The Sheila Variations

Fever 103º ***

Even the darkness was hot. The air smouldered, no escape because you had to breathe it. Darkness did not bring a breeze, or dew, or coolness. The motorized fan on the shelf stirred soupy hot air. My eyeballs ached beneath my skin. Sammy the cat lay flopped on the couch pillow, devastated from the heat himself. And he was such a cuddly cat, he wanted to curl up with me AT. ALL. TIMES. But his fur was too hot that summer. Sammy experienced my rejection of his hot fur as an emotional betrayal, and would stare at me with reproachful worried eyes. Or at least I imagined he did.

On the night I am thinking of, the fever was on its slow way out, but it had left me weak, slow-moving, spacey. The back of my neck hurt to the touch. My skin was tender and itchy. Light hurt my eyes. The fever had been a doozy, 103.2, and I had no health insurance. It was the summer of the deadly heat wave in Chicago, when hundreds of people died, and I got sick directly following. The heat still trembled up in the high 80s and 90s, but that was like a wintry blast compared to what was going on the week before. I was in a show and I had no understudy, so I had to make it to the theatre every night. I remember walking home from the theatre one sultry night, at the height of this sickness, and I couldn't feel my legs as I walked along, my feet floated above the sidewalk, body dissolved in and out of focus.

I was leaving Chicago in a month. Moving to New York. I was not dealing with it yet. I was denying reality. Nothing was changing. This part of my life was not coming to an end. Oh ho no. I am FINE.

And so naturally I got sick. It took a 103 degree temp. to cut through my blase nonchalance, and make me really see what was happening.

For 2 straight days, I lay prone on the green velvet couch in my living room. Facing the front windows. The windows I used to climb through, when I would forget my keys - which, at this point in my life - a vaguely irresponsible point, was often. ("Sheila," Mitchell said to me, kindly, yet firmly. "You have to stop climbing in the front windows. You are advertising to burglars how easy it is to get into our house." Not to mention the fact that M. was also climbing through my bedroom window, at all hours, on a semi-regular basis. Just to say "Hey!")

Speaking of M. Otherwise known as window-boy on the blog, but I'm sick of that nickname. He's M now. During that summer, M - who had been a semi-constant in my life pretty much since I met him 3 years before - became omnipresent. He was everywhere. We had had kind of a rough spring - after an altercation at the Gingerman Tavern (I only went there once, - and the thought of the place still makes me angry) - and I pretty much refused to speak to him for months. But then came the thaw. There was always a thaw with M. I could never stay mad at him long. I would turn my anger into a haiku fit, and soon all would be well. It was never serious. I loved him. But we never had that kind of relationship. You know, serious, and talk-y, and analytical. We analyzed some stuff, but we never analyzed our feelings for each other. I have a hard time explaining what the relationship actually WAS, and I will not try here. The further away I get from it the more perfect it seems. Also, I was leaving. What was I gonna do - harbor a grudge and then not see him again? No. So that summer, M was everywhere. I went to see his shows. He went to see my shows. He climbed through my window at 3 am after his bartending shifts. I would go hang out where he worked.

M lived 3 streets down from me that summer, so we developed a "just stop by" attitude to our relationship, which was rare (for us, and also for any city-dwellers). He hurt his back - maybe during a show - and he wouldn't go to the doctor, or a chiropractor. The whole "let me silently endure my injured back like the macho man I am" routine was kind of boring, to tell you the truth. So I told him I would give him a massage, whenever he wanted, just to at least give him a break from the torment. He called me one morning, and he was in agony. He wasn't a whiner. So I knew it must be terrible, if he would even mention it to me. He had an hour and a half before he had to be at work. "I'm coming over right now," I said, and hung up. I grabbed a tape of Pachelbel's Canon in D (with the sound of the ocean in the background - very new age relax-ey) - threw on my sneakers, and walked down to his place in less than 5 minutes. Up the rickety wooden back staircase, let myself in through his kitchen door. I called out, "M?" "In here," his voice from his bedroom. I walked in, and he was lying on his stomach, on his crumply mussed-up bed. I was very businesslike. Almost impatient. I popped on the tape (he started laughing when he heard the waves. "Oh, shit, what the fuck is that?" "You shut up, you.") - and I didn't just massage the guy. This was not a kumbaya experience. This was hardCORE. I was drenched in sweat by the end of it. I WALKED on his back, for example. If anyone had peeked through the window at that moment ... that person would have been faced with the absurd sight of a girl hovering in the air, and a prone flattened man. I cracked my toe knuckles on his back. I dug my toes in. I pounded on his back with my fists, I made hot compresses with a washcloth, then I made cold compresses. I stood on his back as though it were a surfboard, and shifted my weight around. M was what I would call a gruff and manly type of person. His head would have to have been literally guillotined off into the bloody gutter before he would allow that maybe he was in pain. I remember standing on his back, as the Canon in D blasted through the stale musty air of his room, saying, "Does this hurt? Does this feel better? Talk to me!" After an hour of this, he had to get to work, so I collected my tape, said "Bye!", let myself out the kithen door, went back down the staircase, and strolled up Southport, back to my apartment. It was only 11 am. A good morning's work. My last summer in Chicago was full of casual moments like that. I could rely on them.

When I got sick, everything started breaking down. By that I mean, my veneer, my oblivion, the blithe forgetfulness of my daily existence. I was living as though I would not be moving in a month. I was not allowing myself to grieve, to prepare, to be fully present. After the sickness, all I was aware of was the quick passage of time, scarves through my fingertips, gone in a flash. I am, in a way, grateful that I got so sick. Because for my last 4 weeks in Chicago - I held nothing back. I went to all my old haunts. I traveled up and down the lake shore, taking pictures of my favorite spots, for safekeeping. I had breakfast with friends. I started hanging out with Michael again. We had dates. I went to Pat every week, which I had resisted doing for a couple of years. But now that I only had 4 weeks left, I wanted to soak up every second. Even if it made me sad. Being sad was appropriate.

Fever 103 was a jumpstart.

The two worst days of it were in July. Much of this time blends together in my memory. When you get healthy again, you forget the feeling of being so sick, that feeling of eternity that comes over you when you are that sick. You cannot conceive of ever feeling better again.

The green velvet against my skin. The white hot light out the front windows. I slept out in the living room and would wake up so soaked from fever that it was as though I had climbed out of a pool. I took aspirin. I drank gallons of water. I had chicken broth. Whole cloves of garlic. Shots of whiskey. I was desperate. But I kept getting sicker. No health insurance. I was young, hearty, I had always bounced back. But I kept getting sicker. My body started dissolving. I remember one night of the show I was doing from that time - I was doing a scene with Kate - both of us in our ridiculous falling-apart turn-of-the-century dresses - and we were sitting on the edge of the stage, and an audience was there, and I felt suddenly like everything was liquid. My ear drums were liquid. Her voice was liquid. My limbs were liquid. I opened my liquid mouth and my liquid lines came out of my liquid throat. The audience liquified too. They were not even real to me, I forgot where I was, am I on stage right now?

So I lay on the green velvet, and didn't move. I had no air conditioning in my apartment, and this was immediately after the heat wave. So we're still up in the 90s. And one day, one day things got scary. This was the 103.2 day. I began to feel that I had no body. My eyeballs were tiny slits in my big liquidy head. I was so hot. So hot. Things started disintegrating around me, the light breaking into shards, the rug washing away like the tide. And I remember suddenly seeing ranks of icebergs, huge and white and blue and terrifying, coming towards me. There was a midnight-dark sea, you could feel how cold that water was, the frosty air, and icebergs towered around me, as far as the eye could see. It was a treacherous landscape, and yet it looked so beautiful - so (above all else) COLD. I was so hot. So hot. I yearned for that ice, that midnight ocean. This was the scary day. These were obviously hallucinations, but I do not remember them as such. I remember them as real.

At some point during that blurry day, i took my temperature, and saw how high it was. Vaguely, I felt fear starting to prickle at me. But it was vague. I couldn't really be concerned, I had no energy leftover to think: "I should go to the emergency room." But somewhere, maybe from a Jane Austen novel, I remembered that 103.2 was scary high, and I needed help. I called Mitchell, who was at work at the dentist's office. I told him my temperature was 103. He said "That is bad." I said, "Ooh, here comes another iceberg!" and he said, "I'm calling Maureen." and hung up. Maureen was the doctor girlfriend of the dentist whom Mitchell worked for. I loved Maureen and Michelle - by this point, I had known the two of them for a couple of years. I was scared because I had no money to pay Maureen. I'm not sure what happened next ... or the timing of it ... because everything dissolved, even a couple days later I only had a vague image of Maureen ... but Mitchell must have called Maureen and told her the situation, and Maureen came straight over. She was a doctor making a house call, in this day and age. I lay on the couch, and she did what doctors do, I can't even remember - I just felt so glad she was there. I remember lying on the velvet, and melting into it, and she gave me a shot, I think, and also ... pills? Antibiotics? I do not remember. All I know is that she was there. No more icebergs. I would get better.

And I did. But not fast enough. That fever had done its work - and I was still not 100% by the time I moved to New York. There were still respiratory issues, and sleep issues ... that thing had its death grip on me. But she drugged me up enough that I could bounce back from the midnight-sea abyss. I began to recover. I got my appetite back. I could sleep.

I vaguely remembered that M. had called me during my sickness. Mitchell gave me the phone, and M. said, "Hey, what's up ..." and I started going on and on about my sickness, and the icebergs, and Maureen's house call - I still was not well.

A couple days later, I was actually out - during the day - maybe I went to go get some coffee on Southport - it was hard to get anything done, in this recovery period, and I remember seeing M. in his battered blue car, at the intersection of Southport and Addison. The drugs were working in me by this point - I remember the spacey blunted sensation - they did something to my hearing, too, there was fuzzy wool over everything. And I know that I wasn't quite myself because of what I did when I saw M. I just plunged out into the street to go running over to him, without looking both ways, or even one way ... and I remember M. leaning out his window, shouting, "CAREFUL!" - a car slammed on its brakes to avoid smashing into me - that kind of thing - but i totally didn't care, I had been so sick, and I was starting to feel better, and the fever had washed away, leaving me totally aware of how little time I had left. M. loomed in my mind, as important, essential, necessary, and loved. Did he know? Could I let him know how I felt before I left? He and I were usually kind of calm and cool with each other, it was the most relaxing no-worries relationship I've ever had, and it cannot be explained any other way ... so I felt embarrassed later at how I was clinging onto his neck through the car window, in the middle of the intersection, kissing him, saying, "I've been so sick! I've been so sick! I need to see you though!" He was laughing at me, at how frenzied and Sophie's Choice-ish I was. He said, patting my hand like I was a halfwit, "We'll see each other. You just get better first. Okay?" The light had turned green. I didn't want to let him go. I was standing in the middle of the street, hanging onto his arm. He said, gently - and I remember there was something soft and fond about his smile, a look I rarely saw on his face - "You get better. Okay?" "Okay! But I need to see you!" Cars were now beeping at us. "We'll see each other. Please be careful - you're going to get hit by a car right now."

M. knew that, on a very deep level, I was crazier than he was (even though outwardly he was always the more crazy - in terms of public behavior). Okay - I need to write more about this, this thought just occurred to me ... It seems important. I am rather buttoned-down, in terms of public behavior, but inside? I'm a freakin' lunatic. M. was a freakin' lunatic on the outside, and there was very little he wouldn't do in public, he had no fear, he was a drunken lunatic 9 times out of 10 - but inside, he was very stable and calm. I remember one night when he came to pick me up at a Pat show, and he was sober, and I was - well, let's be honest, I was wasted. The second I clambered into the car, he started laughing. I threw my arms around him, in an urgent way, wanting a kiss, wanting a LONGER kiss, kiss me ... NOW ... and M. kept laughing, saying, "We have just reversed roles." Anyway, he never judged me for being a little bit crazy. This would happen to me sometimes: a guy would be attracted to what he would call my intensity ... and then, when he got close, he would find out that that "intensity" also meant I was a little bit crazy sometimes ... and instead of saying "This is what I signed up for, this is part of Sheila" - he would judge me. He would belittle whatever it was I was concerned about, or worried over (my worries are global, not always rational, and they are with me at all times). He wished I would be different. But ... I'm me. You're with ME. If you want someone different than that, then go get someone different. And don't treat me like I'm stupid. Don't ever treat me like I'm stupid.

M. accepted me almost in the way Sammy the cat accepted me. It was uncomplicated. Un-worried about. Un-angsted over. M. told me once that there were only two people he trusted on the face of the earth: his older brother, and me. That gives you some idea of what was going on here, hard to explain though, because it would manifest itself in exchanges like this: I would tell him something I was worried over, he would take it in, and then state, "You're fucking nuts." But he never did it with contempt. Is that possible? Well yes, it is. He had zero contempt for me. Because of course I know I'm fucking nuts ... I would respond, "I know! It makes no sense. None." There was always humor in how he treated me. So I was free to be a little bit crazy, I didn't have to rein all that stuff in, which takes so much energy, and always stressed me out, because it felt like a lie. M. just seemed to accept that I was a bit crazy, I needed reassurance sometimes, and that sometimes I was completely OFF in my assessment of reality. (This topic is a whole post, I'm realizing - my mind is racing.)

The fever receded, day by day, leaving me clear, calm, and alert. I had drawn a picture of a phoenix in my notebook, during the height of the burning-up, and I liked the look of it. It looked almost Catholic. Like one of the symbols along the altar at my church at home. I decided to get a tattoo. I had wanted one for a long time, so this wasn't a huge deal, but it was impulsive. I was not quite better yet, still drugged out and spacey, with some ear drum issues - but I walked down to Belmont Tattoo in the middle of the day - showed him my drawing - and asked him if he could put it on my shoulder. The joint was empty, and he did what I asked. I've never regretted it. The tattoo is so evocative of a particular TIME in my life - and usually that is a disaster (like Johnny Depp putting "winona forever" on his bicep, and then having to get it changed when it turns out that "Winona" actually WASN'T forever) ... but mine has not been a disaster.

I walked home from Belmont. I have no idea why I remember what I was wearing, but I do. You remember the weirdest things. I had on a big button-down white shirt, a man's shirt, and a flowery bikini top underneath. I had a big gauze pad over the tattoo, which was healing. I wore cutoffs. High-tops. My legs were still achey, and the sun beat down on the concrete. Sickness still trembled in the veins, there was still a spacey-ness to my experience of things, but health was now conceivable. I could imagine being better. The icebergs were already strangely psychedelic in my memory, like a hallucination from an acid trip. And now I had this beautiful Catholic-looking tattoo on my back, and I was so happy about it. I had gone through some kind of crucible.

Four weeks left.

M. called me that night. I was lying on the green velvet couch, probably watching 30something which was being re-run that entire summer on Lifetime, and Mitchell and I were addicted to it. It was about 11:30 at night. It was breathlessly hot. M. said, "How you feeling? You feel like coming over?"

Are you kidding me? After the breathless unhinged moment in the intersection? The fever-y I love you vibe as the cars beeped around me?

"I'll be right over."

I grabbed a bottle of wine, and walked over to his place.

I remember I didn't walk on Southport, because that was too public? Not sure - I walked a block west, a shadowy tree-lined street, quiet, dark. I was feeling better. I was experiencing health. It was like a miracle. The gauze-pad itched on my shoulder. Phoenix rising. I hadn't even put the bottle of wine in a bag. I strolled down the dark sidewalk, holding it by the neck. Like a wino. In hi-tops and a bikini top. And somewhere between my apartment and M.'s apartment - I got it. If I were Emily Byrd Starr, I would call it "the flash". It wasn't a particular special night, excpet for feeling better again. It was nothing out of the ordinary. M. and I were always traversing in between each other's houses, at all hours of the night, this was nothing unusual either. But suddenly: it was as though my consciousness expanded, got telescopic. It was alarming at first. I could see myself, like in a movie, walking down that dark street, holding the bottle of wine. And I knew that my life was about to change. I could feel it. This was it. Not just the move to New York. But the entire energy of my life was about to shift. And my life right now in Chicago - July and August of that summer - would be remembered in the future as a highly specific time ... completely unlike any other time in my experience ... and this time will never come again. I could feel that. I could see the future. I will experience many new and exciting things in New York. But I will never experience this moment again. And this kind of moment ... this kind of night ... will not come again. This phase of my life is over. And instead of it being terrible - it was joyous. Crystal-clear. Awareness. I could feel my own life. I could actually feel it. And it didn't come in a moment of great accomplishment, or dreams come true, or wishes fulfilled. It came in the everyday. It came because of the leafy darkness, and the familiarity of the walk, and the thought that soon I would be with M., and I couldn't wait to see him, because now I was healthy again, and I had four weeks left to just soak him up and revel in him, and wasn't I the luckiest girl on the planet, and isn't my life just so ... awesome and strange and beautiful? I yanked the cork out of the wine bottle, and took a swig as I walked down the street. What a life. What a beautiful life. This phase is ending. But oh, what a beautiful phase it has been.

Up the rickety staircase. Fumbling in the dark. I opened the door, and his apartment was pitch black - but he had lit a candle in the kitchen. M. was not a candle type guy so I was touched. I stared at the glowing little flame for a while, dazed with tears, smiling at it, like it was a friend. More evidence of beauty, strange and fleeting. I moved out into the apartment, only to see that he had placed candles everywhere. There was a trail of them down the hallway ... he was leading me into a veritable fire trap apparently ... but they looked so beautiful, and it was ... FREAKishly romantic of him. We were not a romantic pair at ALL, and so the candle behavior was so out of character that I have to admit I thought I might have entered the wrong apartment by mistake. But then I came out into the living room, and he sat in a chair in the middle of the room, in the dark, smoking a cigarette, and grinning at me. He had pulled out the couch-bed - which took up a lot of the room. Candles were on every surface.

"What the hell is going on?" I said.

Have I mentioned I'm not romantic.

"What is your problem?" he said.

I'm sorry, but I am laughing out loud. We had exchanges like this all the time. And to me the message was always crystal clear. We rarely misunderstood one another, except for the tragic exception of the Gingerman, which I will mercifully skip over.

I remember saying to him, still shivering from the awarenss of the telescopic moment on the street, which had given me the knowledge that time is fleeting, the moment is almost gone, revel in him, revel in him, enjoy every second, this is it ... this is it ... so I stood there, in this circle of candles, as though I were some Wiccan priestess - and I was just loving his crazy Mark Ruffalo hair, his gleaming eyes, his pale skin - and informed him, excited, "I got a tattoo!"

"While you were sick? Sheila, that is so stupid. You'll regret it." Ah, the fondness. The love. Can't you feel it in his adoring words?

I showed it to him. He actually did think it looked cool.

The living room had windows on 3 sides of it (it was kind of a porch-type room - very typical of Chicago) - and it had a huge ceiling fan. The heat was still oppressive at this point, and I was far from well, so he had set us up in the living room, with the cross-breeze. We climbed into the pull-out bed, which was creaky, squeaky, with a mattress as thin as a Kleenex. I felt like I had never been in such a comfortable bed. The bed was so comfortable that it seemed to even create the illusion of a soft low night breeze around us. I mean, it was the same hot night that it was 3 blocks away at my apartment, but I felt soft, and floppy, and relaxed. In a weird way, and I can't explain this, I think I've never been so happy as I was on that night.

We ordered food. I ate 153 French Fries. I couldn't stop. I was just amazed that I was able to eat. And that tinfoil-wrapped greasy food tasted better than freakin' caviar. It was so delicious. My taste buds were back. It was health. Coming back.

We turned on the TV and watched The Verdict. I remember telling Mitchell this later, casually, "And then we watched The Verdict ..." and Mitchell was like: "What?? The Verdict? That movie is soooo sloowwwww..." And I remember lying there under the cool cotton sheet, watching The Verdict, and I had taken my contacts out, so I was totally blind, couldn't see a thing, really, which was fine with me, since I was on my way out into sleep - real sleep - no icebergs ... and I remember M. sitting up next to me, intently watching the movie, like - he was into it. As though it were an action movie. Like Paul Newman would say something, and I'd hear M. go, "You tell 'im, Paul." As though Paul were Dirty Harry. This running supportive commentary went on for the entirety of the film - I'm pretty sure I fell asleep in the middle of it. All I remember is the movie going on, the television blurry at the foot of the couch, and M. smoked, and talked to the movie, saying bitter stuff like, "Yeah, fuck HIM, Paul", and occasionally M. would lecture me with an impassioned monologue about why Paul Newman was so good.

I barely listened to a word he said, as sleepy as I was, eyelids heavy, the cool sheet over my body, and he was going on and on about Paul Newman, and the words all blended together, I would murmur, "Mm-hmm" in response to M., having no idea what Paul Newman factoid I was agreeing to, but I was so happy, and so aware of my own happiness in that moment, that I wished he would never stop talking.

*** with apologies to Sylvia Plath

Posted by sheila