Photo Pest: The Way We Were

It looks as if Barnet was born a beach bunny. We're certainly paying now at the dermatologist's office for the many sunny, barely protected weekend afternoons we spent at Jones Beach in the 80s.

This picture was taken not long after his nose job. Barnet turned his cosmetic surgery into a self-deprecating joke. He and several friends formed the "fag nose club," a name derived from an aspersion cast by a homophobic vagrant.

I can't remember where this photo was shot. I do know that it captures Barnet without the broad smile he perfected for the camera. He takes a better ID picture than anyone.

Barnet is one of Manhattan Plaza's original tenants. Federally subsidized housing, it opened in 1977. Performing artists like Barnet--a member of the Gingerbread Players, a children's theatrical company, and star of Lovers, an early off-Broadway production about gay men--paid rent equal to 25% of their annual income. I called it welfare for neurotics, especially around "re-certification time" when Barnet had to prove he qualified for the subsidy. Still, the glorious northern views from his studio on the 37th floor--he could see the twinkling lights of the George Washington Bridge as well as the Ninth Avenue Street Fair crowds stretching towards uptown infinity--are more than worth all the tsouris, one of the many Yiddish words he taught me. Kneina Hura remains my favorite.

Bill, one of Barnet's close friends, painted the stylized portrait of Barbra hanging in his apartment. Barnet named his first cat Sweeney, after the Grand Guignol musical. In the parlance of our youth, Barnet was known as a "show-tune queen." Knowing him has been a lifetime master class in Streisand, Sondheim and Merman. Bill takes as much delight in Barnet's dizzy celebrity impressions as I do. Can you tell he and Barnet have identical noses? They had the same surgeon and Bill is a charter member of the aforementioned club, too.

Barnet and I met cruising Central Park. He loved to show off his pecs, the product of multiple sets of 25 push-ups daily. Although sexual attraction initially brought us together, we inhabited entirely different worlds. He was the Borscht Belt comedian to my straight man. Throughout the 80s and 90s, man troubles and show business sustained our friendship and repartee.

Barnet went to City College with Howie, another Manhattan Plaza resident. He belonged to the Gingerbread Players, too, and owned the Munchmaker, a candy store on the Upper East Side where Barnet met Paul. When Howie died long before his time of heart failure, Barnet moved dozens of mourners to tears in Riverside Memorial Chapel eulogizing his friend's warm, generous spirit. "I've never been more proud of you," I told him afterward. "Your eulogy avoided the mistakes of many that I've heard. It was more about him than you."

Once I caught the Fire Island bug, I saw less of Barnet although he spent a week at the beach with me every summer for nearly two decades, getting to know many of the guys who later became other members of my gay family. There's no question that socioeconomics stunted our friendship. He couldn't afford a share, and I couldn't get enough of the Pines. So we made the most of our time together. We pretended to drag Claudette Colbert, a guest of one next-door neighbor, to Cherry Grove for dinner. We did magic mushrooms which he buried in Little Debbie cupcakes. He made delicious kugel. And we listened to Barbra. A lot. I will never forget the unanticipated thrill of introducing him to "Someone That I Used To Love," a cut from a 1989 compilation album it made no sense for him to buy. The repeat button on my CD player got a workout that weekend.

Kismet factored into our early relationship, too. On the day we met, Barnet stopped by Bloomingdale's to drop off a Linzer tart. Barbra had been spotted in the store wearing a paprika raincoat just an hour earlier. Alas, try as he did, he couldn't find her before she exited. In another odd coincidence, his sister Diane purchased a tie from me. Here's Uncle Barnet with Dina, his first niece who was born around the time I became a guncle, too.

I took Barnet, a city boy from Yonkers if ever there was one, on his first motorcycle ride. And he joined the Pines crew for some whitewater rafting at the Delaware River Gap, too.

During one of his Pines visits we memorably weathered Hurricane Bob. Still, seeing Barnet wearing his headphones in these old pictures mostly brings back our drives home from Jones Beach in Herr Cucaracha, using the double jack on my Walkman to listen to The Phantom of the Opera, together, but separately, as good a metaphor for our relationship as any. We were obsessed with the London cast album that summer but even with terrible traffic we never made it past the first disc.

Miraculously, Barnet and I weathered another, much harsher storm together: AIDS. He was the only friend of mine to attend Dave's funeral. That's not the kind of thing you forget. He lost dear friends, too, like Bartley, a gentle DJ at the Gaiety Male Burlesque which Barnet introduced me to long before Madonna used it as a location for Sex. Bartley exhorted us to "put our hands together" for the dancers. We did.

Here's Barnet at the closing ceremonies of the Gay Games in 1994. He knew the Lexington Avenue line to Yankee Stadium would be packed with gay men like us. As much as I love this picture--probably one of the best portraits I've ever taken--I wish I would have recorded him on the train opening the June 23, 1969 edition of the New York Daily News, headlined JUDY GARLAND DIES IN LONDON. Now that's what I call performance art!

I can't decide what is more noteworthy in these two photos: Barnet with a paddle or platinum blond hair.

Although this picture was taken much later, Barnet also wore a bathing cap the afternoon he pantomimed "As If We Never Said Goodbye" for Brad, a Pines housemate with late-stage AIDS. A dying man has never laughed more heartily, a sound indelibly imprinted on my brain thanks to Barnet's Esther Williams antics in our kidney-shaped pool at the Muller Cottage.

Barnet never travelled much, so when he turned 50 in 2000, I took him to the West Coast. We arrived in Los Angeles on his birthday. Predictably, Hollywood Boulevard was our first stop.

Anthony, a Pines housemate who enjoyed Barnet's shtick as much as I did, joined us. We previously had driven to the the nation's capital and flown to South Beach, where the accommodations weren't quite as luxe as those we found at the Bellagio even if the three of us did share a room.

From Vegas, we headed to Yosemite National Park through Death Valley.

As the full moon climbed the pale southern sky, Barnet took the wheel for the first time in his life and freaked out. You can take the boy out of the city but . . .

After driving up the Pacific Coast Highway and touring the Hearst Castle at San Simeon, we flew home from San Francisco.

Barnet hosted my 50th birthday party three years later. As requested, it had a Boys in the Band theme. He tracked down a VHS copy of the movie and bought the fabulous cake. When Harold says "Call you tomorrow?" to Michael in the final scene, I couldn't help but think of my analog relationship with Barnet. He was my first gay friend and we spent more time on the phone together than we ever have in person. If I ever lost my cell phone, his number is the only one I know by heart.

Can you tell we all got plastered?

When Barnet sent me this photo of him with Barbara Cook, I accused him of cheating on Barbra.

Always up for a campy new experience, Barnet, Anthony and I went to Coney Island for the Mermaid Parade. It was about as far away from Broadway as you could get.

Barnet eventually began declining my invitations to the Pines. But not before I got the chance to integrate my straight family with my gay family. Magda, my goddaughter, met Barnet as a nine-year old when I took her to see My Fair Lady. We stopped by his apartment to pick up a pillow for her seat. As an adult, she joined us for a Broadway revival of Follies and End of the Rainbow.

Here's Barnet in a Pines hot tub with the other members of my straight family: Audrey and Tom, my best friends from college, and Zoltan their son, Magda's younger brother. Thanks to another rainy weekend with Barnet, Zoltan, as his mother likes to say, was probably the only first lieutenant in the US Army who could identify Company from its opening notes.

As we aged, Barnet and I gradually began to see less of each other.

In the meantime, Dina, like Magda, grew into a young woman with a husband and a family of her own.

Life has taught me that friendships, like the moon, wax and wane, but they always glow in memory. Barnet is forever associated with my youth, and during the occasional outing with Anthony, he never fails to flash his megawatt smile!

Someday, Barnet and I will have to re-enact the sailboat scene from The Way We Were, where Hubbell Gardiner and JJ tipsily reminisce about the best moments of their lives. Of course, we'll argue about who gets to be Robert Redford but hey, some things never change.

Until then, Happy Birthday, Barnet, for the 45th time!