Divine Hello, Dolly!

In the new revival of Jerry Herman's Hello, Dolly!, Bette Midler doesn’t so much inhabit the character of Dolly Gallagher Levi as allow Dolly to inhabit her own divinity. With double takes and side eyes, Bette's Dolly breaks the fourth wall while mining all the laughs from Michael Stewart’s classic book. (Breaking the fourth wall is a typical conceit of original playwright Thornton Wilder.) Midler is ably aided by David Hyde Pierce, a perfect foil as Horace Vandergelder and someone who the producers felt worthy enough to add the previously cut Vandergelder solo, Penny In My Pocket, as the second act opener. The rest of the supporting cast sing and dance joyfully in the ageless musical: Gavin Creel as Cornelius Hackl is adorable, Kate Baldwin as Irene Molloy is resplendent, Taylor Trensch as Barnaby Tucker is a mensch and Beanie Feldstein as Minnie Fay is a revelation. The sets are darling, dances energetic throwbacks, costumes colorfully vintage and Herman’s songs tuneful as ever.

Undoubtedly though everyone in the house for this first (March 15) preview was there for Midler’s return to the musical theatre. Exhilaration was in the air as we braved the 20 degree weather for the 8:00 PM curtain. (No late seating EVER … for this engagement.) When Bette finally enters on a trolley, there’s a standing ovation. Bette lifts her skirts to dance at Irene Molloy’s, there’s a standing ovation. She sings the act one closer Before The Parade Passes By, there’s a standing ovation. And following the always entertaining Waiters’ Gallop, when the Harmonia Gardens curtains part and Bette descends the stairs to the strains of the classic title tune, the roar of approval is deafening. Bette’s Dolly is, at once, boisterous, reflective, quirky … and quite hungry. This role would be her star-making turn - if she hadn’t already been a star for almost fifty years! Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! is an event that comes along once in a lifetime and lucky me I have tickets for two more events. How lucky can you get!

(How lucky can you get! See what I did there?)

Click the link for a NSFW throwback on Bette called It's Not Porn. It's Bette Midler!.

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It's Not Porn. It's Bette Midler!

One Gay Man's Sexual Journey

I spent my first year of college in Weinstein dormitory at New York University. It was the first time I had lived under a roof that did not belong to my parents. This new freedom started me thinking about my virginity...and losing it. But there was something that I MUST do first.

For too many years, I had been blessed with nocturnal emissions or wet dreams - dreams that culminate in an eruption of seminal fluid. Fall asleep; dream about a sexually gratifying scenario and wake up to a pulsating urethra and wet, sticky underwear. It is an out-of-body experience - old school virtual sex - that is real. That reality allowed me to live under my parents roof without a diurnal (daytime) sexual release. That's right - I was 18 years old and had never masturbated in the truest sense of the word.



Tonight, alone in my new dorm room, I MUST pulsate my urethra while I am awake. For the first time. No one to walk in on me now! I left the dormitory and walked down 8th Street looking for something to help me pulsate. I passed a news stand and looked at the pornographic magazines. I was mortified.

I can't buy a magazine like this. What is this vendor going to say? Is he going to hold up the magazine and yell, "Hey, everyone look at the pimply kid buying his first piece of pornography!!"
I couldn't do it. I couldn't. Then...I saw a magazine with a picture of Bette Midler on its cover - right next to the latest issues of the male magazines Blueboy and Drummer. What's this? After Dark?



I rifled through the magazine and found a tasteful portfolio of shirtless ballet dancers in leotards and come hither bodies in advertisements aimed at the Christopher Street man. It wasn't porn though - it was Bette Midler.

I bought the magazine and went back to my room. I lit some candles (which I have never done since) and laid on my bed, face down. (Well, that's how I slept at the time.) As I turned each page I turned my mind to the pictures; I would read the Midler interview later. Ultimately, with some helpful hip gyrations, I pulsated my urethra. And I was awake!

That's masturbation?

So I did it again to be sure - this time face up - and it worked again.

That's masturbation!



I went into the shower and did it again.

You mean I could've been doing this whenever I wanted? Awake?

By the end of the week, I had lost my virginity. But that's another story.


This is the other story, the 'hole' story

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