ARENA
There
were three of them and you probably could have smelled
their wiring in Brooklyn, but—my purpose eluding
me—I found myself headed straight in their direction.
If
I didn't know what I was doing in that respect, however,
I wasn't in the least unclear about my impending decomposition.
Although
none of my vital parts had actually shut down yet, I was
convinced, and had been for weeks, that one or more of
them was about to, that I was already in the end stages
of a fatal wasting disease. In all manner of physical
distress—perpetually light-headed and nauseous,
my breath short, my vision dim and my gait unsteady—I'd
never felt so weak and frail. Or small. Not that, at 5'6",
140 lbs, I wasn't small. But I was getting even smaller.
In fact, I was shriveling—I swear, I could see myself
withering and contracting in my mirror. No, it would not
be long before I was reduced to something ghastly, to
a thing you might find in a drawer, deep in the bowels
of a Port au Prince curio shop cellar.
I'd
been living with the expectation of my imminent demise
since my fifty-second birthday—which had coincided
with my son's acceptance into college and was when it
first hit me that I'd turned fifty. And the anxiety I
was experiencing had begun to color my perception of the
world at large. I mean here I was, returning home from
an errand through the Village on a Saturday afternoon.
It was one of those fine days you get just a precious
few times in midsummer New York when the humidity's low
and the temperature's reasonable. The narrow streets were
teeming with people celebrating the weekend and the weather,
and all I could think was that, at one point or another,
every last one of them was going to get very sick and
then disappear.
Okay.
I know. I didn't need to be a Starfleet engineer to appreciate
that I was in the throes of a monster midlife depression.
But my awareness of this made no difference. If I was
exaggerating my situation, if my expiration was perhaps
not so close at hand as I believed, it was still true
that my youth was gone, and my hyperconsciousness of my
body's impermanence, which recognizing that fact had generated,
didn't go away.
So
literally staggering under the weight of the menace my
body was posing to me, I was turning into West 4th Street
(hoping I wouldn't pass out in the crush of a very dense
crowd—and holding a freshly lit cigarette, which
would prove to be significant) when I saw them a little
way up the block. In their mid-to-late twenties, and emphatically
not from the neighborhood, they were swilling beer from
bottles and loudly passing judgment on the females who
happened near them, even those escorted by men. One of
them, his T-shirt advertising a Jersey City tavern, was
leaning against a parked car. He had a face that was almost
identical to Jack Black's and he'd apparently nourished
his resemblance to a celebrity by shaping his body to
match Black's as well. The other two, similarly proportioned,
were sprawled just opposite him on the bottom step of
a stoop. Their legs were stretched onto the sidewalk and
left with no more than a foot or so to pass, most people
were taking to the street to get around them.
As
I came up to them and, as I've indicated, without a clue
as to what, a sizable trepidation notwithstanding, was
compelling me to enter their space, my only conscious
intention was to slide my way by. But when I turned slightly
sideways to accomplish this objective, the Jack Black
ringer reached out, grabbed me by the stomach, and pulled
me toward him. "Are you a fag?" he said, his
eyes not quite looking into mine.
Now his breath—and an overlay of alcohol did little
to mute it—smelled like nothing so much as a chicken
coop. His skin, moreover, glistening with sweat despite
the moderate temperature, was riddled with brutal acne
scars (the remnants of a likely bleak adolescence). And
yes, his grip hurt a lot. But what I couldn't help concentrating
on was a huge white globule of snot that was hanging precariously
from one of his nostrils.
"I
think you're a fag," he continued, squeezing my stomach
harder and grinning at his friends. "And you know
what? I hate fags."
With
that my focus shifted to his brain. I think of stupidity
as more often than not willful, as a way of shutting out
the complexities and ambiguities of life. But this guy's
stupidity wasn't a choice he was making. No, it was clearly
congenital. He was the grim product of his family history,
of generations of inbreeding with other people from New
Jersey.
And
registering then the full sweep of his stupidity, his
evident derangement, his heft and his inebriation (not
to mention the booger and the prospect of it landing on
me), I felt a very real panic. And what I started to say
was: "Hey, you've got the wrong guy. I'm straight,
man. I'm married. I even have a kid. Not everybody in
the Village is queer, you know? Believe me, I share your
disgust. Of course it's a perversion. The AMA and the
American Psychological Association really caved in on
this one, didn't they?"
But,
no, Jesus, I didn't say that. My pathetic reflex was quickly
interrupted by an intuitive recognition of a large reward
to be gained here—a recognition that was accompanied
by a feeling of elation and a sense of abandon. (Had I
connected to my purpose?) And what I said instead was,
"Let go of me, asshole."
When, grinning more, he didn't let go, and after taking
quick stock of the resources that were available to me—the
cigarette I held and the single file approach of two enormous
guys with gym bags who by all appearances were oblivious
to what was going on and about to push past us—I
said to him: "Do your parents know you boys are in
the big city by yourselves?"
And
then, the cigarette between my fingers and my fingers
clenched into a fist, I hit him in the face.
It
was hardly what you'd call a devastating punch, but the
lit end of the cigarette more than compensated for the
limitations of my swing. Crying out, he freed my stomach
immediately and before he could retaliate—or his
buddies, who rose in unison, could react with more than
a "Mother------!” I darted (with an agility
it amazed me to learn I still possessed), between the
gym guys. Remaining ignorant of my circumstance, or indifferent
to it, they were, in any case, visibly irritated by my
abrupt intrusion. So hanging with them for only a few
yards, I reluctantly abandoned the shield they provided
to less than graciously barge ahead of a group of tourists
who were just then emerging from a restaurant and starting
up the block. From there on, muttering "excuse me's"
and "sorry's," I seized upon every space that
presented itself and, twisting and lunging, stumbling
once, but not falling, I finally arrived at the relatively
open expanse of Sheridan Square, where I turned right
on Seventh Avenue.
As
I headed north, alternately running and marching double-time,
I was certain that the Jersey boys were right behind me
and I didn't want to look back. But when I happened to
notice the faces of people coming toward me from the opposite
direction, I saw no alarm in them, no sign, in their expressions,
that danger lurked at my rear. And when, three blocks
later at Charles Street, I dared to stop and turn around,
my adversaries were nowhere to be seen.
At
that point, with the adrenaline evacuating my blood and
my heartbeat returning to its normal cadence, I realized
that all of my symptoms were gone and I began to feel
good in every imaginable way. In fact, for the next few
days (for about as long as the welt on my stomach and
a blister on my knuckle lasted) I was buoyant. I felt
precisely like what I'd needed to feel like. I felt like
a survivor.
And
the thing was that when I came down, when my high evaporated
and I settled back, as it were, into my body, my symptoms
were still gone and I was something like comfortable with
my body. I understood, of course, that in the risk and
challenge department the feat I'd devised for myself hadn’t
been all that heroic. Still, I’d succeeded in winning
a measurable victory and I’d learned, in the process,
that my body was not without a lingering capability or
two.
With
this information to fortify me I had my balance back.
Indeed, my mirror reflected, such as it was, my full height
again.
