Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva (25 page)

“Well, I would never tell you or anyone else that they should do it, but, you know, Luciano, we want to have you with us and also onstage as long as we possibly can.”

He was full of questions: he wanted to know how long it took me to lose the weight and if it was painful. He wanted to know how to find a good doctor.

“You’re Luciano Pavarotti, I’m sure you can get the best doctor in the world to do this if you want to do it.”

“You don’t overeat now? You never overeat?”

“Never. I don’t. But, Luciano, you have to understand that the surgery is just a tool, not a cure. If you don’t follow the rules, if you don’t eat what and how much they tell you to eat, your stomach will stretch and you’ll gain it back.”

“Ohhh . . . okay, okay. Well, I really appreciate it, Debbbeee. You take care, good night.
Buona notte, bella
. . . .”

“Goodbye, Lucian—”

Click. In all the times I’d worked with him over the years, I’d barely had a one-on-one conversation with this legend, and now we were talking provolone, internal organs, and life and death. I hung up the phone and thought how sweet and vulnerable it was for him to call me up and ask me those questions. He had a very young daughter with his new wife, Nicoletta, and he wanted to be healthy for both of them. But sadly, Luciano was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just a few weeks after our late-night phone chat.

When I heard he had died a year later, I said a prayer for him. He had the most identifiable opera voice I’d ever heard; one note, and you knew it was Luciano. Not only was it beautiful, expressive, and with a wide range of colors . . . no matter what age he was, his sound was fresh and youthful. It was a voice that could coax
Ballo
’s Amelia to declare her love on the gallows at midnight and soothe Aida as she took her last breath.

Luciano was larger than life, and his voice will live forever.

IN THE FALL
of 2006, just over two years after my surgery, I strutted onstage practically naked in front of thousands of strangers and
showed off my new body. Singing in my first fully staged production of Strauss’s
Salome
, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, I had to dance the sexy Dance of the Seven Veils as the biblically inspired and sexually charged Salome, who demands the head of John the Baptist. This role is a perfect example of a part I never would have been able to play in my former body, and she is one of my favorites.

For the first and only time in my life, I worked out like a fiend to prepare for a role—I knew it would be a challenge, both muscially and physically, and I wanted to look fantastic. For four months, I got my ass into the gym every day to sweat on the elliptical and pump iron. I was down to 180 pounds, my pretty and curvaceous high school weight. The next challenge was to find a man who could pick me up—literally.

During rehearsals, we auditioned all sorts of men for the part of the Executioner—a mixed bag of theater extras, muscle men dug up at the gym, and brawny character actor–types. It was a role without any lines; instead of acting-singing ability, it called mainly for brute force, because his essential job was to throw me around. The director, Francesca Zambello, lined up ten potential Samsons to test their strength.

“Okay, now, guys,” she instructed, “I want you each to walk over to Debbie, throw her over your shoulder, walk to the other end of the stage with her, and toss her down onto that pile of pillows.”

I was terrified. In my mind, I still saw myself as 330 pounds.
There is no way any of these guys will be able to do it!
I was wearing knee- and elbow pads just in case one of them dropped me. Even little Steinway, whom I’d brought to rehearsal that day (Francesca dubbed him “the Dustbuster”) was shaking in trepidation.

The first guy who walked onto the stage looked ninety-five pounds soaking wet. Francesca whispered something in his ear and he left. The second guy picked me up but only made it five feet across the stage before he had to put me down. One by one, they each tried
and faltered, until it was Number Five’s turn. He came charging at me, ripped the prop head of John the Baptist out of my hand, threw it across the stage, lifted me up like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder, and charged across the stage, ready to throw me onto the pillows. I was shrieking. Or, to be more precise, I was squealing like a teenager.

“Okay! Okay, okay . . .
okay
!” Francesca yelled. “You’ve got the job. Now please put Debbie down—
gently
.”

Everybody laughed, and I was in shock, not to mention exhilarated, that any man could pick me up like that. Our rehearsals after that consisted of us wrapping our bodies around each other and Number Five manhandling me like a brute—I loved it. Offstage, he took me for motorcycle rides in the freezing Chicago evenings without a helmet. I wore jeans, black leather boots, and a black leather jacket. It felt good to be wild girl Rizzo on the back of a Harley instead of goody-two-shoes Sandy.

And while I was at it, I couldn’t resist giving my new figure a whirl, too. During rehearsals for
Salome
, my old standby boyfriend Dane came to visit. I’d met Dane ten years earlier on one of those Big Girl dating websites during my wild fen-phen days—he was the poet/Harvard law student/former heroin addict who made love tenderly—
that
Dane. We’d kept in touch over the years, seeing each other in between our other relationships. I truly cared for Dane—I loved him, in fact—but since he was married for much of those ten years, having a real relationship with him was problematic. During my Mitch years, he’d been out of the picture, off somewhere having kids. But now that Mitch was old news, Dane had returned for a cameo.

Because he was a former addict who’d been going regularly to Narcotics Anonymous meetings for twenty years, he was the first person I confided in after my Mitch nightmare about a worry I had.

“I think I have a problem with alcohol,” I told him one night, during his visit to Chicago. I had learned to drink heavily with Mitch, and in the last year it had escalated on my own. I was hoping I could talk to him about it, that he’d understand and give me some twelve-step advice.

“You? Nah, you couldn’t,” he said, very sure of himself. “If you were an alcoholic you’d be drinking around me, and you never do.”

I tried to explain that I didn’t drink around him out of respect for his own addiction, and that when our dates were over and he went home, I’d go to the bar and drink until closing time. But he’d have none of that talk. He was the kind of addict I’d meet and recognize later on—the kind who had to be the “star” addict, who had to have the most dramatic story, who had to upstage everyone around him as the more serious addict, the worst addict in the room. Was that something to be proud of?

I remember meeting Dane’s mother once when she attended a concert of mine in San Francisco. She was a lovely woman, and after the concert we talked a bit.

“You’re one of the best things to ever happen to my son,” she said, and I smiled. Apparently I had approval from the mother, which was major.

“But if I were you,” she added, “I’d turn around and
run.
”

I never got the chance to take his mother’s advice, because Dane always ran first. He visited me in Chicago and then went home to the wife, or some other girlfriend, as usual. But at least I had a gorgeous man that I adored see me up close and in the buff while I was in the best shape of my life. Who knew how long I’d be able to maintain those workouts?

For my big nude scene in
Salome
, I had to belly dance across the stage behind a gauzy scrim, then climb up a chain-link fence like a cat and swing my butt back and forth. I wasn’t going to be
completely
naked. I’d be wearing a skin-tone body stocking painted with nipples and pubic hair and with a built-in bra for extra va-va-voom lift. But
I’d look naked. I figured I better warn my parents about it ahead of time since the last time they’d seen me show skin on stage was back in my high school Daisy Duke days, so I did.

About two weeks before opening night, I got a call from Mom.

“Debbie, I’ve been thinking about you playing this Salome character, and I don’t think this is something a nice Christian girl would do.”

I had to smile. I had to smile thinking about all the things that she and I had both done that a nice Christian girl wouldn’t do.

“Don’t worry, Mom. I won’t do anything too inappropriate,” I promised. “But this is an acting part, and I have to play it properly. I hope you understand.”

I didn’t dare tell my mother about the final scene, in which Salome clutches the severed head of John the Baptist to her chest and rolls around with it on the floor, making out with it as she sings.

Some things you have to let moms discover all by themselves.

IF I WAS
going to be a good Christian girl like my mother wanted and find a good, honest, Christian man like John the Baptist, what better place to look than in church? Seek and you shall find, says the Lord. And one Sunday morning in early 2007, I sought and found the handsome face of Peter in the same pew as me at a church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

I was getting my life together and trying to make healthier choices. After seeing Dane the year before and accompanying him to his NA meetings, I started going to AA meetings on my own and had gotten ninety days sober under my belt by the time I met Peter. I was also starting to go to church more often to allow God back into my life. A churchgoing man would complete the picture.

Peter was a divorced father who worked in real estate, he told me. At first, just like with Mitch, spending time with him was thrilling. We traveled to Hawaii and went paragliding off a cliff—something I never would have done when I was heavy. It felt so freeing to sail through the air like that.

I loved that Peter loved God as much as I did. Perhaps even more. For the first five months of our romance we had what I called “Christian sex”; as many a Catholic schoolgirl will tell you, that means we did everything
but
. I didn’t know about Peter’s
commitment to chastity until a few weeks into dating when we were making out and he stopped abruptly.

“I can’t do that.”

“What do you mean you
can’t
?” I asked. (Uh-oh. Did that mean he
couldn’t
?)

“Well, I’m Christian and I believe that you should wait until you’re married.”

Obviously, Peter didn’t understand “Christian sex” the same way I did. Unmarried sex was sinful, sure, but you did it anyway then felt guilty about it and/or paid a big price for it afterward. Sheesh. But . . .
no
sex? Well, every relationship I’d had so far had been based on sex, so I thought, okay, let’s give this a chance. He’s got potential.

I appreciated his dedication to his faith, of course. But the problem with this no-sex thing was that it began to feel like the same dynamic I always felt with men—that they were aloof, holding back, unreachable . . . unavailable. And if I sensed that, I’d end up begging and pleading for the attention I needed. And if I didn’t get it, I learned in therapy, I’d overeat, overdrink, or fill the empty hole inside me some other way—this was my pattern.

Our Christian sex continued for five months—two divorced adults in their forties saving it for the wedding night—until month six, when I couldn’t take it any longer and boldly took the initiative one night. The next morning, he got up to leave and didn’t say a word about it. I couldn’t gauge his mood—was he in shock? Was he angry? After two days without acknowledgment of our long-awaited consummation, I brought it up. It was such an intimate step in our relationship, I felt it was important to talk about.

“Peter, I think something happened between us the other night.”

“Yes,” he said, deadpan. “It did.”

It was all he said before changing the subject. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it, so we didn’t. But he didn’t say he wanted
to stop doing it, either, so we didn’t (stop, that is). But it’s not like the romantic floodgates burst open after that. Once again, I was in the begging role.

On one vacation in the Dominican Republic we were staying at a friend’s gorgeous summer home and I’d been trying to lure Peter to the bedroom. I’d just bought a sexy bathing suit especially for him—black, and cut all the way down to my navel—and I walked into the room where he was watching television and modeled it for him, sashaying across the floor like it was a catwalk. He didn’t look up.

“Notice anything?”

He looked up. “Oh, new suit? That’s really great.” He looked back at the TV screen.

I went out and lay by the pool, in a huff. The sun was setting, and the ocean waves were splashing nearby—it was the ultimate setup for romance. When Peter came outside, I got my hopes up—but all he did was pick up the hose and start watering the plants around the pool.

“Peter! I don’t get it!” I blew up. “We come down here to this beautiful, romantic place, and I feel like you don’t want me. Any man, I don’t care what I look like, would be all over me in this situation!”

Secretly, I was beginning to wonder if he was gay and he didn’t want to admit it. Either way, I took it as rejection, and that feeling led me . . . to take a drink. Once I took that first one, the dam was busted. As they say in AA, you think you’ve licked the disease, but really it’s out in the parking lot doing push-ups, getting stronger. If you start up again after being sober for a while, the alcohol hits you twice as hard.

FOR THE FIRST
time ever, the drinking affected my work—something I had never let it do before. I was in Barcelona in the fall of 2007 to sing a new role at the Gran Teatre del Liceu—Maddalena, in Giordano’s
Andrea Chénier
, and I was frustrated with the role
before performances even began. Maddalena’s an aristocrat during the French Revolution who discovers love with poet Chénier, and in the end she goes to the guillotine with him. Unlike most of the roles I’d played, I couldn’t find a way to identify with her. Her story was dramatic enough but there wasn’t much complexity to her personality or arc to her character. You couldn’t compare her to Isolde, for example, whose love affair and arias were so much richer. It would be like comparing a plain sorbet to rocky road ice cream. Plus, it’s really a tenor’s opera. Maddalena has one great aria and her other two substantial pieces are duets. Which suited our tenor in the title role, José Cura, just fine. Cura is a very good-looking Spanish-Argentinian tenor, and with an ego so large it sucked the air out of a room.