The Journals of Spalding Gray

by Spalding Gray; Nell Casey

  H. [Russo] was saying that I was talking about leaving Renée after Jerusalem. How could I be? The eye operation was coming up. [Gray and Shafransky participated in the Israel Festival–Jerusalem, a performing arts festival in the spring of 1990.]

  Maybe H. likes the way her life is. She said she did. Maybe she likes having the child [Marissa] all for herself. You never thought of that one did you? You have to look at all sides.

  AUGUST 9, 1991

  Afraid this is the beginning of THE TWO YEAR nervous breakdown that mom went through at 50. Ron thinks I should take Prozac and I’m afraid.

  AUGUST 11, 1991

  I got swept out to sea. I got caught in a TROUGH. I panicked and started swallowing water. Because I was in a panic I lost my strength so I cried for help. Renée thought I was calling for her to come in then she realized it was for help and she got Phil Hampton, a chiropractor from PA to go out with a boogie board. I was able to swim toward him. He came with two other men. I felt comforted to be with them.

  [Later, Gray confessed his reluctance to go through with the wedding in Gray’s Anatomy—though he did not mention his affair with Russo—and recounted the above experience as being one of almost drowning. “They’re pulling me up like Christ between them, holding me, trying to take my photograph with them; they won’t even give me a break. They recognize me,” he added in his monologue. “They said they recognized me from the Swimming to Cambodia poster, the way my head was bobbing half out of the water! Art imitates life; life imitates art!”]

  At night I got drunk. I couldn’t stand the loneliness. I kept seeing that imaginary child playing like some beautiful pet in the yard. She is always NOT my child but I have easy access to her and she loves me. This fantasy takes me over to the point of total painful groaning obsession. It becomes a giant pain and the only relief is vodka.

  AUGUST 13, 1991

  Today there was a review about Anne Sexton [Diane Middlebrook’s Anne Sexton: A Biography] in the TIMES I get afraid of what it said:

  “In the end, we are left not with a portrait of a deeply disturbed poet and her work, but with a portrait of a deeply disturbed highly unstable, selfish and self absorbed woman who happened to possess the talent to channel her neuroses into the therapeutic channels of art.”

  of this Renée said, “at least you’re not cruel.”

  THIS IS A BIG ONE AND ITS STARTING TO COME DOWN AND IT FEELS LIKE IT’S GOING TO KILL ME—I keep thinking she’s YOUNGER & SHE HAS A CHILD

  AUGUST 15, 1991

  I went for a walk on the beach. I thought I will phrase it this way, Renée if there was something going on in my life now that might cause us to break up in six months would you still want to marry me and she said yes. But give it a year. She’d rather be married for one year than not at all. I took her out to eat at the American Hotel [in Sag Harbor]. It was very beautiful with all the candles and lobster but I did it. I told her I was having an affair. She said it was like a cancer to her and I understood. She said I told her to relieve my guilt but it causes more pain in her now and that she thinks—and she is right—that I scrutinize her and judge her in relation to the other younger women. She also said that she wants to get married so she will be other than LIZ who still hangs over me like some shadow. Why get married only to get divorced in one year? Is there any transcendence? Any hope? Last night we had pretty good sex but then I woke up with that awful anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

  The child is after me again. I go out to rake the lawn and the child is beside me with her little rake and I see now how and why people talk out loud to fantasies. They can’t stand the pain anymore, the loneliness. And I do see the wedding as closing down a window on the head of THAT CHILD.

  AUGUST 16, 1991

  Yesterday was a very strange day. I started off bad and then Ron [Feiner, Gray’s lawyer, who joined the Universal Life Church in order to perform the wedding ceremony for Gray and Shafransky] came out to work on the marriage ceremony and he gave me a Xanax which did calm me down make me more open and talkative more talk about me and my family etc. rather than about Renée and I and why “WE” are getting married. (God, I can’t believe how self centered I am) Then we went to the beach to check out the spot. But most upsetting for Renée was going over the pre-nuptual agreement in front of Ron. She was embarrassed by it and also by how I talked about how getting married felt like a watershed for me and I—at this point—could not tell if it was a beginning of a new move toward the future or the beginning of the end again acting or maybe even pretending and tricking myself into the idea that I have no will or choice in it. I think I keep having the fantasy that I can live a life without consequences.

  But at times when I look at Renée and I together I feel I’ve not really been able to be supportive of her. Over the years I’ve been like a big taking baby and maybe that is why I’m pushing so to give her the wedding. It makes her so happy but a lot of her happiness does not spread back and infect me. Instead I get anxious about the money and how I will never be able to do another monolog because what I’m going through now is both way too private and too scummy and duplicitous. I hate being divided like this and yet I keep inviting it. I hate not telling Renée every thing, all my endless fears and needs. I have to remember we are two different people.

  ROCKY just called in the middle of all of this and I kind of broke down with him on the phone and told him how much I hated myself and how I felt like a performance machine. That Renée was winding me up like a crazy neurotic wind-up doll and pushing me out on stage and that when I wasn’t doing that I was at home obsessing. And all I can feel is the time clock ticking and soon another crack of an opportunity to jump ship into another life will close. Rocky says Saul Bellow marries a new wife for each new book then in the middle of this Renée came running to me with her heart all a flutter wanting help with some child that was attacked by yellow jackets. And she felt she needed to HELP trying to get the Arm and Hammer Baking soda out and reading the back of it. With her hands shaking.

  Also, you have to understand how this house here, as beautiful as it is, keeps freaking me out because all the empty beds remind me of all the children we didn’t have and will not have and how I’m headed toward becoming a dried up curmudgeon.

  On August 20, Gray met Russo on Fire Island. Shafransky had gone to New York City for a few days. Gray and Russo were together for one night. At the end of their time together, according to Russo, she told him, “If you get married, we’re through.”

  AUGUST 20, 1991

  All private stuff. Went to National Seashore at Fire Island. WILD time—Hurricane BOB is on his way and I drive home with no windshield wipers. The storm seems to calm me because my head is such a Hurricane that its good just for a little bit to have me it outside of me. I’m in such conflict. I’m trying to be honest with myself but can’t get to it. I don’t want to live a life of regrets but no matter what I do I seem to set it up that way—that all action creates regret and I lose my center. It’s like the regret mechanism. The other place offers less responsibility and that’s why I resist having that child with Renée it would be 20 years worth. And I’m getting old and I don’t feel like I’m living and that is making me insane.

  I had to marry her to leave her?

  AUGUST 21, 1991

  Bob hit and when Ken the Caterer said, “Look what you’ve done. First you almost drown and now you cause this.” I smiled and Renée said this is the first time you’ve smiled in a month.

  Renée says she hates me but she is determined and so willful to go through with this wedding. She said, “We will get married and then we will get divorced in six months.” But I knew she was just saying anything to put me at ease because it did. I thought by then I might be able to leave her.

  Everything is falling apart.

  AUGUST 22, 1991

  Every time I look at the date on the calendar I feel like I’m going to the electric chair.

  Is all of it really only grist for the mill? It feels like it
now.

  AUGUST 24, 1991

  SAT.

  It’s the wedding morning and there are men here chopping up all the trees and two cleaning women upstairs vacuuming empty, never used rooms. Renée stepped on a bee and I began to think it was the power of mom. Last night we spent $800.- of dad’s money on one dinner while Chan sat next to me talking about riding 100 miles in a day and nothing makes sense and the FEAR is still there. The fear is in me with the full moon and Rocky and I on the beach late at night talking about my sexual obsessions he doesn’t seem to share in. My big hang up. Renée is so anxious about her script because no one called her to say they liked it. I had my regular morning erection but lost it when she told me this. But I got it back again and we had good but quick sex.

  AUGUST 24, 1991

  NOON—SAT.

  Renée was standing over me helping me with THE BOOK and I’m looking up at her with totally insane eyes thinking this is how we will be in 10 years with no children—me at 60 hanging on Renée saying please please help me to write about MY life and it felt like Uncle Vanya again and Renée told me to go out and try to rake THE YARD not our yard but “THE” yard because this house is not real. I’ve not been here long enough. I have no center no real feeling for the place. All like theatre now and I do go out to rake the yard and Paula Court [a photographer who had taken most of Gray’s press shots for his monologues and was there to photograph the wedding] comes and her body looks so great I want to jump on her and I think of H. and I think my god—I am marrying the wrong BODY and the lawn mower man comes and another motor starts up and its all making me crazy and I stutter when I try to speak to Paula I stutter like a little kid and this all has to be private because it would hurt Renée and Ron calls to say how are you doing and I see Renée’s mother out the window like a great ghost and I say they are coming for me and Ron says—

  “You are bein about to be witnessed by 50 people act in a role you never wanted to assume”

  It is a performance. There are no private acts left.

  AUGUST 25, 1991

  Well, it’s “OVER” … the event is over and how do I feel? Hungover and fearful of the future

  The service on the beach was beautiful even though a few trucks came very close. Renée looked great in her dress and all that I feared DID begin to happen just from the event it all drew me further into love—that still fearful place for me. I both laughed and cried at Ron’s ceremony and I did cry when I read Renée’s inscription on the watch. It was a very strong moment.

  I still feel a large and great sense of doom no matter how much people give me love and support. Witness my wedding toast. A sad one. That in spite of the fact that the sun will go out forever it’s nice that people can still sit here and pretend to be in love. All getting back again to marriage and life as a performance and still and most of all now all I can think of is the most sad and melancholy of Shakespeare’s lines.

  “Our revels now have ended and these as I players etc. into air, into thin air.

  “For we are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep”

  These are the saddest most absurd and most true lines that I can come to after such an event. I know they come from the ego but where else?

  AUGUST 29, 1991

  I can no longer read my book. I smoke cigarettes and stare at it and it all breaks down in front of me. Does not hold together, does not make sense. Reads like some AA victim report. Some stupid confession. All literal and not poetic. The fantasy that I am a writer is broken and I sit here trying to figure out what I will do for a living.

  I don’t have time for a nervous breakdown. I have to get through this year. But how will I do it?

  SEPTEMBER 3, 1991

  I don’t know how to WORK. I’m lazy I’m blasted with photos of Liz’s perfect LAKE WORLD of groupness and it almost wipes me out, then our wedding photos. Who is that? “They LOOK like a happy couple.” Can hardly bear to deal with anything. Skyy and dinner. Me two vodkas and wine. When Renée shows me the wedding dishes I explode. Me acting like a real asshole. “If you keep drinking and insulting me I will leave you.” I drink to go to sleep. I wake early and depressed. Renée is in sexy underwear. I can hardly come because she doesn’t come. I am thinking, what am I able to give to Renée besides (like dad) MONEY A HOUSE. Money is a substitute for LOVE and intimacy. “Your father always fed you well.” —mom. I think I know what I can give to H. but maybe it’s all fantasy and would require endless work on my part and I am really just a SLACKER. If I don’t find my way into a community of people I can trust….. I AM DRINKING NOW … I am now drinking my pre-flight Bloody Mary to calm me. I feel protected by ½ of a Bloody Mary and the plane feels safe—an escape—another escape from the real world waiting for me. [Gray flew to Chicago to play a minor part in a Barnet Kellman film called Straight Talk, starring Dolly Parton.]

  But I want to try to talk about Pavel and what I feel is going on there. It was funny but he wanted to know why I told Renée I was having an affair. He tried to tell me that I am in an unnecessary panic over not being able to get enough sex. That I am in charge and I can get it when I want it but I tried to point out my fear of AIDS and he did not take it all that seriously. Renée is ready to go on without having a child. Pavel seems to feel there is something more complex going on in my work. He seems to think I have something like a number of personalities operating and Renée feels this is right.

  Renée and Spalding got married—PASS THE SALT

  It is Renée’s open face that will HAUNT me forever. It is her happy face that I keep going back to and saying yes yes that’s it. It is her face that radiates love and I love the way she loves me.

  After Gray’s trip to Chicago, he traveled to San Francisco to perform Monster in a Box as well as Interviewing the Audience.Russo met him there—Gray had sent her a letter beforehand confessing that he’d gotten married but that he still wanted to see her. She stayed with him for a week.

  SEPTEMBER 8, 1991

  Sunday

  It occurred to me while in the bathtub this morning that I might end up in an asylum but Renée says all of what I’m going through is to avoid living and perhaps it has to do with feeling I have to make a choice between R & H.

  SEPTEMBER 17, 1991

  Renée came up from L.A. to visit. [Shafransky was working on a film script in L.A. at the time.] The first time we made love it was good. The other two times I couldn’t feel it. Wasn’t sure if I could come. Am split. Pavel is nuts if he doesn’t see this.

  Renée told someone…. I heard her say, that after going through the eye operation with me she knew she wanted to be with me the rest of her life. She wanted to marry me and grow old with me.

  When I played the tape of the opening wedding monolog it reminded Renée a little of HENNY YOUNGMAN my wife made me get married stuff. [In San Francisco, according to Russo, Gray improvised a monologue about finally marrying Shafransky and played a recording of it to her.] But listening back to the tape made me sad because I felt it was just another smokescreen. Another monolog that would allow me to escape from the real events.

  THERE IS NOTHING

  PRIVATE LEFT

  SEPTEMBER 27, 1991

  Renée says she’s married to a misery. A black hole. She said she did not realize how messed up I was until she read the BOOK [the manuscript of Impossible Vacation] and then that was hard to take. When she had to read the details of the indecision. It made her want to scream “Will you make up your mind!” And I made her read that book right after we got married.

  SEPTEMBER 30, 1991

  Renée and I ate striped bass alone at the dining room table. She got me all hot and even crying on the idea of taking Peter and Ken [two of the men who saved Gray from drowning before his wedding] to Nepal for New Years. “That’s what I’d do if I had your money.”

  Renée is so so loving and generous that she keeps blowing me away. That she would want to send me off with guys on a trip she really would lik
e to take.

  I wake up with an erection every morning and force sex on Renée. Then we work on MY BOOK. What a honeymoon!

  OCTOBER 22, 1991

  I’m back to the horrors of the book. I keep fantasizing that it is done and now it has just come back with all the flags on it [with queries from the copy editor at Knopf] and major chronology problems.

  We went to the adoption class. I was angry with these people because of all their uncomplicated surety that they wanted a child. I was not sure. Neither was Renée.

  JANUARY 20, 1992

  I feel so lame working on the new monologue [Gray’s Anatomy] because that subject is NOT the immediate issue.

  The immediate issue is PRIVATE and will remain so.

  It’s HER motherhood that turns me on and its Renée, you and I against the world that does the other side for me.

  FEBRUARY 15, 1992

  I said I cannot stand Renée’s body when it grows big and out of control and Pavel said, “Maybe it’s you that is growing smaller.” When I become like a little kid, Renée gets bigger. Pavel insists that it’s me as a child remembering my mother’s largeness. I can’t believe how much all this seems to go back to Mom.

  Why, I ask Pavel, can’t I just shift to a new smaller woman? People do do it. I guess I’m afraid of the consequences.

  FEBRUARY 17, 1992

  But no matter how low I get I still seem to get some joy out of “PLAYING” it. I’ve become so good at playing my pain to save me from it.

  I just called Rocky from the airport and performed the ultimate depression—Head cold, how did I get involved in this life, etc?