The Kevin Show

by Mary Pilon

  Kristina could feel her eyes glaze with tears91 as the band played on.

  KEVIN

  A friend who knew that Kevin had been on the Artemis told him that post-traumatic stress disorder was very real and that he should be on guard against it. What he had gone through on board with Simpson’s death was beyond horrible and more than merited some time for healing and extra self-care.

  Whatever, dude, Kevin replied.

  He had nightmares about the crash, his relationship to the water inverted from one of trust to fear, the sound of the boat snapping in his ears92 at inopportune times. That summer, in a manner that was both quiet and unconscious, he suspended his belief in mental illness being a real thing rather than a construct, for him or anyone else. His meds didn’t feel as though they were working right and when he mentioned this to his doctor, Kevin was told that this was not a good time to change them. With less than ideal information and support, he stopped taking them on his own.93

  Kevin’s lows were as unpredictable as his highs,94 but for different reasons. When he was manic, his life was one plot point after another, and there was no telling what he was going to do next as the star of The Show. During his lows, there was no telling how long he would stay curled up in a ball in bed. A few hours, a day, a week. Or, if he would act upon his threats about ending it all, feeling that life was without meaning.

  After the crash, Kevin thought of the end of Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis, a compendium based on thousands of typed and handwritten notes and journal entries by Dick, in which he describes how he spent eight years trying to understand a specific experience of the universe. Kevin had started reading Dick in high school and his themes—isolation, loneliness, the future—continued to strike him. He had particularly loved The Man in the High Castle, an alternative history novel that takes place in the years after the Axis powers claimed victory in World War II and Time out of Joint, about a man living in a false reality. Dick totally “got it,” Kevin thought, particularly the feeling of living in two parallel worlds, and how when pushing away voices in his head, one could actually get more and more out of reality and less grounded. It was a strange paradox Kevin could relate to; the more he tried to resist the commands of the Director, the more he wondered if part of him was slipping away.

  Kevin wondered if the world would have been more understanding of his disorder if he had won a Pulitzer or Nobel Peace Prize by his twenty-second birthday, or made the NBA draft, or composed like Beethoven. Deep down, Kevin knew that the romanticization of the mentally ill prodigy, be it an athlete or an artist, was dangerous, as it typecast creative people as crazy and then could make crazy people feel obliged to be brilliant. But somehow, those who were seen as geniuses received more latitude, he felt, when it came to assessments of their sanity. As a middle-of-the-pack overachiever, it was as though he was afforded less room to act abnormally than the indisputably brilliant.

  Then there were the thoughts about his father, who still seemed to honor achievement above all else. That mindset had served Kevin well as a child in some ways, but he no longer knew how he felt about it as an adult. Gordon watched opera screenings at his local movie theater, he listened to music, he appeared to enjoy art, but the cynic in Kevin wondered whether his father was interested in art for the art’s sake, or interested in watching the achievements of people who were perceived to be the best at something; they weren’t just opera singers, they were singers for the Met, therefore successful in a traditional sense. Still, Kevin had played the game. He had made an Olympic team and taken part in several America’s Cup bids. He was married to a kind, successful woman and had three beautiful children. Was it ever going to be enough?95

  For years, Kevin had felt that living the lifestyle of an athlete had allowed him to hide a bit. The training regimen gave his life a rigid, unquestioned consistency and sense of purpose. When he was at the gym, there wasn’t time for asking questions—rather, the focus was on getting more and more weights on the bar and making sure that nothing got in the way of improving his physical prowess. With most of his time occupied by trying to become a world champion, there wasn’t a lot of time for self-pity. Now, after the Artemis crash, all of that had changed. Kevin stopped going to the gym his usual six to ten times a week. It seemed utterly insignificant.96

  In writing about his own depression, author William Styron described it as a failure of self-esteem.97 “Depression,” Styron wrote, “is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self—to the mediating intellect—as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode.”

  The external world didn’t do Kevin any favors in providing logic or closure, either. Although the San Francisco Police Department issued a police report, neither the Artemis group nor the America’s Cup publicly released the results of any further investigation into the cause (or causes) of the crash. In its eighty-three-page report, the San Francisco Police Department cited broad factors, like “excessive speed,” “machinery failure,” “equipment failure,” and “racing” as causes of the accident. The police also conceded that the crash and its vessel were unconventional; “it should be noted that America’s Cup Race Boats present cutting edge technology” and that the boats are “designed to operate with little margin for error.” Therefore, the America’s Cup boats “do not have many of the safety features that would normally be associated with recreational vessels or commercial vessels.”

  In a press conference following the crash, Iain Murray, the regatta director, sat before a gray backdrop and addressed a crowd of reporters and TV cameras assembled at the pier. He choked up several times and said that the organization took “the safety of this sport very seriously.”98 Citing the then pending work of the San Francisco Police Department, Murray and America’s Cup officials were quiet about the details. The event’s website showed gray clouds above the Golden Gate Bridge, not far from where the capsize had taken place, and that their prayers are with Andrew Simpson’s family.99

  “The entire Artemis racing team is devastated by what happened,” Artemis CEO Paul Cayard said. “Our heartfelt condolences are with Andrew’s wife and family.”

  By the third week of July, just over two months after the Artemis had capsized, three hundred or so Artemis team members, friends, and family gathered in private to launch another boat, Big Blue, out into the bay.100 Like its red counterpart, it was a foiling catamaran, but it had two blue hulls and a tall black sail. The sailors swapped their red-and-black suits for all-black ones, topped with bright yellow helmets, visible from far away.

  While the rest of Kevin’s teammates were able to get back on the water, he was not. He spent many hours staring out the window of his home in Berkeley, gazing at the water and listening to Coldplay’s “Fix You” on repeat. When watching fictitious characters on television or film, he found himself moved to tears by scenes that ordinarily wouldn’t have provoked such sensitivity. It all felt connected to Simpson’s death, everything a reminder of life’s fragility. He wondered: Was there anything more he could have done on the boat that day? In the weeks leading up to it? Every line drawing, every comment in a design meeting, every maneuver on the water kept replaying itself in his mind, through the distorted prism of grief and anxiety. The accident had made no sense when it was happening and made even less sense the more he chewed on it.

  In the past, Kevin had been able to work through things by getting back on the water, but that didn’t seem like an option now. He thought about his love of reading and writing and wondered if he could make a new career doing something literary, but it didn’t seem particularly viable as a way of financially supporting his family.101 He had always taken pride in what he described as “the status of killing the deer and bringing it back” for his wife and children.

  For years, Amanda had sacrificed her career to some extent for the sake of the family. She had repeatedly moved or compromised
on hospital placements based on where Kevin needed to be for sailing or where the children would be better served by a consistent home life and schooling. Kevin wondered: Was he doing right by his family?

  It seemed only natural that Kevin would mourn the loss of Simpson, and his time together with him on the Artemis, particularly given its violent end. Given Kevin’s history, it was hard for him and others to tell what was a phase of grieving and what was a more lasting sign of a mental health crisis. Kevin knew that it was difficult for Amanda to go about her day as he drank more than usual, or woke up at 4 a.m. each morning. The guilt this generated only made him more depressed, creating a vicious cycle. At times, it even felt as though depression was just another thing that he was bad at.

  Kevin wondered if the symptoms of his bipolar disorder were a coping mechanism, a way for him to make order out of the bedlam he felt surrounded him. When things were going right, the thought of going off the rails felt less compelling, The Show less intoxicating. Yet when he was on the threshold of an episode coming, it felt as if he had no choice but to dive in. Only afterward, when he thought about the implausible plot of The Show, did the notion that he was the center of the world, or that he by himself could save it, feel ridiculous.

  For decades, Kevin had felt like a gerbil stuck on a wheel chasing achievement, but the Artemis crash had forced him to stop and look up and take a raw assessment, something he felt he had never done before, because he worried that it risked being counterproductive to moving forward. It felt like a cliché, but as he witnessed the life leaving Simpson’s body in the Bay that spring day, a part of his life had actually flickered in front of him. Did he really want to spend the rest of his days trying to win a sailing race, especially when something as horrific as Simpson’s death102 could be a by-product? Simpson had the one thing that Kevin had thought he wanted—an Olympic gold medal. But, in the end, what good had it done him?

  Kevin joined his teammates in flying to Sherborne Abbey in the United Kingdom for Simpson’s memorial service. They gathered in the historic church, surrounded by lush green lawns and cradled inside by sweeping ivory arcades, light streaming in through stained-glass windows high above.

  A choir sang Coldplay’s “Fix You” in perfect pitch, their solemn voices echoing through the cavernous nave. The narrow pews were packed with a gathering of Simpson’s friends, family, and fellow sailors. People unable to fit in stood outside. No one left with dry eyes.

  Kevin stood in the church, along with everyone else, in tears and still in a state of shock. Memorial services are, by definition, designed for the living, not the dead, but it was unclear to him how he or anyone really could begin to process the loss of Simpson.

  AMANDA

  Kevin was still drinking too much,103 she knew that. Beer, vodka, sometimes while around people, sometimes probably while not. He could be spiraling down into depression, she thought, or he could still be mourning the loss of a friend. Perhaps both.

  He was driving the kids to school every day and otherwise helping out around the house. It only felt reasonable to give him some time and space to contemplate his future in sailing. For now, the family would be able to live off Amanda’s income as a doctor and some savings and she tried to resist the temptation to step in and save the day, something she knew she excelled at. The screws of Kevin’s thinking seemed to be a little looser than normal, his thoughts and conversation a bit more cerebral and stream-of-consciousness, but she couldn’t tell what that meant. As long as she had known him, he had never been one to slur his speech, never one to knock things over when he was drunk, and he wasn’t doing that now. He was just talking more, and his thoughts were a bit more all over the place. In some ways, it was easier for her when Kevin was all-out manic, as she could then go into emergency doctor mode; the gray in-between was more difficult to navigate. She was feeling out of sorts, too, as the tragedy had shocked her as well.

  Over the years, Amanda had inevitably learned a lot about sailing; she knew that no competitive career lasts forever and that as Kevin aged, it wasn’t unrealistic to think that he could transition into a leadership role that would still keep him involved in the sport somehow. To leave sailing altogether was something neither he nor she had fully considered. She tried her best to give him room to think about questions that she knew she couldn’t answer for him.104

  KEVIN

  Five weeks after the crash, Kevin officially quit his job onboard the Artemis, posted the words “Free at last” on his Facebook page, and changed his profile picture to a black-and-white photograph of him sailing at the 1985 Youth Championships. When asked about his plans, he told at least one person with the organization that he planned to take up oil painting. It was easy for Kevin to mark his last day of work, because June 16 is of significance to James Joyce fans: that is the day when people in and out of Dublin pay tribute to the author and Ulysses, with some making pilgrimages and others reenacting scenes from the book. Bloomsday. Perfect.

  At least two people in leadership roles at the Artemis organization knew of Kevin’s bipolar disorder, but it didn’t come up in his conversations about leaving. Still, he worried about the stigma he could face in quitting, even after such a public crisis. Sailors aren’t supposed to leave abruptly like that, at least not before serving out their two-year contracts. Even Kevin’s father had cautioned him against doing it, saying that in the close-knit world of professional sailing, it was important not to burn bridges. Kevin also knew that the rumor mill would churn with both accurate and inaccurate conjecture. Whatever the facts of the crash and its aftermath, they weren’t going to matter.105

  Kevin spent hours reading his old journal entries and love letters to Amanda. He’d forgotten what an outlet those missives had been over the years; revisiting them all these years later, he felt like a different person. Meanwhile, his children went about their summer, making a lemonade stand and taking an occasional gag photo with Kevin’s Google Glass.

  The America’s Cup continued. The following month, Kevin made a handful of limited public remarks about Andrew’s death106 on the website Sailing Anarchy. He recounted Andrew’s congeniality as a teammate and wrote, “America’s Cup 34 starts over, or for real, or just plain FINALLY. After all the controversy, and the meta-controversy about what started the controversy; after the divide between those who believe the world is owed the truth about the AC72 capsizes and those that believe it will never be known; after the fascinating discussions with manifold valid perspectives but one final and just decision … For me, today is still about the legacy of a great man and his family.”

  •

  On September 25, 2013, just weeks after the Artemis accident, the America’s Cup had a winner with Oracle’s “upset” of Team New Zealand. News outlets around the world eagerly repeated what the Wall Street Journal and others christened “one of the greatest comebacks107 in sports history.” Somehow the richest team that entered the competition as the defending champion, with more time, resources and power in the event, had been recast as the underdog, its victory perceived as miraculous rather than merely surprising. In the press conferences that followed, there was little talk about the Artemis crash, Simpson’s death, or any safety precautions or changes to the race going forward.108

  Facebook post (courtesy Kevin Hall)

  As summer shifted into fall, Kevin’s expressions of his interest in time bending and reality increased. On Facebook, he posted thoughts about art, a video concerning global warming, the cover of Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint, and a photo he composed of a stairway to nowhere, an offbeat reference to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” That elicited a comment from his mother and a response from Kevin that was hard to deconstruct. Was it humor or an attempt to grapple with existence?

  He posted a quote from Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane: “How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow.” And
going full circle to his 1989 episode in Boston, the first experience with The Show, Kevin referred back to Hamlet, a work he still loved decades past high school. “Believe it or not one can live somewhere like this and still have some pretty tough struggles … Hangin’ with Hamlet’s ghost in Denmark.” He engaged in long back-and-forth conversations on Facebook Messenger, riffing with stream-of-consciousness ramblings that he thought were an expression of his artist self coming out, the creation of meaningful work.

  Kevin began to stay up late writing pages and pages of material—memoir, fiction, whatever he was in the mood for.109 He ingested books like a starving person at a buffet, among them Tom Payne’s Fame: What the Classics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebrity. In the book, Payne examined what he argued was a primal urge of humans not only to worship individuals, but to tear them down when they felt it was necessary. Those characters that people chose as their heroes revealed a lot about them, and about their views on mortality and immortality. When in The Show, Kevin had hungered to be a good hero out to save the world and inspire others through his actions. He saw himself as part of a lineage that went all the way back to the ancient Greeks and the Iliad.

  Kevin pulled Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland off his bookshelf, not having revisited it for years. The next day, he received an email from the Dalí Society advertising an illustrated 1969 edition of Dalí’s Alice, and he knew that that had to be a sign from the Director. Less than a week later, after watching E.T. with his children, he heard the John Williams score to the film on the radio when he drove them to school the next morning. He had listened to the classical station enough to know that they almost never played movie scores. It had to be another sign. A day or two later, Kevin walked into a bookstore looking for Faust and grabbed a copy of Zero History by William Gibson on his way to the drama section. Then, once in the drama section, he noticed that another William Gibson play, The Miracle Worker, was sitting right next to Faust. His brain began to short circuit as he wondered how the Director had known that he would be in the bookstore.