Dear ol' Steve

Friday, December 16^th, 2016.

Nikki and I are at her dad’s house to celebrate the birthday of her Uncle Mel. Not a blood uncle, but the man who has been her father’s best friend for something in the neighborhood of fifty years. Her dad was the best version of himself that night; jovial, sentimental to tears, and anxious about how dinner was going to turn out. He never varied much from the same few recipes, but he always made them well. Prime rib and grilled shrimp were my two favorites.

He was a man who’s been fighting cancer since 1977. Then again in 1997. Then 2007. Then 2012, and 2014, had a major surgery in 2015 . . . you get the idea. He was complaining that night he’d been too easily fatigued lately, but otherwise feeling fine. He told long form jokes with puns as punchlines and teared up at the dedication Nikki had written to him in the foreword of her novel.

We finished dinner and started making overtures about dessert, so he walked alone into the kitchen. A few minutes later the hollow floor shook with a thud. We called to him. No answer.

I was closest, so I was first. I found him face down, hands at his sides, unmoving. I knew he was breathing because he was, of all things, snoring. I rolled him over; the left side of his face was a nightmare from the impact. We called 911, and not long afterward seven large men cut his sweater open to expose his chest, put him into a neck brace, loaded him onto a backboard, and shuffled through the snow to the ambulance.

He made it to the hospital long before us. Nikki and I were directed to a family waiting room where we were met by the doctor. When the doctor timidly asked if he is usually appropriate we laughed and relaxed. She told him no, he usually flirts with the nurses and calls the doctor a bastard. We were told that he wasn’t cooperating with treatment so would we please intervene and get him to behave.

It was not what we were expecting.

We heard him shouting from down the hall. Demanding to be let go. Hurling insults. We went into the room to find him being restrained, one person holding each arm to pin him to the bed. He was struggling to get up. He wouldn’t understand that they needed to treat the broken bone in his face or clean him up. Nikki tried talking to him to calm him down. He kept shouting, asking who she was and complaining that his blood was going the wrong way. Before long she got overwhelmed and left.

I stayed a bit longer to see if I could get through to him, but I didn’t know what I could do that no one else had. Everyone else kept saying his name, but if he couldn’t see or recognize people, he would take my voice as one more among so many strangers. So I tried something I’ve never done before.

I’ve never called my girlfriends’ parents anything at all because I didn’t know what was appropriate. Not their first names, not their last names, not even Sir or Ma’am. I was so scared of being too familiar or unaccepted that I never addressed them; I would simply find ways to approach and start talking. I don’t know if anyone noticed. That wasn’t going to work here.

“Dad?” I tried. It got his attention, and he turned to me agape.

“Who the fuck are you to call me ‘Dad’?” Positively dripping with poison. He stared, waiting for an answer.

“I . . . married your daughter.”

Silence. And then, “Bite my ass!” I fought the urge to tell the medical staff that we actually get along really well.

The story of the next few months is a saga of anguish, despair, and struggle. He was comatose for the next few weeks before finally emerging as the Mr. Hyde to his previous Jekyll. Angry, belligerent, combative, and insulting. Unaware or unable to admit how impaired he was, we kept having to make decisions which hurt his feelings and he didn’t understand.

We finally got him on the right treatment. Much to our surprise, slowly but surely, he started getting better. By the following October he was fully independent again; got his driver’s license back, no more nursing home or in-home caretakers.  It was during that stretch in April of last year that I got my first ever Facebook message from him.

“Hey, Mark please give me a call. Have a story for you.”

This was his code for “I want to tell you a joke.” His jokes were the stuff of legend, but not because they were any good. They were always the sort of joke you’d get in email forwards in the 90s with dozens of ‘fwd: re: fwd: fwd: re:’ in the subject line, and they were ALWAYS clumsily set up puns. What struck me most about his stories is how much joy he expressed in the telling. He was like a grandmaster emcee holding his audience enrapt, and it was always a pleasure to watch him work. I called. He answered.

“Mark! So. A guy walks into a doctor’s office.” I knew it. I loved it. But this time it was different. The joke he told was dirty. Downright filth. Very adult. He’d never told a joke like that before. I sat on my couch and listened, grinning ear-to-ear, absorbing the fact that in the five years I’d been with his daughter this was the first time he and I had ever been on the phone together. I finally felt accepted by him, embraced fully as a member of his family.

When the punchline came I laughed my ass off. “I’ve never heard that one before,” I told him honestly.

“Well,” he said. Now you know something you didn’t know before. Talk to you later, buddy.”

“Goodbye, Steve,” I said, and hung up. Then I realized what I’d said.

Now he’s taken a turn for the worse again. A few months later he was no longer capable of living without assistance, his home too dangerous for him even with live-in assistance. His mind left him again. We sold his car, put his house on the market, and re-admitted him to the nursing home where he spent a few months before recovering the first time.

I left Nikki five days after the anniversary of his fall, and four days before Christmas.

She and I haven’t spoken since then. From time to time I’ve wondered if she’ll tell me when he dies. It’s a thought which I’ve largely been able to ignore – until last Sunday when I awoke to a voicemail from his nursing home. I’d missed a call at about 5:45 in the morning. There had been “a change in his status,” and they really needed to talk to Nikki but couldn’t get a hold of her.

I called to learn that his behavior and physical presentation had changed such that the night nurse wanted to call 911, but they needed permission. I was told that they had gotten a hold of Nikki by then, and he was currently at the hospital, but there was no further news at the moment. It was the last thing I heard about him.

Steve Pill is a good man. I miss him. That’s all.

Parastos

When I learned that my uncle Nicky died, I immediately learned that his memorial would not be attended by anyone I knew. Apparently he and his brother Mark had a falling out many years ago. My mother said she didn’t see much point in going either – it’s not like he was going to know. The rift between them emerged in my childhood, but I thought they had healed it. Maybe not.

As a kid I had idolized the man. I didn’t know anyone else who looked like him, acted like him. Laughed like him. He was the reason I wanted to grow my hair long and have a beard. He was the reason I wanted a motorcycle. He had a languid drawl and a sense of adventure and was very tall. He was sardonically funny without being mean, and chronically laid back. As I grew up I tried to emulate what I remembered of him and hoped I would ever grow into being as cool of a person as I perceived him to be. The last time I saw him was twice in 2002; in July at his own father’s funeral, and then a month later at my sister’s wedding.

I made a post with a brief eulogy of my own and tried to shrug off my disappointment because fuck it, what would be the point in my hanging out with a bunch of strangers, intruding on their grief with my curiosity? I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but someone sent me a message that said, “Maybe you should go. You may learn things about him that you didn’t know.”

I was rocked by that thought, and a little embarrassed that I didn’t think of it myself. Ultimately it changed my mind, combined with the fact that my elder sister and her family would be going. If nothing else it would give me a chance to see my nephews while they’re still growing up.

So Friday night I flew down to Kansas City to be in time for a 10 am service on Saturday. My brother-in-law picked me up from the airport and asked, “So where am I taking you?” which was the first surprise of the trip. Didn’t we have lots of family there? Was no one putting us up? Was I supposed to make arrangements? Oh. Oops.

I ended up at the same hotel they were in, who boasts a complimentary shuttle service that costs $5 per person, a kitchen that stays open until 11pm unless they feel like closing two hours early, an indoor swimming pool with water too cloudy to see the five-foot bottom, and a hot tub with water the color of weak iced tea.

Anyway.

St. George The Great Martyr Serbian Orthodox Church has a very pretty chapel. It looks very much like the one where my grandpa’s memorial took place in 2002. Smallish, with a flat wall at the back where hung unlabeled, flatly painted icons of a half dozen saints.  People gathered nearby and looked askance at me, but no one introduced themselves. Some 10 or 15 minutes after the service was supposed to have started we were told the priest had arrived and we should file in to the pews, so we did. No one sat. Nicky had been cremated, so there was no body present.

One icon had its own little stand in front of the sanctuary. On a small table next to it was a bowl of what looked like granola topped with chocolate chips which were in the shape of a cross. The table held two baskets – one full of plastic spoons, the other empty – and a small decanter of wine. A man in his 30’s stepped in front of the sanctuary wearing a long robe and what I assume is his best attempt at a beard and got to business. He held up a small pamphlet, faced away from the congregation toward the central icon, and started reading. The content was all the usual stuff you hear in the movies when the priest is talking over a body, only this guy was . . . it would be classified as singing, but it seemed to me he was just switching between two notes at random. He was also talking so fast I couldn’t make out half of it even when I was trying. From time to time a chorus of 5 would sing something with a melody while the priest would spoon a bit of powder into the censer and wave it back and forth. Sometimes the church bells would ring. They said The Lord’s Prayer 2 or 3 times, and the congregation mumbled along for some of it. Eventually he emptied the wine over the granola, and finally people made a line to kiss the nearby picture of Jesus(?) and eat a spoonful of the boozed oatmeal; a self-serve sacrament.

In short, I have no idea what the fuck happened. I wasn’t raised in the culture.

We gathered in a nearby cafeteria and hesitated being the first one to take a plate and pull something from the buffet line. Five photo collages of my uncle were placed on stands, and people took turns walking past them. One of them had my favorite expression I ever saw on him – an open-mouthed, amused smile of surprise as if he’d just heard (or said) something funny. A nearby table had a stack of printouts of his obituary.

That was it. No one gave a eulogy. No one told a single goddamn story about my uncle within my earshot. If I approached people they’d ask who I was, and then tell me how we’re related, and that they haven’t been in the same room as my mother in about 40 years. They were excited that I was from Chicago; many of them used to live there, but not since about 1990. They lit up when they learned that I was an actor and wondered how they could see me and said they’d look for me. They didn’t talk about themselves, and they didn’t talk about Nicky.

Four hours later we were the last to leave. But one thing I’ll never forget.

Wandering around after the service I struck up a conversation with a couple. “Nicky was my step-dad,” she told me. “You look just like him. I saw the face, and the ponytail, and the boots, and I thought, ‘He HAS to be related.’” It was a glowing moment in the midst of a head-twisting disappointment mixed with the grief of loss.

Hopefully I’ll make something enough out of myself so that my nephews feel about their uncle the way I felt about mine. If I’m really lucky, I’ll feel that way about me, too.

Thud

Live theatre is such a perilous and rewarding endeavor. We strive, we risk, and sometimes we fail so hard that everyone notices and all we can hope to do is recover and make it look like we did that on purpose.

Such is the case with the current production in which I play a tiny piece, Elektra at The Lyric Opera of Chicago. I play the court jester to Clytemnestra, and I get to be in the most electrifying costume I’ve ever had the privilege of wearing. It’s not that I’m mostly naked, but between the corset and spike-studded codpiece thong, it’s the most revealing thing I’ve ever worn that I didn’t strip down to.

I have such fun getting into costume and makeup. A delightful man named Roger laces me into all of my leather (yes, the whole outfit is red leather), and I couldn’t get into it without help. He makes sure the dressing room is stocked with chocolates, oranges, and Oreos. Then the wonderful professionals in the makeup department affix me with half a bald cap and a wig before two to three people grab brushes and slather me with white paint on every bit of exposed skin.

Yes, every bit. The fellow who paints my butt is named Eric, and he is very thorough.

I have only two entrances in the performances, and I spend every moment of my stage time finding the limits of my physical ability. I leap, I spin, I do my best to break a sweat in the least possible amount of time. The entrances both are tricky owing to the nature of the set.

Both times I rush down a flight of stairs. They’re constructed at a skewed angle; the bits which are ordinarily parallel to the ground are instead leaned slightly forward making each of them a downhill slope. But that’s not all! They’re also angled off to one side. If you pour several hundred gallons of stage blood onto one upper corner (spoiler alert), it will run downhill to the opposite corner and make the whole flight rather more slippery than it was in any rehearsal.

Opening night was exciting. I spent the afternoon teaching some basic stage sword fighting to two of my favorite people on the planet, showing off whenever I could how adept I can be at making my body do as I tell it.  In the evening they sat among some 3,500 people in the audience and watched the performance, bearing witness to a short moment which will stick with me for years to come.

My second entrance. Clytemnestra and her various attendants are on stage, antagonizing Elektra in a most grand fashion. I rush down the stairs to deliver news of (3,000-year-old spoiler) the death of Orestes, dragged by his own horses. The first few steps I take singly; there are two women on the staircase holding torches with honest-to-god real flames, and I don’t want to knock into either of them. Once I’m past them – about halfway down – I leap down two steps at a time.

That was the plan. That was what happened in rehearsal. That was not what happened on opening night.

My first double-step was perhaps a bit too far, maybe a bit too fast. I absolutely lost control, feet shooting out from under me, and landed hard on my unprotected ass. That might have been the end of it if it weren’t for the slickness of the steps, my butt paint, and the extreme angle. I positively skidded down the lower half of the staircase, my tailbone THUMP-ing on every step. Face locked into a surprise, arms flailing, only gaining speed until I hit the landing with my feet and traction reasserted itself.

My momentum was such that I shot forward and up into a standing position, only a foot or two away from where I intended to end. I kept my wits enough to deliver the rest of the scene as intended, cheeks stinging, wondering if I was bleeding. Clytemnestra then signals her retinue to leave, but I’m the last one out, mocking Elektra’s misery for a few moments by being the best clown I know how to be.

The mocking culminates in mooning Elektra and slapping my (surprisingly firm) ass. “I wonder if I’m injured,” I thought to myself. “Whelp! This is how I find out,” I figured, and spanked myself for all I was worth.

Side note: I am worth a lot.

When I came off stage, the entire ensemble was waiting for me to ask if I was okay. At the very swanky opening night party, at least a dozen people involved in the production individually approached me and asked if I was okay. At our second performance a few days later everyone’s favorite question was, “How’s your butt?”

But my favorite comment, which I heard a handful of times, came from those in the audience. Many of them were certain that the whole thing was on purpose. They may have jumped in surprise, but afterward I fell into place so quickly that it looked like the whole thing was planned, staged, and repeatable. This included at least one of my two friends in attendance, whom I several times had to reassure that that shit was on accident, but I’m so goddamn good at what I do that I made it look intentional.

Never committing an error is a skill to strive for, sure. But given the choice, I’ll take the talent which integrates a total fuckup into part of a master plan which is more successful than any amount of perfect execution.

And my butt is just fine. Thank you for asking.