It all began innocently, after a holiday happy hour in 1997. A friend and I went to the Minskoff for an innocuous good time.
Well, my friend recovered from the delirium of our night after a couple of days, and she sounded a bit surprised when I told her that I'd gone back to the Minskoff alone the following week. When I went again the week after New Year's 1998, her tone told me she thought I was kind of crazy. Embarrassed, I stopped telling her of my excursions. If only she had questioned me more about my habits, for you see, although I didn't realize it, I was already becoming a Dougaholic.
In January, the disease grew worse. I'd gotten a lot of money as holiday gifts, and I started spending it. By February I was getting headaches and turning into a real bitch if I didn't make it to the Minskoff two or three times a week. I would slink out of my apartment in the middle of the night to go to the stage door even on nights when I had not seen the show.
The cast members were beginning to know me by name. This should have alarmed me, but I was not looking for warning signs.
I was happy with my autographed programs, photos with Douglas, and the cherished memories of those snippets of conversation with him. My holiday money spent, I began to go through my savings.
By June, my savings were nearly gone too. I was now calling in sick to work most Wednesdays to see the matinees. I was at almost every show. Even Douglas, though flattered, became rather alarmed.
I could see his apprehension when he came out the stage door, looked around, and sure enough, spotted me yet again. I saw those beautiful eyes avoiding mine, and I knew something was wrong.
I began to tell myself that I would not indulge in Douglas for a week. I would come home from work, make dinner, trying to avoid the thought that HE would be onstage in just a couple of hours. I would try to have a leisurely dinner, ignoring the clock, but by 7:30 p.m. I would be biting my nails and pacing the floor, and then... out the door I would go.
Sometimes I would actually succeed in resisting for a few days, or a week even, but then hearing the word "guillotine" or the expression "Sink me!" spoken on the street would set me off and I would go on a binge that would not end for weeks.
I began to go to the show in disguise. I would stand in the windtunnel, but behind a column, so I could watch Douglas without being seen by him, apprehensive of seeing pity - or, worse - fear in his eyes.
I borrowed money from friends and family, making up lies and excuses, never telling them the real reason I wanted it. In one very ugly scene I begged a ticket person at the Minskoff for a job as an usher there, ignoring his repeated statement that there were no openings, and besides he wouldn't do the hiring anyway. To save myself from further embarrassment, I made my disguises more elaborate. I now owned a wardrobe of wigs, capes, hoods, glasses, false teeth and baggy pants. Taking a lesson from Grappin enabled me to indulge my addiction without giving away the extent of my problem to others.
My friends and family would lend me no more money, even my relatively new Pimpy friends. They already knew me too well. I took on an early morning paper route to make more money. I began to overdose on coffee to deal with the early morning hours after the late nights in the windtunnel. It did not occur to me that I had succumbed to the classic pattern of one addiction leading to another. A low point came when I sold my computer, severing my connection to 24-hour Douglas information. I was becoming desperate.
My boss at my day job finally fired me for taking all those Wednesdays off. I stopped paying my bills so that I could buy more tickets to see Douglas. Creditors called... until, mercifully, my phone service was cut off. I bought advance tickets, stockpiling a stash with what money I had left.
February of this year found me in an apartment without electricity, hungry and cold, but still going to the show, to huddle in the windtunnel and gaze upon the object of my addiction. I stopped paying rent so that I could continue to see him.
This month I hit bottom. I have been evicted from my apartment, and now live in the windtunnel. Thankfully the weather is warmer. Douglas looks at me sadly and tosses me coins sometimes, not even recognizing me as a Doug addict rather than just a common homeless person. He is unaware that in my pocket are tickets to every single show from now to May 30, and that I sleep with a smile in the windtunnel, giving the valets across the street at the Marriott dirty looks. I am glad I am finally able to confess my addiction.
Sad as I am about Douglas's impending departure, I am strangely relieved that I will be released, cold turkey, from the grasp of an addiction that has enslaved me for a year and a half.
Then again, if you see me in the windtunnel, could you spare me bus fare to Toronto? There's this concert I'd like to see...
If you've read this far, bless you,
and
please don't be too disturbed... it's
mostly fiction :)
-A future famous novelist
Jane
a.k.a. Barbara Trenn
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