Random Encounters with the Fabulous Kyle Cassidy, Vol. IX
I strolled into the Kimmel Center this evening for the Walker/Wagner program and there in the middle of the lobby stood Kyle Cassidy, looking impressive as usual. Tonight he was attired in a three-piece pinstriped suit, which, if not directly from Brooks Brothers, then was certainly from BB via the Second Mile Center.
"Dude!" I greeted him. He responded "Dude!" and we exchanged the secret hipster University City terrorist fist jab. Then I noticed with a start that he was carrying in his left hand a purse! Not a purse with a strap, but a garish number a little smaller than those new mini-laptops you see all the time, decorated with what appeared to be swirls of blue icing. I have to admit that I was taken aback. I hadn't seen Cassidy for awhile and he seemed taller than ever -- about 6' 4" and amply filling out the space around him. The effect was as if I had bumped into Arnold Schwarzenegger all decked out in lipstick and high heels.
Just then Cassidy's main squeeze, Jennifer Summerfield, the actress, swished up in some splendid iridescent duds, looking like Madame Butterfly. I have always admired her (from afar, of course) ever since I saw her as that hot Nurse Duckett in the Curio Theater's performance of "Catch-22" some years ago.
"Umm, Ms. Summerfield," I started hesitantly, "your man here seems to be carrying a purse..."
"Oh, that!" she laughed with her silvery tinkle. "That's not a purse -- it's a 'clutch'. It's a European thang."
I nodded uneasily and thought Cassidy seemed a little embarrassed too. Then he embarked on a riff about how he carried his toothbrush, a bicycle pump, and his lock-picking tools around in it, in case he was suddenly called off on a job. Sounded a trifle unlikely, but I suppose if that was his story, he was wise to stick to it.
"Well, I need to begin my climb up to the third tier," I said, and they proceeded in to their posh seats in the orchestra section. Oddly enough, leaning over the railing from my seat up in the third tier Box 113 I was able to see them make their regal entrance -- they had seats right down in the first row center. Cassidy always pretends they sit there because that's where the good seats are for rock concerts, but truth be told I think it's because he's too cheap to spring for the really good orchestra seats a few rows back.
Anyhow, as the orchestra tuned up I pondered the strange incident of Cassidy and the purse. I had always considered the dude the manliest of men, but there was something about the way he stood there clutching his accessory, as I believe the term is, that struck me as just a mite effeminate, and I worried during the first act, a brand new violin concert by George Walker, whether there might not after all be something a little *wrong* with him, that he might have what my good friend Andy Warhol used to call "a problem."
Fortunately during the Wagner my fears were put to rest. The lovely couple were holding hands through the whole 70-minute performance. In fact, by the Ride of the Valkyries she was fondling his thigh. They were necking passionately by the Liebestod, and by the Gotterdammerung she was practically in his lap. I spotted one of the ushers eyeing them nervously and fidgeting with his walkie-talkie, no doubt pondering whether to call in the riot squad and give the lovers the bum's rush. But the Philadelphia Orchestra is so strapped for cash now that apparently if you're a paying customer, anything goes these days.
For those of you not into Wagner, you must know that his music is the height of sensuousness, or sensuality. The German word "Sinnlichkeit" absolutely says it all. I myself, in fact, was more than a little aroused by a particularly hot violist with a blonde pony tail whom I've had my eye on for some time now. When she repeatedly did that vibrato thing on the neck of her instrument I imagined that her fingers were doing that very same thing to the back of my own neck. And I'm a happily married Mennonite husband.
At any rate, I was relieved to know that my misgivings about Cassidy were apparently misplaced. It's just that in the increasingly hip and tolerant University City, where it seems that more and more anything goes, one does have one's doubts sometimes.
* * * * *
Some reflections on Cassidy -- if you've ever read The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, Kyle is like the Cassady who drives the bus in that book.
Immense flashes of infectious manic energy.
Like Friday night we were all comfortably settled at Abbraccio in the Boom-Boom Room to watch the Big Debate. I could tell Kyle was restless -- he kept bounding around the room trying to balance the Barfing Chicken carafe on his nose -- finally he's all like: "Let's blow this popsicle stand, dudes. I've got a 72-inch TV chez moi and a couple of bottles of single malt whiskey."
Before I knew it he had swept up a dozen debate watchers, many of whom he had never apparently met before, and we were bouncing down the street to the Big House, Cassidy talking a mile a minute and laughing hilariously at the good parts. The hike itself took over an hour and I myself was winded by the time we got there and the debate was half over, so I was just ready to sit for a spell, but Cassidy, after sitting on the settee and giving McCain the hard stare for about two minutes was up bouncing around the room setting up the pinball machine for a wide-eyed 8th-grader who had got caught up in the sweep -- banging the machine and yelling "Tilt!" in a full-throated roar. It's not that often I get an invite to the Maison de la Cassa Milla, but whenever I do it's like watching Spinal Tap bust up a hotel room and it takes like a full month to recover, if then.
* * * * *
Oddly enough, when I stepped onto my homeward trolley after the Philadelphia Orchestra Concert tonight whom should I spy but the fabulous Kyle Cassidy. He was slovenly, unshaven, plotzed, and three sheets to the wind as usual, but fortunately he had two sober friends, Dan and Julie, just moved into town from Tucson (Dan Ellerbroek's show opens at Abbraccio Fri the 21st BTW) and they were very kindly escorting him home, otherwise it would have been just another night in the drunk tank for old Kyle. ANYWAY .. I thought I would show a bit of soul and taste and oneupmanship by mentioning that I had just come from hearing Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg at le Centre Kimmelle and lo and behold Kyle lurched into this curious tale about having been in the second row orchestra seats the previous evening at that very same show. Astounding. I would have thought that he was making it all up as usual, but he managed to slur out the words "Check out my livejournal entry for last night". Turns out he was telling the truth. I said, Dude, I thought you were just into Goth, Noir, Science Fiction and Bambi, but he stuttered drunkenly, "Au contraire, mon frere, I have in fact done the photos for five classical CDs." Just goes to show you never know how the other half lives.
* * * * *
Le Tout Ouest de la Phillie turned out Friday evening for Dan Ellerbroek's show of oil paintings at Abbraccio. The event marked another step onward and upward in Roger Harman's relentless and neverending quest for culture and savoir-faire, attracting as usual a decidedly mixed and trendy neighborhood crowd and culminating in the artist's presentation of an exquisite miniature titled simply "At Abbraccio" to the devil-may-care proprietor of University City's hippest and trendiest bistro cum eaterie.
The show itself featured a nice melange of pictures of the artist's native Tucson and his adopted city, Philadelphia. Bridges were the dominant motif -- bridges sporting bright graffiti tags, bridges juxtaposed against bridges, and, my favorite "Shadow" -- the telltale silhouette of a lacy trash barrel collar against the Flemish block identifiable to the connoisseur as the spot under the Market Street bridge where Philly's hippies meet at midnight to howl and wail at the full moon.
Melani Demimonde was there, of course, arriving fashionably late and sporting a necklace of what looked to be miniature human skulls a la the Hindu goddess of death, sex and destruction Kali. "They're actually cats," she claimed when I called her on it, but if indeed feline, the heads were noticeably shrunken. One does wonder where all those lost feral cats wind up whose disappearances are always being so breathlessly reported on the UC Neighbors list; I now suspect Melani of maintaining a cat abattoir and headshrinking room in her basement, but I was too polite to pursue the topic.
Trillian Starrs made her grand entrance resplendent in a frilly 19th century widow's undershirt, and sporting cockatoo feathers in her hair, plus a pair of new high-heeled shoes which of course I was too polite to peek at. At about six o'clock a troupe of lady Gujurati dancers arrived in filmy saris accompanied by a gaggle of live peacocks. The oogedty boogedty Bollywood music started over the Abbraccio's non pareil overhead sound system and soon the whole room was "getting down", as I believe the term is. Anoushka Shankar made a brief appearance, flanked by bodyguards, but when I approached her seeking her autograph a look of horror traversed her face and she fled to the powder room. "Was it my breath?" I wondered.
Cassidy eventually showed up, shoved me out of my chair and took my plate of crackers and cheese, then demanded to take my picture. "I'll give ya fitty cents," he snarled. Of course I demanded my normal fee of a benjamin, but we haggled till I got him down to a dollar. By that point I was too distraught to pose with my normal mysterious smile, but I grabbed Roger and Trillian and Cassidy snapped off a Kodachrome. I left with dollar in hand to purchase a pint of Night Train at my local wine and spirits emporium, the classy new one on Baltimore where Melani directs all her overnight "clients".