30 DAYS OF NYMF: Day 6 Ari Gold's Bashert

Ari Gold's Bashert: An Autobiographical Homotheatrical Multi-media Musical

Book, Music, and Lyrics by Sir Ari Gold

This is a story about dreams and destiny.

My name is Ari Gold. I am Jewish. I am gay. I am a 4th generation lower east sider. And I am not the guy from Entourage. I call my style shtetle fabulous. My parents, Sid and Malkah Gold, who worked as educators in the public school system in the South Bronx, are two unorthodox orthodox Jews from New York with unfulfilled show-biz dreams. I like to call them Show-Jews!

My Dad is a big musical theater queen. He kept a copy of every Playbill from every Broadway musical he ever went to-whether it closed after three performances or was a big hit. He made scrapbooks of Esther Williams, Carmen Miranda and Ethyl Merman. My parents got together initially because of a script of Oliver my father had adapted for student productions. My Mother said she was determined to get her hands on this script!

Growing up gay, Jewish and in show-business was a triple gay whammy! From the moment I was born, I was poised to be a star. The invitation to my bris read like the opening of a Broadway show:

                                              METRO GOLD WINNING PRODUCTIONS
                                                                Proudly Presents…
                                                                 “Another Smash Hit”
                                                                 OUR THREE SONS
                                                             With the brilliant new star
                                                                        Ari Gold

Upon my own circumcision, my fate was cut and sealed.

And so my childhood began…unfolding like my Dad’s three favorite musicals: Dreamgirls, La Cage Au Follies, and Gypsy! Like Effie, Albin, and Louise, who I was on the outside wasn’t seen as commercial. Apparently my nose and my Jew-fro made me “too ethnic.” I was heard but not seen on over 400 commercial jingles. By
12 years old I had already been a Cabbage Patch Kid, sang back up for Diana Ross and played an 8-year-old Vietnamese orphan girl on Jem and the Holograms.

When I first started putting music out as an adult on my own label there was nobody in pop music who was out from the beginning of their career; nobody who would dare use a male pronoun in their song or sing about what’s its really like to be gay.

I became a gay pop star and my whole life became as gay as the fucking hills. I put the “dandy” back into Yankee Doodle. This is my story. It’s all bashert--as my Bubbe would say; all meant to be.