The phone rang at eleven this morning, and a casting director I haven't spoken to since 1987 said, "Stephen? Is this still your number? Thank God."

She's hiring a replacement understudy for The Wintering, the new play downtown that got good notices in May. Their understudy is leaving for a tour. She remembered me, and she'd heard from Terry (I'll deal with Terry later) that I was working again.

I went in at three and read for the director and the stage manager, a small, fierce woman named Tess who asked me exactly two questions: can you learn two roles in ten days, and will you ever be late. Yes, and never.

They called at six. I start Monday. Two roles, eight shows a week, most of them spent sitting in a basement, which to me sounds like the Riviera.

I called Mom in Scranton. She said, "Well, that's good, honey. Is it a nice part?" I said it's a part I'll probably never get to play, Mom. She said, "Then you'll be ready for it."

Took my ten o'clock pills and sat up until two. Couldn't sleep. Too alive.
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The Pride March today. The last time I went was 1994, and I watched from a folding chair on Fifth Avenue with a blanket over my knees in June while Terry held an umbrella over me for the sun.

This year I walked. Not the whole way; I'm 45, not a Rockette. But I walked down Fifth as far as my feet would go, with a bunch of old friends from a theater company that doesn't exist anymore, and we carried a banner with names on it. Joel. Raymond. Luis. Kenny. We made it in Terry's living room on Thursday with fabric paint and a glue gun, and it's lopsided, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever carried.

The sidewalks were full of kids, twenty years old with rainbows painted on their cheeks, who have never been to a funeral for somebody their own age. I'm glad. God, I'm glad. That's what we were marching for, back when marching meant something else.

Afterward we sat on a stoop and ate hot dogs and didn't say anything for a long time. I'd forgotten I was allowed to be happy at one of these.
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Two things today.

First, I started temping. Proofreading three mornings a week at a law firm in midtown, where nobody knows me and I'm "the new guy from the agency," which is the most glamorous title I've had since 1990. I read contracts about shipping containers and find commas in the wrong places. It turns out I'm very good at this. Twenty years of memorizing lines will do that to your eyes.

Second, I mailed the letter to Social Security telling them I'm working. People at the clinic say keep copies of everything, so I'm keeping copies of everything, in a folder labeled LAZARUS.

On the way home there was a line around the block at the movie theater for the new Star Wars: people in robes and plastic helmets who had been sleeping on the sidewalk. A boy dressed as a Jedi asked if I was in line. I said no, I've already waited for plenty of things. He looked at me like I was crazy. Fair.
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My first audition in six years. An open call for a Shaw revival, men 40 to 60.

I got there at eight in the morning, and there were already a couple hundred of us in the hallway holding headshots. Mine is from 1992. I look like my own younger brother. A kid with a clipboard gave me number 147.

I sat on the floor for six hours between a man doing vocal exercises and a man eating tuna out of the can. I took my two o'clock pills in the men's room with water from a paper cup, and when I came back the tuna man said, "Vitamins?" and I said, "Something like that."

At three they called 147. Three people behind a table, a pitcher of water, pigeons on the windowsill. I did the Shaw speech I've kept in my pocket since 1981. I didn't get it. I didn't get a callback. I didn't even get a "that was lovely." It was "thank you, next."

I walked out into the sun and laughed out loud like a lunatic, because it was the best day I've had in years. I auditioned and got turned down. Like an actor. Like a man with a future to waste.
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Blood work back today. Still undetectable.

Dr. R. reads me the results every three months in the same flat voice, like a weather report, and every time I hold on to the arms of the chair. Today she put the chart down and said, "Stephen, it's been a long time since I got to be boring with you." She's been my doctor since 1989. She came to the memorial for Joel, my partner, in 1992. She's the only doctor who has ever cried in front of me, on a Tuesday in 1995 when there was nothing left to try. Then in the spring of 1996 there was something.

On my way out she said, "Now go do something with it."

What, though? For years every plan I made had small print at the bottom. I sold my books. I told my agent not to bother. Now there's no small print, and I'm standing in the middle of my life with a bottle of pills and a MetroCard like a man who got off at the wrong stop.
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Happy New Year. Last night I stayed up till midnight for the first time since 1994. My oldest friend Terry and I watched the ball drop with a bottle of sparkling cider, and at midnight she cried, and then I cried, and then her downstairs neighbor banged on the ceiling with a broom and we laughed until we had to sit down.

Terry is the one who said I should keep a journal. She says I've lived like a man in a waiting room for three years and I ought to write down what I'm waiting for. I said I'm not waiting for anything, I'm just glad to be here. She gave me the look she used to give me in scene study in 1975, when I was lying about having read the play.

So. Resolutions for 1999:
1. Go back to work. Acting, if anyone will have me. Anything, if they won't.
2. Stop apologizing for being alive in front of people who lost someone.
3. Buy a winter coat.

I'm putting this on the Internet instead of in a notebook because if strangers can read it, I'll have to keep writing it.
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