Walking Through a Cloud of Meth in New Orleans

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 13 Part 2

After weeks of tech rehearsals, Annie finally had its first preview audience.

In the 2nd act, Warbucks brings Annie to Washington to meet President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR is meeting with his cabinet — including Harold Ickes played by me. The Cabinet is all doom and gloom until Annie starts singing a reprise of “Tomorrow.” Inspired by Annie, FDR commands me, Ickes, to start singing along. I start off begrudgingly, but then I’m caught up with the spirit of optimism. Ending downstage center at the song’s climax, I go full Al Jolson: down on one knee clutching my heart before throwing my arms out wide and hitting my final pose.

Applause.

While everyone else breaks their final pose, I keep holding mine.

Applause gives way to laughter.

I don’t move.

More laughter leads to a second round of applause.

Caught up in the thrill of the moment, I moved just enough to subtly hit my final pose again — which wasn’t part of the blocking.

Huge laughter! More applause!

As it ebbed, FDR said “Harold,” and I snapped out of it and back into the scene.

The remainder of the show, I was grinning like an idiot! For a brief moment I had a sold out house of over 2000 people in the palm of my hand. Talk about a thrill!

But I also knew that I had done something that wasn’t specifically blocked by Martin, so I was a little worried about how he would feel about it.

After the show, as we gathered for a 1st preview celebration, I saw Martin coming up behind me so I turned around and waited outside the door to the venue. As he walked up, I smiled a playful “hope you’re not mad” smile. He looked at me, chuckled to himself, punched me in the arm, and made his way inside.

He wasn’t mad! I was so relieved.

After our second preview, however, when I’d successfully done it again, he gave me the note to take the extra movement out.

“Oh, you don’t think it’s funny?” I asked.

“It’s funny, but it’s not this play.”

That’s an answer I totally respected, so I restrained myself.

Once the tour was finally open, the next year on the road looked golden.

It even seemed I was forming a group of life-long friendships like I had with Jason, Dexter, and Roger all those years earlier on The Scarlet Pimpernel.

There was my roommate, Rafael. An adorable Latino, about my height and a little soft around the middle. I never once heard a hateful word come out of his mouth, and he had to put up with my snoring which was no small thing.

There was Anika, a beautiful young woman of Indian descent, with dark features and long black hair. She’d been a dancer since she could crawl and moved with a natural, almost ethereal grace.

Logan was the token straight guy of our clique. Tall, blond, lean athletic body. He reminded me of Rob, the guy in high school who was cast over me as Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors.

Though I didn’t have a crush on Rob, I certainly had a crush on Logan.

He was handsome, charming, and funny in a very Chris Hemsworth kind of way.

He was also married, like me. In Boston, one of our first stops, his wife — who was cute as a goddamn button — came out to visit Logan. The group of us took our Monday off to play tourist and walk the Freedom Trail all the way to Bunker Hill, Logan’s wife and I chatting all the while about how hard it was being away from our spouse for such long stretches of time.

Separate and apart from this little group, I also grew to be close with our Warbucks, Gene. Bald pate and barrel chested, Gene had the skill to play a wealthy and powerful tycoon of industry eight shows a week. Off stage, he was a pansexual, cigar-smoking intellectual and philosopher who would have been just as comfortable hosting a late night burlesque cabaret as he was playing Daddy Warbucks.

He could be abrasive, crass, and had a sensibility and humor that would raise the hackles of anyone overly politically correct.

Gene was also carrying his share of damage and trauma. A much different journey than mine had left him no less scarred. Scars only other people who’ve been through trauma can see.

I had fun hanging out with Rafael, Anika, and Logan, but with Gene I could be my authentic damaged self.

Then there was Mark.

Mark was on the backstage crew, though to meet him you would think he was one of the actors. He’s simply too pretty to be hidden away backstage. Six foot, dark hair, trimmed beard, just old enough to be handsome, still young enough to be cute. In another reality, we probably would have enjoyed each other quite a bit during our down time.

But my husband Michael and I were monogamous; we hadn’t even come close to broaching the subject of an open relationship. So Mark and I just became good friends. Still, Mark was a gay man in his prime. He got so much ass in every city that I started living vicariously through him much as I did Danny all those years ago.

Mark and Gene were the good and bad angels on my shoulders as the tour went on. If I wasn’t drinking and debating with Gene, I was talking self care with Mark while also enjoying every detail of his hook ups.

As the tour led into its third or fourth month, cracks and flaws started to show.

Unless you’re Annie, Warbucks, Grace, or Miss Hannigan, Annie is an easy fucking show. The music wasn’t complicated, the blocking was simple, and there was very little dancing (if you weren’t an orphan). The audience may have been jumping to their feet every night, but no one in the ensemble was breaking a sweat.

It was an easy job, which was nice at first.

Yet, because the show was so easy, it offered no catharsis.

Most shows — like Crazy for You, Les Miserables, hell, even Cats — they take a tremendous amount of work to perform. Through that work, through singing, dancing, or even acting, we can release pressure and stress that builds up off stage.

A cast of big personalities, grueling tour schedule, the everyday stresses of tour life, all create increasing pressure. One of the great things about being an actor is that, usually, the stage offers at least some release. A 20 minute tap number or a choral line that ends on a high “A” — like a workout or maybe even scream therapy — offers a release valve.

But when the work onstage doesn’t offer that catharsis, then pressure continues to build offstage.

Add to this the fact that our cast was not hired with an eye toward cohesiveness.

I’d been spoiled by the projects I’d done since grad school. I worked in casts that had been assembled in part by how well we worked together, how well we related and collaborated. For Annie, we were hired because we fit Martin’s original vision he was trying to recreate.

It was very similar to when Beauty and the Beast was on Broadway. You could be a brilliant actor/singer/dancer who is loved and works well with everyone… but if you don’t fit the dancing sugar bowl costume, then you ain’t gonna be the sugar bowl.

Without an eye toward cohesiveness, the cast was made up of clashing personalities, like paisley and stripes, orange juice and toothpaste. Like people who love the stage versus people who are in love with themselves on the stage.

Our FDR decided he didn’t like his roommate and started going around and pulling the rest of the cast aside trying to convince them his roommate was a homophobe — which was absolutely not true — in order to get him fired.

Sean, a member of the ensemble, was the rudest mean-girl diva I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with. I had to go to stage management at one point to tell them I’d overheard Sean trashing my work as Harold Ickes in the Cabinet scene, a scene he was also in.

I overheard him trashing me because he was doing it,

On stage,

During the Cabinet scene,

While I was acting!

Harold Ickes and the Audacity of this Bitch.

Our little clique that had formed also seemed to lose its cohesion. We weren’t hanging out together as much, especially Anika and Logan. When we did hang out, occasionally Anika and Logan would bicker in a way that seemed odd to me, like, not the way friends bicker.

Gene, as Warbucks, was often doing promotional work for the show, and with Mark on the crew, we were often ships passing in the night.

By the holidays, it was clear the Fab Four from Pimpernel of Jason, Dexter, Roger and me wasn’t happening again. I was starting to feel lonely.

Back home, Michael was having a hard time as well.

We’d decided to buy a house in rural central New York, but ever since we closed in October of that year, Michael’s dream of owning a house before he was 40 progressively became a nightmare which he had to deal with all on his own since I was on the road.

Then in January, Michael’s father Tom passed away.

I called out of a weekend of shows to fly to Illinois to be with Michael for Tom’s funeral. It was difficult. Even though there wasn’t anything for me to do really aside from just being there for him, I felt incredibly useless. Michael’s entire family is built from stoic Midwestern stock. I never saw one of them cry until the burial service. They all were facing this universal lesson in mortality which was as yet foreign to me. Both my parents were still living. Hell, the only person I ever felt close to that had died had been my high school teacher Elmer. The dissonance between my illusion of immortality and the reality of the loss of Michael’s father had me feeling tremendously off kilter when I rejoined Annie in New Orleans.

The night I returned, at my request, the group took me out and got me trashed, which of course didn’t help.

The next morning, hungover, Mark and I strolled through the French Quarter.

It was the week before Mardi Gras. The throngs of revelers, dripping in cheap plastic beads and drowning in uber sweet and fruity hurricane drinks, hadn’t arrived yet. A mix of jazz and pop music flowed out the open doors and windows of the surrounding bars and restaurants, clashing in the mild yet humid air. There was an energy, the anticipation of a coming storm that would soon flood the streets.

We toured a few cemeteries, had a slice of King Cheesecake, and strolled along the river just below the triple-spired St. Louis Cathedral.

Every city we’d been to had its share of the unhoused. Those in New Orleans were distinct from other cities as nearly every one of them either had a dog, looked like they’d been ruffled up in a fight not five minutes earlier, or both.

Mark and I made a right turn away from the Mississippi River toward the garden square in front of the cathedral, passing a group of unhoused.

I passed through a cloud of something, like someone had just exhaled a cigarette or a hit from a joint.

“Oof, that smelled like meth,” I said to Mark.

I wasn’t alarmed. A surprising number of things smell like meth. Certain plastics. Engine exhaust. Some plant fertilizers.

As we walked into the square, I felt my chest tighten.

I couldn’t take in a full breath.

My adrenaline spiked.

My heart started racing.

“I can’t…I can’t…Mark.” I grabbed onto his arm.

My legs wanted to buckle.

I stumbled forward, catching myself on a rod iron fence.

“What’s wrong?” Mark was concerned but thankfully calm.

“I think …” My breaths came quick and shallow. “I think…that was meth.”

“Ok,” Mark placed a comforting hand on my back. “You’re ok. Just breathe. You’re ok.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, tears welling in my eyes.

“Nothing to be sorry about. Breathe.”

I hung onto that fence for what felt like an age until the panic subsided. I stood up, took a few slow, deep breaths, and let go of the fence.

“Ok, I think…I think I’m ok now.”

“You sure? You want to go back to the hotel?”

“No! No, let’s not cut our day short on my account.” I turned to Mark and pulled him into a strong hug. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, friend.”

Sometimes being a friend means just being there.

We released the hug, stood in silence for a moment before I asked, “You wanna get some beignets?”

“Yes!” Mark answered with the excitement of a former fat kid.

I was back in the show that night and we played out the week. The Mardi Gras crowds started to appear, but thankfully we were off to the next destination.

But the episode left me shaken.

I’ll never know if it really was a meth cloud I walked through or if something that smelled like meth caused me to have a panic attack. What I do know is that something inside me felt off. Like a glow stick had been snapped and broken open, leaking inside me. Instead of a luminous chemical reaction, it was the mixing of poisons, not enough to make me sick, but enough to leave me unsettled, unmoored.

I wasn’t in any danger of using again; that wasn’t a possibility.

But a shadow of my past had descended upon my present, like storm clouds after a hot sunny day, everything on the ground still brightly lit beneath a dark and threatening sky.

I really wanted to be done with Annie.

But there was still six months to go.

Next Chapter

Chapter Guide

A lot of heart, time, and work goes into each piece. One way you can support me is by signing up for a $5/month Medium Membership. Use this link and I’ll get a percentage of your subscription fee. Huzzah for supporting artists!