(Fate And Gus, Playing In The Yard)

I am a Lip Smacker, you heard it first from me.

And I am not ashamed. It’s not surprising, with all of the words that come out of my mouth, that it should dry up from time to time.

It began, I think, when I started putting my acting class monologue up on the blog, and asking people for advice. You know how I feel about advice, but this was advice I wanted, and it was advice that was pretty good. Most people thought I sucked reading T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a post-Victorian classic monologue. It was very nearly unanimous.

By and large, they were right.

It was not really my thing, my new monologue is The Story Of Red and Red and I are performing it on March lst at the Old Castle Theater in Bennington, Vt., along with the other members of our acting class.

But a strange thing happened when I asked for advice.

I was shamed about my lip smacking.

On the first day I posted my monologue, I got one message immediately, it was from a film producer in New York. “You smack your lips when you read,” he said. “This is annoying,  you need to work on that.” And then, soon after, an actor in California (his father sent him my blog request for advice). He was even more direct.

“I heard lip smacking at regular intervals as you read the monologue. You can’t be an actor and smack your lips.” This was something of a shock to me, although it turns out that every time I read the monologue, I got messages complaining about my lip smacking, or pointing it out helpfully. I was startled, I didn’t know I smacked my lips.

I do know I have a tendency to dry mouth, especially since my open heart surgery. I take  diuretics, to help pass sugar out of my body and keep fluids from building around my heart. Diuretics, some of you many know, drain the body of excess fluids through  urination. I try to be open, but talking about medicine sounds like old talk to me, so I don’t do it much.

The medicine causes dry mouth, I drink lots of liquids to stay hydrated but when I talk for a while – I am often known to talk for a while – my mouth goes dry, and I smack my lips. There, I thought I ought to own up to this, it is apparently quite obvious by now.

Neither Maria nor my acting teacher Christine Decker, noticed my lip smacking or said anything about it. Maria said she had never noticed it, I’m sure Christine noticed it but didn’t say anything. She probably knew there was nothing much I could or would do about it.

As it happens, lip smacking is a recognized disorder, it’s called tardive dyskinesia, and there is medicine you can take to moisten the mouth, although “patients should not perform activities requiring mental alertness…” while taking it. I think I’ll pass.

Many people who read the blog already suspect me of low mental alertness. Many of my teachers noticed it.

Every time I put up a monologue, I got lip-smacking alerts. And then, when I put up some audio at the bottom of my blog, I got more.

Merriam-Webster says lip-smacking is the “causing of lips to smack in eager anticipation or in delight.” If you take diuretics, you probably don’t have dyskinesia – caused by the use of neuroleptics or antipsychotic. Since diuretics dry out the mouth,  that is almost certainly what I have. The doctors call it “dry mouth,” the actors call it lip smacking.

I think I’m kissing my acting career goodbye.

The messages kept coming.

Unless you’re asking for advice about a monologue, lip-smacking doesn’t matter much of you’re a writer.  The great advantage of being a writer is that you can grow the head of a Golden Retriever and if you can come up with a decent bio photo, it doesn’t matter.

But you cannot be an actor and lip smack.

Maria is strange – she actually thinks I’m good-looking and claims that she has never even noticed the lip-smacking. Love conquers all.

Maria is a good partner for me. If I crush a spider, she will threaten to toss me out of the house, but if I smack my lips – which I apparently do all the time – she doesn’t even notice.

Once I became aware of my lip-smacking, I had to decide what to do about it. I don’t believe in having secrets and I preach authenticity on my blog. To be silent would be an act of great hypocrisy. I decided to face it squarely and come out.

I am a lip smacker proud and strong.

I appreciated the good and honest advice about my monologue reading, it helped me abandon T.S. Eliot for the very true and amazing story of Red, translated into monologue form. It also helped me to come out as a lip smacker and come to terms with who I really am.

Everybody liked it, I am grateful to Red once again.

in honor of my lip-smacking, I will read – for the last time – a few verses from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

I remembered having a cranky history professor in high school who smacked his lips, his name was Mr. Schine. We did not get along.

He told me once I was the most frustrating and willful student he had encountered in 25 years of teaching, he told my mother he would rather walk on hot coals that have me in his history class again. He smacked his lips with great flair as if he were tasting a delicious piece of pie.

We often imitated him when he wasn’t around, we smacked lips all over the school yard.

At the end of the semester, when we parted ways, he called me aside, and said, “Mr. Katz, you never paid much attention to me, but I know you will amount to something. I don’t know how smart you are, but you definitely have a mind of your own.”

Mr. Schine, you inspired me in a number of ways, and I thank you for trying.  The wheel always comes around, yes?

I am sorry for the grief I caused you. This audio of my lip-smacking is in your honor. And for those of you who missed my lip smacking, here’s another chance.

Audio: Lip Smacking With T.S. Eliot