Acrobaddict (2 page)
Authors: Joe Putignano
Robert Lepage
Creative Director
Cirque du Soleil’s
Ka
and
Totem
Thank you to everyone who has supported, listened, and delivered patience to this creative process. For without you, I would not have been able to do this.
Special thanks to Jonathan Nosan, for a beautiful life lived together, for your inspirational talent, and wonderful care for my book.
Thank you Robert Lepage, whose friendship and creativity have inspired me beyond words and given me the strength to persevere.
To the legendary, iconic goddess, Twyla Tharp, for your magnificence, strength, and creative force that have changed my life.
Thank you Joseph Burgess, for standing by me through my very worst and very best times.
Thank you Dr. Sanjay Gupta, for your kindness and humility, and for allowing me to get my story out to other addicts in need of help.
Thank you Matt Sloane, for your friendship, support, and trust throughout this entire process.
Thank you Mike Ruiz, for your incredible talent, kindness, and support. Thank you Scott Marrs, for your friendship and inspirational spiritual talks.
Thank you Jeff Lund, for the friendship and spiritual support.
Thank you Matt Tanzer, for your friendship, patience, and understanding throughout some of my darkest moments.
Thank you Mark Lund, for your friendship and teaching me how to network.
Thank you to Cirque du Soleil and the “Totemites,” whose support, dedication, and strength have allowed me to follow my dreams and never give up.
Thank you Nancy Schenck, Eliza Tutellier, and Arnold Gosewhich, for handling my story and words with such grace, dignity, and love. Thank you for allowing me to have my many meltdowns.
And thank you to my family: Mom, Dad, Tricia, Jenn, and Michael, for loving me when I could not love myself.
Nobody could see it, could they? The people passing by . . . could they see what was happening to me? I stood on a New York City sidewalk with my eyes shut, asleep, dead, lifeless, but not falling over as the cigarette fell from my lips.
Could they see him?
I wondered. Could they see how behind me the Devil propped me up, like a doll, like a puppet, both claws under my armpits while my head slumped forward, my lips white, skin greenish pale, and the dark circles under my eyes like tiny moons from the City of the Dead? He wouldn’t let go of me. I would fall asleep, and nod out, but never fall over.
Anyone who has walked around the streets of any major city has surely witnessed this before, this amazing inhuman balance of the departed: the “junkie’s nod,” frozen in time, about to fall, but miraculously, we continue to stand. It’s an adagio I perfected over the years. Nobody knows that while we junkies stand there, fading into the nothingness, the Devil holds us close to his lips, close to his skin smelling of burnt cinnamon and ash, as he melodically whispers in our ears, “Come to me, my love; I’ve got you forever and ever; I will devour your soul.” It’s the only voice we can hear above all the others as we stand there like a limp flower about to decay. Once you hear
his
voice, you will never have a good night’s sleep, or enjoy food or any other earthly thing you once took for granted, because pleasure has a new meaning, and there is only one thing that can bring it. Even if you do manage to sleep, you will only dream of him, night after night, endlessly searching for a way out, wishing you had never known of this luxury, known of this existence, and you awaken only to repeat the nightmare again.
This dance is endless, and this is what it looks like to be locked in between the margins of life and death. Once the Devil hugs you in this way you can never return, and you only learn of his deception once it’s too late. If we could at least fall to the ground, it would mean that he has released his grip, waking us up—but we never wake up. We float in slow motion, hovering over ourselves in bodies that were once beautiful and drug-free. The Devil wants to keep us alive as long as he can, devouring our hearts, destroying everything and everyone we ever loved, because this is what addiction looks like. It’s a one-sided romance with death, but death only comes for day visits and never brings its finality. The Reaper has a truce with the Devil, and can only come once he has taken all the light and love from us. Here is the worst part: I love him and he loves me, and this is my happiness.
“I’m not the only kid
who grew up this way
surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks and stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
and we got called them all
so we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
that we’d be lonely forever
that we’d never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
that an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away
that there’s no way for it to metastasize
it does
she was eight years old
our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly
we both got moved to the back of the class
so we would stop getting bombarded by spit balls
but the school halls were a battleground
where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
we used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse
outside we’d have to rehearse running away
or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
in grade five they taped a sign to her desk
that read beware of dog
to this day
despite a loving husband
she doesn’t think she’s beautiful
because of a birthmark
that takes up a little less than half of her face
kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
that someone tried to erase
but couldn’t quite get the job done
and they’ll never understand
that she’s raising two kids
whose definition of beauty
begins with the word mom
because they see her heart
before they see her skin
that she’s only ever always been amazing”
An excerpt of the poem
To This Day
by Shane Koyczan.
From the book
Our Deathbeds Will Be Thirsty
.
I
N
L
ATIN
,
sacrum
MEANS SACRED OR HOLY
. S
OME RELIGIONS BELIEVE THAT THE SACRUM IS THE LAST OF THE BONES TO DECAY AFTER DEATH, AND THAT ON THE DAY OF RESURRECTION THE BODY WILL REASSEMBLE AROUND THIS HOLY BONE
. I
N
G
REEK, IT MEANS ILLUSTRIOUS, GLORIOUS, MIGHTY, OR GREAT
. G
ALEN OF
P
ERGAMON, A PROMINENT
R
OMAN
PHYSICIAN, CONSIDERED THE SACRUM THE GREATEST OR MOST IMPORTANT BONE OF THE SPINE.
As the sliver of blue moon slipped behind the starlit clouds that hung in the night sky, I knew without question that I was the happiest child who ever existed. My short life of eight years had been one of wonder, curiosity, and excitement. I was in my own dimension, an explorer devouring every fragment that life shone down upon me.
At night, I heard the wind as it whispered through the dense, dark forest that guarded the back of our house. I would drift in and out of my fantasy world that was so real to me that I often forgot the reality in which I was living. My imagination was, in itself, a drug.
I owned almost every He-Man action figure ever made, and I would line them up on my bed so that I could submerge myself in their world. A war could have been going on around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. A brown rug in my room stretched wall-to-wall, transforming the floor into a simmering lava pool while the air around me became cursed with demons. I would play in my room for hours, completely engrossed in the world of these creatures: alone, happy, and free.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the world I lived in; I just liked my imaginary one better. The magic of imagination was much more interesting than anything I had known . . . yet.
One day I crept down to our basement to watch TV. I was convinced that the downstairs was haunted by an evil ghost, but I took the risk because my curiosity was greater than the threat. The basement was unfinished and exposed a broken ceiling full of wires hanging down from above.
A large pool table that my father and brother sometimes used occupied a corner of the room, and the TV sat on a piece of smooth wood suspended by giant chains that floated above a cobblestone fireplace. Over the pool table hung a light fixture covered with the logos of popular beers and liquors. Pictures and mirrors decorated the unfinished walls—part modern-day saloon, part demolition site. It was beautiful and mysterious, and reminded me of a dungeon. The musty smell of the cobblestone fireplace overpowered the lingering cigarette smoke exhaled from my mother’s lips. I moved quietly across the floor so that I wouldn’t wake the ghosts.
As I looked for something interesting to watch on TV, I flipped through the channels and stopped on a station where I saw gymnastics for the first time.
I will never forget this moment
. When I die and God asks me about my life, I’m going to tell him this memory. The TV screen seemed to grow larger; as a matter of fact, it was the only object I saw. Everything else in the room disappeared. Watching the American gymnasts Mary Lou Retton and Bart Conner was like watching real magic. They flipped against gravity like a machine—powerful, strong, and flexible. In that moment I was hooked. I stared at the TV and felt a fire spark within me. Actually, it was not a spark; it was more like an explosion. My body grew warmer with a sudden feeling of jealousy, making me want to compete against this new emotion and transform it into achievement.