After Meth and ‘Annie,’ I Ran From NYC and My Broadway Dreams
Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 14 Part 1
To my loyal readers, I’m so sorry it’s been so long between publishings. After nearly 20 years, I’m finally writing a final chapter to Slammed: a Memoir.
It’s fucking hard! Not only because I’m so much closer to the events in this chapter, but how does one end a story of their life when they’re, well, very much still living?
Still, an end there must be, and it’s on the horizon.
Thank you all for coming on this journey with me. Only a little ways to go.
By September of 2015, I’d been clean from meth for nearly 10 years. I knew of several other recovering meth addicts who moved away from New York City in order to have a successful recovery.
I couldn’t blame them. NYC is triggering in myriad ways. Still, I quietly prided myself on being able to stick it out, on being “strong” enough to stay so I could continue pursuing my dreams and stay true to my purpose.
After a year on the road with the national tour of Annie, I couldn’t get away from NYC fast enough.
The previous fall, Michael and I bought a house for a song in the rural village of Sharon Springs in central New York. When I proposed we let go of the apartment and move up to the house full time, you could have knocked him over with a feather.
Michael never loved New York City. But he loved me, so he put up with it while I went to grad school and continued pursuing my acting career. After seven years, it was time for him to have a turn. It was time to prioritize his dreams, and the house was his dream.
At least that’s what I said out loud.
But, honestly, I wasn’t doing it for him.
I was doing it for me.
When I arrived home after Annie, just like after any other unpleasant contract, I expected to feel released and relieved. I imagined, when I flopped down onto my bed, I’d have a good cry and begin healing.
But when I flopped, I didn’t feel relieved.
I didn’t feel released.
I didn’t cry.
I wanted to. I was fit to burst with the torrent of emotions sloshing around inside of me. But just like trying to pee in a crowded public restroom, regardless of how painfully full my bladder was, I could not will my body to release.
NYC was crowded with too many people, too many memories, too many disappointments.
In the countryside of Schoharie County, there were no memories, no disappointments, and far fewer people by several million. As I packed up the apartment, I hoped that in Sharon Springs I might find release. A short month after returning from Annie, it was moving day.
I took one last look at my apartment on Nagle Avenue, empty for the first time since 1999.
For 16 years it had been my home. I’d lived with 14 different roommates, two of them boyfriends, one of them now my husband.
Memories spanning half my life filled this pre-war two-bedroom:
Danny and me watching Absolutely Fabulous nearly every night.
Watching the news coverage of the unthinkable Columbine Highschool Massacre.
Hearing the voice of President George W. Bush the day the towers fell, emanating through every window of every car and every apartment in my stunningly silent Dominican neighborhood.
The end of my relationship with Henry and coming home from 42nd Street after he moved out.
The first time I slammed myself.
Telling Reid I’m HIV positive.
The morning I woke up and decided to go back to college.
Planning our wedding.
Coming home after our wedding.
Leaving to go on tour with Annie.
Coming home more broken than when I had left.
I closed and locked the door to 5A for the last time.
As we hopped in our U-Haul van and drove north out of the city, I knew deep down what I was doing. I was absolutely aware that I was making it near impossible to pursue my career. But I didn’t care. I needed to get out, to get away, I was ready, willing, and desperate to take that risk. Out loud, I may have said “Sure, it’s a bit of a commute, but Sharon Springs isn’t that far away. It’s totally doable.”
But Sharon Springs was, in fact, that far away.
After living in New York City for 16 years, everything about rural central New York was a glorious and welcome change of pace. Every time we crested a hill we were greeted with rolling farmlands, thick forests, and the shy peaks of the northern Catskill Mountains. Every season save winter the roads were speckled with color: spring wildflowers of pinks, blues, and purples; orange and deep reds of summer ditch lilies; and the bright yellow of goldenrods in the fall.
And the scents! Of clean rain, freshly turned dirt, and moist green growth. The brightness of freshly cut grass, the earthiness of fall leaves. Even the smell of the newly fertilized wheat field across the street from our house, both acrid and sweet, was invigorating.
Every weekend, we’d drive down to the village — often passing an Amish carriage — to visit one of the queer-owned businesses, of which Sharon Springs had more than its fair share, for a dinner, a pint, and friendly conversation with new friends.
Everything about Sharon Springs seemed like a healing balm, a mild opiate. The silence of the country was like nothing I’d known my entire life. Once my NYC ears stopped ringing, that silence wrapped around me like a warm, numbing blanket. One I hated to discard more and more with every trip back down to the city.
It took a 45-minute drive to Albany and either a two hour train or three hour bus to land me back in the never ending din of traffic, the overcrowded sidewalks, and always delayed subways.
I’d crash on someone’s couch only to wake up and, after whatever audition or project had pulled me back to the 8th ring of Hell, make the entire journey again in reverse.
And couch surfing when nearing 40 gets a “do not recommend” from me.
I knew this much travel was unsustainable. Regardless, I did try to keep pursuing my career.
Shortly after I returned from Annie, I played Freddy Trumper, the American in a small production of Chess. I also played the role of a grief-stricken father in a staged reading of a new show called Nobody’s Child.
These two shows should have made up for the lack of catharsis in Annie in spades! They were both passionate, angry, tenor roles pushing my instrument to the limit of what it could do.
But my reservoir was to the brim and a couple of shows, no matter how meaty the parts, weren’t enough. It was like trying to bail out a sinking boat with a paper cup.
On top of that, auditioning was so much harder. It was like trying to date after an abusive relationship.
I wasn’t in a place to market myself and put good work into the room.
I was desperate.
Desperate for them to like me.
Desperate for them to tell me I was good enough.
Desperate for them to tell me I wasn’t worthless.
And that wasn’t their job.
Confidence is attractive. Desperation just ain’t cute.
One casting director gave me feedback in the room. “Your work seems very… regional.”
Regional as opposed to Broadway. Regional as in overacted, as in over performed. Regional as in not believable.
All the things I had worked so hard to get away from in grad school.
It was valuable feedback. I simply needed to relax, reconnect, and trust that I was enough.
But I was feeling so amateur, so untalented, so worthless, all I heard was “Why are you even here?”
The day I finally stopped kidding myself came in the Albany Amtrak parking lot. I was headed down to New York for an audition the next day.
I’d just locked my car when my phone rang.
“Hey John.” It was my agent. “How was the audition?”
“What?” I froze. “What…what audition? I know I have one tomorrow at 1 pm.”
“Oh. No…that appointment was today at 1 pm.”
My stomach sank. A honk from a car snapped me back to reality and I hopped out of the street and onto the sidewalk.
“Well…shit. I’m so sorry. I’m still in Albany. I thought…I thought it was tomorrow…shit.”
Thankfully, I had one of the most positive and supportive agents you could ever dream of. He didn’t get mad or rake me over the coals. He just chalked it up to a simple mistake.
I however couldn’t chalk it up a simple anything. There was absolutely no reason for me to have made such a stupid mistake. It wasn’t like I had half a dozen auditions over a couple days to keep track of.
I had one audition.
One fucking audition that entire week.
Hell it might have been my second audition that entire month.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t being honest with myself. I wasn’t being serious about my theater career. Sharon Springs was anything but commutable.
So, I gave up.
At first, it felt like a weight had been lifted. I felt free. I allowed myself to feel something like contentment. I became really invested in lawn care. I created a little garden of flowers and assorted herbs (the creeping thyme was my favorite). I made a little fire pit in the backyard where I could have little bonfires to my firebug heart’s content.
But I wasn’t ok.
Our new cars came with free XM radio. We’d be driving along — perhaps to Albany to see a movie or something — and Michael would channel surf landing on the Broadway station. He would listen and lightly sing along while I’d feel a pit in my stomach pulling at me so hard I thought it might turn me inside out. Every showtune reminded me I was a failure. I was a quitter. I had given up on my dreams. With every “I Dreamed a Dream” or “Defying Gravity,” the belters of Broadway were telling me I had no worth, no purpose, no reason to exist.
For months I’d get up, maybe drive 20 minutes to the nearest grocery store or laundromat. I’d come back and maybe mow the lawn. Micheal was working north of Boston at the time — one of the downsides of living in the rural countryside is the lack of employment opportunities — so 5 days out of the week my evenings were as empty as my days. I’d pick up my game controller and get lost in my video games. Destiny was my game of choice, a multiplayer game where — best part — I didn’t have to talk to the people I was playing with in order to play. I’d crack open an Ommegang IPA, or two, or more and play till my eyes got tired and then I’d go to bed.
The next morning I would get up to do nothing all over again, not living, barely existing.
By the spring of 2016, I had no direction, no aspirations, no dreams.
No real purpose
My unemployment had run out, and I was living completely off of Michael. I’d just finished my first shift as a busboy at a bistro in the village — even in my depression I knew I had to start pulling my weight — when I received a call from my mother.
“John, it’s your dad.”
“How bad is it?”
After a long pause, she said, “You’d better come home.”
Some have purpose thrust upon them.
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