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

by Anthony Rapp

  The next day as I sat and waited for Mom in the MRI waiting room, I called my friend Ben back in New York. I hadn’t spoken to him in a while, but my being in a hospital had put him in my mind; he was very ill from AIDS.

  Ben and I had gone to Interlochen Arts Camp together, when I was fourteen and he was sixteen, and we had kept in sporadic touch since then. He was a thin, pale, freckled, fey redhead from a farm town in Ohio, with an infectious, zany grin and a rare sweetness. He and I hadn’t talked openly about sex or sexuality back at Interlochen, but we gravitated to each other as young queer people tend to do, hanging out with the other undeclared queer kids on the lawn outside our rehearsal rooms, chatting and telling jokes and sharing our love of Kate Bush and the Eurythmics and Peter Gabriel. For some strange reason, we called each other “Worm.” I’m not sure who coined it, but the nickname stuck to all of us in our little group, and even after camp was over, Ben signed off every postcard or letter to me as “Worm.” Three years later, he and I both moved to New York, and we saw each other fairly often at first, but then lost touch for a few years after that.

  Then one day as I was leaving the Vineyard Theatre after a performance of Raised in Captivity, there he was, his orangey-red hair shining above his bespectacled face, his body shrouded in a dark wool overcoat.

  “Anthony?”

  “Ben? Oh my god, how good to see you!” And as I said this I could see right away that there was something wrong; his hair was thin, his face was wan and bony, and I felt a tremor in his hand as I took it in mine and gave him a hug.

  “Hi,” he said, giggling, his smile as bright as ever.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said. “It’s so nice that you came.”

  “Oh, the play was very good, but I have to admit, I had a little trouble staying with it in the second act; I had a little trouble concentrating, because of my medication.”

  I took a breath and nodded before I said, “Are you—?”

  “Yeah,” he said, quick and unapologetic, nodding boyishly, and still smiling, although a little ruefully now.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pathetically.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He shrugged, still smiling, his hands wide open before him. “We have a lot to talk about. I kind of have to go, I have to lie down, it’s this medication. Can we get together?”

  “Sure, sure,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “Great. I’d love that.”

  “Me too.”

  And we exchanged numbers and said goodbye, and then just like that he was gone. I stood in the lobby for a long while after he left, as if I were coming down off a very intense, very brief drug trip, and tried to fit my memories of the Ben that I knew onto this strangely happy but very, very ill young, young, young man I had just seen.

  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 did
n’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.

  The only professional downer of that time was the news that Paul, my agent at ICM, had been fired suddenly, for not being “aggressive” enough. This was ridiculous to me, and if the powers-that-be at ICM couldn’t value the kind of dedicated and resourceful agent that Paul was, there was no way I wanted to stick around. I resolved to leave the agency where I’d been represented for the past nine and a half years, and promptly called my friend Sarah Fargo, who’d been an assistant at ICM years before, and who was now an agent herself at a much smaller but still very reputable agency. She was feis
ty and fun, her trademark red ringlets framing her pale, pretty face. I’d always loved Sarah.

  “I don’t want to be presumptuous or anything,” I said to her over the phone from Connecticut, “but I’d love to work with you.”

  “Oh, are you kidding? I’d love to work with you, too!”

  “Great,” I said, genuinely flattered. “That’s great. Thanks.”

  When I went into her office a few days later to sign my papers, I told her about Rent.

  “I haven’t heard anything about that,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s a rock opera based on La Bohème,” I said.

  “Uh huh.” She was clearly skeptical, but she nodded and smiled politely. “Sounds intriguing.”

  “It is. I think it’s going to be great.”

  “Well, cool. Can’t wait to see it.” I could tell that I hadn’t convinced her, that she was simply behaving as both a good friend and a good agent by being supportive, but I didn’t press the issue; I’d let the show speak for itself. I happily signed my agency contracts with her lucky, green-sequined pen, shook her hand, and left, glad to be entering into this new partnership with my old friend.

  After the shoot for The Mantis Murder ended, I had a few days off and then started work right away again, this time on David Searching. Even with our tiny budget (we had a crew of three on most days) and all of its inherent constraints (no real meals to speak of, the need to quickly film scenes guerrilla-style on the streets, hoping no cops would ask for our nonexistent permits, Leslie having to pay a real New York City cab driver to drive back and forth on East Fourth Street just so we could get a shot done), the filming went off without a hitch. I was honored that Leslie had entrusted the lead in his film to me (he told me he had written the role with me in mind), and I had the pleasure of working with a couple of old friends for the first time, Camryn Manheim and Julie Halston, as well as a great cast of wonderful New York actors, including Stephen Spinella, Craig Chester, John Cameron Mitchell, Joseph Fuqua, and David Courier.