I Was Better Last Night: A Memoir
by Harvey Fierstein
Knopf, 2022

There is reason for apprehension as you read the introduction to Harvey Fierstein’s new memoir. It starts with a bitter romantic breakup, rendered in dialogue and peppered with “Fuck you! You’re a fucking selfish prick!” etc. and words like miseries, hurt, misfortune, betrayal, bad shit.

And this:    

I’m sitting comfortably at this lovely computer in my homey home office and almost everything coming to mind is about what an asshole I was and am still capable of being. So many stupid mistakes. So much selfishness and thoughtlessness to bathe in. Sure, I recall the victories and joys and laughs and lovers, but for reasons beyond me, those happier remembrances are cloudy, dimmed, and distanced. . . The guns are loaded, the knives still cut, and the adage ‘Time heals everything’ makes a lovely lyric but it is a fucking lie. Time heals nothing.

Uh oh. You may well fear that what will follow will be gripes, whinges, finger-pointing, and monumental self-involvement. In short, a (ahem) drag.

Instead, however, I Was Better Last Night (a rejoinder Fierstein says he often uses to deflect a compliment after a performance) is full of joy, humor, and vivid details of a figure that, like Puccini’s Tosca, lived for art. (Cue “Vissi D’arte” here and imagine it sung in Fierstein’s bullfrog croak.) There is indeed anger, self-pity, and tears: a suicide attempt, a battle against alcoholism, unfaithful lovers, homophobia, and the ravages of AIDS. But buoyancy keeps bubbling amid the gloom, and we end up responding with admiration—if not for every artistic move he has made, then for the man himself.

I first saw Harvey Fierstein onstage in 1981, after climbing four flights of stairs in an office building near Lincoln Center. An abandoned room had become a makeshift theater with limited seating and a barebones set. My friends and I had been drawn there by word that the play we were about to see was extraordinary—a rumor sealed by a surprising rave review from The New York Times, not known for seeking out and reporting off-off-Broadway productions. Thus Torch Song Trilogy, written by and starring a performer known almost exclusively to fringe audiences, began its bumpy and unlikely trajectory to an extended Broadway run (1,222 performances), multiple Tony awards, a feature film, and a recent Broadway revival. It made history as the first Broadway play written by and starring an openly gay man.

And let’s stress that unlikely. Trilogy, perhaps best experienced in this its nascent state, was a four-hour-plus saga of Arnold Beckoff, a Jewish drag queen and torch singer by trade, first seen enjoying anal penetration in the back room of a bar while delivering a monologue. (You try it.) The saga that follows is a sharp-tongued, candid, touching and often hilarious portrait (mixing sardonic comedy and sentimentality is Fierstein’s long suit) of Arnold and those in his life—lovers, an overbearing mother and an adopted son. Fierstein played Arnold with dazzling panache—an indelible portrait that would accelerate his stature as both writer and performer. (My friends and I were also enamored of another performance: The actor who played Arnold’s son was irresistibly quirky, but, we decided, too offbeat to enjoy a successful career; his name was Matthew Broderick.)

Not surprisingly, Trilogy reflected Fierstein’s own life as a loyal Jewish son from a middle-class family and the ongoing difficulties of being artistic and gay in the 1950s. Throughout the book, his family dynamics compete with his professional life for the reader’s attention, and the former are rich enough for their own volume, highlighted by the truly harrowing account of how his parents discovered his sexuality, which Fierstein saves for late in the book.

Over the next four decades, he became ubiquitous in the pop culture landscape. Two Tonys for Torch Song were followed the next year by honors for writing the book for La Cage Aux Folles, a hugely successful musical that has had two major revivals. Broadway plays—Safe Sex and Casa Valentina, the latter concerning a Catskills resort where in mid-century, men with a predilection for cross-dressing could relax among the like-minded)—were honorable failures. More commercially successful were the books for musicals Kinky Boots and Newsies, both slick but formulaic. One outright disaster was Legs Diamond, based on the notorious gangster, written at the behest of the flamboyantly gay, largely forgotten pop singer Peter Allen. It holds pride of place as one of the greatest mistakes in theatrical history; Fierstein owns up to his share of the failure with a shrug and a chortle.

Truth be told, none of his plays or musicals matched the triumph of Torch Song, and even Fierstein admits that work, as evidenced by a recent Broadway revival, has lost its sting. He writes:

The actors were ... giving it their all, but they were performing it from a safe place. No one was going to break down the door and arrest them for crimes against nature.... The risk ... the in-your-face daring, was absent. No one on stage was going to lose their career for playing a homosexual.... The danger was gone.

But while his writing may have been lacking (Fierstein would disagree vehemently—he more often than not blames outside influences for a work’s failure to launch), his parallel career as an actor was often triumphant, highlighted by his dowdy housewife Edna Turnblad in the 2000 musical version of the John Waters film, Hairspray: a performance for the ages, and the occasion for his third Tony. He neglects to record his thoughts on losing the film to John Travolta, but let’s guess he didn’t send a valentine. (The book is stuffed with delicious quotable Fierstein jabs and jousts. His response to Madonna, when she asked if she could realistically portray a drag queen onscreen is nearly worth the price of admission.)

And when it was announced he would step into the role of Tevye in a Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof in 2004 well ... Harvey as Tevye? Surely a joke.  And yet he was brilliant, one of the most moving portrayals of that now-classic role (among many) I’ve seen.

Along the way, over the decades, the chubby kid from Bensonhurst, became a national celebrity. Memorable cameos in movies (Independence Day, Mrs. Doubtfire), TV appearances, voiceovers and especially talk show gigs created “Harvey”—hilarious, loquacious, with an instantly recognizable voice—Tallulah Bankhead ground through a cement mixer. Lovable, safe, the perfect gay pal. But the neediness and self-pity gave fodder to Saturday Night Live to create a Harvey parody embodied by Jon Lovitz: “I just want to be loved!” he cried. “Is that so wrooong?”

The caricature stung: Fierstein was often an irritant to those in the gay community who in the ‘80s didn’t favor the face of pride adorned with lipstick, mascara, and eyelashes.

But throughout his career Fierstein’s political bona fides were unassailable. From his early days as a young man embraced by the radical fringe theater movement in New York’s East Village—his first drag role was in an Andy Warhol play—to his more mainstream efforts, he was a fierce warrior for gay rights. The book is dedicated “to the radical fairies who flew before me.”

The AIDS crisis of the ‘80s ignited his passionate advocacy and inspired the memoir’s most powerful chapter, a stark, deeply melancholy rendering of the gay community’s anguish and confusion:

We promised one another “We’re going to be okay” while we screamed to the world, “Can’t you see we’re dying?” We stared at one another with suspicion. We studied one another for signs of disease. Makeup disguises just so many sores. Walking with a cane is stylish only if you don’t need one. Lust dressed in death’s mantle. We wanted and we feared. Some dove headfirst in the closet. Others were outed by the disease itself. The casual mention of a doctor’s appointment became an admission of guilt.

Convinced that he escaped HIV infection by deciding to forgo his frequent escapades in anonymous sex dens (out of sheer boredom), he fought like hell for the cause, making headlines when on a TV talk show he assailed Michael Reagan, son of the then-president, on the latter’s disgraceful record on AIDS: “Fuck you and fuck your father!” Fierstein screamed. He lost his steady gig on the show.

Knopf has given the book a handsome home, with a Chip Kidd-designed cover and a stark, imperious portrait by Guzman that could well serve as a study for a perch on a gay Mt. Rushmore. A wealth of photographs augment Fierstein’s career as a keen-eyed and compassionate witness to five decades of social and theatrical upheaval. We might regret that the cutting edge of his early work slowly dulled to a butter knife—and a man donning a dress just to entertain seems increasingly discomfiting in an age of increasing gender awareness. But Fierstein chose the path of pleasing a wide audience—and in so doing extended his message of diversity and empathy.

He just wanted to be loved. Is that so wrong?

Michael Adams is a writer and editor living in New York City. He holds a PhD from Northwestern University in Performance Studies.