Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (10 page)

We got together for lunch at an East Village café a couple of days later.

“So, how are you doing?” I asked.

“I have to tell you,” he said over his salad, his eyes bright and his face beatific, “getting sick has been in some ways the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”

“I won’t think you’re crazy,” I said, and I meant it.

“Well, I went through a
very
rough time a little while ago. I moved back home to Ohio and I went back to school and I was miserable, I hated it, and I got into some very bad scenes. I was really unhappy.”

“Bad scenes?”

“Where people were having a lot of unprotected sex.”

“Oh.”

“And I joined in. I knew exactly what I was doing. I did it on purpose. I wanted to die.”

All I could muster in response was, “Wow.”

“But my life has totally changed. Seriously, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. Even though I’m sick. Or maybe because I’m sick. I have a boyfriend now, who’s been so supportive. I’m very lucky, I feel.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said, and again, I really did mean it. Sitting across from him, I was convinced he wasn’t just in denial or something; I was completely bathed in his glow.

“Now here’s the part where I don’t want you to think I’m crazy,” he said.

“Okay.”

“You saw
Angels in America,
right?”

“Of course. Four times. I loved it.”

“Me too, I loved it, too.” He leaned forward in his seat, his hands clasped in front of him. “Well, you see, I had a vision recently. I saw an angel. I did. An angel came to me, but it wasn’t like an angel from the Bible or anything, it was like the angel from that play. And it told me that I was, well, that my illness was a gift, and that because of that gift I was now a healer. I can help to heal people’s fears and prejudices through my being sick.” He grinned. “And, I don’t know, that’s how I feel. That whatever time I have left I’m going to get to do a lot of good for people.”

I felt myself nodding. “That’s…kind of amazing.”

“You don’t think I’m crazy, right?”

“No, I don’t, I really don’t.”

“Well, I’m glad. I mean it. I’ve never felt better about my life before. I’m very, very lucky.”

The next time I saw him he was less animated but still cheerful.

“I want to show you something,” he said, and he pulled a large manila envelope out of his bag. “I just got this today.” Out of the envelope he drew a large X-ray, its plastic surface making a kind of music with its wobbles. He laid it on the table between us.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s of my throat.” He indicated a fuzzy white oblong shape at the center of what I could now make out was his esophagus. “This is a tumor they just found. It’s a kind of lymphoma.”

I knew that couldn’t be good news, and yet he was inexplicably chipper. But as surreal as our conversations were, I was grateful to get the chance to talk to Ben so easily and openly about his condition. Ben didn’t flinch or shy away from my questions as Mom did, so I asked him more. “Is it big?” I asked. “Can you feel it?”

“It’s moderate, apparently, and I can feel it a little bit when I swallow. It feels like something’s caught in my throat. And in a way, something is.”

“Is it treatable?”

“Yeah, absolutely. They can do a lot of stuff to lymphoma now.” He gestured to the X-ray. “But do you know what? I understand why I got this. It’s because I’ve locked up so many of my emotions over the years. I’ve stopped myself from saying so many things. So of course I’m going to get something that affects me in the throat. But now that I’m really speaking my mind about how I feel about things, now that I’m really living my life, I know I’m winning half the battle. I know I can beat it.”

I believed in what he was saying to a certain degree. But I was still worried about him.

“Well, I hope you do,” I said.

The next time I saw Ben, a few weeks later, was the last time I saw him before I left for Oklahoma. We went to a small Chelsea restaurant, where we were joined by his boyfriend, Calvin. Right away I saw that Ben had worsened, although he still occasionally glowed with a force that belied his weak, slightly spaced-out condition.

“Isn’t he doing great?” Calvin said, rubbing Ben’s back. Ben smiled wanly, his eyes wandering, seemingly of their own will.

“Yeah,” I said, although I really didn’t think so. Throughout the meal I kept watching Ben not eat. I listened to him start sentences that he didn’t finish and waited for him to register and then respond to things Calvin and I said to him. My stomach clenched up throughout the meal until I had little appetite, but I ate everything on my plate, and when it was time to go, I gave Ben a huge hug and told him, “You look wonderful. Keep it up. I’ll talk to you soon.”

He dazedly waved goodbye, smiling, and said, “Okay,” and then slowly walked down Eighth Avenue, Calvin supporting him with a strong arm around his thin shoulders.

I didn’t talk to Ben again until I called him from the pay phone in the University of Chicago MRI waiting room. The other end rang several times before it was picked up.

“Hello?” Ben said, his voice as meager as I’d ever heard it.

“Hi, Ben? It’s Anthony.”

There was a slight, strange pause before he replied, “Oh,
hi
!”

“I just wanted to call and say hello and see how you’re doing.”

Again there was a little pause. “Well, I’m okay.” Another pause. “I was just resting a little.”

“Is this a good time to talk?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, and then paused. “How are you?”

“Well, I’m okay. I’m at the hospital with my mom. She’s not doing too well at the moment.”

“Oh,” he said. And then a pause. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Me too,” I said. “She’s very strong, though.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I bet.”

I listened to him breathe for a second and then asked, “How are you doing?”

“Well, my throat is very sore.” A pause. “It’s the radiation. It kind of burns.” A pause. “I have to keep swallowing all the time.” A pause. “Or else it hurts too much.” A pause. “But I’m okay.”

“I hope so.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Calvin left me, though. I need to find a new place to live.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah. It’s okay.” A pause. “I’ll be okay. I have a couple of options.”

“Jesus, Ben. That’s terrible. I wish I could help you out,” I said.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. And paused. “Don’t worry.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” he said. A pause. “I’m sure.”

“Well, if you need my help, you let me know, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “I will.”

I rubbed my forehead and stared at the floor and searched for something else I could say, but the enormity of what he was going through stymied me. I came up with nothing, and I finally bailed out of the conversation with, “Well, I should let you go rest. I don’t want you to hurt your throat anymore.”

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks for calling me.”

“You’re welcome. I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

I hung up and stood there holding on to the phone for a few long minutes, clenching and unclenching my jaw, a pit opening up in my stomach, wishing there was something I could do for him, but knowing there wasn’t anything, at least from where I was. What kind of boyfriend was Calvin that he would leave his dying lover? I couldn’t get my head around it. But then I remembered that when I saw Louis, a character from
Angels in America,
leave his ill lover, Prior, in the course of the play, I had deeply empathized with Louis. I’d recognized myself in his fears—of facing death, of watching his lover fade away, of his own inadequacy to be the kind of caretaker his lover wanted and needed him to be. If I had been in Calvin’s position, I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to have the guts to stay with Ben either—I’d had enough trouble finding words of comfort and support for Ben on the phone just now, and I was having enough trouble being around my own mother’s illness in this past week. And that thought, that realization of the depths of my cowardice, flooded me with a terrible, overwhelming shame.

Mom’s MRI did not yield good news; the tumor had not shrunk at all. The previous several months of chemo had been ineffective and had in fact probably worsened Mom’s overall health; chemo was poisonous, after all. I was furious, but I didn’t air any of my frustrations to Mom. She took the news stoically.

“I think the radiation will be easier,” she said. “The chemo just wiped me out.”

“I know, Momma,” I said. “I hope you’re right.”

Soon after that day, the
Twister
production company called me; it was time for me to return to Ponca City. Melanie had already made her way back, so I set off on the road alone in my rental car, blasting my CDs all the way, happy to be speeding down I-55, and truly more than a little relieved to be getting away from the day-to-day pressures of witnessing Mom’s illness.

Little had changed on the set of
Twister
in my absence, and by the end of the shoot, after almost three months of being on location, I’d spent only five days in front of any camera. It was the least fulfilling job I’d ever had, including my brief stint at Starbucks. At least at Starbucks I’d felt myself to be of some real value. But on the set of
Twister,
my teammates and I were the tiniest cogs in a huge, unwieldy machine of a production. Creatively speaking, my experience on
Twister
was the antithesis of why I wanted to be an actor; there wasn’t even a shred of an opportunity for self-expression possible in what I was given to do. At least my bank account had been helped out, which was no small thing.

And luckily, I knew artistic fulfillment was only a few months away, when I’d get to do
Rent
again. Jonathan had called me while I was on location to tell me everything was moving forward for a full off-Broadway production at the New York Theatre Workshop in the fall. He even played a tape recording of a new song he’d written for me: a driving, rock and roll duet with Roger called “What You Own.” Jonathan told me he’d written it with my voice in mind, an incredibly flattering statement, and the first time any composer had ever paid me such a compliment.

I could hardly contain my anticipation to do
Rent
again, but I tried not to brag when my fellow actors on the set of
Twister
would ask me, “So what are you doing next?” and I’d reply, “Well, I’ll be doing a show in New York in a couple of months. I’m excited about it. I think it’s going to make quite a splash.” “That’s cool,” they’d say, or something like it, and then we’d go off to the craft services table for a snack or hang out in Helen Hunt’s trailer playing card games, biding our time before we could all be sent home again without having really worked at all.

A couple of weeks before my time on the
Twister
shoot was over, I got a call from my friend Leslie Smith, who’d offered me the title role in his ultra-low-budget film
David Searching
before I’d left for Oklahoma, although he’d been waiting for financing to come through before we could actually make the film. It turned out the financing was now in place, and we would start shooting about a month after I got home.

So my string of work that had begun with the workshop of
Rent
continued unabated; for the first time in years I hadn’t gone more than a couple of weeks without employment. I was always happiest when I was working, but even more so now, when all this work was helping me keep my mind off my mother’s illness.

Even sooner than I thought, I was going to be able to get the empty taste of
Twister
out of my mouth. As a surprise bonus, soon after I returned to New York from Oklahoma, I was cast as the lead in yet another low-budget film, this one a screwball comedy called
The Mantis Murder.
On-screen I played a dim-bulb cop, a deliciously silly, inept hero who saves the day in spite of himself, and offscreen I became good friends with Christina Haag, the film’s femme fatale. Christina was the only person in my life I allowed to call me “Tony,” because she sounded so refined and sexy when she said it. We spent five goofy weeks up in beautiful Greenwich, Connecticut, making splendid fools of ourselves in front of the camera, enjoying the late-summer heat, and appreciating each other’s comic gifts on and off the set. The experience was a perfect antidote to the difficulties of the last three months.