Cruises

The Hamburg years were punctuated by amazing cruises on which L and I, together or individually, would perform a 50-minute set once and then sit back and have a few weeks' paid holiday. In that time, either together or alone, we covered more countries than I can actually remember. I noted them all down and it's about ninety: all around the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, Acapulco to Sydney through the South Pacific; Peru to Cap Verde via the northern latino nations and the Caribbean, the Red Sea; Hong Kong to Singapore via Japan, Shanghai, the Philippines, Celebes, Bali and Malaysia etc. A wonderful time. L had done the dirty on me before I joined her in Hong Kong (she'd been on the ship with our friend Klaus a full month before I arrived) but every subsequent cruise I did alone I paid her back. These episodes will merit a few posts on their own, but there's time for all that. My favourite was a particularly intense couple of weeks I spent with IH, a German crew member, who was probably the most intensely stimulating and sexually provocative lady I'd ever had the good fortune to be naked with. More on that, later.

Moribund

By this stage it looked like my marriage was dead in the water, moribund, beyond help and hope. On top of that, one of my darling colleagues who will remain nameless as he is worth, even to this day, less than used lavatory paper, provoked me into resigning from my job as top musical dog at The Phantom of the Opera. The decision to quit was mine alone, but it was the spineless reasoning he used to explain himself when we subsequently worked together again four years later in Mexico City, which really sealed it.

Before leaving for the Antarctic and the gentle embrace of Maria I'd sorted out with the theatre that I would return on January 12th then fly on to Prague on the 15th to start auditioning singers for Phantom. I was to meet said colleague at the theatre just as soon as I arrived in Hamburg. Everything was sorted out, I was missing nothing in Germany, yet a provocative satellite phone call arrived while we were in Argentina to ask when I was thinking of coming back, followed by a protestation of innocence when I returned the call. I flew out of Punta Arenas, Chile, landed in Frankfurt fifteen hours later, caught my connecting flight to Hamburg and went straight into work, not having slept for 24 hours and, having flown east, subjected to appalling jet-lag. Colleague suggested I wait in the canteen as he something to sort out in the office. Eventually he turned up, not wanting to talk about the upcoming cast change i.e. the reason I'd come in to work in the first place and not gone home to sleep. I flew off to Prague a couple of days later, said colleague following on soon after. To cut a long story short, he'd kept me at arm's length concerning the cast change, choosing to discuss any possible changes with the Company Manager (who had no jurisdiction in the selection of artists), all the while lying to me about how long he'd spent in Hamburg preparing this little coup. The shit hit the fan in the Hotel Raphaël in Munich when I put two and two and two and two together and made eight. The extent of this guy's deceit was incredible. I threw the book at him, disturbing the other genteel guests over breakfast that morning, who had to listen to a few tabloid clichés about Germans, I'm ashamed to say...

We got back to Hamburg, I took an appointment with the MD and resigned. She didn't want to hear it. I stood my ground. The company eventually plumped for the default option of my assistant, not having found, in six months of auditions or interviews, anyone who they felt could take the show to another level. It was flattering, but I was not for turning; there was no way in hell I could continue to work with this particular manipulative, subversive arsehole.

It was only in 1999 in Mexico City that I found out why this bloke had behaved the way he had. He said he'd received information from the top floor in New York that I was to be replaced, so he decided to provoke me into resigning rather than see me suffer the ignominy of not having my contract renewed. He managed that quite successfully. He also had the good grace, I must admit, to add that he'd checked back with New York after I'd left if they really would have kissed me goodbye. The answer was interesting: "No way; he was the best music director we'd ever had for the show". Go figure, eh? This bloke, let's call him RF, as those are his initials, disgusted me ultimately only for his own lack of backbone and obsession to be an apparatchik. He ended up getting fired but still puts up Phantom productions, mostly in 'emerging economies'. He tried getting in touch a few times after Mexico, but I never replied to his mails, the main reason being they were always of the same ilk: looking for information but never revealing anything about himself. My days of playing with an open hand were long gone, as was any contact with this louse. Live and learn.

No shagging in this post, sorry about that. That'll change soon enough; we're working up to Switzerland, a fertile pasture after the self-destructive Endzeitstimmung of the last months in Hamburg.

Maria

I mentioned a certain Maria in the last post. I met her on another cruise ship, this time one which was sailing around the Antarctic. We flew to Rio de Janeiro, then down to Punta Arenas in Chile (where I currently am, funnily enough, but actually in Santiago, sixteen years later) where we joined the ship. First of all I developed an 'understanding' with another girl who then started to play the 'I've got a boyfriend' game. Maria stepped up to the plate and wasn't interested in adolescent mind games. After a rather liquid evening in one of the ship's bars we went down to her cabin to see what other watery substances we could generate, not emerging until after lunch the next day. We missed the first land excursion but being in bed with Maria was compensation enough, a lady who didn't like to waste a drop of what she inspired. She stayed on the ship when I flew back to Germany but we were to see each other more than once again after that. The next time I heard from her was months later when she phoned out of the blue as L and I were in the middle of a relationship crisis meeting. L was only back in Germany for three days and Maria picked her moment to get in touch with supernatural virtuosity. It also helped the talks, too, loosening L's tongue about what she'd been up to whilst I was thinking I was the only miscreant...

Married, but alone.

Despite being newly 'single', I had no urge to fool around. I was married and still believed that one should not do that kind of thing, even if opportunities were manifold, and they were. I was young, well-mannered, good-looking and successful. And, to all intents and purposes for the majority of the people I met and worked with, single. I chose to ignore a lot of the clumsier come-ons, not wishing, as one does, to shit on one's own doorstep. Still, one night, I caved in. Big time.


There was a group of about five of us out one evening after the show. I still remember saying something stupid to one of the Australian dancers, who didn't warrant my gauche behaviour; I'd miscalculated her feelings for me, or, at least, her own set of morals. It took years for that to heal, and I freely admit acting like a twat. Nonetheless, one of the other girls, a sassy, emotional New Yorker, made her feelings for me quite clear. She looked like one of the girls from Sex and the City and sang like Barbra Streisand. We talked, and how...I ran her home. We talked in her kitchen until 6am, when it became time to go to bed. I undressed her and caressed her. She went exploring. It was heaven. We didn't go to sleep until about noon, sticky, sweaty and wet. Then we started again. Hot, musky and sticky, until we could no more.

Afterwards, I had a pang of conscience. We talked the next day. I was sorry, I was married, this couldn't continue. There were tears. I found out a couple of years later that I needn't have been so conscientious; L had done the dirty on me a good three months previously and not just the once, either. I got this information from her then paramour, Klaus, as we later sailed towards Venezuela on a cruise ship. Klaus, L and I had met years before on a cruise and hit it off famously. Klaus turned out to be L's first refuge when things were not going sparklingly with me. I was incredibly grateful to him; life with L was so much easier and better with her after they'd had their affair and took the edge off Maria's call to me when L and I were in the midst of our final summit meeting, but more on that, later.

Looking back on those extraordinary few years, I'm surprised any of us surfaced from them without at least some form of mild STD. We desperately thrashed around in search of the truth and a better way to lead our lives, taking way too many other people emotional hostage as we went. Interestingly, a lot of the women I encountered in that period have been back in touch recently.

Newly married

The problems with being being married and sharing a workplace are the fact that things can go downhill for one person, up for the other and that you never leave work behind you. You take it home, you take it to bed, you talk about it over breakfast and you live it until alcohol finally opens the door to slumber the next night. It can be fun, it can be hell on earth.

The bald fact of the matter was that things started going uphill for me very quickly at Phantom  and downhill for L, who was, nevertheless, a pillar of the production, rehearsing and singing the lead every day for a month as her colleagues recuperated from illness, an ever-present, ultra-reliable and good member of the production. The only thing was that the Creative Team didn't see her as a lead role 'chairholder', if you like; she was fine as a fill-in, even if this filling-in lasted for weeks on end and enabled the company to continue earning shedloads of cash by not having to cancel performances, but that is, I suppose, life. Eventually, when I was in the top conducting job, the Team came clean about why they didn't want my wife as N°1. It was the reason which would crush any woman, particularly one who earns her living on stage, and I couldn't tell her, at least not then. I told her years later, I think, when we were in the middle of our final, defining row, our tongues loosened by too much wine. Three years of confused bile was regurgitated and distributed randomly to anyone who cared to listen. A vile evening, in all respects. But that was 1995, and we were still newlyweds in 1992.

L was finally informed that there was no more contract for her at Phantom, but Cats were looking for a Jellylorum/Gumby cover, and would she be interested. It was an elegant exit and she went on to become a well-loved member of that show. Cats eventually reached its sell-by date, too; she felt no longer challenged and wanted to try her luck elsewhere. The situation between us was not rosy, so she decided to go back to the USA and try her luck on Broadway. Armed with two major credits, her chances couldn't be that bad. We'd been living in a huge flat in Blankenese, a wonderful Hamburg neighbourhood. The flat was expensive, so we moved to somewhere a little smaller and a lot cheaper when L moved to Cats. This enabled us to save a bit more, then she headed back across the pond. We'd done some cruise gigs together in the years leading up to her departure, so whe had a good money-making contact if Broadway didn't work out immediately. I'll get on to the cruises in my next post; the really were something special. In all senses...

I stayed in Hamburg with the two cats, Norman and Tara. Life was different, and soon became unrecognisable.

Time to meet the family.

I celebrated the week before going to the USA for the first time to meet my new in-laws by getting chicken pox. Not bad at 29, eh? I just cleared travel fitness by 24 hours and off we went. In those days, you could smoke on planes, so everything was OK. It was also ten years before radical Islam decided to change the way we travel, so there was no turning up at the airport six days before your flight was due to leave, either. Travelling in those days was a pleasure, even if it was linked to a marriage that should never have come to pass, but there you go. L's family were delightful and made me very welcome. Years later, when we split up, I felt I'd miss her parents more than her. This trip was the first of many I'd make to the USA: New York, New Jersey, Washington DC on business, two music theatre National Tours etc etc. Between 1991 and 1999 the USA and I were close friends; our relationship began as a backdrop to my first engagement and ended in December 1999, when I boarded a flight from Minneapolis to Reykjavik, bringing down the curtain definitively on our tempestuous, eight-year long affair. There were times when I adored America and times when I loathed and despised it; it was a wonderful place to work but the most boring place on God's earth if you didn't have anything to do. I felt there, more than anywhere else I've ever lived, that if I wasn't being noticeably productive my social stock would fall at least 100 points. The pressure to work and to be seen to work was immeasurable. This was easily fulfilled in DC and on tour; not so easy in Minneapolis, where I was truly a freelance musician, looking around for any kind of work which might rear its head. My savings were slowly diminishing but there was a steady trickle of gigs coming in, but nothing remotely sustainable. That's when I booked a single flight Minneapolis - Paris via the Icelandic capital.

Despite our differences even at this early stage, L's and my sex life was pretty damned good. She loved to fuck, and fuck hard: one night, we did it eight times; she came eighteen times. We watched porn videos together, she loved it front and back and adored being spanked. We still managed to split up twice more before finally getting married on August 15th, 1992. Her family came over to England for the ceremony and we all headed off to Wales and Ireland on our honeymoon, taking in Tom Jones' homeland (for Aunt Dorothy) and southern Ireland for my in-laws, whose grandparents had left the country for the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century. Our families actually came from neighbouring villages in Westmeath. British soldiers pointed guns down our throats as we crossed the border into Ulster from Donegal and our landlady in Portrush fell in love with my new brother-in-law. All in all, it was an unforgettable week, particularly for my wonderful in-laws, who will never forget the fabulous time they had in the UK and Ireland. L and I flew back to Hamburg while her family trudged off to Heathrow's Terminal 1 for their flight back to Newark, NJ. Only then did things start to go seriously downhill.

Slippery slope

It was clear to me by now that L was interested but I was having none of it. I'd still run her home but drive off to my other life afterwards. One night in the car, though, things went further than planned and although I didn't think too much of it, one post-orgasmic female colleague clearly felt that life had taken a new direction. She phoned me the next day as if we were nascent lovers. I'd just got off the phone to the star and my head was elsewhere. L was audibly peeved "...you put your finger in me one night then pretend nothing ever happened?") and I, not wanting to provoke any bad feeling at work, decided to try to polyfilla over the cracks. As anyone with half a brain knows only too well, you can't keep everyone happy all the time, so I quickly decided, in the general public interest, that if anyone was going to suffer then it would be me. I discretely disentwined myself from the star's emotional embrace and L and I got engaged on October 3rd, 1991. I found out later in Roosevelt Park, NJ, that she hated the engagement ring I'd given her; it was 'too small', not 'flashy' enough and the fact that I'd asked an old flame's advice concerning keeping the cost down didn't go down too well, either. Let's face it, my heart wasn't in it from the beginning but I was too much of a masochist to just let it drop. I also had no confidence in my own judgement; L told me that if I broke it off with her I'd regret it for the rest of my life, and I believed her. I convinced myself that everything would improve once we'd got things sorted out. After all, we were both two intelligent, attractive and talented human beings; how could it not work? Well, where shall we start...?