We inspected the gallery that had become our second home. The roof, twenty feet above us, was made of skylights and exposed wooden beams. Columns the size of ancient tree trunks supported the ceiling. Single lightbulbs, hanging from long wires, were scattered about the space. The night sky with stars for eyes peeked in through the roof, twinkling with curiosity about the impossibilities rumored to take place here.
Per usual, the immaculate white walls had been cleared of all sketches, paintings, and photographs. For this performance we had created six-foot-tall letters from black masking tape, sticking a single word to each gallery wall.
FEAR
WILL
KILL
YOU
He clapped, beaming. “This is all because of your genius.”
I took his face between my hands and rested my forehead against his. “Where would I be without you?”
It was no longer enough to swallow glass or spiders as I had throughout the Fearless tour. Such feats had become humdrum by the mid-eighties. There wasn’t enough risk involved; I wanted to push further. I wanted my life on the line. That was how Madame Fearless Presents . . . Suffocated was born. What better way to demonstrate fearlessness than by holding a plastic bag over my head until consciousness deserted me?
Gabe helped me plan that first show in ’85. He found this Brooklyn gallery, which would go on to serve as our locale for nearly every performance. The monstrous movie screens on two of the walls had been Gabe’s idea, a way to cram my brand of uncomfortable intimacy down our spectators’ throats. It was also his idea to turn my work into onetime events instead of something I replicated in theaters across the country. I tried to put on a new show annually but sometimes two or three years slipped by before I could perfect a feat.
After that first performance, I fretted that only a dozen spectators had attended. How was I going to transform the lives of the masses if the masses didn’t show up?
Then I met The Five.
Gabe’s smile disappeared when his focus returned to the center of the room. “Are you sure about this?”
I clucked my tongue and let go of his face. Gabe did this before every show: agonized about my safety, brooded that perhaps this was the piece where we had pushed too far. The wrinkle between his eyebrows warmed my insides, though I’d never admit as much. Encouraging worry was the antithesis of what I stood for.
“Dearest, I love you, but we don’t have time for this.” The audience would file in ten minutes from now. The cameraman had set up his equipment.
“But—”
“Gabriel, how can we preach the importance of fearlessness if we don’t exemplify it ourselves?” It was best to cut him off before he gained momentum. If he sensed his argument had legs, he would run it into the ground.
For eight years Gabe and I had spent night after night in my dreary studio, brainstorming ways to push my mind and body while subsisting on little more than noodles. Spaghetti, macaroni, ramen; whatever was cheapest that week was what we ate out of plastic bowls, my feet in his lap as we covered the laminate floor with ideas, sketches, fantasies. When he stressed about the bills, I held him until his shoulders drooped; when I was creatively stymied, he massaged my temples. Many of these nights Gabe did not return to his own apartment but slept like the dead in my bed. When the sun began its uphill climb, we too resumed our efforts.
I rubbed my tongue along the backs of my teeth, pausing at the small grooves where the two halves had fused back together. If I could bisect my tongue with garden shears, if I could wrap a plastic bag around my head, if I could go a year sans speaking to another human being, how was this endeavor any different? These performances were the primary reason I lumbered out of bed at daybreak. Nothing else made my blood fizz the same way.
Gabe sighed. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”
I sometimes questioned why he had stuck around for so long, could not comprehend why a man who rollerbladed for fun would elect to spend his time in the underbelly that was my world. As soon as he’d moved to New York to work for me, I’d found him the best speech therapist in Manhattan and used nearly all of my savings from the Fearless tour to fund the sessions instead of reinvesting the money in my work. I waited in the lobby during every meeting, held my ear to the door to make sure the therapist wasn’t too tough on him. Gabe’s confidence skyrocketed, and I went to bed beaming.
After a few years in Brooklyn, he ceased the palaver about becoming a performer in his own right. We were stronger as a team, he said. He’d rather operate behind the scenes. I supported this decision because I knew he, not his speech impediment, was the one making it. He was a support team of one, the only person who had never questioned my need to maim my body over and over. In exchange for his loyalty, I withstood his worries.
I turned my back to Gabe, gesturing for him to zip the last inch of my black bodysuit. The ensemble was custom-made and hugged every curve. I felt more alive, more awake, than I had in years. I was primed.
“Confirm with the doorman we don’t have any surprise visitors, won’t you?” I asked.
Gabe made for the door and disappeared into the night.
The week prior I had run into my old college roommate, Lisa, whom I had talked to sparingly in the last decade, in part because I was still miffed that she’d assumed I would fail in this career, but mostly because these things happen. People fall apart as life takes them down divergent paths. She begged me to lunch right then and there. By the time we had Ni?oise salads in front of us, she had laid the ruins of her life in my lap. Three years earlier she had married a sturdy, jovial man who began cheating on her six months into their union. I thought surely the only dilemma would be whether she had the funds to buy her own home, and I was worried she might ask for a loan I was in no position to give. Instead she wanted to know how she could move forward with this man who had deceived her for three-quarters of their wedded life. You’re always giving advice on fearlessness, she said. How do I stop being afraid he’ll cheat again? Once I managed to scrape my chin off the floor, I told her she had misunderstood my teachings. The fear she must now battle was a fear of loneliness. I pointed out that her husband had stopped cheating only because Lisa caught him; more specifically, Lisa’s octogenarian dry cleaner found a pair of crotchless underthings stuck in her husband’s suit sleeve. She needed to leave yesterday. Lisa staunchly refused, insisting she could save her marriage. I tried appeals to both the head and the heart, but neither worked. She sat there, clinging to a thread that had already snapped. How weak this woman was whom I had once called my closest friend. How beyond saving too. I ended the lunch by telling her she was much too tall to be a doormat. I suspected I would never hear from Lisa again, but some small part of me thought she might sneak in tonight, sabotage my performance because I had everything I wanted and she had nothing, not even the art gallery she had once dreamt of opening. Lisa worked at a bank.