“But that kid who still can’t decide which of the two futuristic epics to let win the struggle for his mortal soul, the kid who left the question hanging, the kid who partly invented himself in the vacuum collision of Star Wars and real loss — that kid is me.”
– Jonathan Lethem, 13, 1977, 21
Last year, my therapist told me about his patients. There was a woman who could not enter supermarkets, a diabetic who balked at the concept of visiting his physician, and a college student who stayed in his room with the lights out. There was even an agoraphobe he counseled over the phone. But what really struck me was his account of an ex-army man who swore that he would rather be lowered from a helicopter into unsecured territory — that he would rather be the subject of enemy fire — than converse with another human being. He would rather be shot. Shot. This, in his mind, would be easier, and altogether more comfortable than speaking to a woman, any woman, anyone. Such is the weight of fear.
In his essay collection, The Disappointment Artist Lethem considers this fear. He writes of escape, or want of escape, of using science fiction movies as an anesthetic, trying to outrun pain that is sometimes unfounded (an ache that makes the stomach drop low) and sometimes unavoidable (the dread of watching his parents divorce). Even if you haven’t been on the spectator side of something like divorce, the deterioration of a relationship that once produced something beautiful (you), you know Lethem’s second kind of pain: the ache, the uninvited side of pain that just happened, or happens, or is yet to come.
I know Lethem’s lonesomeness as my own. From a young age, fascination with the other side of awake and animate — unconsciousness, sleep, has been a part of my biology, a part of my hunger. I think back to third grade, my excitement in combating tonsillitis via surgery. After a few trips to the doctor, I realized that surgery meant anesthesia and that anesthesia, by some strange and profound process, meant going under.
I remember counting backwards from ten as the gas pumped into my lungs, cool and fresh; how my father sat beside the operating table in medical scrubs; how my eyes closed at the rate of a lowering flag; how my hair was brown and curly; and how I slipped into oblivion as my father gripped the operating table with both hands.
Later, when I awoke, I was wheeled back to my room. I was on a gurney, a nurse positioned at my side. I remember dizziness and motion sickness, the aftereffects of surgery and anesthesia. I remember what came out of my stomach and what went into the tin pan the nurse held in front of me, as if she was expecting this to happen. It was as if my body was becoming reacquainted with itself, with the air, with the world.
It’s safe to say this was not the most harrowing operation happening in the hospital. Still, there I was, caught in a moment of being alive, having just come from somewhere senseless. But there, on the operating table, I don’t think I could quite say I was alone. Unconscious: yes. Consciously aware: no. Consciously surrounded by people who wanted to help me get better: trick question.
Before the surgery, I knew the doctors would be there, and that they would be examining me, performing surgery, removing a source of pain and discomfort. Did they not, then, enter into a kind of intimacy? Was my nausea a response to the doctors’ act of getting to know my body, of getting to know me? Or perhaps it was a reaction to the nurse, the woman who anticipated my body’s grappling with its place, as if she knew that after becoming awake and animate, the sight of another person would trigger some awful response. She, no doubt, understood the stuff of loneliness, the substance of pain.
“Here,” she said, placing the pan under my chin.
In the hospital, she had probably seen severed limbs, deep wounds, head trauma. She had probably even seen someone die. But here, in the elevator, she knew what loneliness looked like. She knew what it meant to recover, to mend, to heal.
“Here,” she repeated. “You’ll be all right.”
***
Like Lethem, I think back to my childhood to understand what it means to ache, the need for companionship. When my brother and I were small, my father often took us to the beach. We went in his car, and since my brother and I were too young to ride shotgun, we sat in the backseat. The road leading to the beach was a combination of sand and rocks, craggy and pitted. It was not uncommon to hit the edge of a pothole, to jounce in the backseat, as if on a turbulent plane ride. In fact, it was a game my brother and I played: we wanted to see if we could hit the roof of the car with our heads. Our father egged on such games and he laughed every time the portable grill jostled around in back, joking that the car’s engine was falling apart.
On the other side of the road was the beach itself, and in the distance a precipice, trees and houses spotting its surface. The elevated land jutted out, prominent in its stature. It gave the beach a certain aesthetic, accenting the beachgoers’ view as they gazed out into the wide Atlantic.
One time, Dad instructed us to avert our eyes. Instead of looking out the window, he wanted us to focus on the floor of the car, on our feet. He wanted our seatbelts to remain fastened, our attention to stay on the floor of the car, this instruction repeated, not so much an order, but a plea.
I was sitting still, gauging the temperature of the air, taking stock. I could see my father’s shoulders tense as he gripped the wheel with two hands instead of one. His neck was stiff and he locked his jaw. Then my brother poked me, and I poked back, and we bickered, and my father did not say a word.
Years later, he told me what had happened that day, as if what he saw had never stopped playing in his head. There, on the other side of the road, emergency responders were pulling a woman out of the water. She had fallen from a tremendous height and had finally drifted ashore. She had jumped.
Here was someone who could no longer bear her own weight. Here was someone like me — someone young and beautiful — someone alone. And now here’s Jonathan Lethem: someone who gets me who understands me, who writes about me. And yet after reading his work, I’m still sad, still undone, almost broken. I suspect that I am much like Jonathan, wherever he may be: still inventing myself, still caught in a vacuum collision, still coming to terms with sorrow and grief; or, as he calls it, disappointment.
