…At any rate, junior year came and with it my tour de force as Mr. Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors – which remains one of my favorite musicals to this day. I have passed many happy moments with other show folk in the tiny basement of Marie’s Crisis belting out its anthems (in a crowd my atonal voice blends). It was the best production in the history of Episcopal High School, and even if that institution has continued to produce theater without me I doubt it’s been surpassed. As we were a private school with limited access to minority students, we had to fill out the third girl in the Motown girl group trio with a white girl. Of course she was teased for being cast in a ‘black’ role – but you must understand, that was another time. I myself have always had an open mind and heart, even before it was in vogue to believe in Hope and Change and things like that. 

Danny cast as Seymour the object of my crush, Xxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx. He was a senior and delicious. Although it wasn’t to be until after graduation that Danny and I formally acknowledged my homosexuality, it would have been obvious to a one-eyed Lao; and he graciously choreographed a dance number in which my Mr. Mushnik lifted Seymour up into his arms and twirled him around and around. It was to be the closest I came to physical intimacy with someone I actually loved for years – and maybe it still is!

…and there’s more to come, as the paparazzi gears up for a reading of excerpts from I Light Up My Life: the Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography on Friday August 6 at 9:30 pm at Dixon Place, NYC.