All We Owe Iowa

Well, the way Randy tells it, he had just picked up his mail and there among the bills was an envelope addressed to him from his grandfather. Seems Grandpa would give the grandkids a check for $250 when they got married. All the other cousins had gotten their loot by this point but Randy was still unmarried. Who can say what got into the old man, but he decided to send Randy his check in spite of him still being a bachelor.

“How do you like that?” Randy said to Allen as they drove down the street in Allen’s red convertible. The thing is, Randy didn’t exactly consider himself “unmarried.” He and Allen had been together just a short time, but it felt like The Real Thing. So they went right to the bank where Randy cashed the check and handed $125 to Allen.

“And I took it,” said Allen. “And I spent it. And I haven’t stopped spending since.”

That check from Randy’s grandfather arrived in 1973 and, according to Randy, that’s when they were married.

As far as the state of Iowa is concerned, however, Randy Van Syoc and Allen Coit Ransome are newlyweds who were legally married on August 26, 2009.

Randy and Allen have been my friends for just a few short years but we’re as close as family. Our mutual friend Jeanine and I were the witnesses who signed the marriage license. But when their friend Ken, who officiated at the ceremony, asked who would stand for these two people, the entire crowd yelled, “We do!” and leapt to their feet.

The ceremony took place on a boat that launched onto the Mississippi from Dubuque and in the middle of the ceremony, in addition to heckling the minister, Allen instructed the captain to veer a little away from the Illinois side and further into Iowa waters just to make sure the marriage was legal.

All the trapping were there: the open bar; the cheese platters, the bacon-wrapped shrimp; the relatives meeting out-of-town friends for the first time. You know, the usual. The atmosphere , though, was anything but; it felt historic and long, long overdue. Allen told me earlier in the day that he had been lying awake a few nights before the ceremony trying to come up with some appropriate vows.

“And I started to get really mad. ‘Vows?’ What was left for me to promise? I realized after all these years that I had been cheated out of the chance to make vows as a young man when romance and love are fresh and making promises like that really means something.”

Both of The Boys (as everyone calls them) injected a little politics into their vows (which made me very proud) but overall their words were touching and heartfelt. All the guests were in tears. And in a moment that was so over the top it wouldn’t make it into the gooiest Lifetime movie, just as The Happy Couple exchanged rings a bald eagle swooped majestically down from the sky and made a U-turn past the bow of the boat before soaring back up above the water.

After the ceremony and the hugs and the kisses and the laughter and the tears we all took the stairs to the upper deck. I stood in back of the boat looking out at the endless Mississip’ and couldn’t help thinking that, while it may have taken Allen and Randy thirty-six years to prove it, the world, and Old Man River are not, I say they are not, just rollin’ along.

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What Are the Chances?

I never cease to marvel at how innocuous little events can have major consequences. They don’t have to be as Earth-shattering as having to run back in to grab your passport from the hall table and thereby missing the plane that crashes into the ocean. They can be subtle, yet still momentous. Or they can have a cumulative effect that is only visible over time. (That last is a major theme in the Canned Ham script.)

Recently I ran across three friends (two of whom I had not seen in years) simply due to tiny, random occurrences.

The first friend was Donna. We know each other from when we both worked at the Pizza Hut in my hometown the summer before I moved to New York City to attend NYU. (It would be more accurate to say I attended NYU to move to New York City.) Donna was the coolest thing that had ever crossed my path. She was older (she had to have been at least 22 at the time,) drove a very cool Opel GT with headlights you had to flip open with a hand crank, and most of all, she actually subscribed to the Village Voice.

We became great friends and even lived together most of my first year in the city. (12^th Street between Avenues A/B. $150/month.) She dragged me to Max’s Kansas City and the Mud Club and I dragged her to Broadway shows. It’s probably meaningless to her that she got to see Ballroom, but see it she did.

Then we got separate apartments and, as friends do, lost touch. She got married… I got married… I’ve been trying to find her for years but couldn’t remember her husband's last name to save my life. A couple of weeks ago I was putting stuff back on the shelves after returning from Saba and found, among a box of letters, a birthday card from Donna signed with her married name. I headed straight to Facebook and there she was. We have a lunch date coming up in the next few weeks and I can’t wait to see her.

Next: I was joining a friend at a birthday party in the city a couple of weeks ago and, not sure that there would be food, thought it wise to catch a late-afternoon bite. I decided to head three blocks over to Hudson Street to a café but because it was so hot I thought, no, I’ll just jump in to the good old Manatus Diner which was right in front of me on Bleecker Street. I was sitting at a table memorizing my script when I looked up to spot Charles Busch striding past the window. I raced outside and got him to abandon his power walk and join me for a diet Coke.

Now, I see Charles fairly regularly, but it’s always a pleasure. We got to talking about this and that and, as we invariably do, got on the topic of old movies. “Do you know who I’m becoming obsessed with?” Charles asked. “Dame May Whitty.” He then proceeded to recount the entire plot of Lassie Come Home and at the final scene, when Lassie, weary and broken, drags herself down the high street to meet little Roddy McDowall after school, we were both in tears. In the Manatus Diner. On Bleecker Street.

But the most surprising and random encounter happened earlier that day. It was a scorcher and I was parched. I was aiming for the Starbuck’s in Sheridan Square when I passed a phone booth (there are still phone booths!) with an advertisement for Dunkin’ Donuts coconut iced coffee. That sounds good, thought I, and continued toward the Starbucks. Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw that familiar orange and purple right there on Christopher Street, and there, where I do not recall there being one before, was a Dunkin’ Donuts. What the hell, I’ll get a coconut iced coffee. I opened the door to the shop and there at the last table in the back was none other than Whit Stillman, the director of Metropolitan, for which I composed the music score.

Whit and I have a unique relationship in that we get along great personally, but never could really manage to work together very well. It’s usually the other way ‘round, yeah? We struggled through Metropolitan, made an abortive attempt to collaborate on Barcelona and then looked at each other, wrinkled our noses and shook our heads when The Last Days of Disco came around. The last time I had seen Whit was on University Place in September, 2000. I remember the date because I had just returned from the Cabaret tour. After that I completely lost track of him.

“Whit Goddam Stillman! You have no idea how hard I have tried to locate you.”

“I’m in the phone book.”

Dry as ever, that Whit. Of course, I had never tried looking in the phone book. It's so last millennium. Also, he's lived out of the country for most of this time, so I had good reason not to think of the obvious. He was working on something... I was running late... so we exchanged contact info and said goodbye. This tune was written for, but cut from, Metropolitan.

Those three “meaningless” things--opening a box of letters, the day being too hot to walk an extra block and an ad on a phone booth—all led to unexpected encounters with good friends. I’m sure there’s a moral there somewhere. Be sure to send it in if you can think of one.

My new Canned Ham column on Advocate.com

Canned Ham September 23/24 at Dixon Place in NYC.

Tickets available here.

Canned Ham t-shirts available here.