For Eugene, on his 73rd birthday 🥂
It took me weeks to cry in quarantine.
Its early days were rife with confusion, worry, and cancelled plans as the curve crept up, up, up. There was no time for mourning a world slipping so quickly through our fingers. But then I got a call from Mitchell—a friend I’d met only once. His partner had suffered a heart attack. Eugene was gone.
(This was the first time I cried in quarantine.)
A city serendipity brought the four of us together—Eugene and Mitchell, Brock and me. In last year’s blackout, I filmed Eugene directing traffic with his cane at 57th and Broadway. The tweet went viral. News producers asked me for permission to use the footage. Eugene was famous.
If you like beauty, go to L.A. If you like brains, go to Boston. If you like interesting, come to New York. We have 8.4 million people of interest.
The bittersweet joy of New York City is witnessing people but once.
We see them on sidewalks and subways, in bookstores and on stages. They’re in conversations overheard at dinner downtown (is it eavesdropping if you’re almost touching?). At night, their stories shine in little squares that dot the sky. Lights on, lights off, in formless naked shadows.
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, they’re on Twitter.
Eugene had made a Twitter account just to find me! It was a date. And by all accounts, it looked like we were going to get on mighty fine:
That weekend, Brock and I walked to Bar Veloce. Our imagined itinerary? Meet Eugene and Mitchell at 7:00, trade stories, off to dinner by ourselves at 8:30 or so.
How greatly we underestimated what the Fates of New York had given us. Between rounds of laughter and rosé, I took notes on my phone of our jokes and conversation. I had the presence of mind to know this night was special. We didn’t leave the bar until 1:00am.
With a swill of Diet Coke, Eugene started talking. He is the only person I have ever heard say “That’s showbiz, baby” without a lick of irony.
He was born in North Carolina.
In high school, Eugene wrote an operetta. (Very normal for a teen in North Carolina fifty-someodd years ago.) After studying classical ballet in college, he moved to New York City.
One night on the subway, he locked eyes with a man who had just been stood up on a date. Mitchell.
And here we were with them—38 years later! They held court in Bar Veloce like the kings of Hell’s Kitchen (a simile, so it happens, that was not far from the truth). With mathematical thinking and boundless creativity, Eugene became a lighting designer for dance legends. Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, he worked with all of them.
He lit the opening performance at the Kennedy Center for Dame Margot Fonteyn, whom he once partnered with in rehearsal for Sleeping Beauty. How many lighting designers can work double duty dancing with a dame?
He also played the harp.
He practiced yoga (at my studio, even!) and was well-versed in its history and philosophy.
He was adorable beyond belief.
And damn, Eugene could tell a joke.
Like any lighting designer worth his salt, Eugene calculated moments for maximum impact. “That’s why,” he told me, “punchlines should have 7-11 syllables.” He attributed this to Groucho Marx, but I tried to look it up and couldn’t find it. Knowing Eugene, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn it was something Groucho Marx told him in person.
He told us stories about Liza Minelli, the good old days at the Ansonia, and one about Yoko Ono that he never did finish. He entertained us for six hours straight (gay?) and left us wanting more. That’s showbiz, baby.
The week Eugene died, I ran to 57th and Broadway.
When I stood here in July 2019, the city was shut down. Here I stood again. New York shut down again. The lights were on this time, but everything else was off.
I ran to the spot where Eugene had stood in the center of Broadway. It had never felt more empty.
Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream.
I cried for the first time in quarantine at the death of a man I’d met only once. I don’t know that this is a testament to serendipity or New York or fate so much as it is to Eugene.
In the notes on my phone from that night is a Shakespeare quote: “You are idle, shallow things: I am not of your element.”
I don’t remember writing this. I don’t remember when or how or why it would have come about in conversation—but there it is, resting casually after a bullet point that reads “Yoko Ono story?”
Where did these words come from? Eugene, is that you, speaking to me in mysterious text? If so, you do not come bearing new information. Nobody was of your element—a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Director of light and movement on Broadway and on Broadway.
Happy birthday, beaming one.
To witness you not once, but twice, was its own midsummer night’s dream.