The Boom Boom
THE BOOM BOOM
ELLA
Shut up! I think I said for you to shut up!
—CHRISSY, IN THE BOOM BOOM ROOM
1974
Ella, sixteen, who had been quieted if not tamed in boarding school, had become interested in theater in general, and the Williamstown Summer Festival in particular. Ella’s parents, while loving this blossoming side of their creative and outspoken daughter, were also loving the space that the theater and specifically the summer internship could offer. Her father was in the middle of a senatorial run, and the distance between his conservative campaign and his liberal daughter created a cushion that allowed him to celebrate her accomplishments—from afar.
But first, in order to get into the famed Williamstown Summer Theatre Festival, one had to audition. Ella chose a monologue from David Rabe’s In the Boom Boom Room. This was a new play they were going to do in repertory that summer, and she desperately wanted to play Chrissy, the lead. It was an audacious reach, one that her limited résumé did not support, but that only fueled her belief that it was her manifest destiny to land it.
Her theater teacher, Edith Rood, had suggested that, at her audition, she do something to get noticed, and so, halfway through the monologue, Ella stripped and did the remainder of the piece in the nude. The admittance committee, comprised of three actors, one director, and two playwrights, thought the gesture bawdy, lewd, and brave, and though the odds were against her, she was waitlisted for the first company, but accepted into the second.
With a permission slip signed by Eve Lynn and a donation signed by Boo, Ella Joy Gaddy was accepted into the prestigious summer program at Williamstown and offered small roles in that season’s The Seagull, The Threepenny Opera, and the pièce de résistance, understudying the role she most dearly wanted, Chrissy in In the Boom Boom Room. She would be understudying Tamasin Sullivan, a senior star on the rise who was in the drama program at Yale.
Tamasin’s reputation for excellence, and the fact that she had had a small but significant role in John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man, created a mystique around her. It was rumored that agents from William Morris and Sylvan Light were flying in to try to sign her away from her small East Coast representatives who had discovered and nurtured her from the age of fourteen. She was, in Ella’s estimation, a legend, or at least one in the making, and Ella was awed to be in her presence.
For the first two weeks they didn’t talk at all; Ella just understudied, over studied, and generally observed everything about Tamasin. She mirrored her mannerisms, her gait, the way she’d hold on to a phrase or punctuate a word with a breath, a stare, or an elongated pause that made the audience and the actors onstage lean in. Pay attention, it said, without saying it. And people did. There was little about Tamasin Sullivan that Ella didn’t love, admire, and perhaps for the first time in her life, envy.
Rarely intimidated, Ella couldn’t find words when it came to Tamasin.
“She probably thinks I’m a moron,” Ella told Harlan, who was visiting with Essie. They had come to help Ella get situated as Eve Lynn was busy campaigning with Boo. By that time, Darnell was in his last year of medical school in nearby Boston, and he’d come as well.
Ella and Darnell hadn’t seen each other for a few years but had been writing regularly, and despite their nine-year age difference, they’d developed a deep friendship.
“No one would ever think you were a moron, E,” Darnell said. They always used initials when referring to the other, something Ella had started as a child. “Just be yourself,” he told her, winking. “Can’t do better than that.”
But for the first time in her life, Ella Gaddy was shy, and insecure. Being underage, she felt a bit outside the circle of actors and stagehands who would all get together after rehearsals, listening to the Stones or Zeppelin and getting wasted, then getting laid. She kept her distance.
It was Tamasin who approached her. “Got a fag?” she asked.
Rehearsals had just ended, and a group of kids were going to Digby’s to dance and drink and stretch their legs with the locals.
Ella pulled out a box of Virginia Slims from her embroidered shoulder bag. “You’ve come a long way, baby,” Ella said, smiling at the reference as she lit Tamasin’s cigarette. Tamasin looked at her, confused.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“It’s, you know, the slogan in the cigarette commercial,” Ella said, feeling her face redden. “You’ve come a long way?” Tamasin’s emotionless stare made Ella self-conscious.
“Never mind,” Ella said, wanting to disappear.
Tamasin took a long drag. “I heard you stripped halfway through your audition, and that’s how you got to be my understudy.”
It was more of a statement than a question; an acknowledgment that Tamasin had done some research. And somehow that gave Ella back her footing.
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe if I would’ve stripped from the beginning, I could have landed the role.”
Tamasin looked at her for a moment, then let out a deep laugh, which made Ella relax a bit. “I bet you could have,” she said, impressed, and then, referring to the busload of kids, “You going with ’em?”
Ella shook her head.
“Good,” Tamasin said, taking another drag. “Neither am I.” And then she looked at Ella again, with her signature pregnant pause, as if she were weighing a decision. “Wanna walk?”
Ella nodded, shivering, though it was a billion degrees. They headed round the lake back to the cabins that housed the repertory company. They were both wearing shorts and sandals, Tamasin in cutoffs, a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt, and Birkenstocks, Ella in cuffed shorts and a flowered sleeveless blouse.
“Very twin set,” Tamasin commented, regarding the shirt that matched the shorts. “When I first saw you, I thought you’d be a Southern priss.”
Ella didn’t know how to respond.
“So, are you a Southern priss?” Tamasin asked, squinting as she took another drag. Ella considered the question.
“Truth be told I do come from a long line of prisses, and I can’t really abide any of ’em, so I sure as hell hope I’m not,” she told her with a candor and authenticity that was not only refreshing but absofuckinglutley charming.
Tamasin smiled.
And in that moment Ella knew she had passed some test.
The walk back was three-quarters of a mile, but for Ella it felt like two steps. She hung on every word Tamasin said. It wasn’t just that she was talented, that went without saying, but she was brilliant. And honest. And curious. And fucking magnificent.
At five feet nine inches, Tamasin Sullivan was as tall as Ella, but less lanky, with a natural beauty that Ella found refreshing for its lack of pretense.
“Thirsty?” Tamasin asked just before they got to the cabin. Ella nodded.
Tamasin’s cabin, which housed four to a room, was conveniently empty, and smelled of incense.
“You like?” Tamasin asked, holding a cone of Nag Champa.
Again, Ella nodded.
“Light it,” Tamasin told her, bringing over a bottle of Coke and sitting on her bed. She patted the spot next to her and Ella obediently walked over and sat down, taking a swig from the Coke Tamasin offered. The Nag Champa gave the air a heavy, spicy aroma that Ella found intoxicating.
Tamasin studied Ella as she drank. “Is that natural?” Tamasin asked, referring to Ella’s vibrant hair color.
And for the third time, Ella, tongue-tied, just nodded.
“You’re beautiful,” Tamasin said, reaching for a strand of Ella’s hair.
“You are,” Ella whispered back. Her throat was dry, and her heart was pounding. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling except the need to be closer, and not wanting it to end. She had never had sexual feelings for a woman, never even considered it, but now it seemed as natural as breathing as Tamasin gently leaned in and kissed her.
Ella kissed her back, passionately, hungrily, as she had an out-of-body experience, wondering on one hand if this was really happening, and then on the other how to prolong every sensual second.
They fell back onto the bed with unleashed lust as Tamasin’s expert tongue and hands explored and undressed the body of her young understudy. Ella lay back, happily submitting, taking in the overwhelming sensations. Tamasin stripped quickly and lay atop her as the two found a rhythm, writhing, awakening, fulfilling.
It was, Ella recalled much later in life, the moment she realized that rules were for sheep. And she would not join a flock. Fuck rules. Fuck tradition. Fuck Tamasin.
And she did.
They became partners, friends, lovers, inseparable for six glorious weeks, dreading the end of the season. Romantics, they’d lie on blankets under the stars, listening to Simon & Garfunkel wax poetic about the inevitability of endings.
“False promises are for fools,” Tamasin told Ella. “Let’s not make them.”
So, they didn’t.
The finality only heightened the experience.
Their last week at Williamstown, Ella gave Tamasin an antique pocket watch inscribed, Waste not a moment .
As a farewell gift in return, Tamasin feigned illness the night the Sylvan Light agents flew in to see her. “Fuck ’em,” she said, “let them sign you.”
They didn’t. But who cared?
For on that night, Ella Gaddy was In the Boom Boom Room.