Life increasingly feels like a one-person play. I’m sitting onstage in a pale light, twiddling and typing away, but the spotlight from the rafters is shrinking and enveloping me. My thoughts always seem to revolve around myself, even though I never wanted to be so self-centered. I try to look outside of myself, but everything is so hazy and dark. The spotlight is so self-blinding that I can barely see the rest of the stage.
Things used to feel much different. My days were rich and colorful. The spotlight of my attention covered the whole metaphorical stage. But then the world took a cold and insular turn. People retreated inwards. Horizons shrunk. My attention, which used to be expansive but focused, narrowed and shrunk to exclusively myself. So much of what made life beautiful and strange was in the dark. Instead of venturing outwards I followed what many others did and closed myself off. I became convinced that if I only dug deeper into the self, I could relight the stage. I sat around and ‘did the work’ on myself. At first this self-awareness was helpful – I needed to reexamine the stories I told myself, especially ones that were guided by ego. But the self-analysis quickly turned into fanatical self-correction. I tried to smoothen all the rough edges of my personality. Everything complicated within me was evil and had to be eradicated. I began envisioning myself not as a body, but rather a pearl; perfectly symmetrical, glimmering in the water. I gazed into the handheld light and marveled at the future. I was lured by the promise of a world without conflict, which conveniently led to a life without tension and friction. I was good at this performance. I acted perfectly pleasant on the outside – smiley, young, and passably energetic. But internally I was withering. My body and spirit had atrophied. I was morally paralyzed and unable to see beyond myself, while the world buckled and groaned uncontrollably. It was a safe and miserable life where nothing happened. It was tolerable, as long as I was alone. But then this summer the one-person show briefly became two, and I finally saw how unbearably ugly this small production, with its microscopic spotlight burrowing deeper into the self, was.
This person waltzed into my life in late Spring. She was warm, vivacious, ravenous with Eros. Professionally she was a dancer. She taught somatic classes, focused less on technique and more on each dancer’s relationship with their own body. I had zero clue what this meant at the time. All I knew was that it was good, and that she was teaching me how to live again. She danced around me in my small light, and each time she twirled past the world felt slightly warmer and brighter. I instantly knew that she would destroy me. But it was what I wanted. I wanted her to destroy me, again and again, and then rebuild me into someone stronger.
In late Spring, we walked along the ocean. We talked about everything. The whole future unfurled. We could have a small house on the shore. There would be a large garden, with veggies for us and all our neighbors. A dance studio for her. A small room with a desk for me. A large stone fireplace or a small wood stove. Mushroom foraging, climbing mountains. Drinking coffee and wine on dark days. Sheep bleating in the grass. Books, art, and lots of dancing. It was all perfectly marvelous. The light reached everywhere because of her, and with her everything was possible.
But these dreams were practically impossible. Neither of us would have the money for this, not until we were much older and worn down by work. My professional work, though ‘stable’, did not pay a ‘living wage’. I was realistic enough to know that there is practically no money in being a writer, either. Her dance classes, though invigorating, were not enough without supplemental income. At the time that I met her she had three different jobs. She worked between 60 to 80 hours a week. The future, as far as I could see it, would be us independently grinding away and saving up scraps in the vague hope that it would one day lead to domestic bliss. Our future still had the hazy impression of a dream, but it started to look like a torturous slog. Or even a nightmare.
Our schedules rarely overlapped, and so it was rare to have dedicated time together. Instead, we had to squeeze in time together from the margins of our days, at the points when we were most exhausted and spent. On one of these evenings, I met her at the end of a shift. I settled into the restaurant’s bar but avoided ordering at first. I had been sober for a few weeks, and I was afraid of slipping into a kind of drinking which had become increasingly common in my life; drinking as spiritual coping, drinking as solely a means of feeling something, anything.
I looked around the restaurant and saw her. She was in black trousers, buzzing about from table to table, meticulously smiling and accommodating the patrons. Her shift was supposed to end right when I arrived, but she kept being dragged across the floor. Her bosses did this because they could. I opened my book, which was A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White. The bartender came by, and I figured; why not. I ordered a whiskey and savored the first taste. Ahhhh, I thought. I felt even warmer, like I could feel and see everything. I looked up from the bar. The dancer was waltzing across the floor, still smiling, but I could see the strain on her face. She was forcing her smile, trying to maintain appearances. I kept reading my book. My drink was empty and when the bartender came by I said, another please. There was a kind of coldness creeping up on me, but once I drank it went away. Ahhhh. I kept reading. I was deep into a section about a midwestern boy lubricating his friend’s asshole with a large tub of Vaseline. I loved it. I felt hot. But coldness crept back in whenever I thought about the dancer.
An hour after the shift was supposed to end, I looked around. She was still working, breathing heavily as she spun between tables. Within earshot I could hear a young well-dressed couple, about our age, complaining about the service. When they finally got their food, they barely touched it. Instead they complained loudly about the waiter — my dancer — and how noisy the restaurant was. I was gripped by a sudden spasm of anger. I wanted to reach across the table and strangle the man. I wanted the guy to have a black eye the next time he logged into a zoom meeting for his earth-killing AI job. I wanted his partner to be housed in a reeducation camp where she was taught how to be polite to service workers. But I kept quiet. The bartender came by and I said, third drink. I looked around wildly for my dancer. Her forehead was glistening, her hair frizzing out wildly. She reminded me of a dreidel spun atop a table. She had been so perfectly symmetrical and graceful in her initial spinning, but now she was wobbling about, ready to fall over at any moment. It was an hour and a half after the shift was supposed to end. Then two. Then many more. Fourth drink? I needed it, desperately. The light was all gone. The room was all darkness. I was mad and lost again, and the only bright thing was the glass of liquor in front of me.
After the drinks were over, I was handed a tablet by the bartender. I was supposed to rate the bartender and the dancer on scales of ‘sufficient’ to ‘insufficient’. I HAVE HAD IT, I thought. THIS IS NOT THE WORLD WE WERE PROMISED! I had fallen off the wagon and into a cesspool of pure hatred. I was so, so livid at the bosses for keeping her late. I was indignant at this stupid economic system that makes good people waste away for crumbs. I was furious with these stupid gadgets and people’s blind belief in constant surveillance.
This anger, I think now, is completely normal. But at the restaurant, I didn’t know what to do with the anger. Somewhere I had learned that anger was a nasty emotion that must always be avoided. It’s as if there’s an H.R. representative always monitoring my behavior and butting in to say; ‘Fighting is bad :/ Raising your voice and publicly disagreeing is quite rude!’ So I bottled up my frustration. I don’t want to be mean! I am a good boy! I want people to like me. I will smile and repeat my mantras. I will let myself be slapped over and over again, while everyone and everything I love is beaten and destroyed. Aha, yes, this is certainly a healthy moral outlook, and not the worldview of someone who has completely died inside.
I reunited with my dancer after her shift, but there was an unmistakable coldness between us that we never addressed. We walked through the dark streets, tried to find a place to eat, struggled to swallow anything once it arrived. She had been such a wonderful bright light, but by the end of the shift she had been thoroughly dampened, like an oil lamp turned lower and lower. I, too, was cold and distant. I wanted to warm her up, but I no longer knew how to. I had begun building walls between us, because I didn’t want to let my anger into her life. I was afraid that since I had nowhere else for the anger to go, she would become the object of my resentment. I did not want to hurt her. I had forgotten the simple fact that it is impossible to love well without occasionally hurting those you love. All of these endless anxieties, which I repeated silently to myself, only led to silence and distrust. Even when she tried to reignite the flame I was already long gone, convinced that there was nothing left but the darkness and my small little light. We tried, and we tried, but it was all over.
During one of the last times I saw her, I asked about the dance class. She admitted that it was not going well. Apparently, no one wanted to dance anymore. That, or no one had the money. One by one the dancers were dropping out until, one day, no one showed up. She had waited in her studio, expecting at least someone to appear, but not a single dancer came. We both slowly stepped around each other in the coming weeks, attempting to figure out how we could meet in the middle and restart whatever dance we had begun. But I had long retreated inwards and far away from her. It was impossible for us to have an honest conversation again. Whenever I saw her, I was overwhelmed with that terrible image of her in the dance studio, waiting all alone, desperate for someone to come and dance.
❦ ❦ ❦
This summer has been a succession of eerily similar days: waking up in a cramped studio, crawling through the workday, and then languishing about in the sweltering heat. For June and early July, I was mostly in bed. I’d find the dancer’s black hair-ties all around the apartment, and each one sent me into deeper lethargy. I’d roll around catatonically and see some strands of her dark hair on the pillowcase. I’d press my face into the sheets, which still smelled of her coconut cream, and I’d want to scream. But I couldn’t. I was just so tired. I wanted to sleep, and sleep, and sleep. Woe is me.
But it has been a beautiful and radiant summer. When I was able to drag myself outside, I saw clear skies, orcas cresting in the sound, and the tall mountains with their ancient glaciers going drip drip drip. During these days I occasionally hinted to others that I was unwell. The common response was some version of ‘Oh yes, the world is a mess, but there is so much joy! You can’t give in to the despair!’ I love this answer, because it is so deeply American: full of cheer, but deeply unserious.
The H.R. representative in my brain has butted in to say that I must share some positive memories from this summer. It is my obligation as an American to say one positive thing. Okay, FINE! I occasionally went to the beach, where I sat alone, fattened myself on cherries, and pretended to read some novels by Edmund White. I would read four pages and then quickly realize that my brain is dead and rotten, and that I have wasted my brain’s prime years on a little screen full of digital slop. Instead of trying to read or write, I’d reach over for a bottle of chilled chianti and buzz myself into oblivion. It hasn’t been a good summer. Actually, there has been something evil in the air. Everything has felt vaguely ominous and ready to explode. All throughout July and August I was haunted by the image of the dancer all alone in her studio. I kept thinking; that will be me on my small stage, all alone, typing away at the end of the world.
I was often joined at the beach by one of my friends. She works in theatre, and is one of the few people I know who still scrapes together a living through working in the performing arts. She is very honest, real, and plainspoken about what is occurring in the industry. One by one the playhouses are shuttering. Even the great theatres, with their Broadway-style marquees, are barely holding it together. People in the industry are hearing the music. She tells me that many of the great actors, technicians, and stage managers who have made their living from theatre are dropping out for jobs as bartenders, baristas, and gig-workers. When she told me this, I imagined all of these wonderful artists crowded onto a stage, taking their bows, and then leaving the stage one at a time.
We often brainstorm how we’ll make a living once our careers collapse. There’s wide agreement that there will be no such thing as retirement, if things continue like this. My friend is precise and analytical, so perhaps she could land a coveted tech job coding for an app that no one ever asked for. I, on the other hand, will make tens and tens of dollars on Substack, and each post will be something like ’10 Books That Will Un-Fuck Your Dopamine Addiction’, full of books that people will likely never read. I will also start to write about Sabrina Carpenter, Sydney Sweeney’s ass, or how the ‘white male writer’ discourse makes me want to commit white-male on white-male violence. That, or I will try to sell pictures of my Size-14 American Feet.
But my friend and I shared pleasant days, too. One evening we went to see a show at one of the last independent theatres left. It is a small spot, tucked away in an old brick building full of dust and musty carpets. The auditorium only has a couple-dozen seats, and they are deeply squeaky and uncomfortable. It is the perfect kind of place — one last bastion of sanity. The show was about a small spaceship venturing to the edge of the universe. It was piloted by a lone woman, who only had her tech gadgets to connect her back to Earth. She had her daily routine that was planned to the millisecond. She woke up, did her exercises, went through her work routine, logged-off, gamed for a little, repeated her mantras, and then went back to sleep. It was a deeply sad, bittersweet, and beautiful show. I thought of the pilot’s life and thought; what a dull, cold, sterile life. And then I left the theatre, said bye to my friend, went home, repeated my affirming mantras, laid on the couch, looked at my phone, and then went back to sleep.
❦ ❦ ❦
It was clear by early July that a mental breakdown wasn’t a question of if but when, and how. It happened around the fourth of July. One evening I had gone to the water to experience the joy that is my birthright as a spoiled-rotten American. The ocean was dotted with hundreds of speedboats and yachts. Most of them carried the flag of our beautiful star-spangled empire. A few had pride flags, several had the large blue flags with the president’s name, many waved the American flag with the thin blue line. The scenes on board were exactly what you would expect; boys in their pink shorts and boat shoes, women in their floppy panama-style hats, hundreds of beautiful wasps buzzing about with their white claws and coolers full of beer. And then KABOOM went the sky. We looked up. A squadron of fighter jets shot across the sky, shredding the sound barrier. These were our boisterous blue-angels, a squadron of F-18 jets whose sole job is to fly above cities and remind people that we live under the thumb of the most powerful military in human history. The boats blew their horns, and people onboard cheered and raised their drinks while dancing on the bow of their boats.
I went home, my head throbbing. I was going to read, pour a glass of wine, and have a pleasant evening! Immediately a car parked near my building, with a trunk full of mortars, artillery shells, and other large-grade fireworks. People began setting up the fireworks in the street, lighting them, and then KABOOM. The windows rumbled. Glasses rumbled in the cabinets. Smoke wafted in through the windows. This went on for hours and hours. I finally gave up and plopped onto the bed. KABOOM, KABOOM. I tossed and turned. I pressed my face into the pillows, but they no longer smelled like my dancer’s coconut cream. All I could smell was gunpowder. Ohhhh, woe is me, I thought. KABOOM went another mortar, and then all the alarms on the nearby cars went off all at once, wee-woo-wee-woo. The fireworks didn’t stop until five-thirty a.m. I did not sleep. At this point I had only slept five hours in three full days. The walls turned from dark blue to a yellowish orange, eventually. Birds went pweet pweet. Finally, the worst was done! I bumbled around the apartment and made my coffee, sat at my desk, and planned out a perfectly pleasant day. I repeated my mantras, such as; ‘Today I will be well-behaved. I will smile and do my work. Life is joyful, and I must not give in to despair,’ yada-yada-yada. The H.R. representative patted me on the forehead; ‘good boy’, they said.
But then the walls turned from yellow to blue and red. Outside I heard the familiar wee-woo-wee-woo. Ambulances. Cops. I looked out the window and saw a man lying face-down on the street. He was unconscious under a tree. It was an overdose. Fentanyl, most likely. The medics tried their hardest. It did not look good. They tried and tried but then they put the body on a stretcher. They pushed the stretcher into the back of an ambulance and then it drove wee-woo-wee-woo away. It was all so terrible, cruel, and pointless. The jets flew around in the sky and went kaboom. A few straggling fireworks went ka-pow downtown. Later the city hired landscapers to trim the trees along the road, snip snip, and string large strands of outdoor lights across the street. What seemed like a harmless beautification project was clearly ominous: they wanted to eliminate any shade so the homeless couldn’t rest, and blot out the darkness at night so that the homeless couldn’t sleep.
❦ ❦ ❦
I’ve had an instinctual response to the last five and a half years of catastrophe. I prepare my body, slowly collapse onto the couch, and press a palm against my forehead. ‘Oh my God,’ I think to myself, ‘It is the end of the world’. I picture myself as a beautiful character on a fainting couch. The images flash in my head: body-bags on Hart Island in New York, the corpses of thousands of children live-streamed into my pocket, the death of my neighbors, the extrajudicial whisking away of thousands by masked agents of the state, and now something like a military occupation of the country. Only in July did it finally strike me, once and for all, that my response was not enough. Not only was it inadequate, but it was ugly. There was nothing more to be learned by laying around and scrolling on my phone. It was not beautiful: it was solely a waste of a perfectly good life. I looked up at the ceiling, and then I left my body.
I thought of that line; “It was the end of the world.” It comes from a character named Cliff Bradshaw from the musical Cabaret. Cabaret begins with Bradshaw moving to 1920s Berlin, a city at war with itself. On the Left in the city was a vibrant culture of experimental art, radical left-wing politics, and a blossoming subculture of queer life. Everything beautiful. On the Right was a culture of hatred, a politics of endless resentment, and a genocidal party of eugenics with an insatiable death-drive. Everything ugly. Among this backdrop, Bradshaw meets a beautiful dancer who changes his life. Neither he nor the dancer have enough money, but it doesn’t matter; they have love, or at least fantastic fun together. But it isn’t enough. They break. The world, while they were dancing, had been tearing apart. The Communists and Liberals lose. The Nazis win. The final number of the musical ends with the writer sitting alone on a dark stage waiting for his train out of Berlin, beaten and bruised, mournfully telling the audience “It was the end of the world.” He had been dancing with his wonderful partner, he tells them. They had both been fast asleep.
❦ ❦ ❦
But I don’t believe, however, that my dancer was asleep. She understood something instinctual about people: we need to move. Not only for our bodies, but for our minds. When I was on the couch after the overdose, I looked through my phone and found an old video my dancer had sent me. In it she was dancing around her apartment amid a chaotic move. She was trapped inside, but she had still found the energy to dance and smile for me. I smiled and kissed the screen, put the phone away, packed my things, and went on a walk to the beach. All I did for many following hours and days was sit in the sand, watch the world, and read some books.
The first few books were a trilogy of autobiographical novels by Edmund White. In the first of these the protagonist is a young boy in 50s America yearning for love. He is gay, and has been told his whole life that being attracted to the male body is a perverted sickness. He distrusts himself and the way his heart flutters when he sees a beautiful man. Yet he still experiments with his friends at sleepovers and in bathroom stalls, always secretly in the dark. There is something so beautiful about his desire: he will do anything for his birthright, which is love, understanding, and erotic connection. His childhood is a chaotic swing between hope and dread, but there are glimmers of something radiant and transcendent within him.
The final novel of Edmund White’s trilogy, The Farewell Symphony, is truly a book about the end of the world. It is about the 80s, AIDS, and the end of a beautiful moment in queer life. One by the one many of the character’s friends, colleagues, strangers, and lovers succumb to the illness. Some turn inwards and close themselves off from community. Many throw their bodies into their art, activism, or other passions. The novel is full of death and suffering, but the people are dignified. They love life. Even as they’re on death’s door, they don’t die easily. They fight. They savor their last moments. They continue to live deliciously. One by one they stand and leave the stage, until it is only the writer and a few others left behind. It is terrible, and tragic, but the absence of the departed people is felt. It is like they are beautiful ghosts haunting the present. There is something comforting in the idea that all these people, now gone, once created a beautiful thing, and now it is up to those left behind to hold onto the tune.
Edmund White borrowed the name of his novel from Joseph Haydn’s The Farewell Symphony. The final part of the symphony begins with the full orchestra playing their beautiful tune. But in the middle of the piece, one of the musicians stands up and leaves. And then another. And then another. It is one of my favorite symphonies, because each orchestra plays it so differently. Some interpret the fading symphony as a sad, funereal affair. In these performances the musicians stand up rigidly and walk offstage, as if being led to the electric chair. Other orchestras act completely differently. The musicians depart in fun and unique ways; one balls up her sheet music and throws it at an oboe. Another person stomps off exaggeratedly, or waves a white flag from the edge of their bow. It is all very silly, and lighthearted, and fun, until the conductor walks off their pedestal. All that is left at the end are two violinists, holding onto the melody. They often stand up and leave. Yet there’s still a moment, as they’re playing, when the music floats above the empty and darkened stage. It is sad, and beautiful, and full of immense suspense. But then the music stops. The show is over.
❦ ❦ ❦
But the show isn’t over. In White’s second novel of the trilogy, The Beautiful Room is Empty, Edmund’s character is remembering moments of bliss that broke through the worst of his childhood full of refusal and repression.
“When my mother was out for the evening I’d take off my clothes and dance naked, barefoot, through the dim apartment on the shaggy carpets. The glittering spires outside surrounded me like astounded adults. Snow fell, swirled, slalomed past our windows… What a relief to feel longing in my arms, passion in my legs, craving after beauty in my hands rather than in my head for once.”
When I read this scene, I was at the beach. I started crying and could not stop. Something in the scene affected me so much. A young boy, so repressed, so misunderstood, suddenly breaking free and dancing. I walked to the shoreline and dipped my toes in the water. Next to me was a large group of people in all forms of undress. They were kissing, petting, holding each other’s hands. One of them had two large scars along their chest. They were all smiling, and laughing, and perfectly content. I smiled, rubbed my eyes, and continued walking. I walked for a very long time. I went downtown past homeless encampments and watched people playing music from their tents. I went through our international district, past buildings and businesses that one belonged to Japanese Americans deported to the internment camps. Up in Capitol Hill, our queer neighborhood, I saw a large group dancing around a fountain. Someone stepped into the water, and more followed, and suddenly they were dancing and frolicking in the water, throwing their hair back and flinging droplets everywhere. Elsewhere, a large group of bystanders filmed the cops. Baristas gave a free coffee to an unemployed woman. Volunteers filled side of the road foodbanks with produce and pastries. People reached into wild blackberry bushes and dangled it near their friends, dropping the berries into their mouths. A crowd in Keffiyehs gathered, holding signs and marching. In the neighborhoods were hundreds of windows crowded with signs, and flags, and smiling faces looking down. It was all so beautiful. How had I missed it? It filled me with life, with purpose. There is such a beautiful world everywhere. I wanted to look at it, slowly close and open my eyes like a shutter lens, and capture it. I was a camera, and my body was the film. The beautiful images were printed on my cells. I want to develop the pictures, and revel in them forever.
I went home, ecstatic and beaming with energy. I was a fire; I was a blaze. I undressed and put on a vinyl. I lit some incense, and candles, and danced in my room. I was alone, but I was not alone. There was longing in my arms, and passion in my legs. I finally understood how wonderful it was to be doing this. I am finally living. I am dancing at the end of the world.
This was beautiful and deeply relatable. Also you've convinced me to finally watch Cabaret
This was lovely and I too have often considered selling feet pics as side hustle/day job.