Rehoboth

Open ocean backdrop, a green Delaware Doghead Beer baseball cap over graying hair, stylish sunglasses, a safety yellow and cobalt kayak life vest, sitting on top of a lime-green sea kayak, we see Vig floating among a superpod of dolphins. As if they were Cypress Garden beauties, rising out of the water to begin a multi-skier routine, nine dolphins surface and breath before disappearing under water. A dorsal fin is labeled “420”. Vig sighs wistfully. He says to the nearest dolphin: “Every night they gave me thunderous applause.”

Shirtless, wearing a short white and cobalt tortoise themed bathing suit, he is stumbling over words of the show tunes he is singing as he walks the semi-secluded beach. A passerby’s glance reads: “At least you are cute, weirdo.” Glaringly, Vig replies: “Every night I sang with a fantastic band.”

Guido del Giorno, in tiny red rugby shorts seemingly held on with spray glue, refuses to flirt with Vig while being stalked on the beach. Vig kicks the sand, and sits on the beach as Guido saunters into the ocean. He waits and hopes that Guido’s suit will be taken by a wave. Or that he will walk out like Neptune rising from the sea, with his wet suit clinging tightly to his pole. Frustration builds. “Last week Uncle Ernie asked if he could grab my ass,” he says throwing wet sand into the surf.

Body surfing a big wave, hands out stretched. Vig feels a hairy leg and looks up surprised to find he is almost face down in a beautiful man’s crotch. . . he says, “OK, this is fun too.”

‘Tommy-Daddy’ Doesn’t Smoke Anymore

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times. – Mark Twain


Our Young Tommy is a mischievous cherub. Backstage on closing night, running ahead of his mother who was trying to make him finish dressing, he was saying “I have to check my props,” as he navigated the backstage maze, slipping away from Rose at every turn. He’s so small that it’s believable that he wouldn’t even be speaking in full sentences (much less, that he would have props), and yet here he is. . . “No, Mom! I have to check my props!” He is chased until he gets to the Walker’s table, preset offstage with a fake birthday cake. Rose, Gypsy, and I watch as he stretches to reach the cake. With great determination, he pulls out a slice and examines it closely.

There’s supposed to be a cookie hidden inside the rubber hide. Somebody forgot it once. All it took was Mrs. Walker to say, “Oh, you have to be sure to check your props,” and he added it to the list of things he had to do ahead of anything his mother wanted. As I understand, that list included: winking at Cousin Kevin before places, resisting any attempt at applying lipstick, figuring out new ways to get candy without getting caught, and make sure his cookie was going to be on stage! Once he was sure there was a cookie waiting for him, Rose was able to put on his over shirt and take him up for make-up. Gypsy and I smiled, and hugged, with tears threatening to overtake closing night.

Rather than succumb to the sadness of the final show, I danced. Every night I danced back stage to “Smash the Mirror.” On my “Believe My Own Eyes” exit, before I hit the bottom of the offstage steps there’s a ripping drum riff as “Smash the Mirror” rockets off. I would time my descent so I could jump off on the first downbeat onto my dance floor. And I rocked out with the band. By closing night I had a choreographed drag routine down, with backup dancers and a cheerleading section. Some of the band said their favorite memory of Tommy is going to be ME DANCING! Everyone backstage would watch me. Many eventually joined in. Some stood aside and looked at me like I was the strangest being on earth while others wished they could be so free. I didn’t feel free – I felt compelled! There was no way I could even think of passing up the chance to dance during that number! The band was too good!

On closing night, instead of rushing off to change my hair color at the end of Act I, I stayed back stage and danced to “Pinball Wizard” with Mrs. Walker and all the stage hands. Oh my God it was so fun. Is there a way that my life can be like that every day? It’s been six days, and the thoughts still bring me to tears. I danced every time I was off stage. And it was great.

I still can’t believe that I have gotten to be Captain Walker two times in two great productions! This time I was most excited because never thought that I could ever do it again. The last time I was most excited because, after three and a half years, I was going to get to smoke cigarettes!

It started out strictly on stage, and I didn’t smoke at all after the show, well unless I had a drink and someone else was smoking . . . yeah, so, of course I was smoking a lot. By Christmas I was hooked again. So, I’ve smoked about a half pack a day for most of the last 8 years. Yeah. . Oops. I’ve often looked for that Ocean City memory that I could cling to again, but it's hard to believe that could happen. I even tried those smoking cessation tobacco replacement gums. But I wasn’t able to quit for more than a few months. This Tommy was the perfect bookend to my smoking, and I must stop forever on closing night. On stage.

But Mrs. Walker vetoed that idea. (By the way, Mr. and Mrs. Walker have no first names. We called them Nigel and Petula. Captain and Mrs. Nigel and Petula Walker.) Mrs. Walker and I became very close. I always fall in love with my costar anyway. But she was just so great. I’m not saying she was better than the first Mrs. Walker by the way. I can’t say that. Or that she was a better kisser. . .well, yeah she was a better kisser. Other than that, I couldn’t even begin to evaluate who was better. But anyway. She is an ex-smoker and she would smoke an occasional cigarette with me, or share a cigarette with me, over our post show martini’s.

It was her idea that I would quit at the closing night cast party instead, and share my final cigarette with her. Share my final cigarette with her fabulousness, Mrs. Walker? Damn right! Besides, I smoked 4 cigarettes on stage. The first and last, I light it and take a drag, and put it out. The middle times, I got to smoke about a third of it. That last time on stage, I’d have to look at the cigarette I just lighted, knowing it’s my last one, ever, and then put it out before the third drag! Well, that’s just cruel and unusual. So, her idea was much more fun.

The audience whooped after the finale. Applause, whoops, and whistles, while the band plays “Pinball Wizard” and the bows begin. The Mrs. and I are rocking out, dancing backstage while we wait for our turn. Finally we throw open the curtain and rush on stage to receive a grand standing ovation. Two steps in, while we’re checking in with each other, my leg in the air and I think “This is too good to rush.” And we both pulled back and walked.

Oh, oh, oh! And afterward, the band is still playing, and we’ve all exited. Most of us dancing and singing with the band, and Gypsy comes backstage from onstage, and says “Come On!” So I grabbed the Mrs. and pulled her back on stage, and the rest of the cast comes running on stage and we dance! And we wave! And they’re still there! The audience: Standing. Clapping. Cheering.

Rolf took that picture of me and young Tommy at the cast party. I asked him if I could have a picture with him and he said “So you can remember me?” I had a card for him too, and I opened it and read it to him because he can’t read yet. I was kneeling down to read him the card when Rolf got the picture.

A little while later, his mom Rose finds that I am not crowded by people for a moment. And she says that she wanted to tell me that there was one thing about Tommy that was hard for her to explain to her boy (I’m going to continue calling him Li’l Tommy). I remember thinking “What? Like child abuse? Drug abuse? Why tell me?”

“The other day he was pretending to smoke,” she said. “I asked him why he would want to do that, and he said he wanted to be like you."

Silently, I’m thanking God for sending me an angel.

“Then,” she went on, “Peter Jennings was being profiled on the news” (as he had just died) “and Li’l Tommy wanted to know what happened to him. So, I told him that he had cancer, and that it was a type of cancer caused by cigarettes.”

And he started to cry and saying “I don’t want my Tommy-Daddy to die.”

Later, the cast party continued at Mrs. Walker’s house. I asked Rolf to be my photographer, so that gave him some reason to interact, and he had a great time. We were sitting out on the deck. I remember that the guitarist was there, Big Tommy, Mrs. Walker, Rolf and I. As it became near time to go home, I started getting ready for my very last cigarette. Not coherent enough to notice that all the ex-smokers were smoking my cigarettes, I took one cigarette out of the package, and one by one broke all the others in half, dropping them in the ashtray.

The star of the show, my oldest Tommy, looks up from an intense career interview with Mrs. Walker, and says “Throw me a cigarette.”

Oops. “Sorry. I only have my very last one ever left. Wanna share?”

Mrs. Walker was laughing, saying “Oh My God, we smoked all those cigarettes?”

“um. . not so much. I tore them up, because it’s time for my last one.”

My last cigarette is the one my costars and I passed back and forth at the end of the closing night party, celebrating an exceptional production of Tommy, on a night when the audience stayed, standing and cheering, and when I heard that Li'l Tommy said: “I don’t want my Tommy-Daddy to die.”

Let it be, Lord. Let it be.

‘Tommy Daddy’ Doesn’t Smoke Anymore - Prologue

It’s been three days since Tommy closed, and I still haven’t had a cigarette.

Eleven years ago, although together for 13 years, Rolf and I still went separate ways for the major holidays. For Thanksgiving, he was at his folks place, I at mine. His sister-in-law, Chrissy, needed to get to Ocean City, MD and had asked him to drive her there. Begrudgingly, he said yes. When he told me that he was going to Ocean City after Thanksgiving dinner, I couldn’t have been more excited and insisted that I go with him. That came as a surprise to him, because he had forgotten how long it had been since I had seen the ocean.

The three hour trip turned into a 5 hour trip, because Chrissy needed to go to Baltimore first to put a cash down payment on new furniture she was buying. It was not “a stop on the way!” It’s amazing how much we let people take advantage of us. It’s also amazing that I made the 5 hour trip without a cigarette.

We got to Chrissy’s mother’s apartment at about 9:30 in the evening, Thanksgiving 1993. Starving, all of us bundled up in borrowed hats and gloves, and headed out to find food. It was much colder near the beach than it had been at home. We found an Italian restaurant that was open, and had the best lasagna ever.

There was still time to ride Ocean City's boardwalk trains through the Winterfest of Lights. It was open air, and so cold that Rolf and I could snuggle together without seeming gay. (Rolf hadn’t had those talks with his family yet.) There were twinkle light images that combined Ocean City life with Christmas: Surfing Santas, Santa hooking a Marlin from a charter boat, animated Sharks, Santa playing softball . . . dozens of them! And they were big! I laughed until I cried. That night, I was so in love with Rolf.

We warmed up for a minute in the apartment, and then set off for the three hour drive home. Rolf forgot my main reason for spending Thanksgiving this way. I needed to see the ocean. Nineteen ninety-three was the only year I hadn’t seen the ocean. If I didn’t get to see it, I thought my heart would break and I would die. .

My sweet sweet man looked at me, possibly getting ready to say that it was way too cold and way too late to go the beach, but his expression just turned into pure love instead. “Oh my God,” he said “I forgot you didn't see the Ocean this year!” And he turned off Route 1, and drove around a corner. The light poles were all wrapped up like candy canes as we got closer to the beach, and occasionally there other smaller light display decorations, that became more numerous and bigger as we got closer to the water where we found a whole new display of Winterfest on the beach.

Here they were nautical themed lights. There was a 30 foot tall light house scene that we walked right up too. We could see a forest of Christmas Trees, a family of whales playing in the water, King Neptune, looking like a Mer-man Santa in a shell-sleigh, being hauled by Seahorses. And it was cold. We were without hats and gloves, and I think Rolf had less of a coat than I did, so he was ready to go home as soon as we got out of the car.

You know what he did?

“Let’s go sing Christmas Carols to the fish!” I said. “I’ve just got to stand by the water, even if only for a moment.”

And he smiled and walked down to the water’s edge with me, and we sang “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells” and “Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel ... hmm mmmstumble. . la la Israel.” We kissed. And I had my first cigarette since I had gotten to his parents house, 9 hours earlier. As I walked back to the car, I looked down the beach at all the pretty lights.

I don’t smoke around Rolf, much. Never in the house, never if we’re in the same car. Since it had turned cold at home too, and it was so late when we got home that we went right to bed.

My Mom called me the next morning, mostly to reflect on how nice it had been for us all to be together. Of course, as you would expect, she said it was a shame that I left so early. She mentioned that my cousin’s father-in-law had died of emphysema on Thanksgiving Day.

We didn’t go anywhere on Friday. It was snowing very hard. We spent most of the day cuddling next to the fireplace and watching old movies in pajamas and sweatshirts. It was almost evening when the need for a cigarette became overwhelming enough that I was willing to go outside to smoke. Soon, I was searching through everything I had worn the previous day looking for my cigarettes. This is a chore that I knew better than to ask for help with.

Exacerbated, I said “I wonder what I did with my cigarettes?” And Rolf pounced.

Man he was mad. Purple in the face mad, yelling: “You’re cousin’s father-in-law died of emphysema," and I knew he had torn my cigerettes up and thrown them in the fire. He kept yelling, "and my grandfather died of emphysema, and your grandfather died of emphysema, and your brother-in-law’s father died of emphysema. Your niece and nephew and your cousin’s children will never have a relationship with their grandfathers! There’s no way in hell that I am going to watch you die the way that I watched my grandfather die.”

He yelled that, but I heard something else. I heard “I love you so much that I can’t imagine life without you or going through the pain of losing you to cancer or emphysema. So, please, you’ve just got to quit. Because if you don’t, I can’t be here to watch you die.”

Stunned, “Ok,” I said.

“Ok. Yes! Then my last cigarette can be the one I smoked while freezing on the beach in Ocean City while singing Christmas Carols to the fish.”

And so it was.

Sensation!

Saturday, August 13.

Well, I was so wrong. I thought Tommy was only going to rise to the level of: IT WON'T SUCK.

Just call me "He of little faith."

Last night, Mrs. Walker and I entered for our bows straight into a full standing ovation! We looked at each other as we walked, laughing and saying "Oh, My God!"

When I've gone up on my words (or dropped a gun), Time is measured in heartbeats. Everything becomes brilliantly illuminated as my mind works out a solution. There was no need for recovery last night. But I still had that stretch of time where everything became crystal clear. This time it happened as we walked toward the jubilant audience and triumphant cast, laughing and crying; to accept a thunderous ovation.

Vig's Warped Reality

Yesterday, Ruthless! The Musical, which I directed in January, was nominated for a large number of awards.
Tomorrow, The Who's Tommy closes.

Today, friends from work who saw Tommy last night showed up at my office door to tell me: how wonderful the show was, how surprising it was to see me embody a character such that they didn't recognize me, how fantastic the sound was, the lights, the sets. . . and I struggled to hold in the tears.

"How you doin', doll-baby?" Thomas asked when I picked up the phone. "Oh, honey, congratulations on all the nominations! You know you're going to sweep the awards. How happy are you?!"

I couldn't speak. I slammed my office door, and managed to tell him between stuttering breaths that I was not having a good day. (It's so fucking absurd.) Then I sobbed.

"Those are tears of Joy. . . right?"

"NO! That's what's so fucking absurd! All these people keep coming by my office and telling me I'm wonderful, and congratulating me for my success with Tommy and for my nominations for Ruthless, and all I can think about is that after tomorrow night it will all be over. All I'll have to look forward to is this god-damned hopeless fucking job."

I was really crying. You know, as if I really had something to cry about. . .(Did your Dad ever yell at you anything ever along the lines of: "If you don't shut that fuss up, I'll give you something to cry about."?)

"Something to cry about". . . oh damn. It's all so fleeting, then I still have to live my life, and go to a damn job, where it turns out that none of it ever mattered.

Wasted life: that's something to cry about. No it's not. of course it's not. I know it's not.

"Cheer the fuck up before I give you something to cry about!" - GOD

{deep breath, huge sigh}

Actually, I feel better now. . I wonder what that was about.

Sorry about that. And now back to our wonderfully charmed lives. . .

Tommy's Christmas

Tommy has turned out so well. I'm having a hard time facing that it's almost over. Just five more shows. (Click on the picture to make it larger.)

I'm feeling better. The anti-depressant has begun it's work. Every time I think of the show ending, I have to stop and take deep breaths before I break out in sobs. I don't know how I'll get through the final show. I hope I don't cry through the whole thing.

I'll be taking a break from theater this Fall because I need some time at home. I wish I could keep doing theater and take a break from work instead.

I wish I could stop wishing.

Approaching 25 Years of Blissful Hell

I’m fantasizing of running away to Mayberry RFD. I’d work at the grocery store by day, and maybe drink my self to an early grave at night. I’d get involved in, or start some local theatre, and sing in the church choir. Nosy people who might want to get to know me would find that I’m not interested.

Everybody here could get along without me. Those closest to me, would be better off in the long run. Especially Rolf, who could find a boy friend that isn’t sexually apathetic, and who might enjoy pretending to be a character from Seinfeld. Maybe he’d listen to a new boyfriend, one who doesn’t have a history of being wrong all the time, and get him-self into therapy.

Don’t you think two messed up people in a relationship is two to many?

Ok. I’m a bit fucked up. With the doctor’s approval, I’ve stopped taking one anti-depressant, and have moved on to another. This is one that worked for me before. But these things take a little time. Meanwhile, suicidal ideation is back. I hate that. I’m also frustrated with every one who I love. Even though I’ve hardly seen them because of the show I’m in. Part of the suicidal ideation is imagining what would happen to those I left behind. Luckily, I have a conscience, because that stops my unwelcome thought pattern. Yet, I’m wrongly thinking about them nagging me. I don’t think I want to be loved.

My sister is getting a divorce. So, she has reality to blame for her depression, me – just some stupid chemicals that get out of balance. Add in a job I hate, a lover so frustrated with life that he can’t talk to me without me wanting to wring his neck, insufficient exercise . . . and the hopelessness becomes overwhelming. I find it hard to not believe that my life will always be like this: pretty on the outside, but rotten at the core. I’ll become more and more closeted off, and he’ll become more and more frustrated.

And “being there at the end is what counts” will be a bittersweet truth.

I will always love him. I wish we were happy.

There was a period a few years ago when I was afraid to talk at home. I felt as if I were hugging the walls and trying to go unnoticed. I was afraid to talk, and angry that he didn’t want to hear anything I said. Of course that was during a very dramatic phase of his life, but none-the-less, everything I said made him mad. Now it’s the other way around. I’ll talk, and just wish he would shut-up. Everything he says is either negative, dismissive, full of fear and self-loathing, or down-right insulting; it makes me so mad. So mad, that even before he talks, or arrives, or calls, I am already and always mad at him. Well, to one degree or another.

I mean, I try. He tries. We got along fine last night. It was rather intentional, and a bit forced, but you do what you have to do. I was afraid we’d be mean and hateful. But I really wanted to spend some time with him. So I came home right after the show, and we had a late snack together. I don’t know what we talked about, but I didn’t get insulted, and I didn’t call him a jerk or asshole. We watched Jon Stewart together while sitting on the couch. I scratched his back for a long time, as he scratched my legs. I love that.

If we were ever no longer together, and I remembered a random and ordinary moment like that, I don’t know how I could go on.

Of course, I have to bear in mind that I suffer from a major depressive disorder, and I'm way off balance at the moment. But I just really can’t help but wish for true happiness. I just can't.

The wishing may destroy me.

I want these drugs to start working already!

How am I? Odd. I am odd.

It was a great weekend. Four shows, four great parties. People treating me like gold. One comment from a friend was that I was so great as Mr. Walker, that he wondered if people even knew how hard I was working to look like a straight man. He also said that when he saw me on stage, he asked “Where’s the rest of him?” My stage wife keeps hugging me and ecstatically telling me that she loves the choices I’m making. The young ladies in the chorus have taken to yelling “We Love You, Vig” in unison. A couple of the boys have flirted with me, and some of the men too. It’s very fun.

Then of course, Mondays suck. Tuesday sucks too.

I can’t wait to get back to the theater!