For their safety, I couldn’t take a pic with the kids, but here is some of their artwork

* Wow, what a day! I got up early this morning to have breakfast with a dear friend here in NYC (one of a small group of dear friends I have here), which was lovely. We chatted about theater and life and boys and everything. Then I walked around the city window shopping and just generally enjoying the New York vibe.

* The weather has been great this whole trip, but it was a touch muggy today, so I stopped back by the apartment to freshen up and had just put myself together when my phone rang. I ran downstairs and met Joe P.’s cab as it came down the street, hopped in and we were off to the Harvey Milk School. Joe had previously arranged for Malcolm to speak to the students, and he had generously made all the arrangements for me to visit and speak to the students as well. I was a little nervous, but for the second time in a week I entered a high school and had a great time.

* First we took a tour of the facility. The Harvey Milk school is a very small high school set up for LGBT teenagers who would otherwise have no other place to go. Lots of LGBT kids get so relentlessly beaten up, teased and pushed out that they have great trouble finishing or doing well in school. Harvey Milk High is a place where they can go and study and get a high school diploma without worrying about whether the football team was going to lynch them, or whether the other girls were going to hiss “dyke” as they walked by in the locker room.

* We set up a circle of chairs in the cafeteria and at 400pm they came in and we started chatting. I felt at ease pretty quickly and was soon joking around, giving everyone hugs and trying to be funny. The kids were great. They were from all over the world, from all walks of life, and they were all looking for a way to make life work for them. I hadn’t been around teenagers in a long time, especially not teenagers who had been through so much in life, so it was very inspiring and educational to me. At one point I just started crying when I thought about how tough school can be, and how tough it had been sometimes, and how wonderful it was that there was this place for them to be happy. One of the kids immediately pulled out some cool Anime-emblazoned tissues and staunched my tears, and I thought that was the nicest thing ever. They asked all kinds of questions about “Soldier’s Girl” and life in general, and I told them that my #1 advice was to make plans to take care of themselves in life. I elaborated by saying that this meant educating themselves so that no one could take advantage of them, getting post-secondary education of some kind to broaden their minds and enable the possibility of a good income, and respecting themselves enough to turn aside people and influences who had no interest in getting their lives together. I told them that if I could do it all over again, I would sell my teeth to get into a college right after high school, and I hoped that they would make plans to reach whatever their dreams were, and follow them.

* Just as I had finished trying to convince them that I was NOT a wealthy movie star, the car arrived that was taking me to my engagement at the Jacob Burns Film Center‚Äîit was a shiny black stretch limo. D’oh! But I had no option but to kiss Joe goodbye, hop in and pick up Doro on the way to Pleasantville, New York. Yes, “Pleasantville.” Isn’t that toooo cute!

* They were screening “Soldier’s Girl” there, and I hadn’t meant to watch it, but as usually happened I sat in on the beginning and had to stay until just before the end. Watching SG is probably one of the more psychically traumatic experiences I could put myself through, and yet I have seen the film more than any other movie ever in my life due to all the festivals and screenings.

* The audience was majorly moved, impressed and outraged by the story, and we did a Q&A afterward that went on for quite some time with wonderful, insightful questions. Everyone was so so so kind and supportive. I made some new friends and we left quite late in the evening for the hour long ride back.

* Now, I’ve never talked about this, but when I was 11 I saw this movie on television that I just remember as having been really cool. It tugged at my pre-teen heart strings and sparked my imagination and made me think about things like the nature of humanity and love, which was pretty cool for a movie I saw on television. It was called “The Electric Grandmother”, and it was an adapted Ray Bradbury story about some motherless children who accepted the care of an android grandmother robot with dubious apprehension until her kindness wins them over. The really touching part is the end, where they are all very old and as helpless as they were when children, and the ageless electric grandmother is still there exactly the same, taking care of them once again. Undying maternal love.

* Anyway, it was a cool kids movie and remained in the corners of my mind for years. Well, it turns out my friend Doro (producer of “Soldier’s Girl”) produced “The Electric Grandmother” all those years ago! And tonight, in Pleasantville, I met Noel Black, who directed it. It was quite surreal to meet the creators of a distant childhood memory like that. How strange, the way lives intersect.