For eight years Gabe and I had spent night after night in my dreary studio, brainstorming ways to push my mind and body while subsisting on little more than noodles. Spaghetti, macaroni, ramen; whatever was cheapest that week was what we ate out of plastic bowls, my feet in his lap as we covered the laminate floor with ideas, sketches, fantasies. When he stressed about the bills, I held him until his shoulders drooped; when I was creatively stymied, he massaged my temples. Many of these nights Gabe did not return to his own apartment but slept like the dead in my bed. When the sun began its uphill climb, we too resumed our efforts.
I rubbed my tongue along the backs of my teeth, pausing at the small grooves where the two halves had fused back together. If I could bisect my tongue with garden shears, if I could wrap a plastic bag around my head, if I could go a year sans speaking to another human being, how was this endeavor any different? These performances were the primary reason I lumbered out of bed at daybreak. Nothing else made my blood fizz the same way.
Gabe sighed. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”
I sometimes questioned why he had stuck around for so long, could not comprehend why a man who rollerbladed for fun would elect to spend his time in the underbelly that was my world. As soon as he’d moved to New York to work for me, I’d found him the best speech therapist in Manhattan and used nearly all of my savings from the Fearless tour to fund the sessions instead of reinvesting the money in my work. I waited in the lobby during every meeting, held my ear to the door to make sure the therapist wasn’t too tough on him. Gabe’s confidence skyrocketed, and I went to bed beaming.
After a few years in Brooklyn, he ceased the palaver about becoming a performer in his own right. We were stronger as a team, he said. He’d rather operate behind the scenes. I supported this decision because I knew he, not his speech impediment, was the one making it. He was a support team of one, the only person who had never questioned my need to maim my body over and over. In exchange for his loyalty, I withstood his worries.
I turned my back to Gabe, gesturing for him to zip the last inch of my black bodysuit. The ensemble was custom-made and hugged every curve. I felt more alive, more awake, than I had in years. I was primed.
“Confirm with the doorman we don’t have any surprise visitors, won’t you?” I asked.
Gabe made for the door and disappeared into the night.
The week prior I had run into my old college roommate, Lisa, whom I had talked to sparingly in the last decade, in part because I was still miffed that she’d assumed I would fail in this career, but mostly because these things happen. People fall apart as life takes them down divergent paths. She begged me to lunch right then and there. By the time we had Ni?oise salads in front of us, she had laid the ruins of her life in my lap. Three years earlier she had married a sturdy, jovial man who began cheating on her six months into their union. I thought surely the only dilemma would be whether she had the funds to buy her own home, and I was worried she might ask for a loan I was in no position to give. Instead she wanted to know how she could move forward with this man who had deceived her for three-quarters of their wedded life. You’re always giving advice on fearlessness, she said. How do I stop being afraid he’ll cheat again? Once I managed to scrape my chin off the floor, I told her she had misunderstood my teachings. The fear she must now battle was a fear of loneliness. I pointed out that her husband had stopped cheating only because Lisa caught him; more specifically, Lisa’s octogenarian dry cleaner found a pair of crotchless underthings stuck in her husband’s suit sleeve. She needed to leave yesterday. Lisa staunchly refused, insisting she could save her marriage. I tried appeals to both the head and the heart, but neither worked. She sat there, clinging to a thread that had already snapped. How weak this woman was whom I had once called my closest friend. How beyond saving too. I ended the lunch by telling her she was much too tall to be a doormat. I suspected I would never hear from Lisa again, but some small part of me thought she might sneak in tonight, sabotage my performance because I had everything I wanted and she had nothing, not even the art gallery she had once dreamt of opening. Lisa worked at a bank.
I couldn’t help them all.
The door to the gallery opened. We were getting close now. The pre-performance jitters would soon begin in earnest; they were the only way I kept myself honest, the lone indicator of whether what I was trying was risky enough. The queasy stomach, the sodden palms, the rattletrap legs: I used to view all of them as weaknesses. Now I understood they were the body’s way of telling us we were alive. Or perhaps that was merely the story I told myself when I couldn’t control my fear. I watched Gabe make his way across the space. I was more at ease the closer he came.