I got out of the road. I was now wet, covered with oil from the street, dirt from hiding under the car, and All-Temperature Cheer from the laundry. I looked at Beth. She looked at me. There was a special moment. It wasn’t the look of two lovers saying their final farewells, but two people thinking that they had been running around for a lot longer than five minutes. We ran upstairs. Mr. Roberts reported that Champaign was all clear. Apparently tornadoes gravitate toward higher ground. Because Champaign was built on a swamp, the twisters circled the city and headed for the nearest, highest spot in the area. Homer, Illinois.
That afternoon Homer, Illinois, was leveled by the converging storms. I drank a beer and headed back to Do-Duds to redo my wash.
THERE WAS ANOTHER element of the Bible I found perplexing. It seemed littered with sudden shifts from one story to the next with no warning and seemingly no context.
Joseph, stripped of his coat of many colors, is thrown into a pit by his jealous brothers where he is to be murdered. One of his brothers argues that he should be spared, and as a compromise he is sold into slavery. You know you are in a terrible place in your life when being sold into slavery is the “good option.” Joseph ends up in an Egyptian prison. Here is where the story gets interesting. Joseph’s ability to read dreams allows him to see the future. This ability at first leads to his survival, then to his fame, and his rise to power. He becomes second-in-command to Pharaoh himself. We’ll jump ahead to somewhere in act two.
Joseph, according to some scholars, is now is his thirties, even though the Bible is never good at counting. A famine devastates the world, except for Egypt. Joseph’s ESP has saved Egypt and made Pharaoh wealthy and powerful. Joseph’s brothers, back at home, are now in a dire situation, and make the journey to Egypt to find food.
They come to the palace and don’t recognize Joseph. But Joseph recognizes them. What follows is a series of scenes that are some of the most heartbreaking and dramatic in the Bible. Will Joseph reveal himself? How will he reveal himself? Will he seek revenge? In the end, he can’t take it anymore. He sends his servants and guards out of the chamber and breaks into tears. His weeping is so overwhelming that “all of Egypt hears.” He reveals himself to his brothers. He hugs them and in an amazing preemptive strike begs them not to reproach themselves for what they did to him. Their selling him into slavery led the way for him to arrive in Egypt, which enabled him to foresee the famine and to save the Egyptians’ lives. Joseph calls himself the instrument of “astonishing deliverance.”
At this point in the story, we are either moved by Joseph’s largesse or we feel he is a little too good to be true. Swept away by emotion, the reader often overlooks five verses of legalese that occur shortly thereafter. In Genesis 47:20–25, Joseph changes the property ownership laws of Egypt. In the middle of all of the drama, we hit this obtuse section that states that in time of crisis—which could be declared by the Pharaoh—Pharaoh owns everything, eliminating personal property and self-determination. It’s a paragraph that would never find its way into the Lifetime movie version of the story.
What was the reason for the strange juxtaposition? Even in the beauty of forgiveness, of brothers and fathers and sons reuniting, even with the phrase “astonishing deliverance” still ringing in our ears, it was Joseph who, with the best of intentions, passed the laws that would be used to make the Jews slaves for over two hundred years. Joseph, not the pharaoh. Joseph. And remember, he was the one with ESP!
So the question is: Is this a story about the end of bitterness or the beginning of bitterness? Is Joseph the hero of this story for forgiving his brothers and reuniting his family, or the villain for creating the legal machinery for the near annihilation of his people?
I don’t intend this question just for people who like the Bible. It’s a question of simple logic. In this story, was Joseph the architect of the end or the beginning of a chain of events? I think the answer is both. And like a braided rope, it is very difficult to untangle.
Another element that this portion of the Joseph story illustrates for me—and I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a stretch—I think the structure of the story demonstrates misdirection. Like a magician, life draws our attention to the right hand—to family and tears and union. Then the left hand slips in a couple of laws and the history of civilization changes. I would offer that misdirection is not a plan gone wrong, but is part of the plan itself.
A classic example of misdirection was in the Battle of Cowpens in the Revolutionary War. The American militiamen were so scared and so ill-equipped that their commander feared they would just run away in the face of the superior British forces. They had done so in the past. So the commander, Daniel Morgan, told his men to “Fire three shots and you’re home free.” Meaning: I don’t want much. You don’t even have to aim. Just fire the gun three times and then you can run like hell. Some stood, most ran. Eventually, they all ran. Amused, the British rushed forward and attacked the main American forces with abandon.
But the escaping militiamen couldn’t cross the river to get out of the battle zone. They kept running through the trees, trying to find a way out, and ended up running onto the back of the battlefield behind the British forces. The British felt as though they had fallen into an amazingly clever trap. They were surrounded. They surrendered. Misdirection led to an American victory and snowballed into the final victory over the British and the beginning of the United States of America.
Beth and I felt being in Illinois was a misdirection from the start. But we were unaware of the real forces at work in our lives. The seeds for all of our future successes and heartbreaks were being laid, every day, while we blinded ourselves with pizza, pot, beer, and schoolwork.
Take Hob’s Visualization class. It was a two-hour class that met every Tuesday and Thursday. On Thursday we were subjected to a work of art, be it a movie, or symphony, or poem, or play. Over the weekend we had to “translate” that work into another art form and perform it on Tuesday. Sounds cool, I know. It looks impressive in the brochure, but it is impossible to do, impossible to grade, and is absolutely meaningless.
It was meaningless because none of us were going to read King Lear over the weekend and then write a symphony that captured the essence of the play. None of us were going to hear Beethoven’s Eroica and then go out and buy a set of oil paints and an easel and translate it into a still life with pears and a curious cat. In reality, we came up with what could be described as bullshit in hopes of misdirecting Hob into thinking we were wildly creative.
Some class visualizations: One Thursday we read Philoctetes by Sophocles. On Tuesday one student stripped down to a jockey strap and fired arrows into the wall over our heads. One Thursday, we saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and on Tuesday, a class member came wearing an apron and served up hot chocolate with whipped cream and cookies—which we ate and drank while chatting about the play. After a few minutes the student performing the visualization announced that he had put a vomit-inducing drug in one of our cocoas. Gary Genard ended up puking an hour later.
On one Thursday, we took a field trip to the art museum where we saw Zen paintings of a lone monk on a mountain smiling with an enormous empty sky above him. I was first up on Tuesday with my visualization. I came to class holding a brown paper bag. I told Hob that he and the class would have to wait down the hall in the little coffee area while I set up the room for my presentation. Everybody left giggling with anticipation.
After they rounded the bend, I took off all my clothes and set them up in my seat as if my body had vanished. I put my socks in my shoes and my underwear in my jeans. I wrote on a piece of paper, “This too will pass.” I placed the note on my desk with the pencil beside my fallen shirtsleeve. Out of my brown paper bag, I pulled out a bathrobe. I put it on and snuck out of the room. I went down three flights of stairs to the theater dressing room where I had stashed another set of clothes. I got dressed. With a sort of smug abandon, I walked home and watched television.
I heard fro
m Beth that the class waited for twenty minutes before Hob got the first twinges that my setup was “taking too long.” After forty-five minutes I heard that Hob began fuming and marched the class back to the room. He knocked on the door and yelled that I had been preparing long enough and now I “was wasting everybody’s time.” When he got no response, he barged into the room and surprise! No one there! They saw my vanished presence and read: “This too will pass.” How Zen.
That morning I was only trying to punk Hob and the class. I never realized that in that perfect expression of how I felt about Illinois, I had punked myself. I never saw that, in truth, my “visualization” didn’t end when I left the class and walked home. It continued. It became a living poem of my escape into another escape: from wasting my life in school to wasting my life at home. My visualization illustrated that my life had become a misdirection.
In the next few weeks I got cast in another big Krannert production. I would play Sparkish in a Restoration comedy, The Country Wife. Once again I had the opportunity to appear in a play that no one would understand. Even our director, Clara Behringer, professor, scholar, and alcoholic, recognized that no one born after 1740 could follow the play. Her technique for rehearsing was less Stanislavski and more The Dog Whisperer.
Clara would shout: “Enter.” “Stand.” “Speak.” Whenever we had an incomprehensible laugh line—for example, “Doctor, there are Quacks in love as well as physic, who get but the fewer and worse patients for their boasting”—Clara would ring a little bell that meant we should stop talking and hold. She would press the button on a little cassette player she brought with her, and we would hear a recording of people laughing. At the suitable moment she would press the stop button and call out, “You may continue.”
Sometimes, when she was drunk during rehearsal, she would press the laugh button and accidentally pass out for a couple of minutes. We would just stand onstage looking at each other, waiting for the huge laugh to end. We should have enjoyed it. It was the most laughter we got during the entire run.
One of the high points of rehearsal was when the stage crew was working on the set and had not finished the floor. Clara entered with her bell and tape recorder, stepped into a hole, and vanished. It was a win-win situation. The high amount of intoxication kept Clara loose and safe from injury, and the fall itself sobered her up. We ended up having one of the most constructive rehearsals we ever had.
I was costumed in pink and had a long curly blond wig. I marveled in the dressing room mirror that, at this moment in time, I looked more like a French poodle than I would ever look again.
After the run of the play, Hob ran into Beth and me on our way to acting class. He was in a jovial mood. He walked with us for a bit. He asked how we liked Urbana and we both expressed how much fun we were having. Hob was pleased and then dropped that they were still evaluating the masters program in acting as to whether it should be a two- or a three-year program. In that brief walk, without sharing a glance or a word, Beth and I both realized we were done with school. I was twenty-five and losing my hair. If I stayed in Illinois until I was twenty-seven, I might as well buy a beret and become Hob.
Beth was more eager than I ever imagined for a change. She said she was going to write a screenplay. That was brave. We didn’t know any filmmakers and we didn’t have ten million dollars. Am I Blue was a short two-person play. It was easy to see your work realized. When you write a screenplay, all of your efforts may be wasted. It seemed to me that the screenplay was a misdirection, but again, I was unable to see beyond my limited horizon.
Almost more than any time in my past, I can turn and point to this season of misdirection as the braided rope: every choice I made was an end—and a beginning.
I had blocked out some time in the dance studio to work on my final project. Blake wanted each student to choreograph and perform an original dance. Not being a dancer, I knew I could never rely on skill. I had to hope for another tornado to destroy the building. I did come up with a dance (and I use the term loosely) that would contrast motion with lack of motion—similar to my time in Illinois. I would start on the ground in a fetal position (a favorite among dancers) and transition into a horizontal position on the floor (reminiscent of a man watching television). I would slowly rise to my feet extending my arms to the sky (like a man finishing the final swallow of a Rolling Rock), and then I would move across the floor in a series of leaps (demonstrating my desire to get out of school). While I was plotting it out, I heard an unexpected voice. It was Blake. “Good to see you’re working hard.” She ambled into the studio in preparation for another class.
“Well,” I smiled, “hard work is Plan B for the ungifted.”
Blake laughed. “What’s Plan A?”
“Complete avoidance.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Not necessarily. Hard work means you care.”
I looked at Blake. I suddenly found myself in a time machine deposited back into fourth grade. I got nervous and stammered, “I don’t know. I think I’m just allergic to failure. At least I want to give the final my best shot.”
Blake looked off as if she were grasping some unexpected memory. “Believe me, just spending the time puts you way ahead of the game. And besides, I think you have talent. I liked you in The Country Wife.”
I blushed. “Well, thank you. I did as well as I could, considering I looked like a poodle.”
Blake nodded and laughed a little. “I thought that was the point.”
“I’m thrilled you saw a point. And I’m glad you like dogs.”
Blake’s entire face lit up. “Well, I’ll let you finish,” she said. Blake walked back into her office.
I continued to rehearse. With a renewed fervor and intensity. Never underestimate the power of an erection. It built the pyramids. I was never so happy to have been wearing a dance belt.
Let me be clear, I had never seen Blake as anything other than a teacher, albeit an attractive teacher, before that moment. I never imagined there being any other life than one with Beth. But in an exchange of a few words, I saw that the world was not comprised of the stable elements I thought. I recognized the possibility of other lives, other loves, other paths. It was not a good thing. It scared me. I was not comforted by a world of multiple choice.
On the day of the dance final, I wanted to do well. Not just get by. I wanted to impress Blake. She called on each student, one by one. It was my turn. I looked to Blake, who was looking like an angel in her royal blue leotard, my favorite. The music started. I tried to embody every move. I felt it. I came up from the ground like a tree yearning for the sun, I slowly came to life like the world at dawn, and then I exploded in movement. I never felt so much like a dancer. I felt at one with the ground and the space above it.
I was on my final leap on my final time across the floor, and I extended as I never had done in my life. I landed on my right foot, and I heard a loud crack almost like an explosion. Unexpectedly I crumpled to the floor. I was dazed, but I wasn’t hurt. The first twinges of embarrassment started creeping in when I realized I couldn’t move. Blake called out, “Stephen, are you all right?” I laughed and said, “Yes! I just thought I could fly for a second.” The class laughed.
I tried to get up. And I couldn’t. I looked down. My big toe of my right foot was turned backward. It was twisted in a horrible way, dangling from my foot. It looked like something in a zombie movie. A flood of adrenaline got me to my feet. I started hopping to the men’s dressing room, with Blake yelling after me, “Stephen, Stephen, are you all right?”
“No. Not really,” I yelled back. “Please go away.” I got to the men’s bathroom and put my foot in the sink and started running cold water on my toe. It was numb and was starting to turn black. The bathroom door blasted open behind me. It was Blake. I tried to cover my toe with my hands. She rushed to the sink and pulled my hands away. She saw my foot. She never said a word. Without a second’s hesitation, Blake lifted me up in her arms, turned, and kicked the bathroom
door open. That five-foot-five girl ran with all six-feet-three of me down the hallways of the Krannert Center, out through the side door, and into the parking lot. Without stopping she carried me through rows of parked cars to her VW bug. She put me in the front seat and floored it to the hospital. “I had no idea you were that strong,” I said. She looked over at me and with a trace of a smile said, “I’m a dancer. I work hard.”
Blake took me to the emergency room. She kept me good company. She left phone messages for Beth as to what happened and where to come. Blake talked to doctors and nurses to get them to hurry up and help me. She was my advocate. She sat with me for two hours. She told me she had to get back and give another final exam. She apologized for having to leave. I told her no apology was necessary.
Beth drove to the hospital as fast as she could. She ran to me just as I was sent to X-ray. My big toe was broken in four places and dislocated. A doctor came in and rolled up his sleeves. He was there to “set” the break. He reached into what seemed like a set of tools you would use for taking an engine block out of a car. He grabbed a three-foot pair of pliers. I couldn’t watch the process, but I could tell from Beth’s expression it must have been like a scene from Brueghel’s painting of hell. A nurse misread the orders and put two full casts on my foot. Beth thought it wasn’t a bad mistake. It just made me look like Fred Flintstone.
I got home that evening with my gigantic cast on my foot and went to bed. Around eight p.m. there was an unexpected knock on my bedroom door. It was Blake Atherton with a container of soup. She sat on the edge of the bed and asked if I was all right. I nodded and thanked her. She said it was her last day of teaching. She was leaving campus the next morning. She said she guessed she would see me again next year. I told her I doubted it. I thought Beth and I were going to leave. Actors needed a master’s degree about as much as professional bass fishermen did. She looked at me. She smiled in a way that seemed to say, “Have a nice life.” It was a silent moment of misdirection.
The Dangerous Animals Club Page 26