spent a significant portion of my New Year’s Eve at a nursing home not far from Temecula. If 12/31 is a day that lends itself to making one ponder the circle of life, spending it in a nursing home only increases such thoughts.

Last night, after the residents had been fed, (tuna salad sandwiches and chicken soup, which looked and sounded real good to me) the nurses gathered those able in the living room to watch That’s Entertainment! on television. I happened to walk in during a lavish Esther Williams swimming number.

“That’s Esther Williams, isn’t it?” I asked. A gentleman answered me, “Yes, I believe that is.” Some watched the screen transfixed, others stared into space. One woman, I’ll call her Missy, looked at me and told me that Esther Williams had been the best. I agreed. And then, I think, she told me that she’d been a swimmer herself. “Competitive,” I thought I heard her mumble.

The moment reminded me of my favorite scene from How to Make an American Quilt where the cantankerous Sophia, played by Lois Smith, at the end of the movie comes up to Winona Ryder’s character and girlishly confesses, “I was a diver.” And then even later, one of the last scenes (maybe it’s even the very last scene), we see 70-something Sophia climb the ladder of the high dive and sail into the water below.

Real life is often more heartbreaking than cinematic life. I could hope that Missy woke up this morning and went to swim a couple miles at Temecula County Pool, but I know that didn’t happen.

I hope that Missy had a good life. I hope she loved and was loved in return. I hope that the memories of good times are a comfort for her at this point in her life.

Who knows what 2014 holds for any of us? My wish for you is that it’s a year filled with good memories and I hope that those good memories are able to be a comfort to you in years to come.

My Sweet Mama

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photo-39As I type this, my parents are driving from Kansas to Los Angeles to see me. My Mom won’t see this for a few days, perhaps not until after she gets home to Kansas in a couple of weeks. I love the fact that my Mom reads my blog, it keeps me from writing about things I probably shouldn’t write about.

A few days ago, I was swimming my laps and there was a woman, probably in her 30’s, who was attempting to swim in the lane next to me. She’d splash, flap her arms against the water, kick mightily. She had no sense that the water was there to buoy her, propel her even. She’d never had swim lessons, clearly. And I give her credit for being out there, with goggles and swim cap, no less, trying to figure it out. She made me think of my mother, who also never learned to swim. I think the reason I became a swimmer was because she wanted me to take swimming lessons every summer, she wanted me to have something she longed for as a child.

When you find out the story of people’s childhoods, sometimes you wonder how they ever made it to adulthood. If they’ve grown into a person who thrives, it’s even more of a miracle.

My Mother is the fourth of five children. Her Father died when she was two and she was raised by her Mother and three older brothers, Sam, Rocco and Mike. There was never very much money. Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying about money and (as far as I know) I don’t have 5 children to feed. I marvel that my Grandma, singlehandedly, could have raised 5 children to be 5 big-hearted, funny, smart, loyal adults, but she did.

There are things that my Mom missed out on by not growing up with a Father. Swimming lessons was the least of it. There were no Father-Daughter banquets, no one to make a Father’s Day card for, her brothers were the ones who taught her to drive.

And because my Grandmother worked so much and because she was one of 5, I think my Mother was always hungry for her love. At my Grandmother’s funeral, my Mother was so bereft she tried to crawl into her Mother’s casket as the family was saying their final goodbyes. Her brothers had to pull her away. I remember standing there, wondering if I should go to her or hang back. I was 20 at the time, not the best years in our particular Mother-Son relationship. I was a little embarrassed, but also I wondered if I might one day do the same thing with her one day. (My Mom and I have both probably seen the end of Imitation of Life one too many times, to be honest.)

I’m still haunted by the matriarchal character Violet Weston from August: Osage County, played onscreen by Meryl Streep. Her adulthood is so embittered because her childhood was so difficult and cruel. It made me think of my Mother, whose hardscrabble youth must have been similar, and yet she grew into my Mother, a woman who is loved by all who cross her path. A woman who always makes my favorite pork and potato burritos when I come home, a woman who is deeply sentimental about Lifetime Christmas movies, a woman who bakes butter pecan cookies for Eric every Christmas, a woman whose first words after her son came out to her were, “Nothing will change my love for you.”

My Mom’s favorite song is The Rose. Whenever it comes on the radio, she reminds me that this is the song she wants sung at her funeral. I won’t forget. I love the song almost as much as she does and though I’ve never told her, it always makes me think of her, too. If I had a dollar for every tear I’ve shed while listening to this song, I could buy my Mama a solid gold casket.

So, this song is for my Sweet Mama, I love her so.

This Takes Me Back

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photo-37I am home now, but a few hours ago, I was walking through the David Hockney Exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco.  Eric and I were in the city this week working a job together and I had a little extra time, so I went to the exhibit.  I used to live in San Francisco and as I drove along Fell and into Golden Gate Park, I remembered how I would often go for a run from my apartment near Alamo Square to the Pacific Ocean, along Fell, through the park, and then I’d turn around and run home.  I marvelled that there was ever a time when I had that much energy.

As I was walking through the exhibit, I noticed a gentleman about my Dad’s age lean in to say something to his wife.  They were looking at a rather large piece, entitled “Midsummer: East Yorkshire” which was composed of several panels of paintings.  I’d noticed him earlier, he was wearing a thin scarf around his neck and he just didn’t look like the scarf-wearing type.   He then pushed a finger up to his scarf and with a gravelly voice, whispered, “This takes me back to our trips to England.”  Then the two of them stared at the paintings in silence for a few moments, presumably lost in the memories of the vacations that they’d taken together through the years.  I don’t know the story of the scarf, if it’s something he’s dealt with for years or if it’s a new development, if it’s temporary or permanent.  He reminded me of my father, who last year for a couple of months had a tracheostomy tube and we wondered for a while if it might be permanent.  

When I saw the couple, for a moment, I thought I would write about them, then decided, no, there isn’t that much of a story.  Then in the next room, there was a very elderly couple, also taking in the same exhibit.  They were in their 90’s and the husband was bent over and the wife, who was only in slightly better shape than him, was helping him adjust his audio ear pieces that one sometimes rents at museums.  And while I was staring, yet again, I noticed my scarved friend was watching them, too.  I don’t know exactly what he was thinking, but it appeared to me, the look on his face said, “Don’t let this happen to me.”  Or maybe his look was just, “I wonder if this will be me.”  It’s hard to read looks, even when you’re a documented voyeur, I mean, people watcher.

And then, in the very next room, there was an installation called “Woldgate Woods” which depicted a road and the trees surrounding, on four different walls, at four different times of a year, April, June, early November and late November.  In the late November piece, there was snow glistening on the road and in the trees.  Certainly, it was intentionally evocative of the seasons of life and it reminded me of Thomas Cole’s “Voyage of Life” series, which depicts the four stages of human life.  And not only was I witnessing it at the DeYoung as I walked through those rooms.  I was a part of it.  I was a 45-year-old man, remembering those enduring, athletic runs of my youth, looking at these men at 70 and 90, wondering if this was going to be me, wondering if I could accept if it were to be my plight.

Last night, after our hosts took us to dinner in the Marina, Eric and I decided to walk from the restaurant to the home where we were staying in Pacific Heights.  After a few days of bitter cold, it was a balmy 50 degrees.  Many houses were decorated for Christmas, the Golden Gate Bridge was always within our eyeline.  As we walked around the Palace of Fine Arts, we took pictures and talked to the five swans that came to greet us at the water’s edge.  We talked about Ricky and Millie, because being around these gorgeous, flirty, talkative creatures made us miss our own gorgeous, flirty, talkative creatures back home.  And then we walked up Baker Street at what felt like a 75 degree angle, huffing, puffing, and laughing the whole way.  I guessed we laughed too much to call it romantic, but when we finally made it home, it felt like we’d made a special memory.  

And today, as I was driving down the 5 back to Los Angeles, already missing Eric, who is coming home tomorrow, it made me hope that one day, 20-40 years from now, we might be in a museum together and we might see a painting of Golden Gate Bridge, or Coit Tower, or the Presidio, or the Palace of Fine Arts and one of us (no matter what kind of shape we are in) will lean in and whisper to the other, “This takes me back to our trips to San Francisco.”

Starring Oklahoma

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2483653_GA couple days ago, I went with my friend Vinod to see a screening of a film called August: Osage County that is coming out in a few weeks.  It’s an adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Tony winning play starring a who’s who of great actors including Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Margo Martindale, Sam Shepard, Ewan McGregor, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Chris Cooper, and more.  There are a lot of heart-wrenching performances, but the one thing that stuck with me the most, the one thing I’ve continued to ponder since seeing the movie is the performance, or presence of the state where the movie is set and filmed, Oklahoma.

There is a pervasive heat that you feel the entire time you are watching the movie.  That sticky, sweaty, cloying heat is alluded to even in the title of movie.  If you’ve ever spent an August in Osage County or near Osage County, you know what I’m talking about.  The movie was filmed about an hour away from the town in Kansas where I grew up.  In fact, because of my Dad’s illness, I was in Kansas last summer, when they were filming the movie, and it was a particularly hot summer, some of you might even remember.  So, while Meryl and Julia and Margo and Julianne and Juliette were proximating a dysfunctional family dealing with a family crisis in the part of the world I know best, I was with my (probably slightly more functional) family dealing with a family crisis of our own.  

There is a funny scene in the beginning of the movie where Julia Roberts’ character Barbara, who grew up in Oklahoma but lives in Colorado now opines, “Who was the asshole who saw this flat hot nothing and planted his flag?”  And growing up there, it’s a sentiment I thought myself several times.  I used to say that the good thing about growing up in Kansas is that it makes every other place I go beautiful in comparison.  (That’s harsh.)  Later in the scene, I think Barbara gets it right when she says, “This is not the Midwest. All right? Michigan is the Midwest, God knows why. This is the Plains: a state of mind, right, some spiritual affliction, like the Blues.”  

I wept every time the state of Oklahoma flashed on the screen.  Several scenes take place when people are driving down the road or driving through a small Oklahoma town.  Certainly, there was recognition for me when I saw those old-fashioned churches, or once grand country homes that had fallen into disrepair or that sky, wide open, both in day and night.  But it was more than recognition, it was wist.  And it was love.

I was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma and raised most of my life, just 45 minutes away from there in Independence, Kansas.  I’m proprietary about that part of the world, because it’s still mine.  And watching this film, moments of which were masterpieces, I understood why people stay and why people leave and why they come home again, and also, why, even if you never come back to live, the plains will always be a part of you.erez-12

Dream Your Dreams!

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1476352_10153534656775128_2017242665_nI just returned from a night out in West Hollywood.  I met up with one of the kids who was in my youth group back when I was a youth minister in Missouri.  He is a gymnastics coach and teacher in San Diego.  I haven’t seen him for a few years, the last time was 2009, but I feel that we have a connection that will always endure.

He posted a picture of us to Facebook with the caption “with my high school youth minister turned West Hollywood gay comedian. I’m being serious.” Several people clicked like and a few commented that you can’t make things like that up. I’ve certainly written about my years as a youth minister before, specifically here. There is a regret that I sometimes feel that I let these kids down by going to New York and leaving the ministry. Some of those kids are still very conservative Christians and others have gone in other directions. Regardless of the path their lives have taken, I love them all and I treasure the time I got to spend with them. I hope I helped them love God and their families and their friends and their selves a little more.

I love so much about Facebook. While scrolling through the messages that Olin and I had sent to each other in the last few years, I came across a picture he’d sent me of an old Christmas card I gave him in 1991. image_1356835853716789
“I know that you will go far in life. Dream your dreams!” And in the 22 years since that Christmas, he has gone far in life and I’d say that he has dreamed his dreams. I’m very proud of Olin and the man he has grown into.

A few years ago, he told me that one of the reasons he became a coach was because of me and the influence I had on him when I was his youth minister. I don’t tell you this to brag, in fact, I’m telling you this to confess just how much his words meant to me when he told me. Maybe I’ve made a few mistakes in my life, but maybe I’ve done a few things right, too.

So, tonight we drank Hefeweizen (him) and Maker’s Mark (me) and talked about California life and El Dorado Springs and parents and men and dreams. I’m not that 23 year old from the Christmas card anymore, but my wishes will always be the same. To Olin, and the rest of you from Park Street: I hope 2014 is a super year for you. I know you will continue to go far in life and always, dream your dreams!

I Can Catch the Moon in My Hand

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FAMEJust a few minutes ago, I finished watching a French movie called Beau Travail that I’d dvr’d on Turner Classic Movies, it is a movie about, wait, never mind, there is no need for me to tell you what the movie is about, there is no reason for you to watch it.  It’s boring and it’s not even long.  For 90 minutes, I sat on my couch, sipping a little whiskey and eating cheese and crackers, wondering why I was watching this movie.  My answer came at the end, or rather, after the end, when after the credits, TCM played a mini-documentary about the making of my favorite movie (one of my favorites, anyway) Fame.

I remember when I saw Fame for the first time.  It was the summer between my 6th and 7th grade year, in the living room of my childhood home (imagine that!) and I watched it on HBO with my cousins Tracey and Stacey who were visiting from Colorado.  I already loved anything theatrical (I was just coming off of that Charlie Brown high from 5th grade) and something about the movie: the songs, the dancing, the acting, hooked into something inside of me, something at my core.  I remember how nervous the Montgomery character made me.  Gosh, I thought, I wouldn’t want to end up like that guy!

And even though I was a land-locked Kansas boy, I dreamed that one day, I would attend the High School for the Performing Arts.  Alas, that did not happen, but I did make my way to New York eventually, and from the minute I stepped off that Greyhound bus, I did feel like I’d entered a city that pulsated like the choreographed, gritty, magical, mercurial 1980 New York that Alan Parker gave me (ME!) in that movie.  And if you’ve been reading this blog, even just a little, you could understand how this movie might have resonated with me through the last 35 years, through every phase of my life.

Which brings me back to tonight, those few minutes ago, when this documentary came on my television.  And I loved watching these young actors, kids at the time, talk about the characters they were playing.  I always think of those actors, Irene Cara, Maureen Teefy, Paul McCrane, Barry Miller and the rest, in this revered way, the way a freshman looks up to the seniors at his high school, but I was struck by the fact that these actors were probably 16 to 20 at the time, just babies.  The documentary showed behind the scenes of filming many musical scenes, including Hot Lunch Jam, I Sing the Body Electric and of course, Fame, where the entire cast is dancing in the street, on car roof tops and such.  Perhaps it was the whiskey, perhaps it was something purer, but I felt the need to rise up and dance along with these teenagers, my idols, as they danced through the streets of Manhattan.

Where am I going with all this?  Well, I’m not completely sure.  I will say that one thing I love about art, be it paintings or music or movies, is it’s propensity to incite time travel.  As I watched this documentary, I was every age I’ve ever been since I first saw the movie.  I was 12 and 17 and 24 and 34 and 39 and 45.  And then I thought how wonderful it is that a movie or anything, really, could make this 45-year-old get up off his couch on a Tuesday night at 10 pm and dance without abandon.  It makes one think that they could live forever.

Off Avail

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TokyoI had it all planned out.  My blog would have begun: “I’m waiting to board my flight to Japan.”  On Tuesday, I found out I was “on avail” for a commercial that was to shoot in Japan.  I’ve never been to Japan. I would love to go to Japan. For those that don’t know what “on avail” means, it means that the casting people have checked with your agent as to your availability.  You haven’t been booked, but they’ve narrowed down the job to a few candidates.  So, for the last few days, I’ve been walking around thinking about Japan and how nice it would be to book a commercial before the end of the year, if only for tax purposes alone.  So, I was really excited when I found out that I was on avail.  My excitement wasn’t even dulled by the fact that they’d put an unusually high number of people on avail.  But I didn’t want to jinx it by talking about it. I only told a couple of people.  I didn’t even talk about it in code on Facebook.

Just about an hour ago, I was watching an episode of Sean Saves the World (which is really growing on me, by the way) and there was a point where it was revealed that Megan Hilty’s character had lived in Japan and my phone rang, I kid you not, at the moment she was speaking Japanese.  It was my agent calling.  “Well, you won’t be going to Japan.”  And then she told me that they’d cast someone else.  I think she sensed my disappointment and though she’s always been kind, she was just so sweet about the way she broke the news, I started crying after we’d said our goodbyes and hung up the phone.

And I lay on my couch, trying to go back to Sean Saves the World and that game of Candy Crush (don’t judge) I was playing, but I couldn’t.  I just lay on the couch being sad.  I thought about a conversation I’d had with someone recently where they were talking about someone as “an actor, but he never works.”  I try not to say things like that about people, I know how challenging this industry is, but the truth is I’m sure I’ve been described a million times as an actor who never works.  Or seldom works.  

I don’t really want to put too positive of a spin on this, just yet, because for the next few hours, I’m fully committed to feeling sorry for myself.  If you see me on Monday, and I’m still mopey, you can spray me with silly string, but for now, I just want to be sad.  That being said, it was nice to walk around for a few days, at work, while swimming, walking through the Asian section of Cost Plus, planning my next blog, all with the hope, belief even, that I was headed to Tokyo in a couple of days.  What’s the Japanese symbol for hope?  With luck, someday, I’ll find out.