ON THE HOME GOING OF AGOSTO MACHADO

A little more than a week ago, I learned that Agosto Machado had suddenly died, on March 21, 2026. He always kept his age a private matter, although based on the eras he floated through and spoke of, he was definitely somewhere in his eighties, but even so I felt completely surprised. His dying felt more like a magic trick he’d done with black velvet stage curtains, and now he would be standing just behind them, invisible.

Agosto Machado in 2014 Photo by Romy Ashby

 

As an actor Agosto personified a glamorous golden age of Off-Off Broadway, but he was also a great audience, an appreciator, an admirer, a muse, and a champion. He was a true artist in every way, a historian, an archivist, and a loyal caregiver. In his every day he possessed a warmth and sweetness not easily matched. He looked after and outlived by many years a great crowd of friends who died young in the AIDS time, and in later years, right up until the end, he spent part of every day on the telephone, making calls to check on various friends and keep them company. I can only imagine how much those people will miss him.

Years ago, New York’s great wizard Ira Cohen told me that I should record every phone call we shared because of all the wonderful things he would no doubt say, none of which should be allowed to evaporate into the ether. After Ira was gone I wished I’d done that more than I did, but his suggestion stayed with me. So while I was away from the city a few years ago, thanks to Ira I thought to turn on my recorder while chatting with Agosto Machado on the phone one day. And when my shock at his sudden passing had subsided a little, I went looking for that recorded phone chat and listened to it. Like all of his phone calls, it was full of details and excitement. At one point in our talking we ended up out at Coney Island, and this is some of what he said about the thrill rides:

 

I might have been thirteen or so, but I’ve always been a scaredy cat! You get off the Cyclone and feel just, Thank God I’m alive! Even the Wonderwheel, some of the cars move and shift—oh, no, no no! When it shifted I prayed to God, I’ll be good, I’ll do everything, but please, get me off this thing! I don’t like the merry-go-round either. The merry-go-round in Central Park, I thought, I think this is moving too fast! I saw when I was young Strangers on a Train, the Alfred Hitchcock movie, and there’s that mad scene where the merry-go-round goes berserk and people are flying off, and I always was a tad paranoid with those kinds of rides. I can watch, haha, but no thank you, you go on and enjoy it!

And oh, yes, the Parachute. I did that! Unfortunately I wet my pants. I think I was ten, and I didn’t want to do it but they said—the church group—all the kids were doing it, and it was your turn—I didn’t want to, but it was your turn—and going up, I thought, Oh, no. Because when you go up, you’ve gotta come down. And I said, Oh, dear God, please. Please, no. And there’s a pause up there because they have to wait for all the parachutes to go up, and they go up slowly together. Oh, dear God, no. And then there’s this Whooooosh! And people loved it! They said, “Oh, you’re floating! This is a way to be like a bird!” Well, I don’t think so! No more rides for me! And now they have modern rides that are even crazier! There’s one I think is called the Boomerang. You get in this sling and they pull you back—you’re fastened in—and they pull this sling back and then you’re shot off in space. No, no, no! Yet people pay to do that. And my feeling is that accidents can happen. They do that ride all day long and that sling thing, maybe it got tired or something, and they’re off in space on the other side of the park.

And the roller coaster! If you’re tense you could hurt something in your spine. There’s that thing, when you’re at the top of the crest, you raise your hands—oh, no, no, no! I crouched! Saying, Oh, please, if I get off this I’ll blah blah blah, but the thing is, you hear all the creaking of the wood! I mean, it’s a wood structure, and that vibration, you think it’s loosening the nails! And you think it’s going to fall apart!

Agosto talked a lot about life and about death. He wasn’t afraid of either, but he would often say how glad he was to be alive and count his many blessings. Years ago he told me about a job he had as a young man, delivering telegrams. Often they’d be delivered to an old tenement walkup where nobody had a phone. He’d hand over the telegram and try to hurry down all the stairs before he heard the crying, because usually a telegram was bad news. He always felt terribly sorry for their recipients. 

I remember the moment I decided to ask him if he’d let me interview him for Housedeer. It was in the lobby of a little theater somewhere downtown, which one it was skips me, but it was crowded and I heard him say to someone, “Well—the first time I ever went down to the Village…” and that was all it took. I knew that wherever that sentence was going to end up would not be a disappointment. He was an exceptional and generous storyteller.

On Christmas Day last we agreed that we’d meet for a walk when the warm weather came. Now it’s getting warmer outside, soon the trees will be in bloom, and I know that I’m not alone in feeling a great emptiness here on earth without him. It is no exaggeration to say that Agosto Machado was one of the few truly angelic people I’ve known, and an inspiration for how to live life beautifully no matter what. His tiny apartment was a reliquary of shrines to some of his closest friends, works of art now in museums themselves. His creations were beautifully described by Hilton Als in the New Yorker, in the issue published just days after he died. I have no doubt that Heaven is where Agosto woke up, just as he believed he would, and that all his friends who had gone ahead were indeed there to meet his train.

 

Copyright Romy Ashby 2026