Forever the Fat Kid: How I Survived Dysfunction, Depression and Life in the Theater (21 page)

WAR

Always on the lookout for a good read to fill my time, I picked up a book titled Anywhere, Anywhere by Tim Barrus.
This book told the story of two gay Viet Nam veterans trying to cope with life after the war. I was strongly attracted to the book for many reasons. Obviously, there was the gay factor, but I found the whole Viet Nam setting intriguing as well. The war in Viet Nam was an event that I had been intimately exposed to in my life. Growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I knew many young men who had fought, and died, in the most controversial war of our time. It was the first time in our country’s history when patriotism over an international conflict did not prevail. And while it’s happened since, Viet Nam was the first time that people, en masse, said that a war was wrong, and that they didn’t want any part of it. As I read the final chapter, I knew that I had found my next theater project. I went to work on a stage adaptation immediately.

They say that the cosmic consciousness is always at work, which is as good an explanation as any for why similar topics in specific areas of artistic expression come up simultaneously. In 1991, as I was finishing my stage adaptation of Anywhere, Anywhere, the big news on Broadway was the anticipated arrival of the musical Miss Saigon, also set during the Viet Nam war. Already a hit in London, Miss Saigon opened on Broadway in April of 1991. I was there opening night thanks to my friend, Leonard Joseph, who was cast in the show. Little did I know how intricately intertwined my life and Miss Saigon were to become.

BARRY

While working on Anywhere, Anywhere, I met, and began dating, a member of the original Broadway cast of Miss Saigon. As a result, I became a fixture at many of the show’s cast parties and functions, forming friendships with many of the actors in the show. One cast member that I became quite close to was Barry Bernal, who played the role of Thuy. I remembered Barry from having seen him in the Broadway cast of Starlight Express, but we had never met. Because of the solid friendship between him and my then boyfriend, I found myself spending a lot of time with Barry.

Barry had a zest for life that was infectious. You couldn’t help but have a good time whenever you were in his company. We became friends, and our friendship continued and grew even after the relationship that I was in came to a halt. There was much to love about Barry, but what attracted me to him most was his ability to make me laugh. I found him to be one of the funniest people that I’ve ever met. We shared a very similar sarcastic and caustic sense of humor. He also had a low level of self-censorship in both thought and deed. If it came into his mind, it came out of his mouth. He was that person that you dare not dare, because there wasn’t much that he was embarrassed to do–especially for a laugh. And the more outrageous, the better. For better or for worse, time spent with Barry was guaranteed to be somehow memorable. On the flip side of all this was a person who, once he trusted you, was a devoted friend. When Barry and I crossed the threshold from acquaintances to friends, he shared more with me than laughs and good times; he allowed me to share his pain as well.

THE EAST VILLAGE

During the run of Miss Saigon, I moved to New York’s East Village and became incredibly busy again. I directed a production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown (featuring a pre-Daily Show, Mo Rocca as Linus) and staged a couple of shows for Six Flags Great Adventure Theme Park in Jackson, NJ, but the highlight of my first year in East Village was the first reading and subsequent showcase production of Anywhere, Anywhere.

I had an older cousin, Reggie, with whom I was very close growing up. He had served in Viet Nam. He was one of the soldiers that did manage to return home. I would like to say that he was one of the lucky ones, but I’m not sure if that word applies to anyone who had to go through the horror of that, or any, war. He was never the same emotionally or physically. His death from cancer in 1985 was believed to have been a result of his exposure to Agent Orange. I dedicated that first production to him. His mother, my Aunt Pauline, as well as a host of other family members, attended the first performance. It was very weird. I don’t doubt that Aunt Patsy was touched by the fact that I had dedicated the piece to Reggie, but I’m sure that she–and many of the other family members in attendance–was a little uncomfortable with the honest way that the show dealt with homosexuality. There was no nudity and, other than one brief same-sex kiss, it was pretty tame. However, the raw language, as well as seeing two men easily express affection for each other, had to have been uncomfortable for them. To their credit, they never let on.

Terry Helbing, a well-known and recognized authority/historian on gay theater, saw the show and wrote a very favorable review in one of New York’s alternative press newspapers. He also contacted me regarding having the play included in a second anthology of gay plays that he was planning to publish. I was ecstatic! We had an opening night party at Polly Esther’s, a 1970s retro bar-restaurant in Greenwich Village, and I just knew that this was going to be my ticket to the big time. As an unknown playwright, you are at the mercy of so many others when it comes to seeing your work brought to life. As in the past, so many talented people gave of themselves to help get Anywhere, Anywhere onto the stage. Outside of the theater, teamwork is often nothing more than a catch phrase to convince a group of people to work their buts off, further filling the pockets of one or two individuals at the top. But the theater is a true arena of collaboration. I was grateful to everyone who had played a part in bringing this particular project to life. In the program, I thanked every actor by name that had done the various readings of the play in its early stages; including an actor by the name of Anthony Rapp. I would have gladly re-cast him in the production had he not been involved in another little musical playing further downtown. Lucky for him that he chose to do that show over mine, as it did a little more for his career than Anywhere, Anywhere would have. It was called Rent.

NOT A GOOD YEAR

From the start, it was clear that 1994 was going to be something of a bummer. It began with the weather. Anywhere, Anywhere moved from its showcase run to a full, off-Broadway mini-contract production, and what happened? We had snow, and lots of it; which coincided with the beginning of our performances on January 21st. The show was scheduled for five performances a week, Wednesday through Sunday. The hope was to extend to eight performances a week as time went on provided, of course, that the show was successful and attendance was strong. For the first three weeks, we had a major snowfall on each Tuesday, wreaking havoc in the city for the rest of the week. Needless to say, audience attendance was greatly affected. We ended up closing prematurely and losing a lot of money in the process, much of it mine.

I had maxed out my credit cards in an attempt to keep the show running, and it was many years before I was able to get my head above water financially. I had literally put my money where my mouth was. Hey, if I didn’t believe in my show, how could I possibly expect anyone else to? I had wheeled, dealed, begged, and borrowed to get the show on. One valuable lesson that I learned from the whole ordeal was to never, ever open a show in the winter! To this day, I hate snow and cold winter weather, probably because it reminds me of that time. After all, it was the snow that had been the catalyst for an ugly chain of events that included IRS headaches for a number of years afterward, a lawsuit threatened by the theater owners, some very talented actors vowing to never work with me again, and the loss of friendship with some incredibly generous and giving individuals that I had become very fond of. And remember Terry Helbing, who had been so supportive of the show initially and wanted to include Anywhere, Anywhere in his second published anthology of gay plays? He became very ill and soon after succumbed to complications from AIDS. So, this play that I had put so much of my blood, sweat, and tears into, that I had loved and nurtured like a favorite child for the past three years, crumbled before my eyes. I was crushed. It was the beginning of a dark period that lasted for more than a year.

With no new theater project on the horizon, and still reeling from the financial and emotional loss I’d just experienced, I found myself at the beginning of an artistic dry spell. I had always known that there was a direct correlation between my mood and the state of my satisfaction with whatever project I was working on, but this was the first time that I recognized myself experiencing what I now know was depression.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Meanwhile, the other Viet Nam show, Miss Saigon, was still going strong, though many of the original cast members had moved on to other shows and projects. Barry had left the show for a regional production of M. Butterfly, and from there returned to New York to begin rehearsals for the Broadway musical, The Goodbye Girl, with Martin Short and Bernadette Peters. The show did not fare well with the critics and closed soon after opening. Following its closing, Barry moved back home to San Diego. Although I knew of his positive HIV status, the question of his health never seemed of concern. Despite his condition, Barry seemed healthy, vibrant, and buff from his attention to eating well and going to the gym. I didn’t know at the time that all of this had started to change, hence the decision to return to his family and friends on the west coast. Since I was able to make long distance calls from work, Barry and I spoke two or three times a week. The change in tone of our conversations was so subtle as to be almost missed. Although not particularly sad, the constant joking that had been the trademark of our conversations all but disappeared, replaced by far more serious topics. Since I didn’t actually see Barry during this time, I continued to picture him in my mind as he was when he left New York. I wasn’t aware of the changes he was going through physically, but I was very much aware of the changes in his personality. In particular, I noticed how his observations of life began to take on a decidedly different tone. The big cut-up, the life of the party, the guy who normally took nothing and no one too seriously, was becoming acutely aware of–and making some extremely interesting and eloquent observations on–life; a life that, unbeknownst to me at the time, he didn’t have much left of.

Barry decided to throw a thirty-first birthday party for himself, and asked me if I’d come out to California for it. What a stupid question–of course I’d be there. I made plans to go out the week leading up to the party so that we could have some time to hang out together. It was around this time that Barry started to share with me the reality of his condition. As the time got closer, I started becoming anxious about the trip, not sure if I wanted to go. I found myself stressing over things both big and small. I knew that Barry had been in and out of the hospital, that he was not doing well, but how exactly would he look when I saw him after all this time? I began imagining the worse, and wasn’t sure how I would react if he looked too drastically different than when I had last seen him. I also found myself stressing over what kind of gift to get. What kind of present do you give to a dying friend?

I arrived in the evening and was met at the airport by Barry’s partner, Will, who drove me back to his home where Barry was now living. When we entered the house, the lights were off and Barry was on the sofa wrapped in a blanket watching television. Although only the light from the television screen illuminated the room, it was more than enough for me to see that Barry was but a shadow of his former self. I guess that was his way of easing me into the shock of seeing how far he had deteriorated since we last saw each other half a year earlier. To his credit, Barry made a noble effort to keep things light during my visit, acting as if nothing had changed since the last time that we’d seen each other. Any of the medical procedures that he needed to perform during my stay, he did out of my eyesight. He mustered up the energy to get dressed each day and go with me as I explored this part of California that I’d never seen before. He put up a good front, but I could tell that he had only a fraction of the energy that he’d had when we hung out before he left New York.

My last day in San Diego was July 23rd, Barry’s birthday and the day of his party. And what a great party it was! After the party, the plan was for me to meet up with a friend in Los Angeles, stay with him for a couple of days at his place in Long Beach, and then fly back home from there. One of Barry’s friends offered to drive me to Los Angeles after the party. When the time came for us to leave and head to Los Angeles, Barry was sitting in the living room in the big cushy chair where he had opened his gifts about an hour earlier. I know that he must have been exhausted by that time, but he tried not to show it. Without saying anything to anyone, I put my suitcase and my shoulder bag in the car. I didn’t want to have to run around collecting my stuff after saying my goodbyes; I wanted my departure to be quick and low-key.

The friend with whom I would be riding to Los Angeles with went over to the chair to say goodbye to Barry. After they hugged, the two of them made plans to get together the following week. For me, it was a different story and I tried to push that thought out of my head. As his friend stepped away, Barry saw me standing there behind him. Now it was my turn to say something gracious before taking leave. However, words failed me. Finally, it was Barry who did the talking. Looking up at me from the chair, he said, “I guess this means you’re leaving now too.” He was very matter-of-fact in tone and I thought, “Good, we’ll do a quick ‘see ya later’ and keep things light.” I leaned down and hugged him, a hug that lasted just a little bit longer than I expected it would. As we came out of the embrace, Barry took my hands and, squeezing them tightly, softly said, “I’m never gonna see you again.” There was the tiniest moment of silence before he burst into tears.