Wednesday, March 27

‘Shame, age discrimination and nudity: there is much to identify with’: actor David Pevsner in his memoirs | Stage


THere were things in the first draft of his memoirs, says David Pevsner, that his editor thought were “maybe TMI, maybe a bridge too far.” I can’t even begin to imagine what was deemed unacceptable, because there is TMI – sample line: “I’ve always been a copious ejaculator” – on almost every page of Damn shame, an entertaining, moving and absolutely dirty book. My God, the filth! “There it is,” he laughs.

Pevsner describes himself, with self-criticism, as “a minor player in the entertainment business”; he has had small roles in big TV dramas like Grey’s Anatomy and Modern Family, and bigger roles in small ones. He’s been on Broadway, touring and off-Broadway hits. He is not a well-known face, although if you are subscribed to his OnlyFans account, where he shares erotic photos and videos of himself, you will be very familiar with his body; Pevsner is, I think, the only person I have interviewed whose erection I have seen. Along the way, to supplement her theater salary, she has been an escort and a “naked maid,” something she had in common with sex work as well as vacuuming (not an euphemism). He appears, smiling and charming (and dressed), on Zoom from his home in Los Angeles.

Online porn has lost Pevsner to two acting agents, though it’s presumably pretty lucrative in and of itself. Now 62, she had been posing for nude photos since she was 30. In part, it was about exploring her own sexuality, she says. “I was curious to see how far I can go, how far I can explore what is really going on inside of me. I’d watch porn and say, ‘I wish I had the guts to do that.’

The first publicity photography for David Pevsner's agency dates from the early 1980s.
Smile and throw it away … David Pevsner’s first advertising photography in an agency from the early eighties.

His own explicit photos and videos are also partly political. At her age, it’s about broadening the idea of ​​older people and sex. “It’s important because we’re so used to the idea that you get to a certain age and say, ‘I’m done, no one is going to love me more.’ I don’t want people to feel like this. I want you to know that it is never too late. I am 62 years old, I am still desirable. I want people not to shut down, and there are a lot of shutdowns when it comes to age. “

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The main theme of Pevsner’s book is overcoming embarrassment and it’s fair enough to say that from his exploits he appears to have been highly successful. “One of the reasons why there are so many stories of [my childhood in the book] is that you get to know me, my insecurities, “he says. “When we get to the more explicit things, people may find some of them a little shocking, but they will understand why they are there.”

Pevsner grew up in a Jewish family in Skokie, a Chicago suburb, where his father was a jeweler. He was a clumsy and embarrassed boy and teenager, who hated his body and was confused by the development of his sexuality. “I couldn’t say, ‘I’m gay’ until college,” he says. He had girlfriends at school in an attempt to stop homophobic bullying, although it didn’t always work. “It was demoralizing.” He pauses: “There were nights when I would cry myself to sleep, thinking, ‘I’m abnormal.’ I wish I could go back and say, ‘You’re so normal. You’re normal but crazy, and crazy in a good way. ‘ I was a sweet, funny and smart kid. But I had this anguish running through me and I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. “

As a child, he discovered his parents’ recordings of Broadway musicals and loved to sing radio songs in the car. He put on little plays at school, although this often attracted more bullying, “so I stopped doing it.” He was going to go to college, Carnegie Mellon University, to do performing arts, where, he says, “I was finally among other weird artists like me. It was useful to find my tribe, because I was not confident and I was very ashamed. ”It was there that he came out.

After graduation, Pevsner moved to New York in 1982 and landed theater jobs fairly steadily, often working music tours and then returning to the city to find jobs as a waiter. He speaks fondly of the New York of the 80s; how exciting it was, but also terrifying. The AIDS epidemic hit the city hard. Pevsner would meet friends he hadn’t seen in a while and find they were sick. He appeared in a Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof and “we had a couple of losses there. We lost a lot, personally and professionally. “

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For Pevsner, who had recently started exploring her sexuality, the risk of contracting HIV “made me fear God about sex, and that shut me down a bit. But I also felt that we were all together. There was a brotherhood there. We could all hug each other and say, ‘We have to get over this.’ He was scrupulous about safer sex, “so I turned out okay, but damaged, as many of us did.”

The stigma around HIV and political inaction infuriated him, and still does, and his voice rose at the memories. “They couldn’t get funding from the start because Ronald Reagan and [then New York mayor] Ed Koch couldn’t even say “AIDS”. It was ‘someone else’s problem’. That created a lot of anger in us. “He writes that living through the crisis -” used as a way to embarrass gay men “- was probably one of the reasons he later embraced sex with such enthusiasm.

By the mid-1990s, Pevsner’s theatrical work was running out. It had been successful off-Broadway, but it wasn’t worth much. His agent had told him that he would never get “straight” roles. So he took a job as a “naked maid” cleaning houses while naked, a role that could take a sexual turn depending on who hired him. After that, escort work wasn’t a huge leap. It wasn’t just about money. Pevsner says his couple of years working as an escort is “the best job I’ve had outside of show business. I met many wonderful people who were happy to be there. I am a caregiver type; There were times when they would say, ‘My mom just died and I just needed to feel something. So I would go and talk. You know, it wasn’t just about connecting with each other. I just found out that it was something I dedicated myself to. “

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David Pevsner in the 1996 music magazine When Pigs Fly.
Centaur-fold… David Pevsner in the 1996 music magazine When Pigs Fly. Photography: Gerry Goodstein

Have you ever felt exploited? “Absolutely, when it was just: ‘Do your job and go.’ But I enjoyed that too, as long as I was the one in control. It just took a lot out of my libido, my sexual ability, my care. There was a lot of psychology involved in it, a lot of role-playing games. It was all the things he was good at! “There are some alarming scenes in his book (one involves toenails), but he insists the escort was not a bad experience:” I can’t say that’s the way it is for everyone. “Still, he stopped at 40 and started an orderly business.

In parallel, Pevsner wrote songs, putting music to his dirty poetry, for the magazine show Naked Boys Singing !, and performed two of his own solo shows. It has not, of course, been to everyone’s taste. Does criticism bother you? “I used to do it,” he says. He remembers sending a CD of his songs to a friend, a successful Broadway musical director, who was scathing. “He was like, ‘I hate this. Why do you think these dirty things are funny? I thought [my songs were] funny, smart and sexy. Some people are offended by it. Some people didn’t want to hear a song about anal warts, for example. “He smiles, mischievous. please everyone. You have to write with your heart, publish it. And someone will respond. “

It’s what you want to do with your book. “Much is a fish out of water story,” and many people can relate to that, he says. “The elements of shame, age discrimination, fear of sexuality and nudity, there is a lot to identify with.”

Does all of that – the dirty songs, the online porn, the dazzling memoirs – make you feel too exposed? “I guess so,” he says, after a pause. “But I’m stunned and excited that I had the guts to do it.”

Damn Shame: A Memoir of Desire, Defiance, and Show Tunes by David Pevsner is published by Penguin Random house.


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