Blessed by the Best Surviving Addiction: A Spiritual Journey

By David Kearse

The author was trained by the masters -- Harold Clurman, a founder of The Group Theater that led to The Actors Studio; Alan Arkin, an Oscar winner that co-founded Chicago's famed Second City; Frank Corsaro, a Broadway director who successfully turned to international opera; and Norman Seeff, a videographer who continues to study the nature of Creativity among thousands of artists. David explicitly shares what he learned from them, as well as his own path as a journalist, a recovering alcoholic and in spirituality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Kearse
• Release date: Jun 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201319045

David Kearse

Take a cinematic journey from New York to LA, from the Metropolitan Opera to Glyndebourne, and witness the career ups and downs of a pop singer who wants to be a drummer and his older mentor. The author is an optioned screenwriter and a former journalist.

Book preview

1 FROM SHIP TO SHORE

T

his is a story of celebrated Oscar winners and legendary international Broadway and opera directors—my teachers and mentors. It is also a story of survival – from the bitter dregs of alcoholism and growing up gay in the 1950s.

My story tells about spiritual growth and gay sexual identity, and a varied career as a musician, actor, writer, adman, marketer, and California State employee.

My gay awakenings occurred in the Annapolis  Community Center, then the focus of most city cultural activities. I performed in a stage version of Peter Pan with the Annapolis Children’s Theater at age 12—and fell desperately in love with an older teenager, who was 17, and played Peter Pan.

I love theater. Always have at this stage in my life, and probably always will. So, let’s start with that 12-year-old boy whose love for theater in his life got him condemned to hell.

It’s not that I believe that, but when you’re 12, and the Lord’s messenger tells you...

I should explain. As an adult, it’s called giving context, but as a boy, it’s just reality.

I also  love musical theater. I saw it was natural for people to burst into song. I saw it as inevitable. You must break into song. What better place than on stage with people to clap for you and adore you?

So, you can imagine when, at age 4, I sang in Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta, HMS Pinafore, and, at 12,  acted in Peter Pan. Okay, so it was a small part as a Lost Boy. Every night, as soon as I felt the stage under my feet, I felt adrenaline pouring through me.

Then there was Peter Pan himself. He wore the tightest elastic pants I had ever seen. And you know, even though I had my part to play, he took my breath away. With the illumination of the stage lighting, God, he was sexy. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. So, when he came to enlist us Lost Boys, and we flew off together,  it was pure adrenaline mixed with desire. At 12, things are just waking up for you, and wow, did he wake me up!

With the spotlight on him, he was beyond handsome, and with his face alit, I felt there could be no one more perfect. Then he flew, and that sealed the deal. I would almost burst.

Then, sometimes, he would look at me and smile, God, it was as if an angel had touched my soul. I couldn’t name it then, but my loins would fill with desire, and yes, when he’d smile my way, I hoped it was mutual!

When he was offstage, he was always kind to me. If he was 17, I was always dancing fast enough to be 17. Plus, I had always done everything. 

I had served as president of that church’s Royal Ambassadors youth group (while simultaneously serving as the local YMCA’s youth group president). I had found Jesus (so I thought), was baptized by Pastor Wood in the Baptist Church wading pool, and now I questioned everything about my religion.

There was no word like Gay then because, in the 1950s, the climate for same-sex attraction was brutal, closeted, and shame-filled.

But there it was. I knew I had to share my feelings with my love. I was sure there was a two-way street. And I couldn’t possibly hold it inside.

So, with my hands shaking, I wrote my Peter Pan everything I could think of, sure that Peter shared my attraction. But, you know, 12-year-olds can be eloquent, and I just let it out.

I must have rehearsed my letter aloud to him a thousand times. I knew it was risky, but I was confident that genuine love would conquer all.

I mailed the note. 

I didn’t hear anything for several days. God, what went through my mind during that time? I would bound between giddy excitement and forlorn abjection. Had I played my hand right? What could he be thinking:? It seemed like an eternity waiting for a response.

He was in the choir of the College Avenue Baptist Church. So, he was a for-sure Baptist. 

Reverend Wood found me on the steps of the Annapolis Public Library. He said that Peter had given him the letter and that he had read it in utter dismay.

My world fell apart right there. But it was true love. You know, real love. I thought.

He held the letter before my face and said, See what Satan wrote.

But I...

"You should know that you are bound for hell. Boys don’t write notes to boys like this one.

Leviticus tells us, in no uncertain terms, that when men lie together, they are sinful, that it is just wrong, unnatural.

I was in tears, with feelings of shock and betrayal. All was overwhelming. It was 1949, and I was 12, condemned to hell. 

And it might be true; after all, he was a minister.

I couldn’t speak as he handed back the letter.

Stay away from ‘Peter.’ He is a good Christian and wants no part of you.

He turned, but I could not stop crying.

My Aunt Miltie had been a member of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church up the street from the Baptist church, and I used to fetch pamphlets from St. Anne’s to take home to her. My mother, Esther Carlisle McCusker Kearse, and my other beloved Aunt, Margaret Cooper McCusker, were Baptists.

My legendary Uncle, Francis Stanley McCusker, served as organist and choirmaster of St. Anne’s for ten years and as adjunct organist at the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel, in which my christening took place. That was the convincer.

Uncle Stanley was a surrogate father and a tremendous musical influence on me. I was impressed that he had given a command performance for European royalty while serving in the US Army in World War I. He introduced me to Carnegie Hall and the old Lewisohn Stadium in Queens.

I played piano at parties for him in New York’s Greenwich Village and later in his plush apartment on Sutton Place after a second, wealthier marriage.

His first wife had died of alcoholism, but his second bride’s family had a portrait hanging in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

My mother, affectionately called Muffie or Muff by close friends, apparently hoped I had the musical gene in me and sent me off to piano lessons with a female organist at St. Anne’s.

I would go to classes weekly in the Parish House on Duke of Gloucester Street. The classes started well with the traditional Thompson studies but came to an abrupt halt after a few weeks. The fingering numbers provided by Thompson no longer matched the music notes.

Why can’t you play those notes! There was anger from Miss Hinman, my teacher, and many tears from me. I could not read music! Because she never taught me how to read notes and must have assumed I   got it by osmosis!

I begged my mother to let me stop those infernal lessons. Mama, I said tearfully, I just can’t do this!

Mother, who had been a singer, was wise. She said nothing and did nothing for an entire year. Then one day, she quietly informed me that an old friend, Selma Fox Nelson, had come back to Annapolis and was teaching piano.

So, Mrs. Nelson came to me at the piano in the parlor and reassuringly got me started on the piano again.

Let’s see where you are,  she said nicely. The first thing she did,  bless her, was teach me how to read music. I began to look forward to those piano lessons in her home on King George Street until she left town again.

She did not leave me empty-handed, however. Instead, she turned me over to a new piano teacher that was just moving to Annapolis, Pearl Tuttle