I know, if you go to my
website, you will have the impression that I am a grown, healthy,
well adjusted professional writer and performer. And maybe I am.
But don’t be fooled by the façade. I’m a poser.
I’ve been a Ranger of The Dork Forest so long; I’m under
consideration to become the Secretary of the Dork Interior.
In college I wore a sword. I’m not talking
about a little pin in the shape of a sword. I’m talking about
a stage rapier – not a good, classy looking one like they
have in the movies. I wore a crappy, beat-up aluminum fencing saber
fitted with an epee blade thrust through a carpenter’s screw-driver
holster hanging from a wide leather belt. A sword. Everywhere I
went. No phallic insecurity there, eh, what?
I didn’t fence. But I had worked for a year
at a Renaissance Festival and had hung out with the stage combat
director and his team and had learned the basic stances and the
basic defense and offense positions. I could do a flourish with
the sword and when I met a girl I found attractive I would draw
steel, perform a fine figure eight with the flashing blade, smack
my sneakers together as though they had clacking boot heels and
offer up a deep Elizabethan bow and I wondered when, oh, when I
would lose my virginity.
Friends, I’ve lived so deep in the Dork
Forest I’ve had people in Star Fleet Uniforms ask me for directions.
I started doing stand-up comedy in New York City
while I was still at college and I put together a bit that utilized
the sword so that I would have an excuse to take it with me to shows.
I wore a sword on the New York Subway and on the train to and from
Westchester. Nobody cared. They glanced at me and I imagined that
they were admiring my fine weapon when they were actually dismissing
me out of hand as a non-threatening Middle Class college student
majoring in Dork Forestry with a minor in Drama Queen.
I went to London and studied Stage Combat, became
a member of the Society of British Fight Directors – SBFD
– and then came back to New York to work as the Fight Director
for the Light Opera of Manhattan. I wore a sword and worked Gilbert
and Sullivan shows.
I’ve (since) earned a black belt in Ki Gum
Do, a Korean sword style in the martial arts tradition and now I’m
an instructor at the studio where I continue to study. A friend
of mine told me that whatever your hobby is, eventually you have
to start dealing to support the habit.
About a year and a half ago I choreographed the
fights for an award winning short film and since then I’ve
had a series of gigs choreographing for small films and theatrical
productions.
I don’t wear my sword around Hollywood,
but there’s an eighty percent chance at any given time that
there’s one or more in the trunk of my car. I pretend that
it’s because I have class to teach later or a rehearsal in
the afternoon. But that’s really just pretense. I’m
a poser.
Eventually we all have to flesh out our lives,
find footing in the towns and cities where the squares and hipsters
cross paths and do business. The good news is, it turns out there’s
a living to be made here and a decent group of people to hang out
with on the tree lined paths that lead from the shacks of the obsessive
model-makers out to the beach-side camps of the shipless pirates
with their hands hidden behind oversized hooks.
I’ve never played Magic The Gathering, but
if you need an extra person, I’m willing to learn. Don’t
be confused when I seem to be a grown, healthy, well-adjusted professional
writer and performer. I’m a poser.
