Donald Harrison - The Regulars

 

 

The year I turned 30, I decided it was about damn time I got a job playing the piano and singing in a gay bar. [audience laughter] Sometimes you just reach that phase of your life, you know? It wasn't any gay bar. It was a Philadelphia institution called Tavern on Camac. I had always loved Tavern. It is a medium-sized gay piano bar. Back then, every wall and surface was covered in mirrors. There's a baby grand piano off in the corner, and piano players every night accompanying themselves. There's also a guest microphone next to them, and customers can come up and do a solo with the piano player. It's great. This seemed like the dream side gig for me. I mean, a chance to perform every week, people clapping at me on a regular basis. Free drinks? Yes, please. So, I auditioned and, to my amazement, I got the job. 

 

When I first started working at Tavern, I inherited a small crew of regulars. My shift was happy hour on a Friday, which meant that my crew of regulars was mostly older gentlemen, men who had been going to that same bar, though the name and layout had changed over the years, for decades. They were 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50 years older than me. They could remember when the piano was over here, when the piano was over there, and they could recite the long lineage of piano players who had preceded me, just as you might the kings and queens of France. [audience laughter] 

 

My regulars terrified me. I wasn't, what you'd call, a seasoned or very professional singer when I first started working there. In fact, on my third Friday on the job, one of these inherited regulars, Pity, tipped me a single dollar and then stormed out of the bar after he told me that my performance of On the Street Where You Live was perfunctory. [audience laughter] My background in English meant I understood this word, [audience laughter] and I understood it to mean that I had sung without feeling. My background in being anxious meant I was rather destroyed by this bit of feedback. [audience laughter] However, this man went on to say that my perfunctory performance also proved I had no respect for the American songbook. [audience laughter] That's right. I wasn't just bad at a single song, but I was lousy at the entire canon I was attempting to perform. Cool. 

 

I thought, thanks for the note. I'll just keep going. [audience laughter] But what I wanted was to do that job well, and that meant making men like him happy. Because not only was this the generation of gay men who had preceded me, who had spent decades of their lives fighting for our rights and our visibility, living their lives in such a way so as to make comfortable the life I have today, but this was also the generation of men who had kept alive this grand piano bar tradition, singing the same songs, making the same requests, belting out Over the Rainbow for the 50,000th time, [audience laughter] holding on to this brand of music and live performance no matter where the piano was or who the piano player was. Inside those mirrored walls was their space and their tradition, and I wanted to be a part of it.

 

One of these regulars was named Mike. Do you know that line from the Christmas song Do You Hear What I Hear that goes, With a voice as big as the sea? Well, Mike has that sort of quintessential Pacific Ocean kind of voice. [audience laughter] It's wide, it's deep, and it's capable of totally drowning out everyone around him. [audience chuckles] But Mike isn't just loud. He is also guilty of what I like to call the "I Could Have Danced All Night" power move. The last line of "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady is, as maybe you know, hopefully you know, "I could have danced, danced, danced all night." [audience laughter] 

 

The person performing the song gets to decide how long that little beat is at the end. "I could have danced, danced," hold for drama "all night." [audience laughter] The "I Could Have Danced All Night" power move occurs when someone who's not performing the song decides that, from their spot out in the audience, they will decide when to come in on that final note. [audience laughter] The person who comes in ahead of the piano player does not do it by accident. No, he does it to assert his dominance. [audience chuckles] This is a type of musical theater conquest. And it's during these moments in so many songs that Mike takes over. But Mike's music is joyful music, and I love him for it. Yes, he overrules my timing. Yes, he sings too loudly. But there's no question that he means well, that it's inside of Tavern that he's living his best life.

 

So, one night, a few months into my tenure there, it's 07:30 on a Friday, and I've got one person sitting at the piano with me, the one fan I have earned in all the weeks of playing so far, my mom. [audience laughter] My mom was there the first night I ever played there, which was not, incidentally, also her first night in a gay bar. [audience laughter] She had been back a few times since, and she would tell anyone who would listen that she was there to hear her baby sing. [audience aww] So, there she is, perched alone at the piano when in walks Mike. 

 

These two had not yet arrived there on the same night, but I had envisioned their meeting, and I had envisioned it in much the way an astronomer might the meeting of celestial objects. [audience laughter] I watched as Mike crossed the room, got a drink at the bar, and then sat down across the piano from my mom. It was just the three of us at this point. What could I do but begin to play Lullaby of Broadway [audience chuckles] in my timid and perfunctory way. So, I start, Come on along and listen to… and then Mike joins in, [sings in a bold voice] The Lullaby of Broadway. I glance over the sheet music at my mom's eyes, and my mom's eyes say, “What the fuck?” [audience laughter] I continue, The hip-hooray and ballyhoo, and Mike continues, The Lullaby of Broadway. I look at my mom, my mom eyes say, “What? This cannot be happening. How are we all accepting this? Where is the manager?” But Mike's still like, The Milkman's on his way.

 

I can see outrage really starting to build up in my mom. She begins by giving Mike a less-than-savory look, a look I myself have received many times throughout my life. This does nothing. So, then she starts gesturing toward that guest microphone. And the message for Mike is, “Go up there, do your own solo, then sit down and shut up.” I shake my head at her. “Please, Mom, no. This is the way of the world here, [audience laughter] and so it has been since time immemorial, and so it ever shall be. We must endure this.” But she persists. And before long, Mike finally clocks her disdain, and he says something like, "Do you have a problem, lady?" And my mom says, "I'm just trying to listen to my son." And then, they start to argue over the piano.

 

I decide my only power in this situation is my ability to overwhelm them with my show tune. [audience laughter] So, I play louder. They argue louder still. The lyrics are an absurd mismatch to what's unfolding in front of me. It's "All the daffodils who entertain at Angelo's and Maxie's…" Through this, I hear Mike say something like, "Do you know how long I've been coming here, honey?" And I think, shit, we have already reached a "honey" point in this gay bar argument. [audience laughter] I myself am starting to sweat and I'm starting to get very angry, because you know what? It's hard enough to come in here week after week and play these songs for these men and get called inadequate in all manner of vocabulary words that are fancy AF. [audience laughter] But now, now, I have to do it with my mom coming in and causing trouble for me.

 

So, I get angrier at her because, of course, Mike sings too loudly, we all know that, but he is a regular. This is the one place he should be able to go to escape the judgment and scorn of middle-aged suburban straight ladies from New Jersey. [audience laughter] On the other hand, Mike does sing way too loudly. My mom is in the gay bar for the fifth time in her life. She wants to hear me sing and I'm proud of her and she's proud of me and she should be able to do it. But still they're going at it over the piano and my Lullaby of Broadway is getting really insane. I'm all, You’ll occupy your day and your Broadway baby 'round 'til everything gets hazy…

 

I'm not wanting the song to end, because then what's ongoing, what's this ridiculous fight going to sound like when the piano is quiet, the stupid new bad piano player and his mom coming in and yelling at everybody? But then, then I'm worried is Mike going to say something truly hurtful to my mom? Or is my mom, who is a personal trainer, going to beat up Mike? [audience laughter] I watch as my mom stands up and begins to move toward him. I wouldn't say that she looks like a lioness stalking over for the kill, but I wouldn't not say it. [audience laughter] I feel powerless to stop whatever is about to happen. I reach the end of the song, what else can I do but finish? Two other people clap.

 

My chest is heaving in that way it does after the big final notes of show tunes, all up there by myself, like, [heavy breathing] And my mom gets close to Mike and Mike looks up at her and then they hug. [audience chuckles] They hug. Now, my own eyes say, “What the fuck? [audience laughter] What incredible transformation has occurred while I was so savagely pounding out the last few lines of Lullaby of Broadway?” In a moment I would learn that Mike's question, "Do you know how long I've been coming here, honey?" had led them to discuss their respective ages, a very mature place to take this conversation, I might add. But this conversation about their ages led them to discover that they had been born within hours of one another. [audience aww] 

 

My mom and Mike were not two comets doomed for mutual annihilation in the midnight sky. They were birthday buddies. [audience laughter] And it was on this common ground that we could all begin to try to get along. It's been almost 12 years since my mom and Mike met that night at Tavern on Camac, and I've played there almost every Friday we've been open since. A lot of regulars have come and gone over the years, some are no longer with us, but my mom and Mike are still two of my most faithful. Many times, over these years, people have come up to my mom and they've told her how awesome it is that she's there, a mom watching her son play piano in a gay bar. My mom talks to them and she hangs out with them and they tell her their own moms wouldn't come to a place like this.

 

My mom threatens to text them and ask them why. [audience laughter] This is a territory she's found for herself around that piano. Mike is still exactly the same. [audience laughter] He still sings way too loudly. My mom still gives him the stink eye. But a couple years back, they went out to dinner together to celebrate their birthdays. [audience aww] It turns out that there continue to be timeless standoffs across that piano, whether my mom's involved or not. But in the end, keeping that grand piano bar tradition alive is about coming together, this glorious mishmash of ages and generations, to make that loud and joyful music together. And for that, I'll be home on Friday. Thank you.