That ink flowing to the blank pages of that book was my lifeline, my IV, my only escape from collapsing. In that moment, I understood something about my writer husband that I’d never understood before. I had a small glimpse into the act of writing something down as a direct, very viable escape from pain. I had no desire to publish this writing; I wasn’t thinking about an audience. I just needed to do it, or else I’d weep and not be able to control myself. For the first time, I experienced the physical truth of what it felt like to dwell in the act of creation as a direct escape hatch from an unbearable reality.
If I stopped writing and started thinking, I’d start crying and wouldn’t be able to stop, or make sense of my thoughts, so I kept the pen to the paper and barely lifted it for the entire journey.
Neil picked me up from the airport, and together we drove to the hospital. We sat for a moment in the parked car, and talked.
I can’t leave again. I’m going to have to cancel the whole European tour, I said, staring out the windshield onto the gray wall of the hospital garage. And the Australian and the New Zealand tours. I can’t go, not while he goes through this.
My mind started to race. It’s already on sale, Neil…thousands of tickets have sold. Jesus, honey, this is going to be so fucked. The fans will get it. But it’s going to lose tons of money if I reschedule, and I won’t be earning anything…and…the band…I’m going to need to give them some money to bridge the gap…they’re all going to be out of work on three months’ notice, I need to pay them, and—
Darling, slow down, slow down. First of all, don’t worry about the money, Neil said.
I’m not worried about the money, I said. You’ll help cover it, right?
Of course I will. Wait, hold on… He looked skeptical. You mean you’re fine just letting me help? he asked.
Yes. Honey, I’m more than fine. This isn’t like last year when I hit the black spot. This is easy.
Why is this easy? he asked.
It’s impossibly easy… I said. It’s Anthony.
It hurt enough.
I got up off the nail.
The second time I saw Anthony cry was about ten years after I gave him the letter about Laura.
He needed chemo, they said. Thirty-six trips to the hospital, and he couldn’t get there and back himself, because the side effects made him too tired to drive safely. His friends scrambled into action, and a carpool was organized so that everyone could take turns driving him to and from the treatments.
Neil seemed scared of my sadness, afraid that he was going to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, react in the wrong way. But I could feel how much he really wanted to help, to see me. Neil and Anthony had become a lot closer, but I still didn’t know if Neil understood what he meant, how big it was. All I wanted was to plug Neil into my brain and show him the entire history of our friendship. The love.
All my life, Anthony had been my go-to, the person I’d gone to with every sorrow, every problem, every heartache.
The only person I really trusted to understand how I felt about Anthony’s cancer was Anthony, and I couldn’t call him and collapse. That was out of the question; he had cancer. Asking for his help on this one wouldn’t really be fair. I felt a kind of loneliness I’d never felt before.
I was driving him home from one of the first treatments. We were on the freeway, and I was deliberating whether I should drive in the slow lane (he was feeling nauseated and fragile) or the fast lane (he also wanted to get home and back to bed as soon as possible). It had been a relatively normal drive for the first ten minutes—you know, as normal as it can be when your friend-who-had-just-been-given-a-death-sentence is sitting silently next to you steeped in chemicals and you’re trying to maintain a stable state of mind. We were approaching a patch of traffic.
Get off, he said.
You want me to exit here? I mean, I can. But…
GET OFF. GET OFF. And he tried to grab the steering wheel and pull the car over to the right.
HEY! Hey. Hey. I snapped. Watch it. Seriously. Don’t kill us.
Then he hit the glove compartment. Really hard.
I don’t want to go through this, Amanda.
And his voice choked and his fist hit the glove compartment again. And again, and again.
I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH THIS.
I felt my eyes sting and took a giant breath.
I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH THIS.
I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH THIS.
I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH THIS.
He hit the dashboard so hard it frightened me.
And he started to cry.
He wiped his eyes and sounded so weak, and so tired.
I don’t want to go through this, Amanda.
I breathed in and out again. I put my hand in his and kept my eyes on the road.
I know.
I know.
I know.
There was nothing else I could say.
I didn’t want to see him like this, I didn’t want to fuck up, I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.
And I felt dark and selfish. I didn’t want him to be sick. I didn’t want him to fall apart.
I wanted him to take hold of me and help me. He always had.
But this was it. He was breaking down in front of me. Which, I realized, was the ultimate act of trust and love.
He was asking me to see him.
Not as my mentor, not as the guy with all the answers, but as himself.
Human. Afraid.
He’d been taking care of me all my life.
It was my turn.
I hadn’t really talked about Anthony to the fans before. He was the magic friend behind the curtain.
My close friends all knew The Anthony Deal, but now I had to talk about him on the blog and to Twitter. It was a shitty reason for introducing someone (Dear Everybody, meet my lifelong best friend and mentor! He’s dying, probably!), but otherwise there was no way to explain why I might have to postpone all the upcoming shows.
Launching the Kickstarter gave me a new level of pride in the fanbase, but the outpouring of support they showed when I told them about Anthony and his cancer was astounding. They truly held me up, sending me love, but more than that, sharing their own stories and pain, past and present: parents with cancer, wives with cancer, teachers with cancer, children with cancer. I didn’t feel alone.
Neil and I had been about to head to New York, but instead we canceled our move and rented a house in Cambridge, near Harvard Square, so we could be on hand. Neil offered to cover the whole rent there, and for the first time, his wanting to help didn’t send me into a fit of anxiety. The money, and who was covering the rent, didn’t seem to matter as much as the cancer, which was all I could think about. Neil was paying, I was paying, whatever.
I rejiggered my schedule and tried to leave town only when necessary to deliver the remaining house parties, then came home to drive Anthony to and from chemo when it was my turn in the carpool. I got used to the routine: pick him up, drive to the hospital, take a parking garage ticket, walk him up to the ninth floor, wait for his treatment to start, bring him a sandwich, sit and wait while they prepared and administered the chemicals while Anthony lay in the hospital bed, go get the car four hours later, drive him home.
Neil joined the carpool, too, and sometimes we’d drive in together. Then we’d sit in the treatment room or go for walks to the hospital cafeteria while Anthony dozed off.
First they said he had six months, I complained. Then they said it was a sixty percent chance that the chemo would save him. Then the guy today said it was more like a fifty-fifty chance. What exactly are they basing that on? I mean, if his type of cancer is that rare…doesn’t it sound like such a perfectly random bullshit number? Fifty-fifty? Really? They expect us to take that seriously?
Neil was silent. He’d spent the entire night before researching T-cell leukemia online. Then he said, I don’t know. If we believe the Internet, it’s much worse than that. More like
a five percent chance, darling. Who knows what the truth is. I think fifty-fifty means what it means. He might survive, and he might die. And they don’t know.
Somewhere inside, I had no doubt he would survive. He had to survive: he was Anthony.
We picked him up, we drove him in, we sat, we waited.
The chemo made him tired.
Sometimes, sitting next to him as the clock ticked, I’d start feeling confused and guilty about the choices I was making. I’d finally released my Kickstarter record, and instead of touring, promoting, and connecting with the fans, I was staying at home, sitting in a hospital, watching a bag of chemicals drip into my friend’s arm.
But then I’d look at him, sleeping there.
Fifty-fifty.
Anthony.
He had loved me more than enough.
He had loved me way beyond enough.
I would give him everything.
THE BED SONG
Exhibit A:
We are friends in a sleeping bag; splitting the heat,
we have one filthy pillow to share.
And your lips are in my hair.
Someone upstairs has a rat that we laughed at,
and people are drinking and singing bad “Scarborough Fair”
on a ukulele tear.
Exhibit B:
Well, we found an apartment.
It’s not much to look at:
a futon on a floor,
Torn-off desktop for a door.
All the decor’s made of milk crates
and duct tape
and if we have sex
they can hear us through the floor.
But we don’t do that anymore.
And I lay there wondering: what is the matter?
Is this a matter of worse or of better?
You took the blanket, so I took the bedsheet.
But I would have held you if you’d only…
let me.
Exhibit C:
Look how quaint and how quiet and private;
our paychecks have bought us a condo in town.
It’s the nicest flat around.
You picked a mattress and had it delivered
and I walked upstairs
and the sight of it made my heart pound.
And I wrapped my arms around me.
And I stood there wondering: what is the matter?
Is this a matter of worse or of better?
You walked right past me and straightened the covers,
but I would still love you if you wanted a lover…
And you said:
“All the money in the world won’t buy a bed so big and wide
to guarantee that you won’t accidentally touch me
in
the
night…”
Exhibit D:
Now we’re both mostly paralyzed;
don’t know how long we’ve been lying here in fear…
too afraid to even feel.
I find my glasses and you turn the light out;
Roll off on your side like you’ve rolled away for years,
holding back those king-size tears…
And I still don’t ask you what is the matter…
is this a matter of worse or of better?
You take the heart failure; I’ll take the cancer…
I’ve long stopped wondering why you don’t answer…
Exhibit E:
You can certainly see how fulfilling a life
from the cost and size of stone
of our final resting
home.
We got some nice ones right under a cherry tree;
you and me lying the only way we know.
Side by side and
still
and cold.
And I finally ask you: what was the matter?
Was it a matter of worse or of better?
You stretch your arms out and finally face me…
You say:
“I would have told you
If you’d only asked me
If you’d only asked me
If you’d only asked me…”
—from Theatre Is Evil, 2012
I remember seeing Yana again, at the Kickstarter house party in Melbourne. It had been over a week since our nudist park escapade, and she looked a little ragged. I’d seen her in the front row of my official theater concert the night before, her chest pressed against the lip of the stage, getting smooshed by a few hundred people behind her. The hostess of the house party was a drummer, and her grunge band was playing in the backyard while everybody ate picnic food and nursed hangovers from the show the night before. I bumped into Yana outside the bathroom. She’d flown all the way from Perth to come to the Melbourne concert and house party. She looked sad.
Yana! How are you doing? I asked.
It’s been a hard week. Symptoms of all sorts, she answered, in a voice that seemed like it didn’t want to elicit any pity.
Is it just physical? I asked. Body stuff? Or is there other stuff going on?
I’m fine, she said, shrugging. It’s been a brutal week, with all the travel. Just dealing with all sorts of shit.
I hugged her, then rejoined the party, talking to the guests, watching as people took turns sharing songs they’d written on guitars and ukuleles. My band came by with the tour van and flocked to the potluck food. I was about to play for the whole crowd in the garden and ducked back into the house to put on some makeup.
I made my way into the hostess’s bedroom, where I’d left my suitcase, and sat down in front of a cracked mirror. As I tossed my ukulele onto the bed, I saw a pile of clothes in the center of the room that seemed to be moving. I looked closer. The pile of clothes was Yana. She was lying on the floor, wrapped in a blanket.
Damn, girl. You doing all right down there? I asked. Don’t you want to lie on the bed instead of the floor?
No…I’m good, she said.
Really? I asked.
Yeah. Just need to rest.
I put my hand on her cheek and looked down at her. I knew those eyebrows so well. I still wished I hadn’t fucked them up so much in the painting.
Feel better, okay? I whispered. She shut her eyes and I pulled the blanket over her shoulders. Then I went back to the party.
I got to Berlin a few days ahead of the Kickstarter art party, and started noticing the same girl and guy everywhere I went in the city. They struck me as nice enough, albeit a little overenthusiastic, the first few times I ran into them. Which I did, seemingly coincidentally, in every spot where I happened to be eating or hanging out in Prenzlauer Berg, even though I was eating in pretty random neighborhoods and staying with different friends with no mention to Twitter of my specific whereabouts. Every time I ran into them, we’d say hello, and take another picture together. By the fourth time, I’d figured out that somehow they were following me, maybe even waiting for me at a distance to see where I was headed in a taxi. It was creepy. There was nothing threatening about this couple—they were sweet—but it seemed to me like they’d crossed a line.
The Berlin art party was held in a bunker-like pop-up gallery called Platoon, and the night had been electrifying from the start. The commissioned album art fit perfectly on the vast cement walls; the gallery staff were all thrilled and offered to kick in a bunch of free beer; there were some spontaneous last-minute guest performers, including a ragtag marching band I knew from the States called Extra Action, who happened to be playing a show a half a block away. I’d seen on Twitter that they were in town and invited them to come busk in the parking lot, and they made a perfectly ecstatic racket with their brass horns, banging on their beaten-up instruments, shouting into their megaphones. We passed the hat for them and everybody threw in a few euros.
The gallery fired up a barbecue. My German is still pretty fluent, and I danced between speaking German and English, running around in my kimono with my glass of wine, bringing requests to the DJ who was set up on a few milk crates, eating a vegan sausage a
s the sun set. Thrilled.
The band and I took our places in the middle of the gallery to play our acoustic set and a local string quartet accompanied us. At the end of the set, I took off my stage dress and invited the crowd to decorate me with marker. I wound up using a beautiful photograph of that moment for my TED talk, accompanied with a suggestion: that if you ever wanted to experience the visceral feeling of trusting strangers, I recommend this exercise—especially if the strangers in question were drunken Germans. The night, the venue, the bands, the fans—everything felt perfect in that moment.
A tipsy girl squeezed right up to me, saying something incomprehensible, painted a star on my nose and staggered away. People started markering one another’s faces and arms. One overbearing American was gently escorted away by the crowd because he was getting a little too racy with his marker. I laughed. It was like the street all over again: the crowd was taking care of me, an army of love police. Once I was thoroughly drawn on, which only took about two minutes, I volunteered to do something I hadn’t been planning on, but was happy to do given the mood: take pictures with people.
But only for like one minute, you motherfuckers. I laughed above the din, as someone handed me another wheat beer. I’M NAKED!
The couple who had been stalking me around town was in attendance at the art party, and as a photographer friend jovially agreed to grab people’s cameras to take photos, they stepped up. They flanked either side of my naked body, and while we posed for the photo, the girl slid her hand behind me and thrust her fingers between my legs.
It was a sudden, startling violation. Caught up in the crazed moment of the photo frenzy and the blaring music and the laughter, I shifted my body, whacked her hand away, and grabbed the next person who’d been waiting.
The Art of Asking Page 26