"All good art is an indiscretion."
oddly, i found three different death dates for williams from five different sources. i'm sure this is something that would have amused him. i mean, they know when pliny the elder died; it seems like they'd have a handle on someone from the 20th century.
be that as it may, i've mentioned before how i took williams lightly back in high school, especially when i compared him w/o'neill. seeing his plays actually performed by professionals opened up a whole other side to his writing for me & convinced me of his true genius. i believe now he had a much better sense of the stage than o'neill did.
i met williams in key west. i was there w/frank & di in our new college days. there was a huge gay bar down on front st. it had several levels & the top one was an open air bar built around a huge kapok tree. there was a swiss family robinson aspect to it but for mature audiences. williams was very drunk but very gentlemanly. he said nothing memorable & paid more attention to di(faghag that she was/is)which should have offended me but didn't. the whole encounter amounted to us being able to say we bought tennessee williams a drink, tho i suppose it exposed the origins of one of his great lines about strangers.
he didn't buy any of us a drink.
"Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory."
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