Context: This is from Benny's perspective, I'm thinking maybe a year or two before the events of Rent take place. Just trying to explore his character.
I found this piece in a notebook from a few years ago after I saw a production of Rent but I haven't seen the movie or anything so I don't know how accurate details are.
And we all laugh and say it doesn't matter, isn't it wonderful - it doesn't matter! Not that Mark is a jew, or Tom is a gay, or Roger has long hair, or that I was raised to throw stones at all of them. If we'd been mindless sheep, I said, raising my beer to make everyone look at me, none of us would have met! Maybe Maureen would have been my cleaner. Maybe Mark would have been the guy at work I barred from the country club.
We all hoot with laughter. We can laugh about it because it's so ridiculous, so dumb, because we're so high and it's just not true - Maureen could never be my maid! We're all the same, none of the names apply. Your past doesn't matter, not now we're all knotted together in this one big family.
I remember the first time I met Mark, it was when I was hanging around with the stoners and I asked him for a light and all I saw was his big Jew nose and Jewfro and skinny arms in a T-shirt. And now I look at him, I don't even see it. How is that all I thought he was? I love these guys. Mark is the guy who once locked himself in the bathroom by accident and Roger and Maureen and me all rammed against the door but just as we broke through he was already out the window trying to grab onto the fire stairs. I don't know. It was funny. We went for beer after and it started to snow and Maureen wanted to make an angel and Mark made this really beautiful movie, I don't know how he did it, but it made me love New York all over again.
There are a lot of things I could say about Mark, but jew would be way down the list. What difference does it even make? That's what I realise now.
I ask him - does he still have the tape? That one night, when Maureen threw herself on the ground even though the snow had barely started to stick, and April hadn't washed her hair in a week, but he still somehow made us all seem so beautiful?
Maureen laughs but Mark is flattered, I can tell. He digs through his old films and sets up the projecter, and it's cosy, all of us on the floor or on the couch and the stove choking out smoke and the movie plays, weren't we young? Weren't we dumb back then?
He's got this shot of the dark, dark street and then he raises it so you can see the snow and it's like first it's empty and then he brings us into it but the sound's turned low so we don't seem obnoxious or drunk but just caught up in it all, too small for the stuff inside us... But anything's possible in New York. I feel it again - that love for the city and it takes me by surprise, even though I've lived here my whole life, even though I'd been to the Met a hundred million times before I turned six.
My parents are just the opposite. They don't say it but every time I talk to them they're either just back from the Bahamas or just about to leave for the Hamptons. Even in the city they climb to their penthouse. If you ask my mother she'll tell you - "New York is the only place to live!" and then ten seconds later - the homeless, the dirt, the rats, the trash, the muggers and hookers and new money and Koreans swarming out in crowds. But she doesn't realise that is New York - it's filthy, it's heaving! It's all the cultures of the world vomited on top of one another in this squat in Alphabet City.
It's one of Mark's longer pieces, about 35 minutes, and when it's over I shake the water out of my ears and look around. It's just me and Tom, and Tom is asleep. I was vaguely aware of the others leaving. Mark didn't want to, but Maureen was whispering in his ear and now they're having sex in the other room. April and Roger left, looking to score. That's junkies for you.
Sometimes it does get me down. I stand at the window and I'd throw myself off the roof just to kiss the ground, I love it so much, but it gets me down. All the chaos; it's brilliant, it's beautiful, it's a hub of artistic creation, but it's still chaos. The misery of it gets me down sometimes. The scum of life confronts you every day in New York. There's homeless in your face and junkies lying in their own piss and gays dying left, right and centre and it's dirty. It stinks. The hobos fight the rats for scraps. I can't always see past it.
But I guess it's worth it, for the people who live here. I'd never meet these guys on a golf course. The misery of the world won't go away if I fly to the Bahamas will it? Maybe it's my job to just feel it, let the sadness filter through me, suffer on behalf of the homeless who are too numb to suffer for themselves anymore.
Please leave feedback :) There's a second part to this that I might type up.