Paul Stroili used to have a secret. But after years of denial, of struggling to even come up with a name for his "affliction," he's now ready to confront the hecklers head on. You see, Stroili is a self-professed, out-of-the-closet Renaissance geek. And there's thousands more just waiting to be outed. After a successful limited space run last year, Straight Up with a Twist, Stroili's engagingly self-flagellating one-man show directed by Bill Penton, will return for a special engagement at the Tamarind Theatre in Hollywood, Sept. 14 through Oct. 29.

"There's been no answer to this whole Tim Allen/Man Show/X Show thing," claims Stroili. "And while those men definitely do exist, there's a whole lot of Renaissance geeks out there. It's just not very popular to admit to being one."

So named for the epochal notion of a man of varied interests and abilities, the show humorously examines what it means to be a male of multiple talents in today's multi-culti, gender-conscious society-especially when some of those talents are deemed not particularly masculine. "That was sort of the idea behind Straight Up with a Twist, [that it was] a byproduct of the botched attempt to romanticize the male in the late '70s and early '80s," says Stroili. "There's a lot of us who listened to the women's movement - 'No, we want you to be more sensitive, we want you to understand our needs, we want to talk about things" - and we went and learned all of that. And women said, "Umm, you know what, we don't really like that in men." So Straight Up with a Twist was about learning all of this stuff... realizing we were still just as much of an outcast as ever." Or, to boil it down even further, "in our society, it's men who know all the wrong things," are preoccupied with details, interests and avocations that are traditionally feminine, Stroili explains, going on to cite by example men who know how to match a mean outfit or are truly bothered by the ends of pillowcases being turned in.

Where did this Geek get his start, one might wonder? Well, in keeping with the spirit and name of his show, Stroili has worked in a variety of interesting fields and venues, with television appearances on Seinfeld, Brother's Keeper, Getting Personal and The Untouchables. There was also a stint in one of the most difficult positions in all of show business, a post where once you've seen a good one, you appreciate just how much work and talent goes into their job-show warm-up. "I did, I think, two and a half years with Jenny [Jones], about 400 tapings," says Stroili. "It's a brutal thing, but the thing that anyone should remember if they have to do it is that they're not there to see you. I'd like to say it was a lot more interesting than it was, but it's basically themed instructions. It's different from doing warm-up for a sitcom or something where the entertainment is the show. When the entertainment is the audience and the audience reaction to it, it's really just sort of like building up a performer.

"But it was really fun, 15 minutes, twice a day, six days a week, just going out there and building them up to fever pitch," he continues. "And I'll tell you one thing, it prepared me more than 100 percent for any theatrical endeavor." Those theatrical endeavors, prior to Straight Up, included various staged literary parodies (Cheese Louise and The Day the Arts Stood Still) with Chicago's Illegitimate Players and a year as Vinnie Black in the original Chicago production of Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding.

Such diversity and experience no doubt planted the seeds for Straight Up, in which Stroili peoples his show with seven different characters, switching genders, ages and accents with the regularity and ease of changing socks.

"There's the dream when you do something like this. You know what you want it to be as successful as-you want it to be a John Leguizamo or a Spalding Gray [show] or something like that. [And I suppose there's] a debt to Leguizamo - Eric Bogosian too - in that you find out what a Renaissance geek is by watching [the character"s] entire family not understand him. The original draft of this what just sort of me standing up there talking about what a Renaissance geek was. Then I thought, you know, it"s a lot funnier if rather than Paul talking about it, we have his mom, his dad, his brother, his sister, his shrink, a college professor, all these other people in his life not understand him, [all these people who] want to label him gay because it would just make things easier."

Well, since they certainly can't do that (Stroili's happily involved in a long-term relationship, proving that there may indeed be a silent majority of women out there who enjoy sensitive neatniks), how has his family reacted to seeing themselves skewered on stage not once but twice? "They've been incredibly supportive. They came out opening night and of course my mom sat center row about three feet from me. And so I'm performing her, about three feet away from her, for the first time, and just watching her just cry in hysterics. It's a very heightened version of my family, little things taken and amplified, [but] they've still been great."

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