On Beholding

The story of the time I watched a man die on the sidewalk.

The day I dye my hair orange I have plans to go to the theatre with a friend. I wear a red and orange flowered dress over green snakeskin-print leggings and chunky high-heeled boots. In the past, when this friend was my lover, I felt self-conscious that we were the same height and I would never wear high-heels when we were together. Now that we are not together and I feel kind of cool and powerful, I have no hesitations about towering above him.

We walk from our dinner at a Nepalese restaurant to the theatre and find ourselves behind two men. One of them stops and looks straight at me. I say hello and think nothing of it. We keep walking and chatting until both men stop and turn to look back at us. I am unsure of what is happening, but I feel frightened. I pull my friend, B, off the sidewalk and awkwardly continue telling my story while glancing at these men out of the corner of my eye. Once there is some distance between us, I ask B what the fuck was up with that. I don’t know….I thought they were friends of yours until they looked back the second time. I think they were on drugs. It’s okay. I think of the time I went to get my nails done while stoned out of my mind. As I watched the woman next to me ignore and flagrantly disrespect her nail technician, I became ridden with white guilt. I overcompensated by eagerly trying to make eye contact with the woman scrubbing my feet, to connect with her, to let her know I see her and her humanity and feel deep respect and gratitude for the humble service she is offering me. My technician seemed shy and uncomfortable, and she giggled nervously and turned away from my bids for connection. Recalling this story, I empathize with these high, socially unconscious men who are eliciting fear and discomfort in me. Drugs are strange.

The theatre production is very weird. There are four actors monologuing with hardly any pauses. They are constantly interrupting each other and emoting. I have no clue what they are talking about, but there is mention of pedophilia, rape, suicide, and infidelity. The emotional landscape is unrelenting and overwhelming. There is a moat around the stage that is somehow kept invisible until the second half of the production. The water begins to move and twinkle under the stage lights, so subtly that at first it is unclear whether or not it is, in fact, water. The actors step into the aqueous moat and we all shift into a slightly different dimension. The staging is beautiful, to be sure, but I still have no idea what the hell is happening. After 50 minutes, the show is over. Thank God. B and I glance at each other with raised eyebrows as we applaud, waiting to dish until we leave the theatre. We hang around for a bit after the show hoping to run into B’s friend who performed in it. I see the theatre director who fucked my face from across the lobby. He looks at me with a blank expression as he helps his beautiful girlfriend to put on her coat. I’m unsure if it is really him because of the vacant quality in his eyes as he stares straight at me. It seems unlikely that he would not notice me with my orange hair, my brightly flowered dress, and my full-length emerald overcoat, but there is not even a modicum of recognition in his face. He and his beauty leave the theatre together and I am left standing alone while B uses the bathroom. My colors spilling over into the room around me.

B and I link arms as we walk back to the car. Our bodies fit together nicely even though I am towering above him. We are both aware that the show we saw was good theatre, but we are both confused and unimpressed by it. I want to be entertained when I go to the theatre! I profess to my audience of one. And I want more heart connection, openness, vulnerability! B responds with equal sincerity. Apparently this show ran in Seattle 10 years ago and was a screaming success. I have a difficult time believing this. We begin discussing this sort of “Emperor’s New Clothes” vibe we sometimes feel in the art world. This sense that everyone is colluding in a lie that these bullshit, pretentious, unintelligible works of art are somehow good. No one is brave enough to admit the truth (that they actually suck) lest they risk being cast as an uncultured plebeian. I tell B the story of a dance performance I saw several years ago in which the performer spent an entire 15 minutes laying on the floor in utter stillness with a potted plant perched on her stomach as a fan gently blew in her direction. I was enraged after the show and called my sister the very next day to talk shit about it. My sister, an artist in the truest sense of the word, listened with her rare and exquisite flavor of openness and curiosity. After my diatribe she asked me about the other pieces in the showcase: Which ones moved me? Any particularly riveting analysis? I was surprised when my mind drew a blank. The only piece I had continued to think about, to feel about (with an uncomfortable fervor!) was this boring plant piece. And so, without any explicit didactic intervention, my sister gifted me with a deeper understanding of the many different purposes and impacts of art. Whatever the intention of this plant performer was, she most certainly got me to feel something.

B and I are still chatting about the role of art and whether or not performers owe anything to their audiences when we arrive at our car. On the sidewalk not 15 feet away is a group of people standing around a man who is laying on his side. It is immediately clear to me that something is not okay. I am flooded with clear, piercing terror. Most parts of my being want to flee, but another part of me urges us to stay. I look at B with fearful and pleading eyes. We have to go check on them, I say to B, though my body does not move. B releases his arm from my grasp and walks towards the group of people. While he is chatting with them my eyes dart nervously around. Many people are walking past us, glancing down at the man on the ground and then quickly looking away, or else avoiding looking in his direction at all. I have my phone out and dial 911 a few times but delete it each time. I am considering all of the horrible, fucked up things you must consider when you live in America. Will the police come and arrest these people? Brutalize them? Deport them? If I call an ambulance will this suffering person incur a staggering amount of medical debt? It is one of these moments in which I find myself desperately looking around for the person who is in charge, only to realize there is no person of authority leading us through this crisis. The inmates are running the asylum. We’re all mad here. Fuck.

B returns to where I am standing by the car. They said everything is under control. They gave him some Narcan and don’t appear to be worried. I am wringing my hands and holding my breath. Should we call 911? I ask B. B seems to trust that the crowd of people around this man knows what they are doing. He asks me if I want to leave, but I cannot. I cannot leave and I cannot look. B hands me his keys and invites me to wait in the car while he returns to the crowd of people and the unconscious man. I climb in the front seat and continue to look around anxiously, my phone in one hand, the keys in the other. I lock and then unlock the doors, unsure of what I am hoping these locked doors might protect me from. Every 30 seconds or so I open the car door and look behind me to see what is happening. People keep passing by, ignoring the tragedy that is unfolding before them. An older man walks past and stops in front of the car to look back at the small crowd gathered around the unconscious man on the ground. He sees me leaning out of the front door and we lock eyes. I want to run towards him, to implore him for help, to ask him what I should be doing. I want to pull another person into this shit show while I cower in the front seat of my ex-lover’s Volkswagen. But I don’t. We break eye contact and the man continues walking.

Suddenly, palpably, the energy changes. From my seat in the car I notice the majority of the crowd start to walk away. The only ones who remain are B, the unconscious man, and two others. One of the other men is holding a dog on a leash. The dog begins to frantically bark. I get out of the car, still standing far away from the action. The man holding the dog hands B the leash as the dog continues to wildly bark and pull. The unconscious man has been rolled onto his back and someone is performing CPR on him. Ah, ah, ah, ah stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. I am frozen. My knees locked. My jaw tight. I text B, Let’s leave, even though he is only 10 feet away from me. The dog continues to bark and howl and thrash. B hands the leash to the other man standing by and walks to me. I immediately pull him towards me, my body tense and eager to be held. Are you okay? I ask him. Yes, he responds, but I don’t think that man is alive.

The paramedics arrive almost immediately. B informs me that the dead man had already been given 3 doses of Narcan. A fleeting thought crosses my mind …Maybe if I had called 911 sooner…, but it quickly passes. This was not my fault. I tell B that I want to leave, for real, and we silently get into his car. His bluetooth is broken so he turns on the radio and holds my hand. We drive in silence, soft jazz notes soundtracking our somber journey from Capitol Hill to Wallingford. I start to cry and turn up the radio. This jazz is not it. I switch stations and we pick up some screamo music. Both B and I are grateful for this unexpected soundtrack, but there is too much static and it fades in and out with Sheryl Crow. We settle on a college radio station, still loosely holding hands. We start processing the experience, and we are both self-conscious about our responses. B, for being so calm, grounded, and un-phased. Me for being so distraught, fearful, insistent that we stay but unable to help. B is defensive and protective of my response, and I of his. You cared so much, Iris. That man died with someone standing by who recognized his inherent dignity. He is being so sweet to me, but I feel like a coward. Aren’t I supposed to be a fucking Gryffindor?

We pull up to my house and sit, unmoving, in the car. A song comes on the radio that catches my attention. It is a leftist folk anthem with a triumphant and inspirational vocal styling. None of us can stand alone against the power, we must stand together and make them cower. I Shazam the song and we stay in the car together until it ends. We hug each other goodnight and hold our hug for a long time. Uncertain of what to say to close out this strange, emotional night. I go inside my house and immediately smoke weed. I get properly stoned and crawl into bed to watch Girls. I am so adrenalized that I am unable to relax or tune into the plot. I drag myself out of bed to do some of the somatic practices I know to be helpful for metabolizing trauma. I dance. Shake. Hum. Groan. Sing along to this leftist anthem that I am already in love with. But nothing helps. I feel heartbroken and helpless. There is no shaking off this experience and returning to my previous baseline. I am different. Something has changed, and there is no going back. This is one of those times that I must go through.

The next day B and I voice memo each other back and forth trying to make sense of what in the hell we experienced the previous night. I wonder out loud if I was so disturbed because of my dad’s decades-long addiction to opiates. I remember the numbness and dissociation I felt in high school as I watched my sisters cry with fear and love over the potential fate of our drug-addicted father, and start to think that maybe there is something frozen inside of me that needs some attention. B wonders if his own dissociation allowed him to show up calmly. In between intrusive images of the dead man on the sidewalk, I think about this stupid play that meant nothing to me. The way my mind was forced to surrender, to stop making sense, because there was no sense to be made. It was pure, raw emotion thrust at the audience in such an illogical matter that there was no avoiding it, no analyzing it. You can’t philosophize your way out of this barrage of feelings. Nothing to do but sit there and marinate in the anguish of these actors. Behold their suffering with no opportunity to intervene, to offer advice, or help. Nothing to do but witness and feel. My God, I hated that fucking play.