Blackouts and Breakdowns (14 page)

It took us a couple of minutes to realize what was happening.
Michele called that night and yelled at me for calling her a dumb bitch.
She didn’t pick up her phone when I called because she was running for her life across the Brooklyn Bridge.
That night Tom fled to Queens to stay with friends, fearing the terrorists were going to find him if he stayed in Manhattan.
He later became the self proclaimed Queen of Queens.
Sebastian and I stayed in Apartment 3H, glued to the television and began the final weeks of our relationship.

After September 11th, Tom and I decided to support the economy of New York by going out and drinking as much as humanly possible.
On one particular night we got really trashed and I ended up kissing some random guy. It was then I realized that I loved Sebastian.

“You know Tom, doing that, going out on a limb like that, really made me realize how much I really really love Sebastian,” I slurred, clutching my drink as if my life depended on it.

“Uh, yea. Kissing a stranger will do that,” Tom replied.

Tom and I drunkenly swaggered back to the apartment around three o’clock in the morning and I decided that then was the perfect time to tell Sebastian that I loved him. I woke him up from a sound sleep.

“I love you.
I am in love with you!”
I screamed into his face, my breath smelling of forty-five vodka cocktails.

“You’re drunk,” Sebastian replied.
Not really the response I was going for.

“Yes. But, I am telling you that I love you.”

There was a very long, very uncomfortable pause.
Tom was drunkenly swaying there, watching this train wreck take place.

“I SAID I LOVE YOU!”
I shouted.

And finally, after what felt like an hour, Sebastian replied: “That’s nice.
Thank you.”

I passed out.
The next morning, I woke up feeling as if I chartered a flight to the Dewar’s plant the night before and drank everything inside.

“Do you remember what you did last night?” Tom asked.

“Uh, kind of,” I replied. After Tom so graciously filled me in, I asked him what I should do next.

“I don’t know,” he responded, “See how things go after we move into
Falcon Crest
.”
We had decided that our new apartment was going to be named
Falcon Crest
– it seemed only fitting. “You guys have been spending far too much time together.
Perhaps, after you move out he will realize what his real feelings for you are.”

Maybe not – I thought.
Deep down inside I knew moving was not going to help, but I decided to see how things went.

October 1st finally came and Tom and I moved into
Falcon Crest
.
To celebrate moving into our new digs, we decided to throw an “opening night” party.
Cheap five-dollar bottles of vodka were poured into crystal decanters and huge bags of Doritos were put into tin bowls.
It was to be a gala event.
However, that evening, Sebastian called and told me that he had gone to a party the night before, where Alex was in attendance.
He said that he wanted to see him for one reason or another.
I was floored.
I had only moved out of his apartment days before and he was already going to parties where he knew Alex was going to be.
I was told at the beginning of the summer that Alex was bad and I was to steer clear of him.
Now Sebastian was going out of his way to see Alex.
Were we still dating?
Was Sebastian simply waiting for me to leave the apartment to start another fling with Alex?
I was crushed but I knew what I had to do.
I broke up with Sebastian – took one of the crystal decanters filled with five-dollar vodka and retreated to my room, where I stayed for the next three days.
I completely missed the
Falcon Crest
opening night party and sat for three days watching
Beaches
on rotation while drinking vodka. I was devastated by what happened – I felt my love life was spiraling out of control.
Finally, Tom intervened.

“Look, you have been drinking by yourself for the past three days,” Tom said.
“Remember when Maggie turned into a raging alcoholic on
Falcon Crest
?
Did we not learn a lesson?
When you drink by yourself for days at a time you are an alcoholic.
So get your ass up and get some drinks with me. At least you won’t be drinking alone.”

Tom’s persuasion worked.
I figured going out would help me take my mind off of Sebastian, but when we got out, who was the first person we ran into?
Why Alex, of course.

I was about as excited to see him, as I was when I found out that Paris Hilton was putting an album out.
By this point, Alex had turned into a full on arch nemesis.
He was the Alexis to my Krystal Carrington.
Things were being said about me behind my back that I really did not appreciate and Sebastian had done a great job of pitting the two of us against each other.

“I don’t like him,” Tom said as Alex sashayed his way toward us.

“Thanks, but you don’t even know him,” I replied.

“I’ve known people who have looked like him before and I didn’t like them so I don’t like him.”

Alex came over and began running his mouth about how I was getting what I deserved because I had betrayed him.
I was already drunk from my three-day rendezvous in my room and I could not listen to much of Alex’s babbling.
I began to walk away when Alex mentioned that he was planning on meeting up with Sebastian the following night.
I was furious.
Had there been a lily pond near by, I would have thrown his ass right into it.
I gave Alex a dirty look and walked right out the door. I walked down Sixth Avenue, fuming, and wondering what the hell Sebastian was thinking.
He told me that I needed to cut off all communication with Alex.
I had stupidly assumed that the same rules had applied for Sebastian but they hadn’t.
I could not believe the hypocrisy of it all.
Sebastian’s excuse for everything was that he had real feelings for Alex and my friendship was a constant reminder of those feelings.
Now it seemed I was the only one looking out for my feelings.
As all of these thoughts raced through my head, I raced down the avenue to Sebastian’s.

Out of breath from chain smoking during the walk, I arrived at Sebastian’s. He opened the door.

“Bugger!
What are you doing here?”
There was the damned accent again.

“Shut up – I’m coming in,” I said as I made my way toward the wet bar.
I poured myself a huge glass of vodka – my drink of choice for the past three odd days – and parked myself on his couch.
“Why on earth would you be asking Alex out again?”

“I suppose you’ve seen him?” he responded.

“No dumbass.
I’ve acquired psychic abilities in the four days that we haven’t been dating. Of course I saw him and he could not wait to tell me the news,” I yelled, with my glass of vodka swishing this way and that.
“Honestly, I cannot believe that you are doing this.
Do you even have feelings for him?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, meekly.
“But, I wanted to make sure.”

“Excuse me?
You don’t
think
so?
What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I am not sure.
I am just very confused about my feelings right now.”

I was really not in the mood for this.
I had consumed about a year and a half’s supply of vodka over the previous three days and Sebastian’s indecisiveness was grating on my nerves.
I really didn’t feel like going around in circles anymore.
I needed at least twenty-four hours of sleep and possibly a trip to a rehab clinic.

“Ok fine,” I got up.
“Well…ok then,” I said stumbling toward the door.
I could not think of anything else to say so I told him to call Alex and tell him that they were not going to be able to get together the next night because we were back together.

“What?”
Sebastian asked.

“We are back together,” I told him.
“I just decided. Tell Alex we are back together.
I am only looking out for you.
Do you really want to get involved with someone like that again? Remember how miserable you were?
So really, I am doing you a favor.
I am saving you from yourself.”
If only I could have taken my own advice and saved myself but it was too late.
On the way out I took the glass I was drinking out of and threw it at the wall.
Mostly for dramatic effect, but also to show him that I meant business.
The next day we were back together and Alex seemed to be out of the picture.
Tom, however, was not happy about any of my recent behavior and told me that he thought I was not making the best decisions for myself.

“I think it’s time that you put this booze cruise in dry dock for a bit,” he said.

It was true.
I wasn’t making good decisions anymore.
For another couple of months, Sebastian and I continued to date, but it wasn’t the same and we finally broke up for good.

Again, I was not very happy about this decision.
Sebastian was my first boyfriend and I could honestly not imagine my life without him. Pair that with the fact that the two of us continued to sleep with each other for the year and half after we broke up – things were not looking good for my sanity.

Finally, I dropped my basket.
Through some computer sleuthing (I guessed the password for Sebastian’s email account.
It was Paddington Bear.
Easy for me to decode as it was his favorite story when he was a child.
And he’s British – how difficult could it have been?
Maybe he wasn’t as smart as I thought he was.)
I discovered that Sebastian had yet again been corresponding with Alex. If my life was a soap opera, this storyline had been going on for far too long at this point.
No one wanted to hear about it anymore.
There needed to be a dramatic ending, climaxing with the ingenue (me) coming out triumphant and relatively unscathed.

For months I had threatened to tell Sebastian ubber-conservative parents that he was gay. I knew it was an awful thing to do, but at this point, I had no other choice.
What would Erica Kane have done?
I was too young for a hostile takeover and I really don’t think I could have pulled off an insanity plea in a murder case just yet so this seemed to be the next logical step.
La Kane would have also tried to sleep with someone else to make her former suitor jealous, but since Sebastian had already encouraged me to do that, it clearly would not work at getting him back. I even tried a half-assed, very dramatic suicide attempt but that didn’t even work.
So I did it. I sent his parents a very long and very detailed letter, with pictures, via first class mail. I, of course, had to call Sebastian and tell him that I was sending it and that was the last time we ever spoke.
I was so hurt by everything that had happened between the two of us, I felt like I needed to make him pay for hurting my feelings; however, it didn’t make me feel any better.
In fact, it made me feel awful. I did truly love Sebastian and did not want to hurt him, but this back and forth between us had to end.
I will always hold a special place in my heart for Sebastian.
He was and still is an amazing person, and my time with him was the best of my life.

A few years after I sent the letter to his parents, I bumped into Sebastian and his new boyfriend Jesse.
Sebastian and I became very good friends and all was seemingly forgiven.
That is of course, until he reads this.

It took me some time to get over Sebastian and realize what I had done was possibly the worst thing anyone had ever done to him.
But being the self-proclaimed survivor that I am, I trudged on.
A few years later, Tom was in a full-fledged relationship with his now husband Michael while he was performing in his own Off-Broadway hit musical.
His show opened to much acclaim and seeing Tom entertain anyone other than me is always a treat.
The show went on every Sunday night and afterwards we would go down to the West Village to a piano bar where our friend Kate worked.
One Sunday night, my friend Jason (previously responsible for suggesting Sebastian and I date), met us at the bar with his boyfriend Mark.
By this point my drinking had plateaued and I was at a very happy place with it. I had stopped getting hammered every night, instead enjoying just a drink or two.
Seeing my two best friends happy was amazing.
Tom was with Michael and enjoying the success of a very popular Off-Broadway show; while Jason was paired with Mark who was musically directing a very popular Broadway show at the time.
Everyone was happily paired and working in the theatre.
It was like everyone was living the gay-dream. Had Liza Minnelli been lowered down from the ceiling on a disco ball that night, everyone’s lives would have been complete.
I, on the other hand, was living my life vicariously through Tom and Jason and had absolutely no problem being single.
But, it seemed everyone else has a problem with it. I was constantly being invited to parties where someone’s single gay friend was going to be only to find that their single gay friend was either over fifty, had at one point been in a mental institution, or just completely incapable of carrying on an intelligent conversation.
I mean, I love Madonna as much as the next guy, but there is only so much I want to know about her life. ABC soaps on the other hand, I could talk about for hours.
Needless to say everyone had pretty much given up on paring me off until Jason’s boyfriend Mark introduced me to his friend Jeff that fateful night. Jeff seemed perfect on paper.
Tall, dark and handsome – just the way I liked them.
He had worked with Mark in Chicago (the city, not the musical), the previous year, musically directing a show out there.
Jeff came highly recommended from Mark and Jason and I could see why.
Maybe this was my second chance.
Maybe my karma wasn’t completely fucked for what I had done to Sebastian.
Jeff and I ended up closing the bar that night.
We were so busy talking and getting to know each other; I guess time just got away from us. As Jason was leaving, he came over to me and whispered in my ear:
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”