Splitting Hair: Revisiting Rock 39 Years Later
The year was 1971 and Hair was touring the USA, four years after it burst onto the Broadway stage with its message of love, peace and harmony. My older sister Lanie lived in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and while I was allowed by our parents to visit the big city, the play was off limits due to its legendary nude scenes and celebration of drug use. Forget that you walked past more than 20 stripper bars and countless junkies to reach my sister’s apartment on Toulouse Street. I was allowed to visit my sister in the big city, but the play was too risque for this 17 year old.
Lanie, on the other hand was 21 and living the single girl’s dream in a fabulous apartment with a balcony that stared directly into the courtyard of Tennessee Williams’ historic home. She had it all. If Mary Tyler Moore’s legendary TV character Mary Richards could make gumbo, that would be my sister.
She’d gone several times to see Hair. During her first time on stage, when the audience is invited up to sing along/sway along to “Let the Sunshine In,“ she met the lead character, Berger. He basically picked her up during the fifteenth repeat of the verse. Having just performed for two hours, Berger didn’t need a brilliant pick up line. Nope. He pretty much gets the girl he chooses—and he chose Lanie. They um...dated...for a few nights in a row and he would leave tickets for her and her friends for VIP house seats.
Not knowing this little romance borne of rock music was in full swing, I arrive to visit on a Friday night, and stop at her office to get the keys. She tells me that “some of the cast of Hair are staying with me.” It seems they were kicked out of their hotel for smoking marijuana, which legitimately got them into character but out of the hotel. AND, IF I TELL OUR PARENTS SHE’LL KILL ME.
By southern standards, our parents were extremely progressive and open minded, but “dating” before marriage, letting men live in your apartment, and drug use would pretty much freak them out. So I’m thinking (but wouldn’t verbalize for two decades) LET’S THROW IN THE FACT THAT I’M A BUDDING HOMOSEXUAL AND YOUR ESCAPADES WILL SHRINK BEFORE THEIR VERY EYES. Her little trysts would pale to this pansy in a heartbeat.
But I stay in the closet and share the bathroom with the cast of a show I’m forbidden to see. I keep her secrets and certainly don’t share mine. We are a southern family, living across the street from Tennessee Williams, after all.
Fast forward 39 years, and Lanie and I are headed to New York to celebrate her 60th birthday. Since her Hair raising days, she married a very bright funny fellow, and raised three wonderful boys. Today, she is the proud grandmother of two adorable girls.
Along the way, she was there for me when I came out—asking only two things: “Why didn’t you trust us before now?” and “Why did you go through this alone?” When I could finally let the sun shine into my own life, she was my biggest ally. Now in her sixth decade, Lanie still looks fabulous and has always been sidesplittingly coffee-out-the-nose funny...and a weekend in Manhattan with her gay theater-queen brother is all she wanted to celebrate the birthday.
She flies into LaGuardia, and I train up from D.C. The Mundts Take Manhattan.
Obviously, Hair has grown more important in social commentary and in our brother-sister bonding in these four decades. Faced with several theater choices, we agreed upon its revival as the number one choice. A guy I dated ten years ago taught me the trick of getting “house seats” by going to the box office the day of performance to see if the cast’s allotment of the best seats had been released back. If so, you sit center orchestra in the first three rows, normally reserved for family and friends. Of course, you run the risk of not getting in at all, but if you do this at 1 p.m. you have plenty of time to find another show. And bingo, Jupiter aligned with Mars, and we’ll see Berger and Hair from the second row.
So instead of having the inside track of dating the leading man, my sister and I laugh about the fact that life takes care of itself: you get older, but a smart gay brother can still get you a good seat.
It was a stunning performance and given our seats up front, the gay superhero, Gavin Creel, literally sat on my head during the audience participation segment. (I haven’t washed my hair since.) The finale approaches and the set crew comes to take down the guard rails along the stairways so the audience can flow onto the stage for the sunshine number. I take Lanie’s hand, thinking this is the memory of memories, and she says she doesn’t want to go. We continue to sway and sing, but by now most of the audience is up there on stage and she still shakes her head no. When the show finally ends she says we need to wait before we exit.
So standing there in an empty theater, she informs me of her wardrobe malfunction among her foundation garments. It seems her panty hose met her new Spanx halfway, and somehow both had crept down to her knees. That’s no way for Grandma to meet the cast.
We laugh like hyenas when we’re together, and cry like babies when we say goodbye. It’s been 39 years since her Hair raising capers, we’ve let a lot of sunshine into each other’s lives. Here’s to 39 more. Just keep your panties on, sister.
Brent Mundt resides in Washington, DC but lives in Rehoboth Beach.