Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent

by Anthony Rapp

  I made my way onto the campus of the University of California in San Diego, where the La Jolla Playhouse produced their shows, and wandered into the rehearsal room. The cast was in the midst of a run-through of Act Two, just beginning to line the edge of the stage for the reprise of “I’ll Cover You.” How apropos, I thought. Another funeral. Michael quietly waved me over and gave me a hug. I sat and took in this cast, all of them attractive and with huge voices and a lot of energy. It was surreal, however, to see a whole new group of people singing these songs and embodying these characters. But they approached the work with heart and commitment.

  When they were done with the run-through, Michael announced my presence. I reddened as I waved hello, and one by one they came up to shake my hand and chat. It was strange, as though I were an elder statesman, but I enjoyed the opportunity to impart some wisdom here and there and to have a glimpse of their process.

  After rehearsal, some of the members of the cast joined Michael and me for a bite to eat at a local Italian restaurant. I sat next to a cast member named Andy, whom I found to be adorable, but I couldn’t tell if he felt the same way, so I kept my flirting to a minimum. As we were leaving, I offered a ride home to anyone who needed one, and he was the only person who took me up on it, so I thought the feeling might be mutual.

  Even though I had never cheated on Todd, I longed to know if my attraction to certain people was returned. Knowing whether the feeling was mutual might satisfy some of my urge to go further. But I didn’t ever ask anyone for fear that it would get back to Todd, or that I might tempt fate.

  So during the brief drive from the restaurant to Andy’s apartment complex, I fought back the desire to ask him head-on how he felt about me. Instead, I made idle chat.

  “So, are you having a good time in the show?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, it’s really wonderful.”

  “Are you getting to be friends with the other cast members?”

  “Yeah, some of them, especially. We’re becoming like a family, you know?”

  “I do.”

  I glanced over at him as I drove, wondering if he was doing the same while I wasn’t looking. But soon enough we reached his destination, and he gave me a brief hug good night and went upstairs, and I drove off to my hotel room alone.

  I had become an e-mail junkie over the past year, answering as much of my fan mail as I could, and striking up a few lovely friendships with some of the early enthusiasts of the show via AOL. E-mail had also served as an easy distraction from the reality of my mom’s illness. And now that she was gone and the waiting was over, the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a strange hotel room in silence, alone with my thoughts; I had to keep finding ways to occupy myself. So as soon as I sat on my hotel room bed, I popped open my laptop and signed on to the annoyingly familiar generic male voice proclaiming, “Welcome! You’ve got mail!” and I opened up my inbox to discover an e-mail from Andy.

  It was really nice meeting you tonight, I read. I hope we can keep in touch. On a whim, feeling impulsive as hell, I typed in his screen name to see if he was online, and lo and behold, he was, so I sent him an instant message.

  “Hi.”

  “HI!” he typed back.

  “Thanks for your e-mail,” I said. I felt my cheeks flush, and my heart rate picked up steam.

  “No problem.”

  “It was really nice to meet you, too,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  And before I stopped myself, I typed, “I think you’re really cute.” I hit the “send” button and waited for his reply. It was a smiley face. Followed by, “Thanks, I think you are, too.”

  I had crossed a big line, but invigorated by his response, I wasn’t going to turn back now. “Really? I wasn’t sure. I never know for sure, you know?”

  “No, I really do. I really do.”

  Beaming, I shoved to the corner of my mind the nagging feeling that I was treading on dangerous territory. I resented Todd for all of the times I hadn’t said to others what I was now saying to Andy. I became incredibly aroused.

  “If I didn’t have a boyfriend…” I said.

  “I know,” Andy replied.

  “Oh well,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  And we continued to type at length, sharing more stories about what it was like to work on this amazing show we were both in. I told him about my mom, and he listened and offered heartfelt condolences and told me about his family back in Florida. After a while, it was very late and we said good night and signed off. And I knew that I had started something that I wasn’t sure I wanted to stop—something thrillingly illicit that would keep me occupied. And no matter what, I knew I couldn’t ever mention one word of it to Todd.

  Over the next month or so, after I returned to New York and threw myself back into my life there—filling up every hour I could with plans and social engagements and e-mails and dinners and, of course, the usual eight shows a week of Rent—Andy and I e-mailed each other every day, sometimes more than once a day, and when we found each other online at the same time, we chatted. He even sent me a handwritten letter with his picture enclosed, which I carefully hid away. And we made contact via phone more than once, although that seemed too risky, so I kept our phone calls to a minimum. In all of our various modes of communicating, I would tell him about the difficulties I’d been having with Todd, about how little Todd had been able to comfort me throughout my mom’s illness and in the aftermath of her death, and Andy would offer to treat me with more love and kindness and care than Todd. I pined for Andy and thought about him and fantasized about him and looked forward to each opening of my AOL mailbox to see if there was something new from him. It was the closest I had ever come to having a full-blown affair, and I grew accustomed to the sensation of carrying around this secret when I was with Todd or when Todd also signed on to AOL from his apartment while I chatted with Andy online from mine. I knew that what I was doing was out of bounds, that it was wrong, but I convinced myself that since no physical contact of any kind had taken place, or would be taking place, that since it was all just talk, it really wasn’t such a big deal. And besides, since Todd wasn’t giving me the kind of care that I needed and wanted from him, fuck it, I had to get it from someone, right? Talking to Andy felt safe; he didn’t begrudge me anything, he wasn’t threatened by the attention I was receiving from my fans, and he had an open ear when I told him stories about my mother and everything that had happened in the last few months.

  During this time, though, I began to feel that my mother’s death had occurred long ago, that it had become some remote event lodged in the outer recesses of my memory. I had come back from our vacation in LA with a vengeance, not missing any more shows, pouring myself into every performance, loving being onstage again, spending as much time as possible with my friends, sleeping very little, making sure I was rarely alone and quiet. And for the moment, at least, I was feeling free of the pressures that had dogged me in the long long wait for the moment of Mom’s death. So with all of my newfound energy, I gave myself over to this virtual-reality affair I was having with a near-stranger three thousand miles away, intoxicated by our illicit e-mails and instant messages, and thrilled by the escape from the stresses of my relationship with Todd that Andy’s desire afforded me.

  Idina was the next one to leave the cast, so she could go off and record her first album, with Hollywood Records. While I wasn’t as close to her as I was to Daphne, I hated to see her go; her nightly, explosive rendition of “Take Me or Leave Me” had brought me so much joy. I had the privilege of sitting onstage show after show and drinking in the ridiculously raucous and joyful ovation she and Fredi always received.

  Soon after her departure, word came down that Jesse would be the next to go; he had gotten a recurring role on Ally McBeal, and there was sure to be more work, so his time had come. I deeply dreaded saying goodbye to him; not only was he one of my dressing room mates (Adam was the other), but he was also one of my best friends in the cast. T
he consistency and passion for his work that he had continuously displayed had carried me along on nights when I had been just emotionally spent, or physically exhausted, or both. I hated losing such a strong source of support, especially now, only a month and a half after Mom’s death.

  But I tried my best to ignore his impending departure, stuffing down my dread in the same place I was stuffing down my guilt about Andy and my lingering grief in the wake of Mom’s death, and I just kept at my frenetic pace of the past few weeks. I even managed to schedule a trip home to Joliet, to surprise Rachel on her tenth birthday.

  Technically, it was a trip to New Lenox, the next town over from Joliet where Anne lived. I purposely avoided Joliet on my way to Anne’s house; I just wasn’t up to driving down its familiar streets without also going home to see Mom.

  I walked into Anne’s house, and Rachel immediately burst out of her chair and into my arms, her excitement as infectious as ever.

  “Anthoneeeeeeeee!”

  I laughed as I gave her a huge hug. “Happy birthday, Rachel,” I said, kissing the top of her head. Anne grinned, a rare occurrence, as she watched us embrace.

  I spent the day with Rachel, taking her shopping and to see the movie Babe, which we both loved, and all day I tried to gauge whether I could broach the subject of Mom’s death. I was especially mindful of my approach in the wake of a conversation I’d had with Anne right after Mom’s memorial.

  We were standing in her kitchen, and Anne was telling me about the “gratitude book” she’d given to Rachel.

  “She gets to write an entry every day about something she’s grateful for,” she said.

  “That sounds very nice,” I said.

  “I’m asking her to write something about Mom in it, too, if she wants.”

  “That sounds good. I’d love to talk to her about all of that at some point.”

  Anne regarded me firmly. “That’s my job,” she said, her voice on edge. “I’m responsible for her now.”

  I was surprised by the intensity of her declaration. And even though I didn’t entirely agree, I said, “Okay.”

  But as I drove home with Rachel after the movie, I couldn’t resist asking, “How are you feeling about Mom?”

  “I miss her,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Concerned about overstepping the boundary Anne had set for me, I left it at that, for the moment, anyway.

  That night, in Anne’s darkened, sleeping house, I found myself awake well after everyone else had turned in for the night. Too much silence had settled into the house, so I went online and was happy to find that Andy was on. I promptly wrote hello. And because there was something even more illicit about engaging in this activity in my sister’s house, I was bolder than usual.

  “I really wish you were here right now,” I said.

  “Really? Why?”

  “’Cause there are so many things I would want to do to you right now.” Part of me felt silly for talking this way, like I was suddenly in a cheeseball porn film, but I continued. “I really want you.”

  “I want you, too,” he said. And as he said this, Todd signed on as well, startling me. I didn’t panic when I saw his screen name appear, although I was starting to feel a little high from all of the adrenaline that was firing through me.

  “How are you?” Todd asked. I typed to Andy, “Todd is on, hold on,” and then I typed to Todd, “I’m fine. Rachel was happy and surprised. I’m just writing e-mails and stuff.”

  “To who?”

  “Just some fan mail and stuff. Nothing too important.” It was easy to type those words, which were far from the truth. Since I was already in so deep, what was one more little lie?

  “And stuff?”

  “It’s a turn of phrase, Todd, jesus.”

  “Well, I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow.” I was scheduled to fly home the next day so I could be there in time for my performance.

  “Okay, honey, see you tomorrow. Love you.” Again, it was easy to be sickly sweet to Todd while, unbeknownst to him, Andy was off to the side, waiting for me to come back to him.

  “Love you, too,” Todd said.

  And as soon as he signed off, I went right back to typing with Andy. “That was a close one,” I said. I was starting to relish the idea that if Todd wanted to be so fucking jealous and paranoid all the time, I’d give him something to be jealous and paranoid about.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I wish you were alone…”

  “Me too…” I sighed as I typed and then got up quickly and closed my bedroom door. I was feeling jumpy and incredibly horny and more impulsive and reckless and driven to misbehave than I’d ever been, and before I had really formulated my thoughts, I wrote, “I want to do something with you right now.”

  “What do you mean?” he replied.

  “I don’t know…”

  “Well, what can we do? We’re not even in the same city.”

  “I know…” And then I had a heady idea. “Let’s both sign off and get ourselves off at the same time, and then sign back on so we know we did it.” There was no stopping me now, I had crossed a line, but somewhere in my mind I thought that what I had proposed would exempt us from cheating, since we weren’t directly engaging each other in a sexual act.

  “Wow,” Andy said. “Okay, I think that would be hot. Yeah, let’s do it.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling giddy and stupid and incredibly turned on. “I’ll see you back here in five minutes.”

  And we both signed off. As I leaned back and closed my eyes and got myself off, I imagined Andy doing the same thing in his little apartment in La Jolla, and it was hot hot hot and I drove away thoughts that I had seriously fucked up now, that there was no way I could get away with this for long, that Todd had been right about me all along—I was full of shit, he was right. I stuffed away those thoughts and signed back on to find Andy waiting for me there.

  “That was hot,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Too bad you weren’t really here.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Too bad.”

  We said good night and I staved off the chunks of guilt that were threatening to dislodge themselves from the outer edges of my mind. In these past few weeks, I had been getting more and more adept at keeping my thoughts at bay, at keeping myself occupied with anything but the consequences of my recent experiences, and soon after I lay down on my sister’s guest bed, I drifted off into an easy sleep.

  The next time I saw Todd, after my show the following night, I could barely look him in the eye; it was much harder to shove away my guilt in his presence than it had been while I was by myself. We had sex, though, not so much because I wanted to, but because if we didn’t he was probably going to be upset and question whether I still loved him and wanted him. And as we lay in the dark after we were finished, I stared at the ceiling, my hand distractedly resting on his, and I tried to sort out how I could still put what I had done with Andy into a guilt-free context. It had been nothing, really, after all, it had just been talk, and what he and I had done we had done in our separate homes, on our own time, and how was that any different than if I had just jerked off by myself at any other time? And as my thoughts chased themselves around while Todd slept next to me, my head eventually slowed its churning and I was finally able to get to sleep.

  The next day I was at home, avoiding silence by answering e-mails (Andy wasn’t around online, although I was hoping that he would be) when Todd signed on.

  “I want to talk to you,” he typed.

  Already I could feel my throat tightening at the thought of another fight with him. “Okay,” I answered.

  “On the phone,” he said. That was sort of new; we’d been known to have long fights online as much as in person or on the phone.

  “Okay,” I said. He quickly signed off, and I followed him.

  I stared at the phone for several long moments before dialing his all-too-familiar seven digits.

  “What is up with you?
” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’ve been very distant since you came back. What’s going on?”

  I didn’t answer him for a long moment. My stomach started to burn.

  “What’s going ON?” he said, his voice rising. “Say something! You’re really freaking me out!”

  My heart was thudding. “I…”

  “WHAT?!?”

  I didn’t know what words I could use to explain or defend what I had done, or what kind of insanity I might encounter on the other end of the phone no matter what I said.

  “I need you to fucking say something!” His breath came fast and heavy. “I’m going to start panicking if you don’t fucking talk.”

  “Todd, I…”

  “WHAT?!?” I could hear him as he swallowed, hard. “What happened? What happened?!?”

  I stared straight ahead, barely moving, my voice hardly above a whisper. My head felt incredibly heavy. “I don’t know how to say it…”

  “Say WHAT?!?” Where were the words? What words could I use? “Did you fuck someone?” he shouted. “DID YOU FUCK SOMEONE?!?”

  “No!” I managed. “I didn’t fuck anyone.”

  “Then what?”

  “I…” I began, then stopped again. Mercifully, Todd waited for me to continue. And somehow, I managed to say, “I just…jerked off with someone.”

  “What do you mean?” His voice was low and thick and horrible. “What does that mean?!?”

  “He’s in California, he’s someone I met in California…”

  “WHO?!?”

  “He’s in Rent there, I met him when I went down to La Jolla—”

  “Oh my god,” Todd said. “Oh, fuck.”

  I was beginning to cave into myself. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “When was this?” he said.

  “Just the other night,” I said.

  “What other night?!?”

  “The other night, when I was home,” I said.

  “Oh, fuck. You’re sick,” Todd hissed. “You’re fucking sick. In your sister’s house? You fucking did this in your sister’s house?!?”