AFTER A FALL

WHEN YOU HAPPEN TO STEP off an edge you didn’t see and lurch forward into space waving your arms, it’s the end of the world for a second or two, and after you do land, even if you know you’re okay and no bones are broken, it may take a few seconds to decide whether this is funny or not. Your body is still worked up about the fall—especially the nervous system and the adrenaline-producing areas. In fact, I am still a little shaky from a spill that occurred two hours ago, when I put on a jacket, walked out the front door of this house and for no reason whatever took a plunge down five steps and landed on the sidewalk flat on my back with my legs in the air. I am in fairly good shape, not prone to blackouts or sudden dizziness, and so a sudden inexplicable fall comes as a big surprise to me.

A woman who was jogging down the street—a short, muscular young woman in a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants—stopped and asked if I was okay. “Yeah! Fine!” I said and got right up. “I just fell, I guess,” I said. “Thanks,” I said. She smiled and trotted away.

Her smile has followed me into the house, and I see it now as a smirk, which is what it was. She was too polite to bend over and hoot and shriek and guffaw and cackle and cough and whoop and wheeze and slap her thighs and stomp on the ground, but it was all there in the smile: a young woman who through rigorous physical training and feminist thinking has gradually taken charge of her own life and rid her attic of self-hatred and mindless competitiveness and other artifacts of male-dominated culture is rewarded with the sight of a middle-aged man in a brown suit with a striped tie falling down some steps as if someone had kicked him in the pants.

I’m sorry if I don’t consider this humorous. I would like to. I wish she had come over and helped me up. We might have got to talking about the fall and how each of us viewed it from a different perspective: that she perceived it as symbolic political theater, whereas I saw it as something that was actually happening to me at the time. I might have understood that the sight of a tall man in a suit folding up and waving his arms and falling helplessly and landing flat on his back was the punch line of a joke she had been carrying around with her for a long time.

I might have seen it her way, but she ran down the street, and now I can only see my side of the fall. I feel cheapened by the whole experience. I understand now why my son was so angry with me a few months ago when he tripped on a shoelace and fell in the neighbor’s yard—a yard where the neighbor’s sheepdog had lived for years—and I laughed at him.

“It’s not funny!” he yelled.

“Oh, don’t be so sensitive,” I said.

Don’t be so sensitive! What a dumb thing to say! Who has the right to tell someone else how to feel? It is the right of the person who falls on the dog droppings to decide for himself or herself how he or she will feel. It’s not up to a jury. The fallen person determines whether it’s funny or not.

My son and I are both tall fellows, and I suppose tall people are the funniest to see fall, because we try so hard not to. We work hard for our dignity, trying to keep that beanpole straight, keep those daddy longlegs coordinated, keep those big boats from tangling with each other. From a chair through a crowded room to the buffet dinner and back to the chair with a loaded plate is a long route for a tall fellow— a route we have to study for tricky corners and edges, low doorways, light fixtures, rug wrinkles, and other low-lying obstacles that we, being tall, don’t see at a glance. A tall fellow has got his hands full on a maneuver like that. He is pulling strings attached to all his joints, knowing that, if he lets himself go or makes a mistake, it’s a long way down.

Short, compact persons can trip and recover their balance quickly, maybe even turn that stumble into a casual Twyla Tharp–type dance move or a Buster Keaton fall, but when tall fellows stumble they go down like cut timber. We’re not like Walter Payton, who bounces right up from the turf when he’s tackled. We’re more like the tall trees in the National Basketball Association. When they fall, usually there’s ligament damage or torn cartilage; the stretcher crew runs onto the floor, and the crowd applauds sympathetically as the debris is stacked and carried away. “The knee feels good,” the tree says six months later. “I am lifting weights with it, and I am now almost able to bend over,” but he knows that his pro tree career is done gone, that he has begun a new career as a guy who hurts a lot.

All this can happen in one quick fall, and so a tall fellow is cautious when he threads his way through the party to reload his plate with spareribs. One misstep and down he goes, to the vast amusement of all present, who don’t realize that he has wrenched something in his back and will be in a body cast for months and not be so good a friend again. Only a tall fellow knows how major his fall might be.

Five years ago, I got on a bus with The Powdermilk Biscuit Band and rode around for two weeks doing shows every night. They played music; I told jokes and sang a song. One night, in the cafeteria of a junior college in Rochester, Minnesota, we happened to draw a big crowd, and the stage—four big plywood sheets on three-foot steel legs—was moved back twenty feet to make room for more chairs. The show was late starting, the room was stuffy, the crowd was impatient, and when finally the lights dimmed and the spotlight shone on the plywood, I broke from the back door and made a run for the stage, to make a dramatic entrance and give these fine people the show they were waiting for.

What I could not see in the dark was the ceiling and a low concrete overhang that the stage had been moved partly under, and then the spotlight caught me straight in the eyes and I couldn’t see anything. I leaped up onto the stage, and in mid-leap my head hit concrete and my right leg caught the plywood at mid-shin. I toppled forward, stuck out my hands, and landed on my hands and knees. The crowd drew a long breath. I got right up—I had been doing shows long enough to know not to lie onstage and cry in front of a paying audience—and, seeing the microphone about ten feet ahead, strode up to it and held out my arms and said, “Hello, everybody! I’m happy to be here!”

Then they laughed—a big thunderstorm of a laugh and a big round of applause for what they now saw had been a wonderful trick. But it wasn’t funny! My neck hurt! I hurt all over! On the other hand, to see a tall man in a white suit jump directly into a ceiling and then fall down—how often does a person get to see that? Men dive off high towers through fiery hoops into tiny tanks, men rev up motorcycles and leap long rows of trucks and buses, but I am the only man in show business who takes a good run and jumps Straight Up into Solid Concrete Using Only His Bare Head. Amazing!

Let’s see that once more in slow motion:

Me in the hallway saying, “Now?” Stage manager saying, “Not yet, not yet,” then, “Okay, now.” He opens door, I take two steps, see bright circle of light onstage, take five long running strides. In mid-run, the circle moves, man is blinded by the light, looks for edge of stage, then leaps—pushing off with left foot, right leg extended. Head hits concrete, stopping upward motion. Forward momentum carries body onto stage but right leg fails to clear plywood. Body falls, lands on hands and knees, stands up—like a dropped puppet picked up by puppeteer—walks forward, speaks. Laughter & applause. Looking at this footage one more time, you can see how hard this poor guy hit. The head jerks, the eyes squeeze shut, the hands fly up like birds, the body shudders.

Look now as the tall fellow who has had a load of concrete dropped on his head starts singing. It’s a song he has sung for years and knows by heart, so it doesn’t matter that he is senseless; these lyrics are stored not in his head but at the lower end of the spinal cord. “Hello, hello, it’s time for the show! We’re all dressed up and rarin’ to go!” But his eyes are glazed, and it’s clear that something is terribly wrong. Stop the show! This man is hurt! Is there a doctor in the house? This fellow may have broken his neck! Friends, this entertainer who always gave you everything he had has now given you too much. His life is now shattered, owing to one last effort to jump headfirst into a ceiling for your pleasure and amazement.

—You’ve now seen in slow motion the play that led to the injury that so tragically ended your career. Tell us in your own words, if you can, what goes through your mind as you see yourself jump into the ceiling.

—Howard, I’ve tried to put all that behind me. I have no hard feelings toward the guy who moved the stage or the audience that laughed—they were only doing their job. Right now my job is to regain my sense of humor and go back to work. I feel like I’m making real good progress. Howard, I consider myself to be one lucky guy.

Oh, it is a sad story, except for the fact that it isn’t. My ceiling jump got the show off to a great start. The band played three fast tunes, and I jumped carefully back onstage and did a monologue that the audience, which now knew I was funny, laughed at a lot. Even I, who had a headache, thought it was funny. I really did feel lucky.

So do I still—a tall man who fell now sitting down to write his memoirs. The body is so delicate, the skeleton so skinny; we are stick men penciled in lightly, with a wooden-stick cage to protect the heart and lungs and a cap of bone over the brain. I wonder that I have survived so many plunges, so many quick drops down the short arc that leads to the ground.

The Haymow Header of 1949: Was playing in Uncle Jim’s haymow and fell through a hole, landing in the bull’s feed trough, barely missing the stanchion, and was carried into the house, where Grandma put brown paper on my head. The Milk Jar Mishap of 1951: Tripped on the cellar steps while carrying two gallon glass jars full of milk from the grocery, dropped the jars (which broke), and then landed on them but didn’t cut myself. Went to my room and cried. My dad said, “That’s all right, it doesn’t matter.” But it did matter. I had ruined us—my poor family! A week’s worth of milk gone bust, and it was my fault. Miscellaneous Bike Bowls, 1954– : Biking no-handed. Going over the bike jump. Going down a steep hill and hitting loose gravel. Practicing bike skids. Swerving to avoid a dog. The Freshman Composition Class Collapse of 1960: After staying up all night to write an essay on a personal experience, rose in Mr. Cody’s class to read it, blacked out, and fell on top of people sitting in front of me. Got up and went home. Miscellaneous Sports Spills: Basketball collision that dislocated left elbow in 1961. Skating, skiing, tobogganing. Two memorable outfield collisions, after one of which a spectator said she could hear our heads hit 250 feet away.

Falls of Fatherhood: Walking across the room, thinking long-range thoughts. Suddenly there’s an infant at my feet, whom I am just about to step on! And instantly I lift the foot and dive forward, sometimes catching myself short of a fall and sometimes doing a half-gainer into the furniture. (I also fall for cats.) The Great Ladder Leap of 1971: Climbing up to install a second-story storm window, felt the extension ladder slip to one side, dropped the window and jumped, landing in a flower bed, barely missing my two-year-old boy standing nearby. Dreams of Falls: Too numerous, too common, to mention. Always drawn toward the edge by some powerful force, tumble through space, then wake up and go get a glass of water.

The first time I ever went naked in mixed company was at the house of a girl whose father had a bad back and had built himself a sauna in the corner of the basement. Donna and I were friends in college. Both of us had grown up in fundamentalist Christian homes, and we liked to compare notes on that. We both felt constricted by our upbringings and were intent on liberating ourselves and becoming more open and natural. So it seemed natural and inevitable one night to wind up at her house with some of her friends there and her parents gone and to take off our clothes and have a sauna.

We were nineteen years old and were very cool (“Take off my clothes? Well, sure. Heck, I’ve taken them off dozens of times”) and were careful to keep cool and be nonchalant and not look at anybody below the neck. We got into the sauna as if getting on the bus. People do this, I thought to myself. There is nothing unusual about it! Nothing! We all have bodies! There is no reason to get excited! This is a normal part of life!

We filed into the little wooden room, all six of us, avoiding unnecessary body contact, and Donna poured a bucket of water on the hot rocks to make steam. It was very quiet. “There’s a shower there on the wall if you want to take a shower,” she said in a strange, nervous voice.

“Hey! How about a shower!” a guy said in a cool-guy voice, and he turned on the water full blast. The shower head leaped from the wall. It was a hand-held type—a nozzle at the end of a hose—and it jumped out at us like a snake and thrashed around exploding ice-cold water. He fell back, someone screamed, I slipped and fell, Donna fell on top of me, we leaped apart, and meanwhile the nozzle danced and flew from the force of the blast of water. Donna ran out of the sauna and slipped and fell on the laundry-room floor, and another girl yelled, “Goddamn you, Tom!” Donna scrambled to her feet. “God! Oh, God!” she cried. Tom yelled, “I’m sorry!” Another guy laughed a loud, wicked laugh, and I tiptoed out as fast as I could move, grabbed my clothes, and got dressed. Donna grabbed her clothes. “Are you all right?” I said, not looking at her or anything. “No!” she said. Somebody laughed a warm, appreciative laugh from inside the sauna. “Don’t laugh!” she yelled. “It isn’t funny! It isn’t the least bit funny!”

“I’m not laughing,” I said, though it wasn’t me she was angry at. I still am not laughing. I think it’s a very serious matter, twenty years later. Your first venture as a naked person, you want it to go right and be a good experience, and then some joker has to go pull a fast one.

All I can say is, it’s over now, Donna. Don’t let it warp your life. We were young. We meant well. We wanted to be natural and free. It didn’t mean we were awful. God didn’t turn on the cold water to punish us for taking off our clothes—Tom did, and he didn’t mean it, either. It was twenty years ago. Let’s try to forget it. Write me a letter and let me know how you’re doing. I would like to hear that you’re doing well, as I am, and that our night of carnal surprise did you no lasting harm. Life is so wonderful, Donna. I remember once, after I lost track of you, I ran on the dock of a summer camp where I worked as a counselor—ran and slipped on the wet boards and did a backward half-somersault in the air and, instead of hitting the dock and suffering permanent injury, I landed clean in the water headfirst and got water up my nose and came up sneezing and choking, but I was all right, and is that so surprising? It was luck, I suppose, but, then, two-thirds of the earth’s surface is water, so our chances are not so bad, and when you add in the amount of soft ground, bushes, and cushions in the world and the amazingly quick reactions of the body to protect itself, I think the odds of comedy are better than even. God writes a lot of comedy, Donna; the trouble is, He’s stuck with so many bad actors who don’t know how to play the scenes. When I dropped the window off that falling ladder back in 1971, I didn’t know that my son had come around the corner of the house and was standing at the foot of the ladder watching me. The window hit the ground and burst, the ladder hit the ground and bounced, and his father landed face first in the chrysanthemums; all three missed him by a few feet. Quite a spectacle for a little boy to see up close, and he laughed out loud and clapped his hands. I moved my arms to make sure they weren’t broken into little pieces, and I clapped, too. Hurray for God! So many fiction writers nowadays would have sent the window down on that boy’s head as if it were on a pulley and the rope were around his neck, but God let three heavy objects fall at his feet and not so much as scratch him. He laughed to see me and I laughed to see him. He was all right and I wasn’t so bad myself.

I haven’t seen you since that night, Donna. I’ve told the sauna story to dozens of people over the years, and they all thought it was funny, but I still don’t know what you think. Are you all right?