A Thousand Clowns

I have a daughter

A little girl

Precious

I can show you pictures later

If you want

Which you should

Want to see them, I mean

Anyway

I have a daughter

And one day

She’s going to do theater

Because I do theater

And it’s in the blood

Trust me

It is

And the only advice I’ll give her

When she comes to me

And tells me she wants to do theater

Is—

Don’t fall in love with a gay man

And if he does theater

He’s already at least twenty-five percent gay

Even if he winds up being straight

In 2009—this was before my daughter was born

I did A Thousand Clowns

At the Orpheus

And I fell in love

With one of the acting interns at the time

Who was gay

He sort of loved me too

In his way

And I said ‘Let’s have a kid together

Like—just for fun’

And he said ‘Sure’

Because we were both high on coke at the time

And so we did it

We had a kid

Now I have a kid

And he’s backpacking in Europe

With a nice young man named either Stephen with a ‘ph’

Or Mikel with a ‘k’

Yes, the gays spell ‘Mikel’ with a ‘k’

Probably just because

It looks better that way

I’m not angry

Or upset

About anything I’ve just told you

I just wish somebody had warned me

That the theater is a wonderful place

Where you will meet wonderful people

And they will be gay

And you should not love them

As anything more than friends

And/or second family

Not that I have regrets

I love my daughter

And she loves me

And we both love her gay father

Even though we haven’t heard from him

Since he called us

From a payphone

In Zurich

It’s not a traditional life

But what can I say?

We’re a theater family

We’re anything but traditional