GIVE ME A BREAK: TRAVELING WITH A CAST ON
by Cliff Simon
I have a history of accidents. Intermittently throughout my life, I’ve worn many casts, braces and splints in cities across the country. I’ve been bandaged and restrained in the Bronx, the East Village, Harlem, Vero Beach, Austin and Birmingham, and have experienced narrow escapes in Santa Fe and Queens. About ten years ago at the end of the year, my theatre students honored me with “Most Accident-Prone.” The award celebrates something I live with, and I usually have enough sense of self and of proportion to accept this reality at face value. There are far worse things in life than the award (or the accidents). I do not think of it as karma, an affliction, a curse, or bad luck. I attempt an enlightened response, which is marginally successful and sometimes view it as my way to make other people feel better about themselves.
But last night I was lying in bed, ending my first week of recovery from a recent bone break caused by a fall. I wondered, as I do with most things, if there is some inherent reason why these accidents happen to me wherever I go or happen to be. Is there anything for me to learn from this, not that I’m deficient psychologically or physically clumsy (though that last is a matter of opinion), but a way to look into myself and find some deeper, helpful, gentle meaning and guidance? I know there’ve been times when I’ve observed other people who have calamitous events happen over and over in their lives, and I make an immediate assumption that they’re attracting the negativity. But thinking about that now, it feels judgy and sort of insensitive to them. After all, they’re human beings, not stereotypes, and they deserve more compassion and face time, which of course leads me to the realization that maybe I do as well.
So I decided to do some research and think back to where it all started, the Bronx. It is one of the two lesser-known boroughs in New York City. The other is Staten Island, whose notoriety comes primarily from the Staten Island Ferry. The Bronx, however, is the only borough preceded by the. In fact, many of the Bronx’s tourist spots also begin with a the, such as the Bronx Zoo. This subtlety distinguishes it from the other four boroughs giving it that je ne sais quoi appeal.
My very first accident occurred when I was eight and my sister Rona, twelve. The location was on the 3-step stone stoop of our beautiful brick building across the street from Crotona Park in, as I’ve said, the Bronx. Rona and her friend were sitting on the top step having a good time talking, as teenage girls are wont to do, and I was bored with nothing to do. I had inherited my mother’s sense of entitlement and lack of inhibition and decided my sister and her friend would be entertained by me. I thought they would embrace the sheer fun of me coming up from behind them, sticking my fingers in their hair and making unique noises in their ears. But I was very wrong, and my sister pleaded with me, “Get out of here. You’re so annoying. Get away twerp.” I must have taken that to be encouragement because I persisted until finally Rona, who for some reason resented my presence, started to chase me away towards the back of the hallway where the mailboxes were.
Before I continue, I want to make it perfectly clear that I was not an athletic kid. I had energy to be sure, but physical prowess? No. When I ran past the mailboxes I jumped down a few steps to the glass door, extending my arm so I could connect with the metal doorknob. Sadly, I missed it, thus my arm went through a pane of cheap glass which was a really bad thing. Eighteen stitches later, and 3 scars for life on my arm complete the condensed version of a much longer story involving our neighbors, my mother’s rag drawer, Bactine Antiseptic, lots of blood, a frantic drive to the hospital, and a calm pretty nurse in the ER.
The subtext of this story, I realize now, was that I was kind of excited and proud that this happened to me. I thought this experience made me feel more manly somehow, more “normal” than my perception of myself. In my young mind, I felt that I had kind of walked over the coals, through the desert, endured the trials of Hercules. I’ve never thought about it in those terms, but I believe it’s true. As a kid I was definitely different from most of my 1950’s peers. I was sensitive, most safe with my mother, timid beneath my somewhat urgent exterior and I was afraid and distrustful of people. Mostly, though, I was unhappy about not being like everyone else, yet at the same time had no desire to be. So I became my own anomaly, who reveled in this fantasy of imagined bloodied manhood.
I wonder, is it possible I could have unwittingly created accidents as time went by, to renew that feeling of an enviable testosterone-enabled assurance? This first time, the discovery came as a result of the event itself, and the subsequent rush of courageous endurance. But did the rest of my life need to repeat bodily injury for the sole sake of machismo? This is very disturbing to me, as a human being and especially as a gay man. I need to search further.
My next injury occurred in Manhattan, not far from Harlem. It was the first time (of three) that I broke my right wrist, and the only time I did it in New York. It’s a big thing to break a bone in high school, because at that age bones are stronger and egos are bigger, so if you’re male, it’s expected to happen in a violent sort of encounter. Classmates excitedly asked me, what happened? Did you do it playing football (really???), and I unfortunately told the truth that I was ice skating. I realized after witnessing their disappointed reactions, that I would have fared better in the long run if I had lied, and fabricated something more studly than ice-skating. But bravado was never one of my assets.
After that, years went by with no physical misfortunes, until I was twenty-two, had recently come out of the closet and was watering some hanging ferns in my apartment in the East Village, standing on a designer chair from Conrans, and lost my balance (might have been because I had too much to drink that morning), toppled off the chair and wrenched my back.
Then, however, I was good for a long time, decades even. But in the last 20 some odd years I’ve broken two opposing wrists, had a metal plate put in a broken finger, sprained my Achille’s tendon, broken my right knee into seven pieces, had a spectacular bicycle accident which ripped my meniscus and mangled my poor pinky (which now looks, in profile, like Mount Fuji), and then last week, while using a chain saw for the very first time, I tripped over the cord and broke my right Radius, the forearm bone that connects to the wrist. And truth is, I no longer feel intrepid, and am ready to stop relocating, because my skeletal paranoia believes that nothing good comes from these moves.
Tonight at a socially distanced dinner with my sister and my husband, as I was detailing my lofty search as to why I’ve had so many accidents in my life by considering the he-man connection, Julian (husband) looked at me and suggested maybe I’m simply being reminded that at my age, I need to slow down and be more careful. Well, I didn’t really like that very much. And in what turned out to be a last-ditch effort to salvage whatever manhood I am left with at 69, I created a list of accidents and corresponding locations and likely reasons for them.
From my little accident itinerary above, I notice: Five out of nine of my major accidents have occurred in the past sixteen years in Birmingham, Alabama. I can try to blame the city. God knows, many people verbally attack us for all kinds of things, both real and imagined. But it is not this beautiful city at fault. I can point my mangled finger at my lack of focus, to be sure, which probably has existed all of my life, causing all of those earlier injuries. But now especially, as I focus on retirement, and also ponder mortality, legacy, and the meaning and value of life, it becomes both tender and necessary to let go of my youth, which bade me farewell long ago, along with my mental acuity that is blurring at the edges, my crepe paper skin that bloodlets just under its surface if I so much as bump into a cotton ball, and, as the King of Siam so eloquently stated, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. As someone who always felt it was so important to be different, unique, special, and youthful I am now, finally, able to fathom that I am just like everyone else. And for newly lucid me, that is special.
Cliff Simon has designed hand-painted cakes since the late '70's, in New York, San Francisco, Austin and Santa Fe. Presently he teaches Scenic Design at UAB, designs at regional theatres and continues to bake, paint and write, the medium that has always helped him better understand life. Learn more at http://www.cliffcakes.com
