Monday, April 03, 20063:24 a.m.: Fort Collins, ColoradoI awaken at 3:24, my throat parched from the dry air. I'm here with Opera A La Carte, the touring Gilbert & Sullivan opera company I've worked with for 22 years. Waking up in a strange hotel room, configured exactly like every other hotel room we've ever been in, is something I've been doing for a long time.I go into the bathroom and turn on the shower, raising up some steam. I sit on the floor with the rooming list, the only piece of written material in the bathroom. I look at the names on the list. I have been traveling and working with these people for so many years. And yet how well do I really know any of them? Have I not been paying enough attention? I signed up for this job in 1984, right after grad school. I was working at LACMA, as their projectionist and stage manager. I loved running the Bing Theatre, but we had overstayed our welcome in each other's lives. When a touring company came in and the technical director asked if I wanted to join him in one of his other gigs, I took it on. I figured I could make enough money touring on the road with these people that I could write in between tours. I also figured that if it didn't work, I could quit in a year or two and figure something else out. I was wrong on both counts. Even though we went on at least one tour a year and several local dates, it was not enough to live on. And I still have never been able to quit. The technical director who hired me quit after we'd worked together about a year. I became the T.D. and hired his brother. Affilliations were made and broken. Back in those days, believe it or not, I was actually quite a free spirit. My overhead was low, I was trying to break into screenwriting. Going in and out of town fairly frequently was relatively easy. So was going in and out of relationships. On one six-week tour I brought along a guy whom I was sort of playing with the idea of marrying. Not wanting to be away from him for a second, I hired him as our truck driver. During the course of the tour I became enamored with someone else in the company, with a lust so intense it felt like a constant crippling pain. The object of my desire had a girlfriend at home; I was rooming with my boyfriend; and yet, for both of us, the intensity was nearly unendurable. Every moment of that tour remains accutely etched in my mind, seared into place with the acid solution of unquenchable desire. By the end of the tour, after taking our forbidden feelings through Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, I was nearly incapable of walking. By the time we were in Nevada, it was obvious that something had to give. My boyfriend -- after driving me to distraction with his living habits (one learns a LOT about someone else while touring, almost never in a positive way) -- and I were more than happy to be envisioning the other's taillights in a matter of days. I don't believe I've seen him since. And with the other one, well, we had one night. In room 69 in a Best Western in Carson City. I still have the room key. My next liaison was with someone who was interested both in me and a soprano in the company. I believe he was interested in her first (as was every other straight guy in the company) and yet he and I did our thing for at least a year. He ended up waffling back and forth, eventually choosing to be with her. She was, and is still, beautiful and fun, with a lovely voice and a sweetness I will never acquire. Since she is still with the company, we have had a couple of decades to resolve our differences. But at the time the fact that he chose her over me rankled and stung me to my core. He quit the company but their relationship hung on, for an inconceivable twenty plus years, spanning both coasts, living together at times, always contemplating marriage but never making the final commitment. I think the sting for me was greatly offset by seeing over time how clearly better suited they were for each other -- both in terms of companionability and the ability to make each other completely insane. When it became clear that Opera A La Carte was not going to be able to support my living needs, I took up my assistant's offer to teach me word processing. Second to the typing class I took in high school, learning how to do word processing -- and by extension how to understand, teach, and work fluently with computers -- was the single biggest income-producing skill I've ever acquired. That one connection sent me off into the world of legal word processing, which I did as a contractor for nearly ten years. It was lucrative and enabled me to keep my schedule flexible enough to continue doing gigs. Many years were spent working in law offices, going on the road, and writing. Over the years, of course, I got married, had children, got divorced, changed (the money making) careers, wrote a book. Technology now permits me to take sleepless nights in strange towns and put my thoughts into words while I wait for sleep to come again. Many people that I started working with are still in the company. My boss is still the person who books the tours, arranges for the hotels, negotiates with the orchestra, and -- at the end of the day, literally -- goes on stage to completely charm the audience with his unflagging energy and talent. To him, this is the least of his job. To the rest of us it is clear that he is, when on stage, the sum total of the company. Our efforts pale. He is an old-school performer, one who seemingly effortlessly channels the true spirit of Gilbert and Sullivan and fills up the house with their unique brilliance and wit. Incomparable. And we all are getting older. I see this now in the graying hair and the lines in my friends' faces. My dearest friend in the company is not with us this week as he is at home fighting cancer. A different kind of reality has infiltrated our timeless bubble and I am worried and scared. He is the one I always look forward to seeing appear on stage when I'm sitting in the house and the company arrives for sound check. His eyes have always held for me a special bright affecton and humor. He is the person I hug and my rock in the company. He thinks I'm beautiful. Once on a long tour, taking a break from the noisy shaking truck, I sat with him on the bus and he introduced me La Traviata, our headphones enterwined as we watched the snowy fields roll by. Where am I going with this? I think it has to do with the tangled skeins of our lives. My assistant taught me word processing which has enabled me to survive in the world of computers since the PC started owning the world. Another one of my assistants is now my web and book designer. I had another assistant for 13 years. We were neighbors, then partners, and close as brother and sister could be. He started growing resentful and angry with the work as he continued losing a long battle against alcholism and gambling; we lost touch a few years ago when I had to hire someone else. His presence and the warmth of his smile will always be an aching void. Some of these people sang at my wedding. I have seen relationships start, flourish, grow moribund and end. What happens on the road stays on the road, for the most part. But sometimes it overlaps and becomes a life-changing event. Associations that are fostered and heated while traveling the interstates may cool off when the final bags are unpacked, but they alter the nature of the "real" reality back home. We are all changed from this experience. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 3:04 AM  
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