It has taken me 56 days since my last blog post. That in itself is scary to me. Not because my procrastination has reached new limits but, ask Josh Kobak, because I have told him several times I have an absurd obsession with the number 56 as it continues to show up in my life. One would call it a "favorite number". I call it ominous. And on a day like today, Friday the 13th. Numbers are playing a big factor.
I swear I didn't plan on sitting down and writing today. I diligently count the days on my calendar when I make the title for every blog post. Day 146. An incredibly boring number.
The truth is, I haven't found much to write about. I know many of you check in to see what it is like to be an actor on the road. I would like to post about all the glamorous parties and the wonderful celebrities we meet and all the fun lavish things I buy with my ginormous salary..... But then I would be selling you a great blog of fiction.
I stretched the time to think of new and inventive blogposts for you readers and each time I would shoot blanks and delay my writing by another day....then a week....and now apparently 56 days. When I remembered, "the only thing that is appealing about my blog is how real I try to keep it." So, indulge me in a tale that involves a little show anecdote and my personal life, will you?
Here is the truth: The show has become a job. A job that I always want to do well with but it's come with all the territories of being a job. The perks and the pitfalls. And this job is 24/7. As much as I thought that I would find comfort in living in a hotel and calling it home.... it's not possible.
We have developed an undeniable family here with the cast, crew and band of the show. We work, party, eat, DRINK together. Still it can be incredibly lonely on tour.
Most of our cast has significant others which I'm not convinced I envy or am relieved that that isn't my life. A part of me believes that, being alone in my hotel room with the next chapter of the Hunger Game isn't the worst fate but pretty pathetic. Another part questions, well, is it much better to be, constantly, miles and miles away from my love; I see it on the faces of my castmates who have visiting lovers. Upon their arrival, they are giddy with anticipation. The elation on their faces when to come to work that whole week, and then the inevitable decline into withdrawal when it's time to part. It seems merciless.
Still, perhaps I prefer to be the later. I've been told I could have a trick in any city, in every city. But it doesn't appeal to me. Who needs the clubs when I can find the company of the lonely right here in my hotel suite? A party of one is still a party of one even in a crowd of hundreds. I prefer actual silence and not that produced by thumping techno beats.
Wait....if you think this is a depressing story.... we've only just gone down the rabbit hole. I can hear my roommate Enrico now, saying in his most lovingly concerned voice with a tinge of humorous judgement, "what are you going through?"
Because more and more I think about that Sunday, nearly three years ago; I only remember it was a Sunday not because I obsess over our breakup, but because I had to miss the Tony Awards that year. The only year I've missed the live broadcast since my gay self discovered the darn ceremony, my superbowl. I things I do for love.... The things I did for HIM.
I was flying home to NYC from SLC International. This is the first time I left my heart out on the road and I vowed it would be my last. I will spare the readership of anymore gory details than this. But the upcoming weeks as I searched through why I was meant to find love and then to have to leave it behind in pursuit of a job, I didn't think I'd ever understand.
I raged against a lot after that break up with HIM. I remember the first day back in the city I started a random fight with a pushy woman on the subway of whom I would have never given two looks. I remember getting hammered at a friend's BBQ and finding the nearest couch to lay flat faced down on instead of being remotely social with the multitudes of attractive people. I remember one day ordering a bag of pot (medicinal?) then a lunch special from one of every cuisine that would deliver to my apartment and consuming them all before dinner.
From HIM, I had learned the power of external love, and therefore by product of relativity, learned the power of internal loathing.
A mere six months later, after a few interventions and few hundred "what are you going through?"'s.... I set out on a mission. I set out on a mission to prove HIM wrong. I set out to show HIM that I was worth something much more than even the man I allowed him to love.
I get my ass back in the gym. I get myself to a vocal coach. I audition for everything. Everything I do, I do to better myself in order to say "Fuck You, HIM!" I got the goods. Suddenly my successes outweigh the failures.
Slowly the image of HIM blurs. Or at least it dims in comparison to this newly vibrant ME.
Here's the tie in my, Twidiots: Like Jesus who turned water to wine, the Jesus of Suburbia learned to turn Love into Rage and back to Love again.
End of Anecdote. Or is it the beginning?
Because, still I am lonely as ever on this tour. Typing this blog post in my hotel room as I alternate between making lunch for Tommy McDowell and him washing dishes out of the bathtub. But, I've grown to know that loneliness is not for me to dwell on but another time to reflect and crack the nut that is this lesson in life.
Time has been my adversary. Patience has been my friend. Solitude has been my test. Clarity has been my goal.
In retrospect, it's ironic. It's because of HIM, I am on the road again. As our tour trucks drive en route farther and farther west; closer and closer to SLC International. I wonder, if the pushpins on the map of our tour are trying to point me back.
'Til then "I text a postcard sent to you, did it go through?"
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