When it was time to go, Tess put me in my Mazda and asked if I was okay, which I felt I was, until, driving back home to the Valley, I tackled the curving roller-coaster that is Coldwater Canyon. I had to pull over twice to pee and vomit in the dark bushes. It was the first time I knew what blind drunk meant. I could see only the yellow lines, and I followed them slowly all the way to my right turn on Victory and left on Troost. When I stumbled into the small apartment, Roxanne said “Damn, Jenny, you smell like a distillery.”
After a few months I began to get anxious about work. I wasn’t getting cast in anything. A big mouth and a deep backbend weren’t cutting it in Hollywood. I had signed with ICM for movie and TV work on the West Coast, but a string of unsuccessful auditions led Iris Grossman, my agent, to tell me to get out of the business. This is not exactly what you want to hear from your agent. Tess was also getting frustrated with my failure to secure any jobs. Clutching at straws she bitchily told me I needed to lose weight—“You’re in Hollywood now!” I wasn’t obese by any stretch, not even chubby. In fact, my strength and flexibility were two great assets that had served me well. But the pressure to meet the size 2 Hollywood standard was real.
I questioned more and more if I could cope because I was not centered or prepared. I had not yet trained to audition for screen roles; I was used to playing to live audiences, and now I had to pull everything back for the camera. And I hadn’t “acted” in a long time—to develop a character for a role required more focus than my scattered mind was able to muster. I found it difficult to concentrate. My mind was always racing off on tangents.
I became homesick for New York City. I especially wanted to be in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow in mid-August to participate in the global meditation marking the Harmonic Convergence, a big event in the New Age movement. The importance of the date had to do with the Mayan calendar and a prediction of something big and transformative happening, signaled by an alignment of the sun and planets on August 16, 1987. Some believed the spectacle would usher in a new era for humanity. Well, that turned out to be bullshit.
The first thing I did when I returned to New York was see Thomas. But being with him was a drag. He was really worried that we would never get married because now I was living in Los Angeles. But he was still telling me not to curse and to “act like a lady.”
Thomas had good reason to be worried. I was jetting back and forth between the East and West Coasts for auditions and meetings, taking acting classes, performing in nightclubs, and sleeping with a few other guys in New York and Los Angeles. The Harmonic Convergence did not seem to extend to my crazed ass.
To relieve my anxiety and try to get a grip on my life, I continued to search for answers by immersing myself in popular spirituality—Rolfing, crystals, chakra cleansing, totems, channeling, past-life regression, and on and on. I reread Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman and became motivated by Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization, which spelled out how to manifest your dreams. A few of these approaches helped me immensely, although they didn’t solve the underlying problems. I also was consuming titles such as Overcoming the Fear of Success by Martha Friedman and Love Yourself Into Life by J. Z. Knight.
I had begun to build my West Coast corral of lovers. First with a man named Tim who pulled out his HUGE dick and said, “Not bad for a white guy, huh?” After Tim, my stable of men grew as I began to date Gary, a musician, as well as Aaron, Jeff, and Peter.
Dick. The men weren’t human; they were my tool, my drug. My need for the euphoria of the orgasm was acute. I was starting to think there was something off about my behavior, but I felt compelled to have sex. It was the best way I knew how to calm my anxiety.
I could no longer deny the fact that I was fucked up in deep fundamental ways that were too overwhelming to contemplate. It was becoming more difficult to overlook my extreme, abiding depression or to deny that my clowning and promiscuity were, in fact, inappropriate behavior.
I wanted to be different, to take control of my life. And I did find hope. Many of the books I read gave me new perspectives and new self-help tools for becoming the person I wanted to be. The Seth books by Jane Roberts were hugely important to me. The themes they addressed made me increasingly convinced that maintaining positivity and staying focused on what I wanted, instead of what I did not want, would enable me to manifest the life I sought.
My metaphysical studies taught me that energy is highest where the water meets the land, so I booked myself for a weekend at Gurney’s Inn, a historic spa resort in Montauk, on the tip of Long Island, New York. The sunset was magical as I stood on the rocky shoreline. It seemed the perfect setting for manifesting, and each time the waves crashed against the rocks, I shouted, “I want a job in Hollywood!”
The next day, I lay in a darkened spa room, mummy-like in a seaweed mineral wrap. I heard the attendant enter, sensed her bend in close to me, and softly whisper, “Someone is calling from Los Angeles, Miss Lewis. I believe it’s Hollywood.”
The moment felt just like one of those scenes in an old movie where the actress gets the call that changes her life: “Hollywood calling.” The attendant had a phone on a long cord and held the receiver to my ear as I said “hello” through the mud that restricted my face.
Bob Wachs was on the line shouting from excitement that I had to catch the earliest flight to Los Angeles because a producer named Haim Saban wanted me to audition for a pilot called Love Court. There was a limo already waiting for me, which drove me back to my apartment and idled at the curb while I hurriedly packed. On the way to JFK airport, I had the limo stop briefly at Thomas’s apartment to pick up a few things I had left there.
Thomas said, “How long will you be gone this time?”
I said, “Baby, this might be it.”
I saw his face and thought to myself, let the fucking limo wait. I held his face in my hands and kissed him. He drew back just a little—I could see he was trying to cover the heartbreak he was feeling. I felt bad, but I didn’t feel horrible, because I had never lied to him. He knew this day would come. We had a sweet and powerful quickie, and like the gentleman he always was, he carried my luggage to the limo and waved me off.
You’re wondering if I cried in that limo. The answer is yes. And the five hours on the fucking plane.
I had just ended a seven-year relationship, and by the time I got back to Roxanne’s apartment, my whole body was itching. The next morning, I broke out in red welts and my entire body was sore. This had never happened to me before. I was sure it was AIDS. I couldn’t get to the doctor fast enough.
Roxanne and I were holding hands when the doctor came into the room. He asked me if I had been under heavy stress. I looked at him like he was a damn fool and told him I had just gotten a divorce. He said, “Well, this is very common. You have shingles.”
I had remembered playing hopscotch with torn shingles from our rooftop in Kinloch made of sand and tar. Good Lord, what a come-around and what a hideous name for a hideous ailment.
I proceeded to skip my happy, itchy ass to the car and took my scratchy, itchy ass home.