Acrobaddict (45 page)

Jonathan strived to instruct me in all he knew, and I battled him every step of the way. I continually hit my head juggling clubs and fell off the unicycle, but I found comfort training on the slack rope—a long, braided rope that was popular in old circuses, walked across in a similar way as a tightrope but swinging back and forth from the slack. My first few attempts at standing on the rope shot me to the ground, but gradually, after emptying my mind and concentrating on the quiet balance of the rope, I could stand without falling.

During difficult days my recovery friend always told me, “Move a muscle and it will change the thought”: do something, anything, and you’ll find a different result. His words became my mantra for whenever I was about to fall off the rope—I moved a muscle and found my balance to continue a natural movement. The slack rope became a meditation and indicator of my level of recovery—the two were almost inseparable. Standing on wobbling rope, I cleared my mind and remembered who and what I was: a heroin addict attempting to stand on a rope, finding his balance and place in the world. If I didn’t move, I would fall. I had to trust myself and not allow my fear of falling to stop my forward movement, accepting the possibility that I might not stay on the rope. If I fell, I’d get back up and do it again and again. I fell in love with standing on that silly hemp rope, my simple speechless guru, showing me how to remain in recovery while handling life’s uncertainties. Increased recovery time increased the time I could stay on the rope, walking forward and backward. I would balance like a bird swaying on an electrical wire in a storm, remaining solid and unaffected.

The other skills I had to learn brought me difficulty, and I didn’t find the same meditation as with the slack rope. It was a completely new lesson of understanding, and I tried the same technique riding the unicycle as I had walking the slack rope. I’d let go, search for the balance, and . . . crash! I was constantly smashed onto the pavement like a child thrown from a bike, skinning my knees. The patient master I had become on the rope was absent on that single-wheeled
beast, and, like an uncoordinated fool, I found myself repeatedly tossed to the ground in deep humiliation and pain. At first I blamed the seat, accusing it of being too high or too low, but the real reason I fell was because I didn’t have trust. I tried to control the outcome and remained held back by my fear. Every day I practiced on that damned unicycle in the park near the Hudson River, and every day I continued to fall.

Along with training in contortion, stilt walking, singing, dancing, juggling, riding a unicycle, playing a trumpet, and slack rope with Jonathan, I tumbled and lifted weights—trying to reclaim my former gymnast’s shape. My track marks and bruises were fading, and I could wear tank tops again without advertising a history of drug abuse.

I moved out of my apartment before leaving for San Diego, planning to stay with Jonathan until I found a place of my own after returning to New York. Excited about my first trip to San Diego, as part of the preparations I had a second implant inserted into my arm, assuring my continued abstinence.

The calmness and serenity of sunshine and palm trees after everything I had been through was refreshing, transporting me back to a trip my family and I once took to Florida. I believed I would be happy in San Diego. A tall, blonde woman met us at the airport and drove us to our apartments. She radiated a warm light and, with a smile, mentioned parties and drinking, to which I replied, “I don’t drink anymore. I’m in recovery,” as newly sober people love to say.

“Oh, I’ve been in recovery for a very long time,” she told me, promptly handing me a meeting list. With that interaction I knew I was safe in California, and she would become a wonderful source of support as I learned to perform.

The intimacy of the show brought a new challenge for me. I was accustomed to working at the Met and never actually interacting with the audience—we entered the stage, did a few flips, and left. The Met stage and productions allowed one to easily hide behind lights, set pieces, and costumes when in doubt of what to do; but smaller
Broadway houses demand an immenseness to come from the hearts of the artists. Did I have that quality of heart to give? With nothing to shield me, I would be forced to become a strong performer.

Everyone worked diligently with Twyla, drilling with the choreography, score, and acting while pushing our bodies beyond their boundaries. We tirelessly rehearsed to the degree of injury, and ultimately her vision began to materialize. Everyone was gratified, and after just a few weeks our creation became a strong ensemble performance as we approached opening night. I, however, was not ready for that, as my body and mind became frozen with overwhelming performance trepidation. I adored Twyla, but was petrified of making a mistake in front of her, publicly showing her my flaws and inadequacies. I was determined to convince her through perfection that she had made the right choice in picking me.

Yet another difficult aspect of the project was understudying my boyfriend and having to act like him on stage. Jonathan was trained by some of the best teachers in the world: Philippe Gaulier, Lu Yi, and Katsura Kan. My acting techniques were self-taught and refined in emergency rooms to win pity prescriptions—a desperate addict is a hell of an actor. But my boyfriend’s energy on stage was commanding, unpredictable, and wild—he was a born performer—while I was restrained with apprehension over the possibility of humiliating myself. How could I leap into the unknown spectrum of conveying emotions onstage when I couldn’t recognize emotions as a human being in daily life?

Twyla brought a pastiche of artistic elements into her show,
The Times They Are A-Changin’
, a story set in the timeless state between reality and dreams, told through characters in a traveling circus. During a rehearsal, a couple came in after the lights went down and sat in the back of the theater. I assumed they were producers or Twyla’s friends. When the show finished, the man and woman walked up to the stage and Twyla said, “Cast, this is Bob . . . Bob, this is the cast.” I couldn’t believe it: the legendary Bob Dylan! I wished Tara were there to witness this with me, or Nick, who had loved Dylan. The reality that my life was changing finally started to set in.

The show opened to favorable reviews and great audiences. Artists camped outside the Old Globe Theater, painting pictures of Dylan, selling T-shirts and memorabilia, and listening to his music. I kept studying Jonathan’s stage presence, attempting to siphon it into my own performance. The understudies hadn’t been onstage yet and I practiced every move backstage as the show ran, like the janitor knowing every actor’s cue as he continues sweeping the floors. I watched the dancers’ confidence and grace, praying to obtain even a fraction of it for myself.

My time finally came to perform in front of an audience, and, despite having seen Jonathan perform the show countless times, I was a nervous wreck. My skills weren’t entirely ready for the public, but I had to suppress my fear and allow my vulnerable heart to be placed before judgment. The minutes waiting for the curtain to open brought on the familiar emotions of competing in gymnastics, the gut-wrenching time waiting for the judge’s nod before beginning my routine. In those moments I wanted to quit, questioning why I or any human would willingly place himself in such a situation.

I heard my cue, “God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son,’” and entered the stage on three-foot stilts, my vision distorted by a giant headpiece with a mop beard covering my face and wearing a long, white robe that wrapped tightly around the bottoms of the stilts, almost inviting me to fall. I tried to embody Jonathan’s character while giving my own energy to the audience. After a grueling two hours it was over, and I remembered why I did this: for the feeling and the overwhelming sense of pride that participating in a production can bring to one’s soul. This was a new high, and I wanted more.

As the show finished in San Diego, I knew the transition back to New York would be difficult. After nearly a year of recovery, my opiate blocker had worn off and I toiled daily with my broken strands of character, attempting to reassemble myself as an individual while aware that temptation pulsed though the soul of New York City. Would the towering, sky-lit silhouette reanimate my demons? After just barely scratching the surface of who I could become, and discovering whether I was made more from love or hate, I wasn’t
ready to return to hell. I wanted to experience life without the anchor of drugs sinking me down. I was experiencing a basic level of knowing myself, my likes and dislikes, and realizing I had the power to make positive choices.

I had blamed everyone and everything for my addiction, but all my life horrors were consequences of my own poor and ignorant choices. I was not the victim. I was the creator. My parents and friends did their best, and in their way shared pieces of their souls to encourage a better world for me. No one forced me to use drugs. I made that choice, and, were I given the opportunity to make the decision again, I would choose the same path. I was grateful to know hell, heaven, and all the rest in between. The pain I walked through formed a blessing, transforming my suffering into a deep compassion for and identification with others. Upon setting foot in New York, I continued my meetings in order to form a network with others in recovery.

The show would move forward and open in the fall at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Forty-sixth and Eighth—a one-block walking commute from our apartment. We trained relentlessly through the summer at a space in Harlem, working with new cast members and changing many show elements. Getting off the subway uptown was a familiar walk to rehearsals, full of junkies who were calling me—my sleepless sirens reaching up through the sidewalk cracks, trying to pull me back into their nothingness. Nobody else felt their presence, but I wanted to dive in and devour their pleasure. Though my brain wanted to stop, I forced my body forward; the process of creating the show had strengthened my recovery, and I was too proud of both to lose what I had gained. Arriving safely to work, I thanked the heavens for my protection.

Finally, we moved onto Broadway, did tireless technical rehearsals, and were ready for our opening night. Twyla’s revered status in the dance world generated huge anticipation around the show; but strangely, there was also an undercurrent of buzz desiring or predicting its demise. I’ve been on that other side, fueled by jealousy, ignorance, ego, and envy, hoping for a new show to close with no knowledge of the production.

We received mixed reviews, and one of the least admiring came from my old employer, the
New York Times
. I didn’t know the writer personally, but remembered delivering his mail regularly in a heroin daze. The reviews seemed to miss the entire point of the show. I thought Twyla a genius at submerging political symbolism within her choreography and storytelling, but the reviews attacked and dissected the dance without seeing the poetry of the production. I was hurt, and I knew the voice of the
Times
had power behind it—bad reviews stop ticket sales. My love and respect for the work and the dedication of each individual in the show had me emotionally too involved to recognize any validity in the reviews. The project had thoroughly challenged everyone involved and provided an eternal satisfaction from simply seeing it through to completion. But the reviews were not what we had hoped for.

The fragility of the show kept Twyla from allowing any understudy to perform; every element needed to remain solid and strong in an attempt to boost ticket sales and gain a public following. My father and stepmother came to a matinee. He beamed with pride as we took a picture under the marquee, next to the poster with my name printed in the middle: Joseph David Putignano. I couldn’t imagine what that moment was like for my father—my name on Broadway and not on a prescription bottle, warrant, or hospital bill—standing together with me in my success, so far away from finding the limp body of his son on a bloodstained bedroom floor. The autumn light cast a new memory to replace the nightmares of my past, and I saw a never-before-seen joy on his face as he looked at me, and I thought, “So this is what happiness in recovery feels like.”

After one night’s performance the entire company was called to the stage and the producers entered; our show would soon be closing, unable to survive the reviews. New York didn’t value our creation of artistry, dance, circus, and song, and the announcement demolished me, a heartless blow to my ego, strength, and hard work. It was an absolute miracle that I had achieved almost two years of recovery during
The Times They Are A-Changin’
. I wrote a letter to Twyla, explaining the truth and details of my past and how privileged I had felt to have been given the opportunity to work with her.

The show and my recovery were deeply connected, and the desire to use came over me fast, planting a small, quick question in my brain:
If I used just once, to numb my pain, would anyone notice?
Was I about to throw away almost two years of recovery? Jonathan knew I was distressed, and thought I would snap out of it. I thought I would snap out of it, too. But I didn’t. The show’s closing, in addition to extreme dental pain from another botched root canal, brought on the urgent need to feel held and protected from the next thing trying to bring me down. What could I do after this? I wouldn’t audition for another show; I was through with being judged. Ultimately, the battle against my addiction was lost. I called my dealer, who seemed to be waiting by the phone, having expected my call for the last two years. I went to Duane Read and stood in a long line at the pharmacy, terrified of running into someone from my meetings, armed with my shopping list, ten 1/2 cc insulin syringes.

I entered the stage door, went to the understudies’ dressing room, and waited for the show to start and for Jonathan to finish his more dangerous elements. If he got injured, I didn’t want to go on stage high during a hard part. I went down to the second-floor bathroom outside Jonathan’s dressing room, cooked up, and shot up. It was so smooth, so wonderful, and the wash of euphoria cleaned all the recovery off my bones. The hot fire burned again brightly under my skin. As I sat on the toilet with my head slumped forward, the low-laughing Devil gently caressed my pale flesh. I no longer cared. He could have me all to himself. I fell into my old place in hell, kept exactly as I had left it, and softly woke to the sounds of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” coming out from the monitors.