The First Night I Used Meth

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 1 Part 2

New York City, April, 2003

In two days I was heading down to Hilton Head, South Carolina, to do 42nd Street. After three national bus-and-truck tours over the previous two years — traveling every day to a different venue every night — I was looking forward to performing in one theater, sleeping in one bed, and riding no buses for a couple solid months.

I had invited several people over that evening hoping to have a decent size get together before I left. But try to get anyone to travel above 96th street in Manhattan and you would think you were asking them to journey into the lands of Mordor. “But feel free to visit the Shire (Astoria) anytime.”

So it ended up being just Jason, Dexter — both friends from my last tour, The Scarlet Pimpernel — and Dexter’s fiancée, Laura.

Henry, my partner of five years, was also there, though while the rest of us chatted it up in the living room, he had retired early to our bedroom to play his half-elf druid on Everquest, a kind of Dungeon and Dragons video game. Any other night and I would have been at my computer in the living room playing my human wizard. Many an evening we would be at our separate computers in separate rooms joining our “clan” to hunt digital monsters for digital loot. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say we often communicated more through the game than we did with actual words.

Henry, barely in his 30’s, was a big guy like Jason, only where Jason wore his weight with the confidence of a successful character actor who sees his size as an asset, Henry bore his weight as a burden that only weighed him down. His hair was jet black and receded into a sharp widow’s peak. His face was round and wide with features that suggested northern or eastern European ancestry, like he was built for harsher, colder climates.

We started dating in Montana during the year between high school and my moving to NYC. He was a bit of an Eeyore, but he was also a trusted and caring friend, confidante, and counselor to many queer people of all ages trying to navigate their queerness in the social wilderness of Montana.

After a few months of long-distancing, he moved to NYC and in with me. Ironically or prophetically, the day he arrived, having literally not even put his bags down, I got the call with my very first professional job offer.

“Welcome home, Henry, I gotta go do dinner theater in Ohio for three months. Bye.”

For every month I was home I was gone for a month doing shows with friends like Jason and Dexter, leaving him alone in a city he honestly didn’t care for.

By this evening we were not in a good place. We were stagnant and silently unhappy, having not been intimate in months. We had become two broken records. He would come home from his computer programming job, never wanting to go anywhere or do anything.

“I’ve been working all day. Can I please just relax?” Then he’d proceed to, after sitting and working at his computer all day, sit and play at his computer all night.

My record was stuck on having to constantly justify why I wasn’t trying to get a regular job during the months I was home. “Why would I go to the trouble of getting a job only to quit a month or two later?”

I would go on auditions, but otherwise, I would stay home and play my video games. Henry made more than enough to cover the rent and bills. To me, things were working fine the way they were without me having to put in the extra effort.

Hindsight? She’s a bitch. But this is who I was. I knew how to be a working actor, but I didn’t know how to be in a relationship, or, honestly, how to be an adult.

Although we often tried to “talk” about our issues, we never really listened to each other.

We also never fought. We never argued. We never yelled. Ultimatums were never given. For as unhappy as we both were, neither of us had the balls to call it quits.

God, how I wish we had.

“When do you get back?” Dexter asked, putting on his coat. April just did not want to warm up and admit it was Spring.

“Mid June,” I replied, downing the last of my fourth or fifth Captain and Coke.

Hearing the rustling coats and the beginning of goodbyes, Henry emerged from our bedroom to throw them a “Goodnight.”

They tossed their own pleasant goodnights over their shoulders as I followed them down the hall to the front door. Hugs were given all around. Henry was grinning, happy everyone was leaving. I was sad, wondering if I should pour myself another drink before jumping on my computer to play my wizard.

As Dexter and Laura walked out the front door, Jason gave me a big bear hug. “Safe trip, bud. Give me a call when you get back.”

“Will do, fucker,” I said, giving him a couple of friendly hard pats on the back.

As they disappeared down the stairwell, another voice trumpeted up from the floors below. “Sweetie!”

It was Danny.

“Darling!” Yes! My night wasn’t over.

Danny was our roommate.

He was a blond-haired, blue-eyed, brazen hussy dripping with sex. His early 20’s body was sensual, his cherub face adorable, his club-kid energy entrancing. He was always bursting at the seams with creative ideas and plans and themes, like having a photo shoot of self-portraits dressed as both angel and devil, designing drag queen outfits representing each color of the Pride flag, or filming a fake public access style talk show he called 4 U 2 C co-hosted by yours truly.

His fabulousness spilled onto the very walls of his room.

Our two-bedroom apartment was classic pre-war New York City. The walls were covered in “landlord white,” countless layers like rings on a tree, spanning back decades, leaving once sharp wooden door-frame corners rounded and bulbous, covered with the scattered acne of nail holes that once hung pictures.

Walking through this muted, aging environment into Danny’s room was like walking out of Dorothy’s house into a world of Technicolor. From floor to ceiling, every inch of Danny’s walls were covered in a massive gay collage: pictures and clippings, sexy and fabulous, raunchy and artistic, funny and thought provoking. My favorite piece — nuzzled between a big haired, waist cinched, face beat drag queen and a cigar smoking, nipples pierced, hairy, leather bound muscle bear — was a simple quote in a thought bubble,

“You need to realize you’re never going to be a butch hairy top.”

I was enamored with Danny. He was like hypnotic club music pulsing with a lust for the most fabulous life. Many a night he and I would watch Absolutely Fabulous, “sweetie darling” each other in horrible British accents, drinking our 32-ounce Budweisers but never finishing them before the bottom third was stale. He was the Patsy to my Edina. I saw in Danny an abundance of life, a want, a need to live it. I adored his grand, over the top, artistic ideas that never came to fruition, his stories of his sexcapades, his deliciously fragile way of living: only and ever in the moment, not caring for tomorrow till it came.

If you were to ask Danny, I doubt he would describe this period at all in the same way. Regardless, as far as he— and every other main player in this story — is concerned, it was how I perceived it that mattered. Danny gave me a colorful distraction, an enjoyable way to forget how unhappy I was.

He bounded up the stairs. “Oh no, did we miss it?”

“Not at all, darling, now that you’re here,” full, horrible, posh British accent, “and you brought friends!” Two guys had followed Danny up the stairs.

“Yes, sweetie, I hope that’s alright. This is Jerry. And this is Ben.”

“Pleased to meet you Ben, Jerry,” deciding to pass on the ice cream pun. “Please come in.”

Jerry looked to be in his early 30’s, dirty blond hair and goatee with a dark grey cabby hat, a brown leather jacket, and a black backpack slung over one shoulder. Ben was early 20’s, skinny, with black hair, olive skin, and a clean-shaven boyish face. He wore a faded blue t-shirt under a light black jacket. Ben seemed awkward, shy, almost tense, with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

The look on Henry’s face said everything about how he felt seeing Jerry and Ben come down the hall. “Guys, I’m heading to bed so…”

“We’ll go into my room,” Danny said, ushering his guests along.

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep it down,” I tried to assure Henry, none too successfully as he rolled his eyes and shut our bedroom door.

I shut Danny’s door gently behind me. “So,” trying to be as sotto voce as the spiced rum would allow, “can I get anyone a drink? We have rum, vodka, though we’re running low on mixers…”

Jerry had unzipped his bag and pulled out a bong with a long green neck.

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Well, it’s been a while, but I wouldn’t say no to a toke, though I wish I bought more munchies.”

“It’s not pot,” Jerry said. “It’s Tina.”

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