Man-ifesto.

Now that I have become a man, what is to become of me? I feel as though my boyhood is like an abandoned snake skin just, just behind me and I’ve been handed a new role to play. Now that I’m a man I must do manly things mustn’t I? I must be a brave, a big, strong protector. I must provide. Or can I just continue to cast my creative nets into the seemingly unyielding ocean that is this industry and hope to sustain myself ten, twenty or sixty years from now ? In other words: Is it time I got a ‘real’ job and stopped ‘mucking about.’
I started Speech and Drama as a child because my little (Little) brother had a lisp (now gone) and my mother asked if I wanted to join. I was the proverbial duck to water and when I turn around and wipe the Kryolan make-up out of my eyes I realise that despite the “sukkel” and the uncertainty, I have adored every projected utterance. I love to entertain. Strange that I have recently been feeling such pressure, having turned thirty, to suddenly produce the real estate with the white picket fence and the Toyota RAV in the garage. Do I really have to cash in my chips now? Have I been playing for long enough? God knows that I don’t want to but I feel bogged down by guilt and obligation. I’m not getting any younger and I don’t have any real assets to my name, whilst people I know and watched grow up are sitting pretty, high on top of gilded nest eggs. I’m also tired of being snubbed because my clothes are not new or expensive or feeling bad because some of the men I have dated can afford the finer things in life while I choke on my half of the dinner bill. Then there is also the ‘where to from here?’ As an actor or entertainer in South Africa, are the greatest aspirations and long term goals I can have, to be a feature on a soapy or the lead in consecutive musicals? There must be more to my life. There must be more for all of us. What though I don’t know. One thing this lifestyle does afford is time to think (when you’re in-between gigs) so I have been doing a lot of it because it passes the time and is free. There are a few corporate type jobs that may be on offer, if I play my cards right, but I can’t help wonder if it would just be giving up the ‘goose’. Or would a steady income and responsibilities provide me with a ‘golden goose’? I am sure though, that if my income continues to be so erratic then my ‘goose’ is ‘cooked’. I’m unsure about just about everything else.
Also, now that I am a man, I am finally getting attention from other men (I’ve always liked guys in their thirties who’ve only recently returned the favour) and though they now seem attracted and give me the eye brow shuffle, they seem to shy away or disappear once they realise how inconsistent my finances are. To be honest I don’t blame them. Dating any artist in a recession mean that you are either stupid, besotted or he looks like an Abercrombie model. Fun, but not necessarily a good idea. Since my last blog I have been reminded of two friends of mine who have been in a loving monogamous, that’s right, I repeat: MONOGOMOUS, gay relationship for eleven years. One is corporate and the other creative and so I am starting to believe that there are no hard and fast rules. Things are generally a less flattering shade of grey. There are people who need to constantly upgrade their lovers like cell phones, there are people that are committed. There are artists that make plenty money and there are loads of poor people doing kak jobs they hate. Some people can and some people can’t. Some people will and others won’t, but I just need to figure out which of those people I want to be (Even if it changes from time to time.)