I Was Better Last Night: A Memoir

by Harvey Fierstein

Only science and mathematics offer do-overs. History may echo but never repeats. Humans struggle to get a recipe right twice in a row. I can’t count the times I’ve had friends visit after a performance only to hear myself say, “I was better last night.” Of course I was better last night. I was younger, fresher, braver, and had one less day of life clogging my brain. But most of all, it was last night. Time upgrades survival to triumph.

I was Harvey F. because there was also a Harvey S. in my class. There were a lot of Harveys in P.S. 186. Three greatest mistakes of the fifties: Formica, thalidomide, and naming children Harvey.

My grandmother had six older brothers for whom she cooked, cleaned, and cared. When word reached America about the Nazi roundup of Jews in Eastern Europe, Moe, Murray, Max, Herman, David, and Joseph Schatzberg took up a collection so one of them could travel overseas to seek out family members and bring them back to safety. Several months later Herman returned alone. “No one?” the others asked. “You found no relatives to save?” He shrugged as he handed back the cash. “All I found were women.”

I moved toward eighth-grade graduation with relief and excitement. My only obstacle was surviving my bar mitzvah. Yes, it was time for that greatest moment in a Jewish boy’s life, when the fistful of checks given to him by relatives and family friends are snatched away to pay for the chopped liver and cha-cha band. L’chaim!

Drugs were different then—nothing like the potent locoweed people get these days. When we scored pot, it was a blend of twigs, stems, and seeds. The sixties happened mostly in the imagination.

He took me around the upstairs dressing room and introduced me to the cast—and to my amazement, I recognized someone. Without her wig and makeup, I realized that the woman I’d be replacing was the very same woman who had followed me out of that audition to tell me that I was talentless. She showed no sign of remembering me, and I didn’t want to make a scene. But several years later we were seated together at an awards show. Relaxed and in a spirit of fun, I related the incident, about which she swore she had no memory. Funny how that is. The jockey never recalls using a whip. The horse never forgets.

Arthur Bell, culture writer for The Village Voice, was arrested for holding another man’s hand as they crossed the street. You read that correctly. It was 1973, and you could still be arrested for holding another man’s hand in public.

I was once in London meeting the director John Schlesinger at his gentlemen’s club when a waiter asked what I’d have. Not being a gentlemen’s club drinker, I mumbled, “I guess I’ll have a beer.” The waiter looked down upon me even more than he had before and said, “Beer drinkers are generally discouraged at the door.”

Anyway, it was lovely seeing Paul now that things had settled in between us. I almost wrote “now that we were friends,” but exes can’t be friends. There is a red line of intimacy that’s been crossed. Exes know things about each other that friends never could. You’ve altered each other’s emotional DNA. You can be friendly with an ex, but exes cannot be friends.

When gay playwrights are interviewed, they are always asked about their sexuality, but I’ve never read an interview with Arthur Miller where he had to explain how he came to be heterosexual and what it was like. And believe me, if I was going to read up on that subject, he’s the guy whose opinions I would seek.

I had a childhood friend named Bennet Beckoff. His mom once gave us cookies she made from a box mix. My silly brain nicknamed her Betty Crocker Beckoff. Realizing that the script never mentioned Ma’s first name, I dubbed her thus, because it always made me laugh.

I wanted the show to change the world, but you ain’t changing nothing unless you’re putting asses in the seats.

“Oh, Miss Merman, I am one of your most devoted fans. I’m so honored you came to see the show. Please, I’m dying to know what you thought.” She took a beat and then, loud enough to be heard in Pittsburgh, “I thought it was a piece of shit. But the rest of the audience laughed and cried, so what the fuck do I know?”

Even with his personal friends succumbing, Reagan didn’t speak the word “AIDS” publicly for five years. He taught us a reality that had always been staring us in the face: a politician’s first priority is to get reelected. Second is to fund-raise. Third is to protect his party. Caring about a disease that is killing a small unpopular minority ranks somewhere below hosting Icelandic dignitaries at the White House.

As for me, I was hypersensitive of how I’d look on camera and resorted to a starvation diet for a year. Dangerous and unpleasant as it sounds, I restricted my food intake to a few minuscule meals a day along with Diet Coke and, before bed each evening, as a reward, a shot of Southern Comfort. By the time we began to film, I weighed 162 lbs. which today would be the weight of one thigh. Still, I noticed in reviews that I was referred to as fat or overweight. What we girls go through!

Dublin provided my greatest culture shock. Asked what I’d like to do on my evening off, I said, “Let’s go to a gay bar.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” our host said. “We’ve none of them in Dublin.” I guess my outraged countenance alarmed him. “No, no, don’t misunderstand. We legalized homosexuality years ago and so have no need to segregate.” It was the first time I felt as if America was a third world country.

Once, when it was obvious that a song was not working, I said, “What a shame to throw away such a gorgeous melody.” To which he replied, “Please. I shit gorgeous melodies.” I had that made into a T-shirt for him.

Mr. Vilanch possesses one of the drollest minds in show business, which he proved again when he returned from his year-long tour with Hairspray and reported, “When I die my epitaph will read: ‘Here lies Bruce Vilanch. He was no Harvey Fierstein.’ ”