Exploiting Myself (unsuccessfully)

Every singer is self-conscious of their voice, but for a closeted tenor who grew up listening to female artists, I was particularly inhibited. There was no way I could hit those notes - or admit that I was trying - so I just sounded awful.

‘You suck!’ My older sister heckled me from the hallway outside my bedroom, the same one whose CDs were shaping my musical taste. Her boyfriend assured me I didn’t, but what teen trusts kindness more than cruelty?

A single voice lesson would’ve informed me that I was trying to sing out of my range, but singing is vulnerable, and vulnerability is for girls, and I had already been mocked for being soft, so I had to figure this out alone.

I was 15, but had started writing songs two years prior, when I was struck by an overwhelming realization that I was meant to ‘do something great with my life’. Was it youthful ambition or my impending mania? I knew better than to share my plans.

Because in the eyes of my peers, I was the ‘gay’ gymnast, secretly overcompensating to gain my father’s approval. A futile task, as even a state champion will never equate to a high school quarterback. But I was an artist at heart. I wanted to dance, but that was too ‘gay’ before I knew I was or what that even meant; it was just how the other boys mocked me when I wouldn’t play their violent games. So I did gymnastics and muzzled myself by playing classical piano instead of singing in public.

When I turned down an athletic scholarship to attend art school in NYC, it was a pivot that left me with no fans. Or confidence. I fleshed out my dramatic songs in private, nitpicked and ‘perfected’ them for music production class, but never performed them outside of pressing ‘play’ on a computer to a small group of professors and students.

The live music scene intimidated me; the real musicians of New York were raw, provocative, and didn’t care if they were off beat or out of tune. They boldly showcased their imperfections as art itself on street corners and make-shift stages all over downtown. These performers would see right through my carefully constructed persona and discard it thoughtlessly, when I was at my most fragile and couldn’t let that happen again, less than a year after coming out and then being hospitalized for bipolar disorder, when I wasn’t ready to reconfigure my identity any further, or risk more rejection.

So I focused on my creations and schoolwork, waiting until my recordings were so unimpeachably perfect that I could finally share this part of myself with a world that would be forced to recognize my value.

I would be too good to fail.

If I ever left my 80 square foot East Village studio for something besides class, it was to explore the gay scene, where I was readily embraced due to my daily diminishing but still prominently fit gymnast body. Here, all I had to do was physically exist, and I could wear my artist role as a quirky persona and not a duty to live up to. Offers for photo shoots with local photographers led to features in the now-defunct weekly gay rags like Next or HX. I may have been busty and shirtless, but I was listed as ‘singer/songwriter Brett Gleason’, so I considered it a successful promotion for the songs I would eventually release.

The ‘Gay Life Expo’ booked me to perform to an audience browsing the latest offerings of rainbow capitalism at the Jacob Javits Center in midtown Manhattan. It may have been my first performance, but I knew that playing my dark, industrial pop (think NIN meets Tori Amos?) between drag queens and musical theater troops was a tough sell, so I wore my tightest white tee and rehearsed in an endless loop in front of the mirror.

Gay Life Expo: Taken on a flip phone in 2008 or 2009

But I had to sing to a backing track, which meant I couldn’t hide behind my keyboard, so my discomfort was fully exposed during the 30-second instrumental section I failed to cut, now endless on stage. I paused painfully at the microphone stand, knowing a more seasoned performer would have something planned here, like a sexy dance or charming banter. But I just stood there trying to deflect the impatience of the sober, mid-afternoon audience.

When I could wait no longer, I stepped to the side and chucked a perfect standing back flip. A thunderous boom echoed through the convention center when I landed just in time to step back up to the mic stand for the final chorus, but it was just my feet pounding the make-shift stage. A stunned audience looked on in silence, waiting to see ‘Why?’ but all I did was finish and walk away.

I knew I had to put myself out there more when I was doing more harm than good with my relentless tweaking and had to finally release when my collection of songs so I created a ‘listening party’ that a connected friend of a friend offered to host at one of his monthly ‘soirees’: He filled his Union Square apartment with some of the wealthiest, most ambitious gays who unfortunately were more interested in the latest offshore scam or upcoming socially liberal, fiscally conservative candidate than hearing a self-produced electro rock EP from a scruffy 25 year old that likely won’t sleep with them.

But it was a start.

The pale, cardigan host put his arm around my shoulder, raised his wineglass, and introduced me as a ‘hot new singer’ before plugging in my iPod to play the first 30 seconds of my music and then lowering it and to remind us to ‘tip our sexy bartender’, waving at the shirtless, smooth bodied actor already getting shamelessly flirted with at his corner station. It was a struggle to hear the music over the party, but judging from facial expressions, for the best.

Photo by Thomas Evans

But that didn’t stop me from stealing the guest emails to start my mailing list, which got me into email marketing when the paltry open rate confirmed these gays were not my audience, so I expanded to Craigslist. Before people were getting murdered there, more than the acceptable amount, they had a Personals Section where you could post your desires with photos and receive responses from fellow lonely hearts.

I did this a few times in NYC first before branching out. I’d say something like :

‘Hey, I’m in town to play a show and looking to hang…

(insert sexy pics plus link to my website)

A polite decline to meet would go to men who genuinely wrote back; most were crudely illiterate, but a few were so heartfelt, I was tempted to connect, yet couldn’t ruin the ruse. These guys would then be added to my mailing list with corresponding geo-tags and the hope that they would become fans and, on my first tour, remember me fondly to come out and see me play, as I looked out on a crowd of lonely but admiring men, not imagining that I would someday be one of those myself…

Eventually, I got booked for my first proper set at an indie rock bar on the Lower East Side and hired a drummer to accompany me. We had 6 weeks to prepare and promote the show. Rehearsing with a pro musician was thrilling after playing alone so long, but I had no idea how to get anyone to buy tickets and show up on a Tuesday night.

So, I combed through my almost 4,000 Facebook ‘friends’ and messaged anyone in or near town a personal invite. Most ignored, many unfriended, but a few messaged back. Some were old friends, but lots were new ones who had randomly ‘friend requested’ me after seeing photos and imagined that I was the brazen, sexual creature these photographers depicted, not the emotionally chaotic young man from the songs they had never heard.

Once I confirmed my target had purchased a ticket, I moved on, but a dour-looking middle-aged man, Liam, with whom I had no ‘mutual connections’, messaged me at the end of each day. In his mind, every shirtless photo I posted was sexted directly to him, and every email blast was a love letter not repeated to anyone else.

How are you?…

If I didn’t respond immediately, I received a monologue:

Work is killing me. I am a ghost going through the motions.

They talk about me, but I keep my head down.

At lunch, I look at your pictures. Counting the days until we are together!

I responded to him as I responded to everyone; just enough to be polite, but my bottom line was: Sell Tickets, bodies in the club.

It wasn’t just that I had to pay my Grammy-nominated drummer, but that I had been fantasizing about my first show forever, and when I looked up between songs, there was a sea of fans. After suppressing this dream for over a decade, it had grown in proportion; there was a lot at stake.

When showtime came, the room was packed with just about every person I knew from the last decade: co-workers, friends, former classmates, family members, and some random online gays, all now slumming it at a Lower East Side indie rock bar.

I took a Xanax to steady my hands and approached the keyboard.

The focused attention during the opening number was followed by enthusiastic applause, quickly filling in with drink orders and conversations. I responded by raising the volume & drama of my performance to recapture their attention. The less they listened, the more pleading my presentation.

Except for Liam, up front. I recognized him more from the intensity of his focus than his grainy profile pic. A strong widow’s peak bisected his forehead above a stern unibrow. He was listening but unmoved by the music, never taking his eyes from mine, unafraid to maintain contact.

He was the first to congratulate me when the set ended, speaking uncomfortably close as I unplugged my keyboard. I gave him a thank you and a quick, sweaty hug before he was pushed out of the way by drunks who knew me better but paid less attention. With my steady stream of cortisol pleasantly transmuting into something bordering on satisfaction, more than enough money to pay my drummer and treat myself to a cab home, I dragged my full-sized keyboard up to the ground-floor bar.

The process of moving upstairs had filtered out most people and left only the drinkers at a table to my left and Liam at the bar alone, peeking intermittently over his shoulder as I sat with the three people who knew how hard I worked for this, my best friend, and two roommates. I knew Liam was just a few feet away, and I imagined he wanted to come and sit with us, but I was also thinking: Just what do I owe this strange man now? Have my responsibilities not been met?

Eventually, I relaxed enough to walk past him, share a joint with my friends out on Eldridge St., and then a victorious ride over the Manhattan Bridge back to Brooklyn. There is something distinctly different about seeing downtown glimmer from the backseat of a cab you hailed vs the Q train. Paid for with cash from a packed show you just played of your original music. Though delayed and painfully difficult, I was on my way.

Scrolling Facebook before work the next morning, commenting on pics from the show and thanking people for coming, a cryptic post popped up from Liam:

NEVER open your heart again

NEVER put yourself out there and expect something in return

If you go out of your way for someone, they WILL leave you there alone

NEVER AGAIN

Guilt tore through my stomach as the image of him sitting solo at the bar flashed through my mind. Was I now excluding someone from the ‘in crowd’ after always being the one left out? I examined the expectations of buying an $8 ticket and going out for a 45-minute set. Did I promise him companionship? Understanding? Sex?!

My images and intimate messaging may have implied all of this, and I did nothing to correct him when he assumed as much. I tried to minimize these feelings by reminding myself that no one else responded like this, but it didn’t help. I sent a follow-up message thanking him for coming. It went unanswered.

For the official release show, I was invited to play a larger stage on Delancey St. and hired a bassist and a synth player to flesh out the band. Between paying them and renting rehearsal space, I was now matching half of my rent to put on this performance. I looped back to all those messages, texts, and emails with renewed urgency but diminished returns.

A reality was setting in that I might not be able to repeat the initial success of my debut show. That support and goodwill are like a bank account you make deposits into before you can withdraw, and all I’d done was take.

Approaching the official release of the record, I had no idea how I would recreate that energy for the next show, which had to be even bigger. So in addition to my social media spamming, I began to digitally stalk the thriving underworld of the 2010 indie music blogosphere. I found the email of every English-speaking music writer to send a clunky message weighed down by MP3s, photos, a homemade press release, and a music video depicting a mini horror movie in which I murder and bury myself, only for my naked corpse to resurrect and chase me through a New England forest in the dead of night. If I could find an address, they got a CD. I plastered stickers all over downtown until I received an email from the lawyer at Webster Hall warning me to stop defacing their venue. I became so good at running social media ads that it eventually became my career. In short, I tried everything to get the attention of the small minority of the public open to new music and live shows, except actually showing up for the community I wanted to be a part of.

Not that I didn’t have some successes:

A publicist who saw me at the Gay Life Expo submitted my music video to MTV’s gay channel where I got on their music video countdown show, hovering in the Top 3 for several weeks, receiving thousands of views, a wild range of comments, legitimate fans in disparate parts of the country and new connections on social media. Random requests for soiled underwear and trimmed pubes came in from men in isolated locales with names like ‘Bill’ & ‘Paul’. I kindly redirected them to the pre-order page.

When I released my 5-song EP ‘The Dissonance,’ it received more downloads and press hits than one would expect from a self-released debut. Some were scathing, mocking me personally, my over-the-top video, and my gothic art. Still, a random writer in New Zealand did say I was ‘an artist ahead of his time’ and a prominent gay culture site posted my beefiest pic, leading to comments like, ‘unlistenable but I heard he’s an aggressive top!’

The release show was part of a showcase at a trendy bar serving high-end cocktails under sparse lighting. Our set time kept getting pushed back to the point where, when looking out at the audience, I didn’t know if they came to see us or the previous band, but it was clear when we blasted into our dissonant opening, “Futile & Fooled”, and the more finely dressed patrons grabbed their handbags and fruity drinks to hasten towards the rooftop bar until it was a more intimately spaced-out, patchwork of misfit gays that this was far from the ‘sea of fans’ at my first show.

But still, far from nothing.

Yet all I saw from stage was the negative space I had failed to fill.

I kept an eye on the door as we played, willing more people to arrive, simultaneously policing the current attendees for their level of interest. At no point did I attempt to perform with the proper presentation and passion that the good people who did come out deserved. No. Instead, each time someone went to get a drink, I stumbled over myself to see if they would return, personally offended each time they pulled out their phones, too embarrassed to talk about the project I had prepared all of this for, and we were there to celebrate.

This space was more of a basement club than a dedicated music venue, and our sound felt dull, like we were playing underwater. The vibe was off, and I kept going faster and faster, chasing myself to my own bitter end. On track to finish our 45-minute set in 30, I was further spurred on by the tall, svelte Carson, who ran a popular queer site I had invited many times. I desperately wanted him to cover the show, but was now mortified that he showed up to witness my public failure. When he stepped outside, I was convinced I had lost him, but I could still make him out through the sliding glass door, smoking on the patio and laughing at me with his plus one.

During the last song, I watched to see if he would go upstairs to leave or rejoin when he put his cigarette out, peeked his head in through the door, and cupped his hands to his mouth to yell, ‘Take your shirt off!’

I raced through the final chorus as he sauntered across the floor chatting with his friend, and then I ripped my t-shirt up over my head and threw it at them. A few cheers were audible as well as a laugh or two as Carson perked up and ran center stage to lift the camera from his neck and snap a few pics. I grabbed the mic from the stand to get out from behind my keyboard and give him the full frontal, but he was already checking the photos in the camera’s viewfinder.

With evident satisfaction, he gave me a nod and then a thumbs up over his shoulder, as he left before the song was over.