The Art of Asking

by Amanda Palmer

  Four blocks later, I slipped on a loose brick of the sidewalk and twisted my ankle. Badly.

  I lay there sprawled on the bricks, emitting a small moan, while ready to explode with laughter at the poetry of it all. Really?

  I couldn’t put any weight on my foot. I was going to need to ask a passing stranger for help. I had nothing on me—no phone, no money, just my house keys. It was a quiet street, but a woman about my age wearing a smart raincoat saw me and stopped to help. Then another woman, an older one, stopped as well. My fellow humans were coming to my aid.

  You all right there? one of them asked.

  No—actually, I’m not, I said, trying to look amiable. I’ve twisted my ankle and I can’t really walk.

  Oh dear, said the older woman.

  A third woman wandered up behind them.

  Do you need an ambulance? the first woman asked.

  I tried to get up, to put a little weight on my ankle, but it shot back lightning signals of agony.

  I don’t know, I said, trying not to cry. I think it’s just twisted, I don’t think I need a hospital. But I can’t walk.

  How can we help?

  Yes, is there anything we can do? They huddled around me in a concerned triptych, like a bunch of mother hens.

  I grimaced as a new searing pain shot up my leg, but tried to express my gratitude. Well, thank you…yes, sorry. You’re so kind. Can one of you just grab me a cab and hop in it with me? I don’t have any cash on me, but my house is literally right around the corner. I’ll need someone to just help get me inside so I can pay the cabdriver.

  The three women all looked at one another, then at me, then at one another.

  Um…

  no,

  they said collectively.

  But is there anything else we can do to help? one of them asked.

  I was dumbstruck. And humiliated.

  Are you sure you wouldn’t like us to call an ambulance? said one of the women.

  Did they think I was trying to…scam them? Trick them? I was a thirty-five-year-old woman in jogging clothes with a twisted ankle on a quiet street in Scotland. We weren’t in a Dickens novel, for fuck’s sake.

  One of them was at least kind enough to help me hobble over to a passing cab, and I threw myself at the mercy of the driver, who drove me the four blocks, took my arm, and half carried me up though our front door and into the kitchen, where I thanked him profusely and gave him a twenty-pound tip.

  Ya’right, love? he asked, kindly. I knew I looked like hell. You’re sure?

  Yes, I’m fine, really. Fine. I’m great. Thank you so, so very much.

  He left, closing the door behind him.

  Then I hopped over to the sink, ran some cold water over my leg, and started sobbing uncontrollably. In that moment, I couldn’t tell which hurt more, my ankle or my heart.

  Brené Brown writes:

  In a 2011 study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, researchers found that, as far as the brain is concerned, physical pain and intense experiences of social rejection hurt in the same way…Neuroscience advances confirm what we’ve known all along: emotions can hurt and cause pain. And just as we often struggle to define physical pain, describing emotional pain is difficult. Shame is particularly hard because it hates having words wrapped around it. It hates being spoken.

  I was walking around Edinburgh on crutches. I was an emotional mess. And to cap it all, my period was really late.

  While Neil waited at a table, I peed on a stick in a restaurant bathroom and sat there absolutely stunned, and strangely relieved, by the result.

  So that’s why I have become a crazy person. I’m a hormonal mess.

  I’M PREGNANT.

  All of a sudden my flailing worries about whether or not to take a business loan from my husband—or whether or not I was crazy to be grappling with the dilemma in the first place—seemed completely insignificant. What did it matter whether or not I was going to be a few grand short and borrowing money from this guy? I was carrying his child. Neil and I left the restaurant, walked home, and cuddled each other in bed for the next twelve hours, in shock.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that the nurse’s question echoed back into my head. I googled the name of the antibiotic I had taken. Pregnant women were very strictly warned to avoid it. Birth defects.

  I called our family doctor.

  It’s not good, Amanda. Very risky. Especially in the first trimester. That antibiotic blocks the effects of folic acid, which is crucial to the fetus at the beginning of pregnancy.

  What do you mean risky? I asked. How risky? HOW not good?

  Really, really not good. He hesitated. As your doctor, I’m afraid I’d advise you to terminate the pregnancy.

  Neil and I spent a hard few days in bed together, talking, accepting the decision, spooning each other. I cried a lot.

  The day of the abortion itself was a nightmare: I don’t remember it very clearly. I lay in a hospital bed in Edinburgh, having taken the pill I was prescribed. I threw up and slept, then woke and threw up again, feeling powerless, my whole body and heart in pain. I didn’t know what to feel.

  Neil sat there beside my bed the whole time, holding my hand and saying nothing.

  Then I hid away and spent a few weeks in bed with a hot-water bottle on my abdomen, trudging out for rehearsals and shows and trudging back to bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling like an empty shell of a person.

  Neil was just as sad as I was, possibly sadder; he withdrew from talking, he got quiet and distant. My usual life of colorful online back-and-forth became anemic. I told the band, and told a few of the friends who were staying with us. But I didn’t want to tell the world. I wasn’t ready for that. Keeping it seret made everything feel even lonelier. I wanted to reach out to everybody I knew online, I wanted to blog and tweet the entire, harrowing story to my fans, but there was no way I was going to do that. I just stopped doing anything, feeling more and more broken.

  And, as the days wore on, I got more and more upset with Neil. I knew that he was having a hard time, but I was the one stuck in bed, bleeding, nauseated, and weak. He brought me Scottish-style hot-water bottles, and things to eat and to drink, but he was really quiet. I didn’t need a selfless faucet of sympathy, but I wanted him to stroke my cheek, ask how I was feeling, give me a good cuddle. He stayed silent. With every passing day, he felt further and further away.

  I started wondering if I’d made a horrible mistake, getting married. What had I been thinking? Who was he anyway? Didn’t he care? He was physically there, but he felt like a ghost. I knew what I needed, but asking for specific emotional things felt impossible and obnoxious. He was a human being. He should just instinctively know how to take care of an emotionally exhausted, sick, post-abortion wife.

  He ought to just know, I thought.

  I shouldn’t have to fucking ask.

  Once, in London, at the very beginning of my relationship with Neil, I had decided to do a ninja gig because my official show at a church had sold out. There was a pub called The World’s End near John and Judith’s house in Camden where we were staying, and one of the bartenders was a fan. It had a concert space in the basement. Perfect. I asked if they’d be game to host a secret free show, which I was eager to do since my official show had sold out. They giddily agreed to do a lock-in.

  I twittered a teaser photo of the secret late-night location the morning of my official show. The ninja gig filled the basement to its capacity of about five hundred, and I showed up with Neil, high from my success at church. (I’d played Bach! On a big pipe organ!) The bar staff all came down and pulled pints for the collected crowd. A violinist friend from Ireland who’d seen the announcement on Twitter joined me onstage, plucking out improvisations for a song or two while the room cheered her on. An artist named Robin hopped on the stage with a terrifying life-sized Amanda-Doll he’d made and gave a puppet lip-syncing dance routine while I played requests. The puppet’s head came off. Everybody was riotous
and drunk on cider and the magic of being hidden underground, singing, sweating, and making new friends.

  It was one of those nights where I felt my heart open and stay stuck open, like it had grown a size bigger. There was a backstage dressing room but no security, given the nature of the night, and the guest musicians, random friends, and puppeteers had left their shit all over the tables and couches. We left at four a.m., tired and happy. As we walked out the door, it dawned on me.

  Someone had stolen my red ukulele.

  I was crushed. I loved that ukulele. And I loved that ratty trumpet case it lived in. It was the very first ukulele I’d ever bought, and it had traveled the world with me for four years. It had resisted theft on the beach in Los Angeles. I had even started writing songs on it, regularly. It was MAGIC, that ukulele.

  The heartbreak wasn’t so much in the loss of the object, it was in the fact that someone in Our Crowd had crept off with it. I’d seen and talked to, hugged and kissed, sweated on and toasted every single person who’d been drinking in the dressing room. Who would do such a thing?

  I wept a little on our late-night walk home, feeling my flowering faith in humanity wither, and then slither, lifeless and trampled, into the London gutter. I was a fucking fool. People sucked.

  Neil soothed me, reminding me that everyone had been very drunk, and that people do stupid shit when they’re drunk.

  I know, I said. I’ve been one of those people. But I still can’t believe it. You were there. We were all in love. What the hell? Did someone think it would be funny?

  You’ll ask Twitter tomorrow, darling, he said. I bet it’ll turn up.

  I woke up. I twittered.

  I AM REALLY SAD. SOMEBODY TOOK MY RED UKULELE AT THE NINJA GIG IN CAMDEN LAST NIGHT. IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING, TELL ME.

  A few hours later, someone twittered back. They knew who took it. The thieves were sorry, this person said, and they wanted to give it back. My heart soared. I direct-messaged my phone number to the intercessor via Twitter, and the thieves texted me soon after, to arrange a drop-off. I told them not to be scared; I wasn’t angry. I just wanted my ukulele back. I texted the address of the friends’ apartment where I was staying, and waited.

  A few hours later, the doorbell rang, and there stood two British teenagers, a boy and a girl, looking like the two most frightened people I’d ever seen. They started babbling:

  Oh my god oh my god Amanda we’re so so so soooooo sorry

  We were really drunk

  We love you so much you’re our favorite musician

  We thought it would be funny

  We were really REALLY drunk

  I shushed them. I hugged them. I told them to come inside for a cup of tea.

  We sat down.

  I have done some very stupid stuff while drunk, I said. I have had meaningless sex. I have gone to strange people’s houses when I shouldn’t have. I have drunk dialed ex-boyfriends and ruined perfectly cordial breakups. I have stolen the CDs of my favorite band when I was selling their merchandise as a teenager, which took me ten years to confess to them, and they laughed and totally forgave me. And I totally forgive you. Okay?

  They looked at me.

  Oh my god. It was so stupid.

  We’re so so sorry.

  We can’t believe you’re not madder at us. Oh my god.

  It wouldn’t help anything, I said, being mad. Now hug me and go home and please. Try not to steal any more ukuleles.

  We won’t. It’s really cheeky but, um…can we give you our CD? We’re in a punk zydeco band.

  And I took their CD, and they hugged me and I closed the door behind them, and I looked at my ukulele, and I watched my faith in humanity not only crawl back up from the gutter but blossom a new little flower I’d never seen before.

  For our wedding anniversary, Neil and I decided to spend a low-key, romantic night in New York City. We were both in town for work and staying in a hotel.

  It was two nights after New Year’s Eve. We walked through the cold, dark streets of SoHo to a little sushi restaurant and lingered there, reflecting on our life, marriage, the abortion, our friends, writing. The summer and fall had been painful and turbulent, and we were just starting to settle down and heal.

  I lost my appetite quickly for reasons I couldn’t figure out. I love food. I even turned down dessert.

  We bundled up and walked out into the freezing winter night, and I’m not sure who puked first, but it doesn’t really matter: one of us vomited, Exorcist-style, into the street, and a minute and a half later, the other one did. Was it the oysters? The salmon mousse? We’ll never know. It was a fifteen-block walk home. One of us would puke in the gutter, or in a trash can, and the other one would feel sorry for the puker. Then, half a block later, the roles would reverse. Neil stayed up until five a.m., throwing up every twenty minutes. I fell asleep and resumed puking the next morning. By noon, Neil had mostly recovered, but I was trembling, couldn’t keep down any water, and was starting to get worried. I lay on the bathroom floor next to the toilet, while Neil read a newspaper. I dragged myself back to bed and waited to be patted and soothed. But Neil was acting sort of distant. Silent. It was that thing he did. That was worrying me, too.

  After I hadn’t been able to keep water down for twelve hours, we went to the hospital. Neil sat with me, holding my hand without saying a word. The doctors rehydrated me and I started to feel human again, like a dried-out sponge plopped back into the sea. But my blanked-out husband was scaring me.

  We hobbled back to the hotel on foot for the fresh air, just as the sun was starting to set.

  Neil drew the curtains and seemed to have returned to normal. I was lying in bed, feeling flattened.

  Honey, I said. I need to ask you something.

  Yes, darling?

  Earlier today, when I was puking, you were acting really…strange. You did it in Edinburgh, too, when I was sick, after the abortion. And you just did it again. It’s kind of freaking me out. I looked at him. It’s like you couldn’t see me.

  What do you mean?

  I don’t know. There’s just this thing I expect my lover or my friend to do when I’m really sick…you know?

  I felt stupid and childish all of a sudden.

  What thing?

  I don’t know. Cuddles? Talking? Love? Patting my head? Telling me everything will be fine? You stopped talking to me. Why? I said. I’m not angry. I swear. I’m just…asking.

  He looked confused. Then deep in thought.

  Well… he said slowly. Maybe it has something to do with what I was taught growing up, about sick people.

  Tell.

  The way I was taught to deal with a sick person was to just…be very quiet around them. I was taught that you’re not supposed to say anything, or show any sympathy or anything. You’re just supposed to be very quiet. He blinked his eyes at me. Is that wrong?

  My throat clenched and I took a deep breath.

  You mean, I said, that all this time you’ve just been trying to leave me alone…because you think it’s RIGHT? Not touch me because you think it’s…good for me? Are you serious?

  He looked at me.

  Well…yes. He blinked. That’s how I was raised.

  You didn’t get cuddled and talked to and smothered with love when you were hurt or sick?

  No, darling…that wasn’t really the way it worked.

  Oh, baby. I sat up in bed. Do you know how weird that is?

  No. Is it weird?

  Well, no. Well, YES, it’s weird for me. Jesus.

  I sat there, trying to make sense of this, while Neil stood at the foot of the bed, looking apologetic.

  Wait wait WAIT, I said. Is this why I lost my shit in Edinburgh last summer? When I thought maybe I’d made the biggest mistake of my life marrying your ass because you didn’t know how to take care of a sick person?

  He looked lost. Then found.

  Maybe. Well…probably. I dunno.

  Oh god, Neil. I got up and put my arms around him. We
stood there at the foot of the bed, silent for a second.

  I guess it’s a stupid question, I said. But…did you ever ask?

  Ask for what?

  For the THINGS. Did it ever occur to you to ask for…like, a cuddle when you were hurt, when you were a kid?

  He stared at me.

  Amanda, darling. You can’t really ask for what you can’t imagine. You can’t ask for what you don’t know. That was my world. It was what I knew.

  I shook my head, tightened my arms around him, and stood there holding him and not wanting to say anything stupid.

  I love you, he said.

  I love you, too.

  We were silent for a while.

  I thought about Abortion Month. When I’d needed him so badly, and been so infuriated that he wasn’t acting the way I’d expected. I tried to remember if I’d even asked him. I must have asked. But maybe I just assumed that my state of being was a ball of asking in itself. I couldn’t remember just outright asking him for the things I needed, the simple things. To be held. To be cradled and patted…it seemed ridiculous to ask for that.

  Maybe it wasn’t ridiculous. Maybe it had just been a communication breakdown. Maybe it had been both of our mistakes. He’d been in pain, too. Had he asked me for anything? I couldn’t remember.

  I think, I said, I’m going to ask you, from now on. When I need the things.

  He cocked his head and said, tentatively, Can you show me?

  Show you…what?

  He sat on the bed. Can you show me what you mean? For when you ask? For the things?

  I sat down. I closed my eyes, took his hand, and put it softly on my face. I guided his fingers down my cheek, up my cheek, and pressed his palm into my neck, opened his whole hand, lay it on my chest, and held it there. He paid close attention, like a focused child, as if I were teaching him how to spell a word or tie a shoe.

  Like that, I whispered, my eyes filling with tears,

  …like that.