It took me much longer than three months to appreciate how unique and bizarre this lower east side theatre world was. On one of the first weekends, as I left PS 122 in the early morning hours after a late night show, I was accosted by a short, chubby little gay dude in khakis and a blue button down.

"Hey Bill."

Great, I thought, another creepy dude with money who thinks I'm some insatiable Chelsea bottom.

'Hey, DUDE,' I responded.

I probably made the 'Dude' a little more staccato and sharp than it had to be. I had gotten in the habit of appending a 'dude' or 'man' to my same-sex Manhattan greetings as a not-so-subtle way of spiking the Village gaydar with a 'HETERO' blast. Since I looked...well...gay, it was all I had.

"Uh, listen," Gay George Costanza stammered, "I'm doing this play 'Tartuffe' in a couple of months and I think you'd be great to play the Prince."

Really? The Prince?

That's what my career needed as a jump start - the opportunity to play a piss-ant part for no money in some black box theatre on the 4th floor of a walk-up in Greenwich Village. The amount of classical off-off Broadway shows in the city was astounding. It wouldn't surprise me if this show was being put on in... shiver... Brooklyn. The only thing that makes my skin crawl more than Brooklyn is the idea of doing theatre in Brooklyn. You mean I can have all the filth and danger of a big city with all the inconvenience of a shitty suburb!? Yay!

Luckily, I had an out...

"Well, I'm still in school right now so I can't really do anything else. This show is an exception because it plays so late."

"Okay, well my name is David Saint, and I'm a fan of your work. Maybe some day in the future we can work together. Good luck."

And then he walked away.

Very polite, very professional, I thought. Hmmmm, I guess he DIDN'T want to sleep with me... am I losing my looks?

The number of actors who got their big break with Jeff and/or worked with him on his "Hot Keys" series was astounding: Kevin Kline, Frank Langella, Allison janney, Victor Garber, Kristen Johnston, Ken Leong, the list goes on and on. As a matter of fact, the first guy who ever played the Billy character was none other than the freaky and talented Willem DaFoe. Jeff's following never failed to amaze me.

Rumors persisted that Jeff was a pathological liar and, indeed, some of his stories seemed, if not implausible, constructed entirely for entertainment value. In some ways, he reminded me of the Albert Finney character in 'Big Fish.' Jeff loved a good-old fashioned yarn and maybe sometimes he took out some of his more colorful spools. A couple of New York actors were adamant about Jeff's relationship with the truth and would vehemently advocate for their positions like we were debating a matter of extreme national security. For me, the veracity of his stories got cleared up during my last week of 'Hot Keys.'

One of the more popular characters in "Hot Keys" was a Finnish gymnast named Bjorn who went around sleeping with strangers and then murdering them. Jeff told me, during one basement rehearsal, that the first half of the storyline was true: that he used to go uptown, pick up rich, married suits, pound their buttholes into jelly for a weekend and then retreat south of 14th Street without fear of detection or repercussions. "Bjorn" was his nom de guerre.

It was a perfect plan, Jeff said, and in his defense, he was a handsome guy. He looked a little like Sir Laurence Olivier with a crack problem. His double life lasted for years, he boasted, until he started getting a little more famous and doing Broadway shows. He would exit the stage door some nights and there would be some forgotten Bjorn conquest waiting for him, slack-jawed and confused. I imagined some poor guy scouring uptown gay bars, looking for 'A guy... about yay tall... named Bjorn?" only to find him after a show. Off-handedly, Jeff declared this happened on several occasions.

Yeah, right! Cute story though.

As I continued doing shows with Jeff, he continued to tell me even more outrageous stories. At one point he had a brief love affair with Richard Gere when Gere was working at the Pyramid club on Manhattan's lower east side. Then, one night during his days at the Russian-Turkish baths when they were still a veritable revolving door for gay orgies, the famous dancer Rudolph Nureyev was getting his nightly ass pounding from a group of sycophantic queens when things got a little...intense...and Nureyev had to call a halt to the activities.

With Nureyev's age, ill health, and penchant for fat cock, Jeff explained, he had become horribly incontinent. Ol' Rudy had stopped the anal action to make a dainty dash for the bathroom. Jeff meticulously described the scene: Nureyev on tiptoes, floating down a dank, sparsely lit hallway, rivulets of Rudy doodie dancing down his hammys... all in stark contrast to the pink ballet slippers cinching up his feet.

Bullshit!

Ballet slippers?! C'mon! Like he would wear his work shoes during a Turkish bath gangbang!!! Jeff was taking a little too much poetic license with that absurd detail. Nureyev did his final performances with a generous butt plug and a diaper underneath his tights, Jeff contended. This wasn't speculation...he knew. The diaper, he continued, would have to be changed throughout the night by a young Latin assistant waiting in the wings of the Met.

Jeff and his Big Fish stories. They made me laugh, but what a goofball he was with those lies! If I just accepted him as a creator of tall tales, I knew I'd be okay with all the crap he said.

On the last weekend of Hot Keys, I was heading home to my girlfriend on East 13th Street after a particularly long show that ran until almost 4am. Once again, a well-groomed gentleman was waiting for me outside the entrance on 1st Avenue. At least this gay stalker was attractive. I couldn't help but think 'I must look goooood!'

"Excuse me," he said.

"What's up, dude?" I responded. Bam. Dude was extra straight. Like an arrow.

"I have a question to ask you... but I'm a little embarrassed by it to be honest," he said.

"No, it's cool - I'm straight - but don't worry about it."

"Oh, sorry, no, it's not about you, it's about Jeff."

My curiosity was officially piqued.

"Well, he's probably still upstairs. You can go up there and ask him whatever you want," I said.

"Oh, no, I don't think I can...."

He looked down at his feet and then around in the cold night. Clearly, he was a little flummoxed. If you want someone to set you up on a date with Jeff, I thought, I'm probably not your guy. I took his silence as my cue to leave, so I hitched my backpack further up on my shoulder and said, "Well, I'll see around."

I took 3 or 4 steps until the following sentence stopped me in my tracks:

"I think I slept with him about 8 years ago, but he told me his name was Bjorn."

I froze like a deer hearing the crinkle of Autumn leaves under the boots of a hunter. What the fuck?!? Now I was the one who had no idea what to say. I stopped and gawked at him, my silent invitation to elaborate.

"I met him by my place on the upper East side and he told me his name was Bjorn and he spoke with this crazy accent."

"How did you find out he was here tonight?" I asked. "Is that why you came down, to confront him?"

Again, the man looked down, seemingly flustered.

"No, I came here with a friend. I had no idea who Jeff Weiss was. And then I saw him, and, it was so...."

The man's voice quivered a bit and then trailed off. By way of explanation, he shrugged and forced a tight smile. When he suppinated his palms during the shrug, the light from the lamp post above caught the gold in his wedding ring and it glinted against the darkness before the dawn.

I did everything in my power not to erupt in raucous laughter until we parted ways. We stood that way for a few more awkward moments, the wind from the 6 Train coming up through the street-level subway vents in alternate bursts of hot and cold. Santa Claus IS real, I thought.

I'm not sure what he wanted from me. Maybe he wanted me to say something that would let him know it was okay or maybe he knew that, in me, he found the one person on the planet to whom he could admit this clandestine Finnish affair. Then I saw the doubt in his eyes and I realized his reasons were more practical. He just wanted confirmation.

"It's him... isn't it?"

I wanted to tell this stranger not to take it personally - that Jeff had a partner who saved his life, that Jeff could never leave this man, and that his uptown vision quests were just a way to keep his penis in the game, as his head and his heart were committed to one man and one man alone. I wanted to tell him that he wasn't the first guy to wait after a show abashed and saddened, and I wanted to tell him that he had nothing to be ashamed of. But, in the end, all I could manage to say was:

"Yes, it is."

On the short walk to my girlfriend's place, I couldn't help but think:

"....I can't believe Nureyev shit on his ballet slippers like that...."

The singing teacher hated me because I was an awful singer, which happened to coincide with HER being an awful cunt. The voice teacher hated me because, try as I might, I could not get much past the third row of a theatre. The Shakespeare diction coach hated me because... let's be honest - it's 'Shakespeare diction' - it was painfully pointless and my only joy in the class derived from my ability to mock it at every turn. I was as close as you can get to being persona non grata in the NYU MFA program. As a result, I got cast in a lot of roles with "#1" or "#2" as their suffixes. The types with lots of standing around but only one line and it was always something like, 'My liege, dost thou desire thy sword?' For most aspiring actors, this kind of experience would have destroyed their spirit, Luckily, part of me knew the whole concept of a school for acting was fucking retarded and silly, so I was able to enjoy the best part of NYU every day, and that was the NY.

Still, it was clear to at least one other classmate that I was sort of unhappy there. Or at least that I didn't fit in. So one day, this classmate, Flo, came up to me and said, "You know Bill, my boyfriend did a show with this actor in Seattle and he's got some crazy late-night serial show in the East Village. It's pretty weird shit, but this guy is supposed to be pretty interesting. He's holding auditions tomorrow if you wanna go."

Fuck it. I went. Why not?

In a nice but of serendipity, the character I was auditioning for was named "Billy". I grew up as 'Billy' until I started going by 'Bill' my freshman year in college in a bid to be taken more seriously (fail). It was a lead role and all my scenes would be with this same actor/playwright dude.

I grabbed a set of scripts and sat down in one of those old formica public school desks with a big grin on my face. Lead role. Sweet.

The first scene I read involved Billy's incestuous love affair with his male wrestling coach, who also happens to be his father. Billy is complaining to his dad/coach/lover about the taste of his--Billy's--semen. He's worried it tastes sour. Dad/coach/lover informs him that he should "drink more Juice. That will sweeten your cum right up."

I visibly blanched and put the sides down.

What the fuck?

This shit was disgusting and wrong on about 7 levels in the physical plane, 4 levels on the spiritual plane, and Pi levels on the metaphysical plane. I had signed in to audition but it was time to leave. I mean, right? Even if I wasn't offended by the content, I wasn't gay and SURELY this role was intended for some 20 year old piece of fruity East Village eye candy who had no qualms with prancing around and getting revenge on his overbearing father in one fell swoop. Not for me. I was a serious actor. This was pointlessly offensive and grossly frivolous gay shit.

I heard noises and froze like a gazelle in the bush. There were voices coming from a nearby room. Hmmm, I guess I found the audition. I contemplated leaving but curiosity got the better of me and I edged towards the slightly open door. An older man in his 50's with baggy, cheap clothes and a weird knit beanie was holding pages and arranging chairs in order to sit next to a young bleach blonde kid. It seemed like the older man was giving him notes about the scene. As he positioned his chair, his head swiveled and he caught me peeking through the crack like a creep.

"Oh hey, come in. We're about to do a scene. Feel free to watch if you like." He had an almost juvenile smile with a gap between the front two teeth, which juxtaposed oddly with his sharp features and weathered skin. Stuck, I silently nestled into the nearest seat with a sigh. Well, I can watch this train wreck for a bit and pretend I'm Lars from Denmark -- just lost and passing through.

The young bleach blonde with the tank top cleared his voice and started speaking in a high-pitched gay accent. Not a Harvey Firestein 'I'm gay and I'll fuck the Steelers offensive line and then smoke a pack of Marlboros' pitch, but a freshly out of the closet lemme try acting fag-cent. He was clearly green and clearly awful. Ugh. Off-off-Broadway.

Then it was the older man's turn to talk. He turned to the hacky fag and said, 'Billy... I love you so much.'

Inexplicably, hairs rose on the back of my neck.

I had just spent three years learning the 'craft' of acting, but within 5 seconds of hearing this actor, I was convinced my teachers didn't know a fucking thing. I had never experienced anything close to this. The feeling reminded of that camera move - ubiquitous in 70's film, Jaws being a prime example -- where the camera swiftly dollies out while the lens simultaneously zooms in; the not so subtle nudge to the viewer that the subject of the zoom is having an intense revelation/out of body experience/awakening/sees a shark. This was the REAL shit. I leaned in, zeroing in on this odd man in the clownish clothes with the bizarre knit red and white bulls eye beanie on his balding head. I had an epiphany: I had just thrown away $60k in loan money.

The scene continued. The dad was in the hospital and his son/wrestling team member/lover was there to see him. Somehow in the mire of this disgusting, reprehensible, white trash Jerry Springer relationship, the older actor managed to bring incredible emotional depth and simplicity and naturalism to it. And on the 'Juice' cum line he made me laugh out loud with his buoyant and light reading of it.
When the scene was over, I knew I would do anything in order to be on stage with this man.

This man was Jeff Weiss.

When peroxide skull left and I auditioned with Jeff, I got the humbling and exhilarating feeling of knowing that I was acting with a genius. He gave so much focus and attention to me while I talked that it almost made me feel giddy.

And yes, I know that sentence is gayer than 8 guys fuckin' 9 guys, but there's really no other way to put it. I was next to some sort of savant. I was smart enough to understand it, and talented enough to know he was out of my league.

The weird part is that, when I left, I kind of knew the role was mine. Of course it was. In some preternatural way that baffled and intrigued me, I connected with this old, beanie'd east village queen. I was going to be half-naked, lightly oiled, rolling around on a gym mat with him, doing scenes at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays...in public. And somehow, that was perfectly okay with me. Beyond okay, it presented an escape from the hackneyed and fossilized teachings of acting school. Chekhov and Shakespeare plays again this semester? What a surprise!

Jeff called me the next day from a pay phone to let me know where and when the first rehearsal would be. He didn't even bother with officially offering me the role. Like I said, it was obvious. I wrote down the info and looked at it with a crooked grin, maybe a little bit concerned. It read: "Tomorrow. 120 east 10th street. 10pm. In the basement." Since this was after Pulp Fiction, one of my classmates was convinced I would never return to the NYU Tisch, forever trapped in a basement in the role of 'Gimp of the East Village.'

When I showed up to the East 10th Street address, Jeff was in the same clownish clothes and beanie scraping ice off of the steps on the stoop. It turns out Jeff was also the building's superintendent. This just gets stranger and stranger, I thought. Jeff's brown eyes beamed when he saw me and, in what I was soon to find out was his signature greeting, grinned and guffawed a 'Hi Billy!' I murmured a 'Hey Jeff,' and he presented the entrance into the dilapidated brownstone like it was the dacha of a Russian czar.

Once inside, I followed him down the mosaic tile steps into the basement. The basement was nearly black except for some indirect courtyard light from a window in the back and one small gas kerosene lamp on an old wooden desk by the window.

"Watch your step," Jeff said, lighting another kersone lamp and leading me to the desk at the back wall. The desk had an old smith-corona typewriter and two small wooden folding chairs, evidently made for midgets or 3rd graders. Jeff pulled out my rickety chair with a scrape on the cement floor, and then sat down in his with a casual grin like it was tea time in Paddington. Although everything about this dank and dark cellar suggested it would, indeed, be a perfect setup for a Gimp or, at least, the creation of a Gimp, I felt oddly at ease. Speechless, but at ease.

"Alright, let's work on this scene," Jeff said somberly as he spun the paper around on the smith-corona roller and cracked his knuckles.

"Okay," I murmured inaudibly.

We started reading through it and Jeff stopped when he got to the line about the sour-tasting splooge.

"Hmmm," he mused as he stroked his white stubble. "I think Gatorade is funnier.... So it would be 'Sour semen, huh? Drink some Gatorade... electrolytes will sweeten that jizz right up.' Whadda ya think, Billy?"

He delivered the line so sincerely and looked up at me with earnest, searching eyes. In response to his sudden query, I half-nodded, half-laughed despite my aversion to the subject matter and the very thought of man ranch being anywhere near my taste buds. It was impossible not to laugh when he delivered such bizarre shit with such utter conviction. Jeff had this uncanny ability to completely believe the truth of what he was saying, and it made YOU believe it in turn. So much so that, to this day--because I'm a nice guy--I will drink a quart of Gatorade if I know that, later on, I might make a mess in a girl's mouth. I have absolutely no idea if there is any scientific basis to the G-effect on cock snot, but the idea has stayed with me.

While I was laughing with my hand over my mouth, I realized I must have appeared like the countriest of bumpkins. This wizened East Village queen had already retired from his job as a male hustler blowing johns in Port Authority bathrooms when he was my age (true story) and I hadn't even been to a gentleman's club yet. . I felt self-conscious and naïve. But Jeff didn't judge me or make me feel inferior. He just looked at me with a tender, bemused look. He laughed and produced a tightly wound joint from the inside pocket of his ruffled clown coat. Then he said something I will never forget:
"Hey it ain't Chekhov."

It was the perfect sentence at the perfect moment in the perfect time in my life.

"Thank God," I said.

Jeff choked on his inhale and let out a staccato laugh through his gappy grin. He offered me the joint like he was handing me a pencil

"Here," said.

I had never smoked marijuana before in my life. My superego instinctively shot down my spine and clenched my sphincter into a conservative and righteous fist. I had been pressured dozens of times to smoke but had never once been tempted. I still wasn't 'tempted,' but my hand took the joint and put it in my mouth. My lips pulled at it and my lungs followed suit like it was Tuesday.

Hell, I guess it was the perfect moment to smoke weed for the first time.

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