On Making Off: Misadventures Off-Off Broadway (24 page)

And suddenly, because sometimes in life things happen suddenly, I was able to forgive myself. Until that moment, I wasn’t aware this was something I needed to do. I hadn’t realized the tremendous blame I put on myself for having “failed” a relationship. But now, I could forgive myself, learn from it, and move on. In fact, my relationship with Scott had demonstrated I already had. The second I did that, I felt wonderful. Judgment turned to joy, and I was glad C.J. came and looked forward to catching up with him after the show.

The song ended. The audience applauded and returned to their seats and their wine. The Fucks, for the first time during the run, actually performed the task they were given: warm up the crowd, which they had done quite literally. Our audience was now sweating profusely and fanning themselves with their dossiers.

Harrison burst into the theater. “Sorry I’m late,” he announces to the audience in a formal tone. “Welcome to the seminar on
Do It!
”

And the play begins, inside a seminar led by Jerry Rubin from the 1980s. Jerry, like many other 1960s radicals, turned from Yippie to Yuppie during the Reagan years. He dabbled in the world of est, got involved with pyramid schemes, and engaged in other suspect business endeavors.
Do It!
features this 1980s Jerry confronting his past, a past materializing behind him as he waxes on about memories.

“
When I think about my past…” our Jerry continues.

Behind the spread-out white sheet hanging over the backstage door, the shadows of the ’60s grow in size and in volume. Smoke spills out from the back and, just as the amplification of the past overtakes the sounds of the present, the sheet drops to reveal the Chicago Riots. Smoke and screams fill the room and then stop in an instant as the focus falls on young Jerry, played by me. I hold an army-issue gas mask as if it were a pig’s head.

Raising a knife into the air, I shout, “I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna kill this fucking pig.”

Then, silence. The stage falls into order, and we flash back to where it all started, the 1950s.

About 20 minutes into the hour-long play, we come to a scene called “Troop Trains.” The Yippies attempted, with their bodies, to stop trains from transporting U.S. soldiers through Berkeley. While their second attempt was successful, the first was not, and we staged both scenes in slow motion. The light of the train engine moves across the stage toward our crowd of Yippies, who throw their arms in the air and shout in silence. As the train moves through the group, we lift a few performers by their feet and turn them upside-down to create the illusion of leaping bodies.

As I am about to lift Nick, he bends down and places his hands on the stage. I squat, grab his feet, and start to stand up. Then, I feel something slip. Not on the floor. Not off my body. It’s something
in
my body, something in my lower back. It doesn’t hurt at first, but suddenly, I can’t support my own weight, let alone Nick’s. I promptly drop him on the floor, which temporarily ruins the illusion of the slow-motion troop-train dodge.

Something terrible has happened, and I have no idea what. We still have another 40 minutes of show, and the pain I didn’t experience at first begins to make its presence known. Still ahead, I’m to perform a song-and-dance number that includes several group lifts and a long list of other highly physical feats.

This includes Fannie jumping on me and wrapping her legs around me as I gyrate my hips, simulating intercourse. I also leapfrog over some folks, lie on my belly, push backwards on the floor, get up and leapfrog again to simulate an advancing protest line. Thankfully, I only stand still for the courtroom scene. And then, I’m set to perform 12 headstands in the JFK assassination scene. In the finale, Harrison (with gas mask on) will wrap himself around my waist. I lift him in slow motion, and, while he’s still holding my waist, his entire body jets out to the side and turns upside-down before settling back around my waist and, in a full body C-clamp position, assumes the role of the pig I am about to kill at the beginning. No wonder my back just exploded.

I know I can’t make it. But at this moment, I am dripping in the wonder drug called adrenaline, so I press on. I fudge my way through the song and let the others do the brunt of the lifting. I manage to hold Fannie long enough to simulate teenage-boy sex (two thrusts), which she plays off of brilliantly. My leapfrogs turn into rollovers. The headstands actually feel pretty good. It’s no picnic coming out of it, but once there, I get a brief reprieve from the rapidly increasing pain. I’ve almost made it to the end and can hardly wait to lie down. I only have to get past the “pig” bit.

Harrison and I square off. I’m sure everyone notices something is not quite right, but like me, they have no idea how bad my injury is. Standing there, looking at 175 pounds of muscle and bone, I realize that somebody will die if I try this lift. I start shaking my head.

By the look of sheer terror on my face, Harrison knows he’s on his own. So, he makes up some tumble movements while I stand by and watch.

Once the show ends, I run to the dressing room and lie flat on my back. There I stay, through the curtain call, the closing speech, and the dispersing of the audience. I then try to sit up but realize that isn’t going to happen. While the cast packs up around me, Dickey calls for help.

Within minutes, the paramedics burst through the door. These two good-looking men in their 20s, dressed in paramedic outfits, seemed like they just walked out of a hunky calendar. After assessing my situation, in a hot second they offered me two choices. They could help me up, give me some aspirin, and put me in a cab, or they could help me up, put me in the ambulance, and take me to the hospital, which would cost a great deal more.

“
So, basically, what you’re saying is that I have to get up,” I said.

“
Yes,” said Hot Paramedic Number One. “You have to get up.”

“
Well, how am I going to do that?” I asked, staring into his hot paramedic eyes.

“
Grab our arms, and we’ll pull you up,” replied Hot Paramedic Number Two.

“
Just like that?”

“
Just like that.”

The idea I would get to touch not one but two hot paramedics was so thrilling, I almost forgot how painful the maneuver would be. Is that why they send the attractive paramedics to calls like this? I wouldn’t have been able to do it if they were what my former agent Patty called “normal-looking.”

“
Come on,” said Hot Paramedic Number Two. “You don’t have a choice. You gotta just do it.”

“
You
fucking do it if it’s so easy,” I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to jeopardize the imaginary three-way I’d be having with them in the ambulance.

Scott wouldn’t mind, would he? After all, how often do two impossibly hunky paramedics come along to rescue you? I grabbed their arms, and in one painfully awful move, they pulled me up to stand. I draped my arms over their shoulders, and they escorted me to the street.

Opting to save a few thousand dollars, I got into a cab with Lolly and Nick and, feeling helpless and overwhelmed, immediately started to fight back the tears. It wasn’t so much the pain. It was the idea that this could be permanent. I looked at Nick, who put his hand on my shoulder. He knew exactly how I felt.

Back at the apartment, where our cast party was underway, I rolled around on an exercise ball, and Big Rob burst into the apartment with cigars.

“
Congratulate me! I’m gonna be a dad!” he bellowed and looked down at me. “What happened to you?”

“
I threw out my back. Did you just have a baby?”

“
No, but my girlfriend is pregnant. I’m gonna be a daddy! Tee-hee.”

Big Rob “tee-hees” a lot. It’s his favorite expression. He is the only person I know who actually verbalizes it, but having a baby seemed to warrant more than just a tee-hee. He’d been dating a girl in California for a while, and, apparently, one of his brief visits had made a baby. I guess that’s what happens when you mess around with real vaginas.

“
You know, you’re not actually supposed to break out the cigars until the baby is born,” I said.

“
I know,” Big Rob replied. “But I’m happy. And I like smoking cigars. So fuck it! Let’s smoke.”

A few weeks later, he’d be gone. He’d had his New York adventure, and now it was time to settle down. With his departure, I began to realize the transient nature of New York. As a professor once told me, New York is a great place to be rich and a great place to be young. And over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people “age out” of the city, usually, when a baby’s on the way.

The next day, I managed to get to the doctor and begged, not for pain medication, but for something to speed my recovery. I’d only been to see Dr.
Kline
once before, but I think he already had me figured out. When I’m with medical professionals of any kind, I tend to talk nonstop. It’s my whole, “get therapy wherever you can” philosophy.

So, I treated Dr. Kline to a full description of how I was about to embark on a wildly romantic trip through Italy, and I needed to be well enough to go. Scott and my relationship had survived those five months, and I couldn’t just let my body ruin this trip. I didn’t care how much it hurt; I just wanted to walk. I’d worked hard. I was falling in love. I had to get to Italy. After about five minutes of my babbling, Dr. Kline said he could treat me like a cheating athlete and give me some steroids.

“
Does that show up on drug tests? ’Cause my work sometimes tests for drugs.” I was oddly more concerned about doctor-prescribed steroids than all the pot I’d been smoking.

“
Unless you’re planning on competing in an athletic event, which I don’t recommend in your state, I think you’ll be fine,” he said, showing me the door
.

I spent most of the 12-hour journey fondly reflecting on the past several years. The company had grown considerably, but more importantly, I had grown considerably. And I could feel another one of life’s shifts coming. I had no way of knowing what shape it would take, but my first clue came when I arrived in Italy. After several dizzying transfers from planes to trains to cabs, I found myself safely in Scott’s Bologna hotel room. With Scott still at work, I crawled right into bed and quickly fell asleep at one in the afternoon. Six hours later, I opened my eyes to find Scott quietly reading in bed next to me.

“
You have perfect timing,” he said, as he closed his book, ready to go out for dinner.

But to me, his comment meant far more than my awaking in time to eat. After fumbling with my emotional availability for most of my adult life, I’d started to grasp the need to express myself in a different way, to allow myself to love and be loved, not in the past and not in the future but in the present. And while I couldn’t fully agree with the perfect part, my timing
was
getting better, which was fortuitous because, once again, I was falling in love.

PART V

STOPPING THE WORLD

ALL ABOUT THE SPACE

“
So, what’s next for you guys?” Beverly asked as we piled a second helping of pulled pork and fried okra onto our plates.

“
Stopping the World
,” I said. “An exploration of the profound moments that forever alter our perception of reality.”

We were still working on the tagline and in no way prepared to give a description, so I got off the subject.

“
You have a beautiful home, Beverly. Thanks again for putting this together for us. We haven’t eaten this well all week. I guess this is what they call southern hospitality.”

Beverly, who is cast-member Kevin’s mom, had invited the
Do It!
cast to her home for some southern barbecue to celebrate the completion of our week in Atlanta.

Noj’s brother, Chris, and another Moon Monk ran an Atlanta art gallery/event space called Blue Milk, and they invited us down to perform
Do It!
Eager to go out on the road, we flew 12 people south for a one-week run. A whole week without day jobs or city distractions meant we could accomplish a lot. We’d do four
Do It!
performances, a more coherent musical staging of Noj’s
Odd-Eye-See
(yes, another
Portal Opening
), and a series of daylong workshops to explore the aesthetics of our next production,
Stopping The World,
which we’d present at FringeNYC the following month.

“
What exactly do you mean by
Stopping the World
?” Beverly asked. “I don’t quite understand.”

Southerners like to talk, so I wasn’t going to get away with just the title and the tagline. I grabbed another beer, which Beverly reflexively opened, and we walked out into the steamy July heat, where some of the boys were engaged in a friendly but physical game of basketball.

“
The idea comes from Carlos Castaneda’s book,
Journey to Ixtlan
,” I started, as we sat on wooden deck chairs. “In the book, Castaneda speaks of the need to stop the world in order to begin ‘seeing.’ For his character, Don Juan, this was something he actively tried to do, but for the purposes of our show, we want to explore what happens when a stopping-the-world moment happens to you when you’re not looking for it.”