Steve Slavin

Kabuki

 

 

When my sister, Laila, invited me to a Kabuki play, all I could say was something like, “You’re going to be in a what?” And now, all these years later, all I can tell you is that Kabuki is a very formally acted and stylized Japanese drama, conveyed through song and dance. It seems based on stuff that happened maybe three hundred years ago. Think of it as a 17th century Japanese “avant-garde” musical drama. It was not – if you’ll pardon the pun – exactly my cup of tea.

           But hey! It was free, and it was OK if I brought a date. The woman I brought actually knew   Barry Manilow in high school. Sadly, I know a lot more about him than I can remember about her. Except that she was very nice.

           The play’s directors were Japanese, and spoke and understood virtually no English, so communication with the cast -- most of whom were professional actors – was almost entirely through pantomime. I never understood how Laila, who played the second samurai, had managed to get a part, considering that she had never studied acting, nor had much experience except for one or two parts with her community theater company.

            The play was held in a small theater on 42nd street between 9th and 10th Avenues. Most of the people in the audience were friends of the actors. There were a few Japanese people in the cast, but most were – as they might have jokingly described themselves – gringos and gringas.

            While we waited in the lobby for my sister to change into street clothes, I saw a woman who looked just like Julie Christie, who had just starred in “Doctor Zhivago.” My date said, “You know, it’s bad enough that you have to stare at her, but must you make it so obvious?”

          I apologized for being so rude, but not before I noted that the woman was talking to the third samurai, who played opposite Laila. She had to know him. When she came out, the three of us went for a snack, and I could see that Laila was very taken with my date. In those days there was still some hope that I would settle down with a nice girl.

         The next morning I called Laila, and when I told her that I needed to reach “Julie Christie,” she was very cool to the idea. “I thought you were with a very lovely woman. What’s wrong with her?”

        “Nothing! She’s nice. But she’s no Julie Christie.”

        Very, very reluctantly, my sister said she would see what she could do. “But I really don’t like this.”

       What’s not to like, I thought to myself. All I need is a phone number.

       A few days later, Laila called. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.” The good news was that the woman I wanted to meet had just gotten separated from her husband. And the bad news? The third samurai, who did indeed know her, had taken a liking to me. I would need to call him to get her number.

        It was very awkward, but I did manage to give him my oh-so-sincere, “While it’s so flattering that you’re attracted to me, as luck would have it, I don’t happen to be gay at this time” speech. From there I improvised with something like, “So if we can just get past that, could you just give me the phone number of the most beautiful woman I have ever seen?” He very graciously gave me the number, along with a very pleasant, “And if you should happen to change your mind….” I thanked him and said that if I ever changed my mind and decided to join the other team – not in those exact words, of course – he would be the first to know.

          That evening, when I called, she was amazingly friendly, even animated. We made a date for the next weekend, and I was so inspired, I wrote a poem to her, and rushed out to put it in the mail.

          She lived about a half mile from me on the Lower Eastside, and we arranged to meet at the Philippine Garden restaurant, a place we both knew. Everything seemed to be going quite well. She talked excitedly about her dream to be on Broadway and I talked about finishing graduate school and then changing the world.

            She hadn’t mentioned the poem, so there was no point bringing it up. I guess it was the standard type of thing a guy would write if he believed in love at first sight. We walked back to her building, and I can still remember standing in the hallway outside her apartment door and asking if we could see each other again.

No, she said. “We really don’t have much in common.” She was an actress and I wasn’t remotely connected to the theater. But there was more. She grew up in Oklahoma and was part Cherokee. The Cherokees were considered a very good looking people, and, like Nancy, they had high cheek bones and blue eyes. Weirdly, so did I. But I’m not even a small part Cherokee. There are no Jewish Indians, but considering how she had just made me feel, perhaps I could have qualified for membership in the Shmohawks, a legendary tribe of Jewish Indians. (If you’re part of the 99 percent who knows no Yiddish, shmo -- sometimes spelled schmo -- means a dull, stupid, or boring person.)

*

         A few weeks later, a married couple I had introduced, invited me to a cast party for Mame, which starred Angela Lansbury. They were obligatory guests because they lived below the hostess, an actress who was in the play. I figured, maybe I could meet another actress.

         The party was on the second floor of a four-story, very elegant building on Riverside Drive. Richard and Judy lived just off the lobby, and from their door we could see the grand staircase. As guests was buzzed in and would proceed up the stairs, Richard, who was an excellent pianist, would serenade them with his grand version of, “There’s no business like show business.” We watched them preen as they climbed the stairs. We had been laughing so hard, we were almost reluctant to go to the party ourselves.

         I noticed that almost everyone was greeting everyone else with hugs and saying, “I almost didn’t recognize you in street clothes. So I tried that line on a few women who just looked at me like I was a schmuck. Then a guy walked over and threw his arms around me, using the same line I had been using. He did look somewhat familiar. Seeing my puzzled look, he decided to help me out. He was the third samurai.

 

          About 20 years later, I was bullshitting in front of my house in Brooklyn with a neighbor, when an ancient truck with wooden sides pulled up. Two women were in the front, one in her 20s, and the other, maybe old enough to be her grandmother. The older woman rolled down the window and announced: “Hi! We’re Indians! Once a year we come around to your neighborhood with our lawn furniture, all of it made by Indians.

        The back of the truck was filled with wooden chairs and benches. The women got out of the truck and placed a couple of benches on the lawn. “Let’s try them out!”

          David and the older woman sat on one of the benches, while the younger woman and I  sat on the other. They were very comfortable.

        “What tribe are you with?” I asked the older woman.

        “We’re Iroquois. We were the first to run in battle.”

        “Really? I’m Indian, too.” David gave me a strange look.

        “What tribe?” she asked. I thought maybe she was just being polite.

        “I’m part Cherokee.”

        “Yes! I can see you are!” And then she turned to the younger woman and said to her, “Just look at those high cheekbones and those blue eyes!”

 

 

 

A recovering economics professor, Steve Slavin earns a living writing math and economics books.