Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences (6 page)

“I feel like we’re exploiting Nancy!” Touch My Heart with Your Foot exclaimed, sniffling, during the circle discussion after
our final dress rehearsal, the night before we opened. I crawled across the circle to comfort him, caressing his head in my
lap, while the others piled on into a group hug, like little lion cubs. As I shushed and reassured him and the rest of the
company, saying that not only did I feel fortified by the topless moment but it was, in my mind,
essential to the piece’s integrity
, I realized that, truthfully, rehearsing it, I felt nothing at all.

Then came the actual show. For all the numb nothingness of the times my top came down in our dingy rehearsal space, performing
it live in the dark, bathed in hues of soft blue, was exhilarating. The faces of the first few rows, the only ones I could
vaguely make out, bore startled expressions when first my breasts were thrust before them, but almost instantaneously, surprise
morphed into warmth-tinged awe. I may not have been able to see beyond those first two or three rows, but the vibe in the
space was unmistakably clear: we are here, together, beholding some naked tits, and it is all going to be OK.

I never once saw Debbie Harry during our brief run on Wooster Street, though our piece followed hers, but my mother was in
the audience for our final per formance. She had come alone in a hired car, then stood in line for an hour to get a ticket.
I hadn’t been expecting her; my father had sent his regrets, saying that he couldn’t stay awake for a midnight show. (“What
kind of show goes on so late?” he had asked. “They must be assuming no one will come, and far be it for me to prove them
wrawng
.”) But my mother, ever the dutiful housewife, eternally submissive to the blustery protestations of my father, was not about
to miss my return to the stage, with or without him, witching-hour moments of dishabille notwithstanding.

“What did you think?” I asked her afterward.

“I think your boobs are small,” she said, cutting right to the chase. “But they look very pretty under the lights, and for
that you should be damned glad.”

I would go on to repeat the breast-baring act in subsequent per-formance pieces with Cary, and also for other helmers, becoming
known in certain fringe theater circles downtown as the Chick Who’s Willing to Show Her Tits in the Show If Need Be. Though
none of this shows were exactly like
Ball and Chain
, my toplessness in each of these outings was generally justified by the mini-themes that coursed throughout, usually having
to do with contemptuousness for “the male gaze,” positing the usual theories about “possession and ego,” what it is to be
an object both admired and deplored, and how when one looks at something, one sees not only the
thing
but one’s
relationship
to the thing, blah, blah, blah. What ever. All I know is that at some point in these melees, my shirt would come flying off.
Show after show: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, then shirt off, top down, bra off, show the groceries. And yet I loved it:
the connection, the delicious albeit artificial intimacy I felt with the audience every single time. I couldn’t help thinking
that this was what one of the Method-acting teachers I’d had at NYU must have meant when she said that acting was the art
of “behaving private in public.” For many years, I convinced myself that I was being a brave feminist and a committed artist,
that all of these pieces
really
needed such a moment. But I suspected—just a little—that these bits of nascent exhibitionism under the guise of “female empowerment”
also served my compulsive need to make everyone happy, and I often wondered if all my supposed outrageousness made me any
less compliant than usual. In any case, it got old and so did I, and several years later, in a theater in East L.A., I put
my bra back on and stopped taking my shirt off—publicly, anyway. I was a little sorry to leave all that behind, wondering
if I could ever again be that unadorned, that
naked
, but also, at the same time, that commanding of an entire room’s attention? But feelings of wistfulness never lingered when
I admitted to myself the truth: none of the times that had followed had surpassed that rapturous first with
Ball and Chain
when, ditched by my man, dissed at my job, I’d wanted nothing more than to act in the theater.

3. Mud Season in Maine

Ned was the
best acting teacher I ever had. He made acting seem simple yet beautiful, no mumbo jumbo, nothing magical or elusive. There
was an understated glamour about him like that of a rock star in the Eric Clapton or Stephen Stills tradition: not loud or
rowdy, but “slowhand” and intense, occasionally dark, always witty. He also wasn’t one of those creepy weirdos who seem to
be playing out some psycho-Svengali fantasy wherein they “make you feel,” like Ray, a teacher I had freshman year.

I remember once working on Blanche in that scene from
Streetcar
when her boyfriend Mitch says, “You’re not clean enough to bring into the house with my mother.” Right after my scene partner
said that line, Ray punched me—hard—in the arm, and then, when I turned to him, horrified, he smacked me across the face.

“A breath went through you, yes?” Ray asked quietly, using his standard query line, his face a mask of placid madness.

Ned, being an actor himself, abhorred games like this and was both respectful and a straight shooter with his comments and
critiques. Everyone—guys, girls—loved him and felt indomitable when he shone his approving light in their direction. “Yeah,
I was hanging out with Ned,” you’d hear someone gush, clearly feeling exalted by the proximity to cooler-than-shit Ned, Working
Actor. An ex-hippie who, like most of the guys in his generation, played guitar serviceably, he was constantly throwing parties
at his pad that would culminate in big Simon and Garfunkel sing-alongs. He was a voracious pot smoker, had eaten acid “like
candy” through the sixties, and told intoxicating stories of marrying his first wife rather whimsically in a wheat field.
He maintained that he’d never felt more “in tune” or “free” than when he was butt naked onstage in front of a full audience.

Ned cast me as the lead in a play he was directing that got me a lot of attention. I played a tough-talking, booze-swilling,
pothead slut for whom the party could never end. The character presents herself as this freewheeling bon vivant, when in actuality
she is a deeply insecure, mixed-up mess, terrified of being alone. It was a great part, and working with Ned was amazing;
he made me feel safe. He got fantastic performances out of everyone in the cast and would take us all out to eat after rehearsals,
his treat. Once, we were rehearsing this part where I made out with a guy in the middle of a chaotic party scene, and the
guy—clearly taking advantage of the situation—started feeling me up. He was lying on top of me, being really rough; I couldn’t
move. Ned had a fit.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he yelled, throwing his clipboard on the floor and grabbing him. “Not in my show, motherfucker.
Don’t you dare take advantage of her or I will throw your ass right out!”

Because I had never been a partyer, Ned spent a great deal of time patiently teaching me how to roll joints like a pro (we
used tea, which, because it smelled exactly like pot, caused quite the
scandale
) and how to mix cocktails with the unflinching poise of a seasoned drunk. The playwright—a well-known writer—was thrilled
with the production and throughout the run would come backstage with her famous boyfriend and assorted fabulous luminaries,
all of them breathlessly extolling my performance as well as Ned’s inspired direction. A few nights after the play closed,
Ned and I were hanging out and doing a little postshow recap. “You’re gonna have one helluva career, Nance,” he told me over
a shared Caesar salad and fries. Later that night, when we stopped briefly at his apartment, he shoved his tongue in my mouth
even though he had a girlfriend. I completely freaked, ran out of his apartment, and never wanted to speak to him again.

Seven years later, living once again with the Jazz Musician, I heard that Ned was in town and teaching a new class. Even though
I was still disgusted by what had gone down between us, Ned remained the best acting teacher I’d ever had, and I was desperate
to go back to class. I wasn’t getting much in the way of acting work and was feeling very dejected about it. I couldn’t believe
that after all the promise I’d had at school, getting cast in this and that, I was washed up at twenty-seven. As Sandra Dee
once said, I felt like a “has-been who never was.”

I figured I was a grown-up woman now and the whole Ned debacle had taken place when I was just a girl. I told myself I had
“moved on” from all of the resentment I had harbored in the months and years after the Pass. Besides, a part of me had always
thought it had been my fault, anyway. I had probably been unconsciously flirty: “I led poor, hapless Ned on” is how that bit
of reasoning would go. Never mind that when the Pass happened, I was twenty and Ned was thirty-five. Never mind that he was
my teacher, someone I trusted, and also never mind that I had assumed he was faithful to his girlfriend, who had also been
his student once and whom he had started seeing when his marriage had ended with a woman who had
also
been, yes, Ned’s student. Ned liked to fuck his students—so what? I was the one with issues about it.

So, reminding myself of all of this, I signed up to be Ned’s student again. And right from the get-go, it was great. Within
weeks of studying with him, I started getting my confidence back, internalizing Ned’s frequent morale boosts, feeling like,
“Yeah, I’m actually good at this. I should be working.”

“You’ve got a great voice,” Ned enthused one day while we grabbed a cup of coffee and a bagel after class. We had fallen back
into an easy friendship, picking up exactly where we had left off before the Pass.

“Seriously, you sound like Tammy Grimes. You could make tons of cash doing voice-over crap until you get a break.”

“I dunno,” I shrugged. “I can’t even get in to see a decent commercial agent. I’ve actually done voice-overs before and kinda
dig ’em, too. But I don’t really have the money to make a voiceover tape, which apparently you need to—”

Ned waved this off. “I’ll call my agent. You’ll meet him and he’ll send you out. You’ll get some gigs; you’ll make a tape
from that. Done.”

Sure enough, I went to see Ned’s agent, who took me on right away, and soon I was making enough money to quit my terrible
temp job. I started auditioning more often and landed a role in a short film starring Hume Cronyn. Things were looking up.

Then one day just before Christmas, the Jazz Musician announced that he was leaving me—again. “I am the reincarnation of Jack
Kerouac,” he told me. “I need to be free.” Only two years before, I had taken him back, his previous indiscretions notwithstanding,
because I hadn’t been able to bear not being with him; otherwise, I’d thought, I would surely go mad. But then we moved in
together, and I had gone mad anyway, raging at him for his duplicities whenever my insecurities got the better of me. I could
never let it go. What we had shared in our relationship’s first incarnation was gone—irrevocably shattered by both of us being
who we were, while pretending to be who we were not. Somehow, despite our myriad problems, I had
still
convinced myself that we were getting married—a notion blighted, finally, by his past-life revelations.

Following his departure, I promptly forgot all about my career jump start and became morbidly obsessed with getting him back.
I ate Xanax and called psychics at 900 numbers. I visited assorted tarot readers, whose readings I cross-referenced, scrutinizing
them as though they were the Zapruder footage. I wandered, bleating pathetically, from one friend’s apartment to the next,
and when I’d exhausted those resources, I insinuated myself into the company of quasi acquaintances and strangers. I paced
back and forth, clutching my sheaf of tarot readings, positing absurd questions and theories, while people sat tensely on
their sofas, scared that whatever I had was catching. Eventually, no one would return my calls, and frankly, I couldn’t blame
them.

After I’d inexplicably missed a few of his classes, Ned got wind of my breakup from one of my scene partners. The next day,
a basket from Balducci’s arrived with food and cookies and coffee and a note that read, “I’ve been there, too. Thinking of
you, your friend, Ned.” It was such a sweet, kind gesture that all I could do was sink to the floor, shaking and mewling,
clutching my goodie basket to my chest like a life preserver.

Ned had indeed been through a very similar devastation only the year before, when he’d caught his girlfriend, who went by
her childhood nickname, Binky, in flagrante with a younger, more studly actor. Said stud was, according to Ned, one of those
actors who at some point in every part they played took off their shirt to reveal their outstandingly buff chest. Fortysomething
Ned, though in great shape, could never compete with a twenty-five-year-old Obsession ad. Ned felt cut off at the knees or
slightly higher. Sessions with a couples’ therapist ensued; Binky’s indiscretions with the Stud continued. Finally, Ned and
Binky broke up. The story made its glum way back from L.A., where Ned and Binky had been holed up auditioning for second-rate
television dramas, an unhappy object lesson about the perils of pi lot season and youthful pects.

When I finally peeled myself off the floor and put away all the contents of the Balducci’s basket, I decided I had to get
out of my apartment to see the final dress rehearsal for the play Ned was directing. I felt very fragile and wispy as I trudged
over in the freezing January air, as though the slightest gust could send me careening toward the Hudson River.

When I got to my seat at the back of the theater, I felt a tender squeeze on my right shoulder. It was Ned, his expression
full of solicitude.

“Blue skies are coming. They’re right around the corner.”

“When?” I pleaded, seriously hoping Ned knew the exact timeline.

“Real soon,” he assured me slowly, the way you do when you’re talking to a child or a crazy person. “Six months? You’ll see.”
He smiled warmly. “You’ll be OK. More than OK—you’ll be just
great
.”

I wanted to believe him, needed to believe him, unmoored as I was, and I hung on to those words for weeks afterward. I found
myself looking forward to his class again, and also to his daily morning call to see how I was doing. He invited me to lunch
at Whole Wheat N’ Wild Berries, a macrobiotic restaurant on Tenth Street, to try a seitan dish that was supposed to taste
like boeuf bourguignon, then cajoled me into helping him pick paint for his apartment (“There are so many fucking whites!”).
He brought a sage smudge stick over to my apartment and encouraged me to burn it and wave the smoke around my windows and
doors (“It’ll get rid of the bad vibes from being fucked over”). He even bought me a massage—my first—at a wondrous little
place on Sixteenth Street called Carapan. A dark warren of groovy Santa Fe–ish rooms, redolent of cedar and sandalwood, tricked
out with dream catchers and wind chimes, Carapan was noted for being “one of the only places to find quiet in the City.” People
spoke in whispers and padded around barefoot in fluffy robes while drinking hot apple cider; the only sound was Native American
flute music that floated plaintively through hidden speakers. For ninety minutes, I lay inert on the table, sobbing, transported
by the piped-in tom-toms.

“I used to cry all the time too,” Ned confessed later, when I called to thank him. He sighed, then said absently, “Binky always
loved that place . . .”

I was starting to grow really fond of Ned—how could I not? He was cool, smart, funny, generous, talented. We had a history.
A history.

One night, I got a call from the stage manager of the new play in which Ned was starring.

“It’s Ned’s birthday. We’re having a cake for him after the show, and I know he’d love to see you. Can you come by?”

I know he’d love to see you
. Something about this was unnerving. Was it her tone? I kept replaying it in my mind, wondering. What was Ned telling her
about me? Who
was
I to him? When I arrived backstage for the blowing out of the candles, the mostly female company and crew beamed at me beatifically.

“Ohhhhh!
Hiiiiiii!
”

“It’s
very
nice to meet you!”

“Soooo
glad
you could make it! Let me get you a
chair
!”

“I
love
your coat!”

“Hey, you,” Ned said, giving me a hug. His gaze was doe-eyed, his tone boyfriendy. “So glad to see you . . .”

Jesus Christ. When had we turned the corner? Only weeks before, I had been dumped by the guy I’d thought I was going to spend
my life with. I had told Ned about my desolation, how hard it all was, and how I couldn’t trust anyone again, so what was
with the sudden pushiness? It seemed starkly different from the way he’d been behaving since my breakup. Or had I been so
absorbed by my own anguish that I was only now noticing what he had been like all along? No, I decided. This was definitely
different.

“Where are you?” Ned murmured, love light in his eyes. “You seem a million miles away.”

“I . . . I, uh . . . you know, I’m just—”

“Tired?” Ned rubbed my shoulders sympathetically.

“Yeah, I’m really tired. I’m—I’m gonna go—OK?”

“Sure. Go get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning. Thanks for coming.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said as I walked to the stage door, calling bye over my shoulder to the Cabal of Yentas Who Knew Everything.

“Bye!” they sang out affectionately. “See you
soon
!”

Walking home, I struggled to figure out how I felt. Was I even attracted to Ned? I was—kind of. He was one of those “real
guys” who did “guy things” like carpentry and camping and shooting pistols, yet at the same time he had an equanimity about
him, a watery, offbeat, artistic side. I liked this; it was a hot combo. I loved watching him onstage, too. He had this uncanny
grace, the way he moved about the space, even when he was just demonstrating something in class. He was electrifying.

Also, there was the hippie thing; I’d always had a soft spot for hippies. All my babysitters in the seventies were hippies
and I was obsessed with them. There was Julie, who wrote her class notes on her feet instead of using paper; Sherry, who told
me she’d rather be dead than thirty; and Vicky, whose bitten-to-the-quick nails and schoolmarmish glasses belied the frenzied
rendition of Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” she would perform on demand. On Saturday evenings, the moment my parents were out
the door, I’d encourage whichever hippie babysitter was “on” that night to invite over her boyfriend—or “old man,” as they
always referred to them—so I could watch them make out. I’d sit beside them on the floor,
Mary Tyler Moore
or
The Bob
Newhart Show
blaring in the background, while they lay barefoot on the couch, wrapped up in each other’s hair, smoking joints. During commercials,
I’d serve them Entenmann’s Fudge Brownies and Cheez Doodles and Coke and tell them about my dreams.