Happy Accidents (12 page)

When I met Laura in New York, I had always been quick to end friendships. I would semiconsciously build a case against them, and at some point it would come to a head and I’d have to say, “I’m outta here.” Laura would not let me do this, though I tried in dramatic fashion more than once.

The closest I came to succeeding was in
1998
when we were roommates in Los Angeles. We were hiking the ridge up Runyon Canyon, talking. I had been resenting what I interpreted as her flirtation with a woman I had a crush on. All the way up the ridge, I built a case against her. I needed her to admit it, and apologize, but she would have none of it. I got all worked up, and by the time we hit the top I was yelling and she was crying. She could not admit what she didn’t believe she’d done, and I could not let go of what I thought I’d seen. So I said, “That’s it! If you won’t cop to this, I am through with you.”

We walked down the hill and got into the car in silence. I was a wreck, still hurt that she wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to hear, but more than that I was afraid I had gone too far with my anger. I had pushed her away, and I found myself terrified that she would actually go. But Laura said, “You know, Jane. I’m not going anywhere.” And I started to cry.

It had never occurred to me that a friendship could survive a huge blowout like that. I tended to whip up a gigantic outrage (something at which I excel) so that I could dump my friends before they dumped me. I believed it was “one strike and you’re out.”

But Laura and I have been friends for twenty years now. I credit the longevity of our friendship to that moment in the car at Runyon Canyon. It was the turning point for me. Trust replaced tests.

The Real Live Brady Bunch
ran for ten months in New York, and then in
1992
the Soloways took it to Los Angeles, to the Westwood Playhouse (now the Geffen Playhouse). I went to the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York and withdrew my life’s savings—
$10,000
—and lit out for Hollywood.

We all got apartments in Westwood, at a huge student housing–type building on Le Conte and Gayley, a bit down the street and across the road from the theater. Again, everyone bunked up together except for me. I got a huge one-bedroom that I furnished sparsely from a furniture rental place on Wilshire. It was all very white-lacquered and faux Southwestern. It looked more like a cheap hotel in Phoenix than a home.

Laura and Trixie called me on opening night to say break a leg. They also gave me the great news that they were about to make the cross-country trip via Route
66
to Los Angeles. Trixie was thinking of opening a restaurant in town, and Laura was still in her shadow, following along. “Hiding her light under a bushel,” as her mom would say. Though I had only known Laura for a few months, I was thrilled to have my pal on her way to me.

I was nursing a huge, naive crush on Laura at this point, too. I chastely idealized her and daydreamed about having her sing just for me: any thought of sex or carnal desires would have sullied it. Her music made me swoon as I listened to it on cassette tapes in my car and on a boom box in my cavernous apartment. She wrote such beautiful songs of longing and lost love, and I lost myself in the quiet yearning and almost mournful quality of the words. I
exalted
her. She became an ethereal goddess to me.

Now, if you met Laura Coyle, the last word you would use to describe her is ethereal. She is firmly on the ground. But such was the extent of my projection, and my need for an enchanted love that lived only in the confines of my own imagination. I really don’t think I wanted Laura to be my girlfriend, but I did want her to let me fantasize about how perfect our love could be. I chose the wrong girl.

Laura arrived and we started hanging out all the time. She and Trixie moved into an apartment on Speedway, the last street before you hit the Pacific Ocean in Venice Beach. They convinced me to move from my apartment in Westwood to a second-floor ocean-view studio a few buildings down the street from them. It was tiny but clean and open and only eight hundred bucks a month. I was tickled pink that these gals wanted me. I also secretly prayed for the demise of Laura’s relationship with Trixie, so that I could have the fantasy of her all to myself.

Laura was on to me. “What’s up with you, Jane? Are you in love with me?” “What?!” I would say incredulously. “Think highly of yourself much?” She said, “You’re all goo-goo-eyed right now and I want to know what’s going on with you.” I’d dismiss her, hoping she couldn’t see what she was obviously very hip to. Damn if she wasn’t trying to kill my crush for me by making me come down to earth and talk about it. Reality always kills a good fantasy. I hated to lose this one, but as the good times continued to roll with Laura and I got to see more and more of who she really was, our true real-life friendship solidified itself. In other words, I gradually stopped projecting on to her who I thought I wanted her to be and fell in love with my friendship with the real Laura.

So much so that when she told me she and Trixie were going back to New York, I was devastated. They had moved me all the way out to Venice Beach, away from the only friends I had (such as they were), only to leave me alone, again.

Right before Laura left, she looked me directly in the eye and said, “Please don’t think I’m abandoning you.”

She knew me well. I didn’t want to be known that well. I wanted her to know the good and funny me, not this dark and tender me. I, of course, denied that I would be affected in the least by her absence and urged her to have a great trip! But I’d never felt as alone as I did in those days after Laura left.

After Laura’s exit, Venice Beach revealed itself as an increasingly unfriendly and hostile place. I had to park in a lot a few blocks from my apartment, and I’d walk down Speedway at night, jumping at every noise. I always thought I was going to get raped. My head, which is usually a very busy place, would fill up with gruesome images of what could happen to me.

I couldn’t even get joy out of living by the ocean. The vast expanse of blue extending to the horizon made me feel frighteningly insignificant, so I kept my shades closed at all times. If I happened to catch people walking down the beach, I would wonder why they were so happy when I was not.

One night, an earthquake rocked my little apartment just as I was taking a middle-of-the-night pee. The shower curtain rolled back and forth on the rod and I couldn’t stop peeing quickly enough. I took this as an act of nature aimed aggressively and directly at me.

Then in the very early morning hours of July
14
—my thirty-second birthday—I awoke to a bloodcurdling scream. I looked out my window to see a guy with a shaved head and covered with tattoos, obviously drunk, brandishing a machete at another guy and cutting him, just slicing him up. There was blood all over the pavement, I could hear sirens coming, and I just thought,
WHAT THE FUCK! IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!

While this certainly didn’t endear me to my beach apartment, it did make for a rather witty share at my AA meeting that day. I got laughs and lots of “Happy Birthday”s out of it. Most people thought I’d been in AA for years because of the way I told stories. I spoke at a lot of meetings and turned down a lot of women who wanted me to be their sponsor. Thinking back on it, I probably could’ve made some good friends. I just couldn’t get past the fear that once they got to know me, they would be disappointed. So I walked around like a circuit speaker, and I acted as if I knew and liked who I was—even though on the inside I was feeling more and more like a fraud and a dark mess.

During the day I was fine because I was busy and had the comfort of routine. Every day started with coffee, then a meeting in the morning, errands, a nummy lunch out at one of my favorite joints in the afternoon, and then the show at night. But by the time I took the terrifying walk from my parking space to my apartment, I was so sad and alone. I went to bed that way, and throughout the night I would wake up darkly depressed.

Once, in the middle of the night, during a time when I was almost paralyzed with grief, I awoke from a deep sleep into a vivid illusion. Lying in bed, I felt warm, loving arms go around me, as if someone were holding me. Though there was no one there, I was suffused with a feeling of pure love and comfort, and I fell back into my deep sleep. I was in the car in the early afternoon of the next day when, with a start, I remembered it. I had the distinct feeling that
I was not alone.
It was such a relief.

Soon after, I met the woman who would help me make my next huge leap. I found her at a women’s AA meeting. She was in her late fifties, with a solemn, world-weary demeanor. Though she was quiet most of the time, when she did speak, everyone leaned in to listen. Her compassion was palpable. I never knew exactly what her story was, but I had shared something at a meeting one day that had to do with feeling disconnected from my family. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was one of those honest, revealing things I regretted saying as soon as it came out of my mouth. After the meeting, she came up to me and said, “I can hear how painful this is for you and how much you love your family, and just know it is never too late.” I felt I had been heard and
gotten.
I found out she was a therapist. I went to a few more of these meetings before I asked if I could make an appointment with her.

The time had come for me to do something about feeling so alone. I had slowly but surely been distancing myself from my mom and dad for years. Julie and Bob were barely on my radar. Julie had gotten married and had four kids I barely knew. Though I knew where he worked, I wasn’t really sure what Bob did for a living or if he had a girlfriend. Family was supposed to be your rock; mine felt like something I had set sail from a long, long time ago. Why had I cut myself off from them, when I really loved them? It was the gay thing. I still hadn’t told them.

I went home every year for Christmas, and we would spend time together doing holiday stuff. But the conversation always stayed on the surface of things, and I talked mostly about my career. What personal details I did share didn’t land as I wanted them to. For instance, I told them I was in AA, and they just didn’t get it. My mom told me she thought I was just going through a drinking phase in college. Later she told me she thought I joined AA because I wanted attention. It wasn’t something I could convince her of. I hadn’t only drunk less than most people in AA, I looked like a lightweight next to many members of the extended family. I remember hearing about an uncle on my mom’s side who lost a leg due to gangrene from alcohol poisoning. When I suggested that he might have been an alcoholic, as people do not normally lose limbs to moderate drinking, my mom dismissed me with “No, he just liked to have a good time.”

I was extremely edgy during those visits. With so many things unsaid, I became very short and critical with everyone. They all felt uncomfortable, too, and I could feel them walking on eggshells around me. They weren’t asking, and I wasn’t telling.

But we went right on visiting. One time, when they came to visit me in my beach house of sadness, I showed them some recent Brady pictures. My dad saw one photo of a couple of guy friends with their arms around each other. He pinched up his face and pointed to it and said, “What’s with those guys? Are they gay together?” I could hear the nail in the coffin of self-disclosure. I was sure I would never tell them I was gay.

So, back to the wise late-middle-aged lady therapist. I told her all about my relationship with my family. She quite simply asked me, “Do you want to lose them?” I said no. So she said to write my parents a letter. “You don’t have to send it,” she said. “Tell them how you feel about them and why you want them in your life. Tell them why you’ve distanced yourself from them and what you’re afraid they will do if they knew this about you. Then come back next week and read it to me.

“Again, you don’t have to send it.”

Now, we all know where this is going. Therapists always tell you that you can write the letter, but you don’t have to send it. Because no one will ever read it, you pour your heart out in writing it. Then, you anxiously read it to your therapist, hoping to be heard and approved of. At this point the therapist gives you a nudge—all it takes at that point is a nudge—and you put the damn stamp on it. It is a ruse. If you don’t want to end up sending the letter, don’t write it.

But the thing was, I wanted to fix these relationships. As I wrote the letter, my love for my mom and dad flowed freely. I realized how much I missed them and what fabulous people my parents are. It was absolutely honest. I wrote that I could feel us drifting apart, and that a lot of it had to do with who I was: that I was gay, and that although I hadn’t had any real relationships yet, whenever I did it would be with a woman. I told them that I wanted them to know this, so we could be closer.

I finished the letter and I felt good about how I’d expressed myself. I was able to articulate my fears, and my hopes for the future, and the whole thing was just very cathartic. When I read the letter out loud in therapy, I got all choked up and felt like I might hurl. My lady therapist said, “That’s lovely.”

Like I said, all it takes is a nudge. . . . I said, “I think I’ll send it.” She said, “Okay.”

Then I had to drop it in the mailbox. I had to physically let it go, and I literally shook as it fell from my fingers. I immediately worried about my mother and what she would say to her friends. Would she be ashamed or embarrassed? Then I thought of how confused my dad might be. He wasn’t a homophobe, but this was so far from his experience. He didn’t understand “gay.”
What have I just done?
And then the mailbox clanged shut, and it was gone.