Belonging (29 page)

I wasn’t convinced I should sit in on
the interview, but both he and Eddie told me I needed to be a part
of it. While the young journalist framed up his shot, I told Zan,
“This isn’t about me, it’s about you. Your fans are dying to hear
your story and I don’t want to go all Yoko here. I feel like I’m
intruding and they will, too.”

“You aren’t intruding, love,” Zan said
before pulling me onto the loveseat and kissing me gently. “This is
where you belong, right by my side.” I smiled at that.

Eddie cleared his throat and said,
“Um, I already starting recording. Sorry. I can edit that out
before I air this if you want me to.”

“It’s fine,” Zan said. “Leave it
in.”

After Eddie took his seat in an
upholstered chair that he’d moved close to the loveseat, he
addressed the camera. He introduced himself and us, then said, “I
don’t have any questions prepared, because I only found out I was
going to be doing this a couple hours ago. I know the question
that’s on everyone’s mind though, so I’m going to start with that.”
He turned to Zan and said, “If I get too personal or ask a question
you’re not comfortable with, let me apologize in advance. The last
thing I want to do is offend you.”

Zan gave him a little grin as he
picked up my hand. “No worries, Eddie. I’m hard to
offend.”

“Great. Well, I’m going to get right
to it then, and start by asking what happened in 2002. Could you
tell me why you walked away in the middle of that concert in
L.A.?”

Zan took a deep breath and blew it out
slowly. Then he said, his voice low, “I walked away to save my
life. I was right on the verge of a total breakdown, and if I
hadn’t left when I did, I know for a fact I would have killed
myself that night.”

“Oh God,” I whispered.

“That concert was in month five of a
seven-month world tour, and I still had over forty gigs ahead of
me. I was mentally and physically at my breaking point with nothing
left to give. I was up on stage forcing myself to go through the
motions, my body full of alcohol and seven different prescription
drugs because I felt I had to be there, I had to keep going. I’d
made promises, sold tickets. A lot of people were counting on
me.

“But then, as I sang my
song ‘Whirlwind’ for probably the ten-thousandth time, this tiny,
crazy, desperate idea came to me. The idea was:
you don’t have to do this
. I stopped
singing and just stood there for a few moments, right there on
stage in front of ninety thousand people, and I mulled that idea
over. It was so incredibly simple, and yet it had never occurred to
me before. I knew my job was killing me,
literally killing me
, and yet I’d
always believed I had to keep going, rather than risk disappointing
so many people.”

Zan took another deep breath and
continued, “Afterwards, I couldn’t believe I’d actually gone
through with it. I’d actually walked away! It was equally the
healthiest and the most insane thing I’d ever done. And then, of
course, right after that I was hit with overwhelming fear and
panic, the ‘oh shit, what have I done?’ and the realization that I
was flushing a career down the toilet that I’d worked for since I
was a child. But I was just so incredibly spent. There was nothing
left of me. Quitting was about self-preservation. Yeah, it was
drastic, but I really don’t think anything short of that would have
stopped me from going back to my tour bus and ODing that
night.”

Eddie asked gently, “Haven’t you heard
this story before, Gianni?”

I shook my head, then realized I had
tears streaming down my face and quickly swiped at them with the
back of my hand. “I figured you’d walked away because the stress
got to you,” I told Zan, “but I didn’t know you were on the verge
of suicide. I’m so sorry it got that bad for you.”

“Nobody knew. I never talked about it,
not then or in the years that followed,” he said, squeezing my
hand. “I kept trying to tell myself, ‘this is what you always
wanted, this is everything you dreamed about.’ I had it all: the
money, the fame, the success, and I thought I was being ridiculous
to complain about what it was doing to me. I knew I should be
grateful, and I really tried to be, but it just kept draining me,
mentally, physically, and emotionally. I let it wear me down to
nothing and kept going and going and going. I was so afraid of
letting everyone down, my fans, my agent, my record label, the list
went on. But I had reached the absolute breaking point that night
in L.A. and I had to make a choice. I chose to live.”

Eddie asked quietly, “Where did you
go?”

“I borrowed my agent’s car, well,
stole it really, and drove home to northern California. The whole
way, I was totally panicked about what I’d done, like I said. A
huge part of me was screaming at myself to go back, to finish the
concert, because you just didn’t fucking do that! You didn’t just
walk away! That little, desperate part of me, the part that knew
how close I was to cashing it all in, kept propelling me forward,
though.

“Many hours later when I finally got
home, I collapsed in my entryway. To this day, I don’t know how I
avoided wrecking that car on the highway, given the state I was
in,” Zan said. “I slept for two days straight, right there on the
floor. When I woke up, I was a mess. My body had begun the process
of detoxing from all the booze and pills. It was bloody awful. I
kept sweating and shaking and feeling like I was being turned
inside out, and was so tempted to take a bunch of drugs and make
the pain stop. The whole point of walking away had been to give
myself a shot at life though, so I knew I had to get
clean.”

“Did you have any help?” Eddie
asked.

“After three days, my agent, Jeff
Franco, tracked me down. He’d thought I’d holed up in some hotel in
L.A., he really didn’t think I’d had it in me to make it all the
way home. He brought a doctor, and the two of them helped me
through the detox.”

“What happened then?”

“After that, it was a question of
rebuilding. I started eating well and exercising, trying to
strengthen my body, and my doctor brought in a psychiatrist to help
me through the rest of it. I guess I was a little more fucked up
than he was accustomed to, so he in turn brought in a team of
colleagues. They had all these different theories about therapies
and treatment options, and this all went on for months.

“Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I fired all of them and I just shut myself off from the world. I
got rid of my TV, my computer, my phone, even my clocks. For the
first time since I was six, I was free. I didn’t have to answer to
anybody. I ate when and what I wanted, I slept according to my
natural body clock, I exercised regularly and started truly
healing.”

“If you totally cut yourself off, how
did you get food and the other things you needed?” Eddie
asked.

“Even though I fired him, Jeff kept
coming back, not as my agent but as my friend. He’d shop for me and
visit with me and make sure I was alright. He did that for years,
until a family member of mine took over.”

“That was nice of him,” Eddie
said.

“Yeah, it was. We had a long history
and he was really there for me.”

“Are you and he still
friends?”

“No, eventually we had a falling out.
At first he was understanding, but then a couple years passed, and
a couple more. He really hadn’t expected my break from the business
to go on so long and he started pushing me to go back and rebuild
my career. When I kept insisting I wasn’t ready, he tried to bring
the shrinks back so they could fix me. Finally, his constant
pressure got to be too much and I had to distance myself from
him.”

“Which family member stepped in to
help you?” Eddie asked.

I noticed the split-second glance that
Zan gave his son, but he quickly answered, “I’d rather not
say.”

“Okay. So, it was just you and your
family member. Did they live with you?”

“Yeah, for a few years. But it wasn’t
fair to expect him to be my whole world, so after a while I
encouraged him to go off and lead his own life.”

“But you stayed where you
were.”

“
I did.”

“All alone?” Eddie asked. When Zan
nodded he said, “How could you stand that much
solitude?”

“I learned to love the quiet. It felt
really good to be able to hear myself think, and to just be still
and live in the moment. I guess I developed a fairly Zen-like
approach to the whole thing. My need for social interaction was met
by regular visits from my family member, and that was
enough.”

Eddie asked, “Were you still cut off
without a TV, phone or computer?”

“I got a TV after a while, but that
was solely for watching DVDs. When anything important happened in
the world, my family member would tell me. He also insisted I get a
phone for emergencies. It only had his and my lawyer’s number in
it. The lawyer had been taking care of all my affairs, from paying
my taxes to handling any business transactions that came up. That
was a big help.”

“In all, this spanned a period of
thirteen years. You really didn’t go anywhere in all that
time?”

“I didn’t, daft as that
sounds. For a long time, the isolation really worked. It healed me
and made me feel good again. I didn’t see the negative consequences
for such a long time, until it was almost too late to do anything
about it. You see, at some point this shift had occurred, from
wanting to be isolated to
needing
to be. I stopped entertaining the notion of going
back out in the world someday and re-engaging. Like I told Gianni,
the cure wound up being as damaging as my original issues, because
I ended up getting stuck. The longer I stayed away from the outside
world, the more daunting the idea of facing it again
became.”

“What did you do about that?” Eddie
asked.

“When I first realized what was
happening, I reached out to that psychiatrist again, the one that
came to me in the early days and helped me through my detox. I
didn’t know what else to do. He was quick to label me as
agoraphobic, paranoid, a lot of other things, and his solution was
that he wanted to medicate me and begin intensive therapy. I didn’t
want either of those things, so told myself I could handle it on my
own and declined his suggestions.”

“And did you handle it?”

“Yes and no. I remained isolated,
until my fear of losing Gianni drove me out of the house. It scared
the hell out of me and induced a massive panic attack, but I did
it. So, I guess when I really needed to, I was able to overcome my
fear.”

“So, wait. Thursday was the first time
you faced the outside world?” Eddie sounded incredulous. Zan nodded
and he asked, “But how? You went from complete isolation to getting
swamped by hundreds of people at a busy airport. How did you avoid
totally breaking down?”

Zan turned to look at me and touched
my face. “I just remained focused on Gianni. He was moving away and
I had to see him, I had to talk him out of it.” I squeezed his
hand, overcome by the emotion in his eyes.

“Why were you moving away, Gianni?”
Eddie asked.

“Because I was stupid, and because I
didn’t know that Zan felt the same way I did. I didn’t think I had
a reason to stay, but he showed me I was wrong.”

Eddie asked, “How long had you two
been dating?”

“We weren’t. We hadn’t been
romantically involved at all,” I said. “What everyone saw at the
airport was our first kiss.”

“Oh! Wow. I had no idea,” Eddie
exclaimed. “So, where do you two stand now?”

I grinned, still looking at Zan, and
said, “At the very beginning of something beautiful.” I forgot a
camera was rolling, and when Zan leaned in and kissed me, I melted
into it.

Only when our little audience started
whooping and applauding did we remember ourselves and break apart.
Zan smiled at me, and I gave him a shy grin. Eddie said, “That’s
awesome. Okay, so, Zan, is there anything you’d like to say to your
fans?”

Zan nodded, growing serious. “I want
to apologize for disappearing the way I did, with no explanation. I
just...I didn’t really get it. Until I saw the footage of all those
men and women gathering in front of this house, I had no idea I
mattered to people.” He turned to look at the camera and said,
“Thank you for all the love and support, and thank you for standing
by me. I’m sorry I ran away and didn’t tell you why. You deserved
an explanation and I’m sorry I was too messed up to give you
one.”

Eddie asked, “Do you think you’ll ever
perform again, Zan?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I really miss
it. Performing was my entire life, ever since I was a lad. I wonder
if I’d ever be able to get back to the sheer joy of it, without
caving under all the pressure that went along with it.”

“Gianni, what’s your favorite Zan
Tillane song?” Eddie asked.

Zan started to answer for me, saying,
“Oh, I don’t think he really—”

But I cut in and said, “Yours Alone. I
think it’s one of the most beautiful songs ever
written.”