Touring with ‘Annie,’ a Monster Cast Member Triggered Meth Memories

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 13 Part 3

About four months into the national tour of Annie, I was spending some time alone in the hotel room Rafael and I shared. He walked in looking visibly annoyed.

“Hey, wasn’t expecting you back so soon,” I greeted him.

Good thing I was only reading.

“Yeah, we were talking about maybe trying to see a movie, but Logan and Anika started making out again. It was awkward, so I just left.”

“Wait … making out?”

He froze for a moment before his entire demeanor dropped. “Fuck.”

“Again?” I asked.

He whispered something in Spanish under his breath before turning around and saying, “Yeah. They didn’t… they didn’t want you to know.”

This was a lot of information coming to me at once. Logan and Anika were sleeping together? Logan was cheating on his wife. I really didn’t know how to feel about any of it.

“So… again?’” I repeated. “How long have they been…” I let the end of the question hang in the air.

“A while. Close to the start of tour.”

“Boston?”

“Before Boston.”

I thought back to our day off in Boston. Logan’s wife, Meagan, came out to visit, and Logan had asked us to be super nice to her cause she was having a tough time being separated from her husband. She was such a lovely woman, I would have enjoyed hanging out with her even without his request. We had a lovely day walking the Freedom Trail all the way to Bunker Hill.

All of us, I realized, except Anika.

So what the hell was I, I thought. A fucking smoke screen with plausible deniability?

I honestly didn’t know how to feel about this information. I mean, he wasn’t cheating on me. But he was cheating. And I kinda felt used, like my ignorance was used to convince Meagan everything was all right and there was nothing to worry about.

I really liked Meagan. I friended her on social media where we shared a language of funny memes.

But I also still really liked Logan. Even with this new information, I was still crushing on him and wanted him to like me. And I was still holding out hope that these friendships would be long lasting and meaningful like they had been with Jason, Roger and Dexter on The Scarlet Pimpernel.

I can’t say I approved of Logan and Anika’s choices. Still I leaned into what I saw as my responsibility in being a friend: How can I help? How can I support? How can I fix?

I collected my thoughts in a notebook, writing down all the points I wanted to make, then asked Logan if he would mind having a talk in private. I sat down with him in his hotel room, my notebook sitting in my lap. He looked like he was bracing for a dressing down from nanny, which made sense since I was a decade older than him and the only other married cast member.

I was honest with him about how I felt used as a way to fool Meagan into believing everything was fine when it wasn’t.

“But I don’t know your life. I don’t know your marriage. Honestly, It’s none of my business. And, trust, I am the last person who is going to throw stones. What I do know is that I consider you a friend. I consider Anika a friend. So what I want to be is your friend and support you in whatever way you need.”

He looked pleasantly surprised and touched. We hugged it out and left it at that.

It’s hard to know what enabling feels like when you want so badly to be a good friend.

Now that I was in on the worst kept secret on tour, I began to see just how much of a showmance had developed between Logan and Anika. They were twitterpated, constantly fawning and flirting with each other. Honestly, I don’t think their behavior changed so much. I had been too dense to see it and was therefore the last to know.

It wasn’t long until, unsurprisingly, Logan’s marriage was heading for divorce. This fact was confirmed when I heard him on the phone with his wife. I heard him because he was yelling so loud I could hear him through the wall of our adjoining hotel rooms.

“No….no. No. No, this is not my fault. This is your fault!…No! Yes it is. You pushed me to this, Meagan!”

I remembered how, over 10 years earlier when that first hit of meth brought a disastrous end to my relationship with Henry, I refused to take all the responsibility. That our relationship ended — not because of what I had done, I protested — but what we “both” had done. I refused to be the bad guy.

Now, through the wall, I heard Logan refusing to be the bad guy.

I didn’t know their life or their marriage. Still, I couldn’t help but say aloud (but not loud enough for it to be heard through the wall), “Dude, you’re the one who cheated.”

With a little over two months left, in June of 2015, we played San Francisco.

While the show played at a theater downtown in the Tenderloin District, our hotel was in Oakland, which meant a commute. The Moms — each orphan had a parent accompanying them on tour — banded together and demanded to be put up in a hotel closer to the theater. Management tried to dissuade them, but they were insistent. So they booked the Moms and the Orphans, along with Gene, our Daddy Warbucks, at a hotel about a block away from the theater.

Turns out management had a good reason not to book a hotel in the Tenderloin. It’s a rough part of San Francisco. Gene watched a guy, high on something, treat a parking meter like a speed bag, destroying his hands in the process. On the very same day, just down the street from the hotel, Gene realized a sleeping homeless guy was actually dead. He called 911 and stayed to divert orphans and Moms till first responders could handle the situation.

The other adults in the cast, hearing about the Tenderloin’s reputation, went with the hotel in Oakland. Rafael, Logan, Anika, Mark, and I decided to pool our money and get an Airbnb.

We’d made these plans months earlier when we were still pretty tight, but by the time we arrived in San Francisco in June, everyone was burnt out on everyone else. Anika and Logan only had eyes — and often tongues — for each other, often when the rest of us were in the same room trying to have a conversation.

So, that was annoying

Rafael was starting to work on directing projects he had lined up after tour, which kept him pretty busy in his off time. Something I was quite jealous of if I’m being honest.

Mark was beyond over the job. The tech side of the show had just as many clashing personalities and unnecessary drama as the cast side. I would try to interact with him backstage, but often he would be shut down in a “close your eyes and think of England” kind of way, focused entirely on just doing his job and getting out of the theater and away from people as quickly as possible.

So when we arrived at our Airbnb — a beautiful townhouse in the Haight-Ashbury district — it was with much less enthusiasm than when we had booked.

Anika and Logan took one bedroom, Mark took the other, Rafael took the couch in the downstairs TV room, and I took the couch in the front living room by the entry hall.

A couple days into the San Francisco run, Anika and Logan had gone out with others in the cast. Mark and I had passed. We planned to play tourist the next day and explore the city, so we called it an early night.

About two in the morning, I was woken from a deep sleep on the living room couch when Logan and Anika came barreling through the front door.

“Leave me alone. Leave me alone! I’m gonna miss my flight.” I don’t recall the reason, perhaps for an audition or to visit family, Anika had called out of the next couple days and was catching a red eye early that morning.

I sounded like she’d been crying.

“Keep your voice down,” Logan scream-whispered, failing to keep his own voice down. They’d both been drinking. The argument continued as he followed her down the hall and into the bedroom. I couldn’t make out much. Logan sounded angry and dismissive while Anika sounded desperate and panicked.

After a couple minutes, the bedroom door flew open and they came barreling back down the hall.

“No, I can’t. Stop! I’m going to miss my flight!”

“You can’t leave yet.”

“Let go of me. You’re hurting me!”

I couldn’t see them but imagined he had a grip on her arm which he must have let go because the next thing I heard was Anika falling to the floor.

Something of hers broke opened, spilling its contents onto the floor. She continued to cry as she searched for her things in the dark.

“You are so stupid.” His voice had turned cruel, dismissive. “You are so fucking stupid.” It was as if the woman whimpering on the floor beneath him were utterly worthless.

I felt my stomach drop.

“Why are you doing this?” She was pleading. My heart broke. “Why are you saying that?”

In a blink, Logan turned vicious. He growled, “Why are you being such a stupid bitch?”

Another glow stick snapped inside of me, poisonous chemicals mixing. My body was remembering things I really wanted to forget.

I should have intervened.

But I didn’t.

I had to get as far away from what was happening as possible.

I got up and made my way back to Mark’s bedroom.

“Hey, you awake?” I asked.

“How could I not be?”

“Mind if I sleep here tonight?”

“Sure.”

I crawled under the blanket and lay next to Mark. We both lay there, eyes wide open, listening. The argument escalated, then calmed, then escalated again. I was bracing for the sound of a struggle or something breaking.

They took the argument out to the front porch, but we could still hear them.

“What if it gets violent?” Mark asked.

Before I could answer, the arguing stopped. The front door slammed. Logan stomped down the hall and into his bedroom, slamming the door.

Just when we thought it was over, “Mom?…Yeah, sorry I’m calling so late.” He was on the phone and now he was crying. “Yes…Yes, ma’am, I’ve been drinking. It just…It’s been really hard, Mom.” He choked on a couple sobs. “I really miss Meagan.”

For fucks sake!

This sonofabitch was honestly calling his mother to say how much he missed his wife after fighting and verbally abusing his mistress.

“Sorry, friend, I’m heading back out to the couch,” I told Mark.

“Don’t blame you.”

I lay back down on the couch, but didn’t sleep much.

Anika’s cries and pleas rang in my ears. Guilt started seeping through my thoughts, sticking to everything like tree sap. I second guessed myself. I should have done something. I should have stepped in. I should have helped her.

Anger, too, began to burn inside me, like a fire deep in a coal mine, slowly consuming my thoughts, making its way toward the surface.

Logan, who I had found so charming, so funny, so attractive, this man who I had so badly wanted to be my friend, who I had wanted to support while he went through a difficult time — like my friends had supported me — had shown his true colors.

Logan was mean.

Logan was cruel.

Logan was abusive.

Logan was a monster.

And we still had two months left.

I lie awake wondering,

How am I going to walk onstage and work,

With a monster.

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