The Time of My Life (6 page)

Lisa moved to New York in the summer of 1974, and I threw out a few people who’d been staying at my place, so it would just be the two of us. I wasn’t exactly sure what the situation between us would be, but I wanted to make sure we had the space to explore it without six other roommates getting in the way.

As I soon discovered, Lisa had very distinct ideas about what we’d be doing together—and not doing. Despite the fact that we’d had plenty of makeout sessions in Houston over the years, she made it clear we’d be living together as roommates, not as lovers. Lisa, who was now eighteen, had been dancing seriously for three years and she was absolutely driven to do one thing: make it as a dancer. Now that she’d
made it to New York, she didn’t want any distractions getting in her way.

I wanted to make the Harkness company, too, of course, and I was incredibly focused on that goal. But my feelings for Lisa grew stronger and stronger the more time we spent together. After just a few weeks, I had no doubt that Lisa was the woman I wanted to be with. She was deep, talented, driven— and beautiful. As I played one of my favorite records of that summer—
The Best of Bread
—Lisa would catch sight of me gazing at her whenever the song “Baby I’m-a Want You” came on. She knew what I was feeling, and it frightened her.

But the attraction between us was so strong, and the intensity of our emotions so high, that something eventually had to give. And boy, did it. When Lisa and I finally got together in the winter of 1974–75, a few months after she’d moved in with me, it was like the dam had broken and the flood came rushing in. With all the fooling around we’d done in Houston, we’d never had sex together, but once we did—well, suffice it to say I’d never felt such passion in my life, and I couldn’t get enough of it. We were intoxicated by each other, and when we weren’t dancing or working, we were most often at our apartment spending every hour we could together.

We’d stay up all night, talking, laughing, and just enjoying each other. The intensity of it was thrilling—I never thought I could feel so strongly about another person. We were discovering so much about each other, and learning about ourselves, too, all in the excitement of first love.

Lisa felt it, too, but she was also scared. She worried about giving in to her feelings for me when she wanted to be totally focused on dancing. And she wondered whether she was making a mistake by getting so deeply involved with me.

Years later, Lisa dug up her diary pages from that time, and they show how deeply torn she was over what was happening between us.

I really don’t know what to do (concerning Buddy). I’m so frightened. I want to sit down and talk it over with him, but I’m afraid I might startle him too much or him think I’m jumping to conclusions….

Sometimes I wonder whether I’m being shallow and just getting carried off like so many girls I know always do. God, I’m so afraid. I’ve never done anything like this before and I feel danger in getting close to a person and caring more than I should….

I wonder if I should move out. I might have to. But I’d see him every day anyway [at Harkness] so there’s not much good for my head in that. What I should do is find a way to get out and away as often as possible. I can’t get my life too tied to his.

I had no idea Lisa was considering moving out, which was no doubt a good thing, as it would have scared me to death. Looking back, these are the musings of a young woman who’s feeling torn in different directions and afraid to make a wrong step. But I wouldn’t have seen it that way. I’d have felt that she was rejecting me, which would have rocked my fragile self-esteem to the core. My feelings for her were now so strong, and I was so sure of them, that I felt paralyzed at the idea that I might lose her.

I wanted to feel the way we were feeling forever, to lock in this relationship and this love. Lisa and I had talked a little bit about where our relationship was headed, but I never got the
sense that she was anxious to commit to anything long-term. But I was. I wanted to marry Lisa. And one night in the spring of 1975, as we were playing around on the couch, I decided it was time to raise the subject.

We were wrestling and tickling each other, just messing around, and all of a sudden I said, “Lisa, why don’t we get married? Why don’t we just go ahead and do it?”

Of all the responses a man hopes to hear to this question, dead silence isn’t one of them. But Lisa was quiet for a moment before responding slowly. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “That could happen.”

I sat up, every nerve ending on alert. “When do you want to do it?” I asked her.

“Well,” she said, pondering, “how about fall of next year?” Meaning, the fall of 1976—nearly a year and a half away.

I could feel panic rising from my chest to my throat. For some reason, I just knew that unless we got married right away, it was never going to happen and I would lose Lisa forever. “No,” I said. “If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right away—like, next month.”

Now it was Lisa’s turn to panic. All the fears she already felt, of suppressing her own desires in order to be with me, of getting distracted from her dancing, were coming to a head right now. She was eighteen years old, and although she loved me, she didn’t feel ready to get married. But she knew me well enough to know how sensitive I was, and how hurt I’d feel if she turned me down outright. So she had tried to buy herself some time—but I wasn’t having it.

“Lisa, we need to get married right away,” I told her. And that was that—I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I told her I loved her and needed her, and couldn’t live without her. I
even told her that if she wouldn’t marry me now, I’d run my motorcycle into a stop sign. I’m not proud of that particular moment, but it’s evidence of just how afraid I was to lose her. No matter how confidently I projected myself onstage and in everyday life, inside I was still a scared boy—afraid of rejection and willing to do whatever was necessary to stave it off. At the same time, I really believed that if Lisa didn’t love me now, she would love me later. I would win her.

This wasn’t the best of circumstances for starting a marriage, but to my relief, Lisa said yes. But the sting of her first response stayed with me for years. For the first decade of our marriage, whenever we had a fight, I’d accuse her of not loving me enough. “Well, you didn’t want to marry me anyway!” I’d say. “You only agreed because I pushed you into it!” This was a tremendous insecurity of mine, and though Lisa and I always loved each other, it took a long time before enough trust built up for me to feel confident in her love for me.

Lisa and I got married in Houston on June 12, 1975, just two months after getting engaged. We didn’t have much money, so we cut corners wherever we could: The ceremony was in her family’s backyard, the reception was at my mom’s studio, and Lisa made both her wedding gown and the three-piece suit I wore. She had been doing some sewing with a famous costume company in New York to make extra money, so she was able to make beautiful wedding clothes for both of us.

In photos taken during the ceremony, both Lisa and I have deer-in-the-headlights expressions. I think neither one of us could quite believe what was happening, and we both felt some fear about taking this step. Lisa cried through the whole
wedding, except for one moment—when she tried to put my ring on and couldn’t quite get it, she smiled a sweet little smile. As she stood there with tears in her eyes, all I could think was, “She’s crying because she doesn’t want to marry me.” But she was actually just overwhelmed with emotion.

In fact, she later told me she had a realization during the ceremony. Looking at me, she had seen my vulnerability, and she suddenly had the thought that marrying someone is just about the nicest thing anyone can do for you. It’s making a decision to hold nothing back. I was making a public vow to commit myself to Lisa forever, and she was touched by how profound that was. Unfortunately, I mistook the look on her face for horror, and I don’t think I’m smiling in a single photo from our wedding ceremony.

Marrying Lisa was the best decision I ever made, and thirty-four years later I can say that it turned out better than I ever could have hoped. But looking back, I’m struck by how very young we were, and how little we really knew about each other, or anything, for that matter. There was a real passion between us, but that’s not what made it last. It’s the commitment we made—and kept—to work on the relationship as much as we needed in order to keep it going. Everybody goes through rough times, and we certainly ended up having our share, but we’ve always found a way to come back together, which is easier said than done.

Just as Lisa did, I found myself wondering whether, by getting married so young, I’d missed my opportunity to have real adventures in life. Right after high school, a friend and I had been offered the chance to crew a sailboat going around the world. We hadn’t done it, and it was one thing that I feared I’d regret later on. Part of me wondered how many other opportunities
I might miss out on now that I was married. But the other part of me was so happy to have found the woman I could ride off with into the sunset that nothing else mattered.

For our honeymoon, Lisa and I borrowed a motorcycle and rode to Lake Travis, about 180 miles outside Houston. We were pretty much broke, so we just camped and brought along a little cookstove for meals. We stayed for a week, and although it was about as low-cost as you could get for a honeymoon, we both had the time of our lives. For all the anxiety we’d felt at the wedding, we were happy and excited to begin our marriage together out in nature, just the two of us.

This was the beginning of our life’s journey together. But as we discovered when we returned to New York, it wouldn’t be all sunshine and roses.

Back in New York, the Harkness Ballet was sputtering to an end. Despite the support of Mrs. Harkness and the sparkling new theater at Lincoln Center, the company folded— and with it, my dreams of becoming a Harkness company dancer ended, too. Lisa had already left Harkness to train at the Joffrey Ballet, so she was set. But I needed to find a new place to continue pursuing my dream.

I managed to win a spot in the Eliot Feld Ballet, one of the most respected companies in New York. Every dancer in Eliot Feld was a soloist, so the quality of the dancing was extremely high. I was excited to join the company and immediately began striving to move up within it. I wanted to become a principal dancer, to get the best roles I could. The level of artistry in my dance was rising, and I wanted to make it to the top of the ballet world.

But as a letter from Lisa home to her mother describes, my knee problems were continuing to threaten my dance career:

Yesterday Buddy went to a doctor because his knee was giving him a lot of trouble again. A Dr. Hamilton, really good,
specializes with dancers and has written books on their injuries. The first of many, many doctors that Buddy felt he could trust.

Nothing really new about the knee except the arthritis has set in faster than was expected. The bones are grinding flatter and flatter. He was given lots of exercises and we bought a brace to prevent it from moving too much…. He said he had the knee of a 45-year-old man, and in five years it will be that of a 100-year-old man. Cause for serious thinking. He might not be dancing much longer, a year is the limit.

This news had been especially painful to hear, because it came just as I was making real headway with Eliot Feld. Lisa’s letter went on:

Kinda awful because right now he’s at a crossroads and it’s just now that things are rushing out to greet him. Eliot is crazy over him, the things he has said to him are more than anyone could hope to hear. Cora [Cahan, Eliot Feld’s company manager] says he’s not just good on stage, he’s fantastic. And he is, and it’s just now beginning to be noticed.

But she also noticed something else, something deeper. One thing I’ve always loved about Lisa is her ability to see beyond the obvious things. She’s very intuitive and uncovers things most other people can’t see. And at this point, she was realizing things about me that I didn’t even see myself.

One thing about Buddy is that he can be equally fantastic if he does something else. His charisma, or whatever, shines as great. I think it will turn out well, he doesn’t have to stop dancing
altogether, just not be in a situation that demands too much. And there are so many things he wants to do, but never has the time: writing, his songwriting, is an important part of him.

Everything’s kind of a blur right now, but something just hits me that Buddy will bloom when he has the freedom to give himself to all the things he wants to do. His reasons for dancing confuse him so much. He can enjoy it, but something drains him and downs him. As he said, this would show if it was dancing or not. I, personally, at this point think that dancing is a big part of him, but not his whole life, and that makes him feel guilty. Something bothers him.

Lisa was right—dancing was, and had always been, a source of conflicting feelings for me. It stemmed from trying to please my mother, from trying to make myself not just a good dancer but the perfect dancer, and from pushing myself beyond my limits. Everything Lisa said in this letter was true, and although I didn’t realize it yet myself, it was what would eventually save me when I had to stop dancing full-time—a time that was closer than I thought.

Meanwhile, our life in New York was a complete whirlwind. Between rehearsals, teaching, singing, and side jobs, we were constantly in motion. I’ve always been this way, trying to pack in as much as I could in a day, but looking back I don’t know where we ever found the hours to sleep. We were so busy running around trying to make ends meet, to survive, to accomplish, that we were in overdrive all the time.

In addition to the dancing, training, and part-time jobs, we also spent the first couple of years auditioning for musical theater roles during the ballet’s off-season. I performed in
Music Man
at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey, and did the
role of Riff in
West Side Story
at the Northstage Dinner Theatre in Long Island. But although these roles were fun to play and brought some money in, they were considered a step down for serious dancers. For a ballet dancer, the only real dancing is ballet—everything else just pales. Even dancing in Broadway shows.