I found a letter I sent her and her then-husband back in 1972, just after I went to a boyfriend's opening in Grease and right before I left him on stage to go to Spain.
So I don't have to type it up later in San Francisco, I'll type it up here as a blog post--or two or three or four:
February 15, 1972
Dear Dana and Herman,
I haven't written you sooner because of all the distracting happenings on 7th and 55th Street and at the Eden Theatre and on Greyhound buses and railway cars and metro trains and in meeting with your father in Harrisburg and at concerts seated among the Harrisburg 8 defendants for whom Joan Baez sings and in visits with your former rival for the Bill Gouldelock highest possible moral standards Aard, who went on to lower his prize-winning morals and grow his hair and develop a social consciousness instead and in seeing once again the fascist pig who dismisses morality and legality with a wholesome, practical "So what?" and explains how you can tell that Vietnamese aren't human and that all the whores are whorish and that your breasts are beautiful but your views are typically those of a humanities major who doesn't understand the necessity of self-defense (oh yeah?) and a metro liner that goes from D.C. to NYC in three hours to opening night and The New York Times, Daily Mirror, Daily News, New York Post, et cetera, carrying mixed reviews that say, on the one hand, the performers are appealing and, on the other, the performers are unattractive 30-year-old morons portraying unattractive 18-year-old morons in what's supposed to be a spoof of the 50's, and dinner at Sardi's, watching reviews on televisions while sipping champagne and booing or clapping, depending upon what the critic has to say about the chance of the play, and meeting Tom Jones--not the Fielding one, but the one who wrote the songs for I Do, I Do, The Fantastics, and 110 in the Shade, and talking with him for 30 minutes and being asked about the Peace Corps and trying to remember which of his songs you taught the Tongan kids, and being hugged by and hugging actors and actresses whose autographs you don't yet have and wondering just when you'll get your hair (that falls so neatly o'er each breast) cut and if you could get it done for free in exchange for donating your "old look" to the advancement of modern medical cosmetological (SIC) science, and trying to figure out just how to get out of the country as cheaply as possible and with no qualms about the no one to meet you on the other side of the vast Atlantic, and all the time being given back rubs and white roses and good meals in pretty restaurants by the wonderful guy you live with at the Wellington, where he wants you to stay at his expense because it's "classy" and the room he had at the Dexter Hotel had a noisey (SIC) madman who laughed all night next door and wasn't in the Theatre District anyways, and thinking about all past sins & wickedness and knowing you're not the person on your check list of things-to-be--and yet there's something about you that moves you still and you wish you could share it with your family whom you abuse instead because you feel abused and all because of your unrealistic self-concept that has you as celebrity to be adored and toasted and served tea to, and so you go to St. Patrick's Cathedral and consider becoming a religious fantatick (SIC) instead, and when you begin writing a letter to your loved ones, saying all your foolish heart dictates, you're down-cast by the realization that it won't be read because it's too long and rambling and there's clothes to be tried on and housework to be done.
That's why I haven't written sooner.
But I do thank you for clothing and feeding me and painting and counseling me and trying to show me the way. Someday when I cast aside my childish ways and take on the maturity and responsibilities of a fine adult and citizen, I'll do the same for some lost soul and your maganimity will have lived on, gained a kind of immortality through me.
Due to my severe personality defects and emotional problems (to say nothing of my sexual hang-ups and inhibitions), I wasn't always able to relax and enjoy all that went on--or would have gone on--around me in the room. Perhaps my irritability and the sometimes sharpness of my tongue left you with the impression that the three of us will never be able to live together on a permanent basis. Well, if time and abortive attempts reveal that this is so, I still want you to know that I do love you, even if I can express it only a a safe distance.
Warm thots (SIC) from my foolish heart,
Tina in a nutshell.
So I don't have to type it up later in San Francisco, I'll type it up here as a blog post--or two or three or four:
February 15, 1972
Dear Dana and Herman,
I haven't written you sooner because of all the distracting happenings on 7th and 55th Street and at the Eden Theatre and on Greyhound buses and railway cars and metro trains and in meeting with your father in Harrisburg and at concerts seated among the Harrisburg 8 defendants for whom Joan Baez sings and in visits with your former rival for the Bill Gouldelock highest possible moral standards Aard, who went on to lower his prize-winning morals and grow his hair and develop a social consciousness instead and in seeing once again the fascist pig who dismisses morality and legality with a wholesome, practical "So what?" and explains how you can tell that Vietnamese aren't human and that all the whores are whorish and that your breasts are beautiful but your views are typically those of a humanities major who doesn't understand the necessity of self-defense (oh yeah?) and a metro liner that goes from D.C. to NYC in three hours to opening night and The New York Times, Daily Mirror, Daily News, New York Post, et cetera, carrying mixed reviews that say, on the one hand, the performers are appealing and, on the other, the performers are unattractive 30-year-old morons portraying unattractive 18-year-old morons in what's supposed to be a spoof of the 50's, and dinner at Sardi's, watching reviews on televisions while sipping champagne and booing or clapping, depending upon what the critic has to say about the chance of the play, and meeting Tom Jones--not the Fielding one, but the one who wrote the songs for I Do, I Do, The Fantastics, and 110 in the Shade, and talking with him for 30 minutes and being asked about the Peace Corps and trying to remember which of his songs you taught the Tongan kids, and being hugged by and hugging actors and actresses whose autographs you don't yet have and wondering just when you'll get your hair (that falls so neatly o'er each breast) cut and if you could get it done for free in exchange for donating your "old look" to the advancement of modern medical cosmetological (SIC) science, and trying to figure out just how to get out of the country as cheaply as possible and with no qualms about the no one to meet you on the other side of the vast Atlantic, and all the time being given back rubs and white roses and good meals in pretty restaurants by the wonderful guy you live with at the Wellington, where he wants you to stay at his expense because it's "classy" and the room he had at the Dexter Hotel had a noisey (SIC) madman who laughed all night next door and wasn't in the Theatre District anyways, and thinking about all past sins & wickedness and knowing you're not the person on your check list of things-to-be--and yet there's something about you that moves you still and you wish you could share it with your family whom you abuse instead because you feel abused and all because of your unrealistic self-concept that has you as celebrity to be adored and toasted and served tea to, and so you go to St. Patrick's Cathedral and consider becoming a religious fantatick (SIC) instead, and when you begin writing a letter to your loved ones, saying all your foolish heart dictates, you're down-cast by the realization that it won't be read because it's too long and rambling and there's clothes to be tried on and housework to be done.
That's why I haven't written sooner.
But I do thank you for clothing and feeding me and painting and counseling me and trying to show me the way. Someday when I cast aside my childish ways and take on the maturity and responsibilities of a fine adult and citizen, I'll do the same for some lost soul and your maganimity will have lived on, gained a kind of immortality through me.
Due to my severe personality defects and emotional problems (to say nothing of my sexual hang-ups and inhibitions), I wasn't always able to relax and enjoy all that went on--or would have gone on--around me in the room. Perhaps my irritability and the sometimes sharpness of my tongue left you with the impression that the three of us will never be able to live together on a permanent basis. Well, if time and abortive attempts reveal that this is so, I still want you to know that I do love you, even if I can express it only a a safe distance.
Warm thots (SIC) from my foolish heart,
Tina in a nutshell.
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